How to Feel Christ's Love? | Theocast

The Hardest Part of Loving the Christ We Have Not Seen

The hardest part about Christianity at times can be the one we say we love the most, we've never seen. We've never touched them, never had a conversation with them, and that can be hard. We want to have this significant connection to our God and King Christ.

We believe, Justin and I, that Scripture can do that for us and that there are times that through the stories and illustrations and the epistles that we can experience the intimate and emotional side of Christ.

Dare we say there's an experienced side of the Christian faith. Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. Have you ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy?

That you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

We have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it. We're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism. Reform theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like?

You can download it on our website. Just go to Theocast. Encouraging worried pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed pastoral and covenantal confessional. Lots of things.

Guys who are broken who love to talk about Jesus kind of way. Guys who love the law and the gospel and different things. Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, who by God's grace is sitting right across the table from me today.

For those who don't know it, he's normally sitting across the webverse through webcams. I'm Jon Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Justin, we're in San Diego, my friend.

Tell them why. Why are we in San Diego?

Justin Perdue. We're in California together. I enjoy California, first of all. It's one of my favorite places to visit. For those watching on the YouTubes, I'm wearing a suit right now. That might really throw some off because I am not usually dressed like this.

Occasionally, I'm wearing flat bill hats and I'm getting roasted for those. I like to dress up. I like to wear suits, but I'm wearing a suit because we have been here for the last few days. We went to at least a portion of the Westminster Seminary California Conference.

The day before that conference, we did a one-day event, Teocast, you and me, with our friend Chris Gordon from Abound in Grace Radio. We had a one-day conference at Chris' church on suffering and the hope of Christ's return.

It was really good. It was a sweet day. We were encouraged by it. Shout out to a number of you that we got to see in person. Meet for the first time or see again. Always encouraged by you. You guys are so kind.

It was a great event. We're thankful to the Lord for that. We went to church this morning at Escondido URC. We heard a wonderful sermon by John Payne, who pastors Christ Church Presbyterian in Charleston, South Carolina.

It was good to meet him. He's a friend of Chris' and we hope maybe a friend of ours. That's why we're here. We're sitting not either one of us in the normal studios where we are. We're sitting together in a house in Escondido, California.

We get to talk about Jesus today. I can go ahead and pivot that direction, John,.

If you want me to. Just for those of you that are like, hey, I want to know more about that conference. They can go to the community. All of that will be posted in the community. Probably first is where we post everything and then eventually go to our website.

Then the recordings of the podcast, those will come out later in a few weeks. If somebody's listening.

And they're like, John, how would I get into the Theocast community? I've never heard of this.

Justin Perdue. That's great. It is a community. It's like Facebook, but there are no other advertisements. There's nothing else going on other than conversations about the faith. There are over a thousand people in there.

Justin Perdue. It's the Circle app.

Justin Perdue. The Circle app. Just go to theocastcommunity .org and you will only be engaging in content about Reformed Theology and the gospel and prayer requests. It's wonderful.

Justin Perdue Our talks from the conference will be there. The panels from the conference will be there so people can listen in on those.

Justin Perdue. Then the pod, we recorded a podcast in the morning with Dr. Chris Gordon. That will come out later.

Justin Perdue. Yeah, the morning after.

Justin Perdue. No, morning of.

Justin Perdue. Well, yeah, the live pod.

Justin Perdue. And then we did another podcast.

Justin Perdue. Which will come out on the regular feed.

Justin Perdue That was a sweet conversation. Justin Perdue That's what's wonderful about these trips is it just allows us to meet you, create more content, be able to partner with Dr. Bob Godfrey as well.

That's all of that.

Justin Perdue. The opportunity to meet others. Brief comment on this. I think we live in a day where this is not the purpose of our show today, but I think it was bouncing around my brain a minute ago when we were talking about things.

The word Catholicity is thrown around a lot. Catholicity for those out there who are like, what bro, what in the world do you mean? It means a willingness to participate with other brothers and sisters that might not be in your same tradition.

So Catholic meaning universal. So a willingness to engage more universally speaking with the church. In our case, we're confessional Baptists, but we're able to partner with Chris Gordon and get to know him and build into the friendship we have with him, though he is a minister in the United Reformed Church in North America.

