Conversion (John Blair) | The Whole Counsel

Hi, welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me is Chuck Baggett and we're looking again at this really helpful book entitled, Salvation in Full Color. It's 20 sermons by the Great Awakening ministers and it's been edited by Richard Owen Roberts.

Very helpful. The sermons again are laid out in a theological order. All of them deal with God's work in and for us in salvation and the order is very specific starting with the character of God working down through the depravity of sin, the holiness of God, dead works, the love of God, atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, all the way down to perseverance of the saint and divine retribution.

This week we're looking at a sermon by John Blair on conversion. So Chuck, why don't you give us an update on who John Blair was?

John Blair was the younger brother of Samuel Blair who wrote the sermon that we looked at two of these sermons ago, it's been some weeks ago now, but Justification by Faith. Like so many of these men, he was a graduate of William Tennant's Logg College.

He became a pastor, a Presbyterian pastor in Pennsylvania and he made several evangelistic journeys into Virginia that resulted in new congregations. It's hard to believe now, to think about this now, but then Pennsylvania was the western frontier and the church that Blair was pastoring was on the edge of that, so very sparsely populated, and they were recipients of a number of hostile attacks by Indians at the time.

And so they decided to close up the church because of the ongoing raids and hostilities and move to a more populated area. So he was a pastor there for about six years, they moved back to a populated area and he was left without a pastorate until 1757, about nine years, at which time his brother passed away and he followed his brother as the pastor at that church.

His brother had been a teacher also of a kind of another Logg College, they called it something else, but John Blair became the teacher there until the College of New Jersey, which became Princeton, opened up and then that was unnecessary.

But he was called to be the professor of theology and the vice president of Princeton for a time, until they called John Witherspoon, and he said John Witherspoon could teach theology as well as he could, so he left there and went back and pastored again.

So that's a brief overview of John Blair. The sermon has been.

Entitled in this book, Conversion. I believe the original title of the sermon was, The New Creature Delineated, and the passage he uses is 2nd Corinthians 5 verse 17, so it's a passage pretty familiar to anyone who spent much time in church, where Paul writes, therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.

Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. One of the things we want to look at in this chapter is the relationship between the doctrine of regeneration and conversion and how it fits under the theme of salvation, because really this chapter is going to be dealing primarily with regeneration.

And we've talked about regeneration earlier on. He does mention conversion and he distinguishes between the two, and we'll get to that in a second. But because he primarily focuses on regeneration, Chuck and I thought that what we could do for this chapter, instead of just going point by point through the sermon, is to kind of come up with eight questions that we're going to try to get through in our time.

Questions that are raised and answered by this chapter, questions that we feel have a practical, pastoral quality to them. But before we do that, let me just give you a very simple overview of the chapter.

His major point number one is that he explains the nature of the change here called the new creature or the new creation. Let me read you a quote. He says, this change called the new creature consists in a new temper and disposition of the soul towards God and divine things, formed by the Holy Spirit's infusing a principle of spiritual life, whereby the heart of a sinner is turned from the love and service of sin to God and holiness, the necessary consequences of which is a happy change in the prevailing course of his practice.

And then he gives a number of specifics based on that. One of the things he says, of course, is that the Holy Spirit is the author, but also that the effect is a spiritual principle implanted. And he describes it this way, the implantation of this divine principle in which the soul is passive.

So he's talking about regeneration there. Like with our natural birth, we're passive. So God is doing something within us that is bringing us from death to life, that is opening our eyes, that is altering our hearts, desires.

And this is a secret, mysterious thing, something that we are not cooperating in, something that we're not causing to happen. And he says, so this implantation of a divine principle in which the soul is passive is what is strictly called regeneration.

And the exercise thereof in sinners actually turning from the power of sin to God. So what happens in us is regeneration. And what we do as a consequence of God waking us up is, he says, is called conversion.

So Chuck, recently this week, we have a young believer in the church that asked me this question. So I'm going to ask you the question, all right? And I didn't prepare you for this, so we're going to see how you're going to do.

She said to me, why do we not just use the word salvation? Isn't that good enough for all of salvation? Do we need to use these other words? So how would you answer that question? Why don't we just use one word, salvation?

Well, we do use the word salvation, but we use other words as well because God uses other words and they describe different aspects of salvation. And if we only use the one, we miss, we potentially miss some of the richness of what God has accomplished and we don't understand all.

