Christ at Work in You: How to Trust in the Sovereignty of God

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Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His Kingdom.

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Jim Lovelady  0:03

Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in his Kingdom.

Jim Lovelady  0:22

Hello. Beloved. Welcome to season six of Grace at the Fray. This season, I’m going to be exploring just how radical God’s grace is. I want to be on the lookout for the surprising nature of God’s generosity toward weak and broken people who are full of sin and participate in injustices of the world, but through God’s grace, become people of mercy, who actually become a part of how God is making all things new. Well, my guest today is Iain Duguid. He’s a professor at Westminster Seminary. He’s a church planter, author of numerous books, including our Gospel-Centered Life in the Bible series books on Jonah, as well as one on Ezra and Nehemiah. And he is he’s just released a new book on the first eight chapters of the book of Acts called Turning the World Upside Down. Now let me ask you this: what really sets Christianity apart from all the other religions, the movements and philosophies throughout throughout history? It’s a question that honestly, can stump a lot of people, but the answer is pretty astonishing and maybe simpler than you’d think. Christianity has a living founder, someone who is still acting in this world, and that’s what the book of Acts is all about. And I sat down with Iain to talk about his life as a church planter, and in his new book, what I find fascinating about this conversation is the confluence of the themes of the book of Acts and the themes of his life. And it starts with this. The biblical book of of the Acts of the Apostles is really, it really should be called the acts of the risen Christ in the life of the apostles. And if there was a book written about Iain Duguid’s life, it would be it wouldn’t be called the acts of Iain Duguid. It would be called the acts of the risen Christ in the life of Iain Duguid. And the same can be said about you and your life, if you’re willing to acknowledge and rest in the sovereign goodness of God. Jesus was clearly at work in the book of Acts. And as you’ll see, he’s clearly been at work in Iain’s life. And if you look closely, you’ll see that he’s clearly at work in your life. So sit back and listen to some stories of Christ at work in his people. Christ at work in you.

Jim Lovelady  2:48

The Right Reverend. Dr Iain Duguid. Did I miss anything?

Iain Duguid  2:52

Set aside by grace.

Jim Lovelady  2:54

Amen. Welcome to Grace at the Fray.

Iain Duguid  2:56

Great to be here.

Jim Lovelady  2:57

Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. It’s really cool. How kind of serendipitously, because I had never met you, and then in the span of a couple months, we got to work together in a couple retreats, and you spoke at my presbytery’s pastors’ retreat on how to preach through the Proverbs. And I tell you, I don’t know if I’ve told you this already, but that was so profound for me. And I tell everybody, I’m like, Hey, if you want me to preach on Proverbs 31 I know how. I know how, now.

Iain Duguid  3:23

Good

Jim Lovelady  3:23

You know. And it was so good,

Iain Duguid  3:25

Very good, thank you.

Jim Lovelady  3:26

So, and then, and then you, you were a speaker at the P&R pastors’ retreat about a month later. Yeah, it’s just been fun to to get to work with you and to sit under your teaching. And so you have a new book coming out, a commentary on the book of Acts. How would you describe it? A layman’s commentary?

Iain Duguid  3:45

Yeah. So it’s really a series of sermons, and this is the first of three, so it’s Acts 1 through 8, and then there’ll be another two volumes the rest of the book of Acts, because we didn’t want to make it too big and make people intimidated by it, right? But there’s so much in the book of Acts that we can learn from.

Jim Lovelady  4:00

Yeah, yeah. And so I want to hear a little bit about you and just kind of walk me through what ministry has looked like for you over the years. I know you’ve been a church planter. I know I saw somewhere that you were an engineer in Liberia?

Iain Duguid  4:14

Yeah. So

Jim Lovelady  4:15

there’s that…

Iain Duguid  4:16

Yeah. Well, we could start. I had a sense of call to ministry when I was 15, and the counsel I got at the time was that’s great, if it’s a real call, it’s not going to go away, but you need to get a life first, which for me, at least, was good counsel. Yeah, I was 15. Nobody’s ready. So I continued on the engineering track, which was what I’ve been preparing for before. And so I went to university, studied electrical engineering. I worked in the oil industry on an offshore in the North Sea, primarily onshore, but supporting offshore rigs. And did that for two years,

Jim Lovelady  4:47

You lived on the rig?

Iain Duguid  4:48

I spent some nights on the rig. Yeah, I’d go out, and often you’d be checking that the drawings that you had in the office actually match reality on the ground, before you get all the stuff out there and try to add something new. Because once you shut things down, you’re costing a lot of money out there.

Jim Lovelady  5:03

Interesting. Is the North Sea as dangerous as the TV says it is?

