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Ep. 306 - Finding Peace in the Character of God · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Speaker 1: To be fearful is to be human.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It's that JI Packer, in the book Knowing God, just says when you consider the world in which you live, if you're not clinging to God.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: And Oswald Chambers describes faith as a fixation of your gaze on the character of God.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Because faith is not a thing, faith is an exercise.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It's a constant thing we're doing.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: And when Peter takes his eyes off of Christ, he begins to drown.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: And Peter is the founder of the Jerusalem church and wrote several books in the New Testament.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: And you see that you know I don't know if Peter struggled with panic attacks, but you do see the element of Lord, save us.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: We're sinking and I think a lot of people who are anxious feel like they're sinking, feel like they're drowning.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: So I'd want to encourage them that you don't have to bear the burden first of all alone.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: First, peter 5, 7, you cast your cares because you're not strong enough to carry your cares on your own.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: So you bring them to a God who is mighty.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: You, friends, have heard of Johnny Cash, johnny Depp, johnny Carson, johnny on the spot, but we have an even better Johnny for you today, friends.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: In fact, he was just telling us that he thinks he's a better preacher than one more Johnny, the legendary Johnny Mac, of course.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, God.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Let's set the record straight, ladies and gentlemen.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, the one, the only, johnny Artavanis.
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: Thank you for having me on.
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: I did not say I was a better preacher than Juan.
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: Macarthur.
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: We don't want to get you busted brother.
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: No, yeah, I'd get struck by lightning, so thank you for having me on.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we are blessed to have you.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: It's a joy.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: We've known you for a while.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Now We've become friends.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I think the relationship started with Spence Meister, here right.
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: You saw him on social media, invited him to Masters.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: We connected through Instagram I believe right, I think Instagram, that's where all great relationships start.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Sorry for the listener.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: What is Instagram?
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: It's like MySpace.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: It's like MySpace yeah.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I had the opportunity to go and speak at the Masters University, one of the chapel services.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great, great time.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: That's when I first met you, oscar as well.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: You were impressed with Oscar's spiffy outfit.
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: That day he is always looking good.
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: Oh, bro, oscar's trying to keep up.
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: He's got matching shirts on.
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: It's a spiritual gift.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we were texting each other for the last week.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: What about this one?
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: One of the kindest things someone could, someone could say to me, is he dressed like Oscar?
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah Well, johnny, we have appreciated your ministry, brother, thank you, and just that platform that the Lord has given you.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I know you've done quite a bit over the years.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I know you were back at Hume Lake.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: You were a director there, correct, you were a dean over at Masters University.
• 3:42
  Speaker 6: When were you a director at Hume Lake?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I was at Hume Lake from 2017 to 2022.
• 3:49
  Speaker 6: We were there in 2004.
• 3:50
  Speaker 6: Okay With Kirk we did the atheist thing.
• 3:53
  Speaker 6: I didn't get to go to that, but that was one of the.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: That was beautiful, Beautiful place yeah it's sweet.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I lived up there.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: It was awesome.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: So, johnny, were you like the head director of the whole camp?
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I oversaw the high school and college ministries and then did the theme development for all the different campuses for the different programs.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: So while I was there I did 26 weeks of camp a year kind of between summer and winter, but my main focus was the high school students and each of those weeks of camp you have about a thousand high school students that are there Sunday to Saturday.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: They leave, you turn it over, and then another thousand.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Bro 26 weeks of camp food Turn it over.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: and then another thousand Bro, 26 weeks of camp food.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Well, no, I eat fried eggs at home.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Good for you, but if you attend, Hume Lake.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: If you go to one of their camps it's like the ideal promised land of a camp, right?
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: Does somebody get hurt every day with one of their crazy epic games that they have going on Most days?
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Most days.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Emotionally or physically, but no, yeah, it was a wonderful time.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: My first exposure really to full-time ministry was working in finance before that and, kind of, the Lord opened the door and I was so grateful for my time there in a beautiful spot that's where I met my wife, katie, and really grateful for my time at Hume.
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: Was that where they have the California redwoods?
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Yes, kind of.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Right next to it you have the General Sherman's tree.
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: Huge.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, huge trees, the biggest in the world.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, ray doesn't like big things.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: So, johnny, one of the interesting things I read about and today we're going to be talking about your book and more importantly, the content of the book.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: But as I was reading through the book, I was amazed to discover that you never wanted to do what you're doing now, and that's being a pastor.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And so you're the pastor of Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin Tennessee.
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you left, cali bro.
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: I know I came back today, you were telling us you were lapping up.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Them waves today.
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: I paddleboarded this morning, just took up the bronzer.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Only the call of God will get someone out of California.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but Tennessee is a great spot, so it's not.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I'm thankful for Tennessee.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: It's been sweet so far, but we do miss the beach for sure, that's great.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: Are you going to start adapting an accent, because it's almost starting like you're getting a 10, y'all I actually do think I have an accent, but I think it's like my Chicago origins.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Lately and you know the Lord uses different things to humble you.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: But in preaching lately I can't say my A's.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I'll be like this is a large thing, you know.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: So I think it's just, it's something the Lord is using to humble me.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's an accent, but how cool that you can can now legitimately adopt y'all which?