That's occurring and why it's necessary. Yeah, I think that's the best answer is that if God in his kindness has given us the gift of many words, kind of like turning a diamond, you know, facet by facet.

So we're seeing our rescue from all these different angles. If God sees that that's best for us, then we would be foolish to oversimplify it. So really, you know, I remember Mr. Roberts, who edited the book, was at the church years ago and he said, salvation is an umbrella term.

So it's the general overarching term that describes everything from beginning to end. We could say, I have been saved. I am being saved and I will be saved. And that would all be accurate. But when we come to the scriptures, there are specific terms for those different aspects.

So for our talk today, we want to distinguish just two great terms that describe the entrance into the kingdom. So regeneration, God making us alive or by his spirit in planting that divine principle, waking us up.

The Bible uses wonderful metaphors for this, a new birth, a new creation, a spiritual resurrection, a quickening. And these, as extreme as they sound, these are not exaggerations. To move our souls from where we were to what we are in as a Christian, you know, it is not less miraculous than those words.

Yeah, and to talk about them or try to.

Understand them is not to try to be nitpicking. It is to try to understand the richness of what.

God has described in his word. Regeneration is actually linked always, always with conversion. And conversion is a word that simply means to be turned or to turn. But the Bible gives two great words for conversion.

And this is, in a sense, we could say regeneration is God's view of this great entrance into his kingdom. You must be born again. God gives that. Conversion is our perspective. I must believe and I must repent.

So I turn away from all the lies of self-righteousness and the lies of the world and my pet sins. I turn away from them in order to turn to Christ. Or as another person has said, I turn to Christ in order to turn away from them.

And in that turning, there is that wonderful exercise of faith. I believe what he has said. Therefore, I turn. So faith and repentance. Faith and repentance is conversion, is the turning. Regeneration is the making alive.

And as we said, this chapter is going to primarily be dealing with God making us alive in Christ. Two things we want to warn you about before we look at these eight questions. And so, Chuck, give us the first one.

The first one is that.

Conversion is necessary. You cannot skip conversion. And all the parts, if you will, the various terms we're talking about under salvation, we've said they're necessary. God's described them all. We don't get to pick and choose which ones we want to know or to experience.

And conversion is certainly one that we can't pass. So we can't not undergo conviction and sorrow for sin and understanding what the nature of our depravity is and seeing how desperate we are and that we need a Savior and coming to Him in faith and repentance.

We don't get to skip any of those steps and just, you know, kind of miraculously become mature, holy Christians. Yeah. Bunyan's.

Book, The Pilgrim's Progress, pictures this where Christian meets men and on the path. So they look like, I mean, so they're on the path of religion. They look like Christians for a moment. But when he begins to speak with them, he asked them, so did you come through that straight gate?

You know, did you come through that terrible stripping process where you are laid bare before God and, you know, and you have nothing but Christ? And they said, no, we didn't come in through the gate.

We live along the edge of the wall. We just jumped the wall and we're as good as you are. Here we are. But in the book, whenever someone skips the gate, skips true regeneration and conversion, they are only on the path of religion for a while and eventually they abandon it.

Another danger is thinking that regeneration and conversion, as important as they are, are enough. That if you get a good start, that's all that is required. And so, you know, you and I both probably grew up in kind of similar cultural religious situations.

I was up north and you were down south, but we were both in the same denomination where all the emphasis that I remember, and the church had many wonderful Christians, but our emphasis tended to be on, can you remember exactly the day that you asked Christ into your life?

And I do remember, you know, revival services where we would sing a hymn and if you were saved on a Monday, stand up Tuesday. And then they did have a wonderful, like, safety net. Like, if you can't remember the day, you know, the eighth verse, you can stand up on that day.

And I remember I just would, like, pick one. I mean, I figured it was a Sunday. It had to be, you know, I walked forward. So, let's pick a Sunday. So, that kind of a thing where, look, I remember the day that Christ was merciful to me, or I remember when I asked Him to my heart and I was sincere.

That's wonderful. But is that all you have? Because if that's all you have, then you don't have the Christianity that Christ gives. Well, let's look at some of these questions and see if we can give some practical answers to things that, you know, commonly plague Christians and maybe parents in particular, pastors, co-workers.

Here's the first one. What are two common errors in modern evangelicalism with regard to understanding the nature of conversion or in applying our understanding of true conversion?

