Ask the Pastors Season 8 Episode 3: “I’m a new Christian; how do I live like it? (pt.3)”

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Welcome to ask the pastors a segment of the West Hills Podcast. We have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded, pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian, I'm your host. I'm joined by our lead pastor Will. Hey and Pastor Thad. Hello. And today we're continuing call this I think part three kind of focusing on one of our listeners. Emma sent in these questions. Part three, I'm a new Christian, how do I live like it? And just a wonderful list of questions. And we talked beforehand going online that we would limit our responses to five minutes,

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Not a piece, a total for each question.

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Total

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For each question.

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Who's doing? Yeah, total. Me and you. Who's doing the timer?

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I am.

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Okay, sweet. Sounds good.

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I laid the ground. I'm starting as soon as you read. We got nine questions. We're shooting for 45 minutes or under with this. Here we go.

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Alright. How does one accept the gift of salvation?

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Romans 10, nine. If you believe in your heart Jesus Christ is Lord and no is saved and confessed with your mouth that he God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. Is that close?

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Yeah.

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Believe in your heart. Confess with your mouth. Jesus. Jesus is Lord. He's raised from the dead. Well, it just so happens we have on our camera here my bridge illustration that I was using just a couple weeks ago with another young lady who came in to talk with the gospel with me about the gospel and what it means to be a Christian. I told this story in the sermon just two weeks ago and about our conversation and about how I put it to her, what does it mean to be a Christian, to be saved to you? And she said, it means to accept the Bible, to understand and trust God's word. And I was like, well, how much of it do you have to understand and accept and no. And I tried to help her understand it's really very simple. You don't have to have read every word of the 2000 pages of Genesis through Revelation and understand it all at a PhD level.

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I mean I don't certainly. So really it's a matter of the gospel. Romans one 16, Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of salvation for everyone who believes. You have to believe the gospel. Gospel literally means good news. It is the news, the announcement about Jesus Christ, the son of God who came, took on human form, human flesh to live the life that we should have lived of obedience to God our sins instead separate us from God. That's the two cliffs over here. Romans 3 23, all of sin separated us from the glory of God. We've fallen short of the purpose for which we were created. Like I got a clock on my wall. If it stops keeping time, like what's it good for? It's not serving its purpose. We are created for a purpose to glorify God, to enjoy relationship with him.

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Our sin separates us from him and breaks us and breaks the purpose for which we've been created. And yet Jesus, the good news is that Jesus Christ came in human form to take on and live the life of obedience so that he might we're going through Deuteronomy now, he might deserve all of the blessings that come with obedience to God, perfect obedience to law and living up to God's standard. And yet he traded all of his blessing for our curse on the cross. He bore in his body on the tree. Our curses deserve to us because of our sin. He paid the penalty for us to give us the blessing of eternal life, relationship with God, reconciliation, forgiveness, salvation, eternal life. And all we have to do according to Romans 10, nine to get all of that is to believe is to believe in our heart. Confess with our mouth. Jesus, I believe you are Lord, I believe you are who you said you are. You did what you said you did. You died for me. You rose from the grave to give me the blessing. You died to take my curse. And I believe and John three 16, who's whoever believes will not perish but have everlasting life. So that's it. That's how you get saved. And I save two minutes for you. What do you think

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I was going to say, do we get to roll over minutes if we,

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I'm going to say no. I'm going to say yes,

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I'm content. That was a great, you're

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Good with that?

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I'm good with that. That was a really good,

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  So we bank 90 seconds. That's how you accept God's gift of salvation. Believe in your heart, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and he's risen from the dead.

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  Alright, number two, how do you know if you have been saved?

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  You

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  Want to start on this one?

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  Yeah, I would begin where we ended. The last question with first you confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and savior and entrust to him through faith. That that's the first point. I think after that Jesus says, people will know you are my disciples by your love for one another that you'll be known by your fruit. And what is the fruit of a believer's life? Now, just to be clear, this is a again, progressive thing that we're growing in. We don't automatically mature to full fledge, mature disciples overnight that it is an ongoing process of becoming more and more like Jesus and we will stumble and fall along the way. But there is the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gift of God's grace that we receive. But it looks like confessing your sin that you're no longer indifferent to it. One John one, nine, if you confess your sins, you will be free. Confession is a mark of genuine faith. You sin you recognize again that I have stumbled, I've fallen short. I've acted as my old self before Christ. And you feel that sense of guilt in your heart, that you have disobeyed, you've sinned against God again and you want to confess that you want to grow in your sensitivity to sinfulness so that you can grow in living out your new life in Christ.

