If I Knew Then What I Know Now | Theocast

Welcome to Theocast. Today we have a conversation. I had the privilege of coming down to Asheville and I'm sitting here with Justin and three of his church members.

We have a live audience, which we hardly ever do. But Justin, real quick, tell them what it is that we did today.

What did we talk about? It's kind of a fun, fun topic. Fun and reflective. Yeah. We're recording this in 2021.

This episode is probably releasing in the new year and we were thinking about where we've been, where we are now. We're thankful for that.

And so John and I both reflect on things that we didn't know a long time ago that we wish we had knew then.

I wish we had known. Man, that's terrible English. Back to the future. Back to the future, yeah. So there we have that.

And these guys sitting here with us are kind of the same. They've walked through a transition and become confessional, covenantal reformed

Protestants. And they're like, wasn't there all the time. Wasn't there a few years ago.

And so we talk about that. Autobiographical. Autobiographical, it's sweet, it's reflective. We're thankful for God's grace to us as wretched sinners.

He saved us and his son. You're not crazy. Keep listening. You're not crazy. We hope something's encouraging. If you'd like to help support

Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening. ♪♪♪

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to find rest. The only sufficient thing there is

Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed and pastoral perspective.

We decided to do things a little bit different today, mainly because we get the joy and honor of being in each other's presence.

We're in Asheville, North Carolina. We are. In actually Justin's office, if you can see right behind me.

That is Asheville's desk. That is Justin's desk. There it is.

Justin, tell them who we are for those who are listening for the very first time. Well, you are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

And I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, where we are currently. That's good.

Hanging out together, kicking it here in the Covenant Baptist Church offices. That's right. This is great.

Yeah, it's been good. We got the opportunity. It's a different day and time than typical. It is not a

Wednesday. It's actually, can we let the cat out of the bag and just tell people that it's a Monday. So John and I are both experiencing a little bit of the holy hangover.

This is sometime called where our adrenal systems, excuse me, have crashed and we're riding on extroversion and Jesus, we hope, and here we are talking.

And so it's a Monday and it's nighttime. Yeah. Yeah, very different than our normal window.

Normally it's Wednesday and it's in the AM. So for those of you watching on YouTube, you're probably used to a black line going right down the middle.

There's no line. Like I can touch him. There it is. All right, so this is a unique conversation.

We normally don't have a live audience. We've had a live audience once or twice before. Rare. Very rare.

It's mostly because we record early Wednesday mornings in our office. But today we actually have a couple of Justins of church members here, a couple of his guys.

And by a couple, we mean three. Yeah. And yeah, so Mackenzie, Lucas, and Rob are here and we've been hanging out and just talking life and listening to music and being silly and enjoying.

Ate good chocolate and laughed hard. Yes, enjoying the new covenant and the fact that we know the hope to which we've been called.

It's been fun. So today's podcast is definitely a unique one. We decided to sit around and ask ourselves, we're going into 2022, which is when this podcast is going to launch.

It might even be our first one. Happy new year. That's right, happy new year. There it is. We wanted to do something a little bit of a time travel, which, you know, who knows what the title of this podcast could be.

It could be back to the future, or it could be, I wish what I knew, what I know now. If I knew then what I know now.

But the point - It's up for debate. That's right. Yeah. We'll decide what that might be. But the point of the episode is to go back.

And if I could talk to John 15 years ago, if Justin could talk to Justin, I mean, how many years ago did this transition happen for you?

I feel like it's been 15 or 20 years in the making. But in a pointed way, like where I would have been self -conscious about it, five or six.

And it's even hard when you, I'll just start with myself. When you start to think about the transition one makes theologically, if there has been a progression, it's hard to even begin to, like, how do you find a starting point?

Sure, I mean, so I remember, just gonna go ahead and say this. I remember when I self -consciously was like,

I'm a Calvinist. That happened for me in 2008.

And I went pretty quickly from being an uninformed, disenchanted semi -Pelagian.

I'm using a lot of theological words, doing it right now, don't care. And I went from that - Go to our series on Calvinism, we'll put it in the notes.

I went from that to being a very joyful and convinced Calvinist in a span of about two weeks. And the only way that that happens is because God had been priming the pump for over a decade.

And so I feel like the same thing happened for me in becoming confessional. Covenant theology was a much longer journey for me.

I think in some ways I've been covenantal since 2010. I mean, so a long time. But being confessional and self -consciously confessional happened for me five or six years ago.

But again, I think it had been coming and God had been priming that pump for a long time. And so that's why it happened so quickly for me.

