Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: At Riverview, we've said our spiritual emphasis for 2026 is growing in grace.
But to be honest, probably most Christians don't actually know what that means. And in fact, it's probably good for me to even kind of flesh out what does this actually mean? What is grace mean?
What's a good working definition of grace? And what would it then mean to grow in it? Is that something I do? Is that something God does? Is it like sort of a. Like a team kind of thing? How does this work? So grace might be a biblical term. That's typically what we hear, although we have a lot of common usage for it. But the question is, if grace is a gift from God, which the Bible tells us, how then do I grow in it?
Do you see the tension there?
And yet, if we don't grow in grace, there really is a real danger, potentially of spiritual apathy, complacency, drifting from God, while maybe on the surface, or at least for a while, it seems like everything's going just fine.
So in this episode, we want to talk about what it looks like biblically and practically to grow in grace or. Welcome to this episode of Word and Flesh podcast by Riverview Baptist Church for Riverview Baptist Church. We're so glad that you joined us. I'm here today only with one of our elders from Riverview Baptist Church. Good to be with you, Brother Michael.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah, glad to be here.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: And let's talk about the reason that Ryan is missing today.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: We've got good news to share. Mr. Ryan Anderson and his sweet wife Abby are welcoming a baby.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Yes, they are. Of course, by the time people listen to this, they'll have probably. That's true, you know, held the baby, and the baby will probably be 2 or 3 years old at this point, by the. No, not. Well, actually, you never know. You never know.
So as of this recording, Ryan, literally last night, 3am yeah. Yeah. Welcomed baby into the world. Sweet baby girl number two for them. So congrats to them. That is a massive blessing.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Every good and perfect gift is from the Lord.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Oh, man. Oh, man. I'm excited for them. Excited for the lack of sleep they're going to be having for a little bit and all the great, great things that are coming. So that's an excuse. That's a viable excuse.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: That's a good reason to miss out of podcast.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: So we're gonna dig into this one a little bit today because I'll admit, even as you announced, I wasn't actually an elder at that Point. So I wasn't part of the conversations about how we shape the 2026 vision. Every year we have kind of a vision. What do we call this?
[00:02:45] Speaker B: I call it a spiritual emphasis.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Spiritual emphasis. Thank you. I was losing that term.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Just that as a church family, hey, we've got maybe even logistical goals we want to knock out or take care of. But spiritually, that's really what we are. I mean, we are a spiritual institution given by God. And so we want to have a spiritual emphasis that's probably not very measurable in a lot of ways because oftentimes spiritual realities aren't. And yet that's what we're called to lean into. And so we try to find a way to focus on that.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Yeah. So the spiritual emphasis this year is growing in grace.
All I was saying was when. When we announced that, I thought, wow, that sounds like a very loaded term. It is, absolutely. I like loaded terms. That's good because that means you get to unload them. Right, Right. So let's first, let's define just from the outset because actually this is. By the way, I'm just going to go ahead and say we've gotten some awesome feedback after the first couple episodes came out.
Have really been encouraged by folks that. I mean, frankly, we thought this podcast was just kind of mid, as the kids say.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: That's right. Mostly because of the host, honestly. But.
But no, we've actually just been super encouraged. Thanks to everybody who's come up and just said, hey, that was great.
I cannot believe but like are the young adults in our church held a watch party.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a little. Felt like a little much to me.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: That was awesome. I think this is gonna be like a routine for them, like a weekly.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: That's funny.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: If so, that's amazing. So anyways, that's all just to say you guys have been really encouraging as we've launched this thing and we want it to be an encouragement to you. So we've gotten some great feedback, even some good constructive criticism. We've had some fights already about the int. Music we have behind the scenes. We had to have an armistice. I think ultimately we'll see if that whole.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: I was gonna say we'll see if it remains.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah, but so. But no, seriously, what we want is. And one of the. My point there was one of the good points of feedback we got is can you help us see towards the early part of the episode where you're going there a little bit. Can you lay out, like, what's this supposed to be about because we do this thing where we want to be conceptual, we want to go into like a theological truth.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: But I mean it's called word and flesh. Right. So we want to flesh out.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: Fairly quickly to the, to the, okay, how do I do this thing? What should this look like?
