Pastor Kyle Bushre: I was going to say the ongoing series that lasts one more week.
Pastor Brian Martin: Hey everyone, and welcome to the Calvary Callback, a podcast where we take a deeper dive into the weekly sermon at Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Rochester, Minnesota. I’m your host, Brian Martin, and I’m here today with Kyle Bushre, who preached a sermon titled, “Confident Prayer”. Looking at 1 John 5:13-15 in our ongoing series, “Walk in the Light”, the penultimate sermon.
Pastor Brian Martin: I know. Yeah, yeah. Anytime you can use penultimate.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: In a conversation. I think you should.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: That was really good.
Pastor Brian Martin: Thank you. It’s one of those words that makes me feel smart.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s a penultimate.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yes, yes.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. We got one more to go. And then we’ll be moving back into the Gospel of Luke. So. Which is fun?
Pastor Brian Martin: And when did we start, Luke?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, boy. I was afraid you might ask me. Oh, it’s been a bit.
Pastor Brian Martin: It’s been a bit.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I believe it’s, if you can believe it. I believe the fall of 22.
Pastor Brian Martin: Look at that.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: It is when we started. Luke and, yeah, so.
Pastor Brian Martin: I think it’s still relevant. Oh, yeah. You know?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. And the truth. Yeah. And the truth is. Yeah, exactly. And the truth is we have preached so many other series and topics and, and, and other entire books, including First John throughout. So it’s not as if somehow it has just taken me four years to preach through the gospel of Luke.
Pastor Brian Martin: So yeah, we’re taking breaks every summer and other times too.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: So yeah, lots of lots of songs. Lots of Samuel in there. Yeah, there’s different stuff.
Pastor Brian Martin: So we’re doing the thing.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yep.
Pastor Brian Martin: So, I know, you know, our kids are similar ages.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes.
Pastor Brian Martin: And so I know you’ve been in the car with some drivers who are learning and I have spent some time as well. My question though is how many times did Mr. Raymond have to use the brake on you?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, that’s.
Pastor Brian Martin: What I wanted.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Okay. So I answered this in the sermon. I told you it never it never happened.
Pastor Brian Martin: Okay. I must have missed it.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, I never once. Nope, nope, never once did he ever use the brake on me. I did wonder what it would be like if I was just driving down the road, and all of a sudden there was a breaking, you know what I mean? Like, and I didn’t do it right. That seemed like that would be very odd.
Pastor Brian Martin: It could be dangerous in the wrong situation. I would think obviously.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: But clearly only used to stop a greater danger. You know what I’m saying? There must be something. I can’t I would love to know the percentage on that. I we need to talk to a driver’s ed instructor to find out.
Pastor Brian Martin: Well, here’s the thing. I don’t think I’m fairly confident the car that I was learning in did not have that.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Really?
Pastor Brian Martin: Yes. And here’s why.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Okay.
Pastor Brian Martin: Okay. Because I don’t remember it ever being used on me, so I’ll say that. But I remember it’d be so funny if she ever hears this. I remember I was learning like we were in the same like group, you know, there were three of us in a group, you know, and we kind of take turns driving or whatever. And I was with this girl, Corinne, who I had known since we were in kindergarten. Okay. Sweet girl. Actually just a great person. Anyway, um, but we were in this neighborhood at one point, and she was supposed to park on the curb, and she kind of bumped the curb, okay, and completely froze, took her hands off the wheel, put her hands on her mouth, completely froze up. And we just like, rolled up onto the neighbor’s lawn and you’re just there on the grass. And so I’m thinking probably would have used it in that scenario.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes. Oh, certainly.
Pastor Brian Martin: I remember our instructor being like, break, break, break, break. You know.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Like, sure, sure.
Pastor Brian Martin: Didn’t ruin anything.
Pastor Brian Martin: Thankfully, there was no garden gnomes were harmed.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I was wondering what stopped you.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, I think it was just it was.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: The living room of the people who owned that house stopped us.