Iain Duguid  5:08

It’s definitely cold. Yeah, we did survival training so you learn how to get out of a helicopter in the water. Oh, wow. And, you know, they tell you not to fall over, because, I mean, they practice every now and then, tossing dummies over seeing how long it takes the support boats to get them. But yeah, you don’t have long in the North Sea before you lose consciousness. You don’t want to be relying on the support boats get you out,

Jim Lovelady  5:33

Right. What an awesome adventure. I had no idea.

Iain Duguid  5:35

Yeah. So did that for two years, then spent two years in Liberia, in West Africa as electrical engineer for a Christian radio station at hospital. So that was the sort of pre seminary missions experience. I thought it’d be really great as a regular pastor to have some idea of what missions is like. And that was a way of using my engineering skills.  And of course, on the mission field, ministry opportunities are all over the place, right? So, you know, I got to preach, I got to I got to do, I got to lead a little village meeting. It wasn’t quite a church, but sort of a church. And so learned a lot about communicating the gospel in a context where people had very little English. I remember drawing, I was working from Acts, and drawing a map on the blackboard, and then turning around and realizing these people have no idea what I just did. Oh, they’ve never seen a map before. Yeah, outside their paradigm, yeah. And so, okay, that’s not gonna work.

Jim Lovelady  6:30

Do you step back and teach how to read a map, or do you just..

Iain Duguid  6:35

Well, you got to wrestle with all those questions? There’s the geography

Jim Lovelady  6:43

That’s right.

Iain Duguid  6:38

And if it is important, how can you teach it? And what’s the stuff that’s really important for these people to know? So good lessons. I arrived in seminary with lots of questions, ministry questions, not just theoretical questions, and studied Westminster here in Philadelphia. So at that point, I had to figure out what to do next. So I went to Cambridge to a PhD in Old Testament, which was really intended to be a chance to connect with some of the people in England who were just beginning a new denomination. Then what’s now, the EPCW, Evangelical Presbyterian Church of England and Wales. So there were a few guys just getting that started at that point. And so I was hoping maybe something would open up with that. But they only had six churches, no vacancies. So it pretty quickly became clear that if I was going to be in ministry with them, I’d have to do church planting. I didn’t think of myself as a church planter. I thought church planters were the guys who, you know, they grab you by the lapels  and say, “brother, are you saved and that was not me at all.

Jim Lovelady  6:43

Soap boxes on the corner of the street.

Iain Duguid  7:07

But we went through the PCA’s church planning assessment and were approved, much to our surprise, yeah, we were trying to raise raise money. We had no support organization, so we wrote to everybody knew, and nobody wrote back. And so after a few weeks, were, you know, a little discouraged, and thinking, “okay, Lord, if yeah, this is not Your purpose for us, that’s fine.” So my wife and I set aside a day to fast and pray, and we said, “Lord, lead us.” I went out to get the mail, and in the mail was a letter from a minister in England who just come back from the States, who said, “a minister in the States approached me and said, do you know of any British church planters working in England? Because we’d like to support somebody.” I thought, okay.

Jim Lovelady  8:19

The specificity…

Iain Duguid  8:20

And out of that, you know, half of our support was raised at this point. Okay, I think I get it. Lord, this is your plan. Now, we never completely raised all of our support. But, you know, yeah, but the Lord, when the Lord directs you, you got to go so. So went to Oxford. We were having difficulty finding a place to meet within our chosen area, and then we realized that right as we were moving in, the council had just built a community center in a council housing estate, literally across the street from where we were. They’d spent $3 million building the perfect location for us, and were eager for us to meet there.

Jim Lovelady  9:01

Wait, I mean, they didn’t build it for you, no, but it was ready for you.

Iain Duguid  9:06

The paint was drying as we rolled up.

Jim Lovelady  9:08

Wow.

Iain Duguid  9:08

And it had a, you know, basketball gym and meeting space. And they even let me store the church stuff in the closet, which doubled as my office. So we got, you know, we got the kids’ toys for mothers and toddlers on one half of this 6 by 6 room and my desk and the other half. So the Lord directed us to ministry in this council housing estate. So low cost government subsidized housing, terrible social need on all sides, which is a fabulous place to preach the gospel. Yeah, because you don’t have persuade people that their life isn’t working.

Jim Lovelady  9:44

It’s difficult to particularize.

Iain Duguid  9:46

Right. But now getting people to come to church that was a different challenge.

Jim Lovelady  9:54

Oh, yeah, right.

Iain Duguid  9:54

We couldn’t even get people to come to our house for an introductory Bible study. That was too big a jump, so we had to meet them in a more neutral context. So we asked ourselves, what do people in this community do for fun? First answer, get drunk. Okay, we can’t do that. Second answer, karaoke.

Jim Lovelady  10:07

Oh, yeah?

