Transcript

00:00 Paul Tripp: Well, I'm glad we can continue our conversation on God's amazing grace. It was so much fun last time, But I want to talk about something I've been involved with. I look at the last six months of my life as just been a time of incredible blessing.

00:26 I was approached about doing a Bible project that basically has a daily Bible reading plan embedded in it and then, at the end of every daily reading, I do a devotional. So I have to read through that area, pick out what I want to write on and write a devotional.

00:43 Shelby Abbott: So the whole Bible, from beginning to end?

00:44 Paul: Yes, so I'm now in Ezekiel. And there's been some things that have just been incredible to me. One, I keep hearing in my mind the Apostle Paul's words in 2 Timothy that all scripture is profitable. It's been amazing to me in places where people would say, "There's just nothing here. I got to plow my way through this." There [are] these unbelievable nuggets of God's grace that it's just incredible. It just reminded me there are no useless, needless passages in the word of God. There's no fluff there.

01:35 Another thing that's really hit me is the zeal that God has to make Himself known. I mean, He is sticking Himself in every account because He wants us to know Him. He wants us to know that He exists and this is His character, and this is what's important to Him and this is how He works. And that's repeated over and over and over again because we're easily distractible and dull of heart and mind; and it's just been such a beautiful thing to see.

02:10 Shelby: So can you give me an example of something that, maybe, on the surface, people wouldn't be able to see God breaking through, but you've been able to discover that and kind of flesh it out, write it?

02:21 Paul: Yes, I'll give you an example. The end of Jeremiah is just a series of God's judgments on the nations and there's about ten nations He just turns to and says, "You're done and you're done and you're done."

02:38 And through the end of it, I'm in tears. I'm thinking what awesome power that He can just look at an entire nation and say, "By My will, it's over," and it's repeat, it's chapter after chapter. And why would I be afraid of a human leader? Why would I think that human political power is where I'm going to find my hope? There is a King of kings and every ruler only exists by His will. And when He's done, He's done. And He has the power and authority to say it's over.

03:24 Now, I think you would read through those chapters, and you may not stand back and say, "What is being revealed about God in this moment?" The awesome, incalculable authority of God is just mind-boggling. So that's been fun.

03:43 I think one of the other things that hit me is, you know, the Old Testament — probably more than the New Testament — is marked by the sternest and scariest warnings of God's judgment. I mean, they send chills down your spine. And people may read those and think, "How could these words ever come out of a God of love? These words come out of Him because He is a God of love, because we have such an ability to minimize our sin.

04:20 It's like a father who loves his son. He's standing in front of him saying, "Now, I want you to pay attention to me. Don't you ever do that because if you do, this is what Daddy's going to have to do." Now, you don't do that because you despise your son. You do that because he's precious to you. And then, those warnings are recorded for us.

04:44 First, there're examples of how precious God's people were to Him, but they're recorded for us so that we would hear those warnings because we're precious to Him as well. And then, one other thing that just hits me again and again is it's a combination of God's patience and His zeal for His plan.

05:16 His patience, He gives warning after warning after warning after warning after warning, but almost all the warnings, somewhere, are punctuated by, "But there'll be a day when after you have been disciplined, I will forgive and I will restore."

05:38 And that the zeal for God to say, "My anger is the anger of a Father. This is not ultimate condemnation because I'm going to bring you back and I'm going to forgive your sins, and I'm going to restore you.

05:57 And in many of those passages, you realize, ultimately, let's be talking about Jesus because some of them, there's no way it could ever be fulfilled by a healing human king. But all that is to say the gospel is just all over the Old Testament. It just brims with the gospel and it's so sad that for many people, the Old Testament is just sort of dark and dusty and weird, and they don't know how to make sense out of it.

06:32 And it's one of the things that motivated me to do this project because if I can help people to say, "Oh, these are people like me and this is for me, and this has been recorded and preserved for me. And, wow, look at this little nugget I would have never seen."

06:46 Shelby: Let's think and pause and reflect, and make sure that we're having the appropriate focus as we're reading through a list of names or laws that you said, those kinds of things. We can take them in a certain way, but we view them from an inappropriate lens when we do that.

06:59 Paul: Yes, and instead of just surviving the Old Testament, pray that God would illuminate. Pray that He would reveal Himself. Pray that those nuggets would shine like, you know, crystal in the sand and you say, "Ooh, look at that," because, wow, they're there and I introduce it this way.

07:21 I feel incredibly blessed that I've been chosen to do this. Why me? There's no way I could ever deserve this blessing and yet, it's been given me. And I wake up in the morning — and I'm now going to use a metaphor — and run to the place where I write because I can't wait to have my devotions and get at it because it's been so exciting. I read about four devotionals a day and it's just been wonderful.

07:59 Shelby: Well, I'm excited. It's coming out in the next few years or sooner than that?

08:07 Paul: Yes, it'll come out on the tenth anniversary of New Morning Mercies, so fall of '24.

08:12 Shelby: Oh, okay. It's exciting. It's really exciting.

08:15 Paul: Yes, it really is.

08:17 Shelby: And it'll be helpful, too. There's a humility in approaching things like that and pausing and examining and looking for like, as you say, gospel truth because most people would say, "Show me the gospel in the Bible." They would not flip to the Old Testament. They would not do that, but that's good that you can do that. You can help us to see that and it helps us to appreciate scripture all the more — even the areas that we would, maybe, label as "boring" or "unrelatable".

08:41 Paul: Well, everything I write, my two goals are that whatever the topic I'm writing on, that you would love God's word more and you'd love Jesus more; and this one is even more upfront. I want people to just get excited about God's word all over again. Well, we're going to continue our...

09:04 Shelby: Keep going with grace!

09:05 Paul: Yes, and I want to introduce this again similar to the way I did before that, sadly, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of believers who think that grace is an entrance and an exit. It's grace that saves me and it's grace that ushers me into eternity; and in between, I gut it out. And it just couldn't be further from the truth.

09:42 The richness of the now-ism of God's grace is just all over scripture and it's sad that in many places, in our Christian culture, we've lost that. We've lost that richness of the right here-right now inner workings of God's grace and that's why when we started this podcast, one of the things that was a dream of mine is that we would just have an extensive conversation of God's grace. Well, we've done that for two hours and we're going to add to that. And people say, "You can talk for two hours about grace?"

