Latest / How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack / What Made Tim Keller's Son Question His Faith & Return

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What Made Tim Keller's Son Question His Faith & Return · How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack

0:00
SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast, where we wrestle with questions on how to live a life of faith, from everything from books to Bible studies, even Bible study tips.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: This is your place to wrestle with the hard questions and dive deep into what scripture really says for the Christian walk.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you've subscribed to this podcast and your favorite podcast streaming services.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Review this podcast so other people can find it and share with other believers who want to ask the hard questions.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Now, with all that said, let's begin.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Hi friends, welcome back to the Faith Will Mac podcast.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: Today I'm so excited for our guest.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Our guest is Michael Keller.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: He's the lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Lincoln Square and is also the longest tenored senior pastor in the Redeemer Network of churches in New York City.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: He spent two decades engaging with one of the world's most culturally diverse populations.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: He holds a PhD from Amsterdam and of course degrees from Gordon Conwell Seminary.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: His writings have been featured in Christianity Today, the Gospel Coalition by Faith, and the Gospel in Life.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: Michael, welcome to the podcast.
0:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thanks for having me.
0:56
SPEAKER_03: Really appreciate it, Faith.
0:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm excited about this conversation.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: For so long, people would ask me, like, hey, who do you listen to?
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Who do you read?
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Who has grown you and challenged you the most?
1:05
SPEAKER_00: And forever.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: It's been Tim Keller.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just working through your dad's writings and all the wisdom that he has.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: And so you coming out with a book that you kind of co-authored with your dad, it's so intriguing for me because you've got your dad's wisdom, but then also you're able to kind of bring it a young angle, I guess, a really practical, let's get to the point, what does this mean for our life angle?
1:30
SPEAKER_00: And so, what was that process like?
1:32
SPEAKER_00: Because you wrote it after his passing, right?
1:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, we were we started working on it before he died.
1:38
SPEAKER_03: It was, it was actually kind of a very funny father and son thing when he he wrote uh a book called Making Sense of God.
1:44
SPEAKER_03: And he said, What do you think about it?
1:45
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Eh, couldn't really get through it.
1:47
SPEAKER_03: It was too, it was too much.
1:48
SPEAKER_03: I wish there was a Cliff Notes version of it.
1:50
SPEAKER_03: And and he was like, Well, what would that look like?
1:52
SPEAKER_03: I said, Well, we would we would center more on the on the stories because these things are like buried in there, and I think that that's you know, that's uh we're story-based people, and I would love to write a book like that.
2:01
SPEAKER_03: He goes, Let's do it together.
2:03
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Okay.
2:05
SPEAKER_03: So we laid out the the chapters and the or you know the outlines, how they how he would do it.
2:11
SPEAKER_03: It's it's all his cultural analysis and content that he's been doing for a while, but hopefully it's a little more accessible and put out there for everybody.
2:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, I loved reading it.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And just what I imagine is you grew up with so much wisdom and him speaking into your life, and it's like, okay, now this is how I've applied it to my life, or this is the cliff notes in a different font, even, but also it's not like it's marked what's from your dad and what's from you throughout.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: What was that like kind of putting your own spin?
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Because I can't even imagine critiquing my father, never mind my father being Tim Keller, and you critiquing him and saying, Yeah, I didn't really like your book.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: Let's write it again together.
2:50
SPEAKER_03: Well, uh as a pastor's kid, I don't know if you know how many pastors' kids you've met.
2:54
SPEAKER_03: You probably have.
2:55
SPEAKER_03: They tend to be one of two types either the kind of rebel or the you know, fall in the line.
3:00
SPEAKER_03: And I've definitely did both, so I I kind of ran away.
3:03
SPEAKER_03: Needed to know where my father and mother and their ministry ended and where faith began and kind of had a go away and but had a conversion, came back, and then so I think that that helped me a lot because it wasn't so much you know dad, you're so dad, and and this and that.