And I was so happy about it. And I had no angst over it at all. Once I sort of understood the category,

I was like, that's where I am. So do you remember that moment where you had the,

I think everybody's described it this way, the born again, born again experience? So I've had two of them at least in my

Christian life. I mean, Calvinism was one. It's like being born again, again. And I think for -

And describe what we mean. It's that aha moment. Yeah, and I mean, for me, the confessionalism piece maybe happened that way.

But I know for many people in our church and these guys sitting here right now who

I love dearly, all of them, I think they would probably use that language. It is like being born again, again. What we mean by that is it's not that I'm becoming a

Christian. I'm being regenerated by the Spirit of God for the first time because no, I've trusted Christ because of the sovereign work of God on my heart.

You know, I've turned from myself, my own notions of my own righteousness and my own goodness and sin, whatever.

And I've cast myself upon Christ and His mercy. I've done that. But what this is is a fresh understanding and a fresh appreciation of Christ and the gospel and His sufficiency.

And I'm just learning how to articulate that better. And I'm using language that saints have used for a long time.

And I'm understanding that much of what I had been told at the end of the day turned itself back in on me.

And so I was unsettled. And now I am being pointed outside of myself always to Christ.

And there is actual rest and peace here. And the joy of that and the freedom of that is in ways disorienting.

And in other ways is so incredible. I grasp at the leash of language to describe it.

The way I would describe, as weak as it might be, when I first discovered the sovereignty of God in salvation, the privacy of man, the

Bible went from black and white with no sound to full color and like complete audio surrounding.

Sure. And I couldn't get in. It was like, you know, when you binge a show and you just, the next episode,

I couldn't put my Bible down. I remember being in the basement and my wife's like, are you gonna come to bed?

And I'm like, yeah, soon. Because I couldn't read, I couldn't, I couldn't, my mind could not be wrapped around this.

Like it was like someone unlocked the key that didn't exist before. Yeah. And I couldn't stop reading.

Another way I might put it is it's like somebody, I've been living in a place,

I've been living in a house and it's been really dimly lit, though I didn't know that it was, just kind of a normal experience.

And then somebody walks in the room, flips on the light switch, and I can see the furniture for the first time.

And I can see how everything is laid out. And it's incredible. It's beautiful.

It makes sense. And I am like free to roam about the cabin, right? And it's really good.

That for me, it's that sort of experience where I'm just seeing, light bulbs are going off every place and all these connections are happening.

And it's almost like all of these things that I've wrestled with for years, I now understand why.

I now have a better grasp of why I was taught the way that I was by people that meant well, but did not have these categories.

I understand why there's always been this nagging sense of inadequacy in me.

And there's always been this haunting thing that won't let go of me, where I'm convinced that at the end of it all,

Christ is going to look at me and tell me that He never knew me. And that now is actually starting to go away because I've been shown who

Christ is for me in new ways. And I've trusted Him for a long time and He's had me throughout, but I'm thankful to see what

I see and know what I know. That's how I feel about it. And I can remember preaching.

So the first job I had at college, I was a youth pastor in my very early 20s. I was married when

I was 22 and my first child when I was 23, was a pastor by the time I was almost 24.

And I had grown up leading junior church. My dad was a pastor.

So I was preaching all the time and here and there all throughout college. And I can remember I was leading a youth group and I would get done at the end of the week and ask myself, what am

I doing? It just feels like all I'm trying to do is get these kids to not mess up.

Like don't mess up with their girlfriends or boyfriends, don't do drugs, don't watch bad movies. It was, I felt like all

I was doing was hurting cats and it felt completely worthless because when they would graduate, they would just go off and do whatever they wanted anyways.

So what in the world was I doing? And that's when I decided to go back and ask myself, the

Bible has to be more than don't mess up. My entire Christian life was be clean and don't mess that part up.

And then when Jesus comes back, he'll be happy with you, which felt completely wrong off.

And when you're a young kid, even when you're in your 12, 13, 14, all you care about is jumping the next bike, hitting the next hoop and having a girlfriend.

And when you get older, all of a sudden you're like, wait, there's like more to life. And that I remember that distinct switching of going, oh,

I'm married now, I have a child and I'm leading people spiritually. What am

I doing? And that's what caused me to completely throw, I use this phrase a lot, but I took everything that you guys have probably experienced this.

I took everything that was ever handed to me theologically and I put it on the table and I said, okay, what stays and what goes?

And that was a life changing moment for me. And Calvinism was one of those things that was added to the table and Arminian theology got bumped.

And it was scary because my entire history, including my family were not,

I didn't know any Calvinist, none. Yeah, I mean, I didn't either. I mean, growing up, I didn't, and it was a dirty word.

I mean, I didn't even know what Calvinism was until I was confronted with it. And then

I started to understand how there was a lot of animosity amongst those who were and weren't and all of that.

And yeah, for me, I mean, I was one of those people that when I first heard it, I was like, thank

God, there's actually God -safe centers. Because I've sort of been told my whole life that you need to contribute to this or you need to do this.