What are two errors that we need to avoid? One is that no change is expected. So, as long as you have made a profession of faith or had some experience, that's enough. And there's no real need to look for fruit or to pursue holiness.

It's just no change.

Oftentimes, I mean, the thing that's brought up there, and it can be a legitimate complaint, is that it's easy for us to become judgmental or try to make a judgment in an area that we can't see. We can't see the heart of a person.

But Christ told us that the life will bear fruit and we're not to be hypercritical. And that's the other error that we say, okay, we are not for that easy believism. Or even in reformed churches, which have perhaps more careful about doctrine, a person might say, well, I think that they're a Christian because they know the truth.

I remember a man in our church in the early days would see a person who had really good doctrine, just walk away from a path of obedience to Christ and live a very bad life. And this dear old man would say, I don't know how they can do that.

They know the truth. And I used to think, but where in the Bible does it say, if you know these certain doctrines and you have the right balance of them and you can explain them and you agree with them, where does it say that that's all it took?

So, we don't want to say, look, if you have these great doctrines and you agree with them, that's all you need. And we're not looking for any changes in a person who wants to join a church, who wants to be baptized.

But also the other error, we don't want to set the bar so high, usually where we kind of feel that we're at right now. And we think, well, if you're below where I think I'm at, whether we're really there or not, then I'm not even sure you're a Christian.

If we did that, I think we would dishonor the Lord and run the risk of damaging baby Christians. Where's their room for growth? Can they not stumble? Can they not be confused about things? If we read the New Testament letters without rose colored lenses, it's amazing how confused baby Christians can be.

And yet Paul doesn't say, I don't think you're even Christians at all. So, we want to be merciful. We look for the biblical evidences of the changes, but we do so with a really a gracious, generous heart.

Another question, if we are new creatures in Christ, how can it be that I still see myself sinning? What would you say to a church member that came up to you and said, you know, I thought I was a Christian, but now I don't, because just this week I committed one of those sins that I used to commit before as a Christian.

So, one answer is that we don't confuse justification and sanctification. Justification is immediate, and it's a legal declaration. So, it is done, it's positional. But sanctification is ongoing, and we do not reach perfection until glorification.

So, there is still an.

Ongoing struggle with sin in this life. That leads to another question. What kind of changes are we to expect in God's work of regeneration if we're not looking for sinless perfection? You know, so what are we to see?

And Blair gives really a very good list, so I'm going run through them quickly. He says, the Spirit will work in us in a way that these changes will be viewed. And again, and I think we have to be really careful, being aware of the changes is not equal to having the changes.

So, there are people that God is, you know, you might see God working in a person, but when they look in the mirror spiritually, they think, I don't see it. But we see it. I mean, it's really very wonderfully clear.

So, God working in us and bringing us to life, uniting us to Christ, you know, and the wonderful changes that result from the work of the Spirit in us, those things may not always be equally visible to us.

But the question is not how visible are they, or how clear are we on them? The question is, are they there at all? So, here are the five things he mentions. He says, the old security of sin. In other words, we were described as being asleep in sin, or blinded by sin, or dead in sin.

So, that's a, obviously, these are all pictures of a very unresponsive, unconcerned person. So, that old security, it's upset. It's stripped away. And he mentions that the Spirit does this by using the law, removing the blinders off our eyes, so to speak.

He then drops the law in front of us like a mirror, and we see ourselves as we really are, not what we thought we were. And then, he said, he shows us the spirituality of the law, the strictness of the law.

So, it's not just that, okay, I'm not perfect. But he shows us that the spirituality of the law means it deals with our motives. And the strictness of the law, we could think of it this way. God is the one that shows us how deeply the law goes to your motives, but also how high, how obedient does a man have to be to be able to say, I have obeyed perfectly.

And the law makes it very clear. Whereas, without the law, we would kind of be left to our own estimations.

And that the law is good. It's not, you know, it's not a harsh or bad law that you're having to obey. But it is the expression of the character of God. It's a good law.

Yeah, that would probably be one of the sweetest, clearest evidences that God is at work in you, is that you go from complaining that the law is asking a bit too much to saying, yes, I'm a lawbreaker, but that is a beautiful, perfect law.

And it deserves to be obeyed. And it grieves me that I'm not the kind of person that loves to obey it. He gives another evidence. He says, the mind is then instructed or the eyes are open to the greatness and excellency of God.