3:20
SPEAKER_03: People talk about him because oh he's so he he helped me this, he help me that, but he was just my father.
3:24
SPEAKER_03: And when you know your father, what's it like to have your father?
3:27
SPEAKER_03: He's got some good things, he's got some not so good things, right?
3:30
SPEAKER_03: The Bible tells us there's the old man, the new man.
3:33
SPEAKER_03: That that's that's in Tim Keller too.
3:35
SPEAKER_03: So that helped me know that.
3:37
SPEAKER_03: And so it was it was it's fun.
3:38
SPEAKER_03: So he has great gifts, great cultural analysis.
3:40
SPEAKER_03: I think it's sort of the last you know, one that we're gonna get from him.
3:44
SPEAKER_03: So it was real great to get it out there and be selective about how it comes out.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I really enjoyed yeah, like cultural analysis is a really good way to put it.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit about what's in the stories we live by.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: By the way, guys, this comes out September 22nd, so it should be just launched or just about to launch when this episode comes out, and you definitely have to check it out.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: Like you said, one of the last little bits from Tim that we can get, but then also with all of your wisdom.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: So tell us a little bit about what's inside the stories we live by, because we are people of stories, and the Bible is stories.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: It's full of stories, right?
4:19
SPEAKER_03: It's all based on stories, yeah.
4:21
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you start with the Bible, right?
4:23
SPEAKER_03: You go to Genesis 1, 2, and 3.
4:24
SPEAKER_03: What do you find there?
4:25
SPEAKER_03: You find all things were made good, but now all things are fallen.
4:29
SPEAKER_03: And that marred nature is still with us is that there's something good about society, there's something good about culture, but there's also something that's that's not as well.
4:38
SPEAKER_03: And we can kind of hold those things.
4:40
SPEAKER_03: And I think we get in trouble culturally when we think something's all good or all bad.
4:43
SPEAKER_03: And politically, if you have if your hero is all good, you're not recognizing the bad.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: If you're or or that your enemy is all bad, you're not recognizing the good.
4:50
SPEAKER_03: And I think there's a lot of biblical wisdom about that, that we are good but fallen.
4:55
SPEAKER_03: You start with that premise, and then you start with the idea that nobody can live life without answers to certain questions.
5:01
SPEAKER_03: And those questions are, who am I, what's the point of everything, why am I here, what went wrong, what's gonna put things right?
5:08
SPEAKER_03: Most of us don't actually think of that cognitively because we don't have to, because the stories around us, the culture has already answered those questions for us.
5:16
SPEAKER_03: Follow your heart is not just a throwaway platitudes you find in Disney movies, it's actually something that we unbeknownst to us have absorbed.
5:24
SPEAKER_03: I think dad called it these things are more caught than taught.
5:28
SPEAKER_03: They're they're caught in our stories, in our music, and our movies and things like that.
5:33
SPEAKER_03: And we don't know it, but whether you're a Christian or not, we we still live out that like follow your heart mentality.
5:39
SPEAKER_03: And there's something good about your heart, right?
5:41
SPEAKER_03: That there's there's something about emotions and about relationships that's good.
5:45
SPEAKER_03: That being in touch with yourself, introspection is good, but there's also something fallen about you know, sometimes your heart doesn't go the right direction.
5:53
SPEAKER_03: So maybe you shouldn't always follow your heart.
5:55
SPEAKER_03: So I I think that's the idea behind it is that we all have questions, we're not asking them because our culture answered them in the stories, and we try to go through in the book identity, freedom, happiness, power, progress, truth, morality, those things, and try to show what's good, what's fallen, and and then the true and better story that actually we can get into.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think y'all do a really good job of giving the reader discernment to kind of rightly divide.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, where have I let feelings, for example, rule over my walk with the Lord?
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Like I imagine the person on the other end listening to this podcast, like they probably really wrestle with, well, you want to feel God rather also have the mental conviction.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: So, how do I, you know, Michael, how do I separate my feelings from like a spiritual desire for feelings and emotional conviction then?
6:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's that's not an experience.
6:48
SPEAKER_03: I think feelings can be good, can I mean you know this?
6:51
SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh not all my feelings are always accurate.
6:54
SPEAKER_03: So they're real, but they're not always accurate.
6:56
SPEAKER_03: So what do you really need is you need an experience through the Holy Spirit.
7:00
SPEAKER_03: And I think I think Paul gives us that that paradigm in Acts 17, right?
7:03
SPEAKER_03: What does he do to go to Mars Hill?
7:05
SPEAKER_03: What does he do?
7:06
SPEAKER_03: He affirms something.
7:07
SPEAKER_03: Hey, there's something good about this altar to an unknown God.
7:11
SPEAKER_03: He critiques it though, but here's your problem, and then he redirects it and said there was something better.
7:16
SPEAKER_03: And I think we have to do that in our own lives.
7:18
SPEAKER_03: No matter who we are, whoever's listening right now, I think if we're an apathy if we're a Christian but we we believe in God but we don't feel his presence, if we we feel like there's this apathy about ah what's going on.
7:28
SPEAKER_03: Is it possible that this cultural story that you're living is keeping you from the true and better story that actually is available that maybe you even cognitively know because you've heard of it in Bible stories, but you actually haven't experienced because you have the other stories are kind of outweighing that.
7:44
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's what the book's trying to get at is that the phrases like follow your heart and you do you and uh you know live free, just don't harm anybody else, and find your truth and do these are not just throwaway platitudes.
7:58
SPEAKER_03: We that we've absorbed them in so many different ways.
8:01
SPEAKER_03: And the there's a what is it, billion or trillion dollar advertising industry.
8:05
SPEAKER_03: The reason why putting a coke ad up works is because when we see something, it affects us, and it's the same thing about everything else that we're in.
8:12
SPEAKER_03: Unless you're in a bunker and you you're you're closed off from society, we are b uh being affected, and there are good aspects of culture and also very fallen ones.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, y'all do a good job of walking that line.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so give me some examples though about like, you know, well we know the lies of the world.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Come on, Michael, like we we know the word, we know truth.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: How do you see this though in the church where we fall for these same lies just in a different font?
8:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it I love that.
8:41
SPEAKER_03: I think see two things can be true.
8:44
SPEAKER_03: That that yes, there are lies of the world, but I don't think I think when we don't realize that sin is not just out there but in here, that then we we we we believe that then there's this sort of actually we're not understanding Genesis 1, 2, and 3, that all things are fallen.
8:58
SPEAKER_03: That means the church is fallen, that means you are, that means I am.
9:01
SPEAKER_03: And the good news about that is it should breed humility when w rightly understood, so then we can kind of l listen to each other.
9:08
SPEAKER_03: But the bad news is then sometimes we we don't, we don't we don't realize it's actually more complicated, and so then I think that's the problem is that there's something about church subculture that's fallen.
9:18
SPEAKER_03: There's something about how I read this is crazy, guys.
9:20
SPEAKER_03: How I read the Bible, there's something fallen about how I go about it.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: The right the question I ask sometimes the Bible.
9:27
SPEAKER_03: I'm asking sometimes ones that are not fully the heart of God, right?
9:30
SPEAKER_03: There's some of them it's like about me and when I I mean what do you what do you think, Faith?
9:35
SPEAKER_03: I mean, have you experienced that as well?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: I used to Jesus all the time, like that's my default, you know.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Let me make this about myself, and you know, you know, even if it's anachronistic, just okay, for example, like your freedom chapter in some ways really rocked my world.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't even think it's titled Freedom, but when y'all talked, you know, as a southern woman, freedom, Jesus, you know, it's like it's it's a thing that's like sorry, the cacao just throw me over.
10:04
SPEAKER_03: That was crazy.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: But it's just like American.
