Battling Discouragement | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin, Jimmy, and I are going to have a conversation around discouragement, specifically battling discouragement.

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We do believe that it's something that you just don't overcome in this life as a Christian. We're going to talk about what causes it, how it's normal, and you're not crazy.

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And then how is it that we should fight day after day to find our hope in Christ as we walk through the dark holes of discouragement.

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Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Today your host, believe it or not, it is more than just two of us.

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We get the joy of welcoming back Jimmy B., Mr. Jimmy Buehler from Willmar, Minnesota, a pastor of Christ Community Church, and Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church, and then myself,

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John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church here in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Oh, I forgot, Justin is actually in Asheville, North Carolina.

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It has been so long since I have done a three intro, I can't even do it straight. But Jimmy, let's give the people what they want.

01:39

Welcome back, my friend. It is good to be back, my guys. It's been a long time.

01:47

It's been a long time, but I'm glad to be back. People have been asking for an update, and we've been waiting so we could do it here.

01:55

So when Jimmy first started with Theocast, his life was a whole lot less complicated than it is today.

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That's right. It is, that's right. For those of you who don't know, and I'll let Jimmy speak into this, but he is a full -time teacher, which is, that's about a 30 -hour week job, right?

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Yeah, just 30, yeah, I reached that by noon. That's right. And also, in his second year, going into his second year of church plant, and so there's a lot to do there.

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Well, I mean, with the church plant, you only work on Sundays. That's right. It's just not that big a deal.

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Just change Kanye's song to work on Sunday. That's it. That's all you got to do. That's it. One day. That's right. Yeah.

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So Jimmy is going to, he definitely has a future with Theocast. We're going to be, just because of his schedule and how things are working right now, for right now, he's going to be working what's called a regular contributor position.

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So he will have him on regularly, but you won't be able to hear him week to week. But that doesn't mean you won't be hearing from him.

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You'll still be hearing from him quite often through his articles. He's going to be in our upcoming book that we have on Reformed Theology.

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So you still get to hear his words written. That's right. Absolutely. Talk to us,

03:03

Jimmy. Yeah. So, yeah, we, a lot of the listeners might know, I teach at a Christian school here in West Central Minnesota, and it's a good role, and we're grateful.

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My wife and I are grateful, and my church is very grateful because it allows me to not be financially stressed with our church plant as we grow and seek to get established, particularly in a post -COVID world.

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And so we've been working a lot, well, just working a lot. And so it's good for me, and I think it's just good for the ministry of Theocast to have a more clearly defined role with what

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I am doing. And this just allows these two guys, I mean, honestly, we can say all this that we want, but let's just be honest.

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You're just, you're kicking me off because I'm ugly. I mean, that's really what it is. When you stand up next to Justin, you don't have a chance.

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That's right. That's right. We all can't be a specimen. But I mean, that's just the way it is. Can we just speak to that and say he's the one who's modeling our gear and you and I don't do it?

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He is. Well, here, here's my water bottle. There you go.

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And then, you know, shout out to 1517. Come on. So, no, it's good. I'm looking forward to contributing through writing occasional podcasts here and there.

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But yeah, I'm excited to go this new direction. Yeah. So he'll be with us today.

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And then in a couple of weeks, you guys will get to hear him again. And it's always good to have him back on. People are always like, great podcast today.

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So when's Jimmy coming back? I am the man of mystery. Yeah. So now, now the mystery has been solved.

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So Justin, pretty good book giveaway today, my friend. Talk to us about it. Good book giveaway. As always, we like to get good resources in the hands of our listeners.

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And so today we're going to be giving away a book by our brother Sinclair Ferguson entitled by Grace Alone.

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The subtitle of that book is How the Grace of God Amazes Me. Always a wonderful thing to consider, the grace of God and the gospel and how the

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Lord is graciously inclined to us and all the things that he has done for us that we could never earn, never deserve.

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And so today our winner, randomly selected, always under the providence of our good and sovereign

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God, Richard Clayton, who is one of our SR members. Richard has won this free copy of By Grace Alone by Sinclair Ferguson.

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And Richard, if you would just shoot us a message, man, with your details in terms of where to ship this book, and we will happily get that headed your way.

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And if you are listening to this podcast as it releases today on a Wednesday, we want to give away one additional free copy of this wonderful resource to one of our listeners.

