Alex (00:03.967)
Well, welcome to season eight. I can't believe we're on number eight already. It seems like this has flown by. And this season we're going to tackle a hard topic. We're going to tackle the topic of sin. We've talked a lot about different suffering topics. And this season we're going to talk about the sacred struggle, sin, responsibility, and the journey to transformation. But before we do that, we thought it might be fun to give a little personal update. And Brenda has news.
Brenda (00:32.846)
Yeah, so excited. So, you know, um...
I just thank God that even though we do live in a sin -cursed world and we're going to have to talk about sin, that God gives good, good gifts in the middle to make life sweeter and to let us just see His goodness. And so I am just over the top thrilled to say that we're going to get our first granddaughter. It's been 31 years since we've had a girl born into the Payne family. So it's our daughter is having a daughter and there's just
Alex (00:46.975)
I'm sorry.
Alex (00:58.814)
Yay!
Alex (01:04.222)
Bye y 'all.
Brenda (01:07.424)
something super sweet about that. So just a little shout out to my daughter KK and little baby girl. If anybody thinks about us, just remember to pray for her. It's been, you know, it's all pregnancies. It's been challenging and she has a little 16 month old boy to boot. So we know that that just gets exhausting. And again, part of the living under the curse is that now we have, you know, childbirth comes with pain and sickness and fatigue and all the things. But at any rate, we're super excited. And yeah, Alex, I,
Alex (01:11.742)
you
Alex (01:24.03)
exhausting.
Alex (01:33.31)
Mm.
Brenda (01:37.327)
I think as we enter into the season, we both have just been talking about, you know, that the conversation surrounding sin is not an easy one. And I know even for me personally, I think that a lot of times, particularly early on in my Christian walk, sin was kind of like the word conflict. It always meant something bad was going to happen, that the outcome was always going to be bad. And it really has been a journey I know in my own life to come to realize that,
Alex (01:46.526)
Mm -mm.
Alex (01:58.397)
Mmm.
Brenda (02:07.263)
you know, where sin abounds, grace abounds. And so there is this focus or shift for me that has been that I can talk about sin more securely now and without the fear and the shame because of the grace that comes with it.
Alex (02:23.678)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah, I think even as we've talked about how to approach the topic we some of the things that I've been juggling in my mind are
to convey the seriousness and the truth about sin and yet to also be able to convey this is a struggle. We're not going to escape this struggle in this side of heaven. And so how do we live with the knowledge that we're going to keep failing and we're going to keep messing up. We're going to keep continuing to be human with both our frailties and our finiteness and also our frail.
Brenda (02:52.717)
Yep.
Alex (03:02.35)
and our sinfulness and so to be able to address this topic and hold a lot of those different complexities is really hard and so yeah we've been very thoughtful about this and I love I love the title I love the idea of it is a sacred struggle.
Brenda (03:14.637)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Brenda (03:21.997)
Hmm.
Alex (03:22.972)
because it is, it's not a struggle we can ignore and yet there is something very unique and set apart about our struggle with sin. And I also love that we put in both responsibility and transformation in the title because we do have a responsibility to take sin seriously but we also have hope that we are being transformed. Not just that we will be completely transformed but we are being transformed as we're being sanctified in our Christian walk. So as with all
Brenda (03:51.852)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (03:52.877)
topics we pick this topic because we talk to a lot of people and a lot of people, all people, are struggling with sin and so we feel like we want to talk about this because it's something we talk about on a pretty much daily basis. We don't want to avoid it and we want, like we said, we want to be thoughtful as we do it.
Brenda (03:58.06)
I'm sorry.
Brenda (04:06.669)
Yeah.
Brenda (04:11.692)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, this episode we've talked about 10 reasons why we must talk about sin. And we're going to give 10 reasons. But the bottom line that we really just want to say is we have to talk about sin because God talks about sin. And I've just completed a 45 day flyover of the New Testament. So I mean, it's like quick. It's like six or eight chapters a day. You're just clipping along.
Alex (04:17.467)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (04:31.834)
Mmm.
Wow.
Brenda (04:35.917)
But the real benefit in that to me in the timing of doing this podcast was kind of this big picture view that there's not a chapter of the Bible, there's not even a page, there's not a book, there's not a chapter, not a page that doesn't at some point talk about the impact or the consequence of sin and then highlights the grace of Jesus Christ.
And so, you know, a hard topic, but a topic that so beautifully always should lead us back to seeing the goodness, the kindness, the patience of God in our lives as His children.