John Payne is a minister in the Presbyterian Church of America, etc. For us to build relationships with guys outside of our tradition and partner with them in gospel work is something that you and I value quite a bit.

We're unashamedly confessionally Baptists, but we really appreciate brothers and sisters in different traditions and are happy to work together. So I think it's a good thing to continue to do. These trips are.

Valuable for that reason too. I'll throw out one prayer request. We are actively hard working on another spring conference in another state. All of that to stay tuned. Some of you have asked about that.

So we're working on it. As soon as it is available, we're going to get out to you. It might even be a year in advance. Who knows? True. Spring of 2025, God willing, we've got some plans in the works. Justin, I'm going to apologize ahead of time if I become a blubbering, slobbering idiot because this subject is so important to my heart, and I know it is to you.

When you start talking about Jesus, I just lose it. So I apologize ahead of time.

Seeing the Father in Jesus and the Humanity of Christ

There we go. There we go. So the conversation we're going to have today, I'm going to front load it in the way that I can do, the way I tend to do. Then you can say what you want, and we'll be off and running.

I said to you a minute ago, it's a good thing that we live in a day where classical theism is on the minds of people. If you don't know what that means or what that debate is around, it's just doctrine of God stuff.

There's been a lot of manipulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, we would say, in the last 20 -30 years in the interest of social and political concerns, gender roles and the like. It's a good thing that people are recovering Nicene orthodoxy in terms of the Nicene Creed.

It's good that people are thinking well about God's simplicity, His immutability, all of these kinds of things. We rejoice in that, and we agree with all of our brothers and sisters who are laboring hard to that end.

Doctrine of God and even the deity of God the Son and what that means that He's the only begotten of the Father and how He is not eternally subordinate. At the same time, you and I agree that there is a tendency also for the humanity of Jesus to be lost sometimes in a way that makes Him feel less approachable, makes Him feel further away, makes God holistically harder for me to comprehend, harder for me to relate to, harder for me maybe in a sense to feel His love for me.

Justin Perdue We're going to expose our hearts fictitious at times. I don't know if I really feel like He's real. He's just kind of...

Justin Perdue. He's ethereal, and He's remote, and things of that nature. I'll go ahead and say it this way. We've touched on some of these things in previous podcasts, and forgive us for that. We're just going to trust the Lord and His providence that this is a really good conversation to have.

In John 14, it's a familiar passage for many people. This is right after Jesus has said the sweet words that we're probably going to quote later about how in His Father's house there are many rooms and we shouldn't be afraid.

He's going to come and get us. Incredible things. The disciples, Philip in particular, ask Him, Will you show us the Father? He says, If you've been with me this long and you don't yet know, you don't yet understand.

This is my paraphrase of these verses. He says, If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. I've made this comment before that for me, and you're agreeing with me, so I know that at least the two guys sitting around this table agree on this.

I trust many out there will too. It's hard for me to comprehend Him. It's hard for me to be like, I know what He's like. Though He reveals Himself to us using human language, praise the Lord. He's merciful and gracious, and He's long-suffering.

He abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness. Praise the Lord. I can understand these attributes to a point, but in terms of what's it like to be with Him? That matters. The Bible in one sense, John, is the story of how God is representing Himself with His people after the fall.

What's it like to be with Him? Jesus is that revelation. He is the greatest and final and most definitive revelation of God. He is God's final and greatest word. To consider Jesus, I think my love for the Gospels has grown immensely over the years as I've thought in these terms.

I want to read the Gospels as a regular part of my time in Scripture because I'm able to see Jesus. He's having conversations with me. He is tender toward the weak, so I know He's going to be like that toward me.

He speaks words of comfort, and He speaks those to me. I'm able to better understand who God is and what He's like. That's so helpful for my soul in those times when I feel like I want the intimacy with Him.

I want the communion with Him, and yet it feels difficult because of my flesh and my sin and because of the curse. We live by faith, not sight. It's helpful to think about Christ's humanity, His tenderness, His gentleness, His compassion, particularly toward people who know they need Him.

His wisdom, His brilliance, the way He spoke. No one ever spoke like this man. Things like that grip my.

