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Jon Moffitt: Today on Theocast we are going to be tackling emotions, affections, and feelings as they relate to your assurance in Jesus Christ. A very prominent evangelical recently said to define saving faith apart from feelings is futile. It’s a pretty strong statement, and we’re going to try and do our best to look at Scripture, history, and the confessions to answer the question: do we find assurance based upon our feelings or is our security in Christ more than a feeling? We hope you enjoy.

Welcome to Theocast – encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ; conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Today, our hosts are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church and Jimmy Buehler is with us today, believe it or not, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota. I am Jon Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Justin Perdue: Today we’re going to talk about feelings and faith. What prompted us to have this conversation is a video that was put up on social media in the last few weeks by Together for the Gospel. It’s a clip of John Piper from 2018’s conference. It’s about a two-minute clip from the message that he gave in that conference two years ago. He is making the argument that it is futile to try to define saving faith apart from feelings. On Twitter in particular, because that’s the platform where I think the three of us are probably most active, many people in the reformed world and the confessional world grabbed hold of that clip and we’re assessing it and talking about whether it was helpful or not.

The three of us started texting each other pretty much immediately. My wife and I had conversations in my own home and conversations even in my local church here in Asheville – and I trust at Grace Reformed and Christ Community you guys were doing the same thing. I’m not going to bury the lead here. We don’t want to do that. We are concerned that the things that John Piper articulates in that particular video clip undermine rest in Christ. They undermine assurance and they put a burden on sinners that sinners frankly just cannot bear. That’s the conversation we want to have today. It’s not just about that video – we want to have a much bigger conversation than that one video clip – but we want to talk today about feelings and faith and how it is that we’re saved ultimately. Even how we would go about defining faith in Christ that produces and gives rest.

Jon Moffitt: When we decided to have this conversation, the one thought that came to my mind was John Piper is very clear on how someone is saved. He fits into the evangelical, historical, and I would even say the Calvinistic faith as it relates to someone going from death to life. He holds to the utter depravity of the human heart. He holds to the absolute sovereignty of God, election, and predestination. He holds to limited atonement. He understands that it’s specifically paid for that person’s soul and their sins; imputation.

What is hard is that he gets some of the core foundation issues. Where Theocast has found our home and where we feel most helpful to the conversations that are happening in the broader evangelical world, that is pulling the clutter off of the gospel that causes weight and confusion. I would say John Piper is not preaching a gospel here that is heretical. Much of what he says in that sermon is correct. But just because someone may say 75% of something that is correct and the 25% that they add at the end is so confusing, so deflecting, and so different than where the foundation is that the foundation then crumbles under the very weight that you have put on top of it. I would say this whole idea of John Piper – he is assuming on the front end a proper evangelical reformed doctrine of salvation.

Justin Perdue; Or at least of justification.

Jon Moffitt: Yes. And then there’s the radicalness of sola fide. He’s almost trying to explain it away. I give him credit for the brilliant man that he is; the smart, compassionate, generous man that he is. But I think there is a side of him that is trying to explain away the radicalness of sola fide. I would start there.

Jimmy Buehler: It’s important to remember in this conversation too, for those that are listening here, is that we’re not trying to tear down a brother and his ministry and the way that he has served over the course of a few decades. That is not at all what we’re trying to say. We also want to keep in mind context. This is really difficult. I’m always a little fearful – and I don’t know if you guys feel this way. I’m always a little fearful if an outsider listens to something that I say in a sermon. If you’re an outsider, you don’t attend our church, you don’t know the context of the things that are happening in the body, the things that I’m aware of as a pastor that I need to tailor my sermon towards.

There’s a little bit still in this evangelical world. Something we’d like to say is that evangelicalism is a pietistic movement. It’s the water we swim in, and it is the air we breathe. It is just everywhere. What I mean by that is in a pietistic world, the focus so often becomes the interior of the Christian – what is happening in your feelings and your “affections.” That was a buzzword for many, many years. There’s this heightened sense of trying to weed out those who are perhaps faking it or perhaps are “among us but are not of us” kind of thing. It’s this overly acute desire to have a “pure church,” which I think all of us want. However, often what happens there is the wheat and the tares parable – or the wheat and the weeds, if you will – where we see that there are weeds among the wheat. What we want to do as an overzealous farmhand is, we just want to start cutting it down. And what does Jesus say in that parable? “Don’t do that. You’re going to cut down the wheat as well as the weeds.”

