0:00:08 – Barnabas

Hey, welcome to the Curious Curmudgeon podcast. I am Barnabas Piper, here for the final episode of our first season, our inaugural season, with my co-curmudgeon who you hear there on the other mic, Adam Read. Yo yo, what’s up? It’s kind of crazy. Eight episodes, I mean that doesn’t feel like many to our listeners, I hope. I mean. If it feels like too many, well, they’re probably not listeners anymore. Well, there’s that. I mean. How does it feel to you to be completing our inaugural season of this here podcast? 

 

0:00:39 – Adam

Um, I think it’s great to actually like feel the accomplishment of having gotten there Like that’s exciting. I think it’s great to actually like feel the accomplishment of having gotten there Like that’s exciting. I just really hope that it’s been useful for people and encouragement to them as they seek the Lord. 

 

0:00:51 – Barnabas

Yeah, no-transcript, and you have no idea what is happening with it at that point. Who is listening or reading? Who is benefiting? How are they benefiting? Is this connecting with people? And there’s very much an aspect of sort of like sowing seed and seeing what grows or kind of. It feels a little bit even more like message in a bottle, like we’re just going to throw this out there. 

 

0:01:27 – Adam

I hope it gets to somebody Watch up on shore somewhere. 

 

0:01:30 – Barnabas

Yeah. So, listeners, if this has been meaningful to you, it would be awesome if you shared it with friends, if you contacted us, if you rated and reviewed it on whatever podcast platform you’re on, whatever those things are, but mostly sharing it with friends. I think just the idea of like those things are, but mostly sharing it with friends. I think just the idea of like, hey, if this was beneficial to you, word of mouth, sharing it from a recommended sources is the most helpful way, certainly to help the podcast, but also just like, hopefully this will be an encouragement to them as well. Yeah absolutely. 

 

0:01:57 – Adam

That’s certainly the goal. 

 

0:01:59 – Barnabas

Yeah. So the whole season we’ve talked about big transitions, big changes in life, and I think one of the biggest transitions in life, certainly the most significant, although it might often feel very like just a snap of finger, something that happens in a moment, something that happens very subtly, but one of the most significant changes in our life is the point at which our faith in Christ becomes our own or becomes very real for us, becomes our own or becomes very real for us. 

 

So I know for a lot of people, both of us included, we committed our lives to Christ at a point when we were pretty young, I think we both said we were sharing some of our stories early elementary school, six, seven, eight years old, somewhere in there, and so that’s a point at which faith is real at that point. But it’s kind of a fledgling faith and often it’s a borrowed faith. I know for me that I would say up well into my teen years, even into adulthood, there were large aspects of my Christianity that were shaped entirely like what I had been handed from my parents, which means that they were very faithful parents. So this isn’t a criticism of them. 

 

0:03:01 – Adam

This isn’t like oh, they did a bad job. 

 

0:03:03 – Barnabas

No, they gave me the gift of how to understand Christianity, how to understand faith. But you know, just like it’s a little bit, like you know, if you’ve been driving your parents’ car, like they gave you the opportunity to do that, and then at some point you got to get your own car, like it’s in your own name, it’s your own title, you’re responsible for caring for it, and that’s a bad analogy. But there’s there’s there’s sort of a there’s a turning point at which our faith becomes our own. 

 

0:03:30 – Adam

Yeah, for sure. 

 

0:03:31 – Barnabas

And it crystallizes. So that’s what we want to discuss today. Is that turning point, that major change in life, with the great hope that we leave listeners on a high note? 

 

0:03:40 – Adam

Absolutely yeah. 

 

0:03:41 – Barnabas

Last episode was dealing in particularly painful things, hopefully in an uplifting manner, but this one we want to focus on good things, high things, kind of the high points of life, so I’ll just throw this to you first. So, thinking about our faith becoming our own crystallizing when did that happen for you? Yeah, so, um, well, real quick, has that happened for you?

 

0:04:02 – Adam

Has it happened? That’s an important question. 

 

0:04:03 – Barnabas

Yes, absolutely Can we for you has it happened, that’s an important question. 

 

0:04:05 – Adam

Yes, absolutely. Can we trust you? It’s similar in some ways to what you said there and what you brought up. I grew up in a home where my mom and my stepdad they loved God and they did their best to show us that and they were still growing as people and their relationship with the Lord, and they were still growing as people, you know, and their relationship with the Lord, and they demonstrated the importance of God to us and obviously shared with us. Jesus made sure we were at places and interacting with the church where we could see the church as useful and important and something that should be part of our lives. And even though it wasn’t until the middle of high school-ish that I really was like, took my faith and was like this is yes, this is it, Like this is going. 