Pastor Brian Martin: Wouldn’t that be something? I it was like that was the thing that was the funniest about it is it was like it was like made for a sitcom. Yes. It was the slowest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. She was like, doing everything right, pulling off to the side, going really slow. She was very cautious driver and then bumps the curb and just starts going up it and just.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Just couldn’t handle. Knew she was in the wrong and was like, I’m done. This is over. I don’t want to be the driver anymore.
Pastor Brian Martin: Basically, like.
Pastor Brian Martin: I think a turtle passed us on the way, you know, like to our stop. I mean, it was, it was hilariously slow. Yeah. So green if you happen to hear this, I’m sorry that I just told your embarrassing story. All these people.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, no. Unbelievable.
What do you think is the purpose of prayer for the Christian?
Pastor Brian Martin: Unbelievable. Anyway, okay, well, on to more pressing spiritual matters, as it were. Yeah, so we were focused a lot on prayer. Yes. Here. And, and so, and I think obviously you answered this question in certain ways, but just sort of in a summarizing kind of way. What do you think is the purpose of prayer for the Christian? And what do people often get wrong about prayer? Yeah, just kind of zooming out to that larger theme of prayer.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I’m probably in this, the vein of those sort of Bible thinkers, theologian types who would say that prayer is it does more in us than it does with God. And what I mean by that is mostly what we what, what prayer is. And I see I get this from the Psalms. I get this from the examples of prayer that we have in Scripture, that mostly what prayer is, is me aligning myself with God and his will. Yeah. And what he wants to do in me. And by that I mean his will, his revealed will and then. And then trusting in his future will. So, I go to God in prayer and I, I remember who I am called to be. I pray scripture back knowing I need to be transformed by it. Be transformed by the be conformed to the renewing of your mind, right? Transformed by the renewing of your mind. We want our hearts and our minds to be in alignment with what God has shown us in His Word. And I think that’s mostly what prayer does. I think it’s a conversation with God wherein I interact with what he’s revealed to me, and I become more like Jesus for having done that. Now that that being said, we are told, go to God boldly. Go to him in prayer. Ask for things, requests. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, Jesus says, ask whatever you wish and it’ll be done for you, right? So, the idea there is my heart is so transformed that the things I’m going to God for are in alignment with what God would want to accomplish.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: So again, mystery I don’t know exactly why some prayers get answers and some don’t. I don’t know that, I don’t know why some prayers get answered in ways that we didn’t ask for them to be you know, solved. I didn’t ask for it to be done this way. And yet here’s how, here’s where we are. And this is what God did. So we can’t know those secret things belong to the Lord, but we are told to go boldly. God in some sense adds our prayer to what he does and uses it. When Moses goes to the Lord on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah and pleads with God and you know he works his way down, if we can find 100 people, if we can find 50 people, I don’t remember the exact number. He works his way all the way down to ten. If we can find ten people in this town, will you save me? He said I will save that town for the sake of ten righteous people who are in there. Right? And that it wasn’t ten people that came out of there. It was just Lot and his family. That’s it. That’s all. That’s all. They were saved. And actually Lot’s wife didn’t quite make it. She was on the ten yard line before and looked back. Right. So,then we find out that’s actually not that righteous nor his daughter. So you know what I’m saying? It’s God interacted with Moses on that. There was a I’m sorry, Moses. I’m saying Moses over and over again. Abraham. Good grief. Yeah, right. All right.