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And so the way that you can potentially be the person to win this second free copy is to go to any of our social media platforms today on Wednesday as you listen to this podcast released.

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So that would be Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. You can go there and find instructions on how you could be the other person to win a free copy of By Grace Alone by Sinclair Ferguson.

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I trust those instructions will be clear enough, especially for all of you tech -savvy folks out there. I know what you're doing on the social media interwebs.

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So there we have it. John, redirect us, man.

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What are we talking about today? Well, as the podcast title says, we're going to be discussing battling discouragement, which this book we'll mention later does play into that.

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And it's kind of why we chose it. This may sound weird and pretentious, but as far as great reformed material that is helpful, it's hard to recommend 52 a year and not do multiple.

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So we're trying our best to give you different options. But when it comes down to stuff that's been written, it's hard to do so.

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But we do our best. Today, we're talking about battling discouragement, and the word battle is a very important word as it comes to relationship to our struggle with being discouraged.

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One of the things that I knew early on in my life is that I know I battled it and still do, but it wasn't a word that you used.

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Often, you would hear things about overcoming or increasing or how do you not struggle.

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And there was never an acknowledgment of the struggle. And I love the title of this podcast because it is a battle.

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And it's one of those things that it's not a war that can be won, not here, not now.

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And that's what we're going to talk about today is what is the struggle? What does it look like?

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And are you in sin or not in sin? And how do we go every day into that battle and acknowledge the fact that we are going to be faced with not only just spiritual discouragement, but physical, emotional, cultural, familial.

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There's a lot of ways in which we can get slammed on our backs, as I said earlier, with just flat out discouragement.

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So gentlemen, I'm going to just send you a softball. But the phrase battling discouragement, what is the first thing that comes to mind, especially when

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I gave you guys this topic ahead of time saying, Hey guys, this is what we're going to talk about. What came into your mind?

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We'll start with you, Jimmy. Yeah. So I think the first thing

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I want to differentiate between is I think there's a difference between being discouraged and then also having a disposition of grumbling or complaining.

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Those are two different things. You said it just a few moments ago, is it sin to be discouraged?

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Are we in a posture or position of unrepentant sin if we are discouraged about something?

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And so there's just all sorts of ways that we can walk through that. But something we need to recognize is that we are fallen people that live in a fallen world with other fallen people.

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And so we are bound to run into relationships and situations and diagnosis and all of these different things that bring about a discouraged spirit within us.

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And so we recognize that as Christians, we are called to be a people of hope that as we look forward to the return of Christ, when he will wipe away every tear and he will make right every wrong and turn sorrow into joy, that we are called to be hopeful in light of that.

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And yet we also recognize what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, that we are also jars of clay that as we carry the hope of the gospel, we carry this treasure as jars of clay to show that the surpassing worth belongs to Christ.

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And so are we in sin if we are discouraged? I mean,

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I would say, well, I think that's kind of actually a normal experience is that as we walk through life now, when that shifts into grumbling and complaining,

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I think that is a completely different posture and we can get into that. But I want to pass it to Justin because I know he has some some words as well.

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Agree with you, man. But what I was going to lead off with is the fact that in a fallen world, discouragement is normal.

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As it's been said before, I mean, we live in a world where we bury our children, you know, and only a crazy person would look around and say that everything is as it should be.

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And so in this life, oftentimes because of, as has been touched on, and we may unpack these one at a time, but because of circumstantial realities in a fallen world, in a world that's broken and doesn't work like it should, things happen to us that discourage us.

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And we actually would be not just inauthentic, but kind of insane if we weren't discouraged by some of the things that happen in this world because they are objectively bad.

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But then we're also discouraged because of things going on in our own minds and hearts just as a result of our fallen constitutions.

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Yeah. And then in addition to that, I mean, we encounter spiritual discouragement because of perhaps sin in our own lives that we're battling.

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We grow weary battling against the flesh or perhaps it's because of the sin of other people around us and how that's affecting us.

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So there are any number of reasons why we would be discouraged in this life. And I think my initial word to the listener out there is that if you are discouraged,

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I agree with Jimmy, it does not necessarily mean that you are in sin. And we'll parse that out a little bit more as we go here.

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But I would just say to you, it is normal to be discouraged oftentimes in this fallen world.