 

I am owning this for myself and, like you said, my parents did a good job, Like I feel like they really tried to set up the home in such a way that we heard the truth and we were told the truth over and over and they tried to live the truth, and so those things were really great boundaries and fences in some way to help me not go so far out that I didn’t even see God working or see God moving, and so I’m really grateful for that. But I was about 16 years old when I finally came to the point like, okay, I believed in God, I believe Jesus is the savior, I want to be, you know, a Christian and that whole you know thought process of life. But it wasn’t really until I was like 16 that I was like, okay, wait, now this is. I’m actually going to choose to surrender the fullness of my life to him and not hold on to these things that I want God and these things too, yes, man. 

 

0:05:45 – Barnabas

That description of full surrender is so much of what this is about, because that’s exactly what needed to happen for me, except I would say it was more like God had to pry them out of my cold nearly dead fingers and I say that in jest, but also like there’s a real element, at least how I recall story of the Lord pursuing me in this. 

 

So again, six, seven years old, I went into my dad’s study. I prayed with him to give my life to Christ. I think that was a genuine conversion because I think it was a foundational understanding of a need for a savior. What there wasn’t, and there wasn’t for a long time thereafter, was a full willingness and understanding to fully follow Jesus with my whole life. So there were definitely parts of my life that I was holding back. I want control over this, and I recall very, very vividly at various points having the thought if I surrender this to Jesus, he’s going to make me do something I don’t want to do, and a lot of it was around money. 

 

In retrospect, you know, I grew up in a household and a church that taught very much. It taught generosity, it taught that money is the Lord’s, taught against the love of money, almost in a fearful way. So possibly swinging that pendulum a little bit too far at least that’s how I received it. I don’t know what the intention was, and so there was a sense in which I really wanted to make money. I really wanted to hold on to money, I wanted comfort, yeah. 

 

And I lived in a church that loved to talk about suffering for the gospel and I was like sure I like that idea. Yeah, I don’t want to voluntarily suffer for the gospel, I’d like to follow Jesus and be comfortable. And so there was. But what that was indicative of was some idols in my heart that I wanted to cling to and not surrender to Jesus. And so all the way up through high school, through college, I had this very thorough theology that I was very adept at arguing and by adept I mean a royal pain in the butt to everybody who was around me. I had a real sense of arrogance, kind of theological arrogance, which is the dumbest sort of arrogance you can have, because it’s arrogance about your knowledge of the one who is greater than everyone and who made you. 

 

0:07:50 – Adam

That’s a fair point, the theological arrogance is particularly idiotic. 

 

0:07:54 – Barnabas

But all along there was this sort of part of my life that I held back doubts that I had about the safety and the goodness of following Christ fully Got out of college, got married, got a great job at a publishing company and was doing really, really well. I had the trajectory that. Had I not blown it, I would have very likely been in a position to advance well over the years. I was mid-20s, I think they liked me. It was a really wonderful company. They treated employees so well. 

 

Nothing in my life was circumstantially problematic except that I wasn’t making as much money as I wanted, which means I started cutting corners at work and trying to kind of basically steal from the company to get ahead. 

 

I was found out I was fired rightfully. So they fired me in a very gracious way because they basically you know how Matthew describes how Joseph intended to quietly divorce Mary so as not to dishonor her. That’s basically how they fired me. It was sort of a quiet departure You’re going to quietly exit, we’re not going to talk trash about you, we will not disparage you. Of course they weren’t going to give me a recommendation, but they’re like we’re not going to defame you, but also can’t work here anymore, and so then that led to a crumbling of so many things in my life. It led to a crumbling of my own self-image so much of the arrogance because I didn’t even have a leg to stand on A crumbling of my wife’s trust in me, which we talked about in the last episode a little bit Crumbling of the ministry I had at church, which I wasn’t on staff but I was kind of a core volunteer with the student ministry. 

 

All of that was just kind of gone from me. Ministry, all of that was just kind of gone from me and I didn’t know who I was, I didn’t know. I knew what I believed, but I couldn’t tell you what believe meant, Cause I’m like, well, if it doesn’t shape my life, what is it really? And so there was just this real existential examination and I re, I distinctly remember sitting in our kitchen at like four 30 in the morning. I got up at an ungodly hour to get to this terrible job that we discussed in the jobs episode and just wondering is it worth it? 

 

0:09:52 – Adam

Yeah. 

 

0:09:53 – Barnabas

Is all this worth it? Why am I clinging to all of this? I can just peace out. And so there was a real like staring into the abyss of you know, and, and in the words of is it Nietzsche who said you know, you stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back? That’s what it felt like, was sort of like oh, I was like evil looking back at me. If I was to abandon my faith, if I was to abandon my family, if I was to abandon all this, I should just kill myself, like there’s no point in living at that point. 