10:07
SPEAKER_03: I think freedom, but keep going.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: This is this is you know, the American eagle motif, you know, that's that's where we were going, okay.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: As a southern white woman raised in the church, I just have over-spiritualized the way that I view individuality or freedom.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: And I I probably would even botch it if I tried to summarize your chapter, but it kind of rocked my world in a really good, convicting ways because it had seeped into even the ways I read for Christ has set us free, you know, like the ways that I had came in to that text with presuppositions and anachronistic understandings.
10:44
SPEAKER_03: And God wants us freedom, but freedom, freedom from all things leads to no love.
10:48
SPEAKER_03: Because if you're free from all constructs, if you're free from all commitments, well, what's love?
10:54
SPEAKER_03: Love in the Bible, right?
10:55
SPEAKER_03: John 3.16, God so loved the world that he gave his only son, loves a lot of things, but it's at least commitment.
11:00
SPEAKER_03: It's a covenant, it's a promise.
11:01
SPEAKER_03: And that means if you want real freedom, you can't have love because real freedom means nobody has a say on your life.
11:07
SPEAKER_03: Nobody actually can tell you, you know, be here, do that, or you're committed to them.
11:12
SPEAKER_03: That means then our version of freedom of caca, you know, nobody gets to uh nobody gets to have a say on my life, then that's actually more shackled and less free.
11:22
SPEAKER_03: So that turns into, I think dad has this phrase, it's not so much about to be free from all restrictions.
11:27
SPEAKER_03: What restrictions are the most freeing?
11:30
SPEAKER_03: And the Bible would say, do lost slave, servant to Christ.
11:33
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna be a slave to something, right?
11:35
SPEAKER_03: Well, who is whoever said that?
11:36
SPEAKER_03: Bob Dylan.
11:37
SPEAKER_03: You might as well be a servant to the one who's gonna love you and serve you and do it better.
11:41
SPEAKER_03: How does it show up in like a Christian world?
11:43
SPEAKER_03: I think sometimes we say phrases like, I think God really wants me to be denkin.
11:48
SPEAKER_03: Whatever that comes out after actually possibly could be the freedom narrative because you are actually assuming that you're able to read what God wants for you.
11:56
SPEAKER_03: That's a freedom narrative thing.
11:57
SPEAKER_03: That you have that that anyway.
11:59
SPEAKER_03: I'd be careful.
12:00
SPEAKER_03: It's possible God does kind of speak to us through the Holy Spirit and we get an impression on our hearts, and that's great.
12:05
SPEAKER_03: But how often do we think that's happened and it's not really that?
12:08
SPEAKER_03: It's actually just our own hearts talking to us, but we're using it and saying, hey, this is actually God telling me to do this.
12:13
SPEAKER_03: I just hear that all the time in sort of broad Christian cultures.
12:16
SPEAKER_03: I think God's telling me blankety blankity blank.
12:19
SPEAKER_03: I think God wants me to.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: How do you know that?
12:21
SPEAKER_03: How do you know it's not the devil?
12:22
SPEAKER_03: How do you know it's not the how do you know it's not your own heart?
12:24
SPEAKER_03: How do you know it it's the freedom there that's given us the hubris to to think that we can speak on behalf of God, I think.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes totally.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: So what would it look like then for us to have a more humble approach to it and go, okay, Lord, this is still a feeling, but I feel like you might be convicting me towards this, that, and the other.
12:44
SPEAKER_03: Are you saying spirits?
12:46
SPEAKER_03: No, test the spirits.
12:47
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you can have that, you can say that, but then I wouldn't I'd be careful how to you who who you express that to, because you you might be wrong, and then see what happens.
12:55
SPEAKER_03: If and if it does happen, then you can thank God saying, Hey, thank you for that.
12:58
SPEAKER_03: And if it doesn't, you say, Well, I guess I was off.
13:00
SPEAKER_03: I guess maybe my heart was telling me a lie, you know?
13:04
SPEAKER_03: But the end goal No, the end goal is is is hopefully praise and love and glory to the Lord.
13:09
SPEAKER_03: I mean that's what it should be always.