10:27 Shelby: And you're like, "Dude, I could talk for six years about grace."

10:31 Paul: "I had this conversation. We just scratched the surface." We will be talking about this for all of eternity. So I want to talk about empowering grace because I think the message of empowering grace is incredibly humbling.

10:59 I have no independent power whatsoever to be what I'm supposed to be and to do what I'm supposed to do in the plan of God. In fact, it hit me when I was just beginning this project I just talked about that the only unlimited being in the account of creation is God.

11:23 Everything else is wired with limits and we have limits of wisdom, we have limits of strength, we have limits of righteousness. And so, the Christian life and any kind of life that's pleasing to God is dependent on power outside of ourselves. Something has to happen to give us the power that we need. And I want to look at 2 Corinthians 12 because it really is Paul's testimony. Maybe if I could read a little, beginning of verse 7.

12:12 ⁷So to keep me from becoming conceited [we got to go back and talk about that] because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. ⁸Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. ⁹But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you... My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ¹⁰For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

12:58 It's one thing, Shelby, to say that power is part of God's plan for us. I mean, who wouldn't celebrate that? But that's not, first, what Paul says. What Paul is proposing is weakness is part of God's plan, and I don't like to be weak.

13:30 I mean, you know I've, over the last several years, had a multitude of physical things, ten surgeries in seven years, I don't like weakness. It's discouraging and frustrating, but you can't avoid the fact that God chooses us to be weak and that's just not a general thing. In moments, it's a very specific thing. He chooses weakness for particular people in particular situations. And Paul says, — I love this confession — "God had revealed so much to me about His gospel, He knew I'd just be conceited."

14:17 Shelby: Well, who wouldn't be, right? If you get this special privilege to be able to see stuff that Paul has been able to see and I've often wondered that in my early days. I was like, "How did Paul know all this? How is he able to speak about all this?" And it's like, "Oh, taken up into the third heaven. What does that mean?"

14:31 Of course, in human experience, we're going to be like, "Look at what I know and what you don't," and it's a gift from God because conceitedness is arrogance. It's pride. God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.

14:45 Paul: Yes, and well, also it needs to be said that pride is the enemy of grace because pride says, "Look who I am." And it's like the Pharisee in the temple who's saying, "God, I thank You..."

15:02 Shelby: "...I'm not like this guy.

15:03 Paul: Well, what he's saying is, "Hey, God, here I am. I just wanted You to know I still don't need You."

15:09 Shelby: Yes, "You're so blessed to have me." And if only we preach the gospel that way of how often do we go to that passage to preach the gospel, say we need to be like the Gentile who beats his chest, doesn't even look up and says, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

15:27 What does that look like to receive the grace and goodness of God? We're talking about weakness here. We offer weakness to people when we offer them the gospel. That doesn't sound sexy. That's not attractive on the surface, but when you dig into this and you finally understand Paul was probably one of the most influential people in the history of humans, and he's talking about being weak so that God would help him to become a greater messenger of the truth.

15:57 Paul: So we need to say two things about weakness. One — this is the bad news, but it's important to face — weakness is a universal human condition. Weakness is everybody. There are only two kinds of people. Those who recognize their weakness and those who don't because we all lack the power that's necessary to be what God created us to be.

16:25 Weakness is a universal human condition and it does you no spiritual good to deny that because denying it, then, takes you on a pathway of self-reliance, and self-reliance is the enemy of God's grace. So that denying weakness never has a good spiritual harvest in your life. The second thing we can say is weakness is also a unique and special tool that God uses in certain points in a person's life, so that they come to the point where they seek and celebrate His power.

17:10 Shelby: If we decide to yield and go there, and that's really the key. It's like, if you read something like this and it says, "My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness," would that not then mean that we as human beings should seek out our areas of weakness so that we can see specific areas that God will move?

17:32 I've been through pain as well. I have chronic nerve pain in my back that affects the way I sit and walk and even experience life. And for many years, when that injury first came along, I rejected it. I pushed it away. I said, "What can I do to get this out of my life," instead of embracing it as a means of God transforming me and taking me to another level. It is my weakness. This is the thorn in my flesh right now, at least.

18:02 It could be different in the future. But instead of rejecting it, I finally learned how to embrace it and rejoice in the sufferings of my life because it helped me to feel, in a weird way, special, like God was speaking to me.

18:17 There's that C.S. Lewis quote of God speaking to me, yelling to me in my pain and weakness. And I was finally able to listen, if I chose to listen. It's that relinquishing of your pride and saying, "No, I'm not going to allow this to be a barrier for me absorbing the grace of God, not going to do it."

18:36 Paul: Yes, and we can discuss this if you disagree, but I still think we're talking about the general here. This passage, there's a specific circumstance in this man's life that often becomes an initiator to pride and so, God says in a specific way, "I'm going to give you something that's a physical hardship that produces weakness to keep you from going where pride would take you," and then, the backside of that is, "What you'll realize is you don't need to be afraid of weakness because that's a workroom for My power."

19:32 Shelby: Why do you think in the human experience — almost universally, I would say — the initial knee jerk reaction to that, even to believers who understand the gospel and the gospel is permeated to the roots of their heart, and they are walking with him, why do you think the initial reaction is to reject something like that? Why do we need to be reminded of that?

19:54 Paul: Because the idol of idols is the idol of self. I want to be capable. I want not only to know that I'm strong, I want people around me to know I'm strong. You know, what's really under self-reliance is self-worship and God says, "No, no, no, no, no, I don't want that for you. That's a pathway to destruction and so, I'm willing, because I love you, to put you through the unexpected, the unplanned, the unwanted, what is difficult and hard so that you would say, 'All I need I find in my Redeemer, not in my power, but in His.'"

20:53 Let's take foolishness as a corollary. The Bible is pretty clear that sin reduces all to fools. At some point, you have to acknowledge that. You have to acknowledge that you're not independently wise or you won't seek the wisdom that is only found in your Redeemer, who Himself is wisdom.

21:17 And we could just name thing after thing where my sort of crass way of saying this is the doorway to hope is hopelessness. You got to give up on yourself, on your wisdom, your power, your righteousness in order to seek and celebrate the grace that is being offered you.

21:44 Shelby: Okay, so that's happening internally in all of our hearts, not to mention, if you live in America or in the West in general. There's this celebration of self. There's a pushing of independence. And I think there's, to a degree, well-meaning in that because people are trying to help other people and they're trying to celebrate certain things, but you're getting that push externally as well to celebrate yourself, exalt yourself, make yourself the center of the universe. Nobody can change.