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And don't beat yourself to death over the fact that you continue to bump up against things that discourage you. We were joking before we hit record about the kind of Christian radio version of Christianity that so many people are exposed to.

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Or, you know, in some church contexts and theological streams, you get this very triumphant onward and upward kind of stuff where we assume that if we are legitimately in Christ and we're doing as we should be, then we will not be discouraged regularly.

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But instead, we'll be overcoming weakness, overcoming sin, and all of those kinds of things.

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And we will be encouraged so much in the Lord Jesus Christ that all of those other discouragements just fade away.

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And so, dear weary saint out there listening who is discouraged, take heart. You're not alone.

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You're not crazy. And there is hope in Christ, but we need to talk about that the way the

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Scriptures do. We're going to hopefully do some of that on this episode as well. Right. And I think it's important to note that I think in our, let's just call it like our

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American evangelical approach to the Christian life, that a lot of times maybe the unwritten goal is a positive disposition on life.

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Like that is that we are more than our problems or we are more than our sufferings in life.

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And that the chief end of us going to church or hearing a sermon or partaking in Christian material, the chief end often becomes,

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I need to be a more positive person. Totally. I mean, and some of that is just overtly ridiculous, you know, like you're a conqueror and just overcoming.

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Yeah, right. Yeah. But then some of it is effectively, man, just the power of positive thinking in Jesus' name.

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Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And that's really what most people get peddled to them in many churches across this land on any given

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Sunday. Yeah, we've baptized positive psychology. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if Dave Ramsey is the one who made this popular or not, but you'll hear the phrase, you know, how are you doing today and better than I deserve, which

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I understand the sentiment, which I understand the sentiment. But what happens, you know,

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I've said this for years, there's more lies told on Sunday morning than any other day of the week because what happens when you show up and you see people like, hey, brother, how are you doing today?

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I'm doing great. Lie. You probably got out of that car thinking, I don't want to be here or I am so beat down.

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I'm so exhausted. I'm so discouraged. I can't tell you how many times I've showed up to church just absolutely discouraged.

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And I told people, you know, they're like, how are you doing? I'm like, I'm discouraged. Yeah. Why? Like then there's talk like, why?

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You're about to preach about Jesus because sin is real and people suffer and people hurt.

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And there's a there's a somberness to Christianity. You read the Psalms and you don't walk away feeling every at the end of every

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Psalm that we are triumphing, walking our way to Zion. You know, it's just there's a somberness.

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And even there's, you know, you can hear in multiple times in the Psalms where there is a just flat out discouragement and there is a complaint being hurled towards God.

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God, this is hard. I don't like this often. Where are you? Like this is like, where did you go?

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I need this. Yeah. And I think for me, the moment I started to make the shift from my congregation where it's like it's

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OK to get together and groan. Yeah, it's OK to get together and not complain. And, you know, what

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Jimmy was saying, lament, saying, man, I am not well. I'm going to confess that my heart is heavy instead of faking it and showing up and be like, yeah, man, things are great.

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You know, life's got me. That could be worse. I could have cancer. And the guy next to you has cancer. It's like, right. Well, great.

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Now he feels like an idiot. Right. Yeah. And I think, honestly, there is a fundamental incorrect belief that if I am a

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Christian, I make Jesus look bad if I'm discouraged in life, right?

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Because all of a sudden we feel that we are communicating that Jesus isn't enough.

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When in fact, I think what makes Jesus and what makes Christ and what makes the gospel look incredible is that when we are in the midst of discouragement, we trust

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Christ, right? I mean, there is a reason why a large portion of the Psalms are

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Psalms of lament because it is a realistic posture of the life. Now, don't hear us advocate that we're telling people to be negative.

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That's not at all what we're advocating, right? We don't want you to be the guy at the party that's like, well, how are you today?

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Well, the world is a rain cloud. Wah, wah. That's not at all. But man, some of the best people that I like to surround myself with are the people who say life is really hard, but I trust that our

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God is good. No, amen. I trust that Christ is sufficient for these things. Yeah. When we say that Christ is sufficient, which we say all the time, we are not talking about anything that is sentimental in terms of warm and fuzzy feelings.

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We're also not talking about something that is necessarily circumstantial, that you are going to think and feel good things about how your life is going because of Christ all the time.