13:10
unknown: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: And not figuring out God because we can control him or massive.
13:14
SPEAKER_03: As if we could.
13:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, as if we could.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:17
SPEAKER_03: As if we could, cakah.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: You give a good actually, what what I loved was you gave a picture of a fish jumping out of a fishbowl.
13:24
SPEAKER_03: And I feel like it's yeah, yeah.
13:27
SPEAKER_03: It's like I had this, although my I didn't I don't know if I put this in the book, but it's like I have this like brave heart imagery of the fish jumping out of the fishbowl going, Freedom! Yeah, you're free, but you're free to die now because you're not in what you were made for.
13:40
SPEAKER_03: And I use the example of there are blueprints of how you were made, and following them is not shackled, it's actually live it into your design and how you were made is is a good thing, and we were made for him.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we see that in the Exodus when God freed Israel from slavery in Egypt.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: They weren't freed to live for themselves, they were free to live unto him.
13:59
SPEAKER_02: And they got that confused so many times, started to complain, send us back, we just want our meat, we just want our bread.
14:05
SPEAKER_03: Well, and and the cultural analysis is that America's only absorbed freedom as a concept of from things, not to things.
14:12
SPEAKER_03: And I think that being freed to something, which is Exodus, is a beautiful example.
14:16
SPEAKER_03: Like, you should have no other gods before me.
14:18
SPEAKER_03: The number one of the Ten Commandments, that's freedom too.
14:20
SPEAKER_03: You're freed now to have no other gods before me.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're still you're shackled, but to the most loving, beautiful, beatific being that there is.
14:28
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's the best type of freedom you can have in that bound relationship.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like what y'all talk about with truth and true truth, you know, having absolute truth and an anchor is uh life-giving, not restrictive.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Y'all put it way better than that.
14:50
SPEAKER_03: Well, no, because culture says like if you you know, my truth, your truth, I mean they they don't like our culture doesn't like the idea of any kind of yeah, absolute kind of statement because they say why?
15:01
SPEAKER_03: Because it's been those things have been used against people.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: And so we have to acknowledge that that there are people have weaponized truth to do injury, harm, and self-service, historically speaking, against women, against minorities.
15:14
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we can we can against you, again individuals.
15:17
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I use this in the book.
15:18
SPEAKER_03: I think I did.
15:19
SPEAKER_03: My mom has this example of she realized that you can abuse anything when one of her sons picked up the Bible and started beating the other son over the head with it and turned she only says that, but I said, I said, Mom, who what son was that?
15:31
SPEAKER_03: She goes, It was you.
15:33
SPEAKER_03: Of course it was.
15:34
SPEAKER_03: Of course it was.
15:35
SPEAKER_03: But but her point is is that just because you you can abuse like the Bible doesn't mean it's still not true.
15:42
SPEAKER_03: And understanding that is really, really important.
15:45
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17:23
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17:25
SPEAKER_00: So, what would you say to the person that has a little like cognitive dissonance of like, well, yeah, but I want the Bible, if it is true, to not be able to be used for abuse, or I want my freedom to mean that I get to choose my destiny and my life.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, I've been so hardwired to this, I don't even delight in what you're explaining is the Christian life.
17:43
SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
17:44
SPEAKER_03: I think that's, you know, to be honest, based on the book, is that you're not understanding how the true story, the good story of the Bible is actually better than the other one.
17:54
SPEAKER_03: You're not realizing that there is there's actually a better, it's like the C.
17:56
SPEAKER_03: S.
17:56
SPEAKER_03: Lewis quote, we're too busy making mud pies to realize like actually what's being offered to you.
18:01
SPEAKER_03: I think the reason why we feel like we're in apathy often, or why we're often, eh, yeah, Bible, here I go again, you know.
18:08
SPEAKER_03: What's this have same 66 books, reading again?
18:12
SPEAKER_03: You're not you're not realizing it's not just about you reading the Bible.
