Pastor Brian Martin: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Cavalry Callback, a podcast where we take a deeper dive into the weekly sermon at Calvary Evangelical Free Church here in Rochester, Minnesota. I’m your host, Brian Martin, and I’m here again today with Kyle Bushre, who preached a sermon titled Paths of Light and Darkness. Looking at 1 John 1:5-10. All right, we’re back at it again. Kyle, how are you today?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: There we go. Yeah. I’m excited. I love talking about this has been a fun podcast to start. I mean, I’ve enjoyed it as much as we’ve had a lot of people come up and say they enjoyed this podcast, but I really like making it. It’s kind of fun.

Pastor Brian Martin: It is fun, and it’s interesting to reflect on the sermon in a different way. You know, my my shepherding community meets on Sunday nights. And so I get like a test run of discussing interesting stuff. So like, I feel like shout out to my group who are, I feel like contributors to me preparing for the podcast too, because they bring up interesting stuff and ask you questions. And I really love my group. So that’s, you know, anyway, thanks guys. If you’re listening, let’s start with with your sermon. So you kind of started with the pretty famous Tozer quote. Yes. And I’ll just repeat it here. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

Pastor Brian Martin: Yes. Yes. So, um, I think my question for you is when is it time that you had your mind changed about the character of God, where, you know, you saw him one way and then either through reading the word or you know, listening to preaching or just in prayer, you felt convicted and changed your understanding of God’s character.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, boy. You know, um, the first thing that jumps to mind is, uh, back when I was in college, I had just become a Christian when I was 20 years old, uh, was at Michigan State University, went off to a camp, became a Christian as a counselor there. Long story, interesting story. But I came to faith in Christ at that time and transferred from Michigan State to a smaller Bible school called Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And, uh, it was there that I really started learning about God. So I encountered Christ and had my heart transformed that summer. But that’s where I started to learn about God was when I, when I got to, to cornerstone. And I remember one of the things that really struck me was I started to learn about the sovereignty of God, the strength of God and his control and, uh, his laying down of all of human history and his, uh, superintendents of all things that were happening and how trustworthy that made him and how, and that really, when I started to learn that I actually learned, started to learn that stuff by, I came across a, this is gonna make me sound very old.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I came across a cassette tape. Yeah. Cassette tape. Yeah. Put it into my Walkman and, uh, was. Yeah. And I was listening to it and I didn’t know who this guy was, I just I thought, this is interesting. Somebody hand me this thing. And I was listening to it and I started learning all this stuff about God’s sovereignty right from Scripture later turned out to be John Piper that I was listening to. I had no idea. I’ve heard of him. Yeah, right. I had no idea who this guy was, but he, I think he in my early stages and to this day, even, but in my early growth, opened my eyes to see truths about God and the bigness of God in ways I’d never really considered before. You know, I came into faith going, yeah, I trust in Jesus. Jesus is for me, I need salvation. I’m so glad God has forgiven me. But I didn’t have a big view of God. And that was something that I was given, uh, through influences like John Piper early on in my walk, um, and started to see how all of scripture is the glorification of this one true God and how my story interacts with that and how I come into that through the saving work of Christ.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: But how I join this big story, which is really about the glorification of God. I would say that was probably the most pivotal moment. That’s the one that jumps to mind where I sort of a category switch and how I think about the world around me.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, that’s really interesting because the same one that came to mind, it’s similar to the one that came to mind for me, um, where I was really struck by just through, I don’t know that it was a moment, but it was just over time becoming sort of overwhelmed by the grandeur of God. You know, Isaiah 55, I love, you know, “Your ways are higher than my ways. Your thoughts are higher than my thoughts”, you know? Yeah. Just love that as an idea and just kind of grasping that just, you know, or even the fact that there’s more than 150 names of God in Scripture. Right. And it’s like, that’s because one name doesn’t encapsulate all of who he is. Like, he’s just so big and just sort of sitting in the feeling, you know, feeling really small because God is so big. And then also reading the story of Hagar and the name of God used there is Elroy which can be translated the God who sees me, you know, not just the God who sees. I understood that part already, the God who sees me. So somehow we have this like vast, enormous God and also a God who sees me.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. That’s just like, yeah, he knows you by name, right? Yeah. And just, um, those are sort of two almost competing truths and also one complete, you know, not complete, complete, but more complete picture of who God is. Yeah.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s nice to know that there’s a God. There’s a creator God who also knows everything that’s going on and is involved and is, is moving things around and is shaping human history. And I’m not, I’m not just in some corner unseen, but I’m part of what he’s doing and which gives us life, meaning, purpose, uh, all of that. Um, yeah. Yeah. It’s, uh, when you start thinking big thoughts about God and biblical thoughts about God, uh, your life changes from it.

