Apostasy, Failure, and the Pastor

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Welcome to Theocast Hot Topics. This is Jimmy. I'm here with John and Justin. And today we are talking about some, perhaps some contentious or worthy items of conversation within the realms of Christendom.

00:16

And this is a new part of our membership that we're excited about. And we thought for those of you that are supporting us, and sometimes there are subjects that we don't really want to put out on the, what do you call it?

00:27

The pod sphere, the podcast sphere. The pod, the pod feed, but we wanted to give you some of our thoughts on it and some, just some,

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I guess, some perspective. And so that's what is the hot topic. Theocast Hot Topics is for, is that periodically we'll get behind the mic for a couple of minutes just to give you some thoughts on what's going on in culture, entertainment, theology, government, who knows what we'll talk about.

00:52

So Justin, what we got for today? Yeah. So apostasy is always a big deal in the church and perhaps it's an even bigger deal when a very prominent individual apostatizes, punts the faith, denies

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Christ, and so many will be familiar with what's been going on with Joshua Harris in recent weeks.

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And so we thought it would be good for the three of us to get behind the microphone and have a conversation today about, about his situation, not in detail, but just in general, a high profile guy in evangelicalism, leaving the faith and heading in a direction that's concerning, and then we may get into some other, some other topics, some other related failures and things of high profile guys in the pastorate.

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So we'll see where the conversation takes us, but we'll start with, with the Josh Harris piece and see where this goes.

01:46

So maybe everybody knows who Josh Harris is, and maybe there are some who are listening to this and like,

01:53

I have no idea who is that. So, so you guys want to answer that? Who is Joshua Harris and why do we care?

02:00

Yeah. He wrote a book that I remember reading when I was in high school. I think, um, how old was

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Josh when he, when he wrote that? When he was 21, 22, something like that. I think he was young. Yeah. It's called a book,

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I Kissed Dating Goodbye. And I think it was written with good intentions in mind.

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He was trying to, I think, combat a very highly sexual culture within the

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Christian world. And I think he was trying to offer a perspective that he felt was biblical.

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And, um, unfortunately I think that, that, well, not unfortunately, that book ended up blowing up in his face, uh, because it, it kind of, and this is not, we're not here to assess the book, but the book didn't really accomplish what he, what he was hoping for it to accomplish.

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And it did cause quite a bit of confusion. There were some people who found the book helpful. So there's a debate on whether it's helpful or not.

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That's not really what this conversation is about, but it put him on the map, uh, along with the

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Sovereign Grace Church movement with, uh, CJ Mahaney. So that's kind of who this guy is.

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And he ended up succeeding CJ at Covenant Life there in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is a very large church and was the sort of mothership home church of Sovereign Grace.

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And so, yeah, he was a prominent guy and, uh, left the pastorate a few years ago to go pursue more theological studies, was up in the

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Pacific Northwest in British Columbia, studying at Regent, I think most recently.

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So that's a little bit about who Joshua Harris is. And so there have been a lot of strong reactions to what he's been putting up on social media lately and his announcement of, hey, like, based on what

03:37

I understand the definition of a Christian to be, I am no longer a Christian. And here are some things that I'm wrestling through and, and here's where I'm landing on some issues of sexuality and gender and the like.

03:49

There have been people like figuratively jumping off the rooftops on multiple sides of this situation in this conversation, and I think what we want to try to do is speak to a couple of different sides of this, hopefully in a reasonable way, and we hope it's profitable for people.

04:05

Jimmy? Yeah, I believe the first thing that kind of made people really nervous and rightly so, is that the guy who wrote the

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Purity Culture book, you know, one day came out, I think, I believe it was an Instagram post announcing his divorce from his wife, and, you know, it was a picture, it was a very, you know, kind of cryptic picture of him and his wife just kind of staring into the camera and, you know, they had announced that they were working through a divorce and then not shortly thereafter,

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Joshua Harris then released another post on Instagram, you know, saying the things that you said,

04:45

Justin, that he no longer understood himself to be a Christian, and so, you know, rightly so,

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I mean, this kind of shakes people because this is, this is where everybody's theological framework comes out to play, you know, if you're, if you're from a more

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Arminian mindset, you know, you're going to say, okay, well, great, he,

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I mean, not great, but he walked away from the faith, you know, we, we believe that he can do that. If you're, if you're of a more

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Calvinistic ilk, you would say, well, perhaps he was never a believer, and so, how do we understand this, guys?

