035 Interview with Keith Palmer {Clip 3 | 1:02}
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You don’t have to have a counseling center to be effective in your community. In fact, you know, I would argue from scripture that it’s you know, as you go you’re preaching the gospel so you know, the church is gathering together to be equipped, to be encouraged, and then we disperse, right? We go to our work places, we go to our schools, we go to our neighborhoods. That one-on-one ministry, where now we have some equipping to be able to address some of those life issues, you know I think as a pastor I’m thinking I want the average person at our church to be able to you know, talking to their neighbor next door that evening and a life issue comes up. You know, a teenager that’s addicted to something, or you know, they’re having marriage problems. I would hope that a believer at that point wouldn’t say, “Well hey, let’s go to our community counseling ministry,” although they could do that, but that they would engage them wisely and in a loving way from the scriptures to give them gospel hope in that moment.
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035 Interview with Keith Palmer {Clip 1 | 2:21}
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You know something I heard another leader in the Biblical counseling movement, I heard him say years ago, and that is, “We don’t want to have a counseling ministry, we want to be a counseling ministry.” When I was first, I was hired at our church years ago as an associate pastor, to be about equipping the equippers, or discipling the disciples. So whether it’s men’s ministry, women’s ministry, [inaudible 00:08:53], children’s, youth, you know whatever, my role was largely was to come alongside those existing leaders and equip them and help them to do the shepherding work that they were doing. I didn’t really intend it to be this way, but I found the Biblical counseling curriculum that I received in seminary as a wonderful, rich source of material to help equip disciples.
So didn’t realize it at the time, but by teaching literally every leader in our church who was teaching at some level, taking them through a basic course in Biblical counseling, I didn’t tell them that. I said, “This is discipleship material,” but to get that type of training it really created a culture in our church that helping others with the gospel from the scriptures for life problems, for training children, training adults, you know, whatever it is, that’s normal church ministry. That’s what the Bible teaches us to do. So that’s been just wonderfully helpful in our church, because now there’s a culture of discipleship. We do have a formal counseling ministry, but I think if you were to bring our people into the studio here and ask them, you know, “What’s one of the facets of your church?”
That they would say, “We believe that it’s every believer’s role to minister the Bible to other people in the body of Christ”, whether it’s for some huge, life changing thing going on, or just the everyday you know, anger, anxiety, conflict, you know just that’s our role to again, going back to Ephesians Four you know the pastors and teachers equip the saints, but it’s the believers that minister to one another. I think that’s created a healthy culture of discipleship in our church. It really, it’s just an extension of our Ecclesiology, but applied in a way that I really think has had a wonderful impact on our church. That would be one area where I think it’s been helpful.
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035 Interview with Keith Palmer {Clip 2 | 1:48}
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Biblical counseling, meaning in our view that’s just taking the gospel, taking the scriptures and ministering to hurting people that are struggling with life problems, that has allowed us to evangelize our community in a way consistent with our ecclesiology. What I mean is, we’re not trying to put on a show, we’re not you know, doing entertainment.
We’re not trying to attract people using worldly things. We are trying to minister the gospel to people who are hurting, who have life problems, marriage problems, and we’re doing it in a way that derives from what we believe about what the church should do and be. So for example, I may sit down with somebody in our church for community counseling and I say, “Hey, my name’s Keith, I’m one of the pastors here and I’m thankful you’re here.” We believe that all life problems are really just symptoms of our greatest problem, which is we were made by this creator God, but we’re alienated from him in relationship because of sin, and the personal work of Jesus Christ in his life, death, and resurrection is what restores that relationship and leads to every good thing that he has for us. So that’s how I’m going to counsel you, and this is God’s word, the Bible on my desk, are you okay with that? I’ve never had somebody say no.
