God's Will Hunting | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, John and I are going to talk about God's will.

This is a topic that most people are interested in. And if we're honest, as we survey the landscape in the church, the will of God is mysterious to many, and many of us spend way too much time agonizing over the will of God for our lives.

What can we say to these things that are profitable? What has God revealed to us in His word? And John and I, just to me, would be greatly helped by stopping agonizing over the will of God for us.

He has told us what is good for us, and we're going to consider those things today. We hope you're encouraged by the conversation. Stay tuned.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional, Reformed, and pastoral perspective.

Your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

John, we have met together again on a Wednesday morning, remotely, albeit. We'll be together soon, in about six weeks.

That's exciting. We're doing yet another double dip today, man. We find ourselves doing these a little bit more and more because we're trying to get ahead slash catch up.

It seems like we're always playing that game in the summertime. We've got two conversations today that are not necessarily related to each other.

We've mapped them out together already. We're just going to bang, bang, record these two and hope they're useful for someone.

We trust they will be. We're excited for both these conversations, but we can only do one at a time. Amen? Amen. Why don't you tee up the first one for us, man?

Tell everybody what we're going to be talking about. Justin Perdue Yes. This is a subject that Justin and I deal with as pastors quite often, shepherding people and helping them walk through decisions that they make in their life or past decisions, thinking that they are now outside of God's will because they have chose the wrong door, they went through the wrong window, whatever path, however it is that you want to use metaphors that have been used.

Often, metaphors can be helpful. Word pictures, they can give us... Justin Perdue I mean, John, when

God closes a door, he opens a window. That's right. It's such a weird thing that we say.

I understand we say things like that, but it doesn't mean that's how

God's will works. We aren't on this weird journey through a house that God's opening, closing doors and making sure that he's manipulating us to be where we are.

Today is a conversation about knocking down some of the not helpful and in many ways rest robbing views of God's will, and then giving us surety, hope, and clarity on this relationship that we have with the

Father. Before we get into the conversation, I want to start here so that you know where we're going to end.

Justin and I, in full confidence through the power of God's word, believe that one can live day in and day out in full assurance and rest and hope, knowing exactly that they are within God's designed will for their life.

You can know that without a doubt, without worrying about it, because God is not keeping back from us what his desire is.

He's made it very clear. As a matter of fact, we can take great confidence in knowing that everything we need for life and godliness, according to Peter and Paul, has been clearly stated in God's word.

We'll start there and now we'll walk over and say, let's talk about some of the ways in which it's been confusing because this might help people give a comparison.

I'll start with one, Justin, and then we can walk from there. When we get ready to buy a car, take a new job, move states, have another child, donate money, whatever it is, we can find ourselves in these life options.

I've heard people say, Lord, I need your direction to know if this is the right decision or not because they're afraid if they make the wrong decision that God's going to discipline them.

He's going to punish them. He's not going to bless them. It's a legitimate fear that people have. I know it because I used to have these fears thinking, man,

I don't know if I should really go to this college or that college. What do we do?

We use God's word as if it's some kind of a weird GPS mechanism. We'll split the book wherever it falls open, point a finger down on a verse, and then start reading.

I've heard amazing stories. There was somebody that showed up in Tennessee because of this type of mentality where it was exact confirmation.

It was kind of scary, the verse that they landed on, but that also could help.

You could land on where you've got a prophetess putting a stake through a guy's head. How do you interpret that one?

David is whacking people to death. How do you take that one? We have to be really careful.

Justin Perdue murdering and killing a thousand people with the jawbone of a donkey. It's like, well, that's confirmation.

See, God wants to be in the military. I don't think people do it this way.

I would never impugn someone's heart or their desire of saying that they're doing this because they're trying to manipulate

God. I think in many ways, they probably have heard someone else do it or been encouraged to do it. My encouragement would be that the outcome of that is not as clear and is manipulated towards our heart's desire.

This is really where our heart wants to be anyways. We're going to try and figure out a way of confirmation of getting what it is that we really want anyways.

I think when people agonize over the will of God, most all the time they are agonizing over a decision that is what

I would refer to as a wisdom call. Let's just go ahead and say this out of the gate.

God has given us his revealed will in his word, and we're going to talk more about that later. If in God's word something is clearly prohibited or something is clearly prescribed, those are really not up for debate or conversation.

If you're trying to make a decision and one of the options that lies in front of you is inherently sin, well,

God's word is crystal clear on that. You ought not go that direction. We should be playing on those things.

