Brenda (00:03.247)
Well, hi Alex. Good to be with you again today. I always love being with you, Alex. Not to be too mushy here, but you're just such a dear friend to me and I love being able to do ministry with you.
Alex (00:04.565)
Hi Brenda.
Alex (00:08.884)
Thank you.
Alex (00:18.036)
I know that is so true, I was thinking about that last week.
Brenda (00:21.391)
Yeah, and I love that the way we're set up with technology that I can be in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and you can be in Montgomery, Alabama, and we can still meet up to talk about really important issues. So that's really wonderful. Well, we are on season eight and we've titled this season, The Sacred Struggle, Sin, Responsibility, and the Journey to Transformation.
Alex (00:32.725)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (00:49.232)
And in our last podcast, we built a theological framework, or if you want to say we put some steps on a ladder in place or some hooks and handles, however you want to say it, for our discussion about sin. And today we really want to zero in and focus in on the heart and how the Bible describes the heart, what the functions of the heart are, and how the heart is transformed.
Alex (01:17.044)
So we're calling this episode, The Heart of the Problem is The Problem of the Heart.
And so I think we have to start off with some scripture and hopefully it's not a tongue twister like last episode when I could hardly get it out. But we're going to start with Matthew 15 where Jesus says, what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this defiles a person for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual morality, theft, false witness and slander. So we're really talking about the fact that what we see on
outside really comes from the epicenter, the heart, which is the epicenter of the intellect, the will, and the affections. And we're going to unpack that today.
Brenda (02:01.838)
And I love Jesus's imagery in Luke 6 where he really ties this to like a tree. And so this thought of like the root being the heart and the fruit. And if you've got a bad root, you're going to have bad fruit. And if you've got a good root, you're going to have good fruit. And he says, the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good and the evil person out of his heart produces evil for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And as you just read, the mouth also are the
the heart also produces action as well. So I guess we could just say, I mean, you know, we could go through Genesis to Revelation and find a lot more about what God has to say about the heart, but there's no doubt that sin comes from the heart.
Alex (02:35.027)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Alex (02:51.443)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (02:52.43)
So now we have to figure out what is the heart, Alex, because when I first became a Christian, I kept trying to figure out like, wait, you mean this organ inside of me that's pumping? Like, I don't really understand how it's thinking or how it's doing or what's, you know, trying to make that correlation. So we want to really delve into what is the biblical heart.
Alex (03:02.483)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (03:06.74)
Right?
Alex (03:12.533)
Yeah, so when you think about the image of the tree, we would say the heart is the root, or we would say the heart is the center, or maybe we could even just think of it as our inner self.
Brenda (03:23.469)
Yeah, and I just love the way the Lord uses our physical bodies to show a spiritual reality because our physical hearts are absolutely necessary and vital for life and we can't do life without them. They're the center of our physical lives just like the biblical heart is the center of our spiritual life and our souls.
Alex (03:31.829)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (03:46.645)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Brenda (03:49.71)
So we want to look at the parts of the heart. And I think this teaching has been really, really helpful to me, especially, I think, as we move next episode into the idea of worship and idolatry. We're going to really tease this out more. But we really want to start with just this basic understanding of the functions of the heart.
Alex (04:03.349)
Yeah.
Brenda (04:11.599)
And we would say if the heart is the inner you, it's the part of you I can't see but you know is in there. Like what's in there? What's in the heart? How do we describe that biblically? So there's three functions. There's the cognition or the thinking center. There's the affection or the wanting center. And then the volition or the choosing center. So why don't we just unpack a little bit what we mean by the heart is the center for cognition or thinking.
Alex (04:19.797)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Alex (04:34.356)
Hmm.
Alex (04:40.373)
So the thinking center could be what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about life, our worldview, which is a popular terminology these days, which is our interpretation of how life works. Our interpretations then are just going to affect how we think about God, ourselves, people, relationships. So all of that takes place in the function of cognition.