And I was like, well, that's not gonna end well. And - I know I've told this story before, but I literally flipped my Bible over and I went, am

I reading the King James? Is this legit? I've never seen this in Ephesians before.

Textus receptus fell from heaven in 1611. We were joking about this earlier. The king ain't already ain't in it, amen, come on.

All right, so yeah, let's keep the conversation moving forward. Right. And we got three guys here who have come from different places.

You and I, John, we're gonna talk autobiographically about our own experiences. And what we hope is that this is maybe a different vibe and feel than some of the podcasts.

We're here together. Very different, yeah. And we hope this is encouraging to people.

In some ways, I'm gonna use a word, it sounds strange, I hope this is kind of a tender, gentle, like we're with you in this kind of conversation.

Because sometimes I think we take great pains to be thoughtful and not be punchy in a way that's unhelpful.

But this is us trying to pull up a chair and have a drink with somebody that is in a different place and is thinking about their lives.

I mean, we've all been there. Doctrine and just, am I legit? Thanksgiving dinner. Am I legit? And I don't know what to make of a lot of this.

I feel like I'm crazy. I'm in the corner in a chair in the room. Is anybody else here this?

Does anybody else see this? Yeah. And there's definitely that transition. So for me, that was the next big transition was definitely the confessional slash covenantal theology.

Right. Calvinism became a really weird whirlwind for me. I went from, it was not hard for me to stomach it.

I embraced it. I saw it. It was in the text, but I became unfortunately one of those guys you should have caged up long time.

Let them work out as theology. And then I became an angry fire preaching, fire breathing

Calvinist that just torched anybody and everybody. And that's when

I was introduced very early to covenant theology, I'm sorry, to a lordship salvation.

And basically, if you didn't hold to my view of Calvinism and you didn't make

Lord of your life and your life didn't have this massive transformation, then you weren't really a

Christian. You were just this nominal person that loved to claim it, but you weren't really real.

And to be, I think a lot of people have had this experience. It's threw me into a very dark night of the soul where I just never could seem to find a place of,

I was always angry, no rest, all anger all the time. It's like my job to correct the world's theology.

Yeah. The covenantal piece, I'll say this now, because the confessional thing is the bigger thing for me in ways.

The covenant theology thing was a lot more gradual because I think given that I was reading Calvin and Warfield and other people, when

I encountered Calvinism, I quickly latched onto a redemptive historical framework, high level, and I quickly latched onto this one plan of God promised in Genesis 3 .15.

So what was your transition then between like Calvinism and covenant theology? Was there? I just think

Calvinism in terms of, and by Calvinism, really I mean predestinarian theology, right?

Where we understood that God is the one who had, you use this word and it's a lightning rod and it's like God has chosen people.

And that was the real thing that I had to bring myself to the place where I could say that God has chosen to save his people.

And I struggled with that for, like I said, two weeks. And within 10 to 14 days,

I had battled with the scriptures enough. I had thought about Augustine and Pelagius and all these kinds of things and understanding of the fall and what that meant for redemption.

And I thought - So what was your transition between that and covenant theology? Again, it was more gradual because immediately upon becoming a

Calvinist, I was given the Reformers and a lot of covenant theologians to read by my pastor at the time.

And what that meant for me is that I kind of absorbed that slowly because the pastor who gave those resources to me was not covenantal self -consciously, but he'd given me guys to read who were covenantal.

And so I just absorbed this and it made sense to me that there was this one cohesive, consistent plan of God to save sinners and that he had promised this in Genesis 3 .15

and it was revealed throughout the rest of the Old Testament. Christ accomplished and fulfilled it. And it just made sense to me.

I mean, in a way, well, I mean, we can say that it was by providence, right? Because we're Christians, right? It wasn't their intention.

No, it wasn't their intention. Which is my experience too, because I was in seminary. I was at a dispensational, very lordship salvation, master seminary.

And they're handing me books. And as I'm reading them. Yeah, you were in a different space than me. Right, but as I'm reading them,

I'm going, you're reading me this to show me what's wrong, but I'm reading it going, this is right. This is right. Well, and for me,

I was maybe in a space where it was just more what I would call new covenant theology. Okay. A more stark distinction.

By default, right? Right. It wasn't dispensational, but it was not even progressive covenantalism or it wasn't covenantal, but it was just kind of like there's this big distinction between the old and new covenant and some kind of reductionistic things even said about the law and the gospel and the

Old Testament and the New Testament. And I just thought, yeah, that doesn't really square to me because I understand these things. So I think

I accidentally, providentially, just made my way slowly toward being covenantal, though I didn't have all the terms.