22:13 You have to make those choices, but in the middle of all of that — we're fighting against it based upon what scripture calls us to do — in the middle of all that, for the believer, God has given us His Spirit to be able to empower us, and help us to see that that sinful tendency inside and that pushing that's coming from culture as well are to be rejected seems impossible to do, but God has given us His Spirit in our lives to be able to live the Christian life for us if we would just understand that it is not about us. It's not about worshiping. It's not about mustering up enough energy to live the Christian life. It's about letting go and letting him live the Christian life in and through us.

23:03 Paul: Yes, absolutely, and the Christian life, therefore, is just a series of deaths. You know, I'm still dying to all those self-idolizing hopes and dreams and dying to the self-deceptive things that I say, and it's really daily death.

23:39 Now, that's where life is found. It's not self-flagellation, but I don't think we'd like death and I don't want to be the weak one in the room. And so, one of the things we have to talk about as we talk about Paul's confession here is how unnatural and counter-intuitive that is for us.

24:13 And so, it actually takes — this is the way it works — it takes empowering grace to confess your need for empowering grace because it's not natural for me to do that. And I mean, how many people read what Paul says here and say, "God, would You do that to me? Would You do that for me? Would You bless me this way?"

24:45 And my experience is, you know, I've always been healthy and quick and productive. And Luella says that I do everything in my life as fast as I could possibly do it. It's just personality, but that meant productivity. And then, I get very, very sick and I can't do any of that.

25:16 I mean, there are days when I couldn't get out of a chair and I began to realize that beneath all this productivity — although I spoke gospel language — was a huge amount of pride, huge amount of self-reliance and what I thought was faith in Christ wasn't faith in Christ at all.

25:41 It was, "I'm good at this." And so, I can say when I read this, because I've been through that experience, that if I had to go through what I've gone through again for God to get me where I am, I would say yes because the harvest has been just so precious.

26:12 You know, it's been hard and there's a way in which you wish this passage, you want to make Paul the hero, but you don't want anything to do with it. And yet, these things are written for our example and our instruction.

26:30 Shelby: And you know, as a personal example — and you know this about me — I became increasingly convicted last summer that I needed to send a letter of forgiveness to my biological father. He was interested in me as a kid until he wasn't and around the age of fourteen or so, he just basically exited my life.

26:55 From the age of fourteen all the way up to last year in my mid-40s, I saw him a grand total of three times. No Christmas cards, no birthday, no calls, no nothing. But this grace that empowered me... someone said, "At one point, you need to forgive your father." And I said, "Impossible, impossible to do. We're talking about thirty years of neglect. Not capable of doing it."

27:21 But the Spirit, the power of God's grace gave me the ability to have a season of time where I wrote out a letter and I screened it through some friends, you were one of them as well, and I ended up getting together with a few buddies of mine. I read them the letter. They prayed for me. I put my iPad in the middle of the room, and I clicked send and I never thought I would be able to do something like that. Afterward, my wife was like, "It is the Spirit of God changing your life."

27:51 You cannot pull the wool over the eyes of your spouse and when your spouse looks at you and goes, "You're different. You've changed," then you know that that's happened. My sinful tendency would be to be like, "Yay me, I finally did it," but no, you cannot do that.

28:08 You must look at the scriptures and go, "This is the power and the grace of God to be able to make it even possible to think about being capable to write a letter of forgiveness to the man that you've hated for thirty years. But I did and I am free, and I give God the glory. Yes, it's been amazing.

28:27 Paul: So in this passage, Paul doesn't just say he celebrates empowering grace, but he says, "I will boast gladly in my weaknesses." Would you?

28:43 Shelby: Not initially. That's not my tendency to be like, "Let me tell you about all the areas where I am awful. That's not really... but, I mean, the way up is down and that's what Jesus even said to His disciples. If you want to lead, you got to serve. You got to run to the back of the line and let others go first.

29:00 Paul: But Jesus isn't best preached by heroes. He just isn't. The gospel is way more powerful when it comes on the mouth of somebody who's weak. I mean, I can remember being told in my training, "Don't ever bare your weaknesses. It contradicts the gospel."

29:24 Shelby: Yes, yes, I remember, you told me that. It's, crazy.

29:29 Paul: It's the opposite. And so, think about the last five years in evangelical culture. We have a culture of loud, bully, big personality leaders. Now, that doesn't best project the power that only Christ can give. We're the soft, tender-hearted, weak men.

30:06 Shelby: Not celebrated. Well, it's also we live in a culture, too, where social media pushes forward, not only with people, but the algorithm. The more arrogant you are, the more provocative you are, in some ways, it's very difficult to display and live a life of humility on social media.

30:27 Now, that's not, per se, real life. I mean, it is an element of our lives now, but weakness is not something that usually gets any kind of accolades or footage or coverage or pushing a tweet or a post to the front of the line.

30:44 Paul: I'll give you an example. There was, some months ago, someone on Twitter told a story of a very tender-hearted thing toward his wife and the response was, "Dude, be a man. No woman needs a weak man." And I'm thinking, "Well, I agree with that if you mean morally weak," but a man who confesses his weakness and because of that, has both hands on the grace of God, what a great husband he's going to be because nobody gives grace better than a person who thinks they need it themselves."

31:34 Don't go too far. All right, so the cultural part of this right now is we are in a culture, even a Christian culture that repudiates what we're talking about right now. In fact, there was a huge Twitter conversation you're probably familiar with on empathy, that empathy is not something God calls us to, that empathy is different than sympathy and, you know, getting all emotional about somebody else's struggle.

32:17 It was, I'm just thinking our Messiah, the promise of Him in Isaiah is a bruised reed He won't break, a smoking flax He won't quench. It's a beautiful metaphor for the tender-heartedness of Jesus. So it's not just that there are natural instincts in us to be independently powerful. We live in a culture that repudiates weakness and even in the Christian culture, that repudiation of weakness is there.

32:53 Shelby: It is and it's sad to see Psalm 8, which you know this. ^1bYou have set Your glory above the heavens. ²Out of the mouth of babies and infants, You have established strength because of Your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.