Brenda (05:07.312)
I was even thinking about our imagination too because our imagination plays such a powerful role in, you know, how we particularly think about desires, which we're going to talk about next, but the things we long for, the things we dream about, the things we hope for, are the things we think about.
Alex (05:09.78)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (05:18.292)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (05:22.356)
All right.
Brenda (05:22.929)
But also, the next part of the function of the heart we want to talk about is affection. We said it was the wanting center. So this is the desire center. And our desires, which we are going to talk a lot about next podcast, is we want to recognize that we have a lot of incredibly wonderful desires that God has given to us. But we have an incredible ability to have those desires
Alex (05:32.916)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (05:52.882)
corrupted. So they can be God -given or self -driven. And in the area of desire, we also want to look at things like our feelings come from the area of our affections. And this wanting center of our heart is really what motivates us so often in the direction that we're going to go. And I think about an example from my own life, you know, when I think about cognition or my thinking versus my affection wanting and how it moves me. And that's
Alex (05:53.748)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (06:10.325)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (06:22.802)
is that I know that exercise is really good for me. Like, I've read all the material, Alex. I've been with the personal trainers. I've done the things, right? But I'm much more prone to act on what I want than what I believe when it comes to exercising. So, what I don't want is pain. I don't want to sweat. I don't want to get above zone 2 because that means you can't talk while you do it.
Alex (06:27.893)
Mm.
Alex (06:32.085)
Hahaha!
Brenda (06:50.672)
And the talking aspect is very, very important to me. Thus, why I love walking. I could walk, you know, from here to Montgomery if you'll just talk to me the whole time and let me talk to you. But, you know, just that there's this disconnect even. Like my wanting drives me much more than my thinking or believing. And that's why we have to talk so much about desires.
Alex (06:52.053)
Forget that.
Ha ha ha!
Alex (07:12.597)
Yeah. Yeah.
And then the third one is volition, which is our choosing center. And that's going to be probably exactly what people would think. That's our decisions. That's our will. That's our commitments. And so that's the part that we kind of see on the outside most of the time because it's action. And I wanted to say, Brenda, these, this idea, this understanding of the heart is communicated really well in Jeremy Pierce book, but I cannot remember the name of it. What is it?
Brenda (07:44.018)
Oh yes, hmm dynamics, the dynamics of the dynamics of the heart, I think is the dynamics of the heart. Yeah, so that is a really good book that we will link in our show notes if people want to check it out. So I think the point we want to make is that these three functions of the heart are like the steering wheels of our life.
Alex (07:44.328)
We'll have uh -huh
I think that is it. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Alex (08:06.581)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (08:07.217)
Because ultimately we live out of what we think, what we want, and what we choose. And so when we say we live out of our hearts, that's what we mean. We mean that how we think, what we want, and how we choose directs our words and our behaviors.
Alex (08:19.925)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (08:30.005)
Yeah, I think what's interesting is to be able to see this reflected even in modern psychology. When we were putting this together, I was thinking about listening to an interview with a psychologist. To my knowledge, she's not a believer. But her whole book is about the fact that if we keep trying to change behavior and we don't address our underlying beliefs in that behavior, like we've missed this important component of our actions. And I was like,
there again like God's truth keeps bubbling up in all these different places and it was great to see her unpack that and to have a lot of biblical language and not be using scripture at all. So we're seeing these ideas of the heart and the different facets of the heart. Once you gather this language I think you'll be able to see it and hear it in a lot of different places.
Brenda (09:25.81)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. Well, the other thing we need to recognize that our heart is infected by sin. And so what we mean by that is, and again, I'm kind of like slowing down and maybe dumbing this down a little bit because I really want us to understand these three functions because it's going to be really important when we start talking about worship. Our heart is infected by sin, so we don't thank or want or choose the things of God.