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033 Interview with Brian Borgman {Clip 4 | 2:37}
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Well I think there’s two interrelated things that have to be in place. One is you have to have a culture, a climate, where helping each other is part of what’s expected. Part of building that culture, of course, is preaching and spending time on the “see to it brethren that there not be anyone among you with an evil heart of unbelief, that falls away from the living God, but encourage one another day after day.” For me what’s been really important in terms of preaching is not only the biblical admonitions to perseverance, but the way that the one another passages fit in with perseverance. We need each other to persevere in the faith. We are means of grace to each other. I think that’s one of the ways that the climate is built.
Then you have to actually put real tools into people’s hands. You can’t just say, this is what you’ve got to be doing and then let them figure it out on their own in a sense. You get some people that are going to gravitate towards that and figure it out on their own, but by and large you’re going to need to be equipping. So everything from the smallest things, like having a book room that’s stocked with books that are designed, so good biblical counseling books for instance. Seeing it modeled. Hearing it taught. Then taking specific opportunities to equip. I think the climate and then the particular equipping are actually two things that come together that help.
God has blessed us with a congregation that really loves each other. There’s really a sense of family. It’s not like we’re a tiny congregation, we’re not a mega church either, but we’re not a tiny congregation so it takes a little bit of work to be involved in people’s lives. I think that having that, in a sense, that biblical undergirding of “look we’re in this together and I’m going to help you and you’re going to help me.”
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033 Interview with Brian Borgman {Clip 3 | 2:15}
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There’s something about these sins in particular that really … I want to say you shrink back from because you know what’s coming. Once things start to be uncovered you start to realize “okay here we go again” and you realize that there is going to be lying and deception and that this is going to take a lot out of our eldership. It’s going to take a lot out of the people that we ask to get involved. There’s a sense in which I really do kind of shrink back from this emotionally, just I don’t want to do this. But you also then realize how much is at stake and somebody’s out there destroying their life and not just theirs but a spouse, children, a church body, people around them.
You realize what’s at stake and you try to be proactive. You try to be assertive, maybe even at times aggressive, in trying to deal with it. This is not something that you can say “Oh, Craig, you had an outburst of anger, why don’t we get together every other week and we’ll work through this or that.” You’re talking about something that is so consuming that that person basically needs supervision 24 hours a day, if truth be told, right. Thankfully we have very good group of elders. We have very loving church, people that are willing to get involved, but it is a daunting task.
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There’s something about these sins in particular that really … I want to say you shrink back from because you know what’s coming. Once things start to be uncovered you start to realize “okay here we go again” and you realize that there is going to be lying and deception and that this is going to take a lot out of our eldership. It’s going to take a lot out of the people that we ask to get involved. There’s a sense in which I really do kind of shrink back from this emotionally, just I don’t want to do this. But you also then realize how much is at stake and somebody’s out there destroying their life and not just theirs but a spouse, children, a church body, people around them.
You realize what’s at stake and you try to be proactive. You try to be assertive, maybe even at times aggressive, in trying to deal with it. This is not something that you can say “Oh, Craig, you had an outburst of anger, why don’t we get together every other week and we’ll work through this or that.” You’re talking about something that is so consuming that that person basically needs supervision 24 hours a day, if truth be told, right. Thankfully we have very good group of elders. We have very loving church, people that are willing to get involved, but it is a daunting task.
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033 Interview with Brian Borgman {Clip 2 | 2:47}
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Yeah, our church is 24 years old and I planted the church. It seems that from our very inception we have dealt with people with drug and alcohol problems all along. What the talk is going to consist of is me basically talking about first of all lessons regarding the offender and the sin, just sort of common themes. Some of the stuff will be obvious, some of the principles or lessons. It was important too that I assess what we did that wasn’t helpful. I had files and notes and went back over things and thought man, if we were doing this today we would not do that. But then there was other stuff that was somewhat instinctive.
Trying to get a team of people around a person, because in one sense I want to say that the drug and alcohol abuse are sins like other sins, but we also know there’s something unique about these sins as well. It’s very consuming. Well, the counseling becomes very consuming. Just to see the way that in the past we just sort of instinctively put people around people that were struggling. People that had both experience, personal experience. People that were grounded. So those kinds of things.