I didn't have all the understanding. I didn't have the framework self -consciously. And that occurred more over just a period of years.

But one big story made sense. Yeah, wholly. I mean, completely made sense to me. And I was doggedly, even before I even knew what covenant theology was,

I was getting in arguments with people about the consistency between the Old and New Testament and the Old and New Covenant. And I'm just like, yeah, anyway,

I can remember this. And now looking back on 2008, 9, 10 version of Justin Perdue, I'm like, yeah, bro, you were covenantal and just didn't have the terminology.

And then that came over the course of years and time. But the confessionalism piece and the confessional piece has been more significant for me,

I think, than any. And it was more stark in terms of just being a pronounced transition. And that was just reading some history and listening to some good things and realizing that there's a difference historically between pietism and a confessional brand of Protestantism.

So it's almost - And that was huge for me. It's almost like you saw the power of God's word in Calvinism. And then you saw all of God's word in confessionalism.

But it's like a Baptist alliterated sermon right now. I don't know who it is. I just need a third point. And third point, he needs an intro, a conclusion.

He's already got the three points. And then we'll just do just as I am and we'll get you to come down. And the buses will wait and it's wonderful.

Sawed -off trail, baby. Every head is bowed, every eye is closed. I don't wanna make fun of my Baptist brothers. I love them. We see that hand and throw your stick in the fire.

They're good men. All right, here we go. They're good men. Here we go. All the things, right? But the way

I describe it is someone walked over and the puzzle I had been putting together was upside down with no color.

The box top was upside down. And the puzzle. And then they flipped the puzzle and the box tops over.

And I was like, now I can do this. Full color. Full color. And I can put it together. And it was fun because making, putting it all together.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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

slash primer. We'll talk and then

I wanna, we can involve these guys a little bit more and maybe interact with things that they say. For me, and I wanna hear more from you.

If you want me to talk about the confessionalism piece, I will. I think for myself, when I encountered confessional theology and started to understand more historically what confessional

Protestantism is, realizing that, I knew about confessions of faith and all these things and that was great.

But realizing that confessionalism or to be confessional has a lot more to do with a posture and a theological orientation that is objective in nature versus subjective.

It is about the finished work of Jesus Christ in the place of the sinner. He stands outside of us.

I mean, one of the battle cries of the Reformation, extra gnos outside of us and understanding that better and how that many

Christians had understood through history that, yeah, we're always looking outside of ourselves to say what's wrong in us, you know, and that that is

Christ and like, yep, I get that, I understand that. If I look within, I got nowhere to stand. Cool, there.

So I started to understand that better. And then realizing that there have been many saints through history who have understood that the project of the

Christian life, the Christian life itself is one of a pilgrimage. It's one of being a sojourner in an exile in a place where you're not yet home.

You know where you're going. You know God's promised it to you, but you're not there yet. And right now it's often scary.

And right now you're riddled with doubt. You're riddled with sin and corruption.

And it's just often really terrible and hard. And you question everything.

And man, like, I just wanna be home, you know, and I don't know that I'm gonna make it there. I mean, I've been told I'm gonna make it there, but I don't know that I'm gonna make it there because I'm so frail and I'm so prone to wonder and all this and that saints had felt that way before and that they understood that the ministry of the local church was actually aimed at that, to help that and that what we need is to be given

Christ in the word and sacrament and that we need each other. This was revolutionary to me.

I mean, I knew these things already in measure, but to realize that this kind of beginning and ending, like Alpha and Omega, start and stop, the whole

Christian life really can be talked about in these terms was life -changing for me.

Yeah, I felt, I felt, you know, cause I used to think I was crazy. I was in a context where spiritual disciplines were emphasized.

I was good at them, though, even though I was good at them, I was introspective and didn't think

I was good enough. So you were good at them, but you were spiritually dry. Yeah, I was good at them and I questioned my sufficiency and adequacy and legitimacy all the time.

Which most people do. Yeah, and I knew that I, everything I'm doing is tainted. How good is enough?

Right, it's not enough. It's, it's miserably just falling short, right? And that's what I felt.

I mean, so I was in that kind of a context where disciplines were made a lot of. I was in a context where, you know, we were obviously predestinary and Calvinistic.

We were all about, you know, the redemptive historical framework of scripture in one sense, but then in other ways, we were always at the end of the day, pointed back to ourselves in some form or fashion.

It's the, it's the yeah, but. It's the yeah, but, it's the, you need to, it's the prove yourself theology, right?

Grace exists. Of course. There is grace for everyone, but. But, or God saves sinners.

It's all of grace through faith in Christ alone. And you need to do well enough.

You can't earn salvation. You can't obey well enough to merit righteousness forever, but you need to obey well enough to prove you're legit.

That's right. And if you don't, you should be concerned. And nobody of course can define how much obedience is enough, how much, you know, how much affection is enough.

