Anxiety and the Gospel | Theocast

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For those of us who are feeling anxious and depressed, dark and discouraged, this is a conversation for you.

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How do we take what we feel and put it in light of the gospel, an objective reality outside of ourselves, and how our feelings tend to adjust and change towards the truth of the gospel?

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Please stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism.

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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

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Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

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Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

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We have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it, and we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism,

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Reformed theology, really, how it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

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Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it at our website.

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Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

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Christian life from a Reformed pastoral and confessional perspective. Today, if you're new to Theocast, the simplest way for us to put this is we want to clarify the gospel, remove all of its clutter, and then talk about the joys of the kingdom, the real purpose of the kingdom.

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Today is definitely going to be encouraging to the weary saint and the weary soldier. Your hosts today are

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I'm John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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Morning, Justin. Justin Perdue Good morning, John. John Moffitt Before we start, we were recording a podcast yesterday with my wife called

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Outside Eden about parenting, and I kept calling her Justin. I was like, there's so many years of being on a pod with you.

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Justin Perdue I don't know what that means, John. John Moffitt I don't even know what that means. Six episodes in a row. Well, Justin, Judith, and she just laughed because I said it and I didn't even realize it.

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She goes, you know you just call me Justin, and I was like, oh man, bad habits. Hey, Justin, the only announcement

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I have is that we have a growing community of over 1200 people who love to share the gospel, encouragements, look for resources, share books.

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It's called the Theocast Community. It's an actual app, and it has all of our resources, including

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Justin and I's sermons on there, all of our past conferences from GRN and Theocast. It's just a plethora of good information with good people.

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So go check it out at Theocast .org. Justin, I don't want to waste any more time because today is kind of a special and precious conversation that you and I were able to have before the podcast got started.

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So I'm going to let you introduce us to today's subject. Justin Perdue Yeah, will do, man.

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And I'll try to not make this overly personal, but what was the occasion for the conversation

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John and I had on the phone, just the two of us, is just some of the things that I've been going through personally that have not been easy over the last number of weeks, just even pertaining to my own health and different things and battles with various kinds of symptoms and trying to figure out what's going on and anxiety and different things there.

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I trust that I am far from alone. I know that many of you out there go through very difficult things too. This life under the sun is no joke, and there are times where in our good moments we have peace, we trust the

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Lord, and bad moments we're afraid. What does the Lord have for us in those times?

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What John and I want to do today is have a conversation about anxiety and the gospel, but it's bigger than that.

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It's about suffering, it's about pain, it's about weakness, and it's about our lives this side of the resurrection and how we process it and how the

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Lord is with us in it and how He's not distant. He's near and He's made promises that change everything.

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I want to just maybe front load what we're going to say today with these thoughts. Two things.

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John and I both agree that there are helpful and unhelpful ways to talk about things in the

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Christian life. For example, there are bad ways that people have talked about a personal relationship with Jesus over the years, but the wrong way to correct that is to make

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Christianity and our relationship with Jesus impersonal. That's not what we should do.

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Christianity is always personal. Our relationship with Jesus is personal. It's just not private. It's personal and corporate.

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Sometimes we say or we act as though feelings are bad or that emotions are bad.

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It is true because we're fallen that our emotions can be wrong and that our feelings can't be trusted to guide us to truth.

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But feelings, we need to consider them and we need to acknowledge and assess how we're feeling.

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We don't need to ignore how we feel, but then what we need to do is we need to have objective truth, doctrine, promises of God, God's faithfulness, who

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Jesus is for us, how Jesus loves us, how Christ is with us. We need those objective realities to help us process our feelings.

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Don't hear us saying today that emotions or feelings are bad and just don't trust them, and so just throw them away.

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All that matters is doctrine. That is not the point of this conversation. The point of this conversation is how do we engage helpfully with what we feel and with the ways that we sometimes, if you're anything like me, at least in recent weeks due to various factors,

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I think my compassion for people has grown yet again. I just don't feel like myself.

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I feel like I'm not really even in control sometimes of how I'm feeling or what my body is doing.

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It's unnerving, and it's very unpleasant, and you feel very weak.