 

And so, like all of this probably happened in five minutes and I was like well, that’s not the answer which then kicked off I’d say probably 12-ish months of striving to get my head around what I believed, under the guidance of a couple of the elders at the church that I was at at the time, a guy named Mark and a guy named Wayne. And it was through that and through their very simple, clear, biblical kind of ministrations that Jesus came to life for me. And the primary way that that came about and this has been so fundamentally striking to me was through at one point, wayne simply said to me I know you think you know all of the answers about everything he’s like. In a lot of ways you do like you know you have a Bible degree. I know who your dad is. I know you think you know all of the answers about everything he’s like. In a lot of ways you do Like you know you have a Bible degree. I know who your dad is. I know how you were raised. 

 

I know you’ve been in ministry, but also here’s what I’m asking you to do. And then he paused and he was like actually here’s what I’m telling you to do. I want you to see if you can forget all of that. And then I want you to go read the gospels, starting with Matthew, and just work your way through all four gospels at a slow pace and just see if you can get to know Jesus. Who is the Jesus on these pages? And I was like, fine, I don’t have anything, like I genuinely had nothing else to do. But I was also like I have read these so many times, I’ve written papers on these, I’ve taught from these, whatever. And so I tried it. 

 

And it was that practice particularly the verse in Mark nine, I believe helped my unbelief. Yeah, that kind of began the dawning for me of going oh, like, as a Christian, you don’t have to have all the answers, you don’t have to have everything tidy and buttoned up, you have to put yourself at the mercy of God. So belief doesn confidence all the time. Sometimes it just means ah, here I am, hold on to me. 

 

0:12:09 – Adam

Yeah right. 

 

0:12:10 – Barnabas

And so that became a pivotal thing, which then the Lord turned around and used all of that stuff that was stockpiled in my mind and in my heart from years past and began rearranging it into fruitfulness of my theology, came to life and I began to understand why the sovereignty of God was beautiful and why the grace of God was magnificent. And how much I had experienced. And you know, stories like the unforgiving servant began to make sense to me because I was like well, I know how much I’ve been forgiven by God and by my family and by the company who treated me better than I deserved when they fired me, and so forth, and it was profoundly revolutionary, for me, fired me and so forth, and it was profoundly revolutionary for me. 

 

0:12:52 – Adam

That’s a lot you know, and I appreciate you sharing that because I think some of those times, like when you have all that history of the church and you have all the history of all the things you’ve learned over the years, like there comes some points where you feel like okay, like how useful is that Right? And then you have that time where all that stuff starts to be revealed in new ways and fresh to you and that’s really awesome, and I just I know so many people. 

 

0:13:13 – Barnabas

now, you know, deconstruction has become somewhere between a fad and a movement. 

 

I’m not sure which, but people departing the faith in which they were brought up to, in many cases just abandon the faith altogether. 

 

In some cases it’s healthy because there’s a deconstruction of the falsehoods they were taught or the cultural particularities, and they’re like there’s got to be something better than this. But I would say that what I went through was deconstruction, with the reconstructive aspect, in part because I was still under submission to the word and I had these wise men shepherding me to reconstruct it into not a hollow, meaningless construct but but a living faith. And so you know, there’s a lot of people who leave behind what they were raised in because it just seems theoretical to them or it’s all attached to hypocrisy that they were aware of or whatever. And I’m profoundly grateful that wasn’t the case for me because, like it’s, that would have been very easy. It’s super easy to just be like this is all a waste. I’m profoundly grateful that wasn’t the case for me because, like it’s, that would have been very easy, super easy. To just be like this is all a waste. I’m going to go do something else. 

 

0:14:13 – Adam

And what a beautiful picture of the church, you know, acting like it’s supposed to intended to act, and coming alongside you in those difficult times, Because, unfortunately, there are a lot of churches that would have just told you goodbye and that’s a very sad thing, you know. And they look down on us when we have trials and we have failures and we all have them. It’s not like any of us are exempt, but it’s the fact that you had guys that would come alongside and help, support you and help you regrow and see your faith in a new light. That’s fantastic. That’s a great example of the church at work. 

 

0:14:46 – Barnabas

Yeah, they have an ongoing ministry in my life from the fact that I’m now in a position to share that kind of care with others. When they blow it, yeah, and I think often about the model that they showed me of patient care clear exhortation. Like they weren’t just like oh, I know this is so hard, you need a hug. Like you know, there were points at which I was very low and they were like friend, this was your own. Doing Like you’ve got to take steps. 

 

0:15:13 – Adam

Yeah. 

 

0:15:13 – Barnabas

And I did so there was a there was kind of a gentle firmness, and so they kind of wrapped me around in care which is really, really formative for me, thinking about your story. Who were the key people outside of your family who maybe played a role in, you know, in your teenage years leading up to that? 

 

0:15:30 – Adam

I mentioned one of them in an earlier podcast and that was my sixth grade teacher, Ron Countryman, and I ended up working for him with the custodial and stuff like that and he just wasn’t yeah the bleach guy. 