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  Sin now grieves us because we have the Holy Spirit, like you said, sealed with the Holy Spirit and sin grieves God. So when you've got God living in you, that sin that still lives in you, and when it comes out of you and you commit sin externally, it is going to grieve you. And maybe a whole nother separate podcast topic, we don't have to think, but is how do I know the difference between grieving the Holy Spirit and just what's a matter of conscience? non-Christians still feel bad if they murder people don't have the Holy Spirit, but something God builds into us like don't murder people. So we could talk about that later. But yeah, confession, repentance, repentance. Was that going

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  To be another? Yeah, it changed. You now desire to be obedient towards Christ and in that not to earn any more favor or earn any salvation, but to again live out. I've been given this gift. I want to live out this new life, this new reality. I am now freed. I no longer have to sin and now I can obey Christ in a way that is pleasing to him. That if I truly desire to follow Jesus and he's won the victory over my heart, I'm not going to want to. I'm going to want to now seek to please him and live out that new reality. You'll desire to be with God's people. You'll desire to be around other Christians for the benefit of they now share a commonality with you through Christ that there is one salvation in him. We are brought into one family.

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  We should want to be around our family, our brothers and sisters. Along with that, a desire to grow in our knowledge and understanding of the word that as we now have this new relationship with God, that we are once children of wrath. Now we are sons and heirs of Christ. We want to get to know him. We want to spend time with him. And we do that through reading of his word through hearing his word preached. We do it through communicating with him through prayer. We grow in our discipleship by hearing from other believers. So again, community is going to be a big part community around the word in prayer. You're going to have a desire to tell other people about it. You're going to want them to hear and know and experience the same good news that you've received in the gospel. And so I think it's Martin Luther.

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  Christianity is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread that you're inviting people to come and see what Jesus has done for me. And I want you to experience this too. You're going to have this desire to really, not just not sin and confess in but habitual patterns of sin. See those slowly start fading away as you are growing more in your sanctification that you'll see victory over some of those areas. Again, it is a long process, the sanctification. We are always working towards becoming more and more like Jesus than we will until we have received glorified bodies. Anything you want to add in the last minute

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  And a half, 30 seconds? No, that was really good. Yeah, I just think you gave us a lot of good practical categories for understanding that. I think in general, I said in one Corinthians one or two where Paul talks about the spiritual person has basically spiritual taste buds. And so that could manifest itself in any number of ways as simple as the kinds of things you find yourself wanting to watch on. I don't know that I would've enjoyed at all watching the chosen before I was a Christian, but now there's something worshipful about seeing this story played out in front of me. That's emotional for me that it gives me, again, just another confirmation peace of mind. Yeah, I don't think unbelievers have an emotional experience at a passion play on Good Friday or something like that.

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  Maybe they might feel something, but they're not

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  Sure where that actually comes from. But it all comes back to, like you said, fruit. You're going to know a tree by its fruit, which at the end of the day is actions too. Like you said, practical outcropping of that. So

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  Yeah,

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  It's all really good. Thank you.

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  Do you guys want to jump down to habitual sin?

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  Is that the next one?

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  No,

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  But it

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  Mentioned

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  No, but as I said it, how can I give my life to God?

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  You just want to keep going.

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  Was that the next,

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  We've talked about that some already, but do we want to maybe be shorter than five minutes then on this? How does someone give their life to God? I mean I guess that's an interesting question. I actually referenced this in a sermon, a couple of sermons here recently as well. I think in the context of starting through Deuteronomy and thinking about so much of this in terms of Deuteronomy 28 through 30 where Moses talks about you get life and blessing for obedience and death and curses for disobedience. So actually this idea of Christianity being about giving my life to God I think is actually a bit of a misnomer for a couple reasons. If I can nitpick, if somebody, Emma was to ask, how do I give my life to God? Number one, I'd say because in one sense you don't have to give God anything.