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If the Lord cannot minister to us in those moments, and if Christianity has nothing for us in those moments, and if the gospel can't deal with my soul in that condition, then what good is it?

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We, of course, believe that the gospel is the greatest good and that Jesus is the friend of sinners and loves us.

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I look forward to this conversation. Jon Moffitt Speaking of feeling, Sunday was for us.

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We recorded several weeks in advance. It was the celebration of resurrection. Of course, we believe you should celebrate it every

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Sunday, and we do. But in our culture and our calendar, we have a special day to celebrate his resurrection.

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We had a children's choir. We had these five, six, seven -year -olds up there singing Justin, and they were singing the song

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Jesus Strong and Kind. I'm talking about five, six -year -olds were singing solos.

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One of the little girls and one little boy both sang separately these verses. I just started losing it.

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I just cried hearing a precious little voice sing this. Believe it while singing it. Jesus said that if I fear,

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I should come to him. No one else can be my shield. I should come to him.

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The second one was Jesus says, if I'm lost, he will come to me, and he showed me on that cross, he will come to me.

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That's what we're going to talk about today is the frailty and the weakness of when we're weak and when we're lost, that God's promises to us are not reliant on our circumstances and experience.

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This is something we've talked about in Theocast for years. It's called the objective reality of the gospel. It's something that is far greater, far more powerful, and significant than you and your experience at this moment.

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I think the greatest example of this, Justin, is Paul and his own weakness when he says, look, I prayed three times to the

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Lord that he would hear me. My brother Peter says, I cast my anxieties to cast my anxieties on the

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Lord. I'm doing this, Father. Will you hear me? Will you remove whatever was causing the angst in Paul, whatever was causing that suffering?

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Jesus' response to him was, my grace is sufficient, for when you are weak, then I am strong. I just want to encourage my brothers and sisters that if you're feeling the frailty of your flesh, where you at times feel a stranger in your own body, you feel like your body is constantly attacking you, your mind, your emotions are warring against the truth that's in your head, that there is something significant that you're fighting.

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This is the body of death that Paul is speaking of in Romans 7. The things

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I don't want to do, I keep doing them. What's going on with this war? He admits that I have to be free from this body.

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There are times, Justin, we have to sit back and just acknowledge that our bodies are not properly functioning as they should.

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In Christ, we are new creations. We're born again. We're regenerate in our inner being.

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All that's true. We drag the corpse of old man around with us. It's that saint -centered reality that we talk about all the time.

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This conversation can't be had without an understanding of that. It's an already but not yet.

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We're new creations, but we have not yet been bodily resurrected and completely set free from corruption and sin and weakness and frailty.

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This side of the resurrection, things are going to look a certain way. Ours is a theology of the cross.

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We talk about this all the time. This side of glory, there will be weakness and pain and suffering.

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There will be difficulty. What we learn to do, I would add, together in the church with our brothers and sisters in the

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Lord or through friendships, even like you and I have, John, we learn together to trust

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Christ in the midst of pain. We learn together to see and know the love of Christ in the midst of weakness.

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We learn together to even know and experience the nearness of Christ.

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Together, we learn this in the midst of the struggle. That's what our lives look like now.

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Here's the comfort. I should have said this in teeing up the conversation, but I just want to say it very plainly now.

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What we're talking about right is where the objective meets the subjective.

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We are not saying that the subjective experience is insignificant. Our subjective experience does matter.

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What we are contending for is that our subjective experience needs to be grounded in and informed by the objective realities of Jesus and the gospel.

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You and I were talking before we recorded, and you gave this analogy of being on an airplane.

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Two people get on an airplane, let's say. One person has never flown before and is terrified.

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One person has flown a lot and is very comfortable. The objective reality of the plane being the mode of transportation and being what's going to get you from A to B is objective.

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It doesn't change for either person, but both of these individuals have a very different experience of the flight getting from A to B.

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It is not that the subjective is immaterial and doesn't matter. It matters very much, but what we want to continue to do is process our subjective experience through the filters of the objective realities of Christ and the gospel and God's love,

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God's promises, and God's faithfulness. It's a good thing to think through.