One thing that has been very important is our approach to church discipline, which some people would think that under these circumstances, you know, for instance we just heard that every addict deals with shame, and not to downplay any of that but actually the weight, the gravity of church discipline has been a significant thing. In fact, there’s a woman here from our church who was on the brink of excommunication and God used the discipline process to bring her to repentance. She’s here. So just some of those kinds of observations, lessons, positives, negatives.
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033 Interview with Brian Borgman {Clip 1 | 1:46}
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Yeah, I mean we’re always trying to help people. We’re trying to point them to Christ. We’re trying to bring word of God to bear on their lives and help them see how the bible really does have the answers. Not just an answer book, per se, but it is God’s power. What IBCD has done, and this goes back years, is that it puts practical tools on how to help people into our hands. I’m glad we have four or five people from our church here this year. Saw a guy from Wyoming this morning. I said “Hey, I didn’t know you were coming.” He goes, “Well you told me to.”
I just think that this is really one of the most practical and helpful conferences that there is. IBCD itself is just a treasure trove of resources. You can go to the website there’s … You know you can just … You’re dealing with something, you can have people listen, you can listen yourself, and so I love what you guys do and, of course, love what George and Jim have built into this over the years. I personally have profited from it. People in our church have profited from it. We’ve done levels one and two for Sunday school, for the care and discipleship. I just see this as really just sort of a hands on equipping type ministry.
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032 Interview with Caroline Newheiser {Clip 1 | 1:19}
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Yeah. Let’s take the issue of living with an angry husband, my workshop, it’s wives who are coming and saying, “I need help.” Often it’s, though, it’s because their children are feeling threatened. Maybe a husband has pushed a son up against a wall, pinned him against a wall. And she’s going, “We need help.” She may be willing to endure what she’s going through but when it touches her kids, she’s out there and she’s saying, “I need somebody to come alongside.”
A lady like that might be hesitant to go to her pastor especially if her husband is part of the leadership. But if a wise woman is in the church, someone not even trained in the ultimate sense, but someone who’s a friend, who’s already involved in her life or she knows that she can go to and this lady is going to keep a confidence, this lady will give her wise counsel, biblical counsel, then that lady also should be prepared to come in and sit with this woman. Even in marriage counseling, to have a female sitting there listening to the counseling, I think is a great benefit. You’re going to get a two-for-one that way.
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032 Interview with Caroline Newheiser {Clip 2 | 2:47}
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That’s a great question and I think, obviously, these promoting women’s issues, our conference this year is about addictions. We had the pre-conference about domestic abuse. There’s an example where women need to be coming alongside. How do you get them to do that?
A lot of it is because women are talking to one another and in my workshop on “Living with an Angry Husband” I encourage the ladies to come alongside and ask questions if they see bruising, for example. Just in a loving way, “Could you help me understand what’s happening in your life because I care about you.” That’s happening on the one-on-one level in the church, and then those women are the ones who might be the people to encourage the ladies, the wives, to go to the leadership with domestic abuse or domestic violence issue.
I’m encouraged by reading 1 Thessalonians 5:11, which says, “Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing.” As preachers, you’re preaching from the pulpit that we should do the one another care. It should be happening individually in the church, but those ladies will need training, a lot of them, that’s why they’re at this conference.
Mainly, they were attracted to the topic or know somebody or they’re already involved in counseling and these issues are coming into the office. The pastor could encourage from the pulpit by preaching one another care and then organizations like IBCD, which bring counseling into the church is what we need to encourage women to take advantage of.
Not everybody has to get a masters of arts in Christian counseling, but they can do one another care and they’re called to. Older women are called to help younger women to love their husbands, for example. This is what the goal is, I know, of IBCD, and this is what we need to be reminded of. I wish that the pastors hearing this podcast will take that into account.
It could be that the culture of the church could be changed by that teaching. As it comes up in scripture, to just bring it out that even cross-generational, I’m not talking about even your pals, but looking out for the other women in the church, keeping an eye on building relationships with people outside of your category of age, and experience.