So, sin is being seen there as, for what it really is, heinous, utterly vile. But at the same time, regeneration is opening our eyes to see that we are estranged from a perfect God. And the estrangement, the blindness is not intellectual, primarily it's moral.

So, there's a change in the heart that allows me to see God for being as beautiful as he really is. Another thing he says, the desires and the affections then are directed in a new direction from sin to God and to the things of God, to spiritual things, which once, of course, we had no interest in.

Fourth, the choices of our life are actually altered. And that's a good point because you could say, well, I really appreciate the sermon. It stirred me. You can go pretty far in the emotions and it still doesn't make any difference in the life.

And so, regeneration touches everything. Then finally, he says, the old patterns of sin are then abandoned, not just outwardly embarrassing ones, but now we've come to the place where we actually hate sin itself, not just the sins that are crippling us.

Well, here's another question that this chapter helps us to answer. Chuck, how do we know that these kinds of changes in some measure will exist in every single person who is born again and that there is no such thing as a born-again person who doesn't have these.

Things occurring within them? Our text tells us so. Yeah. Yeah. If any man be in Christ,.

He's a new creature. Yeah. He gives us two other points there in his arguments. He says, so since this is part of the great plan of God, his promise to his son, that everyone that the son has purchased with his death will be given to the son and will be made completely like the son.

So if that process hasn't begun in this life, there's no reason to call yourself a Christian.

I think of Mr. Roberts preaching at the church some time ago, and he's probably said this many times, that Christ has not just saved us from the consequences of sin, but also from the power of sin and that he means to rescue us completely.

Yeah. And the second reason he gives is that.

Every person in Christ does have the Holy Spirit in them. I mean, it really could give him a lot of answers. You're adopted into the family of God and the Bible makes it very clear that the father will discipline his children, even though he won't discipline everybody else's children.

You know, so many wonderful things. A new nature will be there. And though it's not always equally visible, it is in every believer. And I think that, you know, we can take that as a daunting test, like, oh, am I really a Christian?

But it can also be a very encouraging thing. You know, I am his, but when I look in the mirror, sometimes I see some gaping holes in my Christianity. And if I'm tempted to think, maybe he will kind of just lay me aside and, you know, just say, look, I'm sorry, you're too bad of a pupil.

You're too slow of a follower. No, he has begun a good work. He will complete it. And I know he will because of these two things. Mm-hmm. Another question that the chapter answers, and we can ask it this way.

What about people who have children who have been born into godly homes, godly parents? Maybe they've been baptized as infants in a system like a Presbyterian or an Anglican where there's paedo-baptism, baptism of a child.

What about people that have been very morally carefully raised and they have obeyed their parents? What about people who have really good doctrine from the beginning because of a godly influence? If a person has this background, do they need the same kind of regeneration and conversion as the people who have been brought up in a very wicked atmosphere?

Yes. Yeah, they do. It kind of assumes that because they've had this kind of start that they're not really sinful or depraved. They haven't inherited original sin or that there's another way to the Father.

But there's not. There is a benefit in those things. Yes, certainly. But it's not that you have been put into a different category and do not need to be converted or born again.

Yeah, and I think that even paedo-baptists that we admire, like Puritans, and we think of Robert Murray McShane and the Bonnars and those people, and many good ones today, they are careful to explain to their children in their system, which we are credo-baptists.

Chuck and I believe in believer's baptism. But if you're a paedo-baptist and you're telling your children, look, this doesn't mean you don't need conversion. This doesn't mean you don't need to begin to believe and repent and continue to believe and repent.

It doesn't mean that the Spirit of God doesn't need to make you alive. So, you know, you want to be very careful that that isn't maybe because of a lack of clarification that you don't want the infant to think, you're fine.

Just don't be really bad. But when you think of Paul talking to Jews who have all those benefits and to Gentiles who have none of those benefits in Ephesians, a mixed church, and he says to all of them, you were all, we were all dead in trespasses and sins.

So not the Jew, less dead, you know, Jews, you were sick and you need a little help. Gentiles, you were just dead. The pastor that was my pastor in Wales, a man named Vernon Hyam, grew up in the Presbyterian church, and he was still a Presbyterian.

But he said that in a liberal Presbyterian denomination that he grew up in, he heard one of the leaders of the denomination speak to a group of youth and he preached a Bible passage and then he applied it.