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It's a good thing to consider as we're talking today. I can go any number of directions,

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John, with this. I'm a feeler to the nth degree, so I'm ready for you. Why don't you just lead us a particular direction?

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Jon Moffitt Yeah, no problem. One of the areas that when you're talking about a feeler,

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I'd love to just go ahead and talk about this. Now, I have a very intellectual side to me too, but I definitely live in my feelings.

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Well, we're both emotional. We both have to, as men, keep our emotions in check.

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People think that we're all over the place. What that means is that the emotions can dominate reality, meaning what

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I feel is reality, and it's not necessarily true. We even talk about this in counseling at times, is that sometimes when people experience something, that's the reality, even though it's not real.

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When you walk into a child's room and they're afraid of the dark, you can't tell them to stop being afraid of the dark. You have to give them a power that's stronger than the darkness.

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When my presence walks in, I'm actually stronger than the darkness because they're no longer afraid because I'm in the room. That's an objective protection for them.

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That's the gospel. I love that our God and our

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Savior and our friend and our King is sympathetic to this. This is why he is told to be called a sympathetic high priest.

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Justin, I love this part. At times, our emotions can take over because we think something else is in control and not

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God. That's what's happening. Oh, something else is out of the control because it's out of our control, but nothing is out of God's control.

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That's hard for us to remember. Towards the end of his letter, I'm preaching through Peter. I'm not here yet, but so am I, William. First Peter 5, he says, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God.

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If you understand the tone in which he's writing this, because the next thing he says is about being tender and compassionate, he's saying, you can give your life over to a

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God whose power is sufficient. Humble means I put myself out of control into his control.

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Why? Because of the next verse, he says, cast your anxieties, the things that you're worried about controlling, cast your anxieties on him.

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Why? Because it's sin? No, he says, because he cares for you. Amen. He's powerful.

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He cares for you. Here's where it's important. He says, be sober minded, be watchful, because there's an adversary who wants to trick you to do the opposite.

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He wants to devour your faith and your hope. Then he says, resist him, firm in what?

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Your faith, not your obedience, not your performance, not your health, Justin. Sometimes we equate no pain, good health with good faith.

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I am good physically and mentally, therefore I am good spiritually. I don't believe that this is true because he's saying, resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kind of suffering are being experienced by your brothers throughout the world.

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This experience that many have, as a pastor, I wrestle with it. You wrestle with it.

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We wrestle with the frailty of our flesh, the daunting task of the work, and how incapable we are to do both, to fight our sin, to do the work of the

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King, and at the same time, simply just have faith in the gospel. This is where the constant reminder,

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I'll just a little bit of a sidetrack and I'll come back, Justin. I was listening to a podcast on the Old Testament, and this guy was saying that in Genesis chapter three, during the fall, it doesn't actually say

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Jesus' name. If you preach that, you shouldn't talk about Jesus. You should just preach whatever is in the passage. What ends up happening is we leave people without the real hope of life in the gospel and why

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Genesis three was even written. Of course, it doesn't say his name, but we all know eventually he's the seed.

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We need Christ and the hope of Christ. This is why preaching to people, he cares for you.

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He is powerful. He cares for you, and he's sympathetic. When you feel this way, you shouldn't go away and make yourself stronger.

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You actually fall into the arms of your Savior, and he actually can care for you.

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A simple prayer of, Lord, I don't like the way I feel, and I don't want to carry this anxiety.

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It's as simple as that. Justin Perdue No, it's wonderful to just talk to him and to tell him,

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Lord, I'm afraid. You see me. You know that. I'm asking you to draw near to me.

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I know you're near. I don't feel like you're near, but comfort me. These are the prayers of God's people. David prays like this.

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I'm lonely and afflicted. Those kinds of things. He's praying for God's nearness and his grace and his mercy.

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We talk a lot about being preachers of the gospel, not just preaching the benefits of Christ, but actually holding

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Jesus out to people. I think this is where that really matters. We don't just preach justification and sanctification and glorification, as wonderful as those things are.

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We actually preach the person of Jesus for us, and through our union with him, we have all of our benefits.