Pastor Brian Martin: And that’s such a contrast to the way a lot of people first approach Jesus. I’m going to say Jesus specifically there is like, well, was he a good teacher or not? Did he actually live or not? And it’s like, well, yeah, I mean, those are all very fair questions, but like, it’s so much bigger than that.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh yeah. If that’s your starting spot, let’s talk about it. No problem talking about it. But hey, once you meet him, your life’s going to be transformed. You’re gonna learn so much more. Yeah, yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: So just transitioning to our next topic here. So, you know, the series is kind of named this way. We’re talking, you know, and this sermon was obviously we’ve got light and darkness and you made the DC talk reference, of course.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes. Dc talk.

Pastor Brian Martin: Okay. Oh, wow. We just went for it.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh my goodness. I hope we don’t have to pay royalties now on that.

Pastor Brian Martin: No one’s gonna mistake me for the real thing there. Don’t worry about it.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: You’re hoping this will land in parody. If that’s what you’re hoping for. So that we don’t have to pay homage. A tip of the homage.

Pastor Brian Martin: Tip of the cap. Okay. Uh, so. So we have this light and darkness metaphor here, and, and it’s going to get used throughout the letter and the series. Um, and I think that there is this interesting piece where we could accidentally misunderstand this passage because of the way that technology has changed our lives, right? So, so help shape our theological understanding of light and dark by maybe commenting on how light specifically is different today in our culture compared to how it would have been experienced in the ancient world. How is darkness different? Like something so fundamental, like light and darkness seems like. Well, yeah, it was the same for them as it is for us, but I don’t think it was. No, no, it would not have been experienced the same. So yeah. Can you comment on that a little bit?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Well, sure. Uh, we don’t really know how dark dark is because we are always in light.Yeah, it just, you know.