Iain Duguid  10:08

Hey, we could do karaoke. So we did, and we had a couple of karaoke events that connected us with some people. We also asked the local social worker to tell us some older people who weren’t able to take care of their gardens, and you know, so we show up, we cut the grass, pull the weeds, and you come out and you say, first thing you say is, who’s paying you to do this? Because I’m not right. And we said, nobody’s paying us. Well, why are you doing this? Guess what? You just asked me to share the gospel with you.

Jim Lovelady  10:36

That’s right.

Iain Duguid  10:37

Because the gospel is why we’re doing this, and because you’re British, you will feel morally obligated to give us a cup of tea. I mean, that’s just how it goes. And the grass is going to grow again. So we’ll be back, you know, 10 days, two weeks from now, we’ll do this again, and that provide a context in which we built a relationship, out of which people then began to feel comfortable to come to church. Our primary ministry was to 7 to 11 year old street kids. But we had some people come from Redeemer in New York who studied how you do this kind of thing.

Jim Lovelady  11:10

Oh, interesting.

Iain Duguid  11:10

They found a program in the Bronx has been there for years, and so they taught us how we can, how you can do this, and keep the kids, you know, self regulating. We had about 50 kids coming on Sunday afternoons, and probably about half of those came to the service, and we had lunch afterwards every week, of course, which would be the best meal these kids would get all week. Yeah, so lots of opportunities for the gospel. Not a very easy place to plant a self supporting church, So at the end of three years, in a variety of ways, just as clearly as the Lord had opened the door for us to be there, He closed the doors on us. And, you know, we were praying for six months, that the Lord would guide and direct us and and in that time, everything just came

Iain Duguid  11:34

crumbling down.

Iain Duguid  11:37

Came crumbling down.

Jim Lovelady  11:42

Wow, in the same way that it just kind of ignited.

Iain Duguid  11:54

Rght? And in the same way all the flags were there to go in, all the doors closed.

Jim Lovelady  11:59

That one’s more discouraging than the first one.

Iain Duguid  12:01

Yes, it is. And so on Easter Sunday, we had our last service. I go down to sign on welfare because I’m unemployed, and they say, okay, what kind of work are you looking for? Well, I’m a Presbyterian pastor. Don’t think we have any openings for that. No kidding.

Jim Lovelady  12:15

Oh man.

Iain Duguid  12:16

Yeah, it was rough. I think it really forces you to check, what am I doing this for? Am I doing this for my glory because that that’s not happening, or am I doing this because God has called me to glorify Him here for this time?  And we’ve seen, we’ve seen a handful of people come to faith in Christ who would not have otherwise. There was no other gospel witness in this community. Those people will shine like stars forever. Is that worth it?

Jim Lovelady  12:41

Right.

Iain Duguid  12:42

Absolutely, that’s worth it, but it’s rough, you know. And the weeks after that, I can’t go to church without weeping. But really formative experience. And then out of the blue, I got a call from Alan Curry at Reform Seminary in Jackson, saying, “do you want to come be our registrar and teach Hebrew for us?” I mean, I never, never meant to be an academic and here the door was opened, right? And so then after that, I spent 10 years at Westminster, California, nine years at Grove City College, teaching Christian undergrads. Now 10 years here at Westminster, Philadelphia, and each of those latter three places, we ended up planting a church alongside it, because…

Jim Lovelady  13:14

While we’re here…

Iain Duguid  13:15

Well, so in California, the model is to parachute in a guy with $3 million right, and say, sink or swim. And too many of those were sinking. And I’m thinking, can we plant churches a different way? Without all these resources that gives you more potential to continue on, because you haven’t built this massive budget, you then need to keep supporting right? So again, the Lord opened the door for us to be in Fallbrook. The Church grew, initially, very rapidly. A lot of people came to us from a PC USA church came to us, and then over the next couple of years, most of them disappeared because we weren’t what they were looking for. But we ended up with a core group of about 60 people so that we had something to work with, and that church has faithfully continued. We went to grow cities said, never gonna do us again. It’s just too hard. We’re too exhausted.

Jim Lovelady  14:00

Famous last words.

Iain Duguid  14:01

Famous last words. And then within two, two years, because we couldn’t find a church, and had students coming to us saying, Where can we hear this kind of preaching? We didn’t know where to send them, except to say, come with us down to Pittsburgh, 60 miles each way.

Jim Lovelady  14:15

Oh, gosh, you were driving into Pittsburgh every Sunday.

Iain Duguid  14:19

Yeah? And we met some big sinners who needed a church, right? If you live in a small town and you sin greatly, when you repent, you can’t go back. It’s really hard to go back. And so there were some people who needed a church. Yeah, presbytery voted 50 to three that not to do this, because there’s already a reformed church in town. So how could you do that without taking people away from the existing church.

Jim Lovelady  14:42

Oh, gosh, is that why? God bless those three guys.