And for a person like me, I just was like, yeah, I'm not obeying enough. I'm not, I'm not loving

God. I'm not loving neighbor enough. I don't have enough affection for the Lord. And so I am, as I've already alluded to once and many times on this show,

I am going to be one of those people who gave my life and busted my butt to trust

Christ and discipline myself and read the Bible and aim to fight sin. And Jesus is going to tell me at the end of it all that I was a faker.

Yeah. And that was my - Depart from me. That was my Christian experience. And that was what haunted me.

And the only thing, I mean, this is where I've said a lot of things and where I really want to go because we're 20 something minutes in this podcast, like back to the future, wish

I knew then what I know now. The only thing that ever gave me comfort was

Jesus. I know this sounds absurd to say, but Jesus himself, when he would speak words of gospel was the only thing that comforted me.

John six, John 10, I mean, these were passages where I, Luke seven, places like this, where Jesus is saying things to sinners that completely remove us from the equation.

And he's like, I'm going to do this. It's all I knew. It's like, it's all

I got. And I'm hoping in him. And I don't think he's going to fail me because he's never failed at anything. But yeah,

I don't know where else to go. You know what I mean? It's really like, Lord, you have the words of eternal life. Where else are we going to go? Right? That was me. And I remember the last sermon,

I'll say this, the last sermon I preached in Washington, DC at the church where I was on staff, I preached John 10, 22 to 30.

I did that on purpose because at that time, I was still in this transition.

And that passage was one of the few that was actually balm and comfort for my soul.

And I thought maybe in heralding this to people, not that it would be helpful to me, but I was like, there have got to be people out there like me who just need to hear that Jesus has us.

And as imperfect as my faith and life are, I'm banking on him. And if he can't do it, then hey,

I mean, where else are we going to go? You know, I mean, that was really where I was. And I think to realize that people have thought this way throughout the history of Christianity and people have certainly thought this way from the

Reformation until now. And it's just a minority perspective that has been largely, people have been ignorant of it and unaware of it.

It's, I feel like I'm home and I'm thankful for Christ and an understanding of the scriptures that is objective, that is law and gospel, that's covenantal.

And I feel like I can rest here, you know, and I'm aiming to herald these truths of Christ and his sufficiency to as many people as who care to listen to me.

Yeah. I think if I were to go back and tell the John Moffitt of many years ago from this

John Moffitt and say, pay attention to my hair and the wrinkles and possibly the weight, you are going to hear something that you need, like, please pay attention to what

I'm about to tell you. You are not the first to read the Bible. You are not the first person to discover this, that history often repeats itself.

And what I unfortunately was trained to think that I don't need commentaries, I don't need creeds and confessions,

I just need the Bible, no creed but Christ, which is actually a creed. No, it is. And it's crazy to think about that.

And you probably had your Schofield Study Bible. And I was taught by good men who were taught by good men and unfortunately were unfortunately ill -informed.

Sure. And many of those men I've seen changed and they have progressed in their understanding of history.

But one of the things that has helped me the most in that we try and promote on this podcast that has transformed my mind more than anything is that the sufficiency of Christ and the sufficiency of what

God has done for us in Christ, which is what the primary message of the confessions are, whether no matter what confession you may grab historically, those are the type of things that has transformed my mind.

Every time I read the confession, which I think people need to understand when you hear us say this, they're like, yeah, but you guys, the

Bible is sufficient. The Bible is where the power is. And in many, Justin, in many ways, we aren't trying to put something above the

Bible. And when I've heard people critique theocast and critique reform theology and in general critique confessions, they're basically saying you guys are putting authority that is above the word of God.

The opening statement of our confession literally says that the only source of truth and power is what?

The word of God. That's right. Yeah, I mean, we don't need to go down this road too far, but all the confessions are is an exercise in systematic theology, doctrine.

What does the scripture teach about subject A, B, C, D on down the line, right? And yeah, all we're doing, even with these theological categories and some of these things we talk about regularly, law and gospel, ordinary means of grace, covenant theology, et cetera.

These are things, the redemptive historical framework of scripture, right? These are things that come up out of the scripture. They come up out of the text that we then see, learn, understand, and then take those things and go back to the text with those tools.

That's right. And we can better understand the whole and how it hangs together. That's all we're doing. Right. It's a very cyclical thing in that respect.

Like it comes up out of it and then we go back to the text with this stuff. That's right. Yeah, and so I think people just need to take a breath, calm down, it's okay.

And you've got to study, everybody has to study the scriptures. Everybody, we did an episode, right?

Like everybody's got a theological framework. The question is, is your framework any good? Well, this goes back to, if I asked modern evangelical churches that are in these big mega churches, what does your church believe?