Sometimes we're going to be dealing with people who are brand new to the faith or whatever and might not know everything the Scripture teaches in those ways, and that's legitimate.

Typically, when Christians wig out over decisions that they have to make, it's over something that is a wisdom call where the

Scripture is actually silent on it, and they have liberty in Christ to choose this option or that option or that option.

They don't know quite what to do, and now the project seems to be one of trying to discern the secret sovereign will of God.

I'll just go ahead and say this. I'll quote a little bit of Scripture. Deuteronomy 29 .29 is very useful in this.

The secret things belong to the Lord, but the things that are revealed belong to us and our children.

We would do well to remember that. The secret sovereign will, the will of God's decree, is not something that is revealed to us.

It's not something that we're privy to. When we go about trying to read through the tea leaves and read through every line of providence to try to figure out exactly what the

Lord would have us do, I fear that we just miss the forest for the trees. We get mired in the weeds.

We get super confused. We get paralyzed by all of our thoughts and our anxieties, and it does, to your point, rob us of rest.

It robs us of freedom and joy, and it actually makes us less effective. We might otherwise be.

Whereas, if we understand that God and His revealed will has made certain things plain, and as long as we are operating within those boundaries and within that framework, we are entirely inside the will of God, we might be getting somewhere more useful.

That's right. Sometimes I've even heard people say, we've been praying about this.

We've been asking for God to give us peace. I always struggle, to be honest with you,

Justin, on that. I understand what people are looking for, but I'm not sure what that means or where you would gather that in Scripture.

Do you mean like an unsettledness or a settledness? I think you and I both agree that God absolutely, by His Spirit, presses things on the hearts of His people.

It brings thoughts to our minds, guides us in our living, for sure. I don't mean by His law, but it actually guides our steps in what we do.

We can look back upon things and see God's will in those things, and that's all legitimate. To your point, when people use this phrase that we so often use,

I'm seeking a peace about this, or I have a peace about it. That may be from God, but it may not be from God.

It might be just your subjective sense of this or that, or maybe it subjectively is lining up with what you deep down wanted anyway, and so you're at peace about it.

Like we say often, is it God speaking to you, or is it just what you had for lunch today? The fact that you got a good workout in, and now you've got some endorphins and some dopamine going on, and you feel good about this.

This is a podcast for another day, but I will mention it here because it's often used when you are hunting for God's will.

The idea that God told me this is what

He wants me to do. I heard this from God. Justin Perdue How did He do that? How did He tell you? Jon Moffitt I've had this conversation before with people for years.

I've been dealing with college students when I first started ministry 15 years ago, and the

Lord spoke to me. I would tell them, I have a problem right now because God told me the exact opposite about you, so now

I don't know what we're supposed to do. They would look at me like, are you being serious? I'm like, yeah, I'm being 100 percent serious. I was like, so either you and I serve a different God, or we have a problem.

They couldn't compute that because they've never had somebody oppose them in that. What I was opposing them in was

I didn't literally hear God speak to me. I had His word on my side. I'm like, no, you can't do that because that's opposing

God's word. I was speaking the same way they were, and eventually I led them to that saying, listen, this is why

I'm opposing you because God actually did write this to me and you thousands of years ago, and you're opposing it using something that's in your heart.

This is the hard thing about where we're talking about the will of God. I promised all those listening in the podcast, we are going to get to Scripture, and we are going to help you in this, but we do treat

God as if He's this distant, weird deity that has locked up His desires.

We're trying to do this dance with Him where if we can get the right move, the right word, and the right attitude, then

God's going to slip out for us. Here you go. This is what I really had for you. Now we're going to be in His good blessings.

We're going to be on His good side. I've had people say, I know I'm outside the will of God because look what happened in my life.

I'm like, bro, that's called a trial. That's not outside God's will. That's called a trial. That's what happens in life.

This isn't God's punishment. This isn't you outside of His will. I'll just leak this right now.

I'll just say this right now. Unless you're openly and knowingly pursuing sin, then you're not outside of His will.

If you were seeking to obey Him and seeking to glorify Him, and you were finding satisfaction in Him, and you're trusting

Christ. God's will is that that's for us.

We'll get to that in a minute. Justin, I know for a fact there are people who have been in my office and yours who are convinced they married the wrong person.

They're outside of God's will because their marriage is a disaster. Therefore, it has to be outside of God's will or they got the wrong job.

They carry around this weight on their shoulders to where for the rest of their life they're doomed because they made the wrong decision.

Now their whole life is unraveling because they got outside of God's will.

