Pursuing Personal Holiness with Nathaniel Jolly

Well, I am here again with my good friend, Nathaniel Jolly, who, if you've been listening to the Be a Berean podcast for any time now, you would remember that I interviewed him, I think it was in January, about his upcoming missionary journey to Uganda. I was going to say mission trip, but I think he's moving to Uganda. This isn't a trip. This is a relocation.

So welcome back, Nathaniel. Yeah, thanks for having me, Michael. I appreciate that. Yeah, well, I'm glad to have you on here. I was thinking about you. It's fun to have guests on the show because then I can just sort of talk back and forth with someone.

And I guess if somebody listens to me regularly, we'd have to assume they're used to just hearing me nonstop for 20, 30 minutes. But I think it could break up the monotony a little bit and get some different perspectives by having a guest on. And I think that you are a solid brother with theology and you're prepared to speak on your feet about topics.

And so that's why I brought you on. And so a real quick reminder, you are, your wife is Jen, and you are Nathaniel and Jen Jolly, and you're getting ready to go to Uganda to plant churches and be missionaries there for life, right? That is correct, yes. That's right. And the last time you were on, we made this big deal, I remember, of trying to explain how somebody could support you financially. and the website that was on the old recording is not the right one anymore.

And so if somebody wanted to support your ministry, now you have a Patreon page and the PayPal, or they could give through your church, right? Yeah, that's correct. Okay, and I'll put that information in the text of the blog post that generates this episode, and then we won't talk about it and mess it up in audio. And then also you want people to pray for you?

Absolutely. And you have a newsletter, though, that you send out that has updates on what's going on. So if people want to sign up for the newsletter, how do they do that? Yeah, the newsletter is really good. It lets us know who that we pray for as well. So if they will just simply send us an email at jollymissionaries at gmail.com and ask to be put on the newsletter, we will do that.

We just send it out once a month. It's not bulky. It's normally not more than a page just to give people an update, what to pray for, what's going on, that kind of thing. Okay. And so I get one already, so I don't remember how I signed up. But so anybody wants to just email Jolly Missionaries, and this is J-O-L-L-Y Missionaries spelled out at gmail.com, and you'll get them added.

Well, that's great. Okay, so pray for Nathaniel and Jen Jolly. They are a sweet couple. I met them at G3 this year. I knew them before that online, but I got to meet them in person. And what did we have?

We had barbecued beef brisket. Is that what we had? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, we were both sort of like having a keto meal. We had these huge piles of meat, and I think I had mac and cheese, so I was a little bit of a cheater. But you were doing paleo or keto or something.

Yeah, doing the keto thing. Yeah, yeah. And afterwards, when I felt all bloated, I was like, I should have just done what he did. All right, well, here's why I brought you on today. you posted a tweet so your Twitter is at Nathaniel Jolly and I just thought this tweet was like it was like a proverb it was a concise little explanation of things that was packed with way more information than just looking at the size of a tweet had in it and so I wanted you to unpack it for us tonight and I was hoping it would be helpful to my listeners.

All right. Yeah, sounds good. All right. So here's what he wrote. Let me read what you wrote, and then we'll go back and I'll ask you. It's kind of in three parts is the way I divided it in my mind.

So this tweet from 1032 AM on April 18 says, what I never saw as a charismatic pastor was people taking personal holiness seriously. What I see in many new Calvinist pastors is a disdain for teaching personal holiness. What's the real difference? And then you got like a little guy saying, I don't know, like a little emoji. And it says, we're not saved by works, and yet we must work out salvation in fear and trembling.

So first of all, I was, I don't know how I didn't know this, but you were a charismatic pastor? Surprise. Yes, I did come out of that movement so many years ago. Tell me about being a charismatic pastor. Like, where were you? And, like, I mean, I don't need, like, you know, 20 minutes worth of stories.

But how did you go from being there, like being a teacher, and then being pulled out of that? Yeah, the short version is I really kind of got kicked out after coming into the doctrines of grace. But, yeah, you know, I started in a healthy church, ended up in the charismatic church at a very young age as a pastor. Started out as a youth pastor, you know, then went into, you know, adult pastoring.

Yeah you know God convicted me through just a series of sermons I myself was preaching You know I don even remember what it was now but I just came to this you know wow I teaching heresy I got to stop this. Looked up a few things online. and that's actually interesting because I found that same video that, you know, God's providence, he used to convict me heavily alongside his word. I found that with my wife about a month or two ago and showed that to her.