And you know, Alex, so much of that I think can be kind of summarized in the idea of autonomy, the sinful inclination of our heart that we desire self -rule rather than being ruled by the authority and the care of God, because all of God's authority over us, like when God tells us, hey, here's how you need to think, here are the things you need to want, here are the commitments you need to make. It's always, always, always for our good and His glory. And I always say,
whatever is for God's glory is for our good. And so...
you know, our desire for autonomous independence from God, it really does bleed into every aspect of our life. It shapes our experiences. It, you know, really impacts our deepest desires. It works into our worldview, right, and our personal worldview. And so what we begin to see is that,
Alex (10:51.22)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (10:57.844)
There's just this natural inclination of the heart to want to think what I want to think, to do what I want to do, and to make the commitments I want to make. And that's where we get into trouble.
Alex (11:13.236)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, so we want to talk about not just the functions of the heart, but the different ways that the heart is influenced because we each have unique external influences outside of our control that powerfully shape our lives and these external influences put pressure on our heart, past and present. And so if we're going to keep thinking about the imagery of a tree and the heart being the root, the influences here are
the soil that surrounds the root that can change and influence how healthy the root is. And so we break this down into three, no four different influences. Life in a broken world, in a broken body, in broken relationships, in spiritual warfare. And we're just going to talk about those just for a minute. But life in a broken world is pretty easy for most of us to understand because it's what we encounter every day. We're hearing about wars, we're hearing about natural disasters,
natural disasters, pandemics, all these things are life in a broken world where sin and sickness come to bear on influencing our hearts. Most recently for me, we were driving to the beach this past week. Life in a broken world is driving through red radar rain. It was, yeah, talk about influencing my heart. Immediately my heart is anxious and it's all about
Brenda (12:37.78)
Oh gosh.
Alex (12:44.964)
the weather and riding in the car. And it's just a reminder that like so many things are gonna, how I felt five minutes before when there's no rain and five minutes later when we can't see out the windshield is completely different. And the choices I was making were different and what I was thinking was different all because of the weather.
Brenda (12:46.323)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (13:00.725)
Mm.
Brenda (13:05.908)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (13:07.025)
And then life in a broken body, we've talked a lot about the body in all different ways, but we have to recognize in this discussion that the heart that we're talking about is embedded in the body and it's influenced by the body. And so the relationship, the heart and the body is extremely important and it's extremely complex. So we often can't untangle where the body ends and the heart begins where the heart influences.
over the body and I think what we're seeing in neuroscience particularly today is even as we gain more knowledge we gain more complexity. It's not like we're understanding okay there that was only your body responding no oh that was that was your heart that was your thinking that was your desires. Actually what we're seeing in neuroscience is the more we understand about the heart and the body we see even more complexity with it and I see that no more than in this area of chronic pain for
Brenda (13:47.667)
Mm.
Alex (14:06.852)
I've learned a lot even over the past year about just the way my thoughts affect my pain, the way my beliefs affect my pain, even the way my desires affect my pain. And I'm tempted to think that my pain is influenced by a lot of external factors like food or sleep or those things, but then recognizing, oh, even the words I say, one of the exercises I was given was to begin to talk about my pain differently.
Brenda (14:13.461)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (14:36.708)
and that the words I use shape my experience of it. And it's just this little exercise of instead of saying I have stabbing hot pain in my hips, I say, oh, I have some twinges in my hips today. And even using that different language, making a choice to use a different thought in a different language affects my experience of the pain. And it's just amazing how complex just that one simple interaction is.
Brenda (14:55.029)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (15:06.326)
Hmm, well, that's good. Well, I have a different pain story and you know, it's funny because pain does shape our hearts, influence our heart and reveals our heart. I was telling you, Malia, how I stubbed my toe last week and my big toe turned black. I hit it so hard. And I, you know, I'm happy to say that I was holding my grandson and I didn't say the S word I wanted to say.
Alex (15:19.569)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (15:28.019)
Hahaha!
Brenda (15:30.423)
I said the shoot, nice S word, but that was a major pain and the influence of my heart was like, okay, I'm holding my grandson, hold your tongue. So yes, but the broken, the brokenness of the body, it does impact us.
Alex (15:32.05)
Hahaha!