Heart, and I know they do for you. Justin Perdue. I remember preaching John. That was my first gospel I ever preached. The first thing I ever preached was as a church planter and pastor. It's a pretty good one.

I miss it. John 20 says, I wrote all this down for you guys that you might believe. I didn't believe you could have eternal life. Well, when you go back and read what John wrote, he wrote about Jesus touching people, holding them, healing them, speaking compassionately to them, traveling with them.

I mean, you just see a side of the Savior. John's like, I want you to realize that the man who died for you was a man. We saw the compassion and love and patience of the Father because he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

In my lecture this week, I was talking about how there are parts of the Bible that are really hard for us to understand. If you know anything about, I know so little, but just about dimensions, like first dimension is just a kind of line, just one little line that goes horizontal.

One plane. It's easy to see. It's not complicated, and it's not understandable. In two dimensions, it's two lines. In the two dimensions, for the most part, it's really easy. When you go to that third dimension, your brain starts having a harder time understanding, but it does give you depth.

Well, the parts of Scripture we tend to just keep super simple, but because we simplify it, we lose the depth and the color and really, I would say, the realisticness. We don't live in a two dimension world.

We live in a three dimension world. There's more dimensions in that. That's why old school video games weren't as cool.

As the ones now in terms of the graphics. Is it legitimate to play video games, brothers? That's.

Another podcast for another time. It also depends on who you ask if the 2D versus 3D. Are you playing with your children or not anyway? That's right. Monster Moto X is something my son and I love racing.

Anyways, one of the things that's happened to you and I in our ministries is that it's fun to sit there and really dive down in deep into the person of Christ in his humanity because we're going to live with Jesus in his humanity.

As a human, he's sitting at the right hand of God. So if you were to travel right now, for whatever reason, the Lord took you to his kingdom there, and you were to see Jesus, you'd see him as a man. That's how you see him.

When he comes back, he comes back as a man. Why that's significant is that we are humans. God has come to relate to us.

As a man. It's unreal. Justin Perdue. It is unreal to me. It's a mind blow that God made humanity knowing that God the Son would become one. That's part of what it means to be made in God's image,.

In my mind. That's a big deal. I've been using this illustration lately because it just works for me, and it helps me. Maybe it'll help one or two of you. If you ever have had to put something together, I've had to put together some things recently, like a bike rack for my kids and a pull-up bar.

I'm looking at this bike rack, and I'm like, how hard can it be? It's a couple of screws. I couldn't figure out what end went where. It was annoying. I was like, fine. I'm reading the instructions, but the instructions in my brain aren't clicking.

I said, where's that box at? I flipped the box over, and I see the picture. Immediately, I understand. What's interesting is the New Testament doesn't say, Jesus loves you. It shows you. That's what's nuts.

It shows you how he loves you. Justin Perdue. It does tell us that from the Apostles that Jesus himself tells his disciples that he loves them.

Justin Perdue. But then it shows no greater love than this. Let me illustrate. Here's the picture. Snapshot the cross. It's glorious. Your father loves you, and he's going to heal you. Snapshot. See all the miracles.

Your father loves you, and he's going to make all things new. You watch him raise Lazarus from the dead. You get to a point where….

I am the resurrection and the life. There that is.

For me, my brain has been stuck in this evidential stage because I am one of these people where you make a claim. I want to know how I know I can trust that. I've been fooled too many times. I've had promises made, and I go there, and they're not there.

Then when my father says, there is no one greater than me. There's nobody that can separate you from my love. There's unvalidated claims. When Jesus says, I love you, there's an intimacy there. When you look at how he loves the woman caught in adultery and the woman at his feet, we're talking about the woman who had the issue of blood.

Look how he loves Peter. Peter, do you love me? All of those stories, we should read them. This giddy anticipation going, okay, they wrote that because he turns it and says, that's the same love he has for you.

Justin Perdue. That's right. We don't need to go through doing it because we did this on a podcast a few weeks ago. I also did some of this in my conference message the other day trying to hold Jesus out for us by describing some of these interactions.