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: is so convenient, I know, instead of all of you guys, y'all yeah and boots, and boots.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oscar's probably a boot guy already.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Don't get me going on Oscar's boots Y'all, dudes Y'all dudes yeah, but you're pastoring now.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, how long have you been doing that?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: You said a year and a half A year at Stonebridge Bible.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: How's that going?
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: It's been wonderful.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: We're thankful for the people there for the opportunity.
• 6:52
  Speaker 6: It's been refining and sharpening.
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: For me personally, I was gonna say come on, come on.
• 6:55
  Speaker 6: And then you used the word refining.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah refining there's been, you know, I think, because of the nature of even and some of the ways that the Lord has blessed the church, it comes with just figuring out different things and is that the Lord has blessed the church, it comes with just figuring out different things and we're grateful for that and kind of building out the team, which is really exciting.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Bro, speaking of the team, you've got the legendary Harry Walls on your staff.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: It is a gift.
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: Now was Harry your boss Harry was my boss and now you're his boss, yep, at the Master's University.
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: I hope he treated you well at the Master's University.
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: I hope he treated you well.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: He did.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: And when I moved to Tennessee kind of a young church I was the only guy on staff at that point at a church in full-time staff and I just knew when I went I was praying for a guy like a Harry, an older guy that loved the Lord and I think that is sharpening for me personally and who's just an active voice in my own life and in God's providence.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Harry ended up moving this just a few months ago and so really grateful to be able to partner and plow with him.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: It is a gift.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Mark and I have benefited from Harry's preaching at Kindred.
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: He's come several times.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: What a godly, tender, humble man, approachable man.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: Approachable man.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: Approachable man.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Now when I'm gone he preaches and they like him more than me, so if I go back home I don't have a job Now I know why he's gunning for your pulpit.
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: We call him the silver fox.
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Perfect name for him, but that's great brother.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Well, we're blessed to have you and we're excited to talk about your book today.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Thank you, consider the Lilies.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: What a cool title.
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: Where'd you get that from?
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's an original.
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: There you go again, man.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: So this is your first, right, correct yeah, first book, and give us the backdrop.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Man, what stirred you to write?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: it.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Why this topic?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And even feel free to talk about the process.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, thanks for asking, I think you know.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Ultimately, going back to the Hume Lake days, so I came out of finance to go work at Hume.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Initially I never thought I'd go into full-time ministry.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I grew up as a pastor's kid and I always thought maybe I'd be the business guy on the elder board.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: But I had started preaching in juvenile hall and that was my first exposure to anything ministerial as an inmate.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Well, the only way you can get in is as a chaplain, and so I started kind of doing that.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: And this opportunity opened up with Hume Lake, which is a camp in Central California, and I had grown up in the church, I had grown up around students, but within a matter of weeks being there, I became very accustomed to hearing terms like you know anxiety, depression, panic attacks and I started to do a little bit of a deeper dive on it, you know, and just anxiety at large, I think.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: In 2010, 253 million prescriptions were filled out in a country of 311 million people.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: 40 million adults claim that they're, you know, crippled by anxiety.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Every 15 minutes around the country, someone attempts to take their life and I just became burdened to approach the issue from a biblical perspective and so I started doing an optional seminar at Hume Lake entitled what is the Bible and what Does Jesus Say?
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Jesus say about your anxiety?
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: And even though that kind of seminar competed with the free time activities of paddleboarding or paintball or flirting, whatever it may be, students and counselors and pastors came just to try to find some answers about what does God say about anxiety and despair in his word.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes we talk about it so often as a young people issue, but the number one most medicated demographic in America is a 50-year-old white woman, and so it just ranges from the people of God.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: So I went from Hume Lake, then I went to the Master's University and you would think maybe in this more scripturally staunch environment where they're going to Bible classes, bible chapels and Bible churches, that would be more of a foreign struggle.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: But I think still there students are struggling with anxiety and it could be something like provisional, it could be relational and now, as a pastor of a church, kind of the composition of the struggles, there's a level of variance there, but the questions and the concerns and the worries still persist and I wanted to write a resource and I can get into maybe more of the thesis of it in a moment, but I want you to step in if need be.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I wanted to write a resource that blessed and encouraged potentially challenged the people of God and gave them hope in what is truly an anxious world.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Perilous times it is, that's so good and you know, Johnny, as I was reading through the book, this really hit me here.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: You said there was a soundtrack behind the events taking place during those opening moments of camp.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: You're talking about Hume Lake and all that you said it would be.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Everything is awesome, the Lego everything is awesome right, you don't need to sing it.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love to sing it.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: However, the soundtrack of optimism, excitement and joy would often be altered to a minor key by the first night of camp, as I quickly became accustomed to the terms self-harm, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: And then you said but it's not just teens who are anxious, it's adults as well.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Anxiety affects and attacks people who are 16 and 63 alike, like a ski lift that never reaches the top of the mountain.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: The statistical rise of worry, fear, suicide and depression never seems to plateau, but only to aggressively escalate with time.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: And I thought, man, what a picture you painted, because there is that facade with kids and adults.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: And yet, man, this is the gnawing thing beneath the surface.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: That's so good.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: You know, what's interesting about anxiety, too, is that some people might think, like well, okay, anxiety, as in anxiety attacks, high levels of anxiety.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: But one of the things that's fascinating to me is that there's reports of just what one person called ambient anxiety.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: It's like we are all experiencing anxiety, this elevated white noise of an anxious age, and speaking of the everything is awesome is is, it seems, like the response, the default response for all of us is just to stay busy, so we don't get alone with our thoughts.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: Stay busy scrolling Instagram, stay busy listening to music, to watching videos, stay busy with your schedule, busy, busy, busy.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: And when?