My fear and my concern is in a short clip like that, not only was it ripped out of context but also it was tweeted out in sort of this authoritative, “this is truth, you should listen to” sense. What happens, unfortunately, is people will listen to that. Where does it point them to ultimately? It’s this navel-gazing interior focus that it’s, “Me, me, me, me, me. What do I feel?” Don’t hear us trying to vilify feelings at all, but it was such an authoritative, strong statement that saving faith without feelings, or a particular set of feelings, is futile.

Justin Perdue: I do feel what you were saying about the fact that this is a two-minute clip of a probably 50 to 60 minute message. The one thing that I would say about that, in trying to be reasonable here, is that the video clip was tweeted out for the entire world to see. It was promoted as like, “Hey, here’s why you should come to this conference.” Like you even said, Jimmy, there’s an authoritative tone and feel to the thing. We wouldn’t be interacting with this at all, at least this particular video clip… this idea of faith and feelings we want to interact with, of course, but we wouldn’t be talking about this particular video today were it not tweeted out for everybody to see. That’s just one observation. When you make things public, and you’re going to say things in such an authoritative fashion, then for others to come in and evaluate it biblically, and then even according to the rule of faith and the history of interpretation that’s existed in the church for 2000 years is fair game. And that’s what we’re trying to do today.

I want to say a couple more things about pietism before moving this conversation forward. Pietism, in its beginnings, essentially was an obsession with feelings and affections. It was a hyper emphasis on feelings about Jesus, affections for Jesus, and those things being the emphasis and the center of attention in the Christian life.

As we’ve said so many times: where is the Christian pointed ultimately in this? The Christian is pointed inward to examine his or her heart, to examine his or her feelings and affections. Not that we should never examine ourselves and not that introspection is bad, but when that becomes the emphasis, it’s very concerning.

I’m just immediately thinking about how my own feelings – and this is true for everybody – vacillate by the moment; they ebb and flow like crazy. This is why God’s people, through history have always found great comfort in the fact that our assurance, confidence, and our security are found in God, not us. They are found in the sufficiency of Christ and not our sufficiency. They are found in the fact that though my emotions change all the time, Jehovah never does. The thing that’s hard here is that it seems to be undermining the foundation of Christian confidence altogether.

Jon Moffitt: I put out a tweet last week or two weeks ago that said, “Every breath you take is riddled. It’s filled with sin against your Father.” It got a little bit of traction. Some people were struggling with that and were like, “How? Even when you’re preaching?” And I was like, “Absolutely.” “Even when you’re praying?” Yes. It doesn’t matter. And here’s where we struggle. This is where – thank the Lord – Luther was able to bring some clarity about the differences between us as a saint filled by the Spirit, and the part of us that is still waiting for glorification. We don’t live in glorified bodies. Because of your nature, you can’t love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. You can’t love your neighbor as yourself. You can’t do that perfectly. Because within our nature, we still have selfishness, ambition, pride, arrogance, and laziness. So the question which has always been the one thing we’ve always kind of thrown back to some of the confusion, and I feel that Piper clutters this assurance area, is: how much emotions need to be tilted? Is it a 50-50? Is that a 60-40? At what point do you say, “Okay, I can have assurance because my emotions and affections meet this level.” Where in Scripture will point me to that? Will create that watermark that I have to hit? I’m going to point you to some confessions, which is derivative of Scripture, but I’m going to have a hard time looking at Scripture, saying I can find the watermark of my emotions and my affections without finding assurance.

Jimmy Buehler: I remember when I was coming up in the Young, Restless, Reformed Movement, and one of the favorite verses to be thrown around was Jeremiah 17:9. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” It was in the context that I was in that verse was being lobbed against a more, dare I say, charismatic feely-based sort of faith and trying to bring people back to rich doctrinal truths. And yet what was so ironic is that the Young, Restless, Reformed Movement, particularly that of which I was part of, we would quote this verse. We loved Jeremiah 17, and we loved Romans 9 as well, but particularly Jeremiah 17. We loved to throw this in people’s faces. And yet the way that we “discipled” people, the way that we ministered to people, we pointed them to the area that we told them to hate or to not trust.

Justin Perdue: To the area that you’re telling them is desperately sick.