33:13 "Out of the mouths of babies, You establish your strength"? How does that make any sense? But it makes perfect sense. Babies are like, they're vulnerable. They make no sense. They babble. It communicates that, "Hey, the real power here is in God and not in humanity."

33:32 Paul: So God calls Gideon to defeat the Midianite nation. It's a marauding pirate sort of nation and God finds him threshing wheat in a wine press. Now, you thresh wheat on a hill. It's been stamped on and it's on a basket. And you throw it up in the air and the chaff blows away and the wheat falls down. He's doing this in an enclosure because he's afraid of the Midianites. This story is so funny.

34:09 If you don't think there's humor in scripture, you just need to read again. God greets him, says, "Oh, Gideon, mighty warrior." That's what he says. "I am the least son of the least tribe of all of Israel. You have to have a wrong address." And then, he does that fleece thing. The fleece thing was his hope that he could get out of this. It's not a way of finding God's will.

34:38 Now, why did God greet him that way? Because God didn't call Gideon because he was able. God called Gideon because God's able. And with three hundred men and trumpets and broken pitchers, they routed this nation. I mean, that's how God works.

35:00 Shelby: Moses had a speech impediment and he was the voice of God.

35:05 Paul: Now, why did God call Gideon? So that all of Israel would know it couldn't have been this guy. It couldn't have been him."

35:16 Shelby: Well, Peter, the apostle. Peter was a know-it-all, spoke before he thought. David was an adulterer and a murderer. Jonah was a racist and an angry bigot against an entire group of people.

35:30 Paul: And a runner.

35:31 Shelby: Yes, and God shows, says, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, you're on my team." Why? Because it's about God. It's not about people. I think we just miss that all the time. How can I advance my platform? How can I push my name forward? How can I give people strength?

35:50 Why does when someone go on a podcast and they're vulnerable, and they talk about struggling with the things that they're struggling with, everyone goes, "Wow, that's so unique and so rare for a spiritual leader to do something like that?" Why? Why is that rare? Why is vulnerability where rare? It shouldn't be. It should be the standard for people who lead.

36:11 Paul: Well, we're reading Paul's podcast right now and he didn't have any trouble doing that.

36:15 Shelby: No, he was a great example.

36:16 Paul: I want to look at Ephesians 1 because there's a definition of this power that we're talking about that God gives empowering grace that I think is mind-boggling.

36:42 Shelby: Verse what, 19?

36:44 Paul: Well, Ephesians 1 begins with a three-chapter rant on the gospel. It's just awesome. It's tremendous, but it breaks with verse 15 because Paul's a pastor and he gets so far, and he wants to pray that these people would understand this gospel, that their eyes would be enlightened, that they would know what they've been given. Let me just read the prayer. This is verse 15.

37:19 ¹⁵For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, ¹⁶I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, ¹⁷that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, ¹⁸having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know... the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might ²⁰that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹far above... all... power and dominion...

38:05 The passage goes on. Now, Paul says, "I understand I'm about to talk about something that you will only ever get if God opens the eyes of your heart to this glory because this is so mind-boggling, nobody would ever think this.

38:25 What is that mind-boggling thing? That the power that we have now been given as the children of God — need a drum roll here — is the exact same power with the exact same infinite ability that was the power by which Christ was raised from the dead.

38:52 Shelby: Yes, the most profound thing in all of history.

38:54 Paul: There cannot be anything in human history that is a definition of greater power than to walk out of a tomb, once dead, now alive to conquer death. And so, Paul says, "I'm praying that somehow, you would be illumined, your heart... you'll be able to understand the power that you've been given.

39:28 And if you would look at the resurrection, you would look at the empty tomb and you would say, "Well, if Jesus can defeat this, He can defeat anything. That's what Paul's saying. You need not be defeated by anything because you've been given this level of power.

39:49 Shelby: Yes, I think that a lot of people feel an inability to change. They feel a lot of hopelessness. They feel stuck in a valley that they can't get out of. They feel depressed. They feel anxious. They feel lonely and they are fearful; and they don't understand that if they're a believer, they have the power to be able to get out of that valley because it's the same power that raised Christ from the dead.

40:23 We're not accessing it. We're living as if we're our old self. The power lives inside of us, but we're not accessing it and the access to it is relinquishing this facade of control that we have over our life anyway. We think if we try harder, we are the "O foolish Galatians".

40:44 It's not made by that. It's made by the power of God. It's "have mercy on me, oh God, I am a sinner". Psalm 51:1. That's the key. It's not trying harder. It's actually letting go of the fact that you're trying to try harder. It's letting go of that and letting God work and seeing him change.

41:06 I've sat with people, I've sat with students, I've sat with friends, even people in my church that are like, "I just can't change," and I'm like, "You're lying to yourself. You're believing a lie." Anything is possible. Any change is possible in your life, not of you, but because of the power of God.

41:27 Paul: Yes, in all my years of counseling people, there are a couple things that I regularly encountered. One is, as people would describe for me, their experience of being stuck and why they were entrusting themselves to God. They would describe God to me and I would think to myself, "If that was the God I thought actually existed, I wouldn't trust Him either."

42:01 Shelby: Yes, I'd be hopeless too.

42:02 Paul: So I'd have to correct all of that and then, the other thing that I encountered again and again was that they had developed over the years what I would call [an] attitude or spirit of acquiescence. "There's nothing I can do about this. It just is."

42:23 And once you're there, then you quit reaching out for the promises of God, this promise that is just unbelievable. I mean, if you're facing something that you do not have the independent ability to defeat, you actually acquiesce or you reach out for something from someone that you don't have in yourself.

42:52 Shelby: You look for an outside source.

42:54 Paul: Yes, and one of the griefs we experienced the last several years is watching a number of marriages dissolve without biblical grounds. Marriage is hard and I don't so much need to be rescued from Luella, I need to be rescued from me; and I can be impatient and angry and demanding and self-righteous and full of my own wisdom, and you know all those things.

43:29 Shelby: Yes, and you always say, too, in the marriage conferences, that the greatest problem in your marriage is you because you're always taking yourself into every situation that you're in.

43:36 Paul: So you look at those marriages, someplace, sometime, those Christian couples, I get the discouragement. I get how hard it is. I get the hurt, but they quit reaching out for power that they don't have, that's available to them because of the work of Jesus and they just acquiesced.

44:07 And I think of the legacy in the church of children of divorce and what a mark that makes on a child's life. Sometimes I'm just screaming in my loft, "There's power for this, there's power for this. There's power for this."