Pastor Brian Martin: And here I am, not even catching it.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And listener world. See, we even get we even get the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament mixed up sometimes in our heads. Abraham, please do not direct your emails to me, correcting me on who interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah anyway. Abraham. When Abraham. I know that didn’t sound right when Abraham was interceding right. He was interacting with God on this thing and God interacted back with him. Now, you could say, did God, what he proclaimed would happen in Sodom and Gomorrah happen? Absolutely it did. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. It didn’t actually change anything. And yet God used this interaction with Abraham to create a scenario where one family does get saved. And it is pivotal to the plot of Genesis, because the seed is carried forward in that way. Right. So, we have a powerful tool called prayer. We’re called to pray. How exactly God uses prayer is something that I can’t fully explain. And that’s the part that I, that I struggle with. Um, but I don’t struggle to pray. I certainly don’t struggle to pray. Right. I mean, at times I do, but most of the time I know I’m called to pray. I’m called to pray for my lost friends. I’m called to pray for what I need. I’m called to pray for my daily bread. Lead me not into temptation. Deliver me from evil. Praising God, glorifying him in prayer, lifting him up. These are all things that are part and parcel of the Christian life, and that’s what we’re called to.
Pastor Brian Martin: It’s I feel like part of what you’re saying there is prayer is one of the ways, because it’s our communication tool, it’s our two way communication tool. Obviously, we have scripture that is also a communication tool, but that’s more of a one way. But we can interact then with multiple aspects of God and His character. You know, we can talk to him as Father. We can talk to him as king. We can talk to him as prophet or something. I don’t know if that’s the best example, but, you know, we can interact with him in all these ways. We can just adore him, you know, which is the right response. But we can also just, you know, pray without ceasing. I think of too, you know.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s what Paul said.
Pastor Brian Martin: It’s also just let’s be a part of this together, you know, because it is a relationship which is accurate too.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, communication is part of relationships. So that’s why we pray because we’re in a family, we’re adopted sons and daughters into God’s family. He’s got our father and Jesus advocates for us. And the spirit even gives us words to pray when we don’t have the words right, even when we just groan, the spirit intercedes for us and makes our requests known to God. So, it is mysterious, but we’re called to it. And, it’s powerful. We’re told it’s powerful. God uses our prayer in his mysterious will to carry out what he plans to carry out. Yeah. So pray.
Does God respond to begging?
Pastor Brian Martin: So with that, this is a loaded question on purpose. Does God respond to begging?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Ah, that’s a good question. Does God respond to begging? Well, sure. I mean, well, it depends on what you mean by begging. You know, there’s begging and then there’s persistence.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: There’s persistence. Negative connotation. Absolutely. Persistence is what we’re taught. We’re told to be persistent. We’re told to go. I mean, when when Jesus uses the image of a widow going to an unrighteous judge, a corrupt judge, judge who doesn’t want to listen to her and doesn’t want to give her justice. And he uses this as an example of a worldly persistence in going over and over and over again and badgering this judge. I need you to intercede for me. Probably so that I can live in a widow’s world. Back then they would they didn’t own property and that sort of thing. And so in order to get what she needed to live. She needed that judge to, to act. Well, we’re told, you know, arguing from the lesser to the greater, as Jesus often does if we’re told to do that in a worldly sense, how much more, how much more will our Heavenly Father who loves us, who is completely holy and righteous? How much more will he want us to persist in our prayer and come to him over and over and over again? Now one could argue, well, if God is so good, why wouldn’t he just answer our prayer the way we want the first time? Right? Why not just do that? And the truth is, sometimes he does.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: But again, I don’t know all what God is accomplishing through prayer. And one of the things he’s, he’s, he’s telling us to do is to pray so that we consistently trust in him. We persist in it because it’s shaping our mind and heart to be one who’s settled in what God would have for us. And knowing his power to change our circumstances, we go to him and we become different people as we persist in prayer. And and he uses that as a tool. So I, again, I, it’s hard to know in someone’s thinking, well, what about my situation? I don’t know about your situation. Okay, I can walk with you in your situation. We can talk about it. We can maybe identify some ways that you’re praying that maybe you’re praying for something. You think you’re in persistent holy prayer, but you’re asking actually asking, in, as James put it in his letter, you’re in James chapter four. He says, you ask, but you do not receive because you want to spend it on yourself. You actually are. You’re asking for something that’s very self-centered and that could be the problem, but maybe it’s not. Maybe there’s something else that’s going on.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And maybe God does want you to pray for the next ten years about something so that at the end of that ten years of persistent, consistent prayer and he makes a transformation of someone’s heart. You know, you’ve been praying for a person or something or, or brings about healing in a certain way. Then you can give all glory to ten years of prayer to God. You know what I mean?