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Why does that matter when it comes to anxiety? I trust it's fairly obvious. You already mentioned how

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Jesus is compassionate. Why and how is that? It's because God the

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Son, eternally God, took on human flesh and walked on this earth for 33 years.

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He is called a man of sorrows. He knew what it was like to suffer. He knew what it was like to feel alone and to be abandoned by all of his earthly companions.

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He knew pain, and he knew what it was to be afraid. In the Garden of Gethsemane, as he stared down the barrel of the wrath of God that he would bear in the place of all of his people, he can identify with us in all of those things.

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Then he tells us that he loves us, and then he shows us that he loves us.

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It's wonderful to be told. It's also wonderful to be shown. You were talking about that song,

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Jesus, Strong and Kind, one of our church's favorites, by the way. In that verse,

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Jesus said, If I am lost, he will come to me. He showed me on that cross that he will come to me.

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He demonstrates repeatedly in his earthly ministry how much he loves people who know they need him, how much he loves his own, how gentle he is, how he invites people to come to him for rest and for comfort, for peace and security.

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Of course, most fundamentally, he demonstrates his love in dying in our place. We see that in the death of Christ.

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Then there are his promises, like the wonderful words he speaks. I could talk about a ton, but I'll just give two.

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There's the John 17, 24 reality where we know that he prays for us, and he prays that we would be with him where he is.

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That's a sweet thought. In the midst of suffering in this life, my

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Savior, who I can't leave, and I know he has me in his hands, he's praying to the

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Father on my behalf that I would be with him where he is forever. I'm going to rest in that.

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In John 14, when he says that he's going to go and prepare a place for me and you, he says that very personally to us as his people.

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Then he says, I wouldn't tell you that if it wasn't true, and I'm going to come back and get you. You have his promises when you're afraid and when you're anxious.

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Then it's not just that he intercedes for us. It's the fact that he tells us,

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I'm going to be with you even to the end of the age. By his Spirit, he is with us.

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He is not distant. He is not removed. He's not just this deity that sits enthroned in the heavens that is detached from the pain of his people, but he hears, he sees, he knows.

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Man, yeah, you're speaking my language now. You and I were talking about doctor appointments, and my daughter had a doctor appointment yesterday.

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At times where it's like you got to go see someone who can speak into your life about what's going on, and you got to make these appointments.

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I don't know about you, but I always feel weird around doctors. I don't know, it's just because I'm there because I'm not healthy.

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It's that anxiety. What are they going to tell me? It's the unknown. That is so opposite of the great physician, the father and brother who treats us, and he says, now listen,

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I'm always listening. I'm always listening. I'm always caring, and I'm always here.

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My presence is always here. When you need me, I'll even be praying for you and requesting for the

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Father for things that you don't even know you need. I'll do it for you, but when you need me, you don't have to make an appointment.

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You don't have to get things straightened up and get ready. You don't have to get into the right position.

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He says, man, just run. Run right in, and it's a psychological running.

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It's like, I'm going to just stop what I'm doing right now, and I'm going to commune to my Father because I need to cast upon him either my sin,

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I need to ask him for wisdom, or I need to tell him my anxieties. It's one of those things where Justin, you and I have both felt this, where we want to complain to our wife, but we don't want to burden them.

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We want to complain to our elders, but we know they've had a hard day. It's like one of those things where we're afraid of burdening another sinner who's struggling themselves.

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The encouraging part is, child, I know. I'm compassionate. I understand your weakness, and you can't overburden me because I'm the creator of the universe.

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Tell me, what are you anxious about? Justin, there are even times when someone else takes me to the

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Father. We do this with each other. Adam, we do it with our elders, and my wife and I did it last night, where there are times we're both feeling anxious.

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I use this language in my little eight -year -old. I'm like, hey, who do we want to send a prayer to, or who do we want to carry to the

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Father? Meaning, I'm going to carry your name up to the Father and say, hey, he could really use some help right now.

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He's struggling, and he doesn't even know how to pray for that, so I'm going to ask for you. Even the fact that Jesus in the

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Lord's Prayer is a corporate thing that he says. It's plural language, our

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Father, and so on. I was reading

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Adriel Sanchez's new book on the Lord's Prayer yesterday. We may end up having

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Adriel on here to talk about it. He sent me a copy like he sent you a copy, and I was just plowing through some of it yesterday just for my own edification.