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030 Interview with Mark Shaw {Clip 2 |2:08}
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Oh, yeah. It’s so rewarding. We talk about 30% success rate, but those 30% make the other 70 worth it. Even those 70, some of them have called me. We had a girl from California who once called and said, “I got saved the night before I was dismissed from your program. I was led to Christ. I repented and trusted in Christ the night before I left. I was dismissed the next day.” Usually those things are planned, especially long distance. She’s doing great. She’s one of those 70% who didn’t graduate but is doing great.
So you have those kinds of stories. We have girls that have been trafficked and treated just brutally. To see them now loving Jesus and having a different understanding of who God is, trusting him. It’s fabulous. They serve. They’re delightful to be around. The couple, few ladies I’m thinking about who have been trafficked by their own families, they’re delightful young women to be around. They’re so grateful for everything, because they’ve been in wicked, wicked situations, so they’re thankful. That’s always nice to see.
A lot of ladies will volunteer in our program, help us. Many take biblical counselor training and so forth. I mentioned one is in the Dominican Republic now, serving as a missionary, for a year. That’s neat to see. People who think, “Well, this is very hard and unrewarding. We should let other people, other than the church, handle this,” they’re missing out on the blessings of seeing God radically transform people who will just live for him in victory in a sacrificial way. They’re missing out on that.
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030 Interview with Mark Shaw {Clip 1 | 1:12}
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I always say, and I’ll probably say this tomorrow, is that … I always say that the church needs people who have been struggling with idolatry and addiction, because they know how to lay down their lives, they’ve just laid it down for the wrong thing, for alcohol and drugs. If you can get them to now love Jesus, and God has to do that, please understand, but if they make that change and you help them to now love Jesus, they’ll do so in a radical way, where they’ll lay down their lives for Christ, which is what we want.
We need people who have struggled with addiction. They understand sacrifice. They’re willing to do that. Proverbs 23 really gives some key insights. We’ll go through this tomorrow in the conference, but there’s just some very good things God’s given us in his word that help us to just understand the heart of an idolator, especially with a drug and alcohol addiction, that are laid out there in Proverbs 23, verses 29 through 35.
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029 Interview with Ed Welch {Clip 3 | 1:19}
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Ministry consists essentially of these two parts of knowing a person and knowing the Scripture. And I think historically, we tend to know Scripture fairly well, but sometimes we go quickly over knowing the person. And I would like there to be this generation after generation of material that when people read it, they say, that’s me. That person has described my very experience better than I could have described it myself. This person knows me. I would like us to do that.
I would like us to have stories and case studies of people that are vivid and three-dimensional and shows everything, the really good things in a person’s life and the hard things and the bad things all in one sort of composite mess. So first as a group for people to go away saying, not only did that person know me, but they know me in a way that I’ve never been known, they know me in depths where I haven’t been known before.
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029 Interview with Ed Welch {Clip 2 |1:36}
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Seeing the simple teaching on idolatry that goes throughout Scripture and making it available to the topic of addictions came about by, and here’s one of the ways I think I’ve really appreciated seeing the nature of idolatry is this phrase voluntary slavery. It shows Scripture’s sophistication, understanding addictions where it’s voluntary, we do it because we want it, we love it, we love it more than life itself, but it’s also this abject slavery and it’s controlling us and telling us what to do even if we want to get out of it. Scripture brings both of those things to the struggle of addiction. So that’s, it came because I had friends I wanted to try to help.
In some ways I would say the book on shame, which is a more recent book, it doesn’t exclusively have addictions in view but as I was writing that book, certainly brothers and sisters I know who struggled with an addiction, all of a sudden, I realized this was so critical for them as well. And books on fear and anger and everything else that can become interwoven with our addictions.
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029 Interview with Ed Welch {Clip 1 | 0:56}
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One is people raise these complex stories and situations that rightly should be overwhelming, and none of have these simple sort of, here, do this and everything will be better. Not that any problem has that as an answer. But that simple turn from knowing a person to, okay, how can we pray? Given what you’re saying, how can we pray? That’s what’s certainly I find great encouragement that essentially I’m introducing, there is a person to whom we can turn with this, and we might not even know what he says at this point, but we know to whom to turn and Lord teaches us to pray.