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: You know, I've quoted WH Auden before.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: He's got this poem called Age of Anxiety and in it he's got this incredible little bit where he says faces along the bar cling to their average day, the lights must never go out, the music must always play lest they find themselves lost in the haunted wood.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: Children afraid of the dark, who have never been happy or good.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: I think what Auden's getting at here is the answer to anxiety is for us to just stay busy and distracted.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Yet it's not working.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: How do we slow ourselves down?
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: And what's the alternative to staying busy and anxious?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I think definitely the accelerated life is a catalyst and a recipe for anxiety, and we can talk about a number of the different maybe catalysts or recipes for anxiety, but in regards to kind of the hurried way in which we live our life, that hurry is an enemy of reflection, contemplation and meditation, which is, according to Jesus, the great physician and the greatest pastor in human history, it is the ultimate underlying remedy for anxiety is a deep consideration of the character of God.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: And so what happens when your life is so hurried and the average teen and the average 55 year old spend seven hours a day looking at a screen?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: And so when you take that into consideration and you think that, hey, when Jesus wants to provide you with hope in an anxious world, the first thing he tells you to do, and hence the title of the book, is to consider.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And that word consider means to think, to dwell, to meditate, and that idea of thinking using your brain is actually very foreign in the world in which we live, because we are kind of on a hamster wheel of scrolling whatever it may be, but in the realm of anxiety you think about it.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Isaiah 26, 3 and 4,.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: 1 Peter, 1.13,.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Prepare your minds for action.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Jesus then tells us that the problem with anxiety isn't because we think too much, it's because we think too little about the character of God.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: That's why Philippians 4.6 says be anxious for nothing.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: And then, two verses later, it's saying whatever you think about you, know, pure, noble, excellent.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Dwell on these things, because it could be and you talk about I forget ambient noise or a low grade anxiety would be another term.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: You can fill your life with morally neutral things that don't help you.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: As Paul says, take every thought captive that you would honor Christ and our thought.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Life is really the essence of faith and that's Proverbs 23, 7,.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: As a man thinks within himself, so he is and in the way that we live our life.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: So few people reserve any time to dwell deeply upon who God is, his character, his promises and inevitably, according to Packer and knowing God, inevitably, if that's the way you live your life, you should be anxious because you're starving and robbing yourself of the peace that God provides so good.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: Flush that out a little bit more.
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: For me, right, in one sense, right as I read through the book, I was captivated by something without actually putting a thought towards it.
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: I think we've all had kind of dark nights of the souls where what got us out of that was meditating on the character of God.
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: Right, he's not out here to play games with us.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: Right, there's a command do not be anxious for anything.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: And as I meditate through the attributes and this is where I'm getting at with this are there attributes, specific attributes of God, that will help the believer go through different moments that are difficult.
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: Right, I think of?
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: How do you pronounce it?
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: Horatio Spafford, spafford.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, spaff.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: Difficult.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: Right, I think of how do you pronounce it?
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: Horatio Spafford, spafford.
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, spafford.
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: Right With it is well with my soul.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I struggle with my A's.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: So Spafford to me, Spafford yeah.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: Here he is right there's a tragic shipwreck.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: He loses four daughters, yeah.
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: And he writes a hymn, my favorite hymn when peace, like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say it is well with my soul.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: Then he goes on.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: Though Satan should buffet, though trial should come, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and hath shed his own blood for my soul.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: Where does the believer go when he wants to meditate on the attributes of God, the character of God, to get him through these dark nights of anxiety that are haunting them?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know the character of God is the ultimate antidote that God provides to the anxious in his word and that's part of what I trace out in the book is that, first of all, godly characters in the scripture struggle deeply with anxiety.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes we talk about it and it's almost like this shameful thing.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I think it's important to recognize that there are 42 kings in the Old Testament.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Only one of them is identified as a man after God's own heart.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: That guy's name is David, and David is a warrior and a king.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: And yet throughout the Psalms he says that sometimes he makes his bed drown in his own tears because he's asking questions like where are you God?