Alex (15:44.434)
Mm.
Brenda (15:46.455)
There's another influence on the heart and that is life in broken relationships. And you know, you know that I've got some really difficult relationships in my life where there's been a history of manipulation and deception, betrayal, pain, and all of these things, you know, tempt me to not only to be sad and grief, which is the right response, but they also tempt my heart to something else, bitterness, anxiety, fear, resentment.
And so, you know, I think just in recognizing you've recognized this other people who have counseled have recognized that in me and have been very tender and gentle in dealing with my sin because if you just look at the sin as sin, man, you could just come in and just fire hose me and just make me realize all the reasons why I'm a dirty rotten sinner. But if you begin to look at the context, then you begin to realize the struggle that I'm in and how hard it is and how much.
um you know how much like the reality like why i am actually responding this way.
Alex (16:52.498)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, that's good.
And then the last one would be life in spiritual warfare. And I think as we think about spiritual warfare, we can tend to think of this in big cosmic ways. And yet I think what's really true is that we see spiritual warfare show up in each one of these areas in the brokenness of the world, in the brokenness of the body. And I think particularly in the brokenness of relationships is where I feel spiritual warfare most keenly. But we want to make sure that we mention it because it is a reality that we don't
Brenda (17:11.447)
Yeah.
Alex (17:26.02)
see and we can often forget. But one of the things I think we need to remember most of all about life in these broken places is that all of these are significant and there are significant influences on the heart but they don't make the heart sin. They don't make us sinful. We think about that tea bag illustration. I'm a tea drinker. I drink three different kinds of tea almost every day and so it's always a good illustration to remember that like when the tea bag is placed in hot water,
that is what makes the heat draws out what's really in there. It doesn't put it in there, it just draws it out. And so each one of these influences don't put sinfulness in our hearts or sinful responses in our hearts, but they definitely draw out and affect those sinful responses.
Brenda (18:15.287)
Yeah, I think for me in counseling conversations, what it helps me to do is just to be more patient with people, more gentle with people, more compassionate, even because so often you've got these external influences that are hot and heat. Now it's creating this heat in your heart. And so you're kind of being burned from the inside and the outside. And that's creating pain. Like your own sin is creating pain.
Alex (18:39.025)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (18:45.192)
And so, yeah, I think there was a time when all I could do was kind of look at the sin and that was it. I was just targeting the heart, just the heart. We got to get in there. We got to eradicate the sin. And yes, we want to talk about the sin. We want to help people turn from sin and turn back to the Lord. But I think when we look at these influences, how we go about doing that is going to look a lot different.
Alex (18:50.545)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (18:56.529)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (19:07.313)
Yes, definitely. Yeah.
Brenda (19:10.263)
So now we want to talk about how do we change the heart. And I think we could say right up front that we don't. God does. The heart is the territory of God alone to really change and transform. But we talk about this word, beholding, or to behold. And we want to unpack this word because beholding is actually the way that we are going to be
Alex (19:18.769)
Hahaha.
Brenda (19:40.169)
transformed. And I was looking up according to Bible Gateway, behold appeared 1 ,298 times in the original King James Version and then over a thousand times in the ESV and NASB translations. But unfortunately, the translation that I've used most of my life, the NIV, it never includes the word behold at all.
I didn't know that. That is fascinating. And I need to go back to like surely it's somewhere in there. So I haven't double checked that. You know, the internet isn't true about everything it says. So, you know, somebody wants to fact check that, right? If somebody needs to fact check that, I did not fact check that personally myself, but that's what Bible Gateway says. I feel like they're pretty reliable. But I think that may be a reason, Alex, when we come to this idea of beholding, it's like, well, we're not even, I mean, I just think almost 13 ,000 times in the original
Alex (20:08.401)
That is fascinating. I didn't either.
Alex (20:19.377)
Really?
Alex (20:29.681)
Wow.