 

Yeah, my bleach story. Yeah, he just was a great example of like biblical understanding, but just gentleness with it, you know, not like I’ve got to figure it out or or Lord their knowledge over you, but just like a humble servant, you know. And he taught me a whole lot in those years. Both my youth pastor and my youth pastor’s dad actually had a large impact. I would go almost weekly with my youth pastor’s dad, jerry Webb, and we would go out and he would take me to go visit people who had visited the church. And so I’m not sure if he saw it more as a time that like, oh, we need to go visit these people, or if he saw it more as a time like, oh, Adam’s going to be there and I have an opportunity to invest in Adam, because that’s really what he did in my life. 

 

And so I saw these examples of people that were living for Christ, out of love for him, you know, like out of a recognition that God has done these amazing things. And it wasn’t that I never saw that before. I think I saw it in fresh ways that I maybe didn’t realize before, and part of it was I had interpreted some of the stuff that I had heard in a way that was like well, god is all about, you have to be afraid of God, right, and hear a message from a youth evangelist or something telling you that, well, if you sin, your parents are going to be in a car accident and they tell a story of some kid who lost his parents, and so those sorts of things that, like there was this huge fear in me that was motivating me to be afraid of God and obey for the wrong reasons, which resulted in, you know, any lack of passion for the true faith, because it was more just faith out of fear. 

 

0:17:21 – Barnabas

Yeah. 

 

0:17:22 – Adam

Which isn’t the same thing, just some of those people living out like a genuine love for the Lord that I got to see and watch and they just loved God and they love people well, and they weren’t living out of fear for him and I think that really helped open my eyes. So one day we were at a function where we had visited another church and there was a youth guy speaking and I remember just being convicted by the message and just going to talk to my youth pastor afterwards just about salvation, cause I wasn’t walking with the Lord at the time but I really did believe I was saved and I did a great job of pretending and that’s probably the biggest part in my life. I look back, I’m like I was such a good faker, like I, unfortunately I had figured out the right things to do and say that everybody thought I was great and so inwardly they didn’t think there was any need to try and see what’s really inside me because the facade was so good and it’s a really bad place to be as a believer. And I went back and talked to my youth pastor afterwards and it’s like, you know, this is what I’m struggling with, you know, and I believe I need to follow God, I need to say no to these things and I believe I’m struggling with you, know, and I believe I need to follow God, I need to say no to these things and I believe I’m a believer, but I just I’m not even sure I have questions about that at this moment. And he’s like Adam you’re the last person in our youth group I thought would ever come and talk to me about this and you know that was a striking statement for me and it really pinpoints the level of my hypocrisy, which is an ugly thing, because I had just played the game so well and I had tried to make people happy with me and inwardly I wasn’t seeking the Lord, and that was a huge changing point in my life. 

 

And then, after that, working through, like AW Tozer’s, knowledge of the holy, getting a different, a proper view of God, and I should serve God because I love him instead of out of just fear. If I recognize what God truly did for me and that he came to redeem me, not to punish me. He came so that I could be free from my sin and the punishment for that and he paid the price for that. I mean all those things I’d heard, but I had just processed them differently and so getting a proper view of God really was a huge step in me being like, okay, I want to serve God and I want to love God with my like, just give him all, as opposed to just okay, it’s a nice thing and it’s my parents’ faith and I just need to follow along and I’ll be okay, sort of a look at it. 

 

0:19:45 – Barnabas

Yeah, yeah and I’ll be okay. Sort of a look at it. Yeah, yeah, as I think about your story, you know the line your youth pastor said you’re the last person I would have expected. That’s striking to me also as somebody in ministry now, just thinking about you realizing you know I stand up on a Sunday to preach you know I’m not a primary preacher, but I preach with some regularity or to teach, and there’s a certain amount of evaluation that goes on. You look around the room and you kind of look at some people and you’re like man, their faith is really strong, you know, or they’re doing great, and then sometimes it’s the last person you expect who is at the place of total crisis or total collapse, or it’s all to give wisdom in the realization of these things. One of the things that stands out about this is that both in my story and in your story, the thing that opened our eyes was not anything we did. 

 

0:20:42 – Adam

Absolutely. 

 

0:20:43 – Barnabas

And in fact, in some cases it was things that happened to us, or at least to me, but it was through things that we were doing. So, you know, you talk about having the genuine faith coming from a true and clear view of god. Seeing who god is makes that faith come alive. Yeah, you know, for me, reading the gospels and seeing who Christ is, so I’m trying to put myself in the mind of a listener who knows somebody who is wrestling, or maybe themselves is at a place of like you know, I’ve always just sort of like done the Christian thing. Yeah, I don’t know if my faith is all that genuine, like I just grew up in it. And what are some steps people can take? Not steps to find this faith as much as, let’s say, steps to put themselves in the way of encountering the real Jesus? 

 

0:21:31 – Adam

That’s a tough question there. I think allowing people honest access to your life would have been a huge step in that. 