18:14
SPEAKER_03: You're you have to let the Bible read you, which means letting it speak into your life, and then that's where the power is.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: It's it's when there's a relationship out of it.
18:23
SPEAKER_03: I would respectfully say to that person, I don't think you realize what's being offered.
18:27
SPEAKER_03: I mean, what if what if justice doesn't just make more new oppressors?
18:32
SPEAKER_03: What if justice actually makes the world the way it's supposed to be?
18:34
SPEAKER_03: What if love isn't just you know some sort of romantic fleeting feeling that I I I lose my freedom in?
18:42
SPEAKER_03: What if it actually binds you to something that would always love you and always give you what you're supposed to have?
18:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's just you don't see there's just such a better, better story out there.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Is that something that you personally had to learn in your own kind of walking away from the faith and coming back?
19:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, uh for me it was very much uh what else is there out there?
19:04
SPEAKER_03: And I it was my my conversion was much more intellectual.
19:08
SPEAKER_03: It was wait, if there if God isn't real, then that means I have to, you know, construct my own reality, and so I use drugs and alcohol to kind of escape it.
19:17
SPEAKER_03: But then I was like, wait, escaping reality.
19:20
SPEAKER_03: I lived in New York, I saw a lot of people who were escaping reality, I didn't want to end up on the street.
19:24
SPEAKER_03: So I need escape reality.
19:25
SPEAKER_03: I gotta I gotta make enough money though, so I can keep doing that, but not end up on the street.
19:29
SPEAKER_03: The placating and the pain didn't seem to work.
19:32
SPEAKER_03: And then all the other religions and things of like heck, even the the city trying to move up the corporate ladder, all of it is is performance, performance, performance.
19:40
SPEAKER_03: And Christianity offered uh something radically different that it wasn't based on what you achieve, it's it's what you receive, and that's that's a line straight out from from from my father.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Was that hard to believe as a PK?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: I married my husband's a pastor's kid, and he always well, and now we're raising two pastors' kids, so we're just we're just a mess.
20:10
SPEAKER_03: I was one.
20:11
SPEAKER_03: I know what it's like.
20:13
SPEAKER_03: So my point is it's also good that your husband has that background, he can speak into your kids' life for that.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, my husband was just always raised like kind of performance-y, not that his church ever wanted him to feel that way when he was growing up, but that is just what was communicated to him.
20:27
SPEAKER_03: And I think we can- that's like what, like like, like you mean he has he had to do all the you had to do these things to be in kind of thing?
20:34
SPEAKER_03: Like, what do you mean by performance?
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Or just kind of like look like you have it all together.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't personally in the private, that's okay.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: But just like look, right?
20:41
SPEAKER_00: He's just had to kind of like relearn through life and his walk with the Lord that you know, I would rather have it right with the Lord on the inside and look a mess on the outside than go back to that kind of like fake performance.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: But I think the church, as much as we give that to PKs, that's kind of like a zoomed in version of really what goes on culturally in the church is we say we know truth, we say we know freedom or all these things, we're walking around preaching these truths that we don't even personally truly believe.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: We're walking around half adopted or half believing that we're truly adopted into the faith, we're kind of still enslaved to the world a little bit.
21:14
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: As I was reading, I just kept thinking, like, I wish all Christians could read this book and kind of have their worlds rocked for these things that we kind of get apathetic to.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: If you could just take one part of this book and have every single Christian in the church today get it downloaded into their brain and truly believe it and watch it transform their lives, what would it be?
21:33
SPEAKER_03: That's a great question.
21:34
SPEAKER_03: I think when you read scripture, you see the Pharisees, you see this works righteousness stuff, and you're like, no, I'm gonna live by grace, I'm gonna live by grace.
21:41
SPEAKER_03: I think the problem is we think we're living by grace, but we're still living by works.
21:45
SPEAKER_03: We're still living that performance based mentality.
21:48
SPEAKER_03: Because now it's trying to keep up with the Joneses.