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He picked up on this analogy that is, I don't think, unique to him at all. It's this premise that when people climb a mountain, there's the rope line and how people are all holding onto the rope together.

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He said prayer is like that as far as the saints are concerned. It's a rope, effectively, that goes up to the throne of grace, to the throne of God, but we collectively are holding onto the rope.

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That's a beautiful image of what you're describing, of how we carry one another to the

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Father often. We collectively are praying with and for each other. It's a beauty of the

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Christian life in that personal and corporate dynamic that we were even alluding to a minute ago. I know that there are times when

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I hear two people having a conversation about me for my benefit. It warms my heart to think, wow, those two people took time out of their day to talk about me.

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That's the reality of when we pray for one another or we pray for someone. You're having a conversation with the

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God of the universe saying, hey, I need to talk to you about my friend, my brother, my sister, and make a request for them.

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There's a heartwarmingness to that, especially to the anxious heart who can't seem to get control of their mind and emotions.

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All of these lies are barking at me. I know my experience in these lies aren't true, but how do

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I wrestle with them? To think that someone else went to the Father and asked for that help is calming and helpful.

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Is it permanent? No, this is why we walk by faith, not by sight. You're good.

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Heidelberg Catechism, question one. It's well known for a reason. What is your only comfort in life and death?

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The answer is effectively that I belong to Jesus Christ. That's the comfort, that I am his and he is mine.

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The rest of that answer goes on to convey that he's not distant, but that he sees and knows everything about us.

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Not a hair falls from our head apart from his knowing it, which is obviously straight out of Matthew 6.

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When Jesus says, don't be anxious, to simply say don't be anxious is one thing, but to convey

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I've got you, I know you, I see you, I'm with you as your friend, as your elder brother, as your savior, that's entirely different.

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Christian meditation is a good thing. Let's redeem some categories for a minute.

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I think a lot of times when you hear meditation, you think Eastern religion, or when you hear some of this mystical language, you think mysticism.

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That is not what we're saying. To meditate and to reflect and to pray about these things, that I belong to Jesus Christ, and that he sees me, he knows me, he's with me.

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Not a hair falls from my head without his knowing, and in him all things will work for my salvation and for my eternal good.

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I trust that. Here's the key, or a key to me. We're not called to understand everything we go through.

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There's no way we can. I think so often in the Christian world with the best of intentions, we want to try to read through the lines of providence.

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We want to try to determine exactly what the Lord is doing. We want to use the Bible to interpret all of our circumstances and all of our suffering and all of our pain.

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Friend, that is not why it was given. It was not given so that you can understand exactly why you have that diagnosis.

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It is not given so that you would understand exactly why you feel the way that you do in your body for the last six weeks or the last six years.

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It's not given so that you would understand why it is that you buried your child last year. It's given to ground the verities of your soul in the midst of all of that difficulty and pain in this life under the sun.

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We're not called to understand. We're called to believe. We're called to trust. We're called to hope because the

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Lord is faithful and because Jesus has us and we belong to him. That's the kind of recalibration that we're after.

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Does it take the pain away? No, but is it a help in the midst of trouble? Yes. Justin Perdue, Jr.:

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I think knowing that for 2 ,000 years plus, as long as there's been a broken world, suffering has been the norm.

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At times, we are convinced that suffering is the abnormal, and it really isn't. Suffering is the normal.

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This is why I think Peter writes to the church and says, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced.

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In particular, in this church, they are dealing with hardship according to their faith, but also hardship according to their circumstances.

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They're living on the outskirts of town, and it's been frustrating and hard.

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Peter even speaks to this. In the second letter, they're dealing with immense amounts of spiritual warfare, a lot of suffering in that area.

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The anxieties and the frailties is saying, look, you're not the only one who is suffering.

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Justin, we haven't done this probably in a while. I don't even have to think about if we've ever done something on the prosperity gospel, but the prosperity gospel, the theology of glory, will sneak in.