And I discovered that young Paul Washer was a part of that little video mashup. I had no idea who he was, but the whole video was, interestingly enough, on the holiness of God. And it was, I don't know, eight, 10 short clips of various sermons from various pastors. You know how guys do those mashup things. And that thing just wrecked my life as a charismatic.

And, you know, I came to truth and then I just decided I was going to try to convert everyone around me. And that's ultimately kind of what got me kicked out. So I, you know, was a pastor in a local church, ended up working for Morningstar Ministries with Rick Joyner. So I've met Bill Johnson in person. I've met Chuck Pierce. I've met, I've been around a lot of those guys.

Todd Bentley, you know, all those guys. So yeah. And then here I am, you know, I'm not sure what, maybe six, seven years later or something like that. So that's kind of the short version. So, so let me, let's clarify here. Are you saying that, so, so do you believe you were, you were a Christian, you were, you was, do you believe that you were a Christian, you know, at the time, and then you just got convicted of some things that you still needed to grow in, or do you believe you got converted at this time you were talking about?

Yeah, That's a good question. I started out in a healthy sound church that just kind of fell apart for various reasons. And I ended up in the charismatic church. Now, I believe my salvation was genuine. And and and I think it's important to say for listeners that might have loved ones in the charismatic church or they themselves, a genuinely saved person in the charismatic movement will eventually come out of that movement.

You cannot be genuinely regenerate by the Holy Spirit and stay in a movement that just has such rank heresy all throughout it. So I believe that my salvation was genuine and it was God convicting me of truth and pulling me out of that by his grace. and then and then when you said you were teaching heresy you realized like like what was it a heresy you were teaching oh i mean you know and i take obviously no pride in any of this but you know i mean i taught how to prophesy i taught dream interpretation so you're talking about that kind of stuff yeah i mean you know the crazy just the crazy crazy stuff but in And all of that is heresy mixed in because ultimately what all of that type of thing says is that Scripture alone is not sufficient. So yeah, those kind of things.

I never got into modalism like Bill Johnson and T.D. Jakes and these other guys and various other things, but definitely heavily in the charismatic movement. so when i'm going to dig a little deeper here because when you say the word heresy and i think of the word heretic and i know that in the in the bible i think heresies you know it means divisions right and so you're dividing the church but are you talking about damnable heresies like if someone believes in like dream interpretation then that means they're going to hell or are you referring it in a in a different sense of the word than like is it a different kind of heresy than denying the trinitarian god or denying christ alone is sufficient or are you putting these teachings at that level yeah no i wouldn't put them at damnable heresy okay now i understand i just want to make sure we clarified that i think there's some division there when we talk about heresies or you know it because it's because that type of thing really doesn't fit under heterodoxy um it goes beyond that uh i label it heresy but i wouldn't say it's a damnable heresy okay which is which is why you could have been teaching it and yet been a genuinely born again believer who was just obviously immature and and not But, you know, not where you needed to be and not where you eventually want to want to bring other people. Yeah.

So, for instance, modalism, you know, or what is what T.D. Jakes believes. I don't think he's recanted of that. Bill Johnson teaches that Jesus was just a man. That's a damnable heresy. Yes.

You truly believe that you are on the fast route to hell. So that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about. Yeah, I understand. And that's why we can have some hope that our charismatic friends and our charismatic family, we can have some hope that, okay, they really are clinging to Christ alone as their Savior. But we are very afraid for what they're being taught because it's damaging to their soul.

And in a kind of a weird, almost Joel Osteen sounding statement, it's just not the best for them. I mean I want the best for them you know I want them to have the best and and so I want them to have good doctrine because good doctrine is our only hope in this life of being able to do wise things right so let me go back to your tweet and you say that you never saw as a charismatic pastor people taking personal holiness seriously. And then you said, what I see in many new Calvinist pastors is a disdain for teaching personal holiness.

What's the real difference you ask? So what do you mean by that? personal holiness and new Calvinist pastors having a disdain for teaching it? Yeah, you know, I think my point was that, you know, in what we would consider our camp, the healthy church in particular, I don't know if you would call them neo-Calvinists or, you know, kind of the new Calvinists.