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  I mean God says a couple different times all through scripture, I'm not served by human hands. You don't give me anything that I don't own the cattle on a thousand hills. I own everything I created your life. It belongs to me. They'd be like, I have three kids again. I gave them something they don't have to. So there's a sense in which he already owns it in him. We live and move and breathe and have our being. He doesn't need us to give him anything. There's another sense in which I'd say it's a bit of a contradiction of terms in that think about Ephesians two. You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked. In other words, you don't have any life to give God. He gave you physical life, but you have no spiritual life to give him. We are spiritually dead, walking in darkness, children of wrath, children of flesh, the enemy. And so we don't give him life, we give him death. We give him our and scripture talks time and time again about my Galatians two 20, I've been crucified with Christ, so I'm dying to myself to be raised a new life with Christ, but even that self that I'm dying to is already dead. It's a dead, spiritually dead self. So I'm dying to death in order to live to life. So anyway, maybe that sounds like I'm nitpicking. I know know the heart behind the

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  Question,

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  But I do think it's important to maybe even help someone who is a new Christian or even considering being a new Christian to think through this through a biblical lens in which, yeah, again, what you're really giving Jesus is your sin and your death. And yes, you're also kind of that him take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee, but to the extent that we have lives to offer him and to consecrate and to give to him, to be used for his service and his glory, it's really just the life that he number one gave us physically in the first place when you were born, your physical birth. And then number two gave you spiritually when you were regenerated and became a new creation in Christ and were given spiritual life. So yeah, all that to say, we give him what he already gave us

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  Just to add a little bit more just to say, what does it look like as you have now responded and given Jesus your sin and your death and he has now given you back new life, what it looks like to give your life to him is to now live out the new reality that you have in Christ. Like you said, that our time, talents, treasures, all the things that he has given us. We now live in obedient following after him that we, Romans 12, one, present ourselves as a living sacrifice. We recognize our own worthlessness and what we offer towards our salvation. And now in the new reality of the gospel, we now seek to live our lives sacrificially before him and everything that he gives and making the most of the opportunities and means that he's given us to bring him glory with every aspect of our life. So I would further flesh out an open surrender to following faithfully after Jesus.

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  I'm glad you added that with Romans 12 because once you have newness of life like you said, then I can surrender and give my life to him given me life. And so yeah, I think you're right. It looks like waking up every day just with open hands, God, what do you have for me today? Not that you necessarily go back to the drawing board every day. Oh, there's five minutes on that one. That's great. How do I turn it off? It's a great sound timer sound. I don't know how to work phones. I literally just, okay, but God, I trust that my pastoral calling is giving my life to you. What does it look like for me to do it once again today as a pastor or I trust that my calling is whatever you've called me to. So anyway, that's good. Thank you.

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  Next one, if you had to choose one or two things, what would you say is the key to living a strong Christian life?

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  This one we've probably touched on even more so the last two episodes, parts one and

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  Two

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  With Bible study prayer and fellowship and belonging to the community of God's people.

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  Yeah, two most important things. Time with God through word and prayer and time with God's people through word and prayer and discipleship that again, spending more time with God, more time with God's people I think is really just the two things that I would spend more time talking about. I would say if you want further, if expounding on that, I would say find an older mature believer who can spend extra time helping you learn to read the Bible, who you can ask your questions to. And then really eagerly seek to spend as much time as you can in the scriptures and taking in content, and not just taking in content for information but for transformation and asking those questions that we've previously discussed like and how does this change how I act and behave today? What is the result of learning this truth about God? What does this passage teach me and how to apply just like we would on any Sunday morning sermon as God's word has been faithful, you preach, how should I respond to it?

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  And I guess one other dimension, like third prong of that that I would add, like you said, spending time with the Lord first and foremost, spending time with his people who folks who are discipling, pouring into you, helping you grow folks who you are walking through life side by side. And also folks who in time as you grow as a believer that you can be investing in as I think hugely instrumental in your own in terms of one's own growth. But then I would add a third, which is time with God, time with believers, the community of faith. But then I would add time with unbelievers as well, specifically intentional time focused on ministry to others. And you think about who are the folks that we would describe as probably having the strongest Christian life? I mean from our vantage point, I mean obviously you start with Jesus, Paul Christ's disciple. I mean there's those that, but then you can go down through history and you mentioned someone like Martin Luther already or Charles Wesley or whoever it might be for you, heroes of the faith that you look up to strong Christian life. And I think any one of them, another commonality you're going to see is a huge heart for evangelism and for reaching the lost