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I mean, what do we, what do we do? So, I think I want to speak to two sides of the aisle here.

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One, you have some people who are acting as though this man has committed the unpardonable sin, and we may as well treat him as though he's dead, and to that crowd,

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I would just say, hey, like, based on a biblical understanding and definition of the unpardonable sin, which is quite strong,

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I mean, where he would be, he's kind of presenting this as a, hey, I'm wrestling with this, I don't understand myself to be a

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Christian, the unpardonable sin would be more like, nah, I've surveyed all of this, I've tasted and seen of this, and all of this stuff with the church and Christ and all this stuff is of the devil and Jesus can go to hell.

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That's not what he's saying. And so, I think to one side of the aisle, I would say, look, you know, let's pump the brakes, let's calm down for just a moment.

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Let's not act as though this man could not at some point in the rest of his life come back to the faith, because there have been people throughout history who have denied

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Christ and have returned to the fold. I mean, even the example we see in Luke 22 of Peter, you know, denying the

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Lord Jesus in a very volatile, pressure -packed situation, and then obviously coming back, you know, to Christ.

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So, that's one side of it that I would want to speak to. I'm happy to let you guys jump in on that for a second, and then there's another thing that I'd want to speak to as well.

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Yeah, there has to be, I want to be careful to jump on people, but there's a sense of self -righteousness when you look at a guy like Josh and you look at,

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I mean, there's even, I mean, he was very affirming of the homosexual crowd and part of a gay pride day.

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And there's a side of us where we look at and say, how dare he? And then you can equate it to all kinds of things like his upbringing, his education, was he appropriately qualified as an elder?

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There's all kinds of, you know, you can put anything that you want in there. And I'll tell you this right now.

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You take every seminary in the United States, you take every denomination in the United States, and you have someone who has had an epic failure.

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I don't care what the seminary is. I don't care what the denomination is. And the reason is, is that the heart, the human heart is desperately wicked and has the capacity to do horrible, horrible.

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And here's the other thing is that the human heart is also desperately deceitful, meaning that you can convince yourself you are a believer when you're not.

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So I believe in the sovereignty of God. I believe that no one is regenerate.

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No one goes from life to death or death to life by their own works. And so let's say Joshua Harris is not a believer.

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Well, his apostasy is not a shock to me because he probably grew up in a

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Christian home. He was trained to think and act and live in a certain way. And when he finally got to a place where the sin was not worth,

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I mean, what we call the self -righteousness was not worth it to him anymore, he said, forget this.

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This is not me. I don't look at that and say, if he was trained better, if he had a better education, his education will not make him regenerate.

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His church polity will not make him regenerate. I think one of the things that makes this so brutal is that, you know,

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Josh Harris, public figure, you know, very well known. Um, a lot of people benefited from his writings and I would imagine a lot of people benefited from his preaching.

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And so there, there becomes this massive cognitive dissonance within particularly probably his, his former fold where they're like, man, how could a guy who helped me love

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Christ more all of a sudden be so in your face with the things that he's doing now?

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Because here's the thing, Josh Harris went from this public, you know, to use kind of the, the pokey language, this kind of evangelical thought leader position.

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And now all of a sudden he, he's, he's almost kind of rubbing it in with, you know, you had mentioned

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John or Justin, you know, partaking in like gay pride events and things like that. And so there's this element where it just becomes that much more painful.

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And so I think what's difficult is that if he would have been perhaps quiet about this, you know, done this quietly, some of this conversation we wouldn't be having.