This is God's punishment for their life. Justin Perdue My word to people with respect to God's will hunting play off of the movie title, for those who haven't gotten that yet.

Maybe we're giving ourselves away as children of the nineties. My word to people is this.

God's will for your life is to stop freaking out about God's will for your life. We would all do ourselves a favor to, as we often say, trust

Christ and calm down. It's going to be all right. The things that we spend so much time worrying about are not things that would clearly put us outside of God's will should we make one decision or another, as we've already reiterated multiple times.

Honestly, John, this is a different conversation in some ways, but it's very much related before we pivot to the better place to be.

This is not unrelated to the conversation about over -spiritualization.

I think that many people, when it comes to this discerning the will of God thing, not only do we treat

God's will like this code that we've got to crack and all these kinds of things, and finally we'll know the secret and things are going to go great and the beams of light from heaven will shine down and eliminate our path.

Not only do we do that stuff that's not helpful, I think we spiritualize things that are not inherently spiritual.

We're talking about wisdom calls in the common kingdom about which city we live in, about which job we might take, about which school district we might live in, or even how we might school our kids.

Whatever. Even who we would marry. In those things, we often will spiritualize them and make something a spiritual or a moral issue that is not inherently so.

In doing that, we don't do ourselves a service because we just paralyze ourselves and completely do a category shift where now this is about fidelity to Christ when in reality

I'm actually free in Him to make the decision that seems best to me and those close to me. What I need to concern myself with actually is trusting

Christ and trying to conform my life according to His law and loving my neighbor and the like.

In other words, we've talked about this at other times. You could marry any number of people. One at a time.

Of course. Well said. You could marry any number of people one at a time and be inside the will of God.

The issue is not who you marry so much as how you then conduct yourself within that marriage. You could take any number of jobs.

The issue there is are you an upright employee? Do you do honest labor for an honest wage?

Do you make good shoes and sell them at a fair price? To use Luther's language, the urban legend. You could live in any number of cities.

The question is just how you conduct yourself and how you love your neighbor once you're there. Those are things that we should consider more than we do rather than trying to the secret will of God that we're not privy to know anyway.

Just going to the over -spiritualization, it is a form of pietism because pietism is hyper introspection where you're always examining your life.

If I'm not doing such and such, then I'm going to be either not saved or I'm going to be falling underneath God's discipline.

The thing I would remind everybody about is the discipline of God. Justin and I embrace it. We want it.

We acknowledge it. It's wonderful because it's a reflection and the evidence of God's love in our life.

God disciplines those whom he loves. When I can see God's hand upon me convicting my heart, redirecting my flesh, redirecting my mind,

I praise the Father. Father, thank you for loving me so much that you would not let me wander.

A lot of times, we're so worried about God disciplining us. No, that's a good thing.

As we are pursuing obedience and we might be failing in that, the loving hand of God comes in and says, I'm going to discipline you to put you back to where I want you.

You can't be outside of God's will, which is encouraging because God's hand is there to guide us.

Justin Perdue Right. If you're hearing us say anything, on the one hand, it's like, chill out.

There's not a Christian way to bake bread. Just bake the bread and eat it.

I had some of God's bread last night, as a matter of fact. Justin Perdue Partial because there's a part of it they don't actually follow.

Cooking it over human poop is one of those things. Justin Perdue Something like that. I think that's against the

FDA regulations. There's not a Christian way to be an astronaut. There's not a

Christian way to be a baker. Just do honest work for an honest wage, etc. That's just one example of many that we could give.

We've talked about this in other ways. Quit trying to read through the tea leaves and read through the lines of God's providence in such a way where you're trying to discern the secret things of God that he's even up to in your life.

Quit drawing such one -to -one conclusions of, well, I made this decision and now I'm in this circumstance, so that means

X about what I did and what God's now doing. In reality, we make any number of decisions in our lives where we are not outside of God's will.

We are not inherently in sin. Maybe we're pivoting here towards the Bible in a way to think about this in a more reasonable way.

You're going to encounter some difficult circumstances in your life as a result of living in a fallen world, as a result of being a fallen human being.

God tells us very clearly in his word that trials will come and that suffering is a part of this life.

If every time we encounter difficulty, adversity, calamity, suffering, or trial, we conclude that we are outside of God's will, we are going to be knocked off our horse left and right.

To your point, God disciplines those he loves. Even the corrective discipline of God, along with the formative discipline of God, that's only occurring in your life because he loves you.