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028 Interview with Chris Moles {Clip 4 | 1:52}
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So as I look across a group of men, I’ve got a class of 20 guys or I’m doing an individual with a guy. Yeah, there’s a lot of work that’s got to be done but the reality is, for me, what keeps me going? Twofold. One there’s hope, right? This is not an indescribable monster in front of me, this is a human being who yes, has made wicked and sinful choices. And that’s why Jesus came and did what he did, praise God. And secondly, each man that I minister to or work with, is representative of a family, behind him. So with every face of every man, even if he’s rebellious or angry or bitter at me or whatever, there’s a victim, children, maybe potential victims that are there.
So to me, it’s worth the effort even if the batting average is low. Because Jim’s exactly right. I love the blade of grass analogy. You can go for weeks or months and just things seem to be hopeless and that Sisyphus type thing, which is like, “I got to push this boulder again and nothing’s happening.” And then you have that one incident where this guy comes to you and he says, “Hey I was baptized last weekend. I’m being discipled by my pastor and he wanted to talk to you.” Or, you have the one guy who years after the program, you find out that he’s working at a Church camp and his marriage is great. Or you worked with a guy for weeks upon weeks and then his wife sees you in a restaurant and she hugs you out of nowhere.
While those are rare, right? Those are great reminders of how efficient and powerful the Gospel is. So to me, I guess if you focus on that, it really doesn’t get you down.
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028 Interview with Chris Moles {Clip 3 | 3:20}
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And I was talking to one of our participants here at the Conference earlier where he was talking about batting averages. He’s like, “It doesn’t seem like we have a good batting average.” And I said, “This is not an all star game. This is not a high percentage game because it’s hard, hard work.”
But with that said, Jim, I think what does distinguish, and I don’t want to say my work, but I think what distinguishes biblical counselors. Let me put it this way, when I first got involved in batterer intervention, when I was invited into this secular model of working with men to see behavioral change, I knew going in that that wasn’t my goal and I quickly found a partner or the lady who invited me into the program, my partner, I quickly found an ally. Once we began talking about the centrality of the heart and she’s also a Believer, it transformed the way that we did programming. Because we knew that behavior changes is not enough, right? It’s like stapling bananas on an apple tree, it’s only temporary. There had to be heart transformation.
And so over the years we’ve doing this, I discovered that this type of work fits our paradigm extremely well. Because at first, in order to do batterer intervention or abuser intervention, you’ve got to believe, I think, that change can happen. And you’re right, we get pushback. It’s interesting, I get some pushback from the biblical counseling movement, but I get more pushback from my secular peers who, “Men can’t change. You shouldn’t invest this much time in them. Some programs, they should only exist so that two hours a week, advocates can go to the house and try to persuade women to leave.” Some people literally see us as babysitters so they can try to go and work with the victim.
So I think for me, what really compels me is that we have the message of the Gospel that says, “Not only did Jesus die for us, He died for violent men,” as I like to say. That’s the reality. Not only did He die for violent men, He died in place of a violent man. It’s not like Barabbas was this every day dude. He was an insurgent. And so the very message of the Gospel reaches even to men who’ve used coercion, control, physical force. And so if we don’t hold steady that hope, then I think we’re — I don’t want to say we’re not Christian — but we’re a little less than Christian. And so we got to really hold on to that.
But I would agree with you, I think there is this model out there or this mindset that abusive people can’t change and that we should just kick them out of the Church, which my next question to that is always, “Well what about the next Church?” “We should remove them from the home,” and my question to that is, “What about the next victim?” Because if we do victim care, which I’m all for, I agree with you on that. We help a victim and I want to do that. But if we do really solid perpetrator work, then what happens if a man’s heart’s changed? Then that victim’s safe and every subsequent victim is safe because this is a men’s issue.