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Um, but because he's, he's seeking to publicize his walk away from the faith. I believe he even has a documentary on Amazon right now, um, that a few of my friends watched and said, it's, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty grueling, but, but yeah,

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I, I, I think to agree with you, Justin, that there, there needs to be an element of, you know, we leave the hidden things to the

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Lord that we, the secret things belong to him. Yeah. We don't, we don't know.

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His story is not over. And, and I hate to use that cliche cause it makes it sound so Disney, but his life is, he's not dead.

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No, it's not dead. He has not stood before his creator and you know, like he's still living.

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And so I think what disturbs me the most I'm out of all three of us, I'm probably the most active on Twitter.

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Um, so at Bueller Jimmy, I'm just kidding. I'm, that was, that was shameless.

11:04

It's okay. Hey, it's fine. It's fine. No, no. Um, but here's the thing, like, I think the thing that was most difficult for me to watch was, was more so like Joshua Harris then became everybody's platform.

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Yeah. He, like he became everybody's platform to purport their viewpoint of like soteriology or their viewpoint of ecclesiology where all of a sudden it just became like,

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Hey, this is why I'm part of this denomination because you know, we don't do stuff like this.

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And it's like, okay, hold on a minute. Like, can we just, can for a moment together?

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Right. Right. Yeah, I agree. So on the last comment from me, at least on this kind of, he's not dead yet idea.

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He may very well be committing the sin that leads to death, like first John five, 16 and 17.

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But at least based on my perspective, what I've seen and observed, I don't, I don't see him doing that yet.

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I've seen it happen in a, in a context where like healthy church, a guy who was on staff and all kinds of these things, this dude ends up rejecting the faith and is just so high handed about it and proud of the fact that like he is rejected

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Christ. He is the enlightened one. And, and just stood even in the context of a members meeting where he was being removed from the membership and just was like, you fools don't get it.

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I mean, it was just, it was absolutely horrifying. Um, I think the sin that is unpardonable that leads to death is obvious when it happens.

12:50

Perhaps Joshua Harris is committing that, but I agree with you, Jimmy, the secret things belong to the Lord. Time will tell on that side of it.

12:56

This is a little bit personal for me. I have family members who were pastored by Joshua Harris for several years in Maryland.

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And so we've had some convos, uh, recently in the aftermath of all of this, like what do we make of it?

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And one of the things that I've said to them that we all would agree about is that when a man has a failure, whether it's this kind of failure or sexual immorality or whatever it may be, it does not discredit every true thing that he has ever said.

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When a guy gets in the pulpit or he's writing or something and he says things that are true in accordance with God's word, the

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Holy Spirit of God is faithful to use that truth to impart faith, sustain faith, and conform people to the image of Jesus Christ.

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It's not inextricably tethered to that man's character. Not that that man's character doesn't matter, but this is why we don't need to go burning the books of every man who's ever had a failure.

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And so I think it's helpful for us to just, like, right, common sense, right, and reasonableness. Jared Polin, Ph .D.: If that's the case, nobody, nobody should read

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Luther. I mean, for some of the things that he wrote later in life, you know. Justin Perdue, Ph .D.: That's true. That's absolutely true.

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And we could say that for a number of guys. Jared Polin, Ph .D.: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's like, man, if we, and this is the thing,

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I mean, this is the, we were talking about this before we actually started recording. I mean, this is the volatility that is Christian social media, where it's like, there is a, there is a, there is a mob mentality that whenever, like some public figure, you know, has some sort of failing or whenever some public figure says something, it's just like, everybody comes out and they're like,

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I've been waiting. Like, I've been waiting for this moment so I can, I can, you know, show people what

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I really think. And so, I mean, and this is what's difficult because let's just be, let's just be real.

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It's very difficult to be charitable when you're tweeting. It's very difficult to be charitable when you're commenting because you're not reading body language.

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You know, you, you can, you can rarely have some sort of meaningful conversation about a particular issue on a social media platform.