Iain Duguid  14:45

Yeah, we said that’s not our plan. I don’t think the people who like the existing church are going to like us. I don’t think there’s any danger of that. And so we started this church. Initially, almost all people who were students or looked like students, and people would tell me, you can’t plant a  church just with students. Well, no, but some of their parents are extremely grateful that they’re going to a good, good Presbyterian Church, and some of them have some resources and are happy to help support it. And then we moved to Philadelphia for a while we had a church here too. Again an opportunity to put into practice the stuff I’m teaching and to show people what this looks like in the church form, and then I had health issues, and so wasn’t able to continue that.

Jim Lovelady  15:26

So the common denominator in all of this is you go somewhere and you see a need, and doors fly open. And then it’s not that the need goes away, right, but the doors come slamming shut. Every one of those?

Iain Duguid  15:40

Yeah, I’m basically a border collie. I mean, you show me a bunch of sheep I’m after. I can’t just walk away if they’re not being shepherded. I can’t do that.

Jim Lovelady  15:51

That’s right, that’s a great analogy, because I have some friends who have a border collie and they don’t have land, yeah, so that border collie is, like, antsy, yeah, give me something to do. I’m smart.

Iain Duguid  16:02

Yeah, I could herd something.

Jim Lovelady  16:03

Yeah. Give me something to herd. I need some sheep.

Iain Duguid  16:06

Yeah. We had a border collie when we were in England, and if we go for a walk with our kids, it would be fun to separate onto two palms and just watch the, watch the border collie doing bigger, bigger loops, trying to get his flock back together.

Jim Lovelady  16:18

Yeah, I love it. So, yeah. So you’re, you’re a border collie for Jesus.

Iain Duguid  16:22

That’s right.

Jim Lovelady  16:23

Somewhere along the line, you started hanging out with Serge folks. And you have,

Iain Duguid  16:27

Yeah,so back in the, you know, ’85 to ’89 when we were here in Philadelphia, you know, we hung out at New Life. And, so Jack Miller was there, and World Harvest Mission was, was those were our peeps in many ways. Yeah, you know, we were never formally part of it, but, you know, kindred spirits.

Jim Lovelady  16:43

Yeah, and your Jonah book that you’ve written for us is, is one of our top sellers, apparently, is we’ve got that the Gospel Centered Life in the Bible, and that was one of the first ones, that we did, and it’s also one of our most popular ones. And I love this story of Jonah, well, we’re not gonna talk about Jonah We could talk about right? I love Jonah. You have a book coming out: Turning the World Upside Down, a layman’s commentary, a series of sermons on Acts 1 through 8. And you were gracious enough to give me a PDF copy.  Is this not printed yet?

Iain Duguid  17:21

It’s, it’s any minute. So it’s officially July 29 but I’ve seen copies, and know other people who’ve received copies.  So I think it’s pretty much out.

Jim Lovelady  17:30

When we release this, it will be hot off the presses.

Iain Duguid  17:30

Yeah, we’ll be right there.

Jim Lovelady  17:33

I’ll have links, yeah, at the end of this to to tell people where they can go to find it. But you’re telling your story on church planting, and then having read your book, I’m like, oh, man, so much of what happens in the book of Acts reflects what you’re reflecting what’s going on, for example, just kind of waiting around, and then the Spirit comes and on the Day of Pentecost and ignites right? A fire in, in, well, on the literal heads, but in, in the hearts of these folks. And you know, suddenly 3000 people in a day are because they’ve been, because they’ve been waiting,

Iain Duguid  18:12

Yeah, imagining the pastoral challenges of that conversation, right? Zero to 3000. And none of them have a clue as to what kind of ministry this is. And moreover, as the apostles, you’ll still try and figure it out, right? John Calvin says that the question that the apostles asked Jesus before His ascension, “Lord, at this time, are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel?” Calvin says there are as many problems with that question as there are words.

Jim Lovelady  18:38

that’s right, that’s right.

Iain Duguid  18:40

So, you know, so they need the Spirit.

Jim Lovelady  18:42

Yeah, yeah, y’all don’t get this.

Iain Duguid  18:44

Yeah, I mean, we call it the Acts of the Apostles, but it’s, it’s, it’s really the acts of the risen Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Jim Lovelady  18:50

I love that.

Iain Duguid  18:50

That’s not original to me, but, but I think it’s a very helpful way to think about the book, because if it’s the Acts of the Apostles, then we’re all toast.

Jim Lovelady  18:58

Right. Well, so what? How does that become a liberating thing when this really is a book about the acts of the risen Christ, moving by His Spirit in his people.