Brenda (20:37.898)
King James. Not that that version doesn't have its own set of flaws, but in this regard, you know, this idea of beholding is really a lost word. Like, how often do you ever say, Behold, behold, Alex, behold, Brenda, behold anybody? We just don't use that language.
Alex (20:51.825)
Right. Right.
Brenda (20:56.088)
But beholding the love of God leads to transformation. And that's what the scripture says. And I know you and I both talk about this verse and love this verse. It's very grounded in the idea of how we're sanctified. When Paul tells the Corinthians, and we all with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from where? The Lord who is the
Spirit. So, Paul is basically saying, at our conversion, it's the Spirit of God that opens our hearts to see Jesus. And when we're continually seeing Him, or beholding Him,
we grow to look more like him. And we do this, you know, in this idea of sanctification in stages, right? Like from one glory to the next, transformation is that slow and stubborn process. But if we will set our sights on truly seeing Jesus, then transformation will happen.
Alex (22:02.897)
Yeah, and I just want to add there's another verse in 1st John that says, you know, we will be like him for we will see him as he is. And it's talking about the second coming. And I think that is a great tie into this verse because our beholding is a part of our sanctification process. As we see him, we become more sanctified. And then one day we will see him. Like we will see him and we will be completely transformed. That's our glorification. And so I love that.
Brenda (22:13.112)
Hmm.
Brenda (22:25.784)
Yeah.
Brenda (22:29.496)
Yeah, so good.
Alex (22:32.851)
that because I think it really adds credence to the idea of seeing Him changes us and it will one day change us completely. And so, yeah, well this, just like you said, I think for both of us this is one of our favorite teachings mainly because I tried so hard for so many years to do better and it didn't work and so there was something of a deep breath of relief for me in understanding this teaching of like, wait,
Brenda (22:38.552)
Mm -hmm. Ooh. Preach it. I love that. Yeah, that's so good.
Brenda (22:53.56)
Yep.
Alex (23:02.803)
I'm transformed when I see Jesus? Okay, so now what does that mean? Not I'm transformed as I am nicer and not as I'm transformed as I make a new behavior plan for a new day of what I'm gonna do. And so before we talk about how do we behold and what that means, let's talk about what transformation is because I do love the idea of, I think the whole Christian life is about continual transformation. The word means make a thorough or dramatic change.
change in form, appearance, or character. That's a great definition for sanctification, a thorough or dramatic change in form, appearance, and character. It comes from that metamorpho, which meta means after, with, and morpho means taking on the form of. And so if we put it together, it is change after being with. We change after being with something. So basically, Paul is saying that we can be changed as we behold the
Brenda (23:40.28)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (23:55.768)
Hmm.
Alex (24:02.675)
glory of the Lord as we behold Jesus. So if we want our hearts to be transformed to be like Jesus, we have to be able to behold him. And so I think that part is clear. The how is through beholding and the who, who do we behold? We behold the glory of the Lord and the glory of the Lord is Jesus. In all of his true beauty, some people say Jesus is the one true beauty. He is the good and true and right.
And he's the only being that is perfectly true, perfectly good, and perfectly right. And so he's the one that we want to behold. So, what do we do? That's what we always want to know. What do we do?
Brenda (24:38.168)
Hmm.
Brenda (24:42.584)
Yeah. That's right. Can't get around it. So what does it mean to behold? Well, behold means, like the definition means see or observe, and the root words are thoroughly hold. Beyond seeing an image or an idea, and we hold it so thoroughly that we see it even when we're not looking at it. And so that's, that's pretty like, whoa.
Alex (25:10.993)
Hmm.
Brenda (25:11.256)
I want to just say there's something though.
in this beholding, the thoroughly hold part of that, that makes me think of like when you hold your newborn baby or when you hold your grandbaby, like when a baby first comes and there is just this beholding. All you want to do is look and just hold and look and hold. Yeah, and maybe even a sense in, I'm just thinking about, you know, running the analogy a little bit more. We hold it so thoroughly that we see it even when we're not looking at it.
Alex (25:18.353)
Mm -hmm.