I think Josh Weiss, I believe he was the author of a book called The New Calvinism. Really good book, by the way. But yeah, I think what I noticed is that similarity between the two groups. And it's an important issue because, you know, we won't see the Lord without holiness. And I think a lot of the younger guys, maybe 40s or below, and I know there's some, I'm generalizing here, but in the Calvinist movement seem to kind to have this just say it you're picking on millennials yeah well it's millennials and a little older right everybody else is no no no gen xers in there it you know um but because i'm i'm borderline i'm i'm on the borderline i'm almost above the millennial i'm on the end there okay yeah you know the issue is uh what i see is preaching grace so heavily and rightfully preaching grace, but doing it to such a degree that it almost minimizes the need and really just the evidence in a believer of pursuing holiness.

The reality is, if a believer is not concerned with their personal holiness, if they're not pursuing personal holiness, I would question whether they're actually regenerate or not. So let's define personal holiness, because you You don't mean, you know, you don't drink or chew or go with girls who do. Like, personal holiness has a biblical definition.

So could you tell us what, you know, what that means when you say that? Yeah. So, you know, the short version and what we hear a lot is, you know, we love the things God loves and we hate the things God hates. Amen. That category of things. And so it means that, you know, we care about when we sin.

And when we sin, we hate that sin. We deplore it. You know, we go to the Lord for forgiveness, not that we've lost our salvation. That's what we're talking about. But we're grieved over the fact that we still sin as believers. You know, so we hate injustice.

We hate, you know, sinfulness. We hate, you know, categories of those things that would be classified as unholy. And we love those things that are righteous. We love justness. We love pure thoughts. We love clean living.

You know, all those things that God would deem beautiful and good, we love. and and when you when you um sorry your phone buzzed and I was distracted you if you could turn on do not disturb you probably should but if you can't do it that's fine but what I was going to ask is uh so we love the thing God oh so and I don't want to say we never but we would not as a like as a general rule or pattern ever um presume upon God's grace or consider it either consciously or even unconsciously, subconsciously, consider it a license to sin. And that's kind of what you mean by that, right? Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, I mean, example, Hebrews 12, 14 says, and the wording is important, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. You know, there's a striving. We talked before this about the Philippians passage, which I kind of referenced in my tweet, Philippians 2.12. It talks about working out your salvation in fear and trembling, not working for your salvation, but working out your salvation.

And that's the kind of thing that I'm concerned in the Reformed camp that a lot of younger guys are, they seem almost afraid to talk much about that subject out of a fear of legalism or something like that. And you're comparing that to when you were a charismatic pastor, but it was maybe a different focus there. The focus in charismatic circles is simply, we're just looking for the miracles.

And so they just don't even have a focus on that personal holiness aspect. But with the New Calvinist, you're seeing sort of the same output. Hey, we're avoiding discussing how God's law and the word of God should be brought to bear on our personal lives of holiness. and it's for the sake of something else we're chasing in a disproportionate amount that we should be studying it.

That's kind of what you mean, or you could correct me if I said it wrong. Yeah, I mean, that's the similarity. The charismatic movement as a whole is hyper-focused on their definition of God's love. And that definition of God's love is centered around sensationalism, emotionalism, And basically what they mean by that is, is what I'm doing, hearing, listening to, does it make me feel good?

And that the charismatic general understanding of what God love is You know if it right for me I can do it kind of thing It very worldly very sensual very emotional and sensational And so you move to which is a totally different thing, but you move to Calvinism and, you know, in the Reformed camp. And what I'm picking up in a lot of guys is not, they're not going there. They've got sound teaching, you know, they're doing expository preaching, but it seems like they minimize those parts in Scripture a lot where it talks about pursuing holiness, where it talks about being holy.

There's always seemingly some caveats of, well, but God's grace, and while they're not, you know, I'm not saying they're in the same place as the Charismatic Church because I don't believe that at all, the danger ends up being that, you know, the average person sitting under those teachings can very easily walk away believing, you know, God's got this. He's got me. He's keeping me.

I'm holy because of him, and therefore, I don't need to do anything on my part. You know, you hear a lot of guys say things like, you know, sin is normal, but it's not okay, but that also kind of becomes an excuse for a lot of people, right? Like, yeah, I looked at pornography today, and I haven't done it for three months, but I'm still holy because of the righteousness of Christ has been imputed to me.

I'll just keep moving. There's no godly sorrow. You know, there's no weeping before the Lord. There's no fighting, you know, an appropriate turmoil over those things. And there should be as believers, you know, I'm not talking about, you know, breaking out the whip and beating yourself, you know, kind of like Luther did in his unsaved state. But there's got to be a normal godly sorrow over the sin we actually commit now.