He's producing good things in us through the difficulties that we endure. That's a

James 1 reality. He's producing steadfastness in us when we encounter trials, and he is going to give us the crown of life that he has promised to those who love him.

This is a 2 Corinthians 12 reality that God's grace has made obvious, perfect in our weakness.

His strength is made perfect in our weakness. His grace is sufficient for us. He displays his power when we are going through things that are obviously insufficient and weak for that and not able.

These are things that we need to hold in view that are clearly revealed to us in the word. It should help us process the things that we go through and not then go back, like you said, and retroactively agonize over every decision that we've ever made.

We can lament our sin. We can confess our sin knowing that we're forgiven in Christ. We can trust the

Lord as we pillow our head each evening that he has us and he's doing his good work in our lives. That's right. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. If you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

Transitioning into a biblical perspective of God's will, I will state this and then we will argue it.

You can absolutely know God's revealed will in clarity and comfort and never wondering.

Now, there is the secret will of God, and I think that is your death, your destiny, where you might end up.

Those are the things that are up to the Lord, and you don't need to know those things. You can know one thing.

God never fails, and I will say this. God's will is always for our good.

Romans 8. God's will is always for our good. We need to remember that God has us, he protects us, and he says nothing will separate you.

Because what's the ultimate good? God loves us. That's the ultimate good. He says nothing will separate you from my love, and therefore, if I love you,

I'm going to do what's good for you, and we can trust that. The ultimate goal of the scriptures, as it's revealed,

God's plan, is that we would live with him in the new heavens and the new earth where we would see

Christ. We would be with one another. We would not only love one another perfectly, but we would love the Lord perfectly in a world where there's no sin, no evil, no wickedness, no pain, no suffering.

That's the goal. God's purposefulness, as he's revealed it to us, is to accomplish that goal in us and to bring us there.

When you say that God's will for us is for our good, that's what we mean.

We can trust those promises because we have been called to a certain hope that's unshakeable.

We've got to work from that backwards in this conversation. Justin Perdue says, what is the chief end of man that we would glorify

God and enjoy him forever? That is an amazing summary of scripture. We can look at Psalm 37,

Philippians 2 .2, the Lord always and again has to rejoice that all the nations come and give glory to the

Father. One of the things that's interesting about the story of redemption is that when you start in the book of Genesis in the garden,

God reveals his will to Adam and Eve. They walk with him in full fellowship. They're in full communion with the

Father, and they live in constant glorying to him. To glorify God is to reflect his nature through obedience and through praise.

They do this. They walk with him. They enjoy his creation. Then there's this one rule, right? Don't eat of the tree.

What does Satan offer Adam and Eve? They offer Adam and Eve their own will.

He says, you can just be like God. Instead of living underneath God's will, you can be in equal power with him and live under your will.

Just eat the fruit. From that moment forward, the moment they decided to choose their own will for their life, that became part of our curse.

What is it that we constantly live in? Rebellion against God, resisting his will, and doing our own will according to the flesh.

And that's what I was going to say. The flesh is what you're talking about. So we naturally are born selfish, seeking our own desires.

James says it this way, you have not because you ask not, and when you do ask, you ask according to your own fulfillment upon your own passions.

What's interesting is that the entire Christian life is designed to be about living the

Father's will. I love this from Jesus. He says, my life is sustained.

My food is to do the Father's will. So literally, when the disciples say, teach us to pray, and Jesus says, what does he say?

Glory to God. This is the Westminster Confession. And what's the second part? He says, thy will be done.

He says, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That's for the glory of God. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

The opening of our prayer life is centered on the will of God. So then the question has to be, what is the will of God?

And we can go back and use a great summary of saying, God's design for our life is that we would glorify him and enjoy him.

So I'm going to go to Colossians now, and then I'll throw it over to you, Justin. Colossians, Paul says this in his opening letter, chapter one, verse nine.

And so from the day we have heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will.

So therefore, according to Paul, you could actually know it because he wouldn't pray for that if it couldn't be possible.

So he says, you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord. That would be for his glory, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.

That's the enjoying part of God. So Paul is saying, I want you to be filled with God's will.

And in response, you are going to have to fight against your own because what is our natural desire, right?

To praise ourselves. This is why the gospel says so that no one may boast and to please ourselves.

And Paul is saying my prayer constantly is that you know God's will and from it, you will glorify

God and you will find satisfaction because joy is ultimate satisfaction. A few thoughts here.

Biblical things, high level things. John chapter six. This is a wonderful statement about the will of God.