 

0:21:41 – Barnabas

It’s amazing how hard that is to do without confidence in Christ. If you’re confident in Christ, being honest is a lot less risky, because A he’s the judge, not them, and B he’s the mercy giver for all the stuff that I’m embarrassed about. So, but if you don’t have confidence in Christ, boy is it hard to open up. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, but, boy, the risk feels greater. 

 

0:22:04 – Adam

Yeah, it does, and it’s harder to trust, right, because you don’t know how they’re going to respond. Yep, but God does use those people that you, you know, you had the opportunity to give the opportunity to speak into your life. If they’re followers of God, they can help lead you to his grace because they’ve experienced his grace. And so there is that aspect of it where it’s like okay, well, this is someone who can help me to understand where I’m at, because a lot of times, just a self-introspection thing, like I can gaze at myself all day and find all the things wrong, but it doesn’t help me to find the answers outside of myself that I need to look for. 

 

0:22:41 – Barnabas

Yeah, yeah, that’s striking. I think I mean a couple of steps that people can take. I mean a couple steps that people can take, I think the instructions that Wayne gave me, elder Wayne, to approach the Gospels as much as it’s up to us, as if we have not read them before, and pose the question just who is Jesus? Or, as his disciples say, when he calms the storm, what kind of man is this? Yeah, which is a great question, because I had known of Jesus and in some sense knew Jesus as my savior for basically my entire cognizant life. 

 

But that’s very different than knowing how does Jesus feel about me? How does Jesus treat people who have blown it? Who is Jesus drawn to spend time with? I mean, he’s a friend of sinners, not a friend of the religiously successful. Who does he attract to himself? A whole wild, varied crew of people who are kind of crazy and really bad at stuff and so on and so forth. And you see the heart of Jesus and you see the sacrifice of Jesus and you see the prayer of Jesus and you just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom down the list and it captures you differently. And so that’s something I would say to people is if you were at a place of. 

 

You’re just not sure about the solidity of your faith or the reality of your faith. Is this all just ritual? Do that and the answers that God will show you from his word about who Jesus is will crystallize your faith or will show you who Jesus is? Will crystallize your faith or will show you you really do need to give your life over to this Jesus, because the Jesus you were kind of professing faith to before wasn’t actually like it, wasn’t the real Jesus. 

 

It was some, some cultural Jesus or whatever. So that’s one thing. I think another thing is the very real sense that you need to listen and understand you can’t make your faith. You can’t make your faith happen. You can’t make your faith. You can’t make your faith happen. You can’t make your faith stronger. You can’t make your faith do or be anything. The only thing you can make your faith do is go away. 

 

Faith is a gift from God and is strengthened by the Holy Spirit. So it is through the work of God that this happens. That’s through the preaching of the word, that’s through prayer, talking to God. If you’re not praying, your faith isn’t growing, it just can’t be. And then through his word and his people, in kind of direct context, reading scripture, studying scripture and then being in contact with his people. So you can’t kind of meander through a Christian life and have a growing, vibrant Christian faith. There has to be a dedication to a lived Christian life which will then lead to a vibrant Christian faith, which will then lead to a desire to invest in the Christian life Like it’s this beautiful cycle instead of like a self-eating cycle. 

 

0:25:21 – Adam

Yeah, and I think you hit on it there when you’re like, when you’ve got to, you’ve got to know who God is right. 

 

That’s what it comes down to, and for you that was taking a lot of stuff that you had learned in the past and people helping you bring that to present and working through and being in the word. 

 

And I think for me it’s the same thing ultimately that made that huge transition in my life from okay, this is what I’m going to seek God with my whole heart, even though I fail every day. But, like, that transition took place when I finally got the right view of God, you know. And so for me it was those things happened through his word, through teaching of other people that were expounding the word, but seeing other people that lived out of adoration for him and not out of fear of him. And when I got to see those things and I got a different picture of God, I was like, well, how can I like? Why would I not want this? Why would I not want to love him? Why would I not want to serve him? Why would I not rejoice in his forgiveness instead of just kind of cowering in the corner, afraid of what might happen if he found out who I really am. 

 

Yeah afraid of what might happen if he found out who I really am and that was a huge transition for me is just seeing. God as who he really is and that more of the beauty and the breadth and depth of the character of God and what he’s like. 

 

0:26:39 – Barnabas

Yeah, I think one thing and this is going to possibly sound a little bit weird, but if somebody is at a place of wrestling with their faith is at a place of wrestling with their faith there is a very real aspect of if you don’t know how to have faith in God, have faith in the faith of others. That’s not an eternal answer, but what it means is like if you’re drowning and don’t know how to swim, grab the hand of somebody who’s holding their hand out to you, like that doesn’t make you know how to swim, but it sure will keep you from drowning. And so there’s a reality in which which you just heard Adam say about looking at the real God and going how can I not follow, give my life to find joy. And if that sounds absolutely foreign to you, then that’s okay for now, because we probably can’t convince you that that’s true. But what we might be able to convince you of is that Adam’s not crazy and that the people around you who feel the same way about God, who have encountered an experience with God, a reality with God that’s like that are also like man. 