I find that helpful. Our church has found that impactful, and you and I have had sweet conversations over it too. We don't need to rehash all those things. In 1 Timothy 1, 15, and 16, Paul talks about how the saying is trustworthy and worthy of full acceptance that Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I'm the foremost.

Then he says that effectively, Christ has been this patient and this merciful with him as the chief of sinners so that the saints will know that he'll be patient and merciful with them. I bring that up because that's how I think about Jesus interacting with these people that you were just naming.

If Jesus went to Zacchaeus, like sought Zacchaeus out who was a sinner, stops a moving parade, looks up into the tree, and with exclamation calls out to him, Zacchaeus, you need to hurry and come down because I'm going to stay at your house today.

I'm going to be with you today. If he says that to Zacchaeus, he says that to you. He says that to me. With the woman bleeding, the most gripping part to me is after she's touched the hem of his garment and Jesus stops the proceedings.

I imagine there's a lot of gravity to this whole thing and she's afraid. She comes to him trembling and tells him everything. He doesn't stop her, but he calls her daughter. It's like, all right, if she could come to him trembling because of her plight, her condition, and afraid she's done something wrong, whatever, and she's shaking, and she can tell him everything, and he's going to call her daughter.

I can tell him everything, too. He's not going to stop me either. He's going to say, I love you. If there's the man born blind that gets thrown out of the synagogue, Jesus has already given him sight, but that's not all he wants to do.

He goes and finds him, seeks him out. Do you believe in the Son of Man? He's going to do that for you, John, and for me. He's going to come after us, and he's going to ask us questions in our spirit, in our mind, in our inner being.

He's going to ask us questions that are going to actually affirm and confirm us in the faith. You're mine. You believe in me. We're like, yes, I do. I'm yours, and I'm worshiping you. I'm so glad to know you.

Those are the ways that we think. If he's like that with these people, he's like that with us.

It's interesting when Paul says, cast all your anxiety on him, because if you don't, you're in trouble. Cast all your cares on him, because he cares for you. It's interesting. You and I have a relationship where we share often when we're just not doing well.

I'm just kind of discouraged or whatever. The reason why I always love sharing those things with you, because I'm like, dude, besides my wife and my elders, there are very few people who really care. That is not impugning my church at all.

There's an essence where I'm like, even when it's a little thing that most people might think is petty, you never make me feel like it's petty. My wife never makes me feel like it's petty. There are times when I'm like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to share that with anybody.

Jesus goes, but I care about it. Hey, buddy, what's on your mind? That's hard. One of your pastors at your church, Mackenzie Dinkins, he's just been kind of sharing some stuff. I'm going to give him credit for this.

Love you, Dink. When Dink talks about this, I just love it. He always uses this as a buddy. Hey, buddy. The Lord says to us, hey, buddy, I care about you. I'm happy to be with you. What is it you want to tell me?

It's like those are the moments I want to plop down in my chair and go, okay, well, I got some things on my mind. I don't like that I don't really understand who you are, and it feels like you're far away, and I want you here now.

You want to ask me about my anxiety, and my anxiety is That's exactly right, dude. I love everything you're saying right now. It's like, man, I wish I knew you better. Those are how I feel. I don't like that I struggle with lust.

I don't like that I struggle with anger. No kidding, dude. You're talking about what makes me anxious. These are the things that make me anxious. These are the things that plague my soul. The response is, I care.

It's.

Overwhelming. It's overwhelming. Maybe this is something that the more godly people that listen to the show, people who are godlier than me, maybe this won't be revelatory for them, but I think for you and me, as we've had these conversations over the course of time, you are re-reminded of the fact that we can just talk to him.

Of course, we approach him with reverence and awe.

Hallowed be your name. I respect him in ways I can't even describe.

But there is, biblically speaking. We boldly approach the throne of grace. You just quoted, we cast our burdens and anxieties upon him because he cares for us. When Jesus loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Okay. Sympathetic to our weakness. Sympathetic high priest. All that stuff.

So we're able to talk to him. He knows our hearts. He knows every thought.

As crazy as this is, he's listening to this conversation. What?

He knows everything that's in the inner recesses of my soul that I've never shared with anyone. He knows. So we can just talk to him. I love the way that you articulated what you did just now because I find myself sometimes similarly.