Jimmy Buehler: The area that we’re telling you is sick in need of healing, in need of saving words. We’re asking you to look there for some sort of comfort.

Let me share an analogy. Yesterday I spent a good chunk of the afternoon after work in urgent care with my son. He got a nice little stub toe; it turns out he kicked his nail in, and it was all sorts of gross and all kinds of nasty down there. It would be like me telling my son to look at his toe, which was all bruised and bloody, and say, “Hey buddy, see how healthy you are. Look at that toe. Isn’t that just a wonderful sign of health?” And he would be like, “Dad, you’re insane.” He was limping so badly. And yet this is often what we do.

On the one hand, and we talk about this all the time, we will tell people how desperately sick they are and in need of a Savior. Then often, the medicine that we give them is to go within; go deep dive within your own soul and within your own heart and try to find some sort of comfort. The Enemy loves that. He’s like, “Great, this is my territory. I’d love for you to come to my camp.”

Justin Perdue: We’ve already alluded to the saint-sinner reality that has been articulated by many people throughout history. Martin Luther is perhaps most noted for it in the phrase from the Reformation simul justus et peccator – at the same time saint and sinner, at the same time justified and sinner. That has all kinds of ramifications and implications for this conversation because I think every redeemed person through history would acknowledge that. I am born again. I am a new creation in Christ. Yet, at the same time, I’m still battling the corruption that I inherited from Adam. Those things are true with me.

I’m thinking about Romans 7. I’m thinking about Galatians 5:17. In my inner man, I delight in the Law of God – there’s a feeling word – I delight in and love God’s truth; I want to do all these good things. I think every Christian ever would say, “I want to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I want to love my neighbor as myself. I want to be filled with gratitude toward God, love toward God, affection toward God. I want to be humble before the Lord.” I mean, we could keep saying we want to feel all of these things toward God. The problem is we battle the flesh, and we battle our inherent corruption. To use the language of the apostle Paul, “We do not always do what we want to do.” We do not always feel what we want to feel. The flesh waging war against our spirit keeps us from doing what we want to do – this is what Galatians 5:17 says explicitly.

That reality is so critical for us to hold here. That intention with what we’re talking about with respect to affections. If Piper, for example, were to say that a Christian wants to do this and that but yet often struggle to do so, to that, I say absolutely. I completely agree with him. The problem is we don’t feel what we want to feel, and we don’t feel what we should feel. So then the question is: where in the world is our hope and our confidence in our assurance? Because if you’re pointing me to my feelings – the authenticity of them, the realness of them, the level of them – how much is enough? How could I ever know that I’m feeling a sufficient amount of these things? Our feelings will always change. It’s going to be different tomorrow than it is today. I can’t even explain that to you as to why that’s the case – I wake up some days, and I’m thinking, “I am just not feeling it today like I even was yesterday.” And I think that’s the normal experience for the believer.

Jon Moffitt: The apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian church, which, historically speaking, was very confused in their affections. They were running after the wrong gifts. They were running after the wrong sexual pleasures. They were running after money.

Justin Perdue: They had misunderstood Christian freedom. They’re celebrating sin.

Jon Moffitt: Yet Paul does not write to them in such a way where he’s trying to shake them in their assurance. He actually uses the gospel and says, “It’s the gospel that I want to preach to you.” Then he uses the love of God for them as the way to correct the issue – God’s consistent emotional affection toward them. We can get into the emotions of God at another time, but we’ll say the affections of God towards you are constant and ever-flowing. According to John 17, it is the same affection that He has for the Son. He says that He loves us the way that He has loved the Son.  It is there that we, as the believer, find the true sense of our foundation.

I’m going to read to you the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. It’s at 18.4. These confessions are important because if we were to take all of the reformed confessions, and when it comes to assurance and when it comes to a proper understanding of justification, we’re going to agree here. At point 4 it says this, “. . .true believers may in various ways have the assurance of their salvation shaken or temporarily lost. This may happen because they neglect to preserve it or fall into some specific sin that wounds their conscience and grieves the Spirit.” What they are making room for is the frailty of the believer. We are frail creatures. This is why we reference things like Galatians 6 because we, as believers, our affections, and our emotions can absolutely be captured by the temptations of sin and pulled away at a point to where faithful loving Christians have to come, rebuke us, and pull us out.