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But what we mean is that in the midst of emotional and mental struggle and in the midst of maybe very trying and maybe flat out horrible circumstances, we can lift our eyes from that horizon and look to Christ and say,

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He is sufficient to not only atone for my sin, but to provide me with righteousness, to secure my resurrection one day.

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He's told me that He's going to raise me up on the last day and I trust Him for that. And He's seated at the right hand of God and intercedes for me even now and advocates for my cause when

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I sin. And that's what we mean by saying Christ is enough. And that may not move the needle for you emotionally in the moment.

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It most often will not change anything circumstantially in your life, but you know in the midst of all that suffering and pain that Christ is enough for your salvation and that God has promised you a life after this one that will be different than this one is.

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He's written eternity into your heart and He's promised to deliver it to you through Christ. I think sometimes too, we live in those moments of encouragement where we have like that spike and we can feel the hope or there is this amazing conversation that happened or you see someone repent or you learn something new about Christ.

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I got put into a conversation recently in a big thread and the person was talking about reading

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Isaiah 53 and just how they became overwhelmed with just the glory of God. And the question was, has this ever happened to you?

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And I love someone's comment, yes, but not in a while. It was a sobering reality and people were yes, but not as often as it should.

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That's right. I mean, how do I live in that perpetual state of what

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I would call a spiritual high or that you could call it Christian caffeine? How do

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I just stay right there? And we look to do things that maintain that sense of uplifting, upbeating, positive, and we are given.

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I mean, Christianity has been marketing, I'm just going to stick with it. Christianity has been marketing

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Christian caffeine for years. Do this and you will have the spiritual energy to beat lethargy and to beat all of this other discouragement, to beat temptation.

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And then we try those things and it doesn't work. And I do think the

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Bible gives us some tremendous ways in which we battle discouragement, which we'll get to here in a little bit in the podcast.

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And it's definitely not what we've been handed in the past. We'll get to it. But the one thing

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I want to say is there's a reason why Paul says, be encouraged and then points you to Christ because he understands the amount of time that you're going to face discouragement and that it's almost like sleeping your body and spiritually gets tired at the end of the day.

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And there's this moment where there's like, you're going to have to just, you're going to take a break and we live in this broken world.

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So at the end of it, this is where I think the reform perspective of life is way more realistic than anything else

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I've seen because it says you live in a world that's fallen. Not only are you fallen, Holy Spirit lives within you.

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You are a chosen child of God, and yet you're still a sinner. Which means you're going to deal with the discouragement of this world.

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And you're going to deal with the discouragement of your own life. And that leads you to say, as Jesus says, put not your treasures here, but put them where your final destination is, which is with him in the new heavens and the new earth.

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So we take nothing with us. And that's that reality of don't try and have your best life now, because it's going to only slam you down on your back even harder.

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Well, and right now, really quick, Jimmy, right now we live and walk by faith. Not by sight. And I don't care what anybody says, that is not easy to do.

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And like, I'm just baffled sometimes. Can I just jump in? I mean, Jesus literally said, blessed are they who do this, right?

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John 20. Well, and I just am baffled by people that will push back against us and others who advocate this kind of theology and say, it can't be as simple or as easy as what you guys are saying.

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It can't be, well, we just need to trust Christ. And I'm like, do you hear yourself talk? Yeah. Like to do that, not only is it impossible in man's power, it's a gift of God.

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Amen. The Bible is clear about that. But even in our experience, everything that we feel and everything that we see, everything we go through preaches a different message.

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And faith is not easy. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So I said this to our church last

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Sunday and I said, look, I want to be overly and abundantly clear right now that in the

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Christian life, there is not some secret code that you need to unlock. There is not some hidden lifestyle that you need to follow.

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There is not some set of rules that you need to read between the lines in the scriptures to find.

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That God has spoken to us loudly and clearly through the person and work of his son,

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Jesus Christ, that he has revealed in Jesus all that we need. He has revealed that Jesus is sufficient for these things.

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And so, no, there's not a secret code to unlock. No, there's not some hidden lifestyle you need to live out. No, there's not these hidden rules that you need to discern.

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There is a gentle and lowly Savior that we trust in. And as we've said constantly, the fundamental battle of the

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Christian life is not being positive. It is trusting in a good shepherd,

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King Jesus. That's right. It's to believe. And Lord, help my unbelief. Justin, I'll distill your thunder.