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, I would say an underrated maybe underappreciated is a better word. An underappreciated theme in scripture is waiting.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Mhm. Yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: I think it’s a deeply embedded theme that in the waiting God forms people often, you know, where, where you know, I mean, you look at from when David was anointed to when he actually became king, he, he hasn’t grown up to do.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. You know, and some running to do, some running to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: You know.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And he absolutely did.
Pastor Brian Martin: You know, I think Abraham having let’s bring it back to Abraham.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Abraham. That would be Abraham Abraham listeners.
Pastor Brian Martin: But having having to wait for a child, the God was trying to do something in him.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And he got a little impatient there in the middle.
Pastor Brian Martin: A little impatient, which is, which is a good cautionary tale in one sense. And I think that’s interesting too. And I think, you know. So I think we shouldn’t underestimate the role that waiting can play in our prayer life too, that sometimes we’re praying for that spouse who isn’t yet a believer. We’re praying for that child who has walked away. We’re praying for that promotion that we just really want to get or whatever it is, you know?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, some of that is, are you going to trust and rest in God if you don’t get the thing you want right away?
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Because if you get the thing you want, right? If you’re not going to trust and rest in God in Christ and let yourself be content with him, there’s a good chance the thing you’re praying for is the thing you want more than God. Yeah. Something that you want you value it above your relationship with the Lord. And that’s actually a problem. So there’s lots of things you can learn. I completely agree, there’s lots of things you can learn through the waiting.
What we sometimes get wrong about prayer
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. So I do think there are a lot of things people do get wrong about prayer too. And, and some of it’s just sort of like baked into us, right? Like, so I was actually talking to somebody on Sunday morning, a couple of friends in the lobby, and we were talking about the sermon. And I actually think one of the things that has negatively affected our sense of prayer is the movie Aladdin.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, really?
Pastor Brian Martin: Here’s what I.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Mean. Okay.
Pastor Brian Martin: I think we sometimes think of prayer. Like rubbing a lamp.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Ah, yes.
Pastor Brian Martin: Right. And when that happens, right. The you know, we all remember Robin Williams being hilarious and coming out of the lamp and, and basically explaining the rules of genie hood, which is that now Aladdin is in charge.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Right?
Pastor Brian Martin: Right. And I think we kind of get this twisted sense of it where we’re like, if I pray God will give me what I want. And what’s so problematic about that is I am not in charge in this relationship. That’s right. God is in charge. It’s an inverse of what it’s supposed to be.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: You can take verses like we looked at this weekend and others, what Jesus said in John 15, some different ones, and you can turn them into a formula. You could turn them into a formula where you’d say, all right, as long as I check all the boxes, as long as I clear the bar on faithfulness, holiness, my wording, all of these things, then there’s some formula that will get me into the position of being able to tell God what I want, and he will have to give it to me. He will be bound to give it to me. Right? And that is that is a misuse of these of these verses. That is not how the relationship works at all. To your point. Right. And it can be caused great cause for frustration. Yeah. Great cause for frustration. You can end up wasting that waiting time. You could sour yourself and bitter yourself toward God. Yeah, I’ve seen it.
Pastor Brian Martin: But but I also see where it comes from. Asking you shall receive.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: I mean, you see the way the Bible talks about it.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: And it seems like, okay, but it, it almost feels like, you know, I would say a not close enough reading will often lead us to go, but he’s supposed to give me what I asked for. I feel like that’s what Scripture is telling me, right? You know, and so it’s confusing.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: But yes, I agree. But I would say to that person, okay, but do you understand the posture of your heart is, I want whatever God wants. I actually, I am inclined because I’m growing in Christ, because I abide in Christ and Christ’s words abide in me and I want what God wants. I approach prayer and I say, here’s what. From my perspective I think would be great God. But I am willing to receive anything from your hand because I trust you. Yeah. Are you praying like that or is it a demand? Is it an insistence upon God?