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  Definitely. I don't think that you can, have you talked about this already a little bit when you talked about fruit and evidence of being saved as you want to share it with others? I don't think you can have a true, vibrant, thriving relationship with the Lord without necessarily having an equal and opposite brokenness of heart. For those who don't share and enjoy that the more you enjoy real eternal life in Christ and fullness of life and joy and peace with him, the more you're, they're necessarily going to be brokenhearted about those who don't have that and want to give it to them. And I think that to the extent that God's people are active and thriving in their personal evangelism and personal discipleship of others and just content to

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  Stay in their Christian Bible studies and bubbles and whatever, and only hang out with Christians, I think people would just, Christians would just be amazed at how much that rejuvenates their own and re-energize their own walk. I mean that is absolutely, like you said, a mark of that. We talk about first passion and zeal and joy that you see with someone who's just saved. They want to tell everyone they want to be baptized, they want to share their story, they want to invite people to hear, they want to share it with everybody. And yeah, it's just sad that wanes over time. You think about the church, is it church and Ephesus or whatever in Revelation that you've lost your first love and your first passion. So yeah, I think that is, that's another key to living a strong Christian life and keeping it fresh for yourself, your walk with the Lord. So anyway, just in time.

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  Next one, how can I overcome habitual sin? I

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  Want to start on this

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  One.

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  Sorry, the last one.

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  Okay,

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  Overcome habitual sin. I think we've talked about a lot of this already. It starts with a confession. Obviously I you read one John 1, 8, 9 for us, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins cleanse us of all unrighteousness, first step is admitting you have a problem, right? So I think that's obviously step one, but there's still tons of steps and work to be done after that. I do think that first things first is I guess first admitting you have a problem, second, knowing where to go with it. You go to the Lord, he's the only one. We talked about this last Sunday with Israel fighting against the Amorites and others. You got to fight in God's strength, you against lust or pride or anger or materialism or insecurity or worry, anxiety, whatever your besetting sin is, you on your own, you're outmatched.

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  These are giants, these are things, but God is bigger than all these giants. God has already defeated all of them and can defeat them for you personally. So then the question really becomes, okay, well what does it look like to surrender to him, to entrust yourself to God and his strength to fight that habitual sin? I think it is a daily process of surrender. I think it's a daily process of, we've already talked about confession and repentance and I think there's a role certainly for all the other things, spiritual disciplines and grounding yourself in God's word and in his truth for prayer, for the community of faith and accountability and support and encouragement from others. I think just, yeah, I'll pause there, let you jump in and see if anything else comes to me. But

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  Yeah, I think along with those, the immediate, what do you do with the, who do you take it to? I invite other people in to, this is what my struggle is again, one of the freedoms of the Christian life is that we all come to Jesus with nothing and he gives us everything. And so we should be able to go to other believers and say, this is how I have sinned and how I've been affected by sin. And understand that that's the dynamic that we live in a fallen and broken world. And alongside, I would say like at Matthew five, eight, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. What does it mean to be pure in heart? And I think some of it looks like asking what satanic promises am I believing by giving into the sin? Like doing some of the searching of why is my heart being drawn towards this? What am I failing to believe about the gospel in these moments? I

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  Was going to say, what promises, conversely, what promises of God am I not believing? Because I made that comment in a sermon from two weeks ago, I think it was, where Israel was at Kadesh Barilla and failed to believe, crush God's promise to give him the land and go in. And I think the point, and you see it borne out all through scripture, is it really all sin at its core can I think, be boiled down to disbelief, to a lack of trust in God and in his promises. Because again, as he's the one that's got to fight,

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  He's

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  The only one who has the power to overcome that habitual sin. And he, he's promised to give it to us and he's already defeated it in Christ death and resurrection. So to the extent that we're not living in that victory over that sin, it's really just comes back to a problem of unbelief, which again is not to make anyone feel bad for that we're all sinners here. We all struggle with various forms of sin that we keep

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  Like

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  A dog going to its vomit going back to. But yeah,

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  And I would just add it's to overcome habitual sin or any sin, it's not just a matter about willpower. It's coming back to gospel power where you find real freedom from it. You can will it as much as you want, but you're not going to see victory in your own strength.

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  Yeah,

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  You might temporarily, but

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  Yeah, white knuckle.