Pastor Brian Martin: Light pollution light. Yeah. We got.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can’t go outside your house without being bathed in light in the middle of the night because there’s lights on and the lights in the streets. There’s always light around us. I think the most dark I ever experienced. I think I got a little piece of this when I was, uh, I was a missions pastor. I used to travel all over the place, all over the world, making connections with with churches, local churches, and meeting leaders and creating plans and things like that. And one time I was down in Zimbabwe, I was, uh, I was meeting with some leaders there and I was staying at a, what they call a children’s village there in Zimbabwe and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. And I was at this village, uh, where all these, these kids lived and we were staying with them, working with them and all that, but we were staying at the village and at night all the lights would go out like all of them. Okay. There were no lights. They didn’t. There was no candles. There were no lights on in the buildings. There was there was nothing. And so you had starlight and nothing else. And so the idea of a light coming on in that was it just became brilliant. Right. So we, we have to try, if we can in all ways.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And, you know, whenever we’re reading scripture, we try to put ourselves into the mindset of the people who would have been the original recipients of this letter. So first century people, how would they have seen the contrast between light and darkness much starker than we do, much starker. We, we, uh, manipulate light. We have dim light, we have bright light, we have concentrated light. We have all we use light in so many different ways. And there’s so many gradations between, uh, you know, completely dark and completely light. So we don’t maybe understand just how stark a contrast that would be. And John wants us to know this is a stark contrast. We’re not talking about some middle sort of dim light. We’re talking about complete darkness of sin. And we’re talking about the pure light of of sinless holiness that is God. Yeah. And he does not have this darkness. He has nothing. He is entirely light. And in him there is no darkness at all. And those who are in darkness have no light unless they have him. They are completely blind. They don’t even have starlight, right? They have nothing. Nothing. So when we if we if we grasp that we have a better sense of the difference between a life of sin and corruption and a life of walking with Jesus. And it should call us to a more committed sense of, I must be in the light of Christ’s righteousness, in the way I live my life. I want to be rid of all the darkness that is holding me down.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Um, and so part of that is sort of their categories more than their, you know, it’s, it’s categorically this light categorically darkness. Right. Um, and that that’s important. And yes, dawn and dusk exist, but even those have light, which is interesting, you know, and so yeah, the stark contrast is, is important. So that kind of leads, I think, to an important follow up, which is, I think the way I want to ask it is if a person sins sometimes, does that automatically mean they’re walking in the darkness? Yeah. I tried to get at this yesterday as much as I could, because I think there’s a lot of confusion on this point. Uh, you know, somebody struggles with a particular sin and they fail in it. I think of, uh, you know, I think of guys struggling against pornography. I see, you know, I think of, uh, you know, the battle that that is for a lot of guys, I think of, um, women who struggle with gossip and slander and how they, you know, and and find themselves doing. Or judgementalism can be a big one for a lot of folks where they’re just constantly judging the people around them. Um, and they fail and fail and fail and they say, um, well, if I’m failing all the time, if I can’t seem to shake this, um, if what the Puritans call a besetting sin, you know, something that has entangled me and I feel like I’m stuck in it and it’s got its hooks in me and I’m, I’m pulling against the hooks and I’m trying to get out of this, but I just can’t seem to shake it.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. And I, yeah, I got, I grow, but I also fail and sometimes I got victory and sometimes I don’t, you know, am I walking in darkness? Am I describing a walk in darkness? I don’t believe you are. I don’t believe that’s a walk in darkness. Not not not according to what John is describing there. See, what John is describing is a person who says, you know what? I want to live my life, how I want to live it. I want to engage in this sin. I don’t even I might even say it’s not sin. That’s the other thing, right? That’s the argument he makes. You might find yourself saying, I’m not even a sinner when I do this. If that’s you, you have chosen a path of darkness. You are walking in darkness. Yeah. You can’t. You can’t know Jesus and be transformed by Jesus and have that attitude toward your sin. But if you’re struggling with sin, if you’re struggling against it, if you are praying about it, if you are confessing it and pushing it away, even if it’s got its hooks in you, even if you know alcoholism, right? Even sometimes there’s even a physical addiction to the thing that you’re struggling with.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Um, if you’re pressing against it because you love Jesus and because you want to honor the Lord because of what Christ has done for you, but you still find yourself failing. You’re not walking in darkness. You’re walking in light and you need help. Yeah. You need more prayer. You need more of the church. You need more Christ in your life. You might not be thinking about some things through a gospel lens like you need to. That’s that’s true. There’s no problem. No problem with admitting that. Yeah, but but if you find yourself excusing, pushing away, justifying. I’m good. I don’t need anything else. I’m actually the victim of other people’s sin, that sort of thing. And an unwilling to confess. That’s when you know you’re on a path of darkness and I.