21:51
SPEAKER_03: It's like I gotta make sure my kids are gonna turn out okay, and I they gotta get into the good schools, and they gotta host the right way and show the other women in my community.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: That I got it together and I have to dress a certain way.
22:01
SPEAKER_03: That's what is that?
22:02
SPEAKER_03: That's performance.
22:03
SPEAKER_03: That's still performance.
22:04
SPEAKER_03: And but but how what's it?
22:06
SPEAKER_03: Why don't you recognize it that way?
22:07
SPEAKER_03: It's because the stories of no, how you're living your happiness narrative.
22:10
SPEAKER_03: I'm showing everybody that I got I'm actually free to live this way.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: I can do this way.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: I know my identity is that it's my kids and this and that.
22:16
SPEAKER_03: We've missed the real gospel.
22:18
SPEAKER_03: It's so funny, it's so you know what's so funny is I tell people it really is by grace and doesn't change them because either you don't believe it's too good to be true, or it just has it doesn't hit us to to really say, He sees every aspect of me.
22:30
SPEAKER_03: He sees all that fakeness, he sees all that bless your heart.
22:33
SPEAKER_03: He's you know, he sees all that that's that stuff, you know, disingenuous, and he still loves me anyway.
22:38
SPEAKER_03: He saw it before I saw it.
22:39
SPEAKER_03: And if you have that gratitude, you when you receive grace, you can give grace.
22:43
SPEAKER_03: When you feel loved, then you can be love, then you can love.
22:45
SPEAKER_03: And do it for the right reasons and not I have to love so that I'll be loved.
22:49
SPEAKER_03: I have to, I have to serve to then then I'll be served.
22:52
SPEAKER_03: It's so subtle.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: See how it's but it's reversed.
22:54
SPEAKER_03: No, I've been loved, that's why I can love.
22:56
SPEAKER_03: No, I've been served, that's why I can serve.
22:58
SPEAKER_03: And that change is the difference between life and death in in in the world.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: This is that's it's all of it.
23:04
SPEAKER_03: So I I that's what I would hope people got from the book is they could see that there as much as they might even s on the surface look like something, we might be missing what's really available with this true and better story.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: That's so yes, a yes and amen.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Now I gotta ask, as you finished compiling this book and organizing it like you and your dad planned, was there anything that you came across and it just like totally helped you and you're missing of him or it took a long time to write the book because I didn't know how to make it accessible.
23:38
SPEAKER_03: I realized finally if I'm gonna talk about stories, I need to talk about my own.
23:41
SPEAKER_03: And so I I used the lens of processing my dad's death as the kind of lens of of how to look at these stories because people came to me and were like, hey, he's in a better place, he's he's looking down on you.
23:53
SPEAKER_03: You know, those are cultural platitudes, and I'm like, why are these not really feeling good?
23:57
SPEAKER_03: Because they're they're incomplete.
23:59
SPEAKER_03: But then through the process of looking at my own story through these stories, I came across a Jonathan Edwards sermon that where he was preaching to his nephews and I think his uncle died, and he was he was preaching to them saying, Listen, you miss your father, he was lovely, he was great, he was wonderful, but you need to realize something, everything that made your father great was actually found in Jesus.
24:17
SPEAKER_03: And so if you go to Jesus, you'll be able to have the best aspects, the parts of your father that you always wanted or you miss.
24:24
SPEAKER_03: And I d that just wrecked me, faith, because it was then I realized so often that I think I might have gone to my father for things instead of my true father.
24:33
SPEAKER_03: I think I I was going to to him and I wish I you know I I think death is bad, and I'm I I really you know, I know one day I'll see him again, but his absence has shown me the presence of Jesus better because I was missing what was always available because I was so enamored with what I already had.
24:53
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's the same thing with all these stories, is that we don't realize there's something better being offered to us.
24:58
SPEAKER_03: And I that that wrecked me.