Challenge me a little bit even maybe. Right, absolutely. That kind of thing. So on the outset of this conversation about growing in grace, what might it look like in the life of a believer? Let's just compare contrast for a second. Like a believer who's not growing in grace and then a believer who is, what, what are they doing? What is it looking like? This is a little bit of a spoiler, but it's also, it's not a spoiler. It's just kind of like laying out where we're going and then how will their life look different? Maybe.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So the person that's growing in grace, the way that I would just in a sentence try to capture it is it's a joy filled discipline in your pursuit of God. And what I mean is a pursuit of God means to know him relationally, to see him as your treasure, to be delighted in him.
And so it's the idea of, or the difference, I guess is the individual or the Christian who you know is duty bound. I'm going to do the right thing because I know it's the right thing to do. This is what Jesus would want. And honestly, to a certain degree, Maybe even like WWJDism, what would Jesus do? Just because there's a way that you can do that and turn it into legalism and turn it into rules based, performance focused type Christianity where a person who's growing in grace is recognizing if I do anything right, it's because God's working in me. It's not me earning anything, it's not me doing anything.
And so I'm free.
I'm free in my salvation. I'm set free from performance, I'm set free from the opinions of people and I can just now pursue Jesus. And that will include killing sin, that will include devotional time, that will include Bible reading and prayer, It'll include a lot of things. But the focus and the drive of those things is going to be very different.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: I mean, the contrast that I'm seeing just in that description is a person who experiences joy in their, in their, in their. Just like in the daily doings of being a person. Because being a Christian is being a person. Correct. Being a Christian is doing person stuff throughout the day. That's Right. Means, you know, it means doing laundry and cleaning up after people. And it means doing a job.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: And it means, like, leading. Very imperfect, sometimes wildly imperfect. I mean, I don't know what that means, actually. Just completely. I mean, we're all imperfect. Right, Right. But leading people, some of whom are really, really difficult is my point.
It means doing the thing that you. That you must do even when you're tired.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Right. So some of those do relate to duty.
And sometimes doing your duty is not fun.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Correct. And I think that's part of, again, the idea of earning or growing in grace is when you perform your duty, even in that moment, is it an effort to earn something from God or in an effort to earn approval of men or to earn some sort of thing versus just recognizing life in a fallen world is hard. There's work to be done, and I'm going to expend effort and trust God.
And I think those, again, those two mindsets are vastly different. The world's apart, and so there's a way essentially then, to work or to labor and yet rest. Inwardly, that person's growing in grace. The person that labors and works but inwardly is just lit on fire because they're scared of failure or because they don't want to face the rejection that comes from not, you know, doing their devotionals and their Christian friends find out or whatever that may be.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Yes. That's like a really performance.
That's like, I'm measured by my performance and not by what Christ has done.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: But then the tension, or you, like, immediately have to swing back because you go, yeah, but. And this is actually where we're going is like, so do I just kind of go, Christ did all the good stuff, so I can just. Yeah, I'm just gonna coast. Right. So it's this.
We're called to duty. And I'm serious. If we say duties one more time, I'm gonna quote Nacho Libre, so please.
But we're called to these duties, and I said it. And we're called to do them whether we want to do them at any given moment or not. Right. Where you have the energy, whether you have the happiness of doing it, whatever. And it looks differently for a person who is walking in the joy and the grace of God versus someone who is in, like, a performance mindset or a.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah.
Take us to biblical grounding 2 Peter. Right? Is where we got this.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: That's exactly right. And so we didn't.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Spiritual emphasis.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: We didn't just come up with this. 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 18. Here's the command. He says, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so that's how he's wrapping up the book in many ways as a summary statement. And as he does so, I think there's a connection that he's making back to the beginning of the book.