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You're the one that made the observation about Paul. He's like, yeah, it's better for me if I die. Yeah, right.

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So I just like personally, anecdotally, maybe the longer I live, the longer I'm in ministry, the more

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I totally understand what Paul was saying. That, hey guys, for me personally, it would be better if I died.

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Because if I die, I'm present with the Lord. But it's better for you that I stay because clearly the

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Lord has plans for me in terms of how I can be useful and effective for your sake. And I think the older we all get and the more we suffer in this life and we just experience and taste and see what brokenness in the world does to us and everybody we love,

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I think we begin to feel that same way too, that me continue to live in this life really. There may be some things that I enjoy, yeah, but really,

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I think the beneficiaries are other people that the Lord may use me to bless them. And that's not to sound like conceited or arrogant.

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I think that's a biblical and reasonable perspective. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

24:14

Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest. And if you 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

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

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slash primer. I think Paul's, through the power of the

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Spirit, Paul, Peter, and John, and James, all focus the attention of the purpose and meaning of life is others here.

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Yeah, outwardly focused. And when Paul says, be eager to maintain the bond of peace within the local church, consider how to build one another up in love and good works,

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I mean, you just see that the purpose that Paul lives and he gives to the

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New Testament church, along with all the other New Testament writers, is as crazy as this sounds, it's a sense of survival.

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Because what we've been handed is do these things to survive your relationship with God or prove that it's alive or prove that it's real.

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And Paul says it's safe and secure in the hands of God in heaven, not in your hands. Well, we also encourage each other.

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We also live in a world that tells us that the greatest thing we can pursue is our own pleasure and enjoyment.

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That's right. Whereas the scripture clearly presents something else, that the greatest joy is found in this life when we love other people and help them.

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That's right. I mean, Jesus literally says, my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete for when you love one another.

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Right. John 15. Yeah. So guys, we're here and I know

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I want to make this transition before we run out of time. I don't want to throw candles on the cake at the last second.

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So we have people who are battling discouragement and we've acknowledged that. Let's talk about things that we do personally and then obviously the conclusion we're going to make is the ultimate hope and joy is always outside of ourselves, which is found in Christ and his community.

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And what God has promised us through him. Right. But I'll let someone else jump on this if they're ready. But guys, what happens as an individual and as a pastor when you find yourselves in the absolute throes of the dark holes of reality, what does that look like for you?

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I mean, this is a little bit of a bear the soul moment, and I'm sure we're willing to do so. Okay. So I'll speak on behalf of myself.

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Often for me, when I find myself being the most discouraged, when

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I'm isolated, that I'm bearing either the responsibility of our church or the responsibility of being a dad or being a husband on myself, that I'm not open and honest with the men in my life or even the men on this podcast in saying,

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Hey, I'm discouraged. I need help processing. And my wife has noticed this about me, where she has said, when our life gets tough,

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I tend to retreat and bear the responsibility on myself. And so what

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I begin to do is I live in my own world and I start having these conversations with my subconscious.

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And what that ultimately does is it leads me into kind of this trail of despair, kind of the woe is me posture of life.

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And so what I've had to learn to do in those moments is find that battling discouragement cannot be a solo project in the same way that battling sin cannot be a solo project, that I need the

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Lord's means that He has provided, which is His gospel preached and His church around me to lean into.

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And I mean, I'll just say, I see it in the faces of my people, that when we go into a time of confessing our sin, when

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I, as a pastor, stand up and say, I need the Lord's forgiveness for this and this and this, this week,

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I think that it encourages people in their faith to say, Okay, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one discouraged.

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I'm not the only one battling. And so I think it's important for us to remember that it doesn't matter if we're introverted or extroverted, we can't live life in isolation.

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We need the body of Christ around us. I think for me, as far as my battle against discouragement, it's pretty consistent,

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I mean, meaning I'm always battling it because I've been pretty honest on this podcast in the past about my fight against anxiety my whole life and just pessimism.

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I am an extroverted person. I've got a pretty big personality. I love to hang with people and I like to be spontaneous and have fun in the moment, but I live my entire life sort of haunted by thoughts of how terribly things could go.

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And so it really does at points, I think just where the metaphorical pads just off to where it's just metal on metal and it grinds and it's tough and you feel like you've been ground down to powder.

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And so that is only compounded by the real hard things that I do encounter in ministry because our church is just like every other church.