 

Look at them, are they? Is there a little bit of vibrance in their life? Is there a little bit of. They’re on solid footing when life gets shaky. Do they have joy when life gets hard? Okay. Have some faith in their. They’re on solid footing when life gets shaky. Do they have joy when life gets hard Okay. 

 

Yeah, have some faith in their faith, so that you look at that and go, I don’t know what this God is all about, but when I look at them I see something real. 

 

And so I’m going to try to see what they see, because that’s a thing that became helpful for me as well was I wasn’t so cynical as to think along the way that every Christian was a phony. I just looked at some others and was like man, they see something I don’t see. They have something I don’t have, like I could describe what they had, but I couldn’t have what they have. I could write an essay on it or I could teach on it, but that didn’t mean that I felt a vibrance in my soul about their peace or their joy or their whatever, and so in a sense, the Lord was teaching me to have faith in their faith that there’s something real on the other side of that. What is that thing? All right, the last question for you, Adam, just as we, and let’s keep this one tight just one or two quick thoughts. After your faith became alive, became real I’m not even sure what the right terminology is, like it, blossomed. 

 

What changed about you in your life and I realized that’s a progression and because in a lot of instances it’s not like you woke up the next day, you know, it’s not like we woke up the next day and we’re like fully formed mature believers. But how did your trajectory change? What were you taking joy in that you weren’t taking joy in before, those kinds of things. 

 

0:29:08 – Adam

Yeah, it was certainly a lot like. Even the battle with sin is different because, like, your perspective on it’s changed. Right, I’ve been freed from this and I have a God who’s worth serving now. So like not that he wasn’t before. My understanding was imperfect before, so now it’s like okay, the battle with sin is still real. It’s not that I don’t have it, it’s not that the temptations don’t arise, but I’ve got a whole lot better reason to say no to those and say yes to obedience to God. 

 

0:29:37 – Barnabas

Oh it’s beautiful. I love that. 

 

0:29:38 – Adam

Yeah. 

 

0:29:39 – Barnabas

Yeah, the resisting temptation. So prior to that point in my life pornography had been a I wouldn’t say it was an addiction, but it was a regular. It’s kind of in the regular rotation of temptations. 

 

0:29:49 – Adam

Yeah. 

 

0:29:50 – Barnabas

And when you begin to have a real vibrant awareness of who Jesus is, relationship with Jesus, the closeness to Jesus, that stuff starts to look really unappealing. And there’s nothing more powerful over temptation than that’s gross. You know, like if I asked you to eat, like I don’t know, a raw rotting deer liver, you’d be like that’s not a temptation, that’s gross. 

 

But that’s more or less what Satan is asking us to do with sexual temptation or any other temptation. We just see it as something else. And so when we see it in light of who Christ is and the beauty of Christ, the goodness of Christ, the design of Christ for our bodies, for sexuality, for human dignity, for gender, for all these things, all of a sudden you’re like oh, the reason I feel nasty after participating in that sexual sin is because it was nasty beforehand. 

 

0:30:39 – Adam

Right yeah. 

 

0:30:40 – Barnabas

And so it begins to diminish the power of temptation, because that’s the power of a real Christ. Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a real one. I mean that, again, that wasn’t instantaneous for me, but it was a profound pivot in the battle against sin. I think another thing for me that was really significant was just learning to feel forgiven. Yeah, I knew what forgiveness was for years. Sure, I could define it, I could describe it, could write a paper on it. I mean, I understood how we received it through Christ. He paid for the debt, all of those things, which is not at all the same as, after you have blown it, to feel that that sin is gone. Now, of course, the human side of things is not all the same as, after you have blown it, to feel that that sin is gone. 

 

Now, of course, the human side of things is not all the same. There are still consequences. There are still. You know, people don’t forgive as fast as God does or just completely. But that reality of I’m not under the weight of sin anymore because I’m not going to diminish the cross of Christ in my mind anymore. If you don’t feel forgiven, there’s a sense in which you’re saying or you’re wondering was Jesus’ death enough? Yeah, Did he accomplish what he said he did? Yeah, and now you’re not shaking your fist at him, but you’re just not confident in him. Yeah, and that’s where I had been for a long time, without even realizing it. I just sort of stuck in a pattern of sin and shame and, like you know, I think I’ve gone too far for Christ to totally forgive me, even while theologically knowing all the right answers. So the feeling of forgiveness was a profound change and the freedom in that then is like have you read Pilgrim’s Progress? Or there was a kid’s version that I read when I was little, called the Dangerous Journey. 