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And so, and so, like I said, when it comes to, you know, Joshua Harris, it's just like, hey man, think before you speak or dare

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I say, you know, at the expense of sounding high and holy, like, like pray before you speak, you know.

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Pray before you, I mean, pray for him. I mean, can you, I cannot imagine what this is putting his kids through, you know, his, his family through.

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Like, you think of those, those sheep, as you said, you know, and it sounds like you know some Justin, those sheep that listened to him and followed him, that knew his voice, like, man, that's hard.

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You know, the things, you know, the, the shepherds that are, are there and, and watching over them, you know,

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I can, I cannot imagine the work that they're having to do. Yeah. Right now. Yeah, I think public service announcement to even our members and, and others that are engaging from a reform perspective on Twitter, like we talk a lot about compassion and grace and charity.

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Our theology cultivates and produces that kind of posture. We had all strived to, to show some of that on social media as well.

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And so, pump the brakes before you just start trying to burn the village down on, on a

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Twitter platform or a Facebook platform. And I agree, man, that, that, that arena, that venue is just not the place to try to have a very thoughtful, you know, intricate, nuanced exchange of ideas.

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It just doesn't lend itself to that. Yeah, I think this is going back to Paul where he says, it's not the kindness of God designed to bring you to repentance.

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And if Joshua is a child of the Father, the prodigal story applies where he is prodigal -ing right now.

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He's, he's, he's running, he's running headlong into sin. And our prayer is that the

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Lord in his kindness will, will discipline those whom he loves. And here's the thing, when, when, when the writer of Hebrews says that, we have no timeframe.

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We're not told how long it takes for the discipline to be in effect. As a matter of fact, the confessions,

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Roman, or the, the confessions, particularly the Lenten Baptist Confession 5 .5 says that oftentimes the

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Lord allows us to remain in sin to create a greater amount of dependence. So, listen, our prayer is two things.

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Our prayer is that the Lord would graciously draw him back in or save him.

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But to sit there and judge, that, that's, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a tough one.

17:45

Yeah. So, I feel like we've, we've spoken about Joshua Harris, but, but frankly, you know, he's not, he's not an

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Island. He's not an isolated incident, if you will. And I don't mean to kind of boil him down to, to merely that.

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And so, I mean, again, let, let the listener hear us rightly that I think our posture with Joshua Harris is, you know,

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God has not finished with him. And, and though he has said some painful things and perhaps though he has done some painful things, you know,

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I think our posture is that of, you know, we, we hope and pray that the Lord restores him, that the

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Lord restores him to, to repentance. And so, I think that's, that's the posture that, that we have.

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Yeah. So, one last comment on, on Joshua Harris before we maybe move on to talk about some other stuff.

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I think that we can, you know, even here at Theocast, we can have a very charitable conversation about, about evangelicalism and, and maybe how

18:47

Joshua Harris points to a problem that does exist in that Joshua Harris was thrust into prominence as a very young man because of writing a book about dating.

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You know, he was not thrust into prominence through the exposition and the expounding of God's word.

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He wrote a book that I think we could all agree was an overreaction to secular kind of dating culture permeating the and like, at best, his book contains some common sense, but this is the kind of thing that evangelicalism has tended to hitch its wagon to.

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It's like, oh yeah, this is what we've been looking for. This is the answer. This is the key. This is what we need to get in the hands of all of our young people.

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And so, now this man is kind of thrown into the spotlight and the limelight at a very young age for something that is,

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I think we could all agree, is kind of a peripheral issue within Christianity.

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And so, that's an observation that I think can be made and should be made, though I want to make it with charity and not just like burn everything down with respect to Joshua Harris or his denomination, his tradition, and all of that kind of thing.

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And I'm not saying that everything in evangelicalism is wrong, but that tendency to elevate a man like Joshua Harris for writing a book like that is less than good.

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And so, I'm done kind of like you guys. I think we're done talking about Joshua Harris. Let's take this in a different direction.

20:17

Yeah, so there's also, you know, as I said earlier, he's not isolated.