And he actually outlines and puts some flesh on the bones of what it looks like to grow in grace. So I'll read that as well. It's 2 Peter 1 and he says this, he says in 2nd Peter 1, verses 5 through 8, he says, for this very reason, make every. Here it is effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self control and self control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. And here's the key. 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 he talks about growing the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says, right here at the end, here's how you make sure that you're not unfruitful in the knowledge of your Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, this is what it looks like to grow in grace, virtue.
It looks like making sure that you have self control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love. Those things are starting to come out naturally in your life.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think again, we're just going to do this tension thing the whole time, I think. But it's like those, I think God's grace opens the door for those and you have to step through the door in those. So like self, self control or something.
The fruit. One of the fruits of the spirit is self control.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: That's exactly right.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Yeah, but you have to practice self control. You have to do self control. Yeah. So again, it's not like, well, just no self control showed up today, you know. So I mean, I guess, you know, I'm blaming it on God.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Or something.
So it's this tension of like it's a thing that the spirit produces in us by God's grace. And yet at the same time, I have to implement self control, I have to pursue virtue, that word that he talked about. Those are things that God opens the door for. And like causes to flourish in me.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: But I have to go after them. If I don't go after them, then I will not get them.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: That's exactly right.
And that is the, I think, right and biblical tension that we want really everyone at Riverview to feel when it comes to growing in grace. It is, hey, God has given this to you, but you have to take hold of it and you have to work it out. And that's why Paul says in another place in the Bible, he says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling because it's God who's at work in you to willing to work for his good pleasure. And so again, I think it's a very biblical tension to say grow in grace. You have it, you're in it, but it's up to you to soak it up. You've got to start absorbing it and do some things with it.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: That's one of my favorite verses because it like literally in that verse, it articulates that what feels like a tension. Of course, you know, God would say, no, it's just you don't really understand how it works fully. But in our finite minds, yeah. It feels like a tension where it says, work out your salvation because it's God who works in you. Actually, it's both of those.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: It's not either or.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: It's both.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: And this is what we were talking about before we pushed record was that that one thing we want people to hear is that. And now I'm going to qualify this. But that effort is a good thing in the Christian life.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Again, not a certain kind of effort is not when it's done with a performative self reliance. Self reliance. Thank you. I was trying to figure out how to say that approach.
But effort in pursuing Godliness, in taking actual, real measures in your life to go, I'm cutting this thing out of my life and it's going to be really difficult.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it may hurt.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Right. Or I'm going to add this thing into my life and it's going to make me tired. Right. Or whatever. The thing is, again, I'm not saying I've done this perfectly, but that, but that is, that's a good thing to like with effort, pursue.
You know, I'm just going to pull this verse out. I can't remember the reference, but where Paul says, you have not reached the point in your resistance to sin of shedding blood.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Right. And the way I've always read that is like, there's still some more hard. There's still some more trying to pain.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: There's more hard to do.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Yeah. There's some more pain left.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: There's some More pain left to do. And it's a good kind of pain because it's that working out your salvation with fear and trembling.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: So that, I think, is a good thing for people to wrestle with and to hear is the producing of godliness in you means. And I think I actually like a military comparison here because I just think that it helps.
It means. It means like charging a hill and taking a hill and shedding some. Like shedding some blood on that hill to take that hill, like, take that ground. And then it means not giving up that hill.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: After you've taken that ground. And then it also means, I think, after you take that ground, pressing the advantage and going, all right, what's the next ground we take? Yeah, what's next? So I think that that is the. That's the posture we have to have. And yet all the while, it's the spirit of God that. That really gives us the victory. Right. Like, we see this in Old Testament, right? When they're actually doing battles and taking hills. Who gives them victory? It's God who gives them victory, but he calls them to actually go do the work of taking that place.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah. They got to go to the battlefield
[00:15:14] Speaker A: defeating the people in that battle. They. They don't. There's a couple instances where they do, but generally they don't just kind of stand back.