And here's where the error became obvious. He said, now, some of you are covenant children. You've been baptized and you're in godly families. You need to be careful to continue to be, you know, good church kids, you know, continue to believe, don't turn away from it.

And then he said, but some of you young people don't have Christian parents. You have to be born again. And that's a very dangerous statement, I think. It is. One that's not endorsed by scripture, even if it fits a system where you feel like, well, but it's logical.

But as you mentioned, there is great benefit in being raised by parents who are laboring by the grace of God, not only to explain the truth, but to exemplify it. And of course, as parents, I mean, we're both parents.

So our long list of failures, you know, dwarfs our list of things where we think, by the grace of God, I did pretty well here. Like, no, my list of barriers is, you know, seems endless. But it is a great privilege.

Hudson Taylor's parents, you know, wonderful statement. They said that what we're doing with our children and teaching them and pointing them to Christ and living this out in front of them, we're not saving them, but we are laying up kindling and God will send the spark.

We plead with him to do that. And if he sends that spark, then that kindling there, you know, will catch flame. And that young person will have, you know, really have a lot of advantages over a person who was wonderfully saved, equally saved, but from a bad background, you know, where you didn't have the advantages of careful teaching.

So, yeah, both irreligious and religious people need the new birth, and it may look a little different on the outside. You know, if you go from a really wretched, you know, kind of a criminal lifestyle to following Christ, it's pretty noticeable.

Whereas, like, Misty, my wife, was, you know, ever since I met her, she was always, in many ways, a more admirable person than I was, you know. She read her Bible. She said her prayers. She was very self-sacrificial, but she was not really converted until about 10 years after I met her.

I thought she was a Christian the entire time because of the level of devotion. And the changes were real and visible, but not in the way that the changes were in other people in our church who went from, you know, a pretty wicked lifestyle to a pretty religious one.

Another question that Blair deals with here is being able to distinguish between the normal response of a lost person, of an unregenerate person. So, let's imagine a person in church that hears these truths, you know, hears the Bible preached, and the conscience is affected, reads the Bible.

The mind is filled with great truths. And maybe even during certain sermons, the heart, the emotions are stirred up. And even the external behavior is restrained. Like, I used to do this, but since I started going to church, I quit.

I quit doing that. Now, Blair warns that there is a common grace, or there is an impact that these truths have on everybody, but that does not mean you've been born again. So, how would you distinguish between kind of the normal impact of truth on a person in church and the supernatural impact of truth when the Spirit makes us alive?

One difference that we.

Could see is the nature of the fruit, is a depth of fruitfulness versus maybe, you know, you can think of the parable of the soil. So, there are plants that spring up, and for different reasons, they don't endure.

So, shallowness, short-lived nature of fruit, does a person turn away, or do they endure? So, those would be some ways that we could distinguish between a person who is affected by the truth, but not really changed, and a person who has come to life.

Yeah, you know, I mean, we.

Can't really see this verbally, I mean, you know, from the outside, but one question is, are the changes coming up from within? I have new desires, I have a new understanding, I have a new love, and as you and I were talking earlier to each other about this, that there can be a lot of changes that are accomplished from a legalism, you know, kind of a legal righteousness.

I'll quit doing these things, and I'll start doing these things. Whatever my preacher tells me I'm supposed to do for this church, this denomination, and every church has kind of its own pet things. So, it's easy to give people an unspoken list, look like our church folks, talk like them, dress like them, you know, whether we're homeschool or Christian school, there's a long list.

We don't want to do that. We want God to change the heart, and as that person sees Christ and embraces Christ, there would be an evangelical, not a legal righteousness, and the difference is gratitude.

Because of what he's done for me, for gratitude of that, I want to obey my new king. Book of Hebrews is another good help. As you mentioned, so shallow changes, just the surface stuff, but no change of my heart's desires.

That's not the new birth. Short-lived changes. I seem to really be doing well, but in a year, you won't catch me at church. Hebrews, in such a terrifying way, gives us a number of warnings for those people who have gone very far in religion, but turn back at some point.

And the argument in Hebrews is that in turning back, you have demonstrated, really, that you never were his, and there is no hope for you because in turning away from Christ, there isn't another option for life.

You turned away from the one hope. So, really, very frightening passages there in Hebrews. Very big difference between just being affected by religious truth and being born from above, and the deep and lasting changes that the Spirit works.