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  How does one develop character and cultivate Christ-like attributes?

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  Yeah, I think, again, not to keep harping on this, but time with God and time with God's people are very, again starting points for that. And again, something you do the whole Christian life at the coming back to the gospel, what does it mean to develop Christ-like character? Well, where are we going to find what Christ-like character looks like? We're going to look to Christ in the scriptures. We're going to look for those who have journeyed many years ahead of us and saying, what does their life look like after following Jesus after 10, 15, 20, 25 years in looking at Galatians, fruit of the spirit, continuing to grow in those aspects, putting away all sinfulness, all temptation, all sexual idol idolatry, all immorality, all lying. All stealing. So to put away the things that are not living in light of the new reality of the gospel, of our new identity in Christ, living those out and putting aside all those things that are in the old flesh and the old self pre coming to Christ or in Adam and seeking to live those out.

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  I would add another aspect that one could look to is, again, good resources that are grounded in the truths of scripture through Christian writing. Whether it be from Pilgrim's Progress, I think is a book every Christian could read that really describes the Christian life, but books that are going to point us back towards scripture and flesh out a little bit more about what it might look like to grow in Christ-like character as a student, as a husband, as a mother, as a father in different aspects. But again, through his word, through prayer, through listening to the Holy Spirit's, prompting in our life of putting off the old self and putting on the new self, really a sensitivity to the spirits of prompting and looking out what does Christ look like? What does he embody? What does his character show and that we read of in the gospels and how the other biblical authors describe him and what it looks like to live as a Christian.

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  Yeah, my mind went with this question immediately too. So again, how does one develop character and cultivate attributes? My mind went immediately to second Peter one, five through nine, where Peter says, for this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. So he starts with the gospel. So you can have faith in the gospel, you can be saved, but make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. That's character

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  Christlike, charactering and virtue. And virtue with knowledge and knowledge, with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness, with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection, brotherly affection with love for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So there's a way to have knowledge, a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and yet to be ineffective and unfruitful. And sadly, I think we see that a lot in the church, wouldn't you say as pastors? I mean, we can all sadly think of by name people even at our own church that we would say just not a lot of fruit. I think they're saved. I hope we're going to be hanging out with them in heaven, but I wouldn't bet my life on it based on what I see. And certainly we see an unfruitfulness and an ineffectiveness for Christ because of a lack of these kinds of qualities, godliness and steadfastness and virtue.

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  And anyway, and I think of, is it second Timothy four, like seven or anywhere where Paul talks about bodily training as of some value. You don't just go out and try and run a marathon, you got to train bodily. Training is of some value. Spiritual training is of great value because it is accruing to eternal gain. You're building up your spirit which is eternal, like our bodies are going to die and turn into dirt and get resurrected and glorified one day and whatever, and we'll have better bodies in the new heavens and new earth. But your spirit is your spirit, and so you want to train your spirit for godliness. All of that is more so just I guess making the case for the question itself. How do you do that? How do you develop character and cultivate those kinds of attributes? And I think you already did a good job of answering that for us.

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  You look to God's word, you live unto the spirit, not the flesh. You have Christ, God's son is your model. You have Christ's body, his people as your support and cheerleaders and accountability and fellow co runners in the race. And so he's given us all kinds of resources for doing it. And so again, you think about the metaphor, getting in the weight room and doing the training, spending time with the Lord, spending time with his people and feeding that spiritual hunger. Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness. Are we as hungry for a Christ-like character as we are for entertainment or for distraction or for whatever food or sex or power or money, whatever the things you hunger for, are we as hungry for a godly character? Yeah. So I think it starts with a hunger, obviously. But anyway, that's five minutes on that.

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  Alright, next one, how do I know what God's will is for my life? And em says, this might be my most pressing question.

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  Oh, well we better get it then.

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  Yeah, I think I would start with there's often this, again, I think it comes from a right desire that we would like to know, we'd like God to give us the specifics for every single aspect of our lives. What does it mean to live in God's will or what is God's will for my life is people often ask, they're asking that along the lines of where should I go to college? What car should I buy? Who should I marry? Should I make this stock investment, X, Y, Z? Fill in the blank. And I think again, it's not quite that we're not to be Gideon as he did with God. And two, Hey God, I'll know for sure you want me to do something if I put out this fleece and the fleece is dry and the ground is wet and God does that. And then he says, well no.

