What’s Your Process for Owning Truth?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - In the last podcast, we talked about making
00:00:06.440 | truth discoveries for ourselves, owning truth,
00:00:08.840 | affectionately clinging to biblical realities,
00:00:11.400 | and not just reading about it from others.
00:00:13.120 | And I'm curious, Pastor John, as you read and study
00:00:15.320 | the Bible for yourself in your own devotional times,
00:00:18.180 | is there for you a space between the initial discovery
00:00:21.480 | of a truth and your affectionate embrace of it?
00:00:24.040 | Is there a process between seeing a new truth
00:00:26.000 | and owning that truth for yourself?
00:00:27.660 | Or is this something that really just happens
00:00:29.100 | immediately for you?
00:00:30.360 | - Well, the answer is yes, yes.
00:00:33.200 | Absolutely, it can be immediate.
00:00:35.440 | In fact, it usually is immediate.
00:00:38.280 | And the reason for stepping back from an immediate experience
00:00:43.280 | of something either terrifying or sweet and precious,
00:00:50.720 | a whole range of emotions may happen immediately
00:00:53.920 | when you see something for the first time
00:00:56.120 | that you have never seen before.
00:00:59.060 | I think the reason you may have to step back from that
00:01:01.980 | is you might not have it quite right.
00:01:04.980 | There might be an aspect of it that you're seeing accurately
00:01:07.860 | and an aspect of it that you're seeing inaccurately.
00:01:10.940 | And so some of your emotions might be spiritually
00:01:15.100 | appropriate to the aspect that you see truly.
00:01:18.420 | And some of your emotions might be mistaken
00:01:21.300 | by responding to something you're misapprehending
00:01:25.060 | and to discern whether that's the case or not,
00:01:27.940 | there will be a season, it may not be that day,
00:01:30.840 | it might be a week later, or it might be five minutes later
00:01:34.860 | where you get out your dictionary and look that word up
00:01:39.860 | and you see, oh, it didn't mean what I thought it meant
00:01:42.820 | and all my emotions were based on an error.
00:01:45.820 | Or you may find that the error in this text
00:01:49.380 | was true in another text so that the emotions were real,
00:01:52.560 | they were just based on another aspect
00:01:54.700 | or another place in the Bible
00:01:56.140 | rather than this place in the Bible.
00:01:57.700 | I think that's very helpful to get the intellectual support
00:02:02.700 | underneath the emotional experience
00:02:06.100 | so that it's confident now.
00:02:08.340 | And when you speak of it to others or commend it to others,
00:02:11.340 | you can commend both the experience that you had
00:02:14.820 | and you can commend the intellectual warrant for it
00:02:19.220 | that you've checked out.
00:02:20.860 | You know, this is simply,
00:02:22.420 | I've got Lewis coming out of my pores right now
00:02:26.960 | and Lewis is so big on the distinction
00:02:31.960 | between two kinds of knowing,
00:02:35.620 | the knowing of the intensity, say,
00:02:40.060 | of sexual intercourse with your wife
00:02:45.060 | and the thinking about that experience
00:02:49.940 | and how to maybe bless her more in it.
00:02:53.420 | You can't do both of those at the same time
00:02:57.100 | because when you're in an experience of exquisite joy
00:03:01.380 | or let's just say fear,
00:03:03.060 | maybe you just saw a bear on the front porch of your cabin
00:03:07.140 | and your door's not locked.
00:03:08.860 | And right at that moment,
00:03:10.180 | you're not analyzing the nature of fear.
00:03:13.180 | You're just fully experiencing fear.
00:03:16.500 | Later, you can look at it
00:03:18.500 | and Lewis is just supremely gifted at both of those
00:03:21.840 | and all of us should be, I think,
00:03:24.420 | more or less given to both of those.
00:03:26.520 | Let fitting emotions rise and glut yourself
00:03:31.520 | on the glory of God in any discovery you make in the Bible.
00:03:35.380 | Then later in the peace and the coolness
00:03:39.300 | of your reflective moments,
00:03:40.660 | study it out and make sure you saw what you really saw.
00:03:44.660 | - Thank you, Pastor John.
00:03:45.480 | And thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:03:46.980 | Email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:03:50.700 | You can visit us online at desiringgod.org
00:03:52.780 | to find thousands of books, articles, poems, sermons,
00:03:56.300 | and all sorts of other resources from John Piper,
00:03:58.300 | all free of charge.
00:03:59.420 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:04:00.260 | Thanks for listening.
00:04:01.220 | (upbeat music)
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