Alex (05:13.435)
Mm -hmm, yeah, very well said. Well, we wanted to start off on this topic just kind of sharing some of our own personal experiences in conversations about sin because we bring this to the discussion and we can't avoid the fact that we bring a history, we bring a certain amount of bias maybe even to the topic of sin. And we also see that there have been,
overcorrections. There have been an overemphasis on sin in certain places and an underemphasis on sin. And for my own story, there has been a lot of an overemphasis on sin. First, within my upbringing, I see I was in a lot of Christian circles. There is a lot of legalism. There is a lot of preaching and teaching around sin that made me very fearful.
that made me very definitely self -righteous. And I mean, I even remember some of my earliest days in children's church.
a teacher telling us you cannot go to bed any night without making sure you've confessed all your sins. And if you wake up in the middle of the night and you realize you did not confess all your sins, then you need to get out of bed and you need to go confess your sins. And it was that, that was children's church, right? It was intense.
Brenda (06:36.077)
Oh
Brenda (06:40.845)
Boy, that's intense!
Alex (06:46.425)
And so, and then one of the boys would play the Indian dance while we collected offerings. But you say, you know, had a couple moments of levity, but the teaching was very intense. And I really was one of those kids, like you didn't tell me that, that I didn't do it. So I mean, I really did this ruthless self -examination and I would be very fearful if I fell asleep thinking that I missed a sin. And I always felt like I had missed a sin. And so there was very much this emphasis on
If you don't confess it, it's still there. And it's such an anti -gospel message, but it very much created a fear in me, very much created a sense of...
I don't know what the word is, like God is judge basically, going to sleep every night with feeling that God is up there as the judge with the gavel. And so then we also, both of us Brenda, I think moved into the biblical counseling movement and certainly in early biblical counseling days there was an overemphasis on a teaching of sin and personal responsibility. And again, it doesn't mean that that is not important, but we saw that the focus on the sinner only didn't really
see the whole person and the whole person's experience of life in a broken world with broken people.
Brenda (08:07.918)
Yeah.
It's true. And so, you know, we have an overemphasis. We can have an underemphasis. But I think another thing we see is just some models that throw out the category of sin altogether, right? And areas and philosophies that don't recognize personal, personal sin and responsibility before God at all. And a lot of times it's because they don't have a category for sin. So then they have to come up with the explanations for what's wrong with us. And we've seen in our cultural moment, really, that this is
Alex (08:20.825)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (08:33.049)
Right.
Brenda (08:39.727)
led to an over inflated diagnosis of mental illness in areas where the Bible does say that it's sin. And we want to make clear what we're not saying is that sin doesn't impact our bodies and our brains and our lifestyle choices actually do imprint in ways on us physically. And there are people who have true mental illness. We also want to recognize this, but sin has not been
replaced by something new or something different in the wake of kind of this this phenomena if you will.
Alex (09:16.441)
Yeah, I think when we throw out sin and personal responsibility that means we're kind of focusing only on suffering and that means we again we miss the whole person and so we don't see the person as an image bearer who lives under the authority of God and who can make decisions under the authority of God. So what we want to try to do is have a robust understanding of people because the Bible shows us a robust complete understanding of people that
includes the body, medical, mental health concerns, and also sin and how sin affects the body and that interaction is deeply complex but we have to be able to hold all of that when we think about a person and we think about behavior.
Brenda (10:06.317)
Well, the way we want to do that is, you know, we'd like to have our hooks and handles and ladders and frameworks. And so we want to start off with the framework that to begin with is going to be, you know, maybe more theological today covering those big pictures, ideas of sin and grace. And then we really want to move throughout the podcast season to more practical ways that believers are transformed through our real and
ongoing struggle with sin. And that's where it's going. That's where we really turn the corner, Alex, where we can get excited to see what God is doing. But first, let's just start off talking about this theological framework. You and I were, you know, trying to figure out how not to make light of this, but try to bring a little bit of levity of lightness. And some of us may remember that David Letterman had his top 10 list on his regular TV segment, The Late Night with David Letterman, and he would poll his people about a certain
Alex (11:00.825)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (11:06.144)
theme. So we've just polled the people in the Bible about this theme and mostly God and what he has to say about this theme. And we're going to unpack a lot of these top 10 points throughout the season, but we kind of just want to do a flyover to give some structure, some understanding of what the Bible says and how we want to approach this subject. And let me just say these are not in any particular order. It's not like the, you know, counting down to the best or the worst or whatever. These are just
Alex (11:10.105)
Hehehe.
Alex (11:18.233)
Mm.
Brenda (11:36.047)
Well, we would say, you know, maybe somebody else could probably add 10 more to our 10 or 20 more to our 10. But these are just 10 that we think could be helpful. So I'm going to start with number one. Sin is the reason for everything that is wrong in the world. And let me just say that my allergies right now are proof of that. Because I've been hacking and copying and drinking tea with lemon in it.
Alex (11:41.881)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (11:58.297)
Ha ha ha ha!
Brenda (12:04.462)
recording this in the spring in Chattanooga. We live in the I live in the valley, which is a literal dust ball. So I'm just going to be looking forward to the new earth when allergies will not be a problem. But it's also the catalyst for all the problems that we deal with in counseling. And I kind of went back and I thought, gosh, what were some of the issues that I was just dealing with in this past week? Like these were the counseling. These are the kind of counseling conversations I just had just this week.