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  If I really want to know your willingness is what you want me to do. Let's do the opposite. The ground dry, the fleece wet. And I think God gives us that story with Gideon at times to show that even the people he chooses to use even doubt, and even in his kindness, he still gives opportunity to show them like, Hey, I'm going to give this to you as an opportunity. So what does it mean to discern God's will for his life? I would argue that scripture actually does tell us what God's will for our lives as believers is that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind to live out the Christian life. That although God may not give us the specifics of

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  First Thessalonians 4, 3 13, right? This is God's will for your sanctification,

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  Your sanctification that you would grow to be more like Jesus and to live out some of those other things that we've already talked about, that we are to be like Proverbs 11, that the righteousness of the blameless make their paths straight, but the wicked are brought down by their own wickedness that we are to live blameless and righteous. We're to be following after Jesus so that our paths will be made straight, that we will as we seek to faithfully follow after Jesus, that God will make our paths straight. I would add in there also in Proverbs, in an abundance of counselors, there is great wisdom and to know God's will, God supplies us wise people amongst his people that we can go to and ask for advice and counsel those who have gone before us. Sometimes God's will may be not so clear to us, but God gives others who are more spiritually mature and makes it pretty clear and obvious as they listen and they discern and they have the Holy Spirit of like, have you thought about this? And to ask questions that sometimes knowing God's will requires patience of you might think he's leading you one way and it actually turns out he might be leading you another way. But if I was to boil it down at the simplest level, what is God's will for your life to pursue after Christ in every aspect of your life

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  And then allow the rest of those things to fall into place? That doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for prayer. You shouldn't seek the Lord's wisdom out. Where should I go to school? Where can I best leverage where God has placed me for the proclamation of the gospel and the expansion of his kingdom? And that'll help me grow most to be like Christ. I think that's really good to ask those questions, but to really narrow it down to grow in my relationship into the image of Jesus.

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  Yeah, I agree. It is all really good. Maybe two or three things quickly to add. One is I think in some cases, and not that you didn't say this already, but in some cases because God has made his revealed will to us really clear in scripture, there are certain cases of those practical things where I think you can say, like you mentioned, does God want me to date this person or does God want me to marry this person? We've got a young lady coming to the church, some now who wants to meet with me for premarital counseling. She's engaged to a Jewish guy, not a messianic Jewish guy. And so to me that's a really clear, second Corinthians four says, don't be unequally yoked. You shouldn't be marrying him. I can tell you definitively that is is not God's will for your life. So there are some of those kinds of clear cut cases, but more often than not, like you said, it's going to fall more in the line of should I buy this car or this car? I need a new car. Do I need a new car or should I take this job? And it's less clear cut. And on that, I'll just real quick say I was really helped by Mark Dever. I heard once say that we should maybe be concerned or he's concerned with the growing sort of infantilization of Christians in many churches where, and he distinguished between a child like faith and a child dish. Faith

  (38:52):

  Christ calls us to a child like faith dependency, humble dependency on him but not childish. And kind of the point he was making is you hear, you kind of talked about this, a lot of Christians just seemingly going through life in a free fall all the time. What does God's will, what is God's will? And I think really part of God's will being our sanctification and growing in godliness is that over time in time we become more comfortable and confident about what it means in any given decision or situation to walk in step with his spirit without having to, not that we aren't constantly still praying and seeking God's guidance and leading a direction, but it's not like you need that sign from heaven. You don't need to be Gideon at every turn because there's just more of a kind of humble but still confidence and trust that you know what? I know the difference between right and wrong. I know the difference between light and darkness. I've done this long enough. I've walked with the Lord long enough that I, and you also get better at discerning. When is a decision like who I should marry and when is a decision like whether to meet at Starbucks or Kaldi's, not Starbucks. That's an easy, like don't go to Starbucks, it's unbiblical. But anyway,

  (40:28):

  You learn to weight things differently.

  (40:29):

  Yes.