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I mean, there's also a few other names. Yeah, there's also a few other names, you know, very public names, let's just say in the past year or two where there have been some very grievous sins committed.

20:39

You know, so we think of Talian Chevijan, you know, Mark Driscoll, you know,

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James McDonald, where, I mean, there's been some writing and articles and things that have come to light, you know, three very prominent musicians.

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Well, you can throw in musicians in there too, like Hillsong. Yeah, Michael Gungor, Marty Samson, you know.

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But I'm particularly thinking - Derek Webb in recent years too, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, the

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Camden Skull guy, yeah. So, I'm particularly thinking of these three pastors that, you know, when

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I was in, really when I was being formed, you know, in the doctrines of Calvinism, if you will, you know,

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I mean, these three names, Talian, Driscoll, McDonald, I mean, they were very prominent.

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This was kind of right when the Gospel Coalition was being formed, you know,

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T4G was being formed. And these three guys, you know, were so popular amongst the crowds that I ran in.

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You know, people flocked to them and their teaching. But, you know, with Talian, extramarital affair,

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Driscoll, you know, just a posture of bullying McDonald, you know, the same thing.

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And, I mean, I think McDonald was even, you know, quoted - He's under investigation right now. Right, of, you know, trying to put a hit out on somebody.

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So, I mean, just, I mean, things that just kind of cause your head to spin.

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And John, I remember, you know, John is helping us plant a church. And I remember,

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I was sitting in a Starbucks reading some of this McDonald stuff. And it just, it was like a rock falling on my chest.

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And I remember calling John and just said, John, like, what do you, how do we, what do we do?

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Like, how do you even think about this? And how do we not get there? Because you're, I mean, you're listening to three guys in the ministry.

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And so, what do we do? John, what, I mean, what did you tell me in that moment, if you remember? I do remember.

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Yeah, I think that it's, there's always a danger within our heart and it's, you're, you constantly live in that fear of, like, how do

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I say this without sounding morbid? I live in a constant fear of failure because I know how weak and frail

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I am. So, my elders are, they are, they are so important to me.

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My, my friendship with you three is so important to me because if you do not, what happens is, is that in that type of a culture, these guys get so powerful and they become these cash cows where they draw all this money.

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And there's this, where basically if, if I walk away, these organizations crumble and pride easily builds up into that.

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I think, you know, the, you look at guys like R .C. Sproul, thank the Lord, from what we know, I mean, R .C.

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Sproul's ministry was probably one of the largest in the reform world, brought in more money than probably all of the other guys combined.

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And thankfully, the Lord protected him from that. But I think there's a side of it where we have to live in that posture of if you don't think it's possible, like,

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Jimmy, like when I, what I told you, Jimmy, I said, this is healthy. Means you're aware of it. Means you're gonna be looking for it.

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And, and it's, you have to put your, surround yourself with elders who are gonna confront it when they see it. Yeah, I, I think that a few things here.

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We recently recorded a podcast, episode 181, The Dark Side of Christianity. That podcast, in part, was birthed out of this kind of conversation that we were having on your porch,

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John, about the darkness that exists in all of us, about how all of us as ordinary people and ordinary pastors, even, are capable of extraordinary evil.

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And so, I think that it's entirely right and appropriate that we would have a very conscious posture when we hear about failures like we've mentioned, that were it not for the grace of God, there go

24:46

I. Yeah. So, that's, that matters a ton. But then, you know, also, like, even in the spirit of like Galatians 6 .1,

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you know, where we're told that when people are caught in sin, those who are spiritual should restore those people in a spirit of gentleness, but keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted.

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It's like, well, that word right there is, hey, as you're seeking to even restore people who've been caught in sin, be aware of your own frame and realize that it would be incredibly easy for you to go the same way.

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And so, that's really important for us as pastors to be aware of these things and be aware of our own frames and our own frailties.

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And, John, I agree with you, man. One of the great benefits of having a plurality of elders in a local church is that you pastor each other.

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Like, you have these very intimate relationships. You know one another's lives really well.