Jesus says that he's come down from heaven not to do his own will, but the will of him who sent me. He's talking about his father.

And this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, raise it up on the last day.

So the father's will is that Jesus would save his people. Next verse. For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

You can't help but think about what words later on in John's gospel that these things were written so that we would believe in Jesus, who is the son of God.

So we want to talk about the will of God at the most basic level as it has been revealed. It's that we would look upon the son and trust him for the forgiveness of our sins and for our righteousness, so that we might then be rescued from our corruption and from our sin, and that we might be raised up on the last day to dwell with God forever.

So that's huge. A couple other thoughts, though. Once we have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, like, well, bro, how should we live?

How should we think? Here's a good word from Romans 13, beginning in verse eight. Oh, no one anything, says

Paul, except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment, that's wild, and any other commandment are summed up in this word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Really quickly, Galatians 5, he says, for freedom

Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery, meaning don't go back to the law as a means of righteousness.

Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.

You are severed from Christ. You would who be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace. Then he goes on to say, you were called to freedom, brothers.

Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed by one another.

These are just examples of things that we could read. There are so many passages, John. The point of all this is trust

Christ. Consider his law, particularly in how he exhorts us to love neighbor. In terms of our life on earth, we demonstrate our love to God through our love to neighbor.

Remember that we've been set free in the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't need to wig out about the law and about ceremonies and rites and days and feasts and all these things.

We can calm down. Remember that we've been set free in Christ from all things. We're under grace, not law now.

The law guides our lives, but we're not condemned by it. Remember why we've been set free.

We've been set free unto righteousness. We've been set free unto love. If we're considering these things in the decisions that we're trying to make in life, we are inside the will of God, no doubt.

I don't know about you, but at least in my life as I've talked with people about discerning the will of God, about God's will hunting, these are not the kinds of things people are saying.

It's either assumed that that's there, or it's not even in the calculus because we're so mired in the weeds of some wisdom decision that we kind of jettison the most basic truths in the universe.

It's not helpful. Justin Perdue No, it's not. If you do find yourself in a conundrum where you're trying to make a decision and you're not quite sure, it is wonderful to go to the

Father in prayer and say, I would say, seek wisdom also from godly advice and from elders.

But to say, Lord, is this going to ultimately glorify you, or is this going to detract from praising you, to glorifying you?

Number two, because of this decision, am I going to find satisfaction in you, or am

I going to be distracted in trying to find satisfaction in something else? Sometimes it's as simple as that saying, you know what?

I don't think this is going to increase my love for Christ. I don't think it's going to be good for me.

It's in those moments where you can walk away from it. It's as simple as that. Sometimes, like I said,

Justin, we can over spiritually because someone says, well, I don't know. Should I eat this piece of cake? Is it going to glorify God? Is it going to cause me to die?

Well, if you're worshipping it, if it's becoming an idol, and if you think it's going to bring you ultimate satisfaction and joy, that's absolutely right.

I was going to say there's one other area that it's hard for us.

We're probably going to have to do this in SR, but I'll just read Philippians. This is another part of God's will,

Justin, that I think we try and get out of saying, well, I must be out of God's will because this is happening to me.

We've already mentioned it, but I'm going to mention it again. This is Philippians 1 .29. He says, for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

It would be very clear and biblical to say that while we live on this earth in these bodies, it is

God's will that we suffer because we're going to be administrating the gospel. I'm thinking of 1

Peter. There will be times when we suffer unjustly. I don't think he means for being Christians necessarily.

I think he's just talking about our circumstances in life where we're going to suffer unjustly. Then there are other passages in Scripture that make it very plain that we're going to suffer for the sake of Christ's name, like you're alluding to.

Either way, we look to Christ, who is the greatest example in the history of the world of bearing up under unjust suffering.

We struggle with that because our justice meters start going off and we struggle to forgive people who've wronged us.

There's any number of things that we could talk about. We're going to suffer in those ways. I want to make a few pastoral comments before the regular episode is over.

I can do that now or I can wait. We may be able to unpack more of this in SR.

I'm not sure what direction we'll go over there. These are a few thoughts related to this. If somebody in my congregation comes to me and wants counsel on a particular decision or wants counsel on a general wisdom call in their life,

I always say several things. I'm like, look, what we're dealing with is an issue of wisdom.

If what's in front of you is not inherently sin or not, we're dealing with prudence.