Pastor Brian Martin: Or even celebrate.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh yeah. Of course.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, we could get into examples of that. Oh, sure. But we all know them. You know, there’s lots of celebrations of like, yeah.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. If you, if you, if you think sin, if you’re calling, if you’re calling evil good, you don’t know Jesus. But if you’re struggling against it, you know him. That’s how you’re being transformed by him. The struggle, the shame, the guilt even is something of a gift, as I said yesterday. It’s something of a gift to you because it means the spirit. You have not quenched the spirit. You’re not, you’re not. Harden your heart against sin. You’re you’re not harden your heart toward the Lord. You’re you’re grasping after the Lord. So it’s a good thing. Uh, but I get that it can be confusing, and I think besetting sin can be very misleading in that way. And I think you can start to tell yourself some other lies, like, I’m not good enough and I’ll never be good enough. Well, if you if that’s where you’re landing, you don’t know the gospel. You’re not you’re not good enough. That’s the point of the gospel. You do not redeem yourself. You trust that Jesus died for your sin. And yeah, you’re going to fight against it with the Spirit’s help, but you’re not justified because you’re able to overcome this sin. You’re justified by Jesus because he did the work for you. Right? Right. And that’s what I want to say to every struggling sinner out there who just feels like, uh, you know, starting to tell themselves the lie that because I can’t seem to shake this sin, I’m, you know, God must hate me. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: You’re not good enough. Exactly. And yet you’re infinitely valuable to God. It’s somehow both.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s both. It’s absolutely, absolutely right. And it’s because of what Christ has done for us. He has made us new. Right. It’s his righteousness that God looks at when he looks at me. It’s not my unrighteousness that I conjure up on my own. And yet that fight against sin is a battle I must wage because of what Christ has done for me. Right. And you know, it’s interesting. These things get measured. Uh, some people measure two, uh, short. There’s the short is the measurement is too short. What I mean is, you know, I did really well last week, but I failed this week. And now I’m miserable and I’m awful, and God must hate me. Well, okay. Yeah. From week to week, you may feel that way, but ask yourself this. How long have you been walking with Jesus? Has it been a decade? Who were you ten years ago that you aren’t today? You really need to measure the spiritual growth over a longer period of time. Sanctification. Absolutely. It does. It takes time for all of that to work out, and for the gospel to work its way into every aspect of our lives.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. That’s big. Well, okay, so in that same vein, if we remind ourselves here of verse seven from the passage, it says, “but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son, cleanses us from all sin.” So you touched on this, of course, but I feel like this is a place where people could spiral a little bit in that. Um, it could, and it’s really similar to what we were talking about, but, but it brings this new element of fellowship into it. So I would say it this way. I mean, you know, messing up, having having sin in your life doesn’t mean it removes you from the fellowship of believers. But, but how does walking enlightened darkness affect fellowship? What is he getting at here?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Well, he’s what he’s showing us is how do I know that I actually am spiritually bonded to the other believers. How do I know I have that same Holy Spirit that bonds me to the fellowship of the church? Walking in the light would be the evidence of that spiritual bond. So you and I are on the same journey. We know we’re on the same journey because we both confess Christ. We both trust in him. We, you and I are spiritually bonded together. We have fellowship in that spiritual sense. Again, the context of this letter is there are some people that have gone out from the body of Christ and they’re teaching errant theology. Right? And John is trying to say, these guys don’t have fellowship with the true church. They are teaching a false gospel.

Pastor Brian Martin: It’s not just a minor disagreement on a minor issue.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Absolutely.

Pastor Brian Martin: They’re rejecting the gospel by what they’re teaching.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. And clearly, I mean, they’re teaching something along the lines of God is not wholly good, not wholly ethical, not wholly pure, some darkness and light mixed into God in some way. That’s what they’re teaching. And their justifying, therefore justifying their sin and saying, we can walk in darkness because we align with what you know, the God that we’ve come up with on our own. Clearly, that’s not the gospel. And John wants to say, look, if you’re walking in the light, that’s when you have fellowship with all the other fellow journeyers through the light, you know that you’re your brothers and sisters, uh, journeying in Christ together are the fellowship you want to be part of. And how do you know you have that? Because you’re walking. You can see it. You can see it in your confession. You can see it in your pursuit of righteousness. You can see it in your the way you talk about the gospel, how you talk about Jesus, uh, how you worship. You can see all of this, the evidence, the fruit. It’s not, it’s not the root. It is not the way. Right? We get, it’s not the way we earn. This would be a complete failure of the understanding of the gospel, right? If we thought this is the way walking in this light is the way we are accepted. That’s not what John is saying.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: John is saying, you know what’s going on in your heart. You know who you are. You know who you’ve become in Christ by how you walk. And if you’re walking in the light, then you have fellowship. You know, you have fellowship with the church. And you know for a fact that the blood of Jesus Christ has covered over your sin. That’s the evidence that is true of you. Yep. So if you flip them around, you actually ruin the gospel. But if you keep them in the order that John presents them here and you and you follow his logic, uh, your whole life, your everyday walk, your love for Jesus is the, is your own self, uh, giving the evidence that you give to yourself that you are part of. And it’s also the evidence that you give to others, the other people in the church who go, all right, this is a guy, this is a lady that I want to, we know is part of us. Yeah. And John is saying, we know these guys aren’t because they’re teaching this. And they left. They’re teach in this errant theology and they left. How do you want to know how you’re you’re part of the fellowship. Here’s how you know you walk in the light.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. So related to that, right, is one of the other points you mentioned about following your heart, right?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, my. Yeah. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: So, okay, I have a little personal connection to this that I just want to share briefly. Okay. So, um, one year of my professional life, I did not work in a church. I worked for a nonprofit that would go into schools and, uh, teach character values to kids. And it was great in a lot of ways. But part of our program that we would teach is we’d literally get  like a big piece of paper and we would we follow your heart was like the message.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, really?