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I know that one of the goals on our eldership is to create that kind of intimacy and that kind of safeness, if I can use that word, where we can be very real with one another about the bins in our own frames and how our marriages are doing, how our families are doing.

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Hey, man, like, here's something I'm struggling with right now. Be aware of it. And I think that's absolutely critical and essential for a man's ministry.

25:58

Yeah. And I think this is part of the problem that necessarily,

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I think, boils up when you approach the Christian life with this posture of, we always have upwards trajectory.

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We're always going to have victory. You know, sin is always going to become less and less of an issue rather than approaching the

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Christian life, even from, you know, an elder pastor standpoint that the inner war rages.

26:35

You mean, I just, he's not a pastor, but I think the way he thinks of the pastorate is so helpful.

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You know, one of the things he always says is, you know, I pray for my pastor because the law and the devil have been working very, very hard on him all week, you know?

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And I just find that so helpful because, and just, I mean, if you're a listener and you're not, you're not in full -time vocational ministry, that you just,

27:01

I don't want to say you're just a church member, but you are a church member. Just be so mindful of that, that your pastor struggles in unique ways that you do not.

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That not only is he a follower of Christ, but he's also an under shepherd of Christ.

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And with that comes added responsibility and added accountability. And because of that, when he sins and he's aware of it, when he sins and he's aware of it, man, the shame and the guilt can be just hurled upon him from the law and from Satan.

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And so, I mean, just to be mindful of his frame, be mindful of his weaknesses.

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And I think this is why us, us as three guys, you know, we can maybe talk about this in a future podcast, you know,

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Luther's understanding of theology of the cross, theology of glory, you know, where, you know, being a theologian of the cross, you know, you're not seeking the ministry because of fame and what it can bring you.

28:09

You're not seeking it for position and power and influence, but rather, you know,

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God calls us to the ministry because he wants to use us in order to lead people to not ourselves, but rather to Christ.

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I'm going to follow up to that. I'm going to follow up to an answer to the question, Jimmy, you originally asked me, and I made this observation a while back, and unfortunately, it's an observation that I've had to make for a long time now, trying to put my finger on how someone could preach a message like Tulian.

28:43

Grace, Tulian had a large impact on my life and understanding grace and the development of grace, but there was something in his message that bothered me and that was missing, and I would say this would be true about the other two men as well,

28:55

Driscoll and McDonald. Their ecclesiology, I do not feel is a very biblical or nor reformed historic understanding of the function and how the church is supposed to work, and what

29:07

I mean by that is they preach a message that is very individualized to go off of what

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Jimmy just said. It's about the personal life, and what happens with these men is that it becomes one, they become a public figure, they become a celebrity pastor, and it becomes their

29:24

Christian communication to the broader Christian world. They're not a churchman. They aren't a man who is submitting themselves to the church, and I would say every man around this mic, the priority is gospel, church.

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Like, you have to keep those in that order because if you don't, the gospel then loses its effect on your life.

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So, I would say, and I think it's fair if you were to go assess what they wrote, if you assessed what they said, you would see that the church and the function of the church was very much disconnected from their gospel ministry of how they would apply it.

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I think something that we may talk about down the road is just the pastoral ministry and even a pastor's life, even his holiness and his godliness.

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There is some stuff said sometimes it's unhelpful with respect to some of that, but Jimmy, I just wanted to pick up sort of where you left off a minute ago, man, in thinking about the burdens that a pastor can feel.

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I think this is good for people to be aware of. We too, like you've already acknowledged, we're just like everybody else.

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We are standing in the merit and righteousness of Christ alone, not on our own merit, not on our own strengths.

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We are in the same desperate position of need as everybody that we are preaching to is in, and so we're just like our congregations are.

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I know that for me, and I know if this is true for the two of you guys, I strive to not build a ministry on a public persona of having it all together, and I think it's important for us and for the longevity of our ministries to be able to exist in a church culture where we can be transparent and honest about things.