24:59
SPEAKER_03: It's in the book, it's towards the end, but man, that still it still makes me emotional.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: And it's so good to hear it from your mouth, you know.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it if anyone has been blessed by Tim Keller and his wisdom, I feel like they're so intrigued about like what your relationship would be like and what the inner workings of your life probably looked like, just because it's like, you know, you can say one thing, you can write books, Tim, but did you actually live it out with your son?
25:27
SPEAKER_00: Did you actually yeah, have the fruit of that generally generationally, I guess?
25:32
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just so cool to read this and hear your wisdom, and it all truly comes back to Jesus and praise the Lord for that.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: He's everything we've been searching for and everything the world's searching for.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just so glad that this book is out now.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: I think it's so incredibly needed.
25:48
SPEAKER_03: Well, over the years, people this I don't think this is in the book, but over the years people have been like, Oh man, it's so must have been amazing to have Tim Kelly as your father and this and that.
25:56
SPEAKER_03: And I I try to be very gentle and say, I and cause sometimes they say, Oh man, I wish I had that.
26:00
SPEAKER_03: I wish I and I say, you know, I might have had one of the better distillations of of the gospel presentation given to me.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: And growing up and it wasn't it that didn't work.
26:11
SPEAKER_03: Because you're not saved by the best distillation or articulation of the gospel, you're saved by the gospel.
26:18
SPEAKER_03: And so it was actually in college through some other college minister that I was actually able to hear it.
26:23
SPEAKER_03: It wasn't through Tim Keller.
26:25
SPEAKER_03: And as much as I'm thankful for him and later on in life being able to talk shop and do life, but I I I just think it's really important for people to hear that.
26:33
SPEAKER_03: I think my parents did do a good job of forgiving and repenting in front of me, and you know, that's a that's another book of how do you raise your kids with you know forgiving, repenting, which I think is is so super, super important.
26:45
SPEAKER_03: But I I just think it's important to hear that.
26:47
SPEAKER_03: Is that I love my father, but I think it's it's not about the the the best presentation of the gospel, it's about the gospel.
26:52
SPEAKER_03: And that should encourage every parent that if I could just say it the right way or do the right way, nope, nope, still it's still by faith.
26:59
SPEAKER_03: That's what by faith means.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: That's so good.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Friends, definitely check out the stories we live by.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Again, it hit shelves September 22nd, so it's about to be or it will be already on the bookshelves.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
27:15
SPEAKER_03: It'll make you really free, like caca.
27:18
SPEAKER_03: Sorry, sorry.
27:20
SPEAKER_02: Spam the comments with caca's guys, okay?
27:23
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna hate us.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: That was yours.
27:25
SPEAKER_03: That was yours.
27:25
SPEAKER_03: I just thought I was I still I'm still giggling about it.
27:28
SPEAKER_03: It's my fault.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I apologize that I my husband's gonna be like, you did what with Michael Killer.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: No, seriously, thank you so much for coming on and sharing.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: And where can people find you?
27:40
SPEAKER_00: Hunt you down, maybe they're a New Yorker and they want a new church.
27:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Redeemer in Lincoln Square.
27:45
SPEAKER_03: We're on Central Park West and 64th Street.
27:47
SPEAKER_03: Come check us out.
27:48
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of other great Redeemers as well, but uh we're we're alive and kicking up here, so come come see us.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: And again, the stories we live by.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again.
27:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you.
27:58
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Faith, for your time.
28:00
SPEAKER_03: Really appreciate it.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast with your girl, Faith Wilmack.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: During seasons, episodes go up every Wednesday, and they're found everywhere podcasts are posted.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: I personally love Spotify.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Make sure to hit subscribe and leave a review that really helps other people to find it.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to hang out with me and do in-depth Bible studies, like I talked about earlier, you're gonna wanna find me on Patreon.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: That's where I spend most of my time teaching with weekly Bible studies, longer form teaching, behind the scenes content, and honestly, just a great community of awesome believers who love God's word and want to go deeper.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: It's patreon.com forward slash how to faith the life and Faith Bomack everywhere else online.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Bye guys.