We could say that Mr. Piper is correct in that if the Spirit lives within you, you will have these newfound affections. But they aren’t a constant flow that is ever unmovable. If he doesn’t mean that, then, of course, Desiring God and some of his other books and his well-known sermons – he needs to create that simul justus et peccator feeling in there. But that’s not the feeling I’m getting from most of this material.

Justin Perdue: In the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, I’m reading portions of two or three different paragraphs from chapter 13 on sanctification and chapter 14 on saving faith as they articulate it. 13.2 talks about sanctification and points out the realities that we have been highlighting. “This sanctification extends throughout the whole person, though it is never completed in this life. Some corruption remains in every part. From this arises a continual and irreconcilable war, with the desires of the flesh against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh.” They go on in paragraph 3 to say, “In this war, the remaining corruption may greatly prevail for a time.” That’s huge – that in the war of the flesh against the Spirit, the flesh may prevail for a time. Certainly, that would mean that our affections are not right. They go on, “Yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part overcomes. So the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. They pursue a heavenly life, in gospel obedience to all the commands that Christ as Head and King as given them in his Word.” But that acknowledgment that the flesh may prevail for a season is critical. And then finally the definition of saving faith, chapter 14 paragraph 2 – this is a portion of it. These words are excellent. “But the principal acts of saving faith focus directly on Christ – accepting, receiving, and resting upon him alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace.” There you have that directly on Jesus. The words used are accepting, receiving, and resting on him alone and for everything – justification, sanctification and glorification, eternal life – all by virtue of the covenant of grace, not works. It’s very helpful that that’s defining faith biblically as looking outside of yourself completely to Jesus alone for everything that you could ever need in order to be finally saved.

Jimmy Buehler: I remember severely battling through all of these things in college, being part of that specific context. I remember asking the people who were influential in my life – and this is nothing against them as they were very helpful for the season that I was in. I do think that they loved me, that they cared for me, that they wanted what was best for me. But I remember, reviewing these conversations years later where I would ask, “How can I know? How can I know that I am feeling the right things or that I’m saved?” And I typically would get a response in the form of a question: “Do you feel that you love God? Do you feel this? Do you feel that?” And then they say, “Well, we’re just looking for a pattern. Is there a trajectory of onward and upward?” And my response to that was always, “How much trajectory am I am I supposed to have?” It wasn’t until one of my friends sent the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith to me a few years back and I was like, “Where has this been all my life?” Shout out to our denominationally reformed brothers and sisters that hold the Three Forms of Unity.

But the Heidelberg Catechism question 60 is so weighty and good. It was something that I returned to time and time again where the question is this: “How are you righteous before God?” And the answer is, “Only by true faith in Jesus Christ; so that though my conscience accuse me, that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil; notwithstanding God, without any merit of mine, but only if mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ; even so, as if I had never committed any sin; yes, as if I had fully accomplished all the obedience which Christ has accomplished for me; inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.” When I was asking these questions of how I can know and what if I don’t feel these things, I wish somebody pointed me those truths; things that you can bank and rest on.

Jon Moffitt: I remember early on, one of my deacons was a new believer and he kept hearing me talk about the glory and wonder of Jesus Christ. We were in Ephesians at the time. One day, he finally got up enough courage and said, ” Jon, I’m going to be real with you. When you say the word Jesus, it does nothing for me. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him. I believe I’m a Christian. I believe he died on the cross. I believe in God. But this whole thing about you talking about the sweetness, the joy, the kindness, all that – it does nothing for me.” To which I could then say, “Maybe you’re not a Christian.” Because he was trying to have these affections for Jesus. What I began to help him do is understand that through time and through exposure of the gospel, he’s going to have a knowledge base of trust, which then, in the midst of pain and suffering, he will understand what it means to rest in this absolute foundational rock solid love of Christ for him.

I’m reading the tweet again, and it says, “. . . define saving faith apart from feelings.” Are there people in history who have these emotional experiences where they go from living a horrible life, or even struggling with massive doubt, to this overwhelming assurance that these feelings and affections come flowing out of them? Yes. But I will tell you this: every day doesn’t feel like that to me. It did, two weeks ago. Justin, remember when we did the podcast a couple of weeks ago and we were talking about how you read Jeremiah? There was like this emotional high I had but I don’t live there. It’s a matter of fact. Most of the time I don’t live there. Most of the time I’ve struggled to find my hope in Christ because my emotions are elsewhere.