In fact, almost. I don't know that ever. Do they just literally do nothing. And God's like, hey, you know, guess what? I wiped them out. They're like, oh, cool. Well, just even in the. Like, I think of Gideon, for example, right? Gideon. God whittles his army down to an embarrassingly small number, but they still have to go.
Yeah, they gotta go up to the precipice, Right. And I mean, if again, we always read the Bible with the knowing how the story ends, but the guys in the Bible don't know how the story ends yet. Right? So Gideon and his guys are standing there with their trumpets and their things, and they're like, if we do this right now, they're gonna wake up and come kill us. There's only 300 of us.
So I'm just thinking even in those moments where, like, God. God clearly just wins the decisive victory, and literally none of God's people are even injured even in those moments. There's risk there from their perspective, Right.
You have to go do something that feels rather crazy. Yeah. And press into that. So that's a big, long analogy. Just to say, I think that is what we're doing. As believers, when we're pressing into the kingdom, the kingdom working itself out in us and through us, then into other people's lives, is we got to, we got to take risk again. You know, I'll put that in quotes. Right? Risk, right. We got to do things that feel kind of like. Man, that feels hard. Yes, yes, it does.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: It does feel hard.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Anyways.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: No, that's good. And I, you know, I would just add kind of full circle at this point, just the idea when you look at the Bible, the Bible is not opposed to effort on our part. It is opposed to the idea of earning. And that's where, again, the person that's growing in grace is going to understand is. Paul says, literally, by the grace of God, I am what I am. And he says, and I worked harder than any of them, talking about other apostles, other teachers in the Bible, I worked harder than anybody else. And then he says, he doubles back again. He says, but it wasn't me. It was the grace of God in me.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: And so you have work, you have grace, and you have grace again. And I think again, that tension is just all throughout the New Testament, which is one of the reasons as a pastor, I wanted our people to wrestle with that idea of growing in grace. Because I think in American evangelicalism, we tend to fall off the road into the ditch on one side or the other. We go, you know what? I tried a few times. I failed. I can't tame my tongue. I am who I am. Thank God for gr.
You know, I'll gossip and curse and do whatever it is as long as, you know, the pastor's not watching or whatever.
And then the other side is, no, it's woe is me. I'm a horrible person.
I live in self condemnation. I can't ever get this right. I can't ever get over the hill. And so God must not love me or whatever the case may be again.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Or being a Christian must mean just being miserable because I'm aware of my sin.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: And I just, I don't know, I just kind of do it all the
[00:18:20] Speaker B: time and I hate myself.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: And like, I guess this is just what it is to be a Christian. I guess it's holiness. It's misery.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Right. It's a self loathing.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I think I've, I've seen both of. I think I've experienced both of those.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: I definitely have. Yeah. Yeah. And. And so the person who is growing in grace doesn't fall into either of those ditches. They can say, again, by the grace of God, I am what I am. I've made progress.
I'm not where I want to be. But I know that by the grace of God he's transformed me thus far. He can continue to transform me. And so I have hope, not just condemnation or resignation.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: That's good. And then that gets to the idea that it really. And you had jotted this down, that true spiritual growth. And again, when we say spiritual growth, we mean Christian person growth, right?
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Because spiritual growth produces fruit in the body. Right? So yeah. And I only contrast that to say that, you know, it's not spiritual growth to say, well, I grew in my knowledge of the Bible or something, but like my life hasn't been transformed into looking more like Christ at all. That's not spiritual growth. Correct, that's not spiritual growth actually works itself out. So I'm just making that clarification. But the true spiritual growth is not ultimately behavior first motivated. It's heart first in its motivation.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: That's exactly right. And in fact, if you go back to again our text in second Peter 1:5, he talks about add to your faith. He says virtue.
Now when we hear virtue, we think of a lot of different things. Interestingly, mostly performance driven.
We think of a particular morality or we think of a particular set of goals and able to accomplish those things, or whatever the case may be.
The biblical idea is actually steeped in major Greek history and culture.