Alex (12:08.793)
Uh -huh.
Alex (12:14.873)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (12:33.166)
A woman whose husband cheated on her and left her and her children. A woman whose young child died after a long illness. This mother knew from in utero this child was going to be ill and then walked a journey and then in her elementary age years, you know, the Lord took her home. A father who lost his young adult son to a drug overdose.
A wife who was struggling with resentment and discontentment as she tries to learn to love a husband who's so different than she is and sometimes even difficult. A couple who came who can't communicate to resolve conflict because one of them is too fearful and one of them is too proud. And that's leading to the breakdown of any true understanding of how to resolve like important family matters.
Alex (13:08.121)
Mmm. Mmm.
Brenda (13:28.302)
And then I met with two women who was so obvious how shame had led to such self -contempt and how they were turning on themselves. They were biting and devouring themselves, destroying themselves, and then sabotaging people who were actually trying to demonstrate real love toward them.
And Alex, that's just this week. That's not including all the other weeks that we could go back to, you know, and see. And so it's just a lot like people are hurting and everybody I talked to was impacted at some level. And we can look around and see brokenness. And we're not, you and I are not saying, you know, again, and we've said this, I think repeatedly in our podcast that not all of our suffering is because of personal sin. We recognize that the fall,
Alex (13:48.153)
Yeah.
Brenda (14:15.855)
outside of us and inside of us. But personal sin creates a whole lot of misery in our lives and in the lives of others. And, you know, it's the sin and then it's also that we have to live with the consequences of our sin and the sin of others. And that, and we have to acknowledge, like, that is a big part of what brings pain in our lives. And, yeah, just a lot of suffering.
Alex (14:44.601)
Yeah, when we wrote this first point, sin is the reason for everything that's wrong with the world. I had to sit for a minute and go, yeah, yep, yep, oh yeah, there it is, there it is, yep, that's true. But it's such a big statement. But when we realize that all the brokenness and all the fallenness in the world is a result of sin and all the ongoing.
Brenda (14:57.486)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Alex (15:09.945)
conflicts and consequences of sin. It really is the reason. And so, number two's not gonna come as a surprise to anybody that every Christian will struggle with ongoing sin. It's really hard. I talked to, got to share the gospel with a seven -year -old a couple weeks ago. And his first question, seven years old, well, what if I still do bad things?
after I follow Jesus. I said, well, you will. It's really hard. And so, you know, we see that especially in Romans 6 through 8, all the themes of the chapters are things like your dead descend alive to Christ, your slaves to righteousness, your slaves to sin, life through the spirit, life through the flesh, we see the war. And I know some people maybe don't like these verses in Romans 7, but I love the verses at the end of Romans 7 where Paul is putting
the war into words that makes me feel so normal when he says I don't understand what I do for I want to do for what I want to do I don't do but what I hate I do and if I do what I do not want to do I agree that the law is good and it is no longer I myself who do it but it is sin living in me for I know that the good itself does not dwell in me that is my sinful nature for I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out for I do not know
I do not do the good I want to do but the evil I do not want to do this I keep on doing now if I do What I do not want to do it is no longer I who do it but it is sin living in me that does it I see why you gave me that verse like a tongue twister but the point being We do what we don't want to do and we don't do what we do want to do so and Yeah, and that is life on this planet
Brenda (16:47.824)
That's a mouthful!
Brenda (16:58.096)
Mm -hmm, or what we ought to do. Yeah.
Man, that tension and that struggle is so real. And honestly, as you were reading it, I was getting a little tickled because of so much, I do what I do, I don't do what I wanna do, I do, I do, do, do, do, do, don't, don't, don't, you know? But we feel that wrestle, that tension, that, that...
Alex (17:12.729)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (17:18.192)
the conflict in our heart. We're going to be unpacking the heart a lot more in this series and why that conflict is so ingrained and how hard, why we feel all of that war in the heart. I mean, we are conflicted against ourselves, much less conflicted against God. So, I recently watched a show, Alex, it's so good. So, Netflix has a docudrama on Moses. It's called Testament, The Story of Moses. And it's really interesting because it's
Alex (17:25.337)
Mm.
Alex (17:35.033)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (17:46.329)
Huh.
Brenda (17:48.146)
actually the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim perspective of Moses because we know he's a key figure in all of these, you know, faith perspectives. But if you look at the Scriptures, I mean, the story of the Exodus is the story that the New Testament continues to point to that really shows us what it looks like to be rescued from sin. But also, I think what we miss sometimes is it also shows us that ongoing struggle with sin after
Alex (17:52.857)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (18:18.066)
the rescue, right? Because God comes in, he miraculously rescues the Israelites from the slavery and bondage of Egypt.
Alex (18:19.225)
Yeah.