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I mean, for example, there are a number of Sunday mornings where I feel the weight of my own corruption. I'm like, man, what a prideful man

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I am. What an anxious guy I can be. I can fear men in all of these terrible ways, frustration and anger or lust or whatever it is.

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I mean, these things just kind of rear their ugly heads at points, and you're just like, man, you're aware of that, and then the devil jumps on that, man, and it's like, how in the world are you qualified to go and preach to God's people and lead

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His church? And so, it's important. I mean, pray for your pastor, but also help your pastor create a culture in your local church where it's okay for the pastor to have a bad day and be able to talk to people about that with discretion, of course, but it's good to be able to walk into an assembly and somebody asks you how you're doing, and it's like, you know,

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I'm not doing that well, and here's what's going on, and we're all here because of Christ, and I'm excited to look to Him alongside you.

32:08

Yeah. So, with that being said, perhaps the logical question is, all right, so maybe everybody's waiting for us to answer this question,

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Tullian, Driscoll, McDonald, are these guys disqualified from ministry?

32:27

It's a good question. Currently, yes. Currently, yes. Currently, yeah. They are not without, you know, their reputation is, you know, for, you know,

32:39

I mean, each one of them has failed one of the qualifications of an elder.

32:46

So, yeah, go ahead, Josh. Well, and as much as, I just, I don't know. I feel like Tullian and McDonald has been a little bit more public and perhaps ignorance on my end.

32:56

I mean, I'm just not sure where things kind of landed with Driscoll in his previous context and body, but yeah.

33:03

So, I think the way that I would answer this is, right now, they are disqualified in part because as we do look at the older qualifications laid out in 1

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Timothy 3 and Titus 1, those are often overly spiritualized, which is another conversation for another time.

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But what they describe is a man who is worthy of trust. They describe a man who, in one sense, lives a life worthy of imitation.

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And it's like, hey, this is describing a guy that we would all be happy to follow. And so, in the spirit of what

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Paul is writing in those two pastoral epistles, I think that these three guys that we're talking about right now clearly would not fit those criteria because it's so fresh, it's so recent, it's, in some cases, pretty heinous and demonstrable.

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It's been public. And so, to say, oh, yeah, that, you know, Tullian or James McDonald or Mark Driscoll, that's clearly a guy that I can trust.

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That's clearly a guy that I would want to follow and imitate his life is just not something that I think anybody would say.

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And so, that's where we're coming from, that at least for a season, a man is disqualified from ministry.

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I personally don't understand one sin to disqualify a man from ministry forever, necessarily, because I think if he demonstrates repentance, humility, contriteness, things like that over a season of time, and in one sense is able to rebuild trust that has been broken and is able to sort of reestablish a life by God's grace in the spirit where people are like, yeah,

34:36

I think that I would want to follow that man in part because of how he's handled his failure. I think that's entirely legitimate.

34:43

And so, yeah, it just seems a little bit hasty and premature with these three guys that we're talking about that they're already back in ministry.

34:50

Yeah. I mean, at the same time, there are particular sins. I'm just going to use Tullian for an example.

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I mean, in one instance, having an extramarital affair with a member of his congregation, being restored to a position of authority, and then doing it again.

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I'm just like, bro, I just don't think this is for you. No disagreement at all.

35:15

Right. Like you need to go pursue some honorable work elsewhere.

35:20

Now, and I'm not airing anyone's dirty laundry because he wrote a book about it. You know, I think somebody worth exploring is

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Chad Byrd, like for the listener. I mean, Chad, you know, go read his book,

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Night Driving, where he talks about the heinous sins he committed while in ministry. Which we're going to interview soon.

35:42

That's right. Cock -a -doodle -doo. Nobody calls him that, but for me, but I think there is a model to be looked at where, you know,

35:58

Chad is not in full -time ministry. I mean, he works a noble job.

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He writes for the Christian world, does some speaking, but he's not shepherding a local congregation, but works a noble job of truck driving, you know, where I think for so many of these men, what's difficult is that they commit these sins and then they just, you know, it's the idea of rebranding.