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: You must do for me. Yeah. Because of who I am. Yeah. And if that’s the case, I would. I would remind you of job. I would remind you of a man who had no unrighteousness within him as the way it’s described. He’s a he’s an upright and holy man. And God took everything from him. And God had a reason for it. And job never learns the reason. And yet that’s what God chose to do in job’s life because he was bringing about his greater purposes, his will, that job could not have known, could not have seen.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: So, uh, I, I would caution anybody who would turn prayer into a kind of formula. Certainly, I mean, if you go the extreme route, you get down into the sort of the name it, claim it.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yes. I was just thinking the same thing.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Prosperity gospel. I have said it out loud. I without if I don’t have any wavering of, of my faith within me, God must give me the thing that I said. And of course, what happens is that false theology bumps up against how the actual spiritual reality of. You don’t always get exactly the thing you asked for from God and the way you asked for it. And what happens if you’re in that position of misunderstanding that you think it’s you, you think, oh, it is my lack of faith that is causing the problem here as far as my prayer life.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yes.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And there’s something deficient within me. And, uh, you know, now we’re into job’s friends who who went to him and say, well, there must be something wrong with you. Yes. Must be something going on. If if God’s not answering your prayers, you must be you must be wrong on his bad side in some way. And that could be very far from the truth. But then people have to carry that around. So bad theology leads to bad practice, which leads to worse theology.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah,
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And terrible places to be.
Pastor Brian Martin: I had some conversations with a guy who lost his wife young, you know, I mean, it was, it was a bad situation and, you know, illness, whatever. And, the number of Christians, church goers, maybe I’ll say it that way. Who said things like she just had more faith she’d be healed, you know, and he was just so hurt by that. Like, I had two friends that said had that very similar experience. And, that’s again, like, I like what you were saying about trust just now, like a couple minutes ago because it’s really trust in all these aspects. It’s trust in God’s character. It’s trusting God’s ability to come through. It’s trusting that God has a better plan than you do, you know? And tragedy and hardship reveals how we actually how much we actually trust the Lord, you know, and sometimes it proves to somebody, I mean, right. I would say for me, seeing other people walk through difficulty well is where I’m like, oh, that faith is real. You know, the evidence of that. And sometimes it goes the other way.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, you can really see it. Then you can really see who’s got a really strong sense of the sovereignty of God in all things, even as they’re praying for whatever it is they want. Because when they if it doesn’t turn out exactly the way they had hoped.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: You know, if the cancer doesn’t go away or. Yeah, whatever it is, um, they’re still they still rest. They still go, okay, this is what God has for me. It’s sort of like when David was praying for his, his boy, his illicit affair with Bathsheba that led to a son.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: He prays for that son when, when the son is dying, he prays for him, prays for him. And when the son dies, he gets up and cleans himself up and he says, look, when, when the boy was alive, I prayed and I cried out to God. But when he died,there was no more reason for that. And he still trusts in the Lord. Yeah, he knows that the Lord is good and he moves forward. There’s so many more aspects to prayer than just any one verse on prayer in Scripture. So, and it’s mysterious when you put them together a little bit, but I think at the end of the day, prayer is meant to get us to a place where we are confident that God is in control, that we’re confident that his plan will work out for our glory or for his glory and our good and, and so, I do pray boldly. I ask for the things I want, but I rest that God is in control. And I think that’s the right place to be in prayer.
Why do you think unfettered access to God is an important way of understanding our relationship to him?
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s a, that’s a great segue into to this idea. You talked about unfettered access.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: I love that as a concept. Why do you think unfettered access to God is an important way of understanding our relationship to him?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Mhm. Yeah. I think anything less than that will lead you to prayerlessness. What I mean by this.