Brenda (18:28.08)
Um, but Egypt is still, I mean, they've been there 400 and something years, right? Egypt is still very much in their hearts as they move toward the promised land. And there's a great little saying that I've heard. You can take the people out of Egypt, but you can't take Egypt out of the people, right? Like you can get them out in a day, but you can't get Egypt out of them in a day. Like that takes a lifetime. And we see that even in our own lives that God rescues us just like that from the penalty of sin. But the power.
Alex (18:38.073)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (18:44.889)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Right.
Alex (18:55.257)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (18:58.034)
of sin over our lives and what it looks like to walk out our freedom, that takes a lifetime of understanding God's love and grace.
Alex (19:07.865)
So we'll continue to struggle with ongoing sin and that is part of the Christian experience. But now we're going to talk a little bit about what sin is and sin is violating the holiness of God.
I feel like this is a hard one to unpack because to describe God's holiness has always been really difficult for me. Some of the concepts we talk about is that God is entirely other, He's entirely set apart because the root word for holy means set apart. And what we mean by that is that God is transcendent, He's like beyond, He's above and beyond our comprehension. Everything else that was made was made dependent on Him.
Brenda (19:33.744)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (19:55.547)
He is other. This is the part of God that makes us not able to fully comprehend who He is and that makes us recognize that we are so very different from Him. God is also absolutely morally pure. He can only be good and right. He can only be good and right and He can only do good and right. That's why He is the Judge. Embracing God's holiness,
is a way that we can recognize who we are. It humbles us because it exposes our finiteness. We cannot understand Him and it exposes our frailness, which is our sinfulness, our fallenness. And so, God's holiness and recognizing that He is totally and completely, I can't get the word out, morally pure and good is what helps us understand how different we are from Him.
Brenda (20:50.096)
Hehehe.
Alex (20:55.387)
exposes our sin.
Brenda (20:57.04)
Mm -hmm. I know for me so often when I would hear about God's holiness, I would just tend to think of Him as being harsh. You know, somehow this holiness made Him unloving because we kind of moved to this idea of judgment and justice. But really the truth is God can't be loving if He's not holy.
Alex (21:04.921)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (21:10.425)
Yeah, good point.
Brenda (21:17.616)
and His Holiness has to include justice, right? Because God wouldn't be loving apart from justice. And one of the ways that I think we can think about this is that we would not consider a human judge to be just, i .e. loving, right, righteous, if he refused to punish criminals.
Alex (21:20.377)
Mm.
Alex (21:36.985)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (21:37.616)
And so, you know, there's this sense of which is holiness, this idea that he's above everybody, that he's morally pure, that makes his judgments trustworthy. In other words, God never gets love wrong. He never gets, he defines what love is. He defines what right living is. And right living is to be in a right relationship with him and a right relationship with other people and a right relationship with ourselves and a right relationship with our environment for our flourishing and his good.
Alex (21:50.425)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (22:03.385)
Hmm.
Alex (22:07.641)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (22:08.272)
And so without his holiness, without acknowledging his holiness, if there's nobody otherworldly, if there's nobody who's morally pure out there, then we're going to all be, and this is happening, right? We're all coming up with our own standard of what love looks like and people are being destroyed in the process. As we were getting ready for this, I listened to several sermons on the holiness of God and probably my favorite was the one by Jackie Hill Perry, which we can put in our show notes. And she says this in the message, and I love this, if God
Alex (22:32.313)
Hmm.
Brenda (22:38.226)
is holy, then he can't sin. If God can't sin, then he can't sin against me. If he can't sin against me, shouldn't that make him the most trustworthy being there is? And so,
God is totally and completely loving even in His justice. And I think that's just something that is hard, but He's transcendent. So again, we just need to recognize too that we're not going to grasp, we're not gonna fully grasp God's holiness and how this plays out or how this works or what this means because we're not God. And to your point, that's incredibly humbling. But I also wanna say that we can only know how bad...
Alex (23:00.473)
Hmm.
Alex (23:15.385)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Brenda (23:22.544)
Sin is in light of God's holiness, especially when we look at the cross where our sins have been judged and paid for by Jesus. I mean, it is the cross that really and truly lets us know how serious our sin is. And we know that on the cross, it's God's mercy and wrath that come together as the greatest display of His holiness.
Alex (23:47.705)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, so this discussion about holiness reminds me of one of my favorite phrases that my pastor says when he talks about the law of God and sin. He says that the law of God reveals the heart of the lawgiver. And I love that idea that in the law we're not seeing a harsh judge. We're actually seeing the heart of a loving God who is inviting us into intimacy with him. And this is, it has to be on his terms. Like he's showing us
Brenda (24:03.824)
Mm.
Alex (24:20.123)
who he is and how to have access to him, how to come into a relationship with him. He makes the first move in pursuing us and saying, hey, come into a relationship with me, here's how. And what we see, I love that idea that because we know that he is holy, none of his attributes towards us are corrupted. All of them are perfect. So his love towards us is perfect, his grace and mercy is perfect, his faithfulness is perfect, his power and his sovereignty is perfect. So,
Brenda (24:40.4)
No, that's right.