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Those who have faith and really trust the Lord have successful, providentially good lives.

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That's the benefit and blessings of the Lord versus those who have lesser faith or disobedience. Listen, I would agree that sin leads to a harder life.

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That's just part of Scripture, period. You reap what you sow is a general principle. Yeah, absolutely.

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You're me. You're going to have responses to that. But what about the person who truly is resisting the best they can their sin, and they are walking by faith, and yet they are struggling with anxiety.

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They're struggling with a constant sense of depression. They can't seem to fix their health issues. It's this constant struggle that they face.

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That's where I think it's so heartwarming for Peter to go, hey, just so you know, other Christians around the world are suffering too.

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They have to put their anxiety and they have to watch their hearts, and they too have to trust in the gospel.

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By the way, Peter is writing to churches here. He's not writing to individuals. He's telling the churches, hey, just so you know, you collectively together resist him, trust in him, cast your anxieties upon him.

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To the listener that's out there, you feel like you've either entered into this stage or you've been in a lifelong battle and suffering with something.

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There's something wrong with you. You're right. There is something wrong with you. That's why we long for the hope of his return so that he makes all things new.

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The promise is to come. He's restored your faith. He has captured your soul, and he will restore your body when he returns.

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It's healthy to remember we are not home yet. No, we're not. In the midst of the pilgrimage that is this life, between here and home, our eternal homeland, that heavenly country, there will be pain and weakness and suffering.

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We live in an Ecclesiastes world. I'm going to draw maybe a few final thoughts.

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They're not all related. I'll just try to popcorn them around, and then John, you can close us down.

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Living in an Ecclesiastes world, it really is important to walk with other people who understand that that's true. Sometimes you read

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Ecclesiastes, and people don't know what to do with it. It's like, this ain't how good Christian folks should talk.

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This ain't okay. Solomon is a wonderful book.

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Brother, I can't wait to preach Ecclesiastes personally. Part of that is because of how I'm wired. Let's be real for a moment.

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You look around and you assess the landscape, and it's like, this is not how things should be.

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We all know there are too many terrible things. There are wonderful things in the world, and there are too many terrible things.

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Vanity, the vanity that he talks about all the time, and pain and suffering, and burying people we love, and sickness and disease, and fearful stuff.

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There's too much of that for us to look around and think, yeah, this is how things should be. Solomon writes that way.

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Hey guys, this is how things are. It's important to be able to walk with people who get that, but not in a way that is just despondent and giving oneself over to cynicism and meaninglessness.

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No, you walk in the midst of life under the sun, where there's weakness and pain and suffering, but you know that God and truth remain, and that Christ is a

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Savior, and that we belong to Him. It's important to walk with people who share that understanding.

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A lot of times, here's our tendency. When we go through really difficult things, we feel alone.

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I don't just mean at a human level, though that can be true. We also feel like God's not near.

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He feels distant. Where is God in this? Where is God in this?

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We struggle to know His presence, to know His love, to know His nearness. Oftentimes, we get most afraid, at least

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I do, when I look back on my life and think this is true. Even in recent weeks, I think this is true.

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In your bad moments, God's not in it. He's just not there.

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We need people around us too, and we need to remind ourselves that God is always near, that He always loves, and that He does not delight in our suffering.

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Has He ordained all things? Yes, but there are all kinds of means and agencies, and there are all kinds of things that happen in this world.

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The Lord does not delight in our suffering. He sees it, and He knows it. He's compassionate toward us in it, and He says, bring it to me.

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Lay it on me, and child, I have you. Say that to yourself, but you need people around you who say that to you too.

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That's not platitude nonsense. That's the only hope we've got. The last thought is thinking about anxiety in the gospel.

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This video clip goes around and goes viral every Easter season, and I'm thankful that it does.

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It's the Don Carson clip where he's the good news. The objective meets the subjective.

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Here's the great illustration. If you know it, humor me. If you don't, it will encourage you. I'm going to paint the picture.

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Again, this is not unique to me, but I think it's gripping as to how the objective promises and realities of Christ in the gospel meet our subjective experience and ground us in the midst of the weakest days we have.