44:30 Shelby: If only we would access it.

44:31 Paul: And I think that's why Paul is specifically explaining, "Open their eyes, open their hearts, so they get it, so they don't acquiesce, they don't give in."

44:42 Shelby: Yes, it's the forgetting of the gospel. It really is. Martin Luther was asked one time, "Why do you always preach the gospel every Sunday?" And he said, "Because you forget the gospel every week. Every week you keep forgetting."

44:56 And I examine my own self. I have a tendency, I'm prone to believe lies about myself, about the situations I'm in, about what I'm experiencing, and I need to reapply the gospel. It's not a self-help situation. It's not, "Oh, when this is done, then my life will be better." It can't be about those things.

45:18 Circumstances are always going to go up and down, always. I'll never get to a spot where all my circumstances are great and then, I'll be happy; but I constantly live that way. I don't apply the gospel to those deep, meaningful places in my life that set me free.

45:38 And then the little, tiny things, too, in how I speak to my children or how I view a certain setback at work or whatever. If I would apply the gospel to those areas, I would be a free individual. I wouldn't be enslaved by those things. I have the power to do that if I would just say yes to it.

45:57 Paul: Yes, I was thinking as you were talking, maybe a good question to ask people is have had they developed habits of acquiescence or habits of defeat that mean they're living with less than what is provided for them by their Savior because they're letting weakness be the final stage, instead of weakness is the opening stage to finding this power that has been given me.

46:36 Shelby: Yes, it's not the end. As you said, it's the doorway to magnitude of grace, magnitude of power, magnitude of ability to be able to see things in ways that you've never had before.

46:48 Paul: I think you and I — and we've been through it, our marriages haven't been perfect by any means — and I think we'd be shocked at how many Christian couples feel defeated by their marriage, for example, or how many Christian parents feel defeated or how many Christians feel defeated in this culture that has made such unbelievable moral shifts in such a quick period of time. And, boy, we really do need this theology of the empowerment of grace. We all need it.

47:33 Shelby: Yes, and need to be reminded of it. All right. Do you want to move on to the next one?

47:35 Paul: Yes, I do.

47:37 Shelby: So we spent 16 hours on empowering grace. Let's move now to... how about illuminating grace? It's illuminating grace.

47:47 Paul: We need power because our grace conversation will never end.

47:52 Shelby: And people are like, "Okay, I get it. Let's move on." Illuminating grace. You want to go to Psalm 119 or...

47:57 Paul: Yes, okay?

47:59 Shelby: The big psalm, the long psalm. Psalm 119:18. You want me to read that or you want to do it?

48:15 Paul: You may read it.

48:16 Shelby: Okay, Psalm 118:18. ¹⁸Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Your law.

48:25 Paul: So I'm going to throw it to you here. What does that request tell you?

48:31 Shelby: That tells me, in a beautiful way, that I am able to be able to see things I was never able to see before because of God's grace.

48:43 Paul: Well, start there. The first thing it tells you is you're not able to understand God's truth.

48:53 Shelby: As a person myself because of what we were talking about before. The empowering grace that God gives me, God's grace gives me the ability to be able to see things in ways that I'd never been able to see them on my own without God's help.

49:08 Paul: So the reason I said that is the metaphor is important. You wouldn't request a door to be opened for you that you could open yourself, so the fact that the request is for open eyes means my eyes aren't naturally open.

49:26 Shelby: Yes, I would say, you know, this takes me mentally to lots of places in scripture that deal with blind people and recently — and I do mean very recently, within the last year — you remember in Mark 8 when Jesus pulls that blind guy aside and He spits on his eyes?

49:48 And then He covers them and then, he opens them. He says, "What do you see?" And he says, "I see people, but they look like trees walking." I'm sure I'm butchering the translation, but they look like trees walking. And then He covers his eyes again and he's able to see very clearly. He's in this unique relationship with Jesus.

50:07 For so long in my Christian life, I was in relationship with Jesus, yes; but I felt like, spiritually, I was seeing trees walking. I was not able to see clearly and God did something. Again, Jesus does the work here. He's the one that puts His hands over his eyes again and he's able to see clearly in a way that he had never been able to see before.

50:30 And because of God's illuminating grace in my life, He's made it capable. He opened my eyes in ways now that I am able to view people, places, things, events, circumstances, annoyances, setbacks, financial problems, counseling issues, ministry, evangelism, all in a way that is not trees walking anymore.

50:56 I'm able to see clearly because Jesus put His hands over my eyes again and now, I've been able to see. It's been beautiful. It's been amazing. This last year of my life in particular, it's like 20/20 everywhere I'm looking spiritually and I feel like a new person, just like I'm sure that blind man felt like a new person.

51:16 Paul: Yes, there's so much to respond to that. It that appears if you take that, if you take all that scripture has to say about God's grace of illumination that we're not talking about a one-time thing. One of the elements of progressive sanctification is progressive illumination. That's why we all have the experience of going back to a passage in the word of God and we say, "I never saw that before. Was that there?

51:56 Shelby: "That was there the whole time?"

51:59 Paul: Now, part of the process of illumination is God has to work things in your heart that are part of the enablement to see and also, there are times where he has to bring you to a level of maturity so you can handle what you see in His word. There are things in the in the Bible that take maturity to accept and to understand and so, God is my salvation. My coming to Christ begins, opens up this lifelong process of illumination.

52:51 Now, we know from the final moments of Christ on earth that it's not just empowerment that's one of the gifts of the Spirit who now dwells in us, but illumination is. Jesus said to His sort of panicking disciples, "I'm going to send you another Teacher and He will guide you into all truth." That was a promise of the Spirit of God and we see that being fulfilled right away in the first couple chapters of Acts.

53:28 Shelby: And He even said it that it was better that He went away. It seems crazy, but it's true.

53:33 Paul: So there now is dwelling in me, the Spirit of God to empower and illumine. And those things are intertwined ministries the Holy Spirit. He has to empower growth in me and that growth in me is part of His process of illumining His word to me. So they're not they're not totally separate functions of His grace because they're all part of the blessing of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

54:17 Now, one of the things that frustrates me is I think some of my theological heroes, some of the people, even today, that I would look up to a lot, don't talk a whole lot about the theology of the Holy Spirit and I'm not sure why that is because the two things we're talking about — the instrument of this grace in both empowerment and illumination — is the Holy Spirit.