Iain Duguid  19:07

As a church planter. I mean, I, I’d be toast without God’s sovereignty. You know, if I, if I don’t believe, on the one hand, that God has called me there in the first place, and then when it all crumbles, is that because God was asleep? Is that because God missed something? No, it’s because God chose that for me as well as for other people. God has chosen for the gospel to be there for a certain time and for me to be the channel of that and at the end of that time, when He sends me somewhere else, He’s got good purposes for me, and He’s going to watch out for his sheep.

Jim Lovelady  19:42

So many of my guests on the podcast, missionaries, pastors, ministry leaders, so many of them. It’s the theme of, I just showed up, and then the Spirit started to do stuff,

Iain Duguid  19:53

Rght.

Jim Lovelady  19:53

I just showed up. So what do I go do? Just go show up.

Iain Duguid  19:57

Yeah. Now the danger with that is, is. We start to think that we’re hot stuff in the showing up department. That’s because we showed up that these things happen, and how can you avoid that if the Lord blesses your church? I mean, you think about somebody like Tim Keller, right? We knew Tim and Kathy really well. We stayed in the basement for three months when we were first in seminary. We were in their living room when they’re planning this church plant in Manhattan, which they know is gonna be tiny, and they’re always people who don’t think Tim is the right person for it, right? Because he’s an academic whose only possible experience is…

Jim Lovelady  20:29

in a small town.

Iain Duguid  20:30

Yeah, blue collar mill town in Virginia. I mean, couldn’t get more different. How’s he gonna cope? And then the church explodes, right? What? You know? What is that? Well, it’s God. But how hard to remember that and not to think, you know, in some ways. So this is, this is me. I’m hot stuff. Whereas, when God takes you through, through difficult times, and you watch that church close, then it certainly does, does away with that, that danger, right? But, you know, you don’t think I’m this hot stuff church planter. You think, okay, well, God is sovereign, which means He has the right to call me to do thatand to sustain me through that, and to remind me at all times that it’s entirely up to him.

Jim Lovelady  21:14

When I’m at a presbytery meeting and we’re interviewing a pastor doing the ordination exams, one of the questions that I like to ask is tell me a story of suffering and how you met Jesus in that suffering. And I want to hear like the key words I’m looking for are the desperation of “I thought this was all about me,” right? And come to find out, the Lord in His mercy broke me of that. He razed those things to the ground, and it was so difficult. And you just like, in your three church planning stories, you just like, boom, boom, boom, here’s a hardship, here’s a hardship, here’s a closed door. I was faithful, but oh man, that was hard that ended in great suffering. And there’s meeting with Jesus in the midst of that, that brings wisdom and humility to where there’s no way you can go back to thinking that you’re hot stuff, to the same degree. You still will, yes, not the same degree. Thanks be to God. He had you plant three churches to to bring you to this place of desperation.

Iain Duguid  22:13

Yeah. Well, you know, on the flip side, you know, I got a job teaching the seminary, which, you know, lots of people would love to have, right? That’s the kind of situation where you could easily think of yourself as hot stuff, right?

Jim Lovelady  22:13

Because you know Hebrew.

Iain Duguid  22:14

I know Hebrew, and you know you write books and people read them, and you know people like them. And so it’s very easy to start to think that you’re, you know, you’re really God’s gift to the Kingdom. But yeah, to be reminded it’s not about you. And if God brings people, they’ll show up. But if God chooses not to bring people, you can be just as good, and nothing’s happening.

Jim Lovelady  22:46

So when you were writing, Turning the World Upside Down, how much, how often was it is you’re sitting behind your computer typing, typing it out, how often did a life of church planting, success and failure just kind of come soaring through your mind. What was it like writing this book with Jesus, with all of that being, kind of, part of it.

Iain Duguid  23:08

Yeah, it helps to balance out our view of the book of Acts, right? Because people will say to me, oh, you know, we want to be a New Testament church, right? And they’re always thinking about church in Jerusalem and Acts 2, and the beautiful description of the church there, I want to say, Yeah, but look at the rest of the churches in Book of Acts. Do you really want Corinth? Do you want Laodicea? There are so many struggles in these churches. You know the letters the seven churches in Revelation, right? These are the New Testament churches, that God has sovereignly planted in many cases, by the apostles, right?  And yet, that’s what real life church is like. You know, I think it’s important for me to give our seminary students a realistic picture. Because, you know, it’s very easy for us in seminary to paint this idealistic picture that if you just do all the right things, you know, the right reformed things, then you know, yeah, of course, we won’t grow churches rapidly, because reformed churches never do but, but at least God sort of owes me a middle of the road church, right? And He owes you nothing, yeah, and the book of Acts reminds us of just how difficult ministry is.