36:25

You know, I'm just going to go out and all my haters can hate, but I'm just going to go do my thing, you know?

36:32

Yeah, so before we wrap this up, I'll say Jimmy is very qualified.

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There's nothing in his life that our elders found, but I would treat Jimmy the same way

36:45

I would treat Chad or any of these other guys, is that I don't believe you just go plant a church. I believe churches plant churches.

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So I think if these men, we would treat Chad or Tulian or any of these other men, just the way we treated

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Jimmy, where we would interview him and look at his life and look at the people that we know and say, hey, listen, as he stands right now, not where he was in the past, but as he stands right now, does he have a reputation that beats the qualifications of an elder?

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We're not saying he's perfect, but what we are saying is that, like, listen, why can you make sins that are egregious while an unbeliever and then still be a pastor, but yet have egregious sins while a believer and then not be a pastor?

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And my point on that is that it just depends on what the sin is, right? There are certain sins that you're never going to gain trust back from because you just can't do it.

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There's some cultural things that just aren't going to work. But on certain, some of these sins, we can. And I think elders need to assess, look, and I think qualify whether these men are ready or not.

37:52

That's what I would feel is the most biblical way to handle. And I don't think, from what I've seen,

37:58

I mean, McDonald's is still on a spiral, but these guys I don't feel like have done that. I could be wrong. Someone could correct me.

38:03

They've kind of gone, I mean, it's a cliche phrase. They've sort of gone rogue and kind of done their own thing.

38:10

And that's always a concern when that guy is just kind of making the decision by himself that I'm ready to resume full -time ministry, vocational ministry.

38:19

I think you're spot on, John. I think, Jimmy, you've made good observations about patterns of sin, you know, like Tullian as an example, like, hey man, had this happened once, okay.

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But now that this seems to be a pattern that just keeps rearing its ugly head, perhaps you need to think about a different vocation and still do what you can to love and serve the local church.

38:38

I think that's wise and I think it's good counsel. Well, guys, I think this has been a helpful conversation.

38:44

And I think to kind of bring things to summation is, you know, as we think about guys that are walking away or seem to be making a shipwreck of their faith, you know, the

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Joshua Harris, you know, the different names, it's important to remember, one, we do treat them, we do treat them based off of today.

39:01

And so some of the, in my opinion, I think we treat Joshua Harris like an unbeliever, you know, like I wouldn't ask him to come speak at my church.

39:09

Um, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, if he came and said, I want to be a member at your church, I'd say, well, brother, based on the things that you've said online, no, you know,

39:18

I mean, you're just gonna, you're gonna hurt this body. Uh, but at the, on the other end of that token,

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I think, you know, we, we do pray that the Lord restores him. And then when it comes to these other guys, you know,

39:30

Tullian, Driscoll, McDonald, man, I think this is so important to remember to the pastor is that, man, you do not have to be famous.

39:39

You do not have to have a large following to fall into these sins. And so I don't want to equate, well, just because these guys were famous, that's why they did things like that.

39:47

Like, man, there are guys that pastor 30 people that can be just as susceptible to some of the heinous things that these men have committed.

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And so it's always important to remember the, the piece of accountability, of transparency, of like, if you're a pastor and you're struggling, like that needs to be known to your elders, um, and, and you need to develop a, a culture of safety and trust.

40:15

Um, so, I mean, this has been a sobering hot topic and we hope to discuss more of these things in the future.

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And again, we, we don't want to just simply give our hot takes on this. You know, our hope again is to encourage the weary pilgrim to rest in Christ.

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And so we encourage you to listen to some of our other episodes, see some of the resources that we put out.

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I mean, John has a helpful little, uh, article in our free ebook, you know, a primer on rest where he talks about fighting sin from the posture of rest that would be worth taking a look at.

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And so we hope you enjoyed this conversation. We're excited to continue to bring you content like this.

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So thank you to our members for supporting us. We couldn't be doing what we're doing without your support. Uh, so we hope and pray this has been helpful to you and that you share and support us continually in the future.