Alex (24:50.043)
There is a real comfort. I think we have been taught a fear about the holiness of God, but there is a real comfort in the holiness of God and it also in a real humbling in the holiness of God. And so thinking about this idea that the law is a revelation of the heart of the lawgiver, we also have to recognize number four, that sin is about breaking relationship.
Brenda (24:55.12)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (25:14.105)
and it leads us to separation and isolation. So God gave us the law so that we could know how to be in relationship with Him and with others. And we have to recognize that when we violate that law, our sin against Him breaks our relationship with Him and others. And so at the end of it, sin is not a legal matter so much as it is a deeply personal matter. It is a legal matter, but it is a deeply personal matter. There's not one command of God when violated that will
not fracture some type of relationship, which is really something to meditate on because we think so often that our sin is done in isolation, but sin fractures and breaks relationship.
Brenda (25:49.2)
Yep.
Brenda (25:56.341)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, and I love that. I think really coming to grips with this in my own life has been a great motivation for me to deal with my own sin. When I think about what does it look like? What are my actions or reactions going to do to my relationships? And the first relationship that we need to be concerned with is our relationship with God. And our sin fractures or breaks or separates us from God, but not God from us. And I want to repeat that again, like it separates us from God.
Alex (26:24.473)
Hmm.
Brenda (26:27.526)
but not God from us. You know, we run from God in shame, in fear, with a guilty conscience. I have a close relationship with someone who I often have to step back from in relationship. And I like to borrow a phrase from Leslie Vernick that says, I say, I'm taking 10 steps back now, but I'm facing forward with arms open wide. And when you're ready to turn, I'll be here and you can come right back to me. But I was really thinking about this picture in terms of like my relationship with God because,
God never steps back. When I sin, again, I run away from Him, but He's right there waiting for me to return with outstretched hands. And honestly, Alex, you know, I just think about like the way that God moves toward. All throughout the Bible, we see God moving toward sinners and calling them to repentance and continuing to show them His goodness and kindness and His love. And so, I just, I think if we could grasp even
just that, like this separation, this idea of sin separating us from relationship is creating a scenario for us where we want to move away from God. But part of what's going to bring us back, as we're going to see, is knowing that God wants to be with us, even in our weakness, even in our frailty, even in our sinfulness.
Alex (27:40.185)
Hmm.
Alex (27:45.433)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I think you're mentioning that broken relationship with God because we're moving away and often it also is a broken relationship within ourselves. Like what happens when we sin is that we feel the guilt, this is what I've done wrong, but we also feel deep sense of shame. Something is wrong with me and that distances us even from ourselves. We don't see ourselves as clearly. We don't know ourselves. We...
It sounds weird to say we want to have distance from ourselves, but we know what it feels like to live, to try to live out of relationship even with ourselves, to live without an awareness of who we are, and that's what sin does to us.
Brenda (28:23.475)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (28:33.3)
Mm -hmm.
I was counseling a young lady recently who had gone on a vacation and made some really poor choices. And she texted and called while she was on vacation. She was so sad about her choices and was really heartbroken that she had moved outside of God's will. And when she came back in to see me, I was really talking to her a lot about just the grace of God and the love of God and the forgiveness of God. She also is perfectionistic. So, you know, she was beating herself up so much. And at the end,
I said, well, what are you thinking? Like, give me some feedback. And she goes, it had just been so much easier if I'd come in here and you would have just reprimanded me and just taken a stick to me. This is terrible. Right? And I just think that's kind of an idea of like, I've got to pay for my sin and I'm so broken and messed up. It like, just whip me. Don't, you know, it's just that guilt and that shame.
Alex (29:14.553)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Alex (29:27.641)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Because the guilt and the shame then lead to self -contempt. And the self -contempt means we want to just take our punishment. Yeah.
And then we also, I think maybe this is the most obvious place we see where sin causes break in relationship is with others. Sin separates us from others as we experience that shame and we draw back from others. It also separates us from others as we hurt people and our failure to love them. And typically when we sin, we are not thinking about what is best for others. We're not thinking about loving others well.
Brenda (30:05.268)
I'm gonna go.
No, usually there's an element that is about me and my kingdom, right? So I have just a little story just to kind of an everyday example of how this creeps in this past Saturday was beautiful in Chattanooga. Like it was probably the best day of the spring and you know being the little otter that I am. I work hard and I like to play hard and so I wanted to play with Paul, but he wanted to do what he does really well in that tackle a project and so we have two front patio.
Alex (30:12.121)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (30:21.305)
Mm. Mm.
Ha ha!
Alex (30:36.313)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (30:38.549)
and upstairs, downstairs. He wanted to get in the, I thought it was a great, he thought it was a great day to go clean those front porches. Well, I got really frustrated because he didn't want me time.