Jim Lovelady  24:16

I want to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we at the headquarters here in Philadelphia are praying for each week we meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray, and this week, we’re praying for our teams in Prague and the Dominican Republic. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that You would bless these folks. Give them joy in their work, in Your Kingdom, and the pleasure of your joy as they follow you. Give them wisdom and let Your grace abound in their relationships with one another, with family members and children and with the people they serve, heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness, restore to them the joy of Your salvation and let Your Kingdom come and Your will be done in these places, just as it is in heaven. We pray in Your name. Amen. Now back to the conversation.

Jim Lovelady  25:18

Oh man, when you give your heart and soul to something, how do you not feel… My first gig at a seminary, just like six years or so at that church where the sense of entitlement was overwhelming, my own sense of entitlement, and the Lord liberated me from, I mean, I really did think that I was, if you would just listen to me, where you would do what I say, I could get us out of the stuff that we’re all the mess that we’re in. And Jesus is like, you think you’re the lord of this church, don’t you? And I’m like, Well, no, I meant, but kind of, you know, and He had to bring me to that place of desperation.

Iain Duguid  25:53

But yeah, we think about Paul as a great church planter. But on his second missionary trip, he’s walking and walking and walking and walking. The Lord is not letting him do anything. Right this ripe fields of the harvest north and south of the road he’s on where, you know, later, we’ll read about all these churches that are there. And yet, Paul is told, “no, you can’t go there.” And so he keeps on going until he runs out of road in Troas, because you got to see beyond you there, and still nothing. And then finally, he has this vision of the man from Macedonia. And okay, so it’s Greece, but think about that whole journey.

Jim Lovelady  26:29

Nothing to show for all the work that he…

Iain Duguid  26:30

Nothing to show. He’s just, he’s just walking, walking, walking. But it gets even worse, right? Because then for the last third of the book of Acts, he’s in prison. You think, why would God, a sovereign God, put the most effective church planter who’s ever existed into prison? The irony is that throughout that section of the book of Acts, everybody agrees, Paul, you could have been freed. You’re innocent. We have no reason to charge. If you hadn’t appealed to Caesar, we could have just let you go. That’s going to eat Paul up, right? Yeah, unless he leans into the sovereignty of God. But of course, some of the New Testament epistles come out of that period. And if, if Paul is free to go visit the churches that are having issues, he doesn’t write those letters. Now, I don’t know that Paul had any insight into the significance of that. You know he’s writing these epistles. Obviously he’s thinking deeply about what’s relevant for them. I don’t know if he has any clue. Well, actually, God is going to use this for the entirety of the existence of the church. And if you weren’t in jail, you’d never have written it, so maybe that’s why I have you in jail right now. Even though it’s painful, it’s uncomfortable, and must be super frustrating.

Jim Lovelady  27:40

He doesn’t see the fruit.

Iain Duguid  27:42

Right. I mean, there’s the Corinthians getting invaded by super apostles, and what can he do? Again, frustrating, unless, and, you know, I suspect Paul probably was able to do this better than most of us, although we do tend to whitewash Paul, right? I mean, he describes himself towards the end of his life as the chief of sinners. And they’ve got to be some things there that he’s thinking about, right? I mean, think about the dust up with Barnabas over Mark.

Jim Lovelady  28:09

He’s not saying that out of a pietist kind of fervor.

Iain Duguid  28:12

No. This is not just, oh, you know, let me parade my humility. Look at the dust up with Barnabas over Mark. You know, Barnabas wants to take Mark, his cousin on the second trip, even after he bailed on the first one. And Paul says, absolutely not. I can’t afford to have somebody I can’t count on. And their argument is so severe that they end up going in different directions. The result is, now you got two mission teams, right, instead of one.

Jim Lovelady  28:40

Oh, man, the church…

Iain Duguid  28:41

And you’ve got room for Timothy, right? If John Mark is still there, there’s no need for Timothy. And so Timothy stays with with his mom and grandmom and and, you know, his whole ministry gets lost. You know, God is, is amazingly sovereign in all these really messed up circumstances. And He’s continuing to, you know, to write straight with a crooked pencil.

Jim Lovelady  29:01

How do you maintain a faith in God’s sovereignty? Not with hindsight. We’re talking hindsight. But you know, in the in the like, it they’re just, they’re just these circumstances, and you’re like, God, are you sovereign? And it’s like, years and years and years of asking that question, and then finally, it’s like, Oh, you were totally, totally sovereign, and I just didn’t believe.

Iain Duguid  29:23

Yeah, you use the hindsight. I mean, that’s one of the reasons God has given us the Old Testament. Because if you know, if there’s one lesson that we learned in the Old Testament is God is accomplishing His purposes through screwed up people and messed up circumstances. I mean, it starts all the way back with Joseph, whose brothers are trying to kill him.

Jim Lovelady  29:44

Yeah, you, meant this for this for evil, but I mean it for good.

Iain Duguid  29:47

Right, exactly. You know, Joseph doesn’t see that immediately. I’m sure. You know, when he’s in jail in Egypt and the butler has let him down.