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The Passover, you know it well. It's the tenth plague. The Lord says, I'm going to do this in the land of Egypt, and He, through Moses, tells

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His people what they are to do. They are to take the lamb. They're to set it aside. They're to kill it. They're going to eat it and do all those things, but they're to put the blood of the lamb on the lentil of the door, the posts of the door.

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The Lord says that when I pass through that night to put to death all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, when

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I see the blood, I will pass over you. Of course, we know that that points to Jesus in magnificent ways and how the blood of Jesus Christ shields us from the wrath of God.

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But Carson paints this hypothetical picture of two Israelites living in the land of Egypt having a conversation on the day that this is going to go down.

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Passover is happening tonight. The tenth plague is coming tonight. They're talking to each other, and one guy says, hey man, how do you feel about what's going to go down?

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All the stuff that the on the doorposts and firstborn being put to death, how do you feel about all this?

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The guy's like, oh bro, I mean, I'm terrified. The guy who asks the question says, what do you mean you're afraid?

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The Lord's already told us how this is going to turn out. The other guy's like, yeah, I just don't know, man. I mean, this is frightening stuff. I'm just not sure.

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I'm going to do what the Lord says, but I don't know how this is going to go. So they have that dialogue back and forth. One's confident, one's terrified.

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Well, they both go. They have the meal. They both put the blood of the lamb on the post of their door, and they go to sleep.

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The question is this. When the angel of the Lord comes through the land of Egypt that night to put the firstborn to death, which one of those men lost his firstborn son?

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The answer to that is neither one, because it is the blood of the lamb that makes the difference, not the strength of the faith.

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That is so comforting to know, like we say all the time, that it is the object of our faith,

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Jesus Christ for us, Jesus of Nazareth, the friend of sinners.

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He means we're secure. He's the one who sees to it. He's the one who will not fail.

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We will make it, and we will be with God forever and forever after that. Not because we will not fail, but because Jesus will never fail us.

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That is so comforting to an anxious soul in the midst of pain and in the midst of weakness that I belong to Him, and I trust that He will never fail me and that He will finally save me.

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That helps me process my pain and my anxiety and my weakness now. He is the one to whom

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I pray. Justin Perdue All I can add to this is that when we think about the

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Christian faith, pointing us to the sufficiency of Christ is what creates confidence.

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Telling someone to stop being anxious or stop worrying or stop being stressful or depressed.

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You just need to stop it as the whole video goes. You're either using dominance or fear, or you're going to try and use motivation.

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Like, don't you want God to love you? Don't you want God to be happy with you? Justin Perdue Of course I do. Justin Perdue Don't you trust the

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Lord? If you just think right, you wouldn't feel this way. That doesn't cut the mustard, man. Justin Perdue No, but just like we would do with our own children.

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We turn the lights on, we open up the closet door, we push the clothes back. Hey, we walk them around, and in the end we sit down and say, now there's something more important.

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Even though you can't see in the dark, your Father can see you and He can see everything. Not me, but your

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Heavenly Father. We need to have that gentleness where we're constantly reminding people of the truth and caring for people in their burdens.

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Burying one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. It didn't tell people to stop having burdens, that's the funny part.

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It doesn't say, tell people not to have burdens. It says actually help them carry them. And some of these burdens is anxiety and depression, and where we suffer from the frailty of our flesh, and we're going to help people carry that.

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Well, how? Not by scolding them, but encouraging them and building them up, which is what the hope of this podcast was today.

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If it was an encouragement to you, let us know. Please share it with someone else. The hope of the gospel needs to spread around the world, and the gospel is not the good news to make yourself better and healthy today, but the goodness of the gospel is for those who are sinners and broken and need a

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Savior, and their hope is in His salvation and His resurrection. Hopefully, that was encouraging to you today.

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Justin, brother, I thank you for your time and for partnering with me on this journey.

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It's a joy, man. Sharing the gospel around the world. So, thankful for you, our community.

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We're going to go. We have the opportunity to be on the Pactum in here in five minutes, so we've got to go, so we can do that.

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stay tuned for that interview. Thank you, guys. Bye. Bye.