Pastor Brian Martin: It was really interesting. Yeah. And they even would have us like when we would, we were speaking to the kids and it was like a whole grade, you know, at a school. So like seventh graders would be talking to and they would have us like, draw this line and say like, okay, you’re going through life. And sometimes you come to a decision point and on one side is the crowd and what they what they think you should do. And opposite of that is your heart. Oh, what you what you think is right. I think we actually wrote you, but it was anyway, like. And so this is what we were teaching. And like, so I trained on it and I was doing it for a while. And about six months in, I went and sat down with my boss and I was like, hey, so. This isn’t true. Like we’re teaching this thing that isn’t true. And he was like, well, what do you mean? And I was, you know, I wasn’t going to make a Christian argument because that wasn’t the basis of what we were doing. I was like, well, sometimes the crowd is right and you’re wrong. Yeah. Like it’s just like this. Just the logic. Doesn’t logic here. Yeah. And he had been there like 15 years or something and he was like, I’ve been teaching this for 15 years and I’ve never thought about that.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh my goodness.

Pastor Brian Martin: So and I only I only bring that up as an illustration to say this idea of follow your heart, like you were having some good fun at it in the sermon, but it is deeply embedded into the worldview of most people.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, I would say it’s the predominant philosophy of at least our American culture.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. So, um, here’s the thing. I would argue, um, depending on what you mean by it, there’s parts of it as Christians, we could affirm in, in that, um, you know, people are different. They’re gifted differently. Not everybody has to be the same. Like you have value all of those things. But obviously there’s a lot of things we need to reject about it. And so, um, so, okay, so here’s the question. That was me talking.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. No, no that’s great. Well, before you go to it did that what did that guy do? Did he, did he quit his job and go find the Lord somewhere or.