I’m proud in many ways to have that banner but I think it’s something that biblical counseling can really get behind because of all the models out there, we’re the one who believes that change is possible for anybody.
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028 Interview with Chris Moles {Clip 2 | 1:30}
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Several years ago I was on my way to a conference. I had not been speaking long, for very long on this subject, and I was on my way to a pretty large conference. And I called an advocate friend of mine, somebody that I trusted who has been in the work longer than me. And I asked her, I said, “Look, if you were in my situation and you were going to be addressing hundreds of pastors, what would you say?” And she thought for like just a few seconds and she said, “Chris, can you just remind them that the domestic violence is a sin?” And I think where that was coming from was all her years in the shelter, the place she had seen the most resistance was from the Church. And so I think there has been growing awareness in the Church. And I think the most beneficial thing we’ve done is we’ve actually reached out and had conversations with folks that maybe philosophically, we disagree with but we’ve acknowledged there’s a problem. They’ve been doing this work for a while. Let’s at least have a conversation, “How can we best help as members of the body of Christ?” Rather than just denying its existence. Once we recognize how severe of a problem it is, understanding we have a role to play.
And I think when service providers see that, especially in this day and age when government funding is down, where shelters are closing, where talk therapy’s not so popular, the Church actually has a pretty big void that we can fill. And if people who are doing this work see our compassion and our genuine sincerity, it can be an inviting atmosphere. So I think there’s plenty of work for us to do here.
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028 Interview with Chris Moles {Clip 1 | 1:32}
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Yeah, so I think one, you have to have an evangelistic heart. There has to be kind of a missional mindset to it so you understand that this is an opportunity for me to engage in the workplace. So I think I came into it first saying, “There are certain things about me that the people I work with and the people I work for need to know. One, I’m a Christian. Two, I’m a pastoral ministry. So my experience is not from some other field.”
One of the great blessing for me was I had a supervisor who told me one time, “Chris, you know, if we had a psychologist in this role, we would want him or her to speak to mental health. If we had a law enforcement officer in this role, we’d want them to speak to legal issues. So we want you to be free to speak in your area of expertise. So if a guy has a question about the Bible or you have some insight that can help them spiritually or from a faith-based perspective, we want you to feel free to do that.” So having that type of freedom was a huge blessing upfront in this particular work.
But also, I think, it’s just a matter of being obedient and allowing God to do the work that He’s called you to. And it’s certainly, not every community is going to be like my community. And there’s going to be maybe some resistance but I’d say if you’re really interested, give it a shot. And the first place to do that or how to do that is to maybe connect with some local agencies and get to know the believers that are there. Because they are there. There are believers in government agencies that are really looking for allies.
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¿Qué es la consejería bíblica 2?
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¿Qué es la consejería bíblica 1?
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Gracia para cuando las cosas son difíciles
Las pruebas son experiencias ordinarias para cristianos que viven en un mundo caído. Puedes confiar que Dios está obrando en tus pruebas y que usa las pruebas para ayudarte a crecer. Esta sesión te ayudará ver la bondad de Dios en tus pruebas.
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Aconsejando a aquellos que han perdido un cónyuge o un hijo
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Aconsejando a las víctimas de abuso
Las victimas de todos tipos de abuso necesitan ayuda para superar su situación en una manera bíblica. Esta sesión habla de aspectos de aconsejar a aquellos que han sufrido el abuso.
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Aconsejando a aquellos que abusan
El evangelio ofrece esperanza aún a los que han abusado a otra persona. Esta sesión habla de varios aspectos de aconsejar a aquellos que abusan.
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Palabras tiernas o palabras destructivas
Hay más que ciento cincuenta referencias en el libro de Proverbios que nos habla de nuestra manera de hablar. Esta sesión tendrá que ver no solo de lo que sale de nuestra boca, sino también de lo que se encuentra en nuestro corazón. A medida que nuestro corazón cambia, nuestra manera de hablar cambiará.