It's the Greek word arete and it literally means literal virtue. But their idea of virtue was much broader. It wasn't just a type of morality or a certain character trait. It was the idea that you are fulfilling your ultimate purpose in an excellent way. So here's the question for everyone listening. What is your ultimate purpose? If you don't know that, it's going to be really hard to grow in grace.
And so that would be, you know, I'll just kind of swing that over to you. What would you say the Christian's ultimate purpose is?
[00:21:00] Speaker A: That's a great question, Pastor. Yeah, I know it is.
No, I mean, so I'll give a catechism.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah, give us a catechism answer. Perfect. That's great.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Which is. Oh man. What is the chief end of man? To know God, Dad. Thank you. You put me on the spot. To know God and enjoy him forever. Forever. Yes. Thank you.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah, wow. That's all good. To know God and enjoy him forever.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: So there's a start of an answer.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: It's a fantastic start.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: And, but I think, I think a person's purpose is to A Christian's purpose is to become like Christ.
And then actually Jesus literally, in some of his parting words, really kind of tells us then what it is, which is then to bring Christ's kingdom, spiritual kingdom, which by the way, of course means spiritual, that spills out into the physical, the real stuff of the world.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: To bring Christ's kingdom to bear in the world. And so it's not sufficient to kind of, you know, lock yourself up and go, well, I became a great spiritual person.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Right. Apart from everything else.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's insufficient.
But the purpose is to be transformed into Christ likeness, to be like Christ more and more, day by day, and then to be an agent of the kingdom, a person who brings the kingdom out into God's world. Because God's. The world actually belongs to God. Right. And you know, God, God says to Jesus, you know, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Like, Jesus is doing this work through his church of bringing his kingdom to bear on the earth.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Again, don't know like, when the culmination of that's going to be. You know, those are eschatology questions, end times questions. But the point is that that is what we're called to do. Like, we're not called to be like, oh, it's gonna be bad, right. And just kind of like hunker down and be like, well, I've gotten my ESV and I'm gonna sit here and get really spiritually rich while the world goes to hell.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Like, it's where to bring the kingdom outward, to bear in the world. So there you go. Yeah, that's my. That's. I had a bad start to the answer, but I didn't know you were gonna ask.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry I put you on the spot. Yeah, no, and that's really good. And I would agree with everything that you said.
The only thing I would add to it is just again, the catechism answer, excuse me, is know God, enjoy him forever. I would just add Jesus's words, you know, in the great commandment to love God. And so actually that, you know, to love God with your entire being is then the motivation to turn around and to fulfill the Great Commission, to go out and make disciples and to do those things. Because strangely, there's actually a way to try to fulfill the Great Commission sinfully. I've seen it. Pastors that want to have a big revival and then count all the ways that people responded, and so they can kind of notch their belt and say, hey, look, at all the numbers that we had at this revival or this thing.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: This was happening in the first century, right?
Of course. Paul's like, no, no, I'm just saying that it was happening even. Oh, yeah, no, some preach Christ out of selfish. For selfish gain.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah, for selfish gain. That's exact. And so it happens still today. And the thought is this. So there's a way to even try to make disciples in a sinful way. How do we keep from doing that? It's to love God before you do anything else.
And that will actually help you in your battle with sin. That'll help you live the virtuous life with your wife. That'll help you do all of.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Or husband.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Or husband.
That'll help you in all of those ways, love God. And then you'll actually see how to love people. I mean, it's the classic teaching of Jesus. And so that's real virtue.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Good.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: That's the starting point. Not personal holiness, not evangelism, not those things first.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: That's good. I wanted to.
Two more things before we wrap this episode up. One is a really quick one and I wanted to back up. I always, like, whenever I read a verse to back up. I mean, I think we all should do this, right? Like, go, okay, let me zoom out.
Because context helps. That's not even a novel idea. But that's just an encouragement, right? This is what we do in our life group, like all the time when we do it. So we read 2 Peter 3:18, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, verse 17. He's actually responding. He says that kind of as a response to.
