I have been hooked on this guy ever since I heard his sermon on God and Sex, which if you scroll down, you can click the link and listen to it. I posted on that a while ago. Today I have been searching iTunes for podcasts that I can download and listen to periodically and really, I had no idea where to start. Who to listen to. I wasn't sure what I was seeking for.
Looking at what I have just heard, I would have to say that the sovereignty of God made me listen to this very podcast. It was exactly what I needed to hear and I have been convicted. I remembered how Matt C was a funny guy with a lot of wisdom and a great way of punctually wording things (far greater than myself), and I looked at the list of sermons he had on iTunes store for free. I saw a series called The Path that has like 11 sermons, each an hour long.
I have been told exactly what I need to know. Many of my questions have been answered. And many faults I didn't know I have have been laid bare. I realized that I have been metaphorically "working out" with God instead of "training". Working out involves going to the gym and doing benchpress/bicep curls and leaving. Training involves you standing there at the plate while your baseball coach says "No, hold it a certain way, like this, not like that, but like this, and move your feet here and do that." It is step by step progression to righteousness, to be more in line with how things are designed to be. The Christian life is not a door you enter and you're done. It is a training process in which you love the Lord and are naturally drawn to Him (the Word) and you regularly, committedly read it because you want to. It is step by step, and corrective. So what I've been doing (ok, now I'll read a little Galatians cause I'm struggling with works-righteousness lately or some 1 Corinthians would help with this or that) is not training.
Another question I had answered was this: Why does God not give us a list of what to do in every situation so that we'd just know and life would be easier? The answer is this: We would all run straight toward legalism and our hearts would never be transformed. Those who couldn't do the list would be devastated, and those who could follow it, like a flow chart, would be self-righteous and impossible to be around.
The third point hit me the hardest. I learned that my longing for another person's wisdom via podcast is actually weakening my relationship with the Word. Living vicariously and learning that way through another person is a sad thing because I will never love the Lord like the person I'm listening to does. I'm not fighting and struggling through whatever circumstances it took for them to achieve that wisdom. If a person told me about how much they love an individual, it wouldn't make me all of a sudden love that person. But if I got to know this person (God) through the manifestation of Himself that is His Word, which I'll say again is literally Himself, then we would go through the arduous process it is when you love someone. You go through anything for that person. And it hardens you and it teaches you. So that when someone talks about God you won't have that faint sense of who He is while you stroke your beard and go "ah, yes..." as you ponder the abstract.
So now, I'm going to find a plan, like Jason said, and dedicate myself to reading it. But first I'm gonna ask myself why I'm doing this. And I'm going to end here because I can't really describe that except in my heart and it's a conversation for God and me.
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