54:58 You must have a robust view of the Holy Spirit because the radical change that takes place at the point of my conversion is that I get the Holy Spirit and if I don't have the Holy Spirit, I don't belong to God.

55:21 So that, again, begs the question and we're answering it, why is that so significant, why is it that I need the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit? I need power and I knew need illumination, and I need illumination because I need truth, and I need truth because I need conviction of my sin, so I would seek God's forgiveness.

55:49 Shelby: Yes, this is something that I feel is, like you said, kind of this almost secret that nobody talks about the way that we should be talking about. We try to live the Christian life on our own. Walking in the power of the Holy Spirit is the key to living the Christian life because the Christian life is impossible to live. You need God to live the Christian life for you, through you, because He's in you.

56:18 And I take young people to Ephesians 5 quite a bit, especially college students, because college students understand the illustration real quick. Ephesians 5:18. ¹⁸Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.

56:35 And then a full stop with this just one verse. It's very easy for a college student to understand drunkenness. If they're not prone to drunkenness themselves, they've seen it everywhere on campus or in their environment.

56:49 So let's break down drunkenness for a second. When you decide to drink, you make a choice. You put alcohol in your body and as a result, you are changed by that and you've given control over to something that has made that change in your life. That leads, according to Paul, to debauchery. It leads to bad things. And all the students go, "Yes, I understand this. Been there, done that." "But," he says, "instead, be filled with the Spirit."

57:24 Why would he put those two things together? When you're drinking, you make a choice, you give control of your life over to the to the influence of alcohol and then you're changed. But he said, "Instead, be filled with the Spirit."

57:35 Similarly, you make a choice, you give control over of your life over to the Spirit and then, you are changed. You do things in different ways. It leads to Galatians 5 — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control.

57:55 All the things that are good, those come from the power, the influence of the Holy Spirit who lives inside of you. You just need to make a choice to give control over to Him and then, you'll be changed. I love this illustration that he uses. Not only is it succinct, again, it's something that I think a lot of people can understand.

58:12 Paul: Yes, it's very, very graphic and simple as so many of the illustrations of scripture are. And so, whenever we talk about grace in the life of a believer, we must talk about the grace of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

58:37 That language has to be in our mouths and we have to say that a lot to people, and because these two things we're talking about that are so significant to the Christian experience, power for living and then eyes open to the magnitude of gospel truth in a way that changes me, changes the way I talk and the way I think and the way I act and all that kind of stuff — those are ministries of the Holy Spirit to the believer.

59:16 Now, here's what God knew and I want to say this in a way that I hope won't be misunderstood. God knew that because when I come to Christ, I don't disappear and go to heaven, He knew there was going to be a period of time where I'm going to have a journey on this broken, groaning world.

59:39 And He knew that being positionally righteous isn't actual righteousness. It's the righteousness of Christ. So it was not enough just to forgive me, He literally had to unzip me and get inside of me by His Spirit so that over the process of a period of time — this language is important — I would actually become what He declared me to be in Christ, righteous.

1:00:18 And we're all somewhere on that continuum, but that is the empowering, illuminating work of the Spirit. We talk about it in a more systematic way as being sanctified by the Spirit. Well, that's a big, global piece. We're looking at two aspects of that.

1:00:48 And I always think of the illumining work of the Spirit as not just being instruction, but conviction. So what the Spirit does is applies that instruction to my heart in such a way that creates guilt in me. Conviction. "Ooh, I'm not what I should be."

1:01:20 Shelby: Been there plenty of times.

1:01:22 Paul: And so, when we talk about the illumining ministry of the Holy Spirit, this is an important distinction. We're not talking academic, abstract, impersonal information. That instruction, that illumination is meant to be transformational. And so, it's not just instruction, it's instruction and conviction.

1:01:53 Shelby: Yes, I think the tendency is to look at the instruction and apply that to our lives as if it were some play on a football field and run the play. I think that's what our tendency is to do. Give me the formula and I will live out the formula.

1:02:11 But if you look in the themes of scripture, Old Testament and New Testament, God does not want empty religion. No empty religion. He says, "I reject your sacrifices if your heart is not in it. According to Psalm 51, ¹⁷The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. He wants brokenness in us, not religion.

1:02:36 Paul: Yes, in Isaiah, He says, "Enough of that. Those sacrifices are an abomination to Me." This is system He ordained, but what He's saying is, "I don't have your heart and I want your heart." And so, the focus of God's ministry of the Spirit of illumination is the reclamation of your heart.

1:03:01 It's not just your mind and I think we get too comfortable with a huge disharmony between our confessional theology and our functional theology. Great example is Jonah. You used the example of Jonah. So Jonah runs, gets on a boat, God sends a storm, guys in the boat want to find who's the reason for the storm and they find Jonah asleep in the bottom of the boat, and they ask him who he is.

1:03:41 Now, listen to this. This is a man who's shaking his fist in the face of God and turn to go in another direction. He says, "I'm a Hebrew. I fear the LORD, the God of heaven." This man is showing no fear of God whatsoever. So we know that is an abstract cultural confession that is not true of his heart. That's not what we're talking about in illumination.

1:04:12 Now, do I need the information of the gospel? Sure, I do. The facts, the truths? Of course, I do, but they're never meant to be held separate from my heart. That's why there's a necessity of the ministry of conviction, which should lead me to confession, which should lead to repentance and new ways of living.

1:04:36 Yes, and when He has your heart, like we were talking about before, that change is possible. How do you think about how you talk to your wife? What do you think about your grown-up children when they make decisions that you would not do? Are you rolling your eyes at them?

1:04:54 How is the gospel changing the way you talk to the most annoying person in your family? How is the gospel changing the way you react on the highway when someone cuts you off? So those are all the little, tiny things that this kind of stuff illuminates for us and helps us to change.

1:05:08 Paul: Well, that's what I was going to say. Let's put that in illumining language. Has the illumination of the word of the Spirit illumined you and your marriage, illumined you as a parent, illumined you in your private thought life, and has that borne fruit in confession and repentance?

1:05:31 So when we talk about this ministry of illumination, yes, the Spirit is a teacher, but we need to take that in the deepest form of what that means because I need way more than information. I need heart in life.