Where are they going to go? The only place they can go is to their website unless they're a part of SBC or something like that. And oftentimes that's going to be a statement of faith that the pastors have written.

Or copied, more than likely copied from somewhere else. And which is fine because, which is what we're doing.

We are reusing, we're not coming up with anything new. I don't have any problems with them copying somebody else or using some another document.

The question is, how do you know what that, how do you know how sufficient that document is?

Justin, most of those documents are less than 1500 words. They are quick, small sentences about theological things that are broad enough to be evangelical, but they're not clear enough to lead you to what we would say is a sufficiency in understanding your relationship between God and the church and God's sufficiency in saving you.

They're just, this is who God is, this is who the Trinity is, this is our understanding of salvation and it tends to be very

Arminian in that way. The point of it is that the first time

I took enough moment, enough minutes to sit down and read the confession, it was not that I had learned anything new.

It was a concise, clear understanding of who God was, who I am, and here was the clearest distinction, and this is where I would love for us to talk about, if we can, for the next few minutes.

The distinction that the confessions were very clear to make is the role of God in Christ and our role, where the two play together.

What the Christianity that I heard was all about what I must do to not only save myself, to keep myself safe and then improve myself in sanctification.

What does the confessions do? Completely reverses all of those roles and places it upon the shoulders of God and not on the shoulders of man.

Yeah, I think what we most often, by default and by what we've been taught, believe is that we need to cooperate with God in order to be saved.

And if you really boil it down, it's up to me. I need to choose this, I need to do this, rather than as a reformed confessional

Protestant, right? We're gonna say that it is God's work from beginning to end.

And yeah, and I mean, I would have said that, many people that I was in church with 10 years ago would have said that.

But I think it is only a confessional posture that really aims to live that out.

That it's only God and more pointedly, it's only Christ. It's what he has done in the place of the sinner.

All we do is receive it. And we need to be reminded of it all the time because we forget it all the time.

It's where we are. Yeah, so do we wanna interact with these guys a little bit about some things?

Got a few minutes. So we've got a few minutes. And so guys, as you're sitting here, as you're thinking about your own lives, you're thinking about your own journey, your own pilgrimage, right?

You can throw some things at us that were significant for you in reorienting your perspective where you're like, yeah,

I realize I'm in a different place than I once was and here's some stuff that did it for me.

Or here are things that I've realized now that I had no clue about back then, however many years ago that was.

And just throw them at us and we'll interact a little bit. And you're off mic, so we'll try to repeat them as much as we can, make it plain to the listener.

Here we go. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was just, you know, in Bible college and just been introduced to Calvinism but was so still in the goosebump chase.

Like that was my affirmation that I had a relationship with God. So what did you do to chase the goosebumps?

Well, so when I was younger, it was just, it was youth worship nights. Okay. And as I grew older, it just became missions or just who talks the most about to random people about Jesus.

It means I care probably. Or just, yeah, all of those things. And I really just got to this point where it's like,

I was reading a book and it was basically like, you just need to stop trying. And I just got to this place where it's like, all right,

I'm gonna give up because I'm tired of this. Like, it's the reason I kind of stopped in the first place and now

I'm back at it again except I'm at Bible college and I'm older. And I'm just like, I'm gonna give up. And in doing that,

I truly did. And I found that God was way more merciful than I thought he was. And it didn't depend on me as much as I thought it did.

And then, I was at covenant and was like, you just need to calm down.

Justin told me, you just need to show up to church. And so I did, by the grace of God, I was just so tired of thinking like, it's like,

I guess this is all I got. And like how I like to describe it is that it saved my

Christian life. So, and yeah, here I'm in, here I am. Yeah.

Years later and I'm safe. And I think that now the point of my life is not about proving myself, but it's loving neighbor.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much the audio got captured. None of it.

So I would just say, first of all, this is McKenzie. McKenzie. Works here at covenant. And one of the things he described is that when he first kind of came into Calvinism, he started chasing the goosebumps.

Yeah. Right. And some of that was worship. Some of that's personal discipline. And all of a sudden you're chasing that next spiritual high.

Or missions, evangelism, whatever it is. Like who's doing the thing. Who's doing the craziest mission work.

Yeah. That's right. And that's legitimate. And I think before the podcast even started,

McKenzie, you had talked about how you had potentially even made a really bad mistake and left the country and would have not have married a beautiful wife that you did.

And I rebuked you for that bad mistake that you made. But I just,

I remember being there. I remember waking up every morning at 4 a .m. after reading a book by Joseph Carroll on how to worship

Jesus Christ. And I remember the first few days that I did that, it was like the

Shekinah glory had come upon me. And there was this overwhelming emotion that I had.