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: So you got a guy like David.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: You have Moses, who is the pastor and shepherd of 2 million people, takes on the most powerful empire in the world, and then you have him very anxious.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I can't talk according to Moses.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: You have Elijah, the prophet of boldness, takes on 850 false prophets, declares Yahweh to be the only true God, calls down fire from heaven.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: But then in Elijah, the chapter after, he does all that is going to pray and ask God, take my life, I'm done, kill me, job.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: The word blameless Tom is used 15 times in the Old Testament.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Only once does it refer to a man.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: That guy's name is Job, and yet in the middle of the book that bears his name, he's saying the tune of my life is the sound of the lyre, it's the sound of mourning.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Now, interestingly, I just referenced those four godly characters because the way God responds to them is uniform.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Throughout his word, he proclaims his character.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: He doesn't tell you, he doesn't tell them.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you why this is happening.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: He says let me tell you who I am.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: And to Job he doesn't say hey, let me tell you about what happened with Satan and me.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: He says, no, job, gird your loins.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: And then he goes on to declare who he is and his character.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And even when you're talking about those different attributes, I think sometimes we have a probably deficient view of God's attributes.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: You know, we kind of segregate them into pieces of a pie.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: That is God.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: God is 25% loving, 25% sovereign, but an attribute of God is anything that we attribute to God.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: And so you're looking at the full range of his attributes and it's important to recognize that when God responds to the anxious, he reminds them that he's all of his attributes, all of the time, in full measure.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: And you can never divorce one attribute of God from another, meaning that I think it was Margaret Clarkson that talks about the reality that God's sovereignty meaning that he is in total control of even the chaos in your life is the impregnable rock that you can rest upon when you are anxious.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: It's the pillow you can sleep on, according to Spurgeon.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: But I remember when I was in college or after college, my friend's mom died, and kind of suddenly, and I was there.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I had lived with their family for a period of time and I saw someone come up and slap him on the back and say God's sovereign, and that's true.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: But then one of the realities I touch him on the back and say God's sovereign, and that's true.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: But then one of the realities I touch on in the book, and one of the themes throughout the scripture, is you can never divorce God's sovereignty from his love.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: He's not pulling strings capriciously like a king, he's a father, and so his sovereignty, his rule and reign is always wedded and tethered to his love for you as his child.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: And he doesn't just have knowledge, he knows how to use his knowledge because he's perfectly wise.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: And so you have this harmony happening amongst the attributes of God that allow you to trust him.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: And we could go into greater detail about God's attributes and character.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: But you just think about Psalm 46.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: God is our refuge, he's our defense, he's our strength, he's our offense and he's an ever-present help in times of trouble.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: And then it says in verse two therefore, we will not fear even if the mountains slip into the heart of the sea.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: That's the rational deduction of a deep understanding of the character of God, and I think we starve our lives from this and we maybe just check the box.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: God is sovereign.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, god loves me.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: But when David is running for 10 years from King Saul, hiding in caves, that's when he says, oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: It's that knowledge of God's knowledge of him, that buoys his anxious heart.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: And I don't wanna filibuster, but I do think, yeah, there's so much there, and that's.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Seven of the 14 chapters in my book are on different attributes of God and then how they're both united together, but how they provide God's children with God's peace I love that Out of the four of us.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: Sorry, no, ray no.
• 22:12
  Speaker 6: Ray Johnny, you've got such a compassionate tone and such knowledge.
• 22:17
  Speaker 6: Does all this come out of your own experience?
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: Have you experienced panic attacks?
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: I would say that I wouldn't say that that's been like a routine struggle in my life.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I think anxiety manifests itself in different ways.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: I think I would probably identify my anxiety more in the realm of stress and pressure and, um, I, you know, I probably start get really, you know, driven, and stuff like that.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: But I think, more than anything and I mentioned some of the statistics my life was really changed at Hume Lake.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Um, because I, I just my heart was breaking for people that were so deeply struggling with this.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: And I think now, as a pastor, you do want to weep with those who weep.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And I think, Ray, if I can call you Ray, you prefer his doctor, right, yeah, I'll call you whatever you want.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I think for me, Holiness, yeah, His Majesty, I think for me one of the things about the tone and part of the reason why even some guys have asked me why I use maybe a more feminine title and I get the knock on it.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: But I think when you look at Jesus, Jesus doesn't tell the anxious to snap out of it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: He doesn't go up and down a line and say all right, tell me what you're anxious about.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Eh, illegitimate?
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's legitimate.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: He takes people that are under the ruthless regime of Rome, and it could be their finances, it could be their relationships.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: And he talks to them with a level of clarity, authority and yet with tenderness, and I think sometimes books on the subject kind of lean to one spectrum like grow up, you know the anxious world, you know suck it up, get it world suck it up, get it together, get it together.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: And then others are find someone to blame, contemplate your inner child.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: And Jesus doesn't say to contemplate your inner child, he says to consider the character of your heavenly father.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: And he does that in a way that's beckoning them because he is mindful that we are bruised reeds.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And I think I just wanted to write in a way that was emblematic of the tone of Jesus.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: So good, because if Jesus was gonna show up on the scene and preach a sermon on anxiety, he would have nothing new to say.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: He would say open your Bibles to Matthew, chapter six.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: And he is authoritative, clear and tender, and I wanna do that.
• 24:32
  Speaker 6: One of the reasons I asked is because I think you mentioned the word shame.
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: Do that?
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: One of the reasons I asked is because I think you mentioned the word shame.
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: I had panic attacks about 30 years ago, really bad.