That's just, you know, nothing more than a demonstration of God working in us. If we don't have that, I kind of want to ask the question, well, are you really indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Because surely, although we're saved, the Holy Spirit disdains sin all the same. Yeah, I think that you bring up a good point about having that affections for what God loves and hating what God hates.

And so you're saying that we should have a godly sorrow because of our sin, a mourning, right? Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted as the result of our indwelling corruption that's still there as the result of the fall, even though we've been justified in time, we have not yet been glorified. And so actually, as you were speaking, I was thinking of two different thoughts that are conflating now, but it's all one topic.

I was thinking it's almost as if people skipped Romans 6 and 7. See, the beginning of Romans establishes like, yeah, you're totally depraved. You had no hope. It was only going to be by grace. but Christ is amazing, so now you're saved. And then it's like, okay, well, now we can do anything we want. And then Romans 6 would pop in and it would say, no, you still can't, right?

And then Romans 7 is going to describe this battle that you should be having, where the result of the battle is, oh, what a wretched man I am. It's not, oh, what a saved man I am. It's, oh, what a wretched man I am who will deliver me from this body of death. It's this longing to be delivered from this corruption. You really hate living in this body, in a sense.

And I'll let you comment on that, but before I forget, the other thing I was thinking about is, I'll tell you what, most people hate other people's sin. So all these guys that talk about justification and, oh, it's by grace, and the people you're describing, I guarantee they hate other people's sin when it affects them. but they don't hate their own enough. And I can see how that would become concerning.

And that's a heart check for you and me and anyone listening. Like, do you hate your own sin as much as other people's? And I think a lot of times we commit the error you were describing, where we just don't see our own sin as quite as bad as other people's. And then we justify it by pointing back to Jesus Christ as our justifier. But we're sort of justifying it at that point.

We're not actually leaning on him. So what do you think, like, how do you think we help people to diagnose this? You know, when you say work out salvation in fear and trembling, you didn't say work for salvation in fear and trembling. You said work out salvation. Like, what do you mean? What's the pastoral wisdom to pass on to people who are listening?

And how do they help one another in this endeavor? Yeah, well, you know, again, I think the litmus test is, are we loving what God loves and are we hating what God hates? And so, you know, just stop right there. To know those things requires, you know, again, another discipline of the faith, studying in the word, being in the word. You know, going to a Bible preaching church is absolutely necessary in the beginning. get there, but if you're only showing up Sunday morning to that solid Bible preaching church, and that's as far as it goes, then, you know, you're just not going to know what God loves and what God hates.

And so we got to get in Scripture. You know, we pray that the Holy Spirit would illumine the Scripture to us. We open the Word of God. We get out study references if you need to. You know, most people have access to internet here, but you take some time to be diligent and study, and that's how we answered that question. And, you know, the reality is, and let me say that I think a lot of these, you know, particularly this group of pastors, I think they're well-meaning.

I don't think most of them are intentionally trying to create an atmosphere where their people just think they're fine and that they don't really need to be pursuing disciplines of the faith or pursuing personal holiness. I don't think that's the case for most of these guys, but the end result is all the same. You know, so I want to be fair, you know, to them in that at least, you know, the guys that I've seen, I don't think that that's an intentional thing, but it's happening nonetheless.

You know, let me just I've got a quote jotted down here from Charles Spurgeon. Let me read this because I think, you know, most reformed guys love Spurgeon and he's definitely got a lot of wisdom. But just listen to this quote. He says, I would sooner be holy than happy if the two things could be divorced. Were it possible for a man always to sorrow and yet be pure?

I would choose to sorrow if I might win the purity, for to be free from the power of sin, to be made to love holiness, is true happiness. I don't know how you could say it any better than Spurgeon. And his understanding of how lovely the pursuit of holiness was, was worth his, you know, was worth being in a state of sorrow. Now, we know he struggled with some of those things already.