  (40:32):

  Next one, how do I turn all of my worries and fears over to God? You

  (40:39):

  Went first, last time, I guess I have to this time in prayer. It's Philippians four, six and seven. Do not be anxious in anything but in everything by prayer and supplication. So there it is right there by prayer and supplication, let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will be yours in Christ Jesus, your Lord. So we turn our fears and our worries, our anxieties, concerns, insecurities, doubts fill in the blank, resentments, bitterness. We turn these things over to God by through prayer and supplication. And that's an interesting supplication because supplication has obviously that implication of asking for something. You're petitioning God to supply a need or even a want. So to me, inherent in that is not just that God, I'm confessing again, it's me again. Here I am struggling again with fear, with worry, struggling to trust you in this circumstance of my life or whatever. But also it's prayer and supplication. Again, inherent in that is that I actually, I want this to be different, but I know I need you. And again, like we talked about, your strength, your power to make it different for me, God, would you like Paul prayed three times in two Corinthians 12? Would you remove this thorn from the flesh? Would you remove this worry? Would you remove this doubt? Would you remove this insecurity, this besetting sin, whatever it is, this resentment?

  (42:32):

  And in the meantime, would you sustain me? Would you give me grace? And like Paul says there in verse seven, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will be yours. Will you give me a piece even if you don't remove my kid's really, really sick, 103, four degree fever. I'm taking 'em to the hospital. I'm driving up, I'm worrying, I'm praying. I'm praying both that God would remove the illness, the fever, the whatever. And also that God would remove the fear and the worry from my heart even in the midst of the circumstances, even if he doesn't remove that illness right away or whatever it might be, help me to trust supply the faith that I don't currently have. I'll pause there.

  (43:28):

  Yeah, I mean that was where I was going to go to maybe further expounding on that is the one that you are praying to is the one who is in control of everything.

  (43:40):

  And not only isn't he in control of everything, but he's also good and to be reminded of the goodness of God. And that can bring us such great comfort when we're tempted to believe that God is not good or that he's not working on our behalf when we are worried, when we are anxious, when we are frustrated, when we are doubting that we can cast all our anxieties on him. And knowing that his disposition towards us is one of love and goodness. And that even in the hard things, the difficult things, that it's meant to produce faithfulness and endurance and patience and growth in our hearts. And so what does it look like? Cast your burdens on Jesus because he's the one who is able to bear the weight of them. If we try to bear the weight of everything that makes us anxious and worried, it's a weight that will just simply crush us. And so to do something with that is to give it to the one who is not crushed by our anxiousness, by our worries, by our doubts, by our fears. And let that just be a relief of your burden to give it to him and wait expectingly for him to work, even if it may not be in our timeframe, even if it may not be in the way that we desire, but ultimately remembering that he is working out his good sovereign plan in our lives.

  (45:07):

  And maybe when I like that, the imagery of a burden like what Jesus says, my yoke is easy. My burden is lie one Peter five, cast all your cares on him because he cares for you. You're giving this weight over. And so anytime you feel that weight start to creep up and you feel your heart rate get up and you feel the cortisol levels start to rise again, like, oh man, I feel the stress. I feel it in my throat or wherever you feel that worry or that doubt or whatever it is. There we go again. And maybe that's just a physical physiological reminder. Oh, yep. But this isn't my burden to bear. I can't bear. It's too big. I already gave it to him, so I'm going to leave it there. I'm not going to pick that back up again. I don't know lots more that could be said about any of these, but hopefully that's helpful somewhere.

  (46:03):

  And her last question, how can I glorify God in everything that I do?

  (46:09):

  Did I start the last one? Yeah, it's your turn.

  (46:11):

  Yeah, you did. I would say to live life to the fullest and not in sinfulness that I God, in seeking to glorify him in everything, remembering that he has, whether therefore you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God that we can in our play and in our food and in our work and every aspect of life, that there is a way to give glory to God. And even like Philippians four 11 through 13, Paul says, I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low. I know how to abound in any and every circumstance. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hungry abundance and eat. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. That we live in the freedom that God has given us to enjoy all of life, that all of our life, this is John Piper's thing, God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him, that we seek to be satisfied in God, whether we are doing our schoolwork, whether we are working on a project, whether we are playing with our kids, whether we are enjoying food with people, whether we're enjoying a drink, that in everything that we do, if we are doing this in a way that we are finding thanks and contentment in everything that God has given us, God thank you for the gift of my children that I can play with them.