Alex (25:22.833)
Hmm.
Alex (25:29.489)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (25:45.432)
That's just an interesting thought in relation, I think, just to the love and beholding of little infants. I don't know. Play with that a little bit.
Alex (25:52.561)
Yeah, and I think that it goes back to something you said in the first episode that our imagination is involved here. There's a holy imagination here, meaning being able to hold an image in our mind.
Brenda (25:59.288)
Hmm.
Alex (26:06.321)
that I think we maybe sometimes get a little bit afraid of imagination like oh that's a little woo woo or that imaginations make believe when in reality it's not make believe it's just being able to hold an image in our minds eye that is true.
So I love this quote by Tim Keller and it's a little bit long but I think it's worth sharing. This is from a sermon he preached called Beholding the Love of God. And he says, when you take a truth, it might be a biblical passage, it might just be a principle of the Christian faith that you've heard all your life. And he's saying beholding now is when all of a sudden it gets more ancient and more new at the same time. It gets absolutely astonishing.
Brenda (26:55.864)
Hmm.
Alex (26:58.035)
It moves from the mind to the heart. It moves from analysis to intuition. It moves from understanding to standing under. It moves from seeing it in a detached way to seeing how it connects with everything. Behold, it moves from just knowing to beholding.
Brenda (27:19.256)
Mmm.
Boy, I love that idea that it gets more ancient and more new at the same time. That is just so cool. Well, it leads us right into, you know, 1 John 3, 1 says, but apparently not in my NIV. So I've missed it all these years. But I have sang the song, behold what manner of love the Father has given, right? Given us that we should be called, like, what are we beholding that we're called children of God and that is what we are. And I love Alex to behold my son -in -law with my grandson.
Alex (27:23.889)
now.
Alex (27:31.953)
Hahaha!
Alex (27:37.681)
Uh huh, yes.
Alex (27:50.289)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (27:51.608)
It is the sweetest thing like he's always his father and he's caring for him all the time and you know doing all the daddy things but it is the sweetest thing when I see my son -in -law like like burst forth, you know, like he can't stand it anymore. Like he's just so overwhelmed that he has to scoop up that little boy and nuzzle him and wrestle him and kiss on him and squeeze him and then it's so interesting because the overflow of like his delight is
Alex (28:06.577)
Hmm.
Alex (28:14.257)
Hmm.
Brenda (28:21.562)
in Parker is Parker's delight back to him. He's giggling and squealing and running. And then the spillover is to me as I am just delighting in all the delight that's going on.
Alex (28:24.753)
Yeah.
Alex (28:29.745)
Right?
Brenda (28:34.424)
And so to me, that's kind of just this picture of like the Father's love to us and our response to Him. And then it overflows to everybody else watching. It's just, it's sweet. And I think this idea of maybe even how, you know, the Father's looking on at us and then like we realize that and we're being loved and touched by Him and we look on to Him. But I don't know. There's just a lot of beautiful imagery using my imagination there.
Alex (28:58.45)
Very good imagery. Yeah, I love that, that the delight keeps multiplying or growing, it becomes reciprocal. So let's talk about what beholding is not, because I think it does help maybe to contrast it. Peter Kroll wrote an article for Desiring God and it was called Don't Get Too Familiar With The Bible.
Brenda (29:08.667)
Yeah, yeah, so good.
Alex (29:24.114)
kind of a little shocking to say something like that. But his whole point in the article I loved is that familiarity can often cause blindness. Like there's a good familiarity, a tender type of familiarity that reminds us that the gospel deepens our communion with Christ, but there's a cold familiarity that crowds out our curiosity, that where we stop seeing and we stop asking questions is that we already know that. We start to maybe make assumptions. Another way of
Brenda (29:32.762)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (29:42.874)
Mm.
Alex (29:54.068)
saying that we behold is to say that we go from knowing to experiencing and so the familiarity I think can be rooted in I already know that instead of I'm still experiencing the truth of it and that knowledge that that's the knowledge that moves us to worship it moves us from our head to our hearts. I always love this quote for me in Voskamp when she says the happily married have eyes to look long enough to make the familiar
you.