I believe he was a rather melancholy type guy. But, you know, we ought to love holiness that much rather than being so afraid of being called a legalist. Because that's not what we're talking about. Nobody is talking about earning your salvation, right? That is what legalism is. Legalism is either working to earn your salvation or working to keep your salvation.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about pursuing the holy things of God because we're saved, because we love God, and because that's what he's called us to. yeah there's a recently i saw someone post somewhere online something like holiness is greater than happiness or something and i just remember reading it and thinking well why can't why can't i have both i mean holiness leads to happiness yeah and that's exactly what spurgeon yeah right yeah that's what that's what i was thinking when you read that that You know, when you read about the biblical fruit of the spirit of joy, and especially I think John writes a lot about joy, one of the things you notice is that joy is effectively just the fruit of following God's commands. It's almost as if God just said, hey, if you want to be joyful, just obey my commands.

And I was just thinking of an analogy because I played sports. I was thinking, I remember a football coach asking us if we wanted to win. And we all raised our hand. Yeah, we want to win. And then whenever we would be being beat hard in practice, and he'd be telling us to do things that, like, in that moment we did not want to do. We didn't see how that was going to help us. and we were in so much pain or we were so tired or weak that we just wanted to quit.

And then inevitably some people would complain too. And he would remind us. He'd say, no, you said you wanted to win. And right now I'm training you for that. And it's like an analogy to me of what we're talking about. Like we want joy.

We say we want God, right? We say we want to glorify him and enjoy him forever. So we've stated we want these things when we've professed faith. And, you know, in our tradition, you know, when we've gotten baptized and professed faith, we're saying that's what we want. And then God's word is telling us, well, here's how you get it, right? Separate from the world.

Avoid sexual immorality. Flee idols. it gives us the ways that we can actually achieve our stated goals. And it's like we're constantly too tired, too weak, or just too short-sighted to simply believe what the coach is telling us. And in this case, it's the word of God. And so what do you think? How does a person train themselves to know when to listen better, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, I mean, again, I think it starts with just developing the spiritual disciplines that we're supposed to have already and develop. And, you know, there really is no condemnation, but there certainly is, you know, this thing in us that has to continuously say, oh, wretched sinner than I am. You know, two things that Paul, you know, does throughout his entire life and writings is, you know, he constantly shrugs off his works as just being utterly useless, you know, being subpar.

But the other thing he does is he shouts from the rooftops how wretched he is. And in fact, the older he gets, it seems in his later, the later writings, you know, more and more you see this, you know, I'm the greatest of sinners. Oh, what a sinner I am. You see that coming out. And, you know, and yet the Apostle Paul writes tons of things on joy, you know, the joy of God and that kind of thing.

And so there a healthy balance So we can on the one hand fall into the trap of you know I saved by God grace but now I going to presume upon that And of course Paul would say by no means right do we do that Nor can we fall in the trap of just beating ourselves constantly I'm so worthless. I can't go to church. I can't evangelize. I can't come before the Lord in prayer.

You know, both of those are ditches on the side of the road. And, you know, we've got to develop, you know, a healthy mentality of absolutely. I'm saved by by grace through faith alone in Christ alone. Nothing can change that. God is sovereign. He keeps us to the very end.

So I'm not worried about losing my salvation. And yet, oh, wretched sinner that I am. I constantly need to go before the throne of grace, you know, asking God for, you know, his new mercy every day, which he gives for strength to overcome sin. And, you know, I love Paul Washer's teaching on this. You know, Paul Washer makes the point that some believers may just see very little graduated steps of overcoming in their life over a long time period, and that's fine.

The point is that they're growing, however little it may be. Yeah, and so that's what we're talking about. But how to listen better, I mean, you've got to be in the Word. If you're not in the Word of God, you know, the Holy Spirit's not going to illumine anything to you. He's certainly not giving any revelation outside of the Word of God. And you just, you know, a believer cannot expect to be happy and holy, I'll say it that way, if they aren't regularly in the Scripture.

It's just not going to happen because we only drift one way as believers, and that's towards sin. And if we believe that changes after we're saved, we don't really understand the human condition. Yeah, that's a good point. And I think that a couple episodes ago, we talked about spiritual disciplines, in particular for a new Christian or somebody who felt they were very busy, how to do some of those things.

So let's outline these. I don't think we need to comment on them too much, but believers should be in prayer, and we would say that they should be in private prayer, most certainly, and they probably should find ways to corporately pray, either with their church, small groups, or as a family, people should pray. And so, you know, I also, you know, one way, one thing that I know, one way I think I know I'm saved is I become extremely convicted when I have periods where my private prayer is either not as good or when I've actually missed it for periods of time.