Jim Lovelady  29:55

He’s forgotten about him.

Iain Duguid  29:56

What is God up to now? If the butler remembers him earlier, he’s no longer findable when Pharaoh has his dreams, right? If he’s released from prison, nobody knows where he is, when, when the butler needs to find him because he’s in prison, the butler knows exactly where to find him. God’s sovereignty. Now, once Joseph has learned that lesson, I don’t think he’s ever going to forget it.

Jim Lovelady  30:16

Yeah, right.

Iain Duguid  30:17

And so we can learn that lesson by looking over the shoulder of others and learning from them, and then applying that to our own situation, where, yeah, we do not see where this is going, what God is up to through this.

Jim Lovelady  30:28

There’s a patience that I lack that is like in the vacuum of patience is like regret, you know, like nothing. There’s no vacuums. Everything, something is built and so, so I just hear what you’re saying, and I’m like, man, all the regret of like man, if only I could have, if this had happened, all those things and like, the older I get, the bigger the pile of regret seems to get. And it’s mingled with sadness. It’s proper lament directed toward Jesus. But a lot of it is like, man, if I could go back, I would totally do things differently. And it’s always coming back. It always comes back to, well, if I knew what you know now, I would be thankful for what you’ve been doing. Help me believe that you know, and that’s that you know. I mean, I I believe, Pastor. Help me in my unbelief.

Iain Duguid  31:22

Yeah, it’s a struggle because, because, in the moment, we can’t see, and so God is calling us to believe without seeing. Yeah, just sort of a biblical theme.

Jim Lovelady  31:31

It’s all over.

Iain Duguid  31:32

Yeah, blessed are those who do not see but have believed. But that’s, that’s what God is calling us to. But he’s given us His word to encourage us, to show us that it’s not a leap in the dark. You know, we’re simply trusting that the God who’s done this over and over and over again before and showed us He’s capable of doing it again, and in our much smaller circumstances, that that are still part of His wonderful plan for for the entire world to glorify His Son. That’s what He’s up to. He’s not missing our piece in that.

Jim Lovelady  32:06

Yeah. All of those places become opportunities, like invitations for Jesus to go. I know, yeah. I know your regret. I know that you I know that you don’t believe. I know that you’re not thankful. I know your lack of patience. I know all of those things. He’s the only one who knows, really knows. He knows better than I know. I’m like, I think I’m I think I have regrets about something, and He’s like, you want to tell me what it is. And I’m like, I don’t have just, it’s like a feeling. And, but He knows, yeah, and, and He’s patient, you know. And so I’m like, Okay, well, I’m gonna wrestle this out with you. Like, I feel like, Jacob. I mean, I feel like Israel is my middle name, you know, just yeah, but it’s the blessing of getting to it’s God that we’re wrestling with, right? It’s a sovereign God, that we’re wrestling with, right? Who’s good? It’s like, Come wrestle with me. Come on. I can handle, I can handle you guy. So it’s encouraging, just this, Hey, look at the stories from the past, right? God has been sovereign. He’s not going to stop being sovereign.

Iain Duguid  33:05

Yeah so we’re tempted to look at the book of Acts for a formula, right? We’re looking for that secret sauce.

Jim Lovelady  33:11

Yeah, the the New Testament Church.

Iain Duguid  33:12

Right. So we can create the Jerusalem church. But it’s interesting that that throughout the book of Acts, the Jerusalem church is kind of the only one that’s like that. It’s sort of like, you know, God’s purpose in the beginning is to kind of show us what He can do and then the rest of the book of Acts, we’re dealing with much more difficult circumstances, because we would all volunteer for for the Jerusalem church. We all want to be part of that.

Jim Lovelady  33:35

Everyone’s sharing everything in common.

Iain Duguid  33:35

Yeah, except to remember the rest of the book of Acts, what is it that comes from Jerusalem? It’s Judaizers. So what happened to that beautiful church? Well, this sovereign God, His plan for the church, often seems to be a really messed up, struggling place. Why? Well, because otherwise we’d make it all about us. We’d say, you know, look at this wonderful church that I built that is, you know, that shows my glory. And God says this is not about you. It’s about me and my ability to redeem really messed up people. And one of the things I want to show you is just how messed up the people are who I can save,right? There’s no challenge in saving people who who aren’t messed up at all. You would think, although actually sometimes it was the hardest people to bring to hear the gospel, because they don’t see any need of it. But the really messed up people feeling Corinth, right? Whose city name was a verb that was used to describe really crass and awful behavior. It was, yeah, to corinthianize. So Corinthian eyes meant to, you know, behave like, you know, reality TV stars all the most outrageous things, particularly in the realm of sex. And so Corinth was not a place where you, I mean, you don’t want to be called a Corinthian No, it’s where all the trashy people live.