Alex (30:43.097)
Oh yeah.
Alex (30:50.009)
hahahaha
Brenda (30:52.467)
And I began murmuring really and complaining against him in my heart. And what happened was is my attitude toward him quickly soured, right? Rather than being thankful for his hard work, I actually felt resentful. And then I could feel myself being really snippy. And you know, then my mind goes to, you don't ever want to play with me. You always find projects to do.
Alex (31:02.361)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (31:06.745)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (31:15.513)
I'm gonna go.
Brenda (31:18.067)
the always and never statements start. And let me just say the truth is, I'm going to see John Mellencamp tonight, I'm going to Chicago to do baseball games in May, I'm going to Turkey in June, all instigated by my husband. But the interesting part is I realized then my complaint turned against God. And I can almost hear the voice of Adam in the garden here, this husband you gave me, God.
Alex (31:19.833)
Oh yeah.
Alex (31:23.897)
Ha!
Alex (31:37.561)
Mmm.
Alex (31:42.969)
Yeah. Why didn't you give me somebody fun?
Brenda (31:46.582)
That's right! That's right! I needed another otter, never mind that nothing around the house or the yard would get done or the finances would get done, right? And so, I just became very dissatisfied and discontented. And then, of course, I just moved to Phi, and I'll show you, I'll go play all by myself, and I'll even ignore and not appreciate the work you're doing. I mean, it just got, it was just so interesting just how quickly, like, this sin captured my heart, this demand, and we're going to talk more just about how the heart gets captured, but, you know, and that's...
Never mind that Paul was actually doing this. A lot of this is for my benefit and he wasn't asking me to help and work. Like I could go play all that I wanted to. So I look back and I think, well, I broke God's law in numerous ways, but more importantly, by breaking those laws, I broke relationship, right? And so that's the thing I think we really need to come back to is begin to see, cause that breaks my heart. Like when I really realized the goodness of God in my husband, and then I begin to complain about the husband.
God gave me. And when I really think about, you know, just the kindness of Paul and his hard work and what he's done, and I'm going to complain about him. Anyway, the final thing I just want to say about this is just, I want us to notice that there's just a pattern like leading to isolation and separation. And in that, we will begin to either say, I'm the worst or you're the worst. I'm the only one. You're the only one. You know, this is hard or different for me. No one cares. No one wants to help me. And then I think we really just become sitting ducks for the enemy.
Alex (33:08.313)
Yeah.
Alex (33:16.729)
Yeah, yeah, you're right. Good story.
Brenda (33:20.5)
Just an everyday story for sure. All right, number five. We're at number five, Alex, so we got a clip along here. Sin always originates in the heart and you know, the reason that is we're born sinful. We call this original sin. As a result, we sin because we are sinners. We are not sinners because we sin. So we sin because we're sinners. We are not sinners because we sin. And you know, the Bible tells us the fall affected every part of our being. So sin not only affected our bodies, which
Alex (33:27.641)
We do.
Alex (33:33.657)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (33:50.408)
now gets sick and die, but also impacted and corrupted the core of who we are. And the core of who we are is our hearts, the inside of us. So, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, will, imagination, all have been infected by sin. And what that means, that even as Christians, we are not able not to sin. But, sin does not have to have the final say.
Alex (34:16.153)
Yeah. All right, number six.
Sin is never safe or tame. So sometimes sin is pleasurable for a time, we all know that, but it's deceptive because it does something for us. But one of the quotes we've both used a lot is, sin will take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay. So sin takes us to a place where our conscious may be no longer operating correctly. And then,
Oftentimes sin gets piled on sin and then we're really in grave danger when we stop caring about God or others and it can even lead to a hardness of heart. So oftentimes those sins that we think are small or they're not a big deal, they're pleasurable, they are the ones that end up doing the most damage, take us further than we want to go.
Brenda (35:13.333)
Well, and I think even from my example with my husband, you know, if I let that go and I continue to ruminate on that, that will eventually lead to contempt. And that will destroy, you know, for him, and that will destroy the relationship. So again, I think we just go back to this idea of like, we have to understand the relational fallout and the collateral damage. So number seven is sin is ultimately and always a failure to trust God's character and promises. And I think just when we have a low view of God,
Alex (35:20.825)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Alex (35:31.225)
Alright.
Brenda (35:42.932)
When we don't know who God is, then we devalue him. And what ends up happening is then we give our hearts to some other, you know, lover God, idol, to do for us what only he can do. And that's why it's just so vital, Alex, that we have to know God. We have to know him truthfully and intimately. And really knowing him is the greatest offensive and defensive weapons against ongoing sin in our lives.
Alex (35:53.177)
Hmm.
Alex (36:07.673)
Mm -hmm, we're gonna talk about that more too. All of these we're gonna talk about more, so even though we're picking up the pace.