• 24:40
  Speaker 6: For a year I couldn't have a meal with my family.
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: It was, that was, and it's just.
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: It's something you can't explain.
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: It's like you burn your your finger on it on a toaster or something you can't explain to a kid what that's like until it happens to you and panic attacks are so devastating because it's called irrational fear.
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: And that is where you get a fear that takes your breath away, causes you to break into a sweat as though you're being attacked by a lion.
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: But there's no lion, it's irrational fear.
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: So how would you minister on the podcast to someone who's listening today?
• 25:11
  Speaker 6: Maybe a woman or a man?
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: That's the only sorts there are whatever they identify with.
• 25:18
  Speaker 6: What would you say to them if they're coming out of a sense of condemnation because they're a Christian?
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: And the righteous are as bold as a lion?
• 25:24
  Speaker 6: That's the verse that haunted me.
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: And the righteous are as bold as a lion.
• 25:28
  Speaker 6: And I was so fearful I could hardly meet a stranger.
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: How would you minister to them?
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I would say I think I would.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: First of all I'd ask questions, but I think to be fearful is to be human.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: It's that JI Packer, in the book Knowing God, just says when you consider the world in which you live, if you're not clinging to God.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: And Oswald Chambers describes faith as a fixation of your gaze on the character of God.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Because faith is not a thing, faith is an exercise.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: It's a constant thing we're doing.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: And when Peter takes his eyes off of Christ, he begins to drown.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: And Peter is the founder of the Jerusalem church and wrote several books in the New Testament.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: And you see that I don't know if Peter struggled with panic attacks, but you do see the element of Lord, save us.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: We're sinking, and I think a lot of people who are anxious feel like they're sinking, feel like they're drowning.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: So I'd want to encourage them that you don't have to bear the burden first of all alone.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: First, peter 5, 7, you cast your cares because you're not strong enough to carry your cares on your own, so you bring them to a God who is mighty.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: And so also our strength or our faith is only as strong as the God who carries us.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: So when you're talking about being bold as a lion the scripture is not full of.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: There's not 10 heroes in the Bible, there's one, and that's why I'm thankful even when I mentioned those heroes, because you got Moses who doubted, david who struggled with sin, abraham lied, job who got anxious.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: You have Elijah who was despairing.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: The characters in the Bible that you name your kids after are the people that struggle with the same thing.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: You struggled with Ray, and God is kind and compassionate and gracious with them.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And so I would say, first of all, to go to the Lord in prayer and to cast those cares and obviously that may be nebulous, so I would want to do that with them.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: And then I would also say that faith is a community project.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Sometimes people are anxious and they feel that shame, but part of confessing your sin to someone else or confessing that struggle with someone else, is so that someone else can pray with you and say, hey, listen, let me remind you of the character of God, let me preach a sermon to you right now at Starbucks, so that you would be rooted and grounded in the reality of who God is, because I think sometimes people struggle with anxiety by themselves, so they read a struggle with anxiety by themselves.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: So they read a book on anxiety by themselves, pray that God would take away their anxiety by themselves, and then they see no progress.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: But the reality is we're to spur one another on, and part of spurring one another on is that some people are prone to to be deeply anxious, and so we need each other.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: We need brothers and sisters and Titus, two older godly men and women in our life, because the Christian life was never meant to be lived alone.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: So I thank him for approaching me in the first place.
• 28:02
  Speaker 6: I'll just add something here, if I may.
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: The thing that got me through my lifeline, my oxygen line, was that word afterwards in Hebrews, going through times of chastisement, and says afterwards, it brings forth a peaceful food of righteousness.
• 28:16
  Speaker 6: I remember writing out the word afterwards and putting it on my wall and just staring at it daily.
• 28:21
  Speaker 6: There's light at the end of the tunnel.
• 28:23
  Speaker 6: It's not a train heading for you.
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: And what kept me going was Romans 8, 28.
• 28:28
  Speaker 6: God was only allowing.
• 28:30
  Speaker 6: It's going to work it out for my good, because I was called according to his purposes.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: And the afterwards did come to pass, but it took a long time.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: Arthur Brooks recently wrote an article in the Atlantic and he pinpointed this new epidemic of loneliness, how so many people are alone, they're feeling alone, isolated, outside of community.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: And I bring that up, johnny, to say I'm so glad you said what you just said.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: And the reality is that, because the weird thing about anxiety is that it isolates you and it pulls you away from the very thing that you need certainly primarily the character of God, but then God's invitation to do life in community with other people, to be known and love and to get personal.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: You know, my younger sister struggled with anxiety and depression and didn't tell anybody about it from 12 years old until she had her first attempt on her life at 18 years old.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: And I remember being in the hospital with her and seeing self-harm scars for the first time and you know, rubbing my finger over them and she had this look to her like you're not ashamed of me, you're loving me in the midst of this.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: You're here, you know there's.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: I bring that up to say there are so many people that are hiding that anxiety.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: We're hiding that pain and I love this idea of embodying the love of Christ together in the context of the local church, to allow yourself to be known and loved and cared for by God through the local church.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: Did you want to comment on that, johnny?