 

I don’t remember that it was illustrated and there’s a scene where pilgrim is approaching the cross and he’s bearing this huge burden, you know, and in the illustrated version it just looks like this massive, like canvas bag of rocks. This is huge and he approaches the cross and at the cross the burden just falls off his back and it bounces down a hill into a tomb and obviously the symbolism is right on the nose. 

 

That’s powerful. But when that happens, what are you then free to do? You are free to run in the path that Christ has for you, rather than slog along wondering if you can keep going. You know, on the one hand, we’re talking about gaining freedom from the power of sin over us, and on the other hand, we’re talking about gaining freedom from the guilt that sin put on us or that we participated in, and both of those are so remarkably freeing. 

 

And we weren’t even really talking about sin up to this point. We were talking about faith, and faith is often conceptual, but what we’re really talking about giving ourselves fully to Christ. Yeah, faith coming alive doesn’t mean we understand things differently than we did before. It means that we are resting in things differently than we did before. We are putting all of our weight down, to use a phrase that our pastor likes to use when he’s talking about faith. We put all of our weight down on Christ and just confident that he’s going to hold us. Yeah, so we could probably go on and on, because at this point we’re just talking about things that are awesome, about Jesus, yeah. 

 

0:33:44 – Adam

I just have one word thing, and that is the change for me was massive, from being someone who you know, I believe knew Christ but lived a life of fear, to someone who then was like, oh, look how God is and his blood is sufficient for my sin and I can have freedom from that burden right, and I don’t have to carry that burden anymore. 

 

So it’s shifting from like living a life of inward fear and in situations even outwardly stuff that would manifest itself in fear, to like recognizing that forgiveness and that load being gone, and then it’s like the joy that’s there is totally different and your outlook on life is different. So you approach everything in a way that’s. I mean, yes, I fail and yes, I say everything, but I’m talking about and it’s just a generality Everything is approached differently from a perspective of God has given me life, Like, no matter what comes, no matter how hard it gets and all the trials that will come, god is still good. Like I can go back to that one thing in my life and just salvation itself and recognize the goodness of God and in that have enough rejoicing to last for eternity. 

 

0:34:53 – Barnabas

Yeah, yeah, I found a similar thing the freedom from fear. It showed itself in a little bit different way and it showed itself more in humility. For me, because so much of pride is the fear of looking like an idiot, so you sort of project something. So I just could never admit that I was wrong, I could never. Apologies were really hard. There was so many things and I was wrong all the time and I needed to apologize, which just meant I needed to apologize all the time. 

 

And so, after this sort of transformational reality in my life took place, I started to find freedom in saying you know, I’m sorry, I was wrong. Because then there was a chance for forgiveness and there was like, so there was keeping short accounts, there was just honesty, the freedom of honesty instead of covering up. And so, yeah, it’s similar to what you’re describing, but just sort of that light shined into a different part of my life. I think, oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, yeah, the transformational effect of when Christ does this in our life, whether it’s a hollow faith, a stale faith, an old faith, a borrowed faith, comes to life. I mean, there’s a reason why second Corinthians says the old has gone, the new has come. I am a new creation. Yeah, you genuinely feel like a new person afterwards for sure. 

 

0:36:08 – Adam

Yeah, it’s, it’s revolutionary and it’s one of those things that it’s so hard to explain because it is so life-changing. It’s just one of those things that happens and you’re like I wish I could figure out how to put the abundance of blessings that I have just been given and beginning to understand, into words and share with others. 

 

0:36:28 – Barnabas

Well, let’s land this there simply because, a that’s a great place to end and, b we could keep going about Jesus for a long time and we’ve got the rest of our lives to do so. But for this episode we should land it it there, which brings us to the last curious question of the season. Okay, absolutely nothing to do with anything we just talked about. No, it doesn’t, not even a little bit. But that’s okay because you know, curiosity requires pivoting on a dime. You have to be able to kind of turn and go wow, what’s the question here? So the question is what is the movie that you quote the most? 

 

0:37:01 – Adam

Oh, this one’s pretty easy, really. Okay, I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. 

 

0:37:07 – Barnabas

That’s interesting, that you go there, inconceivable. Why are we preparing to die I? 

 

0:37:11 – Adam

don’t know, it’s just one of the quotes from the movie. Well, I mean. 

 

0:37:12 – Barnabas

I can quote nearly the entire movie. 

 

0:37:14 – Adam

Anybody want a? 

 

0:37:15 – Barnabas

peanut, especially so for those of you who don’t know. He’s quoting the princess bride, which is an all time great movie. It was also one of the only movies that we were allowed to watch in church context when I was growing up. 

 

0:37:28 – Adam

Really, I was laughing about this with some friends recently. 

 

0:37:30 – Barnabas

You know those of us who grew up in various youth groups and like the list of approved movies was so short because somebody’s mom was always going to get mad if it was you know, with nothing above. Pg nothing that you know. Often it was only animated films. So I feel like you know, once Finding Nemo came out, that got watched by church groups a billion times those kinds of things. 