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It's comprised of sinners. And I mean, I'm a sinner. The other elders are sinners and the congregation is we're all sinners.

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And so there's always hard stuff going on in people's lives. It's heartbreaking. There's always ways in which you're misunderstood, you know, even as a pastor.

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And that's hard. There's lots of things. There's just difficulty in family life. You know, as you navigate the grind and the demands of life with children and schedule, and it's very easy to find yourself like Jimmy, you said it, you know, just kind of in this loop of discouragement, uh, where you're having to remind yourself of the good things that do exist in this world.

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Uh, I know that's my experience anyway. And what helps me, I agree with Jimmy wholeheartedly, my brothers and sisters around me.

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I mean, my wife is a tremendous encouragement to me. The other elders of our church are a great encouragement to me because they listen and they don't look at me like I'm crazy.

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They're like, brother, you're not alone. I mean, we feel these things too. And then I'm encouraged, frankly, by the testimony of the apostles and the people of God through history.

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Like when I read Paul in second Corinthians chapter one, and he says, we don't want you to be ignorant brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia.

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For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. I'm like, I get this dude.

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And then he goes on to say, indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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And I'm like, yeah, like Paul, I mean, you're reading my mail, dude. Like I am with you.

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And the only person, the only thing I know to hope in is God and his faithfulness.

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And most pointedly to hope in Jesus Christ and what he's done for me. And sometimes it makes me feel better, sometimes not.

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Sometimes I feel nothing. Sometimes I'm greatly moved as I think about what Christ has done for me. And if I think about the saints through history who have fought these same battles, there's a comfort in not feeling like you're by yourself in it.

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I agree. For me, one of the things recently as we've been going through the book of John, I was faced with the reality that it's a theology

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I've always believed, but I've never seen it so blatantly in the text about how weak the followers of Christ are, how frail they are, especially when you look at the disciples.

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And not only before the cross, but after the cross, there's just a frailty of humanity.

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And so often when I find myself in really, really dark moments of just discouragement, two things happen.

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I am reminded that I am but weak. I'm a very, very weak man and I should not trust myself, nor should

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I trust the thoughts that I have during discouragement. Sometimes my wife will ask me,

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I'm one of these guys, I try and get better at this, but I hold my emotions on my sleeve. And if you know

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I'm not well, you can see it. And my wife will walk up and ask me, what's wrong?

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And I'll express to her the discouragement. And normally in the past,

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I would become doubly discouraged because I would think, how can

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I be so discouraged considering all that I have, all that's going on, all that I've been blessed with?

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And I look at other people and I assume, when you look at people's lives through what

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I call the lens of perfect snapshots, you can assume that people just don't struggle. They don't have problems.

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And social media is a brilliant way to communicate. And we use it often with Theocast to communicate the glory of Christ, encouragement, and as Jimmy loves to use for pure humor.

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But it also can be a lie from the pits of Satan that you will look at someone's life and you're like, wow, they just, they always are happy.

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They always have great tweets. They always have good things to say. And that's just not the case.

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So what I have learned that every time I find myself discouraged, I use it as a reminder to go,

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I am such a weak man. I am such a weak father. I'm such a weak person.

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God have mercy on me and give me grace. Exactly. Yeah, I, um, there, I, you know, this might be a little too much, but sometimes

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I literally get up in the mornings before I take a shower. I just sit on the toilet, like with the lid closed and I have my hands on my head going,

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Lord, if you don't get me through the day, I don't get through the day. Which if you don't give me mercy and grace before I get in the shower,

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I might fall. And that, I think that's the sentiment because when you don't have to be a pastor to struggle with people's pain, people's suffering, people's,

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I mean, if you're emotionally aware, you're dealing with this stuff, right?

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You don't even have to be a Christian to battle discouragement. I mean, it's just, it's part of life. I know

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I've mentioned this before and I won't read this song, but there's a particular artist that I enjoy listening to.

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His name is Dylan Chase and he has this song called Black Holes and I was in the midst of some really dark, dark moments of counseling in my church and just people's suffering just beat me down.

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I mean, I was just discouraged because how do you, how do you go tell a man who's lost a child?

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Like there is no solution to that. Or, you know, there, when you're dealing with infertility or infidelity,

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I mean, there's just, you don't restore those things. Those are unrestorable here on this earth, right?