Pastor Brian Martin: Is that’s not what I thought you were going to say. Tell me more.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: If you if you think you have to go jump through some hoops, that there’s some sort of right and proper thing you must do to get yourself right and prepared and ready in order to be able to talk to God. I just think you won’t. I think that that will lead most people, that will lead them to a place of, well, God doesn’t really want to hear from me or, I don’t deserve, I don’t really deserve God to speak into my, or my life or my problems aren’t really that important or whatever it is. And you just, you just won’t pray. And, Scripture says, no, no, no, no. Pray about everything. Pray about all the stuff that’s going on in your, in your life. You don’t have to pick and choose. You don’t have to clean yourself up. If you trust in Jesus, you’re in the family. And so you get to go to God even with your dumb questions or your small needs or your anxiousness about the future or whatever it is. You can just, you just get to go to him and you get to pray. And you don’t have to prepare yourself for that encounter because you can literally just sit here right now and pray and talk to God. And he’s there and he’s listening. And again, you know, we do need to pray according to his revealed will. Meaning, you know, we don’t go to God and ask for sinful things. We need to know His word. We need to pray in accordance with His Word.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: But but we’re not. So I guess it’s limited in that sense. But thoughtful prayer to the Lord can happen at any time. And you don’t need to, you don’t need to go through anybody else. You don’t need a special place. You can have a special place to pray if you want. Go for it. Have a special prayer. I mean, people have had prayer rooms, prayer closets. I’ve heard people talk about.
Pastor Brian Martin: Even the church itself. You know, the church building.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Go into the building, go into the chapel. I’ve gone into chapels, uh, in various places around the world. And to pray, no problem doing that. But understand you’re not more heard or less heard for the place you are or what you’re, you know, how spiritual you feel in the moment or, and you certainly do not need another person to go to God for you, because we have one mediator, one high priest, who intercedes for us. So and that’s Jesus. We don’t need anybody else. So in all those ways, we I couldn’t come up with a better phrase, I think, than unfettered access. Nothing stops you if you know Christ to go to the Lord in prayer.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. And you know, what’s interesting is to say, you know, I’m not cleaned up enough to come to the Lord or I’m not, or whatever version of that right is actually, I would argue, direct disobedience in the sense of that’s not who God says you are. Right. Like, how dare you, right? How dare you? God says you’re valuable to me. You’re my child. You know all of those things. And you’re like, But I’m not good enough. You’re literally defying his opinion of you, right? In order to come to that conclusion, and nobody thinks of it that way. No. But I think we should train ourselves not to think that way, you know? It’s like, no, if you’re a child of God, you’re a child of God.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Your relationship is based entirely on his grace, unmerited favor. And you think you’re you got a merit. Your presence in God’s throne room. You think he won’t listen to you because you don’t. In a sense, that’s calling God a liar. Right. Like you said, we don’t put it like that.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: But what we’re really saying is, I have a different view of grace. I don’t think God’s grace to me is as strong as what God says it is.
Pastor Brian Martin: Right. I think I can out sin God’s grace. Yeah. Or whatever.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Yeah. I can, I wouldn’t really what we’re saying is I wouldn’t allow me into my presence the way I am.
Pastor Brian Martin: That’s a good.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Point. Uh, so why would God. And I’m going to project that on to God. What? No, no, no. What I would say to you, if you’re struggling with this, is go to the Lord and see what he’s revealed about who he listens to.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And you find out that for if you’re his kid, if you trust Jesus, he wants you to just come in and talk to him. Just talk to him. Pray lift everything before him. Even if you feel silly. You’ll grow in your maturity. You will become a better prayer as you read scriptures. But that shouldn’t stop you from praying all the time.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Grow. You’ll grow in prayer in time.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: And that’s a good thing. That’s, that’s part of Christian maturity as well.
Pastor Brian Martin: Just like you have to learn to have healthy relationships, not relationships. Yes, healthy conversations with various kinds of people. You have to learn to have a healthy conversation with God and you need to do talking and you need to do listening. And that’s part of it too.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.