If you go, I'm not going to read all this, but back into even 14, 15, he's talking about how Paul. He says, hey, Paul wrote a lot of stuff and some of it's actually kind of hard to understand.
And then people have twisted it to sort of lead other people astray. And he says, you therefore, beloved, knowing that take care that you're not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So I think that's an interesting context because he's saying it goes back to what we said at the beginning. There is a danger, right?
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: There's a danger to taking the Scripture, taking the Great Commission, taking the truth of the Gospel and twisting them, or whether that's intentional or not drift.
And I think Peter is warning against that, that you would be carried away by the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. Absolutely. So their stability leads to your. I mean, their instability leads to. Leads to your instability. So I think that's an interesting. That that warning comes. He says so and so. So that you don't do that, grow in grace. So I think that's just an interesting. No, it is.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: And I think that's one of the things that, one of the things that it just reminds us of is again, nothing is. Is new.
We have all Christians across the world have struggled to kind of grasp how does grace inform the way I live in the things of life.
And so the common lie was, well, if grace is grace, then you can just do whatever you want.
You're just free to live how you want to live.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: God's grace covers it.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Yeah, you're forgiven, man.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Read Romans 6, man. Come on, people. These people just don't read Romans 6. This is the problem.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Right. And so where I want us to go as a church family again, kind of big circle, is to recognize grace.
Pastor John Piper said this. This is not unique to me. He said, grace is not just pardon, it is power.
Grace is not just God forgiving your sin. He does do that. Grace is also the fuel to live the Christian life and suffer well and walk through the day to day grind.
And that is what I want our people to grow in.
It is, I think if you just see grace as this static thing that you got when you prayed a prayer. I prayed, God forgive me for my sin. And I trusted him and he gave me grace. End of story.
You are setting yourself up for a life, I think, filled with apathy, joylessness and disappointment. Because what you're going to see is not the grace of God working in you and through you daily, which is hopefully what should be happening. But instead it's going to be, I got grace and now I have to just do what God wants me to do, whatever I think that is.
So if I'm supposed to tell my friends about Jesus, I don't really want to. I just, I got to figure out how to get the guts to do it.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Yeah, and we're going to. We want to give folks some then. And really this episode is meant. And then I want to do a quick personal. Yeah, you know, how's this worked out in your life? But this episode is actually meant to kind of then launch us into a series that we want to do on biblical manhood and womanhood. Absolutely. And asking what then does growing in grace look like as it relates to the term that I've heard Used is sexed piety, which basically means like, how do I live holy as a man? Yeah. H O L Y. Right.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: And I guess you could do the other side.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: You could do both.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Yeah. How do I live holy as a woman? Right. And then how do those things play out? In singleness, in marriage.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: In family and those things. So we want to do some. We're going to give some pretty practical conversations about those in these coming episodes. But as a teaser to that perhaps. Yeah, give me, give me an example of how what growing in Graces looked like for Michael Biehn in your home or in your, I don't know, wherever, in ministry or something like that. Give me, give me some.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: I'll give you, I'll give you a few.
So as a young man. Well, some of the most vivid ones for me personally were this burden that I felt like I had placed on me in some ways by the church to do evangelism, to tell my friends about the lost, to bring friends to church.
And it was all just, this is on you.
You got to do this. You got to invite friends. If you're a good Christian, you won't be ashamed. Tell people.
And I remember walking around thinking, what's wrong with me? Because I feel a little bit ashamed. I don't want to be made fun of.
As I began to grow in my relationship with God, and sadly it probably wasn't till college. I mean, I wrestled with that for years through high school.
One of the things I came to a point was, oh, I don't have to be concerned about sharing the gospel. I can actually just let some of the pressure off and just tell people, I can just talk about Jesus. I don't have to do a sales pitch. I can just talk about Jesus. And if people want to hear it, then I'm just going to keep talking because God's at work and God's in control and he's going to save people if he wants to save them. And so suddenly it moved away from this pressure to get a sales pitch out about who Jesus is in a 10 minute window or whatever the case may be. And this high pressure situation of I hope they convert and I hope they don't make fun of me to I am who I am, I belong to Christ. And so I'm just going to talk about him. And if that offends somebody, that's okay. If it doesn't and they want to keep listening, okay, let's have that conversation.