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And the only thing you do is you, you acknowledge the suffering. And when

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I heard this song, it's called Black Holes, he just kind of acknowledges for three verses, the absolute frailty and how life gets like just all of life, the world just sucks the life out of it.

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And it's just this black hole of endless, just pain. And at the last part, he then turns it to Christ.

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He turns it to the hope of Christ and the restoration of all things. And I'll, this is where I have in my church,

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I have found great joy is that my church has learned how to carry burdens.

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And I know your guys' churches are this way too, where I have stopped trying to carry my discouragement as a pastor by myself.

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And as insane as this sounds, I tell my congregants, if you don't carry my burdens, I will be crushed and you will have not a pastor.

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Like I put that burden on them. You too have to care for me. I'm a sheep, I'm a sinner, I'm a human being.

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And so when I show up to men's Bible studies or elder meetings, I confess my discouragement. I confess my struggles with sin.

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I rely on my congregants to get me from day one to day two. And if I don't have them, my own sin gets into my brain and I have not a place to confess it.

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And now I have to be the strongest person I know because everybody else is relying on me. And, you know,

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Justin and Jimmy have heard me confess to them my struggles and my frailties and my needing of help.

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And so I'll kind of, I know both of you alluded to this and we'll take the last few five minutes to talk about it, but there's a reason

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Paul said, bear you one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. Meaning, I've said this and I'll say it again, the

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Christian life was never designed to be lived alone. And that battle with discouragement, when you think of battle, you typically think of an army and that's exactly what

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Christ has given us in his church, where we gather together when the body functions properly. It builds itself up in love.

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I do not ever want Christians to think that it's up to them to get through this discouragement or anything in life on their own.

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Christ says, unless it's this extreme circumstance where like Paul and you're in prison and he's even like, can you send some people here to encourage me?

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Because I am not encouraged at the moment. So gentlemen, talk to us about the absolute power behind the body of Christ when it comes to battling our discouragement.

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Yeah. Okay. So there's something that I think is safe for all Christians to assume and that it's,

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I don't care what the outward face other Christians give you. Nobody is living on spiritual cloud nine, right?

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Nobody is. And if they claim they are, I mean, maybe this is my pessimism coming out.

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If somebody claims to be living on spiritual cloud nine, I look at that with just a little bit of skepticism.

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I mean, simply because of the reality that we are fallen people in a fallen world. And so I find that the safest people that I go to for encouragement and for help and for wisdom are not the people who just seem to be slaying it in the

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Christian life, but rather are the people who say, man, this is really difficult and yet I have a good

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Jesus. And so there is so much value in surrounding yourself or being part of a church where it's not necessarily like, hey, we all have problems and we're okay with that, but it's more so, hey, we're just realistic about the issues that we have as people.

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We're realistic that we are sinners and that we're not talking about a tough day in marriage, but maybe we're talking about a tough decade, right?

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Or we're talking about like we have a real diagnosis that could shake up the makeup of our family and that's really difficult.

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And to lean into other people who can come alongside and encourage and pray and point you to Christ is invaluable in this world, right?

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I don't need platitudes, I don't need hobby lobby signs, and I don't need Christian radio sayings to get me through the next day.

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What I need is people that are willing to walk with me in my life over the long haul.

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I agree. I'm with you, man. I want people around me who are realistic. Like you said, I don't need platitudes.

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And if you had like a great week, I know we joke about this all the time, where you pulled the lever and every time it was trip sevens, that's awesome.

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But if that's all you ever tell me that your life is just going super well, I'm kind of going to be like, ah,

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I, maybe you're just not seeing things that you should be, or I like you, Jimmy, my pessimism, like,

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I don't know that I can trust you with like the ugly things in my life, if, if literally your life is going this well all the time, because I don't know that we're living on the same planet, you know?

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I mean, I immediately have those thoughts too, but yeah, like I want people around me who are realistic and I might even frame it this way, who will acknowledge the suffering that is a part of life in this world, who acknowledge that it is this way, you know, like who do not want to kind of put their hands over the mouths of the

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Psalmists and over Solomon when they start to talk about how hard life is, but they're like, no, it is that way.