Marriage advice for those looking for “the one.”
Pastor Brian Martin: Mhm. So, I think we’ll kind of end with this as a thought. So you had a little fun and I loved it, you’re talking about marriage a little bit.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: And and the whole idea of searching for the one and how that’s, you know, uh, a hard concept, but I think, I think you would agree, um, a deeply important decision. I mean.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: I mean, over the years, I’ve counseled with many people who probably didn’t make a great decision there.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, you can make a terrible decision. That was yeah, of course, of course.
Pastor Brian Martin: And I certainly that wasn’t your point. But here’s the question. You know, I would even argue maybe the decision of whether or not to get married and to whom you should get married is maybe like the second most important decision of your life. I could maybe argue that after your faith in Christ.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I could see that. Yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: So there’s people who are in the zone right now.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yep.
Pastor Brian Martin: What advice would you give to those people who are, you know, assessing whether or not this is the one? Yeah. Or trying to figure out how they determine who the one might be, which yeah. Anyway.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, I think, somebody might listen to that sermon and think that I don’t believe that there’s just one person out there for you. Actually, I believe there is. I believe that a sovereign God who is leading his children to good things. And if a person wants to get married and feels that they want to get married, then go and get married. But my point, of course, was, um, not to discern these things. You should discern, discern, discern. You should walk a while, of course, with this, with this other person, because you need to observe, you know, does this person love Jesus and is it clear? Is it clear that that he or she is dedicated to the Lord in what he or she is going to accomplish in this life? And would you, if you married this person, become part of that team and the two of you together would be pursuing the glory of God, with your, with the two of you and with your family, if the Lord gives you children. I mean, you need to know that stuff. What I find, it becomes this sort of paralyzing agent for a lot of people in that position is that they, they check all those boxes, they get through that.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s not even the concern. Now, the concern is, but what if for some other reason, some unforeseen future thing, that this is not the proper one? And I’m actually making a bad decision, even though everything that’s happening right now tells me this is a good decision. That’s where I want to alleviate that person from this sort of having to discover some future, you know, predictive will of God that there’s that I have to figure out how to predict what God is going to have for me to do. And it’s interesting because you can get to the place where you are so convinced I’ve met, I’ve talked to people like this. They’re so convinced that God’s will for them must be something that they. That is not coming from them, that it comes from outside of them, that they question their own passions and desires. As if God didn’t give you passions and desires, as if God didn’t give you a joy in this other person, right? You know, those are all good gifts. Those are good indicators that maybe you should marry this person, right?
Pastor Brian Martin: Having them is a gift and also realizing that they are a tool. Yeah. That they’re for something.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes, exactly. I, I’ve gotten to the point now where I’ve talked, I’ve talked to some people to the point where they’ll say things like, I can only do the things that I don’t want to do, because then I know that’s what God wants for me, not something I want for myself. Right? Like that’s bizarre. How are you ever going to make a choice? You’re only going to make choices that you think are not the thing you want, right? Because then it’s what God wants for you. Ironically, the moment you make that choice, that is what you want. So you’ve chosen the thing you don’t want, but it has become the thing you want because you think God wants it for you. Do you see how circular this is? You can really put yourself in a spot. And I just want to alleviate. That’s that was my point on Sunday. I want to alleviate people from this this rut they put themselves in.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. That probably that whole like desire is bad is probably a Puritan influence, isn’t it?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know where it comes from. Probably comes from lots of places.
Pastor Brian Martin: It probably.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Does. I know the monks used to, you know, hit themselves with whips on their back because they wear the hair shirt and sleep on a board because they thought the more they suffer, the more closer to God that they were, which is so. And that was that was well before the Puritans.
Pastor Brian Martin: So, you know, which is respectable on one hand, in that they’re trying to seek the Lord with passion and zeal, but it makes them sound a lot like the prophets of Baal.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: You really missed.