Justin Perdue: The good news is the fact that we are saved by Jesus, not our feelings about him. I think we can all agree that that’s good news and that reality is resolved. The reality is that there are seasons, there are moments, there are days, hours, and seasons of our lives where we do kind of have those waves of joy just washing over our hearts and souls, where we’re joyful, we’re satisfied, we’re thrilled, we’re moved. And those moments are fantastic. I know that we all wish we had more of them. But then for every one of those moments we probably have several where those waves are just not washing over our soul the tide has gone out. I don’t know where my feelings for the Lord are today. I can’t find them. In those moments, often I’m prompted to pray and ask the Lord to work and move in my heart.

I want to be fair to John Piper – he did write a book called When I Don’t Desire God. But he had to write that book because of the things he had written and said in so many other situations. He paints a picture of the only way that that you’re legitimate is if you treasure Jesus above all things; to that, I would humbly say: if you’re saying you want to treasure Christ above all things, then okay, but if you’re saying that the only way you’re a legitimate Christian is if you treasure Jesus above all things, I guess I’m going to hell, and everybody else that I know is going to hell, too. He has put himself in a position where he has to clarify what he means. He writes that he doesn’t desire God with all his heart all the time, and so he’s not saying what it seems like he’s saying; John Piper does not mean that you always feel perfect about God. But what we’re asking and pressing for is clarity and precision of language so that he doesn’t confuse people.

Jon Moffitt: We’re going to get comments on YouTube and on Facebook; people are going to come to his defense and say we’re not listening to what he’s saying. All I can say is that Theocast is not the only one making this observation. This has been a criticism of Jonathan Edwards. This has been a criticism of John Piper for many, many years. I will tell you this right now, to this day, I credit John Piper for this amazing joy I have in the sovereignty of God. The way he described it when I was coming out of the Arminian pit – he just created so much affection and desire. I loved his passion and his patience and his kindness. Please don’t think that this is a Piper bashing moment.

But, I will say, go back to Scripture. On a broad level, the imprecatory songs that are in there, even the songs of struggle. Go read Psalm 5, or even David when he writes Psalm 51 where he went for a very long period of time – it wasn’t a 24-hour period from the narrative that David went from the desire to kill the husband. Even to the point where the prophet Nathan finally had to come up and say, “Apparently you aren’t seeing what you’re doing. So I’m going to have to tell you.” And what does God say after that? What does God say about David? He’s still a man after his own heart. Meaning that David didn’t somehow prove himself to be an unbeliever.

What ends up happening is we have people look at the failures of their life, instead of looking to something outside of themselves and repenting to it. I believe a lot of people hear this kind of message from Piper – I know this for a fact because we get emails, phone calls, and Facebook messages about this. It causes people to stay longer in sin, longer in not pursuing a restoration, and longer in doubt because they don’t feel like it’s achievable. It’s an unachievable goal.

Jimmy Buehler: It’s unattainable. I would add that there is no better way to avoid loving your neighbor than spending all of your time in your prayer closet trying to sort out your own emotions. That is one of my big assessments of that whole feeling- based movement if you will. The hedonistic movement has over grossly become an individualization and privatization of the Christian life where it is an intense focus on the individual and his or her feelings rather than rejoicing and resting in the objective truths. I think something we can perhaps talk about in the members podcast is the fact that I know people who are just not emotional. They are non-emotive people, or they have some sort of condition – hormonally, physically, mentally – that just does not allow them to feel things that, dare I say, average normal people feel. And so what are we supposed to do with that?

Jon Moffitt: A good example to that is one of the former hosts, Ryan Haskins. I’ve known him for eight-plus years now and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him cry or show any other emotion. And so, following that thought, I would be like, “Maybe Ryan’s not saved.”

Justin Perdue: I’m probably going to have to quote my boy Horatius Bonar before we go over to the members podcast. I’ll do that in a minute.

Two thoughts here from me; they’re not exactly related but they were prompted by things that you guys were saying. Jimmy, you were talking about how Christian hedonism and being in your prayer closet, obsessing over your feelings, really hinders love of neighbor. I’m going to make a more broad statement about pietism. I think pietism – this hyper-focus on our affections or our obedience, our performance, and the, the unachievable standard that it sets for the Christian – kills honesty in the church and in relationships like we’re told to confess sin to one another.