I'm just like, Father, here's where I'm at. Here's where I am. Here's where I'm at. Here's what's hard for me right now. Here's how I feel. I don't want to feel this way. These things are bothering me, and I don't even know what to ask for.

I just need help. It's good to do that and to remind yourself that he's never irritated by those things and wants you to come and is delighted to hear from you.

Dude, James 1 .5, without reproach.

Yeah.

Meaning he's not going to scold you.

Because I think we've talked about pietism. We've talked about revivalism. We've talked about all these things over the course of years. So much of what those things do is rather than fostering this kind of love and intimacy and safety and security with our Heavenly Father, with the triune God who loves us, it actually fosters fear, distance, causes me to question everything.

I don't know if I should go to him or if I do. It's like, man, I've got to do some kind of metaphorical spiritual penance and clean myself up or demonstrate that I'm sorry enough for my sins or that I feel badly enough about whatever's going on.

I'm lamenting my weakness enough or something so that it's appropriate for me to go to him, so that I'm not a hypocrite. It's like, man, go to him. He loves us, and he invites us to come. He wants to hear from us.

He's with us in it all, right?

Well, it creates that employee-employer performance base.

Right.

We're like, well, I'm at work. I've got to be on, and he can't know that I don't do my laundry at home. My boss can't know. So we think that we're in this constant performance. How many passages of Scripture have we already mentioned.

Where it's like, he already knows you're weak.

So if I can say this, we did an episode a little while ago with Chad Bird, Personal Relationship with Jesus? And what we were aiming to get at there was the good news that this kind of hyper-individualized, revivalistic thing is not true, and that there is a real beautiful, comforting sense in which, just naming things, we have been brought from death to life and united to Christ, and now we are part of Christ's body, the church.

My brothers and sisters minister to me when we gather as churches. We sit under the Ministry of the Word. We receive the sacraments. Those are very corporate, experiential, visible, tangible, God-is-with-us times where we are pointedly and powerfully reminded that He loves us so and that Christ is all.

We were pointing to these realities of comfort. It's not this hyper-individualized thing that you effectively are driving. It's an us and Jesus reality where, as Chad so beautifully put it, even when I can't sing because my heart's breaking, my brothers and sisters are singing for me.

It's that. I am carried to the throne of God, as it were, by the singing of the saints, even when I can't muster it up. So those things are beautiful. Nothing that we're saying today is contradictory to that in any regard, but it's maybe just putting more flesh on the bone.

Our relationship with Jesus is very personal. It's intimate, and it's one of love and safety and security. We need not be afraid the ways that we so often are afraid. We don't need to accomplish all the things that we think we need to accomplish in order to be in His presence and for Him to be delighted to be with us.

The last comment is we forget that Jesus is with us. Now, how do we most tangibly experience His presence this side of the resurrection? It is when we gather. I might talk more in a minute just about how some of the notions you have as a child are really helpful.

Faith like a child, right? I'll just say it right now because it'd be stupid to try to come back to it because a lot of times you lose the flow. This won't take long. I don't know when I was united to Christ in like born again, but I can remember being...

We can settle that right now.

We can write down in your Bible. Would you like to say the prayer?

Just put your hand on my shoulder. This is the amount of pressure. I'm sorry, man. Soul winning made easy, man. Put your hand on their shoulder and put this much pressure on them and wait this long. I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. Keep going. That's neither here nor there. I was baptized at 14, but sorry to all our pedobaptistic friends out there. My church upbringing was not one where I was in a sound church as a young person.

Long and short, what I meant to say is this. I can remember having... Because we read the Bible in my house and I would go to church and occasionally would go to a good church with some friends and things.

As a grade school kid, I would think... Because I sometimes... I've always been a perfectionist. I've always had this kind of, I've got to achieve. I can be an anxious soul. So I felt everything heavy as a kid.

Going into school, depending on what was going on that day, I would often have a sense of anxiety until I walked in the doors and saw people and settled in. Well, I would remember thinking as a kid, man, everything's okay because Jesus is with me.

I could almost in my little childlike brain visualize in one sense that my Savior is holding my hand, walking me into school, and I'm going to be okay. I don't know exactly where down the road. Some of those kinds of thoughts, you just don't think in those ways anymore.