And guess what happened on day three? It was gone. It was gone. Well, yeah. I mean, yeah. Chase and Goosebumps. So he talked about Chase and Goosebumps and in even being like pursuing all the things and doing the things.

I mean, think about David Platt's Radical. I think about John Piper's Desiring God. I think about all these things where, yeah, you're geeked up and it's like, yes, this is me and this is what

I'm gonna do. And, you know, like McKenzie shared that, you know, even as a

Bible college student, years, he experienced these things as a teenager. Then years later in Bible college, he's like, here

I am again, just kind of repackaging this. I'm gonna do the things. I'm gonna do it right now.

I'm getting serious about my Christian life, but then feeling the same stuff, burnout. And like, I can't do it well enough.

And I think we've all been there. And yeah, I mean, he shares a lot with people. He and I started meeting together years ago and I said, bro, you need to calm down and show up to church.

And in God's providence, he listened. And there has been all kinds of fruit born from that, just to calm down and show up to church.

And as he put it so beautifully, you couldn't hear him say this, but as he put it so beautifully, my focus now is not so much on myself and doing the right things and disciplines.

It's actually on loving neighbor. And it's like, amen, that's what it ought to be. We're safe.

Christ has us. He is sufficient to save. And so now we're able to give our lives away in love to our brothers and sisters.

So we got another one. Yeah. All right, so this is Lucas gonna talk to us for a minute. We'll figure out how to slice and dice this.

We'll slice it in and repeat what he says. Go for it, brother. Relatively.

But what changed in me was like, when God saved me, it became about a game of progress.

It was all about making minor improvements. And at some point, like once I'd reached

Calvinism, once I'd become reformed,

I'd kind of gotten to the end of that, I went searching for anything that I could find, just so that I could be as faithful as possible.

So I could do all the things I needed to do. And eventually

I got to the end of that and was broken. It was just broken.

And so just to put a bow on it, like now on the other side of that,

I'd tell Lucas back then that being in this kind of context, one that points you to Christ and what he's accomplished.

And yeah, specifically what he's accomplished for salvation and sanctification. It's really, it's the most freeing and motivating thing that I've ever experienced in my life.

And it's like, I now have categories for my Christian experience. All right, so I'm gonna try to summarize what you just said.

This is fun. I mean, this is super cool. It's like, thank God for his grace in our lives, right? So say from just a context where he was wiling out a lot and God's mercy was scandalous in the gospel, but then it's all about, as a

Christian, it's all about progress. It's all about getting better. And he encountered Calvinism, various things, and then finally came to the end of all that.

Like, I've got to find other things to just be better. I've got to find other ways to improve. I've got to keep doing the things to prove myself and found that to be soul crushing.

I mean, in one sense, where he was broken by that. And then his word now is that knowing that, like this message of Christ and what

Jesus has done for sinners, being pointed to him, not just for your justification, but for your sanctification and all of your salvation, he says is the most freeing and motivating thing that he has ever encountered, to which we would say amen.

Amen. I mean, one of the things you said that resonated with me, and I'm really glad you mentioned it, is that pressure for ongoing progress.

Like we use it in your book, or in our book, The Rest, as we measure ourself against the wall.

Yeah, it's like a child's height against the wall. Yeah. We've got to keep growing. So we, and I have that in my house, in our hallway.

We, I can see - Measure the kids. Yeah, and I can see where each one of my kids have been over the last, you know, eight, nine years.

And there's a, you can see the progress there. And that's what we want. We want to feel like we're getting better.

We want to feel as if we're getting closer to God. And we can, we want to make it measurable.

You live long enough in the Christian life, you're going to realize those things that you think are significant, you realize they're not.

Like I've read through my Bible 37 times, and I've got 17 journals, and I've been perfect attendant.

Whatever it is that you want to put that progress there, the only thing that matters is, are you gaining further and greater trust in Christ and His sufficiency?

Because if you're not, then nothing else matters. Right, I think that is real sanctification, is learning to more deeply and wholly trust

Christ in spite of circumstance. Yeah. Right, I mean, that's it, bro. It's like, you want to talk about growing in godliness, that's it.

Yeah. You know, what's interesting - There's other stuff we can say, but - Well, yeah, and that doesn't mean there isn't obedience.

Sometimes people hear what we say and it's like, oh, well, we just sit around and rest in Christ and drink beer and just do whatever.

And the work of God doesn't get done if that's the case. If you're just sitting on your hindquarters, resting in Christ and kicking up your feet, that is not what we're called to.

And that's a mistake of what we're saying. And even if we do sit around and consume beverages and talk about Christ, it's very much like Martin Luther's table talk, man.

I mean, why are we doing it? Why are we sitting around talking about Christ? It's like, well, because he has saved wretches like us.