James 5:16 is going to be destroyed by pietism because nobody’s going, to tell the truth about themselves. If I did, what would people think? Pietism kills honesty in the church. It’s interesting that pietistic contexts are obsessed with sanctification yet hinders sanctification because it is all about me. I’m less likely to confess to my brothers and sisters. I’m less likely to lean into the church and the fellowship of the saints the way God designed it. I’m not calling it like it is. I’m painting a false picture of my own reality. Our true sanctification is hindered by that nonsense.

The other thought that I wanted to say is that Piper’s famous tagline is “God is most glorified in us when we’re most satisfied in Him.” I want to rephrase that and say that… I’m not going to say “most glorified” because I’m not going to presume on that piece. I will say this: “God is tremendously glorified when we are most mindful of our need of Him.” In particular when we are most mindful and aware of our need of Jesus. So if we want to glorify God, one of the ways that we can do that in our daily lives, and certainly when we gather as churches, is to confess together the fact that we are sin-sick wretches who are absolutely desperate for Christ and his work in our place. I am confident, based on Scripture, that God is very glorified in that confession. I would wager to say that He is more glorified in that than He is in us being satisfied in our relationship with Him.

Jon Moffitt: The confession of sin and even corporate confession of sin – which Paul says confess your sins to one another and I grew up in a church context where that only happens when you’re in intense counseling moments and you’re confessing it to the pastor to get help – we do this as a congregation. I know you guys do that. We corporately confess before our neighbors and to each other the absolute need of forgiveness. Prayer is also a moment of dependence because you’re opening your heart and your mind and your soul to request something.

But I will say for those of you who are new to Theocast: if you haven’t downloaded Faith Versus Faithfulness: A Primer on Rest, this is what we’re trying to get at.  This is why it was written; Jimmy did an excellent job. In the middle section, Justin does a great job of explaining the difference between a pietistic context or church and a reformed or, we would say, a restful confessional perspective. At the end, Jimmy does a really good job of pulling the clutter off of the gospel by saying, “If you want to know what brings you rest, this is it.” Go read that last section. I encourage you to do that.

Justin, you were answering a question. I think we should jump into the members podcast and do that. We actually have a Facebook group that’s growing – just go over to Facebook, type in Theocast, and you’ll see the Facebook group. Once in a while we’ll jump in there and let you know what we’re recording. We did that today and we received like five or six questions; one of those was, “In light of this tweet by Piper, what’s your overall thoughts on the whole premise of Piper’s ministry?” We’ll talk a little bit about that and some of the other questions that we received. So if you want to join us over there, you can.

Justin Perdue: Can I throw a bone or quote out there from one of the hymns really quick?

Jon Moffitt: Yeah, absolutely.

Justin Perdue: This is something I probably cite about one out of every 10 episodes, but I want to cite it for the people that are new.

Horatius Bonar, Scottish minister in the 1800s, is more famous for his hymns than his sermons. The guy is absolutely spot-on about the reality of the sufficiency of Jesus and the safety that we have in him. He wrote a book called God’s Way of Peace: A Book For the Anxious that I would recommend to everybody. But in his hymn called I Hear the Words of Love, the last two verses go this way (and they’re very short): “My love is ofttimes low, my joy still ebbs and flows, but peace with Him remains the same, no change my Savior knows. I change, He changes not; the Christ can never die; his love, not mine, the resting-place, his truth, not mine, the tie.” And that’s an old hymn. It’s a reasonably sweet tune, but it is not like some contemporary jam session hymn. That song is one of the most beloved songs at Covenant Baptist Church because it’s so good pointing the saints outside of themselves to God in Christ and knowing that we’re safe. And it acknowledges that our feelings will alter, but that God has us. It’s just very sweet.

Jon Moffitt: That’s a great way to end it. For those of you that are new, you can go to Theocast.org and at the top, it will say “free book”. You can grab that. Also, if you want a 14-day trial and listen to our next conversation – which we are going to continue – you can do that by joining our membership.

For those of you that have been supporting us, thank you so much. We’re excited about the future. Stay tuned. We’ve got a lot of big announcements coming your way. We’ll see you next week.

Members Transcript
Members Podcast