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: No, go ahead, mark.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: There's a process.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: It's not always a one-step process.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: We see this with Peter.
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: You'd mentioned Peter earlier in Mark 4, where Peter wakes up Jesus and says hey, don't you care that we're perishing?
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: All the way to 1 Peter 5, 7, where he almost has this epiphany.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: If you would, after walking with Jesus for so many years and seeing relationally who this man is, he goes from don't you care to cast all your cares on him.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: What is it that you have?
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: It reminds me of Richard Baxter.
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: He said cast your care on God.
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: He is wiser and stronger to handle it than you are.
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: You are not designed to carry burdens.
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: Your shoulders are just not strong enough.
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: So we roll off of and we roll onto him, and we can do that with certainty, because he not just carried our cross, but he carries our burdens every step of the way.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think even you know it's important.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I think, going back to Ray, what you said about Romans 8, 28,.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: You know God's going to work everything out for our good and for his glory, I think sometimes even going and I'm trying to tether this with our anxieties.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: What's the good God is working everything towards in my life is a big question that people ask who are anxious.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: If God is working everything out for good, then is there a 10 year window where I'm supposed to look back and say, oh, that's why that happened?
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: And the answer is in the following verse that for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed into the image of his son.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: That's the good God is working everything out towards in your life.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Is your transformation into his image?
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Because sometimes people will ask the question if God loves me so much, why do I go through so much suffering and pain?
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Well, because he loves to transform those whom he loves.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: And even going back to the Peter reality, like Peter is refined through what he's anxious about, because he's learning to be dependent upon no one other than the Lord, and that's part of the way God refined and humbled Peter, and that's what he does in our own life is that he takes us to the end of ourself so that we would learn to depend on the strength and the might that only comes from him.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Because I think anxiety is.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: It does crush us right, like it crushes our perspective on ourself, and that's why, in 1 Peter, right before, he says that, and this is what made me think of it.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: He says humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, because no one can cast their cares on God while they're simultaneously trying to bear them.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: And it's actually, according to Peter, a symptom of pride that we are not humbling ourself under God's mighty hand.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: And the size of our faith isn't in proportion to the size of our God, and so Peter actually, I think, looked at it from a realm of like whatever was making me anxious or fearful was actually an expression of, maybe, my own pride that I was trying to hold on to control instead of relinquishing it to God.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: Wow, Such good stuff, Johnny.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: You know I was thinking about the importance for believers to remember what we're told in Hebrews 2 and Hebrews 4, that Christ was made like his brethren in all things that he can come to the aid of those who are tempted.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: And then he was tempted in all points, as we are, yet without sin, therefore, we can come boldly to the throne of grace.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: I think of Jesus in Gethsemane, where he was deeply distressed, sorrowful, and he said, even unto death.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: And I know that that bears an entirely different nature in terms of what he experienced and where he was headed, but still there's that sense of identifying with us in our weaknesses and sins though his weren't weaknesses or sins, of course but that taste of humanity, in a sense, and being able to come alongside us in that sense is just.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: It's important for the believer to remember that and that he doesn't break a bruised reed, he doesn't quench a smoldering wick, he comes alongside us and breathes life back into us, mends us back to health, yeah, yeah there's Go ahead, sorry.
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: No, it's a little amen Amen.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I originally, at the end of when I started doing that seminar at Hume Lake, I touched on the reality.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: I had seven points about who Jesus is, and the last of which was that Jesus is no stranger to suffering.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: You know that he's not telling us to trust God as one who hasn't experienced the depths of sorrow.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: You know You've mentioned it that he's despairing, in John 12, to the point of death.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: He's got sweat, drops of blood coming down his head and it says his soul is deeply troubled.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: And I think even that's something that I think is encouraging for people is to know that our savior knew true grief.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: True grief, not prolonged grief, isn't wrong.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Jesus was truly grieved, truly betrayed, truly alone at times.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: New, true sorrow, true pain, true betrayal, true abandonment.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: And yet he goes before us as a model of what it looks like to trust in his Father.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: And that's why even I'm preaching through John right now, and it just strikes me that these different times throughout the gospel it says Jesus withdrew to the mountains to pray, and it wasn't.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, I want to be a good example to the disciples.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: It was because in his experience of our humanity he needed to and I'm grateful for that.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and in chapter six, I love chapter six, knowing Abba you talked about JI Packer and you've referenced him a few times.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: Knowing God classic, one of my absolute favorites, in fact, to tie it in with camp, I was speaking at a camp many moons ago and I had to teach 10 messages.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: I had to teach one every morning, one every evening and I was going through like a dark night of the soul type of experience myself at that time and I remember I took the book with me and I remember God's providence in that I had just landed on these inward trials, that chapter and man, it was like a healing balm when he talked about how so often a lot of people will point to believers going through times like that and be like you're, that's, christians shouldn't go through that, and I love how he dispelled that myth.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: And, if you recall, in there he shared the poem these Inward Trials by John Newton and it was just the most eye-opening piece of literature I've ever read in my life.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: These inward trials I employ from self and pride to set you free and break your schemes of earthly joy that you may seek your all in me.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: I'd love you to speak to why that book.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: You called it a life changer, why that was so for you.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I think for two reasons in particular.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: I guess off the top of my head.