And I'm convicted of that. So you mentioned Bible study. so that could be Bible reading as well as different studies people do and and when you have the Bible study going on you're going to have the word of God feeding you which is what the Holy Spirit uses to sanctify his saints right and I like how you put it that there's the Holy Spirit's not going to do a work on you outside of his word and I think that is where people people can falter sometimes. And then I think people should be working on memorizing scripture, which has the added benefit, I guess, of when you're trying to memorize scripture, you're also meditating on it.

So it sort of forces you to meditate on it, which is just part of it, I think. And so, you know, David said, I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. And that's how he says that he avoids standing with the wicked and standing with sinners and sitting in the seats of scoffers in Psalm 1. And then you mentioned local church participation, not just showing up, participating.

And then I would toss in there, like, people should think about eating healthy, exercising, and sleep. I think those three things are things that aren't necessarily what I call big spiritual endeavors. But I think that if you try to do those, maybe a little wiser, it can help you out. I know for me, if I can wake up in the morning feeling good, I'm just more likely to get in private prayer and study, right?

So that's important to me. But you talked about the two ditches you could go on. You can either be so focused on your salvation in a sense that you sort of forget that you're a sinner, and you can be so focused on your sinfulness that you're only self-focused, right? And you said these are two ditches. And I was just thinking about, like, if we just look at Christ, this solves everything.

Because if I'm looking at Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of my faith, What I see when I look at him is I see the perfect man, and I see my sinfulness. And that helps explain how a holy guy like Paul, compared to me, could see himself as the chief of sinners, right? Because now you have this situation where, well, when I compare myself to him, it's, oh, wretched man that I am, no matter how good I'm doing.

On my best day, I'm wretched when I'm looking at Jesus Christ. When I compare myself to other Christians or non-Christians, I can always find somebody that I think is worse, right? Then the other thing is, is if my focus is on Christ, as I'm hitting that, oh, wretched man that I am, and I think you referenced this, that's the end of Romans 7 is when Paul says that.

And just a couple of verses later there therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus So as I focus on Christ I get the sense of my own corruption but I also get the sense that okay there no condemnation And then I can actually work out my salvation and fear and trembling. And so I think that was really good advice you gave. I'm so, I don't know, I'm excited about it now.

I just think about taking every thought captive to obey Christ and how important that is. So do you think that accountability relationships help people? You know, I think they're helpful. You know, I think John MacArthur said it best, if I can quote him accurately, when he said something to the effect of, if you're not accountable before God, you're not going to be accountable for men.

I think that's the reality of it. We all know how easy it is to skirt accountability. So, yeah, I think that's a natural part of what happens in the body of Christ. So we go back to this is why it's absolutely necessary to be a member of a local church. I mean, the local church is where is the context in which the Christian life is meant to take place.

So, yeah, absolutely, it's helpful. But at the end of the day, our hearts have to be set to be accountable before God. And if that's not true, we'll just skirt any earthly accountability. Which is probably why a lot of accountability relationships fail because eventually you can lie or you just – I've had a couple people ask me to keep them accountable for things. and those friendships just ended because I actually tried to do what they asked me to do.

So that's not the cure-all. But I will say this, if somebody wants to be held accountable, those relationships will help them out then because, like you said, they're already accountable before God. That's a good point. Well, good. Well, do you have any other things you want to say about this tweet this tweet or just the topic in general of, of working out your salvation and fear and trembling?

Like, do you want to comment on what fear and trembling means? Yeah. You know, I, I think just in looking at maybe wrapping this up, you know, I just want to reference a couple of scriptures, you know, for the guys out there who, you know, maybe they lean heavily on the doctrines of grace in grace itself and our justification so much so that they, tend to look down on teaching and preaching against sin or, you know, towards holiness.

You know, think about first Peter, you know, who it references the Old Testament in the New Testament and says, you know, be holy because, you know, God is holy. In fact, it says, but as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. Well, that's not a suggestion. It's not a good idea.

It's not a recommendation. It's an imperative. It's a command, right? And I'm not preaching or advocating sinless perfection. That's not what we're saying here. You know, we referenced Hebrews 12 earlier.

I mean, you can just go all through multiple scriptures. Romans 12, 1, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercy of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. I think we read that earlier. The Philippians passage we referenced, you know, these are commands. Our, you know, part of our Christian life is to say, God, I want to be holy.