But in recent months and through conversations that we've been having, even thinking through the preaching of Christ and things, I lean into stuff like that. Just to remind myself of those notions I had as a child were not wrong.

That He's with me. He's with you. He's with us. He's like, my boys, I love you. I'm for you. I'm happy to be with you. My spirit's going to continue to work in and through you. When this is all over, we're going to be together.

We're going to eat and drink, and it's going to be.

Great. Anyway. Justin Perdue. No, I'm with you, man. When you're talking about this, I've had experiences in my life where I found comfort in right doctrine. A lot of it was just pride. Learning proper theology and Calvinism.

Then there was almost the affirmation of man, being able to communicate well. I really achieved after that, and I thrived off of it. Then after a while, that gets old. Then now, what do you go to? You just realize that there's a lot of times that you can use Jesus for your own benefit, but you don't actually are receiving the benefit of Jesus.

I mean, no matter who you lose or what goes on in your life, you have a reason to wake up tomorrow because, well, He works all things good, and He loves me. That's right doctrine. Whether anybody ever hears me say that or not, again, for the rest of my life and I'm stuck in a prison, it doesn't matter.

I can wake up and say, He sees everything. He sees how my temperature is up and down. He sees whether I'm hungry or not. He knows when I'm struggling with sin. He knows when I'm happy and when I'm sad.

He knows all that. Justin Perdue.

He knows all of it. None of those things will ever take you from Him or change the way He feels about you. This is where doctrine and the things we're talking about beautifully are interwoven together.

How do we know that He loves us so? Doctrine. Then as we talk like this, I'm not afraid to use this word, we experience the love of Christ for us.

Justin Perdue. You and I have worked a lot. I'm going to cut you off. Sorry. You and I have in our own personal ministries. I'm not going to say what kind of influence we have because I have zero understanding if we've ever influenced anything.

In my life and your life, we've recovered some of the wonderful parts of Reformed theology. I think we have also called out the Reformed faith. This is one of them, Justin. The Reformed faith is afraid of smiling.

I'm being mean. I'll just say it this way. Chris Gordon was just saying how much he appreciates how vocal and engaged we are with his sermons. It was just fun. I've even bristled at times against our charismatic brothers who only talk about experience all the time.

Then there are times I realize that Satan and his world, those who have rebelled against the king, has used that to rob us. You mean to tell me that that woman with the issue of blood didn't experience something?

You mean the woman at his feet in tears? She wasn't experiencing something? Come on, man. When Paul's talking about how God's grace is sufficient for him and his weakness, he's not feeling something at that moment?

Justin Perdue.

And what you're wanting to do as pastors in our own churches, what we want to do with Theocast is to continue to work at being able to better marry doctrine and experience because they are not in any way against one another.

Doctrine drives experience because the experience needs to be grounded in truth, but we ought never pull the two apart as though you want one and not the other or could have one and not the other or that doctrine ought not lead to this.

That's part of, as I've thought more about preaching, the way that I mean to apply the Scripture. It has a lot more to do with this component and helping pull people into this exercise that you and I have done behind these microphones at points in recent weeks and months.

I have a comment that I want to make to people based on something that we heard this week, but that can wait a moment.

A lot of times people don't understand what doctrine is. Doctrine is truth and teaching, but truth applied. I'll give you an example. It's true that my wife loves me. When she sent me a text earlier this week when we were gone and she sent it at the right time in a very special way to us and me, it did something for my heart.

I experienced my wife's love in ways that if you told me you love me, I appreciate that and I do love you, but when she tells me that, I'm like, it gives me goosebumps. It's special to me because that's her love for me.

I'm not trying to chase that down. I'm not trying to chase down one experience to the next.

We're not chasing goosebumps. We've talked about this before, but this is not that.

That's right, but when I'm at church on Sunday and the congregation is singing how deep the Father loves love, I'm like, man, His love loves me, and I need to hear that. I'm not looking for that experience, but when you apply the doctrine to it, it's like your heart goes, I've had the week of weeks, and it's so good to hear the doctrine applied through the congregation, through the voices, to me saying, hey, John, this is a message from your God.