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: One.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: JI Packer alluped the idea.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: For someone like me that grew up in a pastor's home that knowing God.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: You know I knew the answers.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: But it was in reading Packer's book at the age of 19 that I realized knowing God was thrilling.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: He said what makes life worthwhile is having something big enough that catches your allegiance and your imagination, that makes you excited.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And he says and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has before, what higher, more compelling, more exalted goal can there be than knowing God?
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: And I remember reading that.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And then there's that opening quote by Spurgeon, kind of in the opening opening chapter, where he says no eagle can soar the heights, nobody can plumb the depths of all this.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: And it says Spurgeon wrote this at 19.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: And I remember reading that at 19 and going man, I've been called into a privileged relationship with God as my father.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I said two, there's actually three.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: The second thing is and this is part of the main reason I ground the.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: It thing is and this is part of the main reason I ground the it's called Finding Perfect Peace in the Character of God.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: But in the book I routinely refer to God by Father.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Because Packer says I can tell how well someone understands the Christian faith, by how much they make of the idea that God is their Heavenly Father.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes if you've grown up in a Christian environment and you've been praying perfunctory prayers your whole life to your Heavenly Father, you've lost sight of that.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: And in Spiritual Depression by Martin Lloyd-Jones he kind of tries to help you gain altitude to go.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Well, if you're at peace with God, all your needs in life are already met.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Your greatest need in life has already been met, because if you're at peace with God, you can have the peace of God.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: And then there's this other line that Packer talks about in his chapter on omniscience and I put this in the book all these things about us knowing God.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Obviously that's the name of his book, but he said what matters supremely in the final analysis is not that I know God, but that he knows me.
• 39:09
  Speaker 6: And then he gets.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes growing up you can in my mind I can lean towards oh man, is that seeker sensitive?
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: And then you go.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: No, it's actually just in the Bible.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Packer says I'm engraving on the palms of his hands.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Isaiah says he holds our tears in a bottle, and then all my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: He knows me like a friend, he knows me like a child, and that idea of God knowing me like a father was even more impactful since I became one.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: To go like, I don't think my three-year-old daughter wakes up in the morning going I wonder if my dad's gonna provide for me or love me today.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: If she thought that it'd be insulting and it would be deeply grieving.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: And God is my father, who cares and loves me and wants to meet my needs more than I do.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: And so I think it just was.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: It was a life changing book.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I could go on.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: One of my favorite I think you and I talked about this when we got lunch One of my favorite I think it's chapter eight quotes in that book which was it's like an all time for me as well.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: He says he's looking at the cross and he says something like you know, to be to be forgiven, he said the chief of the gospel is adoption.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: To be forgiven by God is one thing uh, forgiven through propitiation but he says, to be adopted by the father is like the pinnacle of the gospel and it's what you're getting at is to be known by the father.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: And as you guys were talking about, as you were talking about earlier or when you were mentioning Jesus, I think that's where the gospel brings us hope.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: It reminds me of Psalm 73.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Asaph is dealing with his dark night of the soul and he says in verse 21, when my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in my heart, when I was brutish and ignorant, when I was like a beast towards you, he says, nevertheless, I am continually with you.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: You hold my right hand.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: How do we know that, in the midst of our anxiety, of our uncertainty or doubt, that God will not leave us?
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: We know that because we look to Jesus on the cross, god left the only one who loved him perfectly.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: He abandoned Christ on the cross.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: That's why Jesus says my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: Edward Clowney says he forsaken his own son so that he would not forsake you.
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: How do I know he will be with me?
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: I know because I've seen what happened on the cross and that gives me confidence.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Amen, johnny.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: I loved how you grounded chapter seven and how you titled it forever himself, forever God.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: I mean that stirs my heart when I think about that, that our foundation is firm because of who God is forever.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: The immutability of the Lord and you talked in there about the names of God.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: I'd love for you to just touch on a little bit of that El Shaddai, jehovah Jireh, el Olam, jehovah Shalom.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Touch on those, because that's really our foundation.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: It's who he is forever.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the study of the names of God.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I love the Old Testament and names are so important.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: My daughter's name is Lily because we like the passage we're currently talking about and names.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: As a parent, it's kind of funny.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: You get to name your kid what you want to name them.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: But they're arbitrary, meaning I named my daughter Lily before I knew anything about her.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: That's why Shakespeare asked the question what's in a name?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Because you could be a guy named John and you could be like John Bunyan, or you could be a guy named John and be a serial killer.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Names don't represent your character nor your identity.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: They're titles in the world in which we live.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: But in the Bible names are not titles.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: They are consummate and representative of the character of God, and so I love that when you know God's name in the Bible is not God, god reveals himself named 6,800 times throughout the Old Testament.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: God's name is Yahweh, which means he is, he is what, well he.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: But the names of God are a wonderful study and I kind of go into that background with Moses.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Moses is kind of commissioned to go to Pharaoh and the number one question on Moses's mind when he's commissioned to go to Pharaoh is when they ask me what's your name?
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: What should I tell them?