And the reality is the only reason we can have this conversation is because we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, right? We couldn't even strive for these things without the grace of God in our lives. And we will never reach perfection on this side of glory, but it's important that we love the things God loves, and we hate the things God hates. And that's the litmus test, and if we don't, then there's time for a heart check. that's a good word I am I'm thinking about Psalm 2 right now and in Psalm 2 the psalmist writes serve Yahweh with fear and rejoice with trembling and it's just I thought of that verse because of you quoting from Philippians where it says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

And then the other verse that this made me think of is in Isaiah 66. God says, thus says Yahweh, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What is the house that you would build for me and what is the place of my rest? And he says, all these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares Yahweh. So basically, like, you can't give him anything, right?

Like, if we could give him every created thing, it's nothing to him. It was all his in the first place. But he says, but this is the one to whom I will look, he who is humble and contrite in spirit. So you kind of have this beatitude thing going on, right? Like, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And he says, and trembles at my word.

And this is true today. You know, it's the believer, like what you described to me, the one who loves the things God loves and hates the things God hates, the believer is the one who trembles at his word. Not because we are afraid of condemnation. Not because we so afraid that God angry with us and he just ready to strike us the next time we sin or even if we fall into gross sin but we tremble simply because he just so majestic and he so great and he so holy And it's unbelievable in the sense that he would save us.

And that's like the great paradox for me is I believe it wholeheartedly, which is how I got saved, right? Like you have to believe, right? But at the same time, it's incredible. It's the reality. Like, why would he save me? Like, this is mind blowing.

And that humility to look around it, especially that this is my heart. And I know it's your heart, too, to look at unsaved sinners and to be able to have a healthy disdain for their lifestyles, to want to be separate, to hate and abhor falsehood, and to abhor what is evil, all the things the Bible tells us, but to look at them and realize, wow, that's but for the grace of God, there go I. I am what I am by the grace of God only, and if it wasn't for Jesus Christ's salvation in my life, I would be wallowing with the pigs, and then to want to reach out to people and proclaim to them the gospel.

And so I just want to close this out. Would you just share the gospel with all the listeners right now and encourage and exhort them to go and share it with others? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I mean, this is where our confidence in our salvation comes from, right? Even in the midst of talking about pursuing holiness and avoiding legalism and all those kind of things.

The reality is we have good news, the good news of the gospel. And, you know, that good news is that, you know, God loved those whom he chose, who he called out for himself. He sent Christ, his only begotten son, to be our propitiation, to pay what we should have paid, to pay the penalty that we deserved in our place, right, to be our propitiation. and through his life, his death, his resurrection and his ascension, right?

It's now seated at the right hand of the father interceding on our behalf, you know, putting our faith and trust in the works that Christ did. You see, we actually are saved by works. We're saved by the works of Christ, not our own. He was the only one that had perfect works that was satisfied by God. And so he paid for our sin. We put our faith and our trust in that.

And, you know, I would just say for anyone who's listening that, you know, maybe they feel like they're they're not saved. You know, put your faith and trust in the one who paid the penalty that you deserve for you. And when we believe that, you know, God is faithful to regenerate us, to save us, to make us new. And then, you know, if you're not in a member of a healthy Bible-believing church, you know, find one.

And if you don't know how to find one, you know, go to Grace To You, their website. You can find churches. You can go to, you know, lots of other guys. I think you can go to HeartPrize website. You probably have some resources. but find a healthy, you know, Bible preaching, believing church to get plugged into. And yeah, praise God for his son and the gospel.

Yeah, what a gift. What a gift. He gave us his son. He gave us the gospel. And then he actually lets us participate in disseminating it. And even in this sanctification process, we have a role to play in the working out our salvation.

When we say work out our salvation, there's a couple meanings. But one is we're working out what's already been wrought in us by God, right? And then another one is, though, is there is the salvation of our body that we await. and we get to sort of get little tastes of heaven, I guess we'll say, when we worship with other saints. When you preach God's word, you know, to me that's a taste of heaven, getting to participate in the works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in, you know, like Ephesians 2.10 says, as a result of our sanctification.

Yeah, and that gospel, yeah, part of salvation is having that repentance of sin. We can't leave that out. I mean, there has to be a genuine, what the Bible talks about, a godly sorrow for our sin. Otherwise, it's very easy for it to be just maybe an emotional thing. And yeah, and God is faithful to save those who cry out to him, who repent from their sin.