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012 Interview with Sam Allberry {Clip 4 | 01:43}
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The thing we do, which gets us into trouble is we abstract the issue of homosexuality outside the gospel. Really, what I’m trying to do is put it back in the gospel framework and to say actually, the gospel framework of repentance and faith is true for everyone. I think one of the reasons we get stuck on the issue of homosexuality is that we’ve stopped counting the cost of discipleship generally. When we see the cost of it for this particular group we think, oh that sounds a bit unfair. We start to doubt whether it’s right and good. Actually, we just need to remember what the gospel is.
Jesus, he says you must lose your life to save it. Which means at the very least, at some time, at some point in your Christian discipleship it’s going to feel like Jesus is trying to kill you. It is going to feel like losing your life to follow him. If we all recover that understanding, actually it will reduce the shock value of when we see how it applies to one particular context.
The other part of the conversation that has to happen is not just what is the correct sexuality to come in to people, but what do we need to do as a church to make that sexual ethic a viable lifestyle, and to easily, we’re saying to people in a lot of churches that I see, if you’re same sex attracted, you need to be celibate. Actually, in our church, that means you’re going to be really, really lonely. I kind of feel like saying to churches, you can’t call people to celibacy unless you are providing the kind of family and community that the Bible says churches should be.
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012 Interview with Sam Allberry {Clip 3 | 01:57}
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Whenever the Bible gives us a Prohibition, “Thou shall not …” we need to think what is the positive truth that that prohibition is protecting? If the Bible gives us a no, what’s the bigger yes behind that no? What is the good thing that the bible’s sexual ethics is reinventing and protecting and preserving for us? Let’s value that good thing and communicate that good thing in such a way that it makes sense of wall the prohibitions that come down stream of it. That’s one thing. It’s not just to teach rules. Not just to teach truth in a way that applies God’s glories are arbitrary, but to share there’s a vision for marriage as a man and a woman. There’s a theological vision behind that that makes sense of what the Bible then goes on to say about sexual ethics. If we can get excited about that vision, actually that will help us to live within the parameters God gives us. It gives us a reason.
I think the other thing is just to get remember our battle is not against flesh and blood. It’s very easy particularly when culture is turning away from us and laws are being passed and all the rest of it that we feel, that reflects the common good as we understand it. It’s very easy to get into campaign crusading mode and to spend all of our efforts targeting in your cases are Congressman and people in government and all that kind of stuff. To make gay rights campaigners is the enemy, which they’re not. Our enemy is never flesh and blood. Certain ideologies are, and we need to take those on. Other people, we got to fight the right battle and the right field.
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011 Interview with Milton Vincent {Clip 4 | 01:36}
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Confession of sin for a believer, a justified believer of Christ is the precursor to gospel confession.
I like talking about the magnitude of my sin and reminding myself of what I deserve for my sin because it just sets me up to appreciate the grace of God.
When you read the Puritans, like in the Valley of Vision, sometimes if you look at particular lines, you think, “Man, those guys are beating themselves up,” but look at how those prayers finish. They’re just setting themselves up to be dazzled by the grace of God. If I confess my sins, and I want to make this point tomorrow that I should not just confess my sins but I also need to make gospel confessions regarding my sins, that Christ has died for my sins. He has provided atonement for my sins, and there is no condemnation. Who is there who condemns? Christ is the one who has died, and as God has justified me, who shall separate me from the love of Christ? My goodness, if my confessions of sin always climaxed with gospel confessions like what we see in Romans 8, then it’s a wonderful discipline when those things come together.
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012 Interview with Sam Allberry {Clip 2 | 01:47}
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This is the burden that got me being public about this issue in the first place. Just wanted you to say to people, the word God has for people in my situation to anyone who is experiencing and battling same sex attraction, the word God has for us is a good word. We mustn’t feel embarrassed as Christians about believing that word and sharing it with others. We need to do it in an appropriate way. God’s word is good on this issue. That’s really what I’m trying to say to people. Therefore, for the Christian who is struggling with this issue and thinking, “Is being faithful to the Bible worth it?” Absolutely and unquestionably.