Brenda (30:25.754)
Hmm.
Alex (30:25.81)
And it's that same idea you picked up in Keller of once agent becomes new again. And I think we can understand that so well in the marriage relationship. Like we see just the day to day, we can kind of forget who our spouses are and we forget to see them. And it's the same way in our relationship with Jesus, with our heavenly spouse. Like when we're happily married to Christ, we can look in the Word and we can see him again. And we see him anew. Like we see how
precious he is again. I've been, I know y 'all have heard me say this probably on three seasons of podcasts because I've been doing it truly that long, but I've been in the gospel of Matthew forever and you'll be glad to know I'm done. I'm doing the capstone today, but I've been doing it with Marty Solomon's Bae Ma podcast, but I have crawled through Matthew because I've just really, really enjoyed seeing Jesus again, like just seeing all these interactions.
Brenda (31:10.522)
Hehehehehe
Alex (31:25.684)
Hearing Marty give me different information, cultural and background information to make me understand, taking me back to Old Testament texts that explain what Jesus is saying and doing in a different way. Like it truly is an ancient becoming new again as you understand Jesus in his culture and in the text, like seeing the Old Testament texts come to bear and so it's been such a fun, fun way for me to see Jesus.
differently to see him anew again.
Brenda (31:57.854)
Hmm. I love that and I can't wait to tell Paul after 33 years of marriage and his gray hair, I'm seeing the ancient in a new way.
Alex (32:06.002)
That's right. I love that.
Brenda (32:10.814)
That's what I learned from Alex today, honey. But, no, I... That's right. That's right. But there is a lot of truth in that. And, you know, I think about it. I always feel sad. Every once in a while I get somebody that I'm meeting with that will say, I know I should read my Bible, but I feel like I already know everything in there.
Alex (32:15.09)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Alex said you're ancient, Paul, but you're new.
Brenda (32:36.702)
you know, or I should read it more, but there's just nothing new. I've already read through the Bible once. And so again, just missing the whole idea of relationship and experience and that we're in a different place every time we come to the scriptures to meet with God and God through his spirit is stringing together the pearls, right, of seeing him, beholding him in the scriptures. And so, um...
So important. All right, well, I thought it'd be good just to talk about why it's hard. And I'm going to say for me to behold may not be hard for others. This may only be me and I will take that hit. But one of the things is I think it's hard to behold kind of this idea of just being with Jesus with him through his word through with his people because I'm too busy.
And I was thinking about how millions of people worldwide beheld, or at least I guess in the US, I don't know if this is worldwide or not, I don't know enough about my solar eclipses, but at least in America millions beheld the recent and very rare total solar eclipse. And I missed it.
Alex (33:36.626)
Me either.
Alex (33:46.45)
You did?
Brenda (33:47.582)
I missed it because I was quote unquote too busy. And then I find out that NASA says the next one is August 23rd, 2044. And I was like, Lord, let me live to be 78. I promise I won't miss the next one.
Alex (34:02.898)
Didn't you travel to see the last one?
Brenda (34:05.278)
Yes, well, and there, you know what, talk about familiarity. Wow, what a picture of that. Yeah, I've already seen one. I saw one, took the train, went across. To be fair, I didn't have a really good experience. I ate something really bad, spent a lot of the time in the bathroom at that trip. So maybe that had something to do with it, I don't know. But I think about too how beholding is a community. Like when we behold something so spectacular together, right? When every person,
Alex (34:11.762)
You done, stand there, done that. Mm -hmm.
Alex (34:18.514)
Oh, we remembered the story! Oh, yes!
Alex (34:32.882)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (34:35.184)
is beholding Jesus, when the believers are beholding Jesus, then there is this community or unity effect.