Pastor Brian Martin: So here’s what’s so interesting. We actually, um, had some conversations and I only stayed there a year, but I was given permission to change the way I talked about it a little bit. Oh. And so I was using slightly different language about like you, I was, I said, okay, here’s the only way I feel good about doing this. Like if you do what you know is right and good and true. Okay. And then that was a different thing. And, uh, the funniest part was right after we taught that, we taught that right before lunch, right after lunch, we did this activity where we literally used the power of the crowd to convince them of something. And, so for a year, they changed it. And then after I left, they changed it right back, which is so funny. But anyway, uh, it’s well intentioned. It’s fine. Um, okay. So this, this is a kind of a tough question, I would argue. Um, so if we shouldn’t take the advice to follow your heart, because hearts are deceitful, as we saw in the Jeremiah passage, how do we how do we reconcile that tension of a baseline, deceitful heart, you know, versus becoming a new creation in Christ like. Put another way, can. Can we ever trust any human heart in any way? Even if a person is truly regenerate in that sense.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Great question. Scripture says, “delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart”. You go, wait a minute. If the heart is desperately sick, who can know it? And now I’m supposed to follow the desires of my heart according to what Scripture is telling me to do? What is the difference? Well, the difference is the regenerate heart. The difference is my heart and by heart. Here, by the way, in the in the ancient world, heart would have be closer to mind than it would be to what we think. We think about emotions when we think of hearts. But really it’s. It’s really more of what we consider the mind. But it. But it is packaged with, uh, sort of the volition of our lives and the choices that we make and, and the desires that we have that are shaped by the thoughts in our mind. So it’s not entirely unlike what we say when we when we talk about heart. So think of it as sort of the will and the mind that’s directed by the mind going forward. And so my heart can go after things really is how the Bible is. Those folks would have understood the heart. It’s where am I going? What am I heading? What is what do I want? Uh, you absolutely can trust to a degree the regenerate heart.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Here’s what I mean by that. What what happens when we become followers of Jesus and we are filled with the spirit and we are regenerated when we’re brought back to life, our souls have new life breathed into them, right? We are given new desires, right? I cannot desire God apart from a work of the Holy Spirit in my life, apart from the saving work of Christ, right? I can’t want it. I will always want something else. I will always want something for me. Even even religions are a pursuit of something for me, right? And, uh, and what, what God does is he comes in and he doesn’t just save us. He transforms our desires. He makes us want him. That’s what, that’s what it does. It retunes. And that’s because that’s what we were originally designed to do. We’re designed to worship. We’re. “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him”. John Piper right. Uh, to to quote him again in the same podcast. Right. So, uh, we, we, uh, we want new things. We want the Lord at that point. So now, so now I have a heart because of Jesus. I have a heart that gets it right sometimes. Now I have to still be questioning of my heart because I’m not fully sanctified. Yeah, right. Right now, in a sense, the wheat and the tares are sort of growing together.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I am, I am, uh, sin is dead to me. Sin has no control over me. Paul tells us this. I do not have to sin. I have the strength to not to be able to not sin now, not not on my own, but because of the grace of God in me. I have the ability not to sin. Prior to Christ, I didn’t. Prior to Christ, I could only sin. Now I have the ability to sin or not to sin. But the truth is, sometimes those old habits, those desires, those things, they crop up. They grab hold of something in the world, snags my interest, pulls me in a wrong direction. I know that because I’m me, and I know that because I know the sanctifying work of righteousness is happening in me. I’m being prepared for a weight of glory that is beyond all comparison. But that preparation is not done yet. And so, because that’s not done yet, I know that I cannot fully trust that just because I want something means that’s what God wants, right? And I can’t fully I can’t fully trust my own motivations. I can’t say, well, I’m delighting myself in the Lord. That’s why he’s going to give me the desire of my heart. I got to ask myself, am I? Am I delighting myself in the Lord? Am I content in the Lord? Or I’m actually using the Lord to get the thing I want, that maybe he’s not something that’s so good for me, right? Or so good for the people around me.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. And so, so and so. That’s why. That’s why Paul, for instance, that’s why Paul in the New Testament can instruct elders not to do their work for shameful gain. Right? You go, well, why do you got to tell elders not to do their work for shameful gain? I mean, they’re Christians, they’re regenerate. They’re they’re transformed in Christ. Yes they are. And they’re also still this side of the new bodies that we will have in eternity. And there are going to be times when they’re going to be tempted to go after things that are not in the best interest of the church. They’re not edifying. And so they got to be instructed. We all do. Yeah. So yeah, it’s a complex answer. There is a sense in which I should be able to trust my newly regenerated heart, but I’ve got to check that against a lot of stuff. And that’s not where I, you know, I need to look for the counsel of wise people around me who are also on the same journey with me. I need people in my small group who can point out sins in my life in areas where they’re concerned about me. Yeah. Um, I need, uh, you know, I need a spouse who can, uh, be a check and balance to my own impulses or hopes and dreams and visions of the future for our family.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Who can say? Is this really the best thing for us? You know? So, uh, thank God we have that. We have that, that beautiful fellowship community around us that can help us discern our own hearts. Um, but yeah, to your point, there are, there is a sense in which we can trust a regenerate, sanctified heart, because the Lord has given us the ability to worship and love him truly. But we can’t fully trust it.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, gotta thread that needle. You do. It’s an interesting bit. Interesting bit. Well, that’s a great thought to end on, Kyle and I think we are going to. But listeners, we’re going to do something we’ve not done before and we’re not planning to do necessarily, but we still have a lot more to cover. So we’re going to call this part one of our two part response. And so, uh, be looking for that part two here. But with that, we’re going to wrap up this one. Thanks for joining us 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.