1:05:52 Shelby: Yes, because the information you can take in and fake it. You could run the play. And there's been plenty of times when I have annoyed-cleaned the house. You know, when you hate-clean a house and then your wife comes home, and you go, "Look, I cleaned the house." She's like, "That's great, but you didn't actually want to clean the house. You were doing it because you were just trying to get it done and check a box."

1:06:16 And even in marriage, people understand that you can't just do things and your heart not be in it. Your spouse wants your heart. That's what they want. They don't want you to do things for them. You're not a robot. You're a human being. Human beings require relationship.

1:06:30 Now, we require relationship with God, too. If I just do all the stuff I'm supposed to do in ministry, my prayer time, my journaling, my reading of the scriptures, my reading of the commentary about the scriptures, and I do all these things without my heart, God says, "No, I don't want your sacrifices. No empty religion. I don't want it."

1:06:53 Yes, and it's so important to make that emphasis that it's the heart, it's the heart, it's the heart, it's the heart. And God presents Himself as being jealous. Now in this context, jealousy is not an evil thing. True love is always jealous. If your dear wife came to you and said, "I have another lover, if you have a twit of love for her, that would be inacceptable to you. You're unwilling to share her heart. That's what love does.

1:07:33 And so, God is not satisfied when we have reached a high level of biblical literacy and theological knowledge, but our heart is owned by other lovers. And so again, I want to keep repeating this. Illumination always has as its goal, heart and life transformation. It's not information. Information is a path along the way, but we have to take it further.

1:08:12 Now, here's what it means for parents, here's what it means for husbands and wives, here's what it means for the workplace, here's what it means for evangelism — the world is blind. It's blind and your force of your personality is not enough, your gift of communication is not enough, your threats to your children ["Don't make me come up those stairs one more time"] is not enough because none of those things has the power to break through the blindness of sin.

1:09:03 I had a professor who told the story of a student who graduated from seminary and he came back, and he was just so depressed. And he asked the student, he says, "Why are you depressed?" He says, "I've tried and tried and tried, but no one our community seems to want the gospel." And he said, "Of course, they don't. Something needs to happen for them to want the gospel."

1:09:36 And so, evangelism is not about just a set of strategies. Strategies don't break through spiritual blindness. Parenting is not setting up just a nice system of rules and punishments. Marriage is not just negotiating things so that two idolaters can be happy.

1:10:11 All these things need the illumining work of the Spirit of God that helps me to see His truth in a way that's personal, a way that creates grief inside of me, a way that makes me hunger for the personal work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

1:10:24 Shelby: Yes, and there's a hopelessness too that you can feel, maybe as a parent when you get to that spot because you see all the examples of people who are like, "Well, I raised my kids this way and then they turned out this way," and, "Well, I did this and they turned out this way." It's like it kind of seems that mixed with our culture right now, there's no hope. "I can't do anything that's going to guarantee that my kids love Jesus or turn out right or whatever."

1:10:49 And there's a hopelessness there, but there's also a neediness and neediness really is the key to living the Christian life. Jesus said, "Apart from Me, you can do nothing." Nothing! So this illuminating grace should drive us to a point of recognizing our need, as individuals, as husbands and wives, as parents, as grandparents, as coworkers, whatever, recognizing our need and then driving us to the truth of the gospel; prayer, making sure that we're lifting up the people who are surrounding us and saying, "God, You are our only hope. Apart from You, we can do nothing." And I actually believe that. I have to remind myself of that, but I have to believe that and drive myself to it because neediness in the Christian life, that's where strength is.

1:11:43 Paul: Yes, and I think there's another way we can take this conversation. It should not, therefore, surprise us that our culture is where it is. This is the kind of culture that is built by spiritually blind people. Should we accept that? No. Should we pray for change? Should we work toward change? Absolutely. We should be activist, but we should not be shocked that this is what we're dealing with.

1:12:21 I mean, where would you and I be apart from the illumination that has been God's gift to us in His Spirit? Why do we see these things clearly? Why do we mourn the choices our culture is making? Because our eyes have been opened by an act of sovereign grace.

1:12:47 Shelby: Yes, I think coming to a realization that we as Christians are in exile. We're not home. We live in Babylon, so to speak, and that, yes, we should work for the change and the good of our environment, where we live, our culture, our country, all those kind[s] of things.

1:13:07 Yes, we should, but we should never expect it to be we'll finally get to a spot where all the right decisions are made and then everything's going to be good from there on out with the right people in the right positions and the right choices and the right laws. It's never going to happen apart from Jesus.

1:13:25 Jesus will come and set that up eventually, but we need to remind ourselves pretty continually, "I am on foreign ground. When I accepted Jesus, I became a citizen of heaven and I am not a citizen of anywhere else. Primarily, I'm a citizen of heaven."

1:13:40 So it's really important that I remind myself that this is not my home. I want to enjoy the benefits of what it means to be free in America, for example, and I appreciate those things; but if I expect that to be my Eden, it's never going to happen.

1:13:55 Paul: Yes, I want to say one other thing, too, is that it doesn't make sense to despise blind people. Why would you despise someone who’s blind?

1:14:07 Shelby: Yes, unpack that a little bit.

1:14:09 Paul: Well, you know, if you met a blind person on the street, I don't think your first response would be to despise them and mock them, but Christians are comfortable doing that all the time. They don't see. They're unable to see. It takes grace to see. They're blind.

1:14:35 The Bible uses that example, that word picture "the blind". And we've just allowed ourselves to be comfortable with the response to blind people. That's just morally wrong. I mean, your natural response if you were at a corner, there's a blind person there and they were going to cross a busy street, you wouldn't mock them. You wouldn't despise them. You would offer them help because your response would be compassion.

1:15:15 That's why I think this theology of grace is so important because that's implications that we're talking about now. Illumining grace, the fact that it is grace, it's not "I'm something special", should cause my heart to be compassionate toward the billions of people who are blind.

1:15:40 Shelby: Yes, that's not the tendency we have. We're really good at making villains out of people who shouldn't be labeled as villains. Like, why are we shocked by people's behavior, too? I am. I'm consistently shocked by like, "I can't believe they would do something like that."

1:15:57 Well, first of all, it's a prideful statement because my heart is capable of the evil that people do and that I see all the time. It's prideful. But it's also like, well, apart from the grace of God, I would be doing the same things. And not just that, everybody would be doing the same thing. So why am I surprised by that? Being surprised by people's blindness, as you say, is a position of arrogance on my part and God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

1:16:29 Paul: Yes, and there are ways that we should be shocked at how darkness.