Pastor Brian Martin: It, right?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Like cutting themselves. Yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: It’s like what Elijah was up against on the Mount Carmel, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s one of.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: My favorites for sure. That was Elijah and not Moses. Was that that was Elijah, right? I’m pretty sure. Pretty sure on that one. Okay.
Pastor Brian Martin: Although Elijah and Elisha are.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Sometimes that one.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, that one’s like that just feels rude. I actually heard somebody argue once that they felt like one of the best arguments for the like legitimacy of Scripture. The truth of Scripture is that the same name gets used a lot.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Like what, what.
Pastor Brian Martin: What person.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Writing.
Pastor Brian Martin: A, you know, a fiction book would name like multiple guys. John.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: You know.
Pastor Brian Martin: I still remember as a kid the day that I realized like the Johns weren’t the same.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: I was like, what?
Pastor Brian Martin: Or the Sauls?
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. King Saul. King Saul. The apostle Saul. Paul. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Pastor Brian Martin: I was like, wait, so then David. And anyway. Yeah. And you’re just like, oh, this is amazing.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Well, anyway, anyway, back to I just want to just, just put a little end cap on this. Uh, if you are, you are trying to make a good choice. Okay. You’re trying to make a good choice and you’re praying to God about it, and you’re seeking his will. Okay. And I don’t have any problem with that phrasing because you want to make a God honoring choice. Yes. But if that’s fine. If you say, I want to make a God honoring choice, I’m seeking his will. That’s a fine way to use that phrase. But if what you mean by I’m seeking his will is I am trying to push away my own desires and passions and move through a bunch of things that I want to try to find out what God wants for me. I would say to you, I think you’re pushing away some of the some of the clues that you might use to get to the thing that God wants for you because he built you with passions. He built you with desires. Yeah. He’s you know, Paul had a passion to go plant churches. And so he went and he did it right. And he wanted to go to plant churches among people that the gospel hadn’t gone to yet. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to put build churches on places where the gospel was already being preached. He wanted to go to new places. And so he did it. And there were times when God would prevent him from being able to go into certain areas. As this great passage in Acts where God prevents Paul from being able to go to certain areas of what we now call modern day Turkey.
Pastor Brian Martin: Mhm.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: He’s trying to go into these directions, and it says the Holy Spirit prevented him from being able to go in these places. You go. Well, how did the Holy Spirit prevent him? We don’t know. It could have been persecution, could have been weather. It could have been a lot of things that kept him from going. But they interpreted it. He and his team interpreted that as the Holy Spirit is preventing us from going in these directions. He tried to go. He just couldn’t. And what happens is God works him all the way to the shore. And then he receives a vision from the man from Macedonia. He says, come over and plant churches among us. And that’s where that’s where Paul ends up going and planting more churches. So what I’m saying to you is pursue your passions, go after what you want to go after. Pray to God for open doors. And if you don’t have an opportunity, then that’s not the right direction. And he’s got something else for you, and that’s how you’ll find out. But you’re not going to find out by predicting it in advance. So relax.
Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, relax. And you said you shared a key thing there too, about Paul’s pattern, which was he didn’t do he didn’t determine that on his own. No. And so, when you have big decisions, whether it’s looking for the one or something else, we should be bringing that to our community and, and saying, Will you pray with me about this? Because I’m having a hard time determining which way I’m supposed to go. Those are great times to engage our community in prayer too.
Pastor Kyle Bushre: Pray, and then seek wise counsel. Absolutely.
Pastor Brian Martin: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, that’s lots of good stuff. Kyle, thank you so much for your sermon on Sunday. And thank you to all of you for joining us here on the Calvary Callback. We hope this time was an encouragement to you. And whether you’re a part of our Calvary family or if you’re listening from somewhere else in the world, we invite you to join us in our mission to pursue passion for Christ and compassion for people. For Kyle Bushre, I’m Brian Martin. We’ll catch you next time on the Callback.
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