What else are you going to talk about? Right, and we're reminded, like, let's remind each other as we're sitting around and enjoying one's company, right, one another's company, let's remind each other what our

Savior has done for us. And like, in our best of times, this is a foretaste of the new heavens and the new earth. And right now we're not there yet.

And we got to love a lot of other people and point them to Jesus too, because they don't have any hope but him either. You know, and this is what we're doing.

Part of our, I think, my struggle, your struggle in our past, you coming from a particular kind of Baptist background, both of us coming from a

Baptist background, one more liberal, one more definitely legalistic. But then me, Calvinistic evangelical.

Yeah. More than yours, maybe. But it doesn't matter which one you're in. I kind of - It's always self -improvement, right? I just made many stages.

Yeah, but it's - And I smacked my microphone, all kinds of things. Yeah, but it's all self -improvement. It's all about the betterment of the individual.

Yes. Can I get, like, so especially, man, that's true in liberal theology. People don't realize that.

It's all about bettering yourself. Again, it's pietistic. Liberal theology is pietistic, because it's all about transformation.

And sometimes that's aimed broadly at society. Sometimes that's aimed at the society through the individual, whatever. I don't care.

It's all about transformation. But then, in the Calvinistic evangelical world, it's all about personal transformation too.

And what's terrible about that is, by the degree to which you are transformed is the degree to which you can prove yourself.

It's insane. And it's soul -crushing. I mean, the whole thing that Paul says, I must increase Christ. I'm sorry,

John the Baptist. I must decrease, he must increase. We say that in a very pietistic form of like, oh, you know, it's very spiritual.

It's like we talk about taking up our crosses. Right. Yeah, it's the same kind of thing. But the reality really is the greater, the closer you get to the light of Christ, the dirtier and filthier and absolute wretch you feel.

And it's at that moment where you, it's like it's the worst trust fall of all time.

If you don't believe Christ will catch you, then you're done. And that's how you live every single day.

I think that's where, like at the end of the day, as you're grown in the faith, that's kind of where you realize you've been at the whole time. It's like,

I'm literally, I'm falling back and I'm trusting on Christ to catch me. It's Psalm, what, Psalm 37, right?

Psalm 37, 24. That when we fall, we will not be cast headlong because he holds our hand, right?

That's what we're trusting in. That's right. Yeah. And as we do that, we're yelling out at everyone else next to us.

You can trust him. He'll catch you. He'll fall and he'll catch you. That's right. As you're falling, that's what you yell.

That's right. Trust him. As Paul said, or as Peter, I think as it says, is that blessed are those who have not seen, but yet believe.

And in many ways. Well, Jesus says that to Thomas. Yeah. Right. Right. Anyway, we can talk about that for a while. We can go for a little bit.

All of this to say, there is a progress. Yeah. I want to progress every single day, but it's not a progress in morality.

Right. It's not a progress in discipline. It's a progress in the sufficiency, believing and trusting in the sufficiency of Christ on my behalf.

Sure. Which is what the confession leads you to do. Sure. Yeah, agree.

I could say a lot. I'm not going to right now. I'm going to refrain. We've got a few minutes left. And so let's, Rob. We may have to just lead

Rob into the. Rob for the SR. Yeah. Rob, you get to go into the special podcast. Semper Reformanda podcast.

All right, so. You better not fail us. So we, yeah, we got one more brother sitting here with us. And since we're already 45 plus minutes in, it's like, well, we've got our

SR content for this one. And we're going to keep going with this kind of conversation over in Semper Reformanda, the second podcast we do every week.

John, tell people everything they need to know about SR. So one of the. You know this better than I do. One of the things that we did,

Justin and I love this ministry. We love our churches. We want to see the reformation go forward. So we started a ministry called

Semper Reformanda, which means always reforming. And to do that, Justin and I interact on another podcast.

Where we do. To be frank, we may get a little bit more lively. And honestly, knowing these three men like I do,

Rob being the one that we talk to on SR is even better. It's appropriate. Rob may have some fire for us.

So we do an extra podcast where we continue the conversation. Turn the heat up. And then we also have an app.

And that app is where Justin and I will go in and interact with individuals. Allows you to interact with us with further content.

There are groups in there that you can join for local and online interactions. So it's a way for you to join in what we're doing financially and audibly on online.

So it's our own social network, really, technically. Sure, I'm here. I'm here for all of it. We'll see you over there.

But anyways, hope you enjoy this conversation. Justin and I don't take a lot of time to do autobiographical information.

We thought we'd start the year with that. And we're not always together. It's kind of fun to have these sort of conversations.

We're doing a group hang tonight anyway. And my greatest hope is that we're recording this on December the 13th, that it never comes out.

You know why? We're in glory. Jesus will come back. But if he's not, we hope this encourages you while you wait.