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And yet God and truth remain. That's the kind of people I want around me who will point me to something that is beyond this life, that is unshakable, that's outside of me, that has nothing to do with how

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I feel or what my experiences are. And they will remind me at the end of the day of the fact that Christ has overcome all of our enemies, including death, and he will deliver us, you know, that's what

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I want. And I don't need it. Like you said, I don't need it in this kind of refrigerator magnet version, but it's like, hey, like, homie,

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I just want to remind you that Christ will never cast you out. And Christ has accomplished everything that you need.

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And he has promised to keep you through the ups and downs, the good and bad. And he has said that you're going to be with him where he is forever.

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And that's that's our hope, you know, and to remind me, frankly, of the message of the book of Revelation, that Jesus wins, you know, so much of the

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New Testament is written to Christians who are experiencing suffering and persecution. And it's not this, you know, ethereal stuff that we need to come up with these outlandish interpretations of.

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It's not moralism. It's not platitudes. It's like, no, trust Christ is the message. And those are the kinds of people that I want around me.

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Amen. The natural bent of humanity is to do two things to go selfishly inward to resolve our situations because we're too humiliated by the weakness that we live in.

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And so we want to fix these situations by ourselves. But often what happens is people spiral.

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And as pastors, we become keen on catching people spiraling and it catches them off guard because I walk up to someone,

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I say, hey, how are you doing? They're doing great. And then I look him in the eye and I said, you just lied to me. And they step back and they're like, how did you know?

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I said, well, I had a 50 50 shot on that one. But the reality of it is, is that you kind of tell like there's there's something there, there's a weight about what they're carrying and or I might know the situation, but it's so hard to live.

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And this is why I think reform confessionalism almost breeds the somberness because we, we aren't trying to pretend that life can be better.

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I just flat out say, nope, life's pretty bad and it's not getting better. It's only getting worse. As a matter of fact, the more

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I get, the older I get, the more I realize I'm blind to just how bad it really is.

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What's because the message of the scripture and of reformed theology thereby is not an earthbound message. It's, it's actually about a life that is not this one, ultimately, right?

43:25

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, as, as pastors, we can only promise what the scripture promises. And so the scriptures do not promise us a discouragement free life, right?

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But the scriptures promise, uh, promise, promise us a good and gracious Jesus who will rule and wipe away every tear in eternity, right?

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And so that's what we have to, that's what we point people to, right? Like, like that's the fuel in our tank to get through discouragement is trusting that God does not abandon his people, right?

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That he will never leave us nor forsake us. And that's, that's the only promise we can really hold onto in the midst of the throes of discouragement.

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That's right. Some of you might be sitting here and you're wondering, man, I don't know if my church can do this.

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I don't, I don't, man, am I in a good church or how do I assess? Is this actually my issue?

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Like I need to repent and I need to engulf myself in a church that truly is preaching the gospel.

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They may not be exactly reformed confessional, but they've been faithful to love me and I just need to allow that church to love me.

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Or maybe I'm in a pietistic context. One of the parts of our free book, Faith Versus Faithfulness or Primary Unrest, Justin does an excellent job of helping you identify if you're in a pietistic context, which as we move over to the simple reformanda, we're going to use that as a guideline to kind of help us talk about if we're going to battle discouragement, we need to make sure that we are equipped with a body who knows how to do so.

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And if not, what do we do if we find ourselves in a church that maybe is encouraging the discouragement and not finding us and helping us ways to battle.

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The encouragement. So for those of you that are new, who may not know, we have a whole other ministry and podcast that we do called

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Simple Reformanda. That's kind of where we go a little bit deeper and sometimes darker is the way

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I like to describe it. And it's going to be a fun time having Jimmy a part of this part of this discussion because he is known as the grenade thrower.

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I have no idea what that boy's going to do. He took it over for me. That used to be my role.

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And I was like, all my grenades are gone. Jimmy's got them all. Ooh, those go boom. I want one. Yes, very much so.

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So we do two things. It's a special podcast just for those who have partnered with us in our ministry.

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And then also we have an app and in that app, you can come in and have conversations with Justin and Jimmy and I.

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There are video conversations. There are local groups where you gather together and talk about the podcast and online groups.

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All of that can be seen at our website. We are excited about to see it grow. And Jimmy, it's good to have you back, my friend.

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Yeah, we will. For all those who are members, we'll see you in the members podcast. If not, we, by God's mercy and grace, according to Providence, we'll see you next week.