And so that was a major growth thing for me across a lot of years.
You know, another one for me as a young man was Bible reading. I knew I was supposed to read the Bible, but if I'm honest, I didn't always enjoy it. And I felt a lot of guilt about, okay, well, how do I do it? And then I had other leaders and teachers and I think with good intent, just say, just do it, just read it. It's the right thing to do.
And so I bought into that. But again, what I reached was this point of honestly bored duty bound Bible reading.
Over time, what God again has shown me is there are moments where reading the Bible still feels like a duty. Okay, if I'm being totally honest, yeah. I mean, there's moments where it's like, you know what? I'd rather relax, I'd rather do whatever. I'd rather spend time with my kids.
But the Bible reading that I do now, in those moments where it is duty, boundaries, I'm coming to the Bible and I'm praying and asking, okay, God, I'm confessing, I'm not in the mood for this, but I want to meet you and I need you to show me who you are in your word. And so the idea is again, a dependency on God as you share the gospel, a dependency on God as you read the Bible. It's not just me doing the right thing and checking a box and moving on.
So those are some small ways as a pastor.
Growing in grace has again, a myriad of different ways it's worked out. Another example I'll give you is, you know, on Sunday mornings, I take the pulpit very seriously. When we stand up and we teach and say, thus saith the Lord, here's what the Bible says.
That is a sacred holy moment.
When I first started doing that as a pastor years ago, I had a lot of nerves and anxiety about that. Along the way, it was this weird thing. I didn't think I was thinking of myself that much. But actually what God showed me was your anxiety is not a stage fright. Your anxiety is not so much a perfectionism that you think you may struggle with.
It's just you're looking at yourself too much. You're depending on you to do the things that only I can do. If I'm not, you're not going to change anybody's mind. You're not going to save anybody's soul. You're not going to open up somebody's heart towards me. And so if you want those things, that's good, but you've got to trust me to do it. And as I surrendered, I found Man, I found so much more freedom in the pulpit and I hope by God's grace that there's a power behind that.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting because while obviously most people don't have the experience of preaching from a pulpit, I do think that the theme that emerged in those three things was looking at yourself less and trusting God's power.
Ability to, you know.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: Sufficiency.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah, sufficiency, like ability to work beyond your insufficiencies and all that stuff. And that extends to. To literally every single thing. Right. Because I think we can go about any particular thing that's set in front of us with either of those two postures. It can either be that sort of. And for some people I think it manifests like through anxiety. I think other people, it manifests through like a kind of, maybe kind of an arrogance or, you know, the pride. Yeah, prides. I think it can come out in several different ways, but you can go at it that way. That is a me focused. And I think even a Christian can do that and be tempted to do like they're wrong to do that, but I mean can end up doing that and can be tempted to do that. Where you think that the thing you're doing. This is what it is. You think the thing you're doing is a reflection on you.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Yes, that's exactly right.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: That's what you think it is. And actually the thing you're called to do is simply point people to Christ.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Reflect Jesus.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Yeah, reflect God. And so then that's actually super liberating. It's sometimes kind of hard to get there because losing yourself is the hardest thing to do.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: That's exactly. Dying to self.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah, dying is the hardest thing. And so. But I think that's actually the thing that for those, even those three stories that you shared that comes out as I listen is it's the losing of myself.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: John the Baptist. Right. I must decrease, he must increase. Right. So that posture, I think that that cures anxiety fueled work in the Christian life.
I think it cures anger fueled work a lot of times in the Christian life.
Arrogance fueled work.
The kind of the feeling that I'm never good enough. Right. It's like it wasn't about you in the first place. That's exactly right. But that's hard to hear. Even then I had to realize this about myself, that there was a time when I was very, very fixated. And this is again, this is this tension we're going to wrap up. But I was very fixated on my own practice. Of holiness in my life. This was like my early twenties and very cognizant of areas of sin in my life. Very frustrated about areas of sin that I didn't feel like I was overcoming in the way that I should be.