We will revisit. Number eight, sin often results in discipline from the Lord. I like this translation of the verse in Hebrews 12. And have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as his children? He said, my child, don't make light of the Lord's discipline and don't give up when he corrects you for the Lord disciplines those he loves and he punishes each one he accepts as his child. And so we have to remember that that correction is not punishment.
because punishment is paying back for wrong which is what was done to Jesus on our behalf but discipline is correction and that often comes in the form of consequences for our sin so God's not getting I like this God is not getting back at us but getting us back to him that's that idea like the shepherd bringing the sheep back
Brenda (37:02.966)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (37:06.646)
Yeah, and I always say that I'm so glad that God is a better parent than I am because I look back at my parenting when my children were little and there were just a lot of things I didn't correct because it was just too hard. Or like the work was hard or knowing that they were gonna be sad was hard and I'm just thankful that God is faithful to bring correction when we need it even though we don't like it and sometimes it doesn't feel very good.
Alex (37:12.441)
Hmm.
Alex (37:19.161)
Mm.
Alex (37:33.529)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (37:34.167)
Well, number nine and number 10, you know, are just so, so powerful. And I think number nine is kind of the, the hinge pin on this whole talk of sin and where things really begin to turn. And that is the antidote for sin is forgiveness. The late Dr. Carl Meninger, who was a well -known American psychiatrist once said, if he could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75 % of them could walk out the next day.
Alex (38:02.393)
Hmm.
Brenda (38:04.12)
day. I mean that is pretty astonishing. I think you know the father of modern day biblical counseling, J. Adams, said something very similar that his first practicum was like in a mental hospital and he had the same experience when he asked the doctor that he was working with. He said most of these people just need to know they're forgiven. Their consciences are burdened.
Alex (38:04.921)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (38:09.145)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (38:29.433)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (38:32.566)
and we've all had a guilty conscience for something, it can feel unbearable.
Alex (38:37.017)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (38:38.646)
And I would say, you know, a guilty conscience is, is, you know, can be a good thing. It's kind of the initial idea of conviction of the Holy Spirit, but to stay there is damnable, right? Like to have to stay under the burden of a guilty conscience is so heavy. And that actually, again, leads us away from the Lord instead of to Him. So, you know, in our guilty conscience, we get distressed about our responsibility because we know we've done something wrong and then the fear of outcomes. And I think we just, we all want the freedom.
Alex (38:49.081)
Hmm.
Brenda (39:08.6)
that comes with forgiveness. And there's a great story that I heard by Hemingway and Paco. So Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story called The Capital of the World. And it really shows the human longing, the universal longing for forgiveness. And so in the story, Hemingway was told of a father and his teenage son. And the son had sinned against his father and in his shame had ran away from home. Sounds a lot like the story of the prodigal.
Alex (39:15.769)
Mm.
Brenda (39:38.475)
I don't know whether it was somewhat taken from that, but it's a familiar story to the Bible and to many of us as well who are parents or who have been the prodigal. The father searched all over Spain for him, but he still couldn't find the boy. And finally, in the city of Madrid, in a last desperate attempt to find his son, the father placed an ad in the daily newspaper, and this is what the ad said, Paco, meet at Hotel Montana, noon Tuesday, all is forgiven, papa.
Alex (40:07.129)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Brenda (40:08.184)
That just gave me goosebumps. The father prayed that maybe the boy would see the ad and maybe just maybe he would come to the Hotel Montana on Tuesday. The father in earnest Hemingway story arrived at the Hotel Montana and he could not believe his eyes. A squadron of police police officers have been called out to keep order among the 800 young boys named Paco who had come to meet their father in front of the hotel.
Alex (40:25.049)
Hmm.
Brenda (40:38.09)
of the hotel Montana. 800 boys named Paco read the ad in the newspaper and hoped it was for them. Now I don't just have goosebumps, I have tears in my eyes. I've read that story more than once and it is...
Alex (40:47.412)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (40:51.22)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (40:55.16)
It is amazing and this is the impact, this is the desire and this is the impact of forgiveness and we have been offered the greatest forgiveness known in all history to all mankind through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Alex (41:09.78)
Mm -hmm.
Beautiful story. I love that. And that leads us to our last point, number 10, our ongoing relationship with sin is about repentance. Recognizing that we're gonna continue to struggle with sin, we have to approach with humility and know that we're practicing sinners who are in need of mercy. And the focus of sin has to be on the promise of forgiveness that we have. I think it's a John paper that used to say, not only sin we can...
confess is a forgiven sin and so we have to always be in the process of repentance and we're going to continue to break that process of repentance down in future episodes.
Brenda (41:50.007)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, and I just think, you know, we don't want to minimize sin, but we want to maximize forgiveness. I've been reading the classic book. I think you've read it, Alex, The Return of the Prodigal by the late Catholic priest Henry Nowen. And he had an encounter with Rembrandt's famous painting by the same title. And he spent, I think, six years writing about his meditations on the painting and the story. And I think it's so interesting because he really points out that what caused the prodigal to return is he remembered his
Alex (41:57.748)
Mm.