1:16:36 Shelby: I'm not saying we accept it.

1:16:38 Paul: No, yes, but we live in a world that is just blind and we're experiencing where blindness goes. What's happened in my lifetime is the illumining presence of the church that was center culture, that brought light and seeing to the culture, even to blind people, well, we're not there now. We're not center culture anymore. We're fringe culture. So what's going to rise to the surface and control the choices of the culture is blindness. That's not sightedness.

1:17:28 Shelby: Yes, what do you think [are] some practical steps we could take in order to help adjust our lenses so that we could see other people's blindness and respond with compassion as opposed to disgust of individuals? Again, we're not accepting the fact that people make horrible, wicked, evil decisions. Never, never, never that, but knowing that God loves human beings and when we make enemies or belittle or mock people who are spiritually blind, it's not godly at all. What can we do to change?

1:18:03 Paul: Well, there is a heresy in despising and mocking in that way because the heart I'm mocking is "I'm better than you". Yes, you despise people because you think you're better than them. That's not true. But for the grace of God, I'd be right where you were and all these things that are horribly distasteful to me and make me want to weep take sightedness and that's not because I'm a good person. It's because I've been blessed, chosen to be a recipient of God's grace.

1:18:48 And that's why I think you have to continue to tell yourself, "I'm not better. I've been rescued by illumining grace. I'm not better," because, again, you remove God's grace from Paul and Shelby," there's no end to the evil that we would be capable of.

1:19:16 Shelby: Yes, I don't think we preach that to ourselves very often. We kind of pat ourselves on the back pretty consistently about how awesome we are. I was reading a book two days ago because I'm doing an interview of someone who wrote a book on humility. And so, I'm reading their book on humility to get ready for my interview with them.

1:19:36 And as I'm reading the book, I was in my car reading the book, getting ready to meet a couple of guys for lunch, finishing up because I had some extra time. I'm reading this book and when I was done, I closed it, put the bookmark in and I set it on the passenger side chair in my car with the face up that said "humility" on it.

1:19:54 And I was like, "Wait a minute, I'm doing that on purpose in case someone walks by and goes, 'There's Shelby's car and he's so humble.'" It's just ridiculous. How evil my heart is!" It's so ridiculous.

1:20:05 Paul: Well, it's like the Luke 18 story of the Pharisee and the publican. Who do we naturally, right away identify with? The publican, not the Pharisee." We don't say, "Yes, I'm that Pharisee guy. I pride myself I'm not like other people. I tell God I don't really need Him. That's me."

1:20:22 Shelby: Yes, I need to remind myself constantly that if there's a villain in a biblical story, I'm way closer to the villain than I am the hero because I want to make myself the hero all the time. So do you want to move on to the next one?

1:20:36 Paul: No.

1:20:36 Shelby: No, you don't? Well, too bad because we're going to anyway.

1:20:38 Paul: No, we're not.

1:20:38 Shelby: No? What time is it? 12:00?

1:20:43 Paul: I only want to go for a couple hours and we'll never get another one in fifteen minutes.

1:20:47 Shelby: All right, all right. Well, what do you want to talk about for another 15 minutes?

1:20:50 Paul: We don't need to.

1:20:52 Shelby: Nothing? All right. Well, okay, listen. I told you this yesterday, as I was going through and preparing for our time today. Reading through these verses and talking about these different aspects of grace has led me to worship. It's led me to worship and I'm so grateful as I flip through scripture, both Old Testament and New, at the prompting of the verses that we talked about and some things that God brought to my mind and my heart. I'm so overwhelmed with the grace of God.

1:21:25 It's just everywhere because we talk about blind people, I need to have the scales removed from my eyes as well. I need to be able to see aspects of grace that I just take for granted all the time. I don't label, I don't pause and double click on certain things that God wants to show me.

1:21:44 It's such a gift to be able to look through scripture, have conversations like this, and focus on the truth of God's grace in every aspect of my life if I would simply take the time to pause and reflect on it. So thank you so much.

1:22:01 Paul: Yes, and I was thinking the same thing, that these functions, aspects of God's grace are not just items I outline. They are glorious gifts of a God who had the harness of the forces of nature and control the events of human history so [at] the right time His Son would come.

1:22:26 All these gifts are balanced on the willingness of Jesus, too. You read Isaiah 53, which is his job description, and you think who would accept the job description that despised, rejected, pierced, crushed, but Jesus was willing.

1:22:43 Shelby: He said yes.

1:22:44 Paul: And God had zeal to follow through with all His redemptive promises. The things that we're talking about is a picture of the awesome unleashing of the power of God for our redemption and we are gloriously blessed.

1:23:12 We don't need big cars and huge houses and all that stuff. We're gloriously blessed because the God of the universe has said, "I want Shelby and I want Paul, and I'm going to fill them with My Spirit. And they're going to understand things and become men they could never become because of my grace.

1:23:36 Shelby: Yes, beautiful.

1:23:36 Paul: It's just stunning to think about and again, we laugh because we just scratched the surface, because what happens when you talk about God's grace, it's... I can remember my kids were going to a summer camp, and one of the things they did was they had a pond and they had what they called Water Scopes. You could stick into the pond and you could see just a little universe down there.

1:24:10 And I can remember my son, Justin said, "Dad, every look is another universe." That's what this is. We don't get through these because they're so deep and so multifaceted. Each one of those is amazing. So what is that King James translation of Psalm 145? ³His greatness no one can fathom. [NIV]

1:24:39 Fathom, that word is a metaphor. I mean, now we think of it "we can't understand"; but "fathom" is a measurement of nautical depth. It actually means this great and [inaudible] bottom. The reason you can't fathom it is you can dig down deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, and you'll never get to the bottom.

1:24:59 Shelby: Yes, that verse in the end of 1 Peter 1 where it talks about the gospel, something in which angels long to look and if angels are constantly fascinated by the beauty of the gospel, of what He has done for us and they're ancient creatures, they've been alive for eons, they never get sick of looking at the gospel? Let's pull out the Water Scopes.

1:25:23 Paul: Yes, as seen in John, there wouldn't be enough paper and pen in the universe.

1:25:28 Shelby: Yes, the whole world couldn't hold the book, so let's keep digging in.

1:25:33 Paul: Amen.