It’s a hard word, but it’s a good word, because Jesus exists by, it’s in losing our life to him that we receive our life; we gain it. Obviously, there are particular things bound up with that. If you’re a same sex attraction, there are certain aspects of the self that we have to say no to. Certain desires we have to say no to. We need to remember that to say no to certain desires is a good thing. In our culture, it’s unthinkable, and harmful and nonsensical. Actually, in the Biblical understanding of who are as human beings, it is the healthiest thing we can do, is to learn that actually there are some very, very deep desires in all of our hearts that it is a blessing for us to say no to. Even if it feels like it’s killing us to say no to them.
Same sex attraction does describe the sexual feelings I experience from time to time. They don’t define who I am. It’s part of how I am, it’s not who I am.
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012 Interview with Sam Allberry {Clip 1 | 00:58}
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I think it’s so easy, and I’m saying this to myself, it’s so easy to believe in justification by faith, but to pastor as if we believe in justification by being a good pastor. We’ve got to live by grace. If, and I feel this temptation so prevalently in my own heart is to think I’m justified by doing Christian Ministry. That’s just a path to untold misery, if you think of it in that way. You can never do it well enough to feel like it remotely qualifies.
I think we’ve really got to minister by grace and we will be better pastors for that. We will be kinder to our sheep, if we are actually living by grace ourselves.
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011 Interview with Milton Vincent {Clip 3 | 00:57}
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Confession is not some necessary evil that we have to do because we blew it. It’s actually something we’re now free to do and we get to do. Repentance is a beautiful thing.
Paul demonstrates incredible courage in the way that he speaks about his sin. In the second half of Romans 7, where does he get that courage from? If you want to know where he gets the courage from, read Romans 5 and Romans 6, and you see a guy who obviously felt so secure in the love of God and in the grace of God as a justified one under grace that that’s safety in God’s grace did not cause Paul to forget about his sin or turn a blind eye to a sin, it’s actually the very thing that gave him the courage to be such a bold confessor of his sin.
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011 Interview with Milton Vincent {Clip 2 | 01:35}
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The gospel is staggeringly good news.
It’s such good news that it’s hard to believe.
I remember one couple that I was counseling with, they both were just ridden with guilt, beating each other, beating themselves up and each other, just very discouraged in their walk with the Lord. I remember walking them through the very truths about justification that are taught in Scripture and that we talk about in the Gospel Primer. When I got done just preaching that grace to them, I said to them, “What do you think?” The guy said, “This is too good to be true. We’re going to have to go home and pray about this.” I said, “That’s cool. That’s cool.” I said, “But before you leave, let me just ask you, imagine that what I said is true, what would you do if it were really true?”
The guy, he teared up and he said, “If what you’re saying is true, I would so love God. I’d go crazy for him.”
I think that’s the rub that the Gospel of God’s grace, his forgiveness for us who are unworthy of that, to really let that in and believe it. If we did let that in and believe it, it sets our hearts ablaze.
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011 Interview with Milton Vincent {Clip 1 | 01:17}
[gdlr_box_icon icon=”fa-video-camera” icon_type=”circle” icon_color=”#ffffff” icon_background=”#b5dbf8″ icon_position=”left” title=”From the Video:” ]Long story short, it was probably about 14 years ago that I was reading Romans 5 and it’s like the lights finally turned on. I realized that, “Wait a minute. I’m justified all day, every day, good days, bad days, waking or sleeping solely based on the performance of Jesus and not mine, and I’m always under God’s gracious favor.” I don’t know why I didn’t see that before, but seeing that in that moment as I read Romans 5, just seeing a man who was resting in his justification while I was wrestling over mine. I wouldn’t have set it in those terms, but that’s what was happening.
As I began to learn to rest in that, I found my heart just bursting with the love for God. Now that I’m not obsessing over my justification and tending to my standing before God, now that I could let that go because Christ handled that, I had tons of energy leftover for loving God, enjoying his grace and ministering his grace to other people.
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Help Translate Jeremy & Crystal
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