We turn away from it, and yeah. Yeah, we don't want to beat people up, and I know believers will struggle, but it's okay if somebody is stuck in sin to lack assurance. That's actually the product of living in sin, is even a true believer will lack assurance during that time, And that's supposed to drive you to want to work that out, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, we're told to examine ourselves to see whether we're in the faith.

I'm not very quick to try to take that away from people. You know, it's weird. Let people examine, you know, meet with your pastor, you know, meet with other godly friends and counsel. You know, dig in and do as the scripture says. Examine yourself to see whether you'd be in the faith. And if you're not, you know, confess your sin. pen of your sins before God, beg for his mercy that he would come and save you.

He promises that he won't turn away any that come to him, you know, and move forward. But absolutely, we're supposed to examine ourselves. And, you know, as we're maturing in our younger years, we'll probably do that a whole lot more than as we mature and we get a little older and we're more confident. And that's okay. That's a normal, natural part of growing in the faith. yeah excellent word let me switch gears uh momentarily then so your your plans to to move to Uganda how has how have they been affected by the coronavirus outbreak and all of the that ordeal yeah um I I think the short answer is we don't know yet okay um so our plans lord willing is we're still going to move this August.

But of course, things are still changing, you know, very fluidly with all the COVID-19 stuff. So it comes down to as long as we're able to fly and we're not on lockdown in Uganda, because obviously that won't work for, you know, establishing a house and things like that. Yeah. As long as we're able to go, we're going to go, but we'll have to see. We're willing to go through tough times to get there if we need to.

No problem with that So that our plans right now We just have to wait and see We still several months out Okay So the schedule hasn been modified officially yet because you just don know yet So that would be a good thing Our intention is to go if we are allowed to fly, yeah. Okay, and so for people to pray right now, what are any specific prayer requests that you would have for people to pray for that maybe you could see an answer to hopefully in the next few weeks or so? even? Yeah, I think two things is in line with God's will being done.

Pray that he would make a way for us to get there and that he would provide all that we need in doing that. Okay, excellent. And one of the specific things that we've talked about is that you have some resources you want to be able to provide for local pastors some uh like there was a strange fire book by john mccarthur i think right and what i thought there was on stack about five books you wanted to be able to give people could you could you say what those are so if anybody maybe has an extra one or if people would want to buy a these resources because your goal is to bring good doctrine to this dark place and and so what are these resources you wanted to be able to hand out when you got there, the pastors?

Yeah, so the reason we're doing that is because, and I'm not using hyperbole. This is factual. You cannot get sound doctrine books in the libraries there. It is almost exclusively word of faith prosperity gospel material So the books we hoping to be able to give these pastors that come through training are Pilgrim Progress by Bunyan Strangefire by Dr John MacArthur Dr.

MacArthur's Study Bible, so that there's reference material. We're also wanting Lectures to My Students by Charles Spurgeon. and then the other one is Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink. So it hits on specific areas of life in Uganda. So we've got a book for the holiness of God. That's the attributes of God.

So the pastors really get an understanding of who God is, what word they're preaching and how to respond to God as human beings. The Strange Fire directly deals with the charismatic Pentecostal doctrine. Of course, there's a study material reference guide in the study Bible. And the lectures to my students is probably, for me, one of the single best books I've ever seen for pastors or ministers.

It just touches kind of all areas of a minister's life and work. Yeah. So those are their specific books for those reasons. Perfect. I don't think anybody that listens to me would oppose any of those books being given out. So hopefully if you're listening, this is a chance for you to provide good resources to people who some of them probably desperately want these things and they just can get their hands on them Most of these pastors have less than five books Okay And in some of these cases these are going to be guys that maybe they just don know And, and God's called them to preach.

They're, they're a qualified man and they need something to, to help them along as they grow. And so I appreciate, I appreciate that you have a heart for the people of Uganda. And I am, I'm glad I got to meet you in person. So that was a lot of fun. And I hope one day that we'll be doing another podcast where we're asking people, hey, who wants to go on a short-term trip to go do something with you in Uganda?

And so with that, we'll sign off. And you guys can come back. And if you didn't listen to my previous interview with Nathaniel, I don't know what episode it was. But if you go back in the podcast app, you should see it. I said, what is a jolly missionary? I think is what I named it.

And you can listen to that interview where he tells the story about how he really became a missionary to Yaconda. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us. and I also have a personal website, michaelcoghlan.net. You can contact me by emailing me, michael at thingsabove.us. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.