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Because he wants to know your name, because names again represent your character, and God responds and says I am who I am, and that is a name that's emblematic of the reality that God is not the God who once was or the God who one day will become.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: He is the eternal, I am.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: He's changeless.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Malachi 3.6.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I am the Lord, I change, not.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: So the character that we read in the scriptures, the character of God today.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: God is yeah, so that's Yahweh.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Then you have Jehovah Jireh.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: The Lord will provide, because God wants you to know when you're anxious, even in Matthew 6, what shall we eat, what shall we drink, and what will we wear for clothing?
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Jehovah Jireh, god will provide.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Hagar, in Genesis 16, in her loneliest moment, unseen by everyone on earth except for God, she refers to God only once in the scripture, as this name used, but she refers to God as El Roy.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: You're the God who sees, and that sees is so much more significant than mere awareness.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: That's why David reflects on that reality and says oh Lord, you've searched me and known me, and that word for known in Psalm 139 in Hebrew is yada, which is the same word when Caleb and Joshua go to spy out the promised land.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: God knows us deeply, he searches every nook and cranny of our heart, and so these different names of God represent those realities and they're precious to us because we don't know God as a thing.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: If you're a Christian, we know God as a person, and so those names draw us to greater levels of intimacy, because we don't have faith in a principle we have faith in the person of Jesus Christ.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Faith is not a thing.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Faith is an action and it's a relationship.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes, when people don't wanna be anxious, they just pray to something.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: God, take away my anxiety.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: But that's so different than rooting our minds in the character of a God who's revealed himself in his word.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: And that's what faith is.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: It's a response to the revelation of truth in the scripture.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Amen, amen, man, there's just so much there and I think this is just a small taste for people of the book.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: And look, the book, friends, is phenomenal Forward by Sinclair Ferguson, endorsed by Kosti Hinn.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Al Mohler, john MacArthur I mean Dr MacArthur said this book is exceptional in every way, and I agree, and he talked about it already being a classic from the outset, and I think that's where it's headed, brother, and so we're so excited that you wrote this book.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: It's your first.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I know for sure it won't be your last, lord willing, and we want to encourage everyone listening to get a hold of it.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: It's already shot up.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a bestseller on Amazon already.
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: No, I think.
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: So it kind of fluctuates day to day, but really great.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: But it had hit those echelons.
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: It was exciting to see that my mom over and over again.
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it was exciting to see that my mom over and over again.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but, brother, we're excited and we know that the Lord is gonna really help transform lives through this book, and so we look forward to the outcome of it, as we hear testimonies from it, as I'm sure you will as well- Thank you so much Thank you for having me on and I'm so grateful for your ministry to equip people and propel people to proclaim the gospel.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: So thank you guys.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're blessed by our friendship and our partnership too in the gospel, and you also have Dial-In Ministries.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Give us all your details of how people can get in touch with your ministry.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: So I'm president of a non-profit ministry called Dial-In.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: We kind of release biblical resources every week and that'll kind of continue I hope to get fleshed out as different people come on board and really grateful for that.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Started doing that at Hume Lake when COVID started.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: That's when I started the podcast, because I was just burdened to release, hopefully, biblical resources that are sound in theology yet digestible in application, and I use that idea whether you're 13 or 73, digestible in application, and I use that idea whether you're 13 or 73, often kind of in my writing and my thinking, because I want to provide resourcing for the people of God, to tell them who God is and equip them.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Even that's why I had Mark on at one point is how do I share the gospel?
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: And so, taking some of those big questions and condensing them into digestible answers, and I hope it's a resource for people individually and for churches digestible answers and I hope it's a resource for people individually and for churches, because I'm grateful, yeah, to serve in that regard and it's sharpening for me, so I'm always thankful to do it.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, dial in ministriesorg.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and your church.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: How can they find out if there's anyone in the area listening?
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: That would come oh great.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're in Franklin, tennessee.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: You can look us up at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: We have three services now 8, 930, and 1105.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Got a lot of it's multi-generational.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Got a lot of young families, some older folks and we love that because we want to be a biblical church.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: That's multi-generational, and so we've been really grateful and thankful for even the men and women that are there, that are an encouragement to my own heart.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: No, that's great.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: Everyone's wearing boots right, Except for me.
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: I'm wearing loafers, oh loafers.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to be like Oscar.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: That brings me to a question I had earlier which, out of the four of us, makes you the most anxious?
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: It's easy, isn't it, for sure?
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: I mean, I have a quick question as well.
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: You look like a mannequin, is it?
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: Augustine, or is it Augustine, oh Augustine.
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: Let's go.
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: Oh my God, is it Constantine or Constantine?
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: Just wrap it up Constantine.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Is it Byzantine or Byzantine?
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Byzantine yeah, then it's Augustine.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: You made my point, I don't know, all right friends, it's somewhere in.
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: Habakkuk.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Consider the lilies finding perfect peace in the character of God.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Get it.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Get it today.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: Thanks again for joining us, friends.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: We'll see you here next time on the Living Waters podcast, where we have no idea what we're doing, but Johnny does it needs to be where we have no idea how to pronounce Augustine's name that would be you.