Alex (42:03.636)
Mm -hmm. I love it.
Brenda (42:21.673)
Like, right? He remembered that he had a father that was good. And I just think for us that the idea of forgiveness is that same open invitation for me as God's child to return home every time I wander. You know, I love the hymn that says, prone to wander. How's it go?
Alex (42:22.356)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (42:36.98)
Yeah.
Alex (42:41.652)
Trying to wonder, Lord, I feel it. Mm -hmm.
Brenda (42:41.783)
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Yeah, yeah. And I have that in my bedroom, you know, written or painted or whatever. But any rate, home is a place of welcome and celebration. And I think the more we can view our return from sin in this light, the more we're gonna want to run to God instead of from Him. And we will find more freedom not to sin when we focus on grace and the freedom to return to the Father. Let me say this, sorry. We are going to see that we send
less when we focus on grace. And that same grace is going to give us the freedom to return more quickly when we do sin. That's what I was trying to say.
Alex (43:12.979)
Mm.
Alex (43:20.531)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Very true. So this ongoing relationship with sin being about repentance, we're going to unpack the gospel waltz more. We've talked about it in previous episodes, but I love the gospel waltz, especially as you're talking about this return of the prodigal, that it is a return home. It's a celebration. And that's why I love naming it the waltz, that it's a dance, that it is a way to be in step with the spirit, to dance with the spirit. I like it.
Brenda (43:30.998)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (43:52.262)
It doesn't feel like that God the Judge, but God the Father emphasis. So we're going to talk about what it means to repent, which we believe is confess, believe, love the steps of the gospel waltz.
Brenda (43:58.135)
Yeah.
Alex (44:07.38)
And so we'll talk about what it looks like to engage in real confession and belief and then love, which is often the action part of creating a plan towards repentance and changing direction back towards God.
Brenda (44:22.424)
Yeah, and one thing I want to say too is, you know, repented sin, like ongoing repentance, I'm not saying we have to necessarily have totally overcome a sin issue, but as we are receiving God's forgiveness and as we are working through repentance, it makes us more relatable and useful. I just think about these gospel conversations or these conversations that are counseling oriented. If we come to them and we're not even comfortable talking about our own sin and forgiveness and repentance,
we're going to have a hard time talking with someone else and we're going to make them uncomfortable. But I would say some of the best conversations that I have is when I am able to enter into somebody else's sense struggle and say, I get it.
Alex (45:06.547)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (45:07.192)
I've been there. I'm still there sometimes. I was just talking to a young man on the phone the other day and he was struggling with something and I was like, I am 30 years older than you. I still at times struggle with that. Please, please know it. But yet I can see the grace of God that I don't struggle as much as I used to. And so I think that was so encouraging, you know, to him as well. Well, I think we can go ahead and wrap this episode up, Alex.
Alex (45:19.347)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (45:28.979)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (45:34.835)
10 reasons why we have to talk about sin. Because God talks about it. Yep.
Brenda (45:37.784)
That's right, because God talks about it a lot, and He highlights His grace.
Alex (45:43.667)
And the good news is that God is, the whole good news of the Bible is that God is rescuing sinners from sin. And so that's what Salve Lord James calls it, the great rescue mission. And so we just want to remember that a biblical understanding of sin is going to be key to helping people find comfort and change in the Lord. And we're going to have to know how to deal with our own sin if we're going to help others do that. And so that's what we're hoping to unpack this season.
Brenda (46:12.377)
Yeah, and I just want to end up saying one more thing. There might be somebody who's listening who's never placed their trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of sin. And that can happen right now. All the things we've been talking about, Alex, God not being our judge, God being our father, all the ways that we come into sin and see the grace of God, the love of God, the forgiveness of sin, is directly related to the fact that we are His children.
that this message is for those who have put their trust in Christ. And so I just want to say that there might be somebody listening who is saying, like, I don't know that any of this makes sense to me, or I don't know that any of this applies to me. It could just be that they're discouraged in their sin. And I hope that this, they're a Christian who's discouraged, and I hope this series will really help them begin to see how to have some victory and what it looks like to struggle with ongoing sin well and actually be
Alex (47:01.523)
Mm.
Brenda (47:06.731)
transformed, but there might be somebody else who really has never placed their trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. That one -time rescue where we acknowledge that we're sinners and that Christ has paid that penalty and we go from God being our judge to our Heavenly Father. And so, if you're that person, I just want to encourage you reach out to us through social media. We would be happy to talk with you. Find somebody, you know, if you
if you're...
if you're having those kind of thoughts, if you're having that kind of internal struggle, then chances are God's placed somebody around you that you could also have a conversation with. And so, take that step to have the conversation because sin is terrible, terrible, terrible. And the penalty for sin is terrible. But the grace of God is so good. And life in Jesus is so full and so amazing, even in spite of the struggle with ongoing sin.