 

But yeah, so that one’s definitely on the list of most quotable movies. I don’t think it’s the one that I quote the most. I think Tommy Boy is probably in the running for movies I quote the most. All right man, this is tough because Dumb and Dumber is right up there. There’s an era of comedies for men of my age that are just better than any comedy that’s been put out in the last 15 years. Yeah, anchorman has some great quotes. I’m just basically showing my, my juvenile sense of humor. 

 

0:38:25 – Adam

Oh, and then and then the Sandlot. The Sandlot gets quoted a lot too. 

 

0:38:29 – Barnabas

So yeah, all of those so basically movies that came out between 1993 and like 2001, just sort of that window of time. 

 

0:38:36 – Adam

Yeah, my family’s other one that my kids like to quote a lot would be Elf. There’s just some, oh, elf is. 

 

0:38:41 – Barnabas

Family’s other one that my kids like to quote, a lot would be elf. 

 

0:38:42 – Adam

There’s just some. 

 

0:38:43 – Barnabas

Oh, elf is so quotable and there’s just some great lines. I almost offended a guy at church a while back because we were trying to remember his name. You know, he was a guy I hadn’t met and we were trying to put names of faces and somebody was like I think it’s Francisco and I was like Francisco, that’s fun to say. 

 

0:38:59 – Adam

Yeah, every time my daughters or wife wear anything purple, that’s very purply, you know like there’s just sort of roll out there so yeah, they just that’s a great flow off the tongue, that’s for sure all right, that brings us to the last curmudgeon moment of the season. 

 

0:39:12 – Barnabas

So this will be our final grumpiness and I think it’s a little bit on the nose, but uh, that’s okay, maybe a little personal. Yes, the thing that I’m curmudgeonly about is endless podcast banter. 

 

0:39:23 – Adam

So give me a little definition to what you mean by those words. 

 

0:39:27 – Barnabas

So you know there are shows you tune into and you know the title of the show is something like basketball show. Okay, it’s like picking the award winners for this year. So you’re going to hear the hosts talk about who they think should win the MVP and rookie of the year and whatever. Yeah, and you get into it and there’s eight minutes of them just yammering about nothing anything what they ate for breakfast, like how their socks fit, like whatever that stuff is. That is absolutely atrocious and oh atrocious. 

 

0:39:55 – Adam

It’s atrocious. Yeah, we’re out there. 

 

0:39:57 – Barnabas

And I realize listeners some of you may have listened to the podcast that I did up until a little while ago called the happy rant. You might be like that happy rant was 10 years of endless banter, like that’s all you guys did. I understand you may feel that way. I’m talking about inane banter. We were trying not to be inane, so just the pointlessness of it, yeah. And also the like. Get to the point. 

 

It’s a little bit like if you go to church on a Sunday and the preacher gets up there and tells like a six minute story it doesn’t have anything to do with anything, and it ends with him like catching a small mouth bass and he’s like, all right, our text for today. And you’re like what, what did that? I? Could have gotten the lunch earlier. If you would just skip that part Also could have gotten to the Bible faster. 

 

0:40:40 – Adam

We shouldn’t, you know, let’s not overlook that Well let’s not overlook that for sure. But yes, I get that I think sometimes you see this title and you’re like, oh, this will be like a really interesting episode about whatever the topic is, and you get into it and you’re like, scroll forward, scroll forward. Are we ever going to get to the topic here? 

 

0:40:56 – Barnabas

I then like eight minutes in. They’re like should we start the show? Yeah, you should start the show when you hit record. That’s what you should do, which also means we should probably end this show. 

 

0:41:06 – Adam

There should be an ending. This while yeah, so that we do not endlessly banter. 

 

0:41:08 – Barnabas

We don’t want to call ourselves out here. Yeah, I mean, I’m fine with that. 

 

0:41:15 – Adam

We were just talking about honesty show, oh right, Ending the show. 

 

0:41:17 – Barnabas

Sorry, sorry, sorry, Very curmudgeonly of you Listeners. This has been the eighth and final episode of the first season of the Curious Curmudgeon podcast. We hope that it has been encouraging to you, that it has been thought-provoking, that it has been at least a little bit entertaining. Thank you so much for listening to this episode and the whole season. Well, I don’t know if you listened to the whole season. 

 

0:41:39 – Adam

It’s all available. It’s there if you haven’t. 

 

0:41:41 – Barnabas

So, yeah, you can go back and listen to all of them, whatever portion of the season you did listen to. And we do plan to release a second season of this a little bit later this year with a new theme, new topics. So we’re not just going to carry on with this theme. Each season will have its own theme or we’ll just, who knows? We will listen to your feedback as well, so stay tuned for the new season. Thank you so much for listening and tune in next season.