  (47:42):

  God, thank you for this really good food, God thank you for and living and letting that really sink into every sphere of life that we find ourselves in, that we can really glorify God if we, again take our mindset outside of worship is just something that we do on Sundays. That worship is something that we do with every single aspect of our lives. It gives our whole lives even more meaning and purpose and something better to live for than just ourselves or a paycheck or just, if I could just make it a Sunday, I hope everyone just desires to be there on Sunday, but to recognize that all of life is worship that we are describing worth to it. And are we ascribing that worth to God or to ourselves or to our family or to our status and seek to just, again, I would say enjoy life to the fullest in a way that brings your heart to reflect back on God and all that he has given you.

  (48:46):

  Yeah, you already mentioned it, but the first word that came to mind for me when I read this question, how do I glorify God in everything that I do was gratitude.

  (48:59):

  Because again, we're created for God's glory to bring Him glory and we exist and everything exists for that. But yeah, I just, so many scriptures, I mean, I just Googling for what does the Bible say? Gratitude and just so many of them tie it, I think directly to bringing God glory one Thessalonians five 18, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So you want to bring God glory. You do it by obeying him. How do you obey what's his will? His will is our thanksgiving. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Whatever you do, Colossians three 17, whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. That's according to his will in for his glory, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

  (50:02):

  And you can just go down more and more. But yeah, if there's a way of eating and drinking either for God's glory or not, I think it's got to be connected to gratitude, got to be connected to joy, got to be connected to a posture of, there's basically two ways of living your life and two sort of postures. One is with us at the center and we deserve things and are owed things, and it's ultimately kind of for us and our glory and our happiness and contentment, whatever. And then when things don't go our way, we get mad. Or there's living life in light of God, being your creator and your father and the center of the universe. And I'm here for his glory and his purpose and he doesn't know me anything. And I'm grateful for the life I have because I don't deserve it. I'm grateful for certainly the blessings. But even scripture can say rejoice and suffering too, because

  (51:27):

  That even in our suffering, we can bring God. And he uses that

  (51:31):

  And it's making you more like Jesus. And again, that's the point is as we've already said, our sanctification. So God, thank you for this chance to suffer and be more like Jesus and point people to you through it. Like, wait, why isn't he unhappy? He's suffering well, because I trust that God is good and he's working it together for good. And anyway, so all of this is so much easier said than done, but hopefully some of that somewhere in there is helpful for Emma and helpful for our other listeners as well. I mean, we did pretty close. We might've gone five and a half minutes on some of them, but not bad.

  (52:11):

  Yeah.

  (52:12):

  Good luck listening if you like to listen to your podcast on 1.3. Speed. Good luck. We tried to pretty fast. That's the new Apple Podcast, isn't it? I do in Spotify. Yeah. 1.3. It's very

  (52:23):

  Specific. It's fun. That's what mine is. I'm a 1.8

  (52:25):

  Listener. Are you man?

  (52:26):

  Depends. I do one times speed. Stick it. What is normal? Wow. Features zone. Oh, that's my knee. Well, that's it for this week episode of Ask the Pastors. Remember that you can submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills by submitting them online through our website at www.westhillssto.org. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe, share it with a friend, you have a comment, write a review. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch you right back

  (52:59):

  Here. Submit more questions next week. Next. Are we for sure ready to tease? I threw out an idea for next week's podcast that I think maybe you guys liked, so I didn't know you didn't like

  (53:12):

  It. She did not like it. I didn't know what it is.

  (53:15):

  It would be a multi parter. Well, just it's going to be a really good, it'll be sooner, so it'll be great. Yeah. Next couple weeks. Next couple weeks. We're Go ahead. Okay, that's fine. I think it'd be fun to talk some about maybe just because Paul and I just started watching the pit on HBO about the emergency room, emergency room, because they're always doing triage. It's like, okay, who needs care right now? Or they're going to die. Theological triage is a similar kind of question of relative level of importance of theological questions. It's all interesting, the timeline for the end times as well as is Jesus truly divine in nature God, but not the same level of importance. So how do we differentiate between what's most important, heaven and hell issues? And yeah, this is interesting. But we can even on pastors at the same staff at the same church, disagree on this issue, but interesting. Interesting. We'll see. I think it'll be some fun episode. So tune in. We'll see how many parts it ends up being. But you found a good list of some questions that I think we could, we won't do all 150. We might, I don't know, do five minutes a piece again. One minute a piece. One minute a piece. Three parter. Let's do that. 50 minutes a piece. Boom. Listen, next week.