And I was this guilt ridden person. Actually for a while I really struggled against not. I wouldn't call it like godly conviction even. Actually, it wasn't that it was. I called it conviction. It was actually like a guilt cycle that I was in because I recognized a struggle that I was having against sin and I didn't like it.
And what I began to recognize was that my real problem was how self focused I was.
I was focused on whether I was performing right. The Christian life. Well, again, this doesn't mean you should just sort of be like, well, doesn't matter, who cares, right? But that's not what I was actually doing.
It was that I was measuring my own performance.
It was actually pride. That's what I'm getting at. That's what I began to realize, is that the guilt actually that I was struggling against stemmed from a sense that my Christian life was a reflection on me. And it's not supposed to be a reflection on me.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: I mean, I am me and I'm me that Christ lives out through. And I'm different than you are. And that's the beauty of the church, right? Is that God like works out his kingdom through all these diverse people and all these diverse skills and all these things. But at the end of the day, it's about Christ.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. And that is the. So if you actually go back and you look at two Peter and you look at our passage in second Peter one where he has the chain of virtues, verse seven, he talks about godliness.
And I think a lot of times we go straight to godly living.
But again, if you look at the Greek idea of godliness, it's not either or, it's both. And what he's saying is there's a God awareness that you need in order to live out godliness.
And so oftentimes we just fast forward past the God awareness and we just say, as you kind of saying, well, how am I doing? How's my performance? Am I living up to my own standard of whatever I think holiness is, rather than recognizing actually the source of my joy and my peace and my holiness is God. He's the author and he's the finisher. He's the beginning and he's the end. I'm just the in between. And so I get to work this out. But I can rest in what he's done and in what he's going to do.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: And I think that that does two things for us. I think that brings us peace because I can think of how without that, you're torn up inside, right? You're anxious, you're guilt ridden, all these things, right? So that knowledge should bring us peace and simultaneously it should bring us marching orders, basically back to my military example. So it actually then spurs us onto good works, right?
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: So anyways, I think that's a good place to wrap this one up. I hope that this has helped people again flesh out what we mean when we say growing in grace. And as we talk about that this year, as, as again the upcoming sermon series and a discussion about sex, piety, about male and female roles, how God made us, how we live into those things, I hope that this sort of helps set a backdrop for people.
The difference there between again, sort of self focused, performative Christianity versus Christ focused, spirit filled, growing in grace kind of Christianity.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: And I'll just add this as an illustration and we're done. I shared this a few months ago from the pulpit, I think, and shared it with our young adults recently. But if you think of God's grace like an ocean, right? It is what it is. It's huge. It's vast in relationship to something like a common house sponge. It's borderline infinite. You drop a sponge in the Pacific Ocean, you're likely never going to see it again. And essentially that's, I think, the way that you and I are in God's grace, we're like that sponge. Here's the difference.
A sponge, if it's not squeezed, it can just kind of sit on the grace. It's in it to a degree, but it's just on the surface.
If you want to go deep in grace, you got to let yourself get squeezed. You squeeze the sponge and it'll start to soak it up. It's not adding grace, it's not creating grace, it's not earning grace. It's just soaking up what's there.
But you've got to be willing to be squeezed. You got to face some hard things, you got to go through some difficult times. And I think that's the thought I would leave you with in terms of the person growing in grace is essentially asking yourself, am I willing to be squeezed? Am I willing to say, yeah, less of me, more of Jesus?
[00:41:24] Speaker A: God, let that be good closing word, brother.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Thank you, everyone for joining us for this very spongy episode of Word and Flesh. I just had to do that.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Of course you did.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: But appreciate y' all and continue with the feedback. And again, would love to hear from you about this episode or ideas for future episodes further up and further in. And we'll see you soon.
Sa.
Me.
Jesus sa.