That does remind me of a helpful illustration that Vernon Hyam used to do all the time, and it was kind of an unspoken kind of joke in the church, and it was 900 people in the church, which is quite unusual for Britain in the early 21st century.

He used to say, imagine that this, your hand is you, and at the heart, your palm is your soul, and your fingers represent the different faculties of the human soul. So, we have the mind, we have the will, we have the affections or the heart, we have the conscience and memory.

So, you have these five things. Sometimes, I mean, normally, when I describe it, I just think of three, but it doesn't fit the hand illustration as well. So, you know, there's two different ways of thinking of the way God changes a person.

You can think that God starts from the outside and works in. So, God gives you enough information. God convinces you with arguments that are strong enough to make you change the way you behave. God attracts you, you know, with alluring promises so that the heart suddenly wants, and on and on.

And is that how God works? Well, while these are ways that we are, you know, confronted with truth, really, God works here first. He makes this alive, and then spreading out from this new nature become, there is a mind that understands, you know, there is a will that chooses, a heart that desires, you know, the conscience that's receptive, a memory that now grabs hold of truth instead of the things that we're ashamed of.

So, a wonderful change and the way God does it. Well, let's look at a couple more questions. What advice would you give someone who recently has come under a deep sense of conviction of their sin? Blair gives us three things.

Well, I'll hit you with the first. Be thankful for conviction, he says, and do nothing that would stifle it. Do nothing that would kind of, you know, smother it. Reduce the pain. And he warns that the love of ease is really dangerous at this time in your life.

Do not quiet the painful, convicting voice of God. Let that discomfort drive you to the cross. To the doctor. Not cause you to say, look, if religion is painful like this, you know, I came here and I wasn't very good.

And we often get this statement at the church. I came here to become a better person, but after a couple of months, I'm worse than I ever was. Well, it's because God is showing them the truth. And then you have a choice.

Run toward the God that is saying some unpleasant things about you, and that's pretty frightening. Or run away from that God and go back to kind of putting a band-aid of, you know, indifference or religion of some sort of morality, you know, and say, well, I'm fine.

I don't need that. Yeah, you can think.

Of Jesus's words about, well, are they Jesus's words or John's words? Go ahead. John 3. You can think about the words in John 3 about light coming into the world and men loving the darkness rather than the light.

I mean, to embrace Christ is to run to the light where you're exposed and all the sinfulness is right there. So we can understand the natural desire to kind of run backwards and hide in the shadows, even though it's the wrong direction.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean,.

It's much like us with doctors, you know, like I got a terrible diagnosis. The prognosis doesn't look very good. I don't really want to go through that, even though I know that might be my only hope. Another thing he says is stay in the Bible because that is where you will get the clearest understanding of the, of your need, of God's provision in Christ and of the nature of the new birth.

You know, so don't, when you're, when you're under conviction, don't avoid your Bible because then you're left kind of to this fuzzy imagination. Like, well, I feel like I got it, or I feel like there's no hope for me, you know, and the Bible is not guiding you at that point.

A third thing he mentions, keep crying out at the foot of God's merciful throne until he saves you, you know, give him no rest. Final question today, Chuck, what advice would you give to someone who has never been bothered about their sin?

Yeah. Blair spends a fair amount.

Of paid real estate on answering that, and a big part of his answer to that is how you obviously are not aware of the danger you're in. How could you be at ease if you understood the danger that you're facing?

So, you know, don't stick your head in the sand, but look and see what God has said about you and about eternity and about the hostility that exists between you and him.

And the cure that's been provided. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it comes down to do I trust him? Because who would go to God when your life feels fairly comfortable and everything's going well? Do you want to go to God and for him to just turn it all upside down?

I mean, that's pretty terrifying if you take him seriously. I mean, he will demand that you lay every single thing on the and there will be no locked doors in your life that you can say, God, I'm going to give you 85%, but this is mine.

You know, if you say that, if you try to negotiate with God, all conversation ends. It's just you talking. You know, there's no reality. God's not there listening. God's not responding, and you just get stuck with religion, which is more miserable.

But to trust God enough to say to him, this seems to me to be the most frightening thing, and it seems counterintuitive, but I am coming to you because I believe that what you say is true. Please open my eyes, you know, show me myself, and then show me your son.