We're dealing with wisdom, so be comforted by that. Secondly, I'm going to take great pains as your pastor to never bind your conscience where the

Bible doesn't bind your conscience. If you're coming to me to ask me to tell you what to do, unless the

Scriptures are clear that you must do this or you must not do that, you're not going to get that from me. I'm happy to reason with you.

I'm happy to talk with you about things that I would be thinking through. I'm happy to talk about high -level biblical categories that you can weigh, but I'm not going to tell you what you should do or what you should not do.

We're not going to talk in those terms. Often, I'll tell people, if you want my particular take on something,

I'll talk with you happily as your friend and your brother in Christ, but this is not pastor to congregant. We're just going to reason together, and we can have a conversation over this cup of coffee about A, B, or C, but this is not thus saith the

Lord, and this is not gospel. This is not me authoritatively speaking into your life. This is just us processing together as citizens of the common kingdom and also as citizens of the redemptive kingdom who have been rescued by the

Son of God. I think we do ourselves a favor when we talk in these terms because we try to avoid some of that over -spiritualization.

We try to avoid some of that paralysis and that foolish trying to discern the secret hidden will of God.

It sets people free. Sometimes that's hard because sometimes people just want you to tell them what to do, but it sets people free to do any number of things that they're free to do in the

Lord Jesus. It's healthier for the church long term when we operate this way. Those are just a few thoughts.

Justin Perdue. My closing thought would be one of the things that I know in my own heart and I try and give to my brothers and sisters of Christ here in Tennessee is that our heart often wanders.

We know that it can be hardened. We know that it can be enslaved into sin. We know that we can be entrapped in sin.

I would say almost every single time that happens, we have taken our satisfaction off of Jesus and we put it on another object or being.

It's easy to say at that point, you are out of God's will. If you're trying to find satisfaction in money, jobs, sex, fame, whatever it is, and you're pursuing that, then that's not

God's will for your life. It's as simple as that. There are times where I know Justin's the same way.

We wake up every morning and it's like, Lord, my heart is so wandering towards finding satisfaction in something other than you today.

Tonight, I'm really looking forward to spending time with my brothers. We're going to be talking about this very subject of just how do we keep our hearts in tune.

As Hebrews says, consider how to build one another. They learned you are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. The encouraging part of this is that for the rest of your life, you are going to be wrestling with your flesh.

As Paul says in Romans, my heart keeps desiring the things I don't want to do, but what draws us back into the will of God is not sheer willpower.

It's not dedication and discipline. What draws us back, as James says, but he gives more grace.

It's the grace of God that draws us back. This is why in Hebrews he says, when you need grace and mercy with boldness, come right into my throne, claiming the authority in the name of Christ, in the righteousness of Christ, being clothed in his union with Christ, you can receive mercy and grace.

That's what draws us back into the will of God. It's not a God whose arms are crossed, yelling threats at us.

It's a God who's proclaiming loudly, return, dear child, for there is more grace for you.

It's astonishing to me that that word in James 4, that he gives more grace, comes right on the heels of talking about why you war against each other.

It's because of the cravings and the passions that you have. Then he follows up with, but he gives more grace.

Jesus is a compassionate, sympathetic high priest, which is a mind blow given that he's the only sinless person who ever lived.

If we were sinless, I dare say, John, that we would not be so sympathetic, because we're sinners and we're not sympathetic to people who struggle.

Thank God for Jesus Christ and the ways that he loves us, and the fact that he is a gentle, lowly, and merciful

Savior. May we all be comforted by that, whether we're trying to discern the will of God today or whether we're just trying to love our neighbor and do things that would honor

God and be good for others. May we trust the Lord Jesus Christ to be comforted in him. Good conversation.

We're about to continue this conversation or at least talk about something fun over in the SR podcast.

SR stands for Semper Reformanda. For those of you who may be newer to Theocast and not all that familiar, the

SR platform is for our members, for people who have partnered with Theocast.

It gives you access to additional content. That's a piece of what it means to be a Semper Reformanda member.

Some of that additional content is this extra podcast that we do each week, where we continue the conversation, sometimes going into more depth, sometimes just a little bit more personal, a little unfiltered maybe.

We're about to go record that podcast if you want to get access to this additional content as well as become a part of the

Semper Reformanda community. We have an app and everything where you can interact with other SR members, encourage one another, ask one another questions.

It's become a really sweet platform as it grows. I'm grateful for it. I enjoy getting on there and interacting with people.

All of this information can be found at our website, theocast .org. You're intelligent people. We leave it to you.

We trust you can figure it out. We're going to go and record some more content, hopefully for everyone's edification.