And honestly, it seems like everyone I knew was talking about the eclipse before, during and after, but me. And so I missed out. And I don't want to miss out on beholding Jesus because of busyness. And then I just think about being too burdened, like loaded down by my sin or suffering in a way that I don't want to look at Him because of the weight. Like I just don't have the energy. And again, I think that's where, like this, this, it ought to be a joy because going to behold me is like,
Alex (34:52.818)
Aww.
Alex (34:56.562)
Mm.
Brenda (35:14.289)
just bring it to him. You don't have to do anything with it. And then also this idea of community that if I'm too burdened, like maybe it's good for us to be kind of borrowing from other people's beholding. And then the final thing is I just put burden by being busy.
Alex (35:25.074)
Mm -hmm.
Brenda (35:30.047)
And just this always feeling like I need to do something. You mentioned that, you know, observing does not feel very productive and beholding is about being and being with. And so no one who watched the solar eclipse was useful. In fact, I know people who like my sister and her family packed up from Birmingham and went to Arizona in a camper. And so they left all of their useful like the things that were useful that they should have been doing work and all of that behind them to go do something that was.
Alex (35:44.562)
Yeah.
Alex (35:54.322)
Wow. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Brenda (35:59.072)
terribly not useful, but very spectacular as, yeah, that was unproductive. But I will say this too, they had to put themselves in the path to experience, right, the glory of that event. It does, and then God did the rest, God did the rest. Yeah, okay, I'm done.
Alex (36:01.106)
Not productive. Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, mm -hmm.
Alex (36:14.162)
The metaphor keeps growing!
Alex (36:24.242)
No, you know I love that because I love the Puritan idea of putting ourselves in the pathways of grace and it's true that and it ties in with I think our last question is when do we behold Jesus? Well, if we're gonna behold Jesus, we're gonna have to do it in the everyday and instead of part ways and so both of those mean putting ourselves in the pathways of grace, which means every day come into the Word even when we don't feel it, you know. George Miller used to say that
He didn't rise up from reading the Bible until he felt happy in Christ, basically until he saw Jesus. And I thought, oh, I'd have to get up really early some days, because I'm not seeing it, right? But it's that idea that we put ourselves in the pathways of grace every day, and communion with his word, with his people, with his spirit.
And we continue in the world around us, we continue to look for Him. We continue to try to have eyes to see Him. But then we also do take these set apart times like here, like the eclipse. That's what the feasts in the Old Testament are, our holy days are in the New Testament are setting apart times to fix our eyes on Jesus. We just recently had Easter celebration. Our church got to host Andrew Peterson on Good Friday to hear the resurrection letter.
Brenda (37:20.287)
Hmm.
Alex (37:45.332)
and it was just such a set apart time that we'll probably never forget that Good Friday experience of hearing him sing through Holy Week and and then we we returned to it right my husband listened to it on Spotify for the last couple of weeks just returning to that set apart time and so we tried to put ourselves in the pathways of grace in intentional ways every day and then in times that we set apart for the
Brenda (37:46.015)
Mm.
Brenda (37:50.847)
Hmm.
Alex (38:15.252)
purposes. So you know we said that this podcast on sin was going to be hard because it is the sacred struggle but there is so much hope as we keep wanting to point back to because as we talk about sin we are also wanting to remember what Jesus did in order to rescue us from sin and the continuing work of transformation he's doing. So today I hope it was helpful to understand
the three functions of the biblical heart, the thinking, the wanting, and the choosing, and to understand in some small way how we can be transformed through beholding Jesus. I hope that our listeners will try some maybe things, try some new things to be able to see Jesus. And then in our next episode we're going to talk about how our hearts are easily captured and let astray. So we'll talk about how our worship of God turns to a disordered worship.
how good desires become idolatrous desires and how we make idols to satisfy those idolatrous desires. It'll be another heavy one, but we'll try to approach it with both grace and truth.
Brenda (39:31.105)
Yeah. All right, Alex, I think we need to, I think we need to call this done. What do we say? That's all we got. That's all we got. See ya.
Alex (39:37.938)
That's all I got.
Alex (39:42.514)
Bye.