Jim Lovelady  34:57

And if Jesus can save those people, if he can rescue those people, if hecan show mercy to those people. Oh, man, maybe, maybe me too. And then I realized, Oh, I’m not too far right from actually being a Corinthian.

Iain Duguid  35:09

Right, exactly. Yeah.

Jim Lovelady  35:10

And I needed the Corinthians to be that way to show that, oh, I’m that way.

Iain Duguid  35:17

Yes. John Newton has this really interesting insight on the Christian life and the stages of the Christian life. And in his select letters that Banner Truth publishes, he describes, kind of three stages of the Christian life, and the first stage is stage A: the young believer. He talks about how God often gives those young believers a special measure of of his his love and care and power so they have victories over sin. He’s kind of treating them like babies. Right, like the way we do. We protect babies. And of course, the result of that, that Newton notices, is that often these young believers are very obnoxious towards other people.  You know, they’re the people who come up to you when you’ve confessed your struggle with sin that you’ve been wrestling for 30 years and  they say, well, here’s how I solve my struggle with sin, and if you would just do what I did, then, then you too can conquer this. And they wrote, you know, they believe that because God has been giving them this.

Jim Lovelady  36:10

That is genuine to their experience.

Iain Duguid  36:13

Right. And so it’s like that the Jerusalem church in the beginning, right? God has given them special how to be this model church. But then Newton says, in the life of believers, as he’s observed, it, as they grow up, they go through into a phase of their life where God steps back, as it were, and allows them to fall flat on their face more. And they start to be humbled by that, and to stop thinking they’re such hot stuff. And so that makes them more, you know, more useful in His Kingdom in terms of coming alongside people who are struggling. Well, I think you see the same thing, Book of Acts, right? So you give this kind of special measure right at the beginning to kind of show what God can do. But then it says where He kind of steps back in some ways, and says, Okay, this is the more normal state of the church in which my goal is to demonstrate my amazing power to save messed up people. Yeah, so I’m going to take a Paul, who you know, let’s face it, would not have been anybody’s list of people to recommend to church planning assessment, right? You know, first, because he’s going to harassed everybody there to begin with.

Jim Lovelady  37:18

You’re a spy, aren’t you?

Iain Duguid  37:19

Yeah, well, that’s why, how, the, how the people in Jerusalem regard him, when he, when he comes back, and it’s Barnabas, right, the Son of Encouragement, his good name, who’s the one who enables Paul to meet some people there?

Jim Lovelady  37:30

He’s with me, guys.

Iain Duguid  37:31

Yeah, and later, of course, it’s Barnabas who recruits Paul for the work at, you know, in Antioch, because he’s becoming overwhelmed with the spread of the gospel there. He’s the one who sees that Paul will be a good fit here, right? Again, it’s probably not the church finding Assessment Center vote, right? Paul’s the academic. You know, he’s the rabbi. He’s Yes, he grew up in in amongst Gentiles. But really, is this the guy to bring the gospel of the Gentiles? The former Pharisee of the Pharisees? That feels like a stretch, yeah? But this is God we’re talking about, and God has called him to that from the moment that he’s converted. So the church grows up, contrary to our opinion that as we grow up, as a church grow up, we should get holier and holier. Maybe it’s the other way. And so sometimes God, as we grow up and as we mature and we’re able to lean into the gospel more, God allows us to see more of our hearts. Yeah, it’s not that we’re in a sense, it’s not that we’re more sinful than we were. In fact, we may well be less sinful objectively measured, right, but we become more aware of our sins, and more aware of our inability to fix ourselves. And because of that, and because we’re older now, we’re able to lean into the gospel a bit more than we would have been and would have overwhelmed us as baby Christians. And so God has protected us in that phase, but now He’s starting to grow us up. And part of that growing us up is to reveal to us a bit more about our sin and sometimes we’re devastated by it, and we feel like we’re backsliding, but actually, in God’s purposes, he’s he’s growing us.

Jim Lovelady  39:08

Yeah. I have a high sense of my own kind of invincibility, but it’s way less than it was when I was 20. I mean, I was purely invincible. I was fit. I was a collegiate athlete. I was like, I’ll do that. I can totally do that. I won’t die, right? And, you know, the arrogance of it, you know,

Iain Duguid  39:28

Which is toddler stuff, really.

Jim Lovelady  39:29

Totally.

Iain Duguid  39:30

Three year olds are like that.

Jim Lovelady  39:31

That’s right, that’s exactly right.

Iain Duguid  39:31

They’ll just walk around the, you know, the fence and the wall, and have no clue that they’re about to, you know, dive, 10 stories.

Jim Lovelady  39:38

That’s right, that’s right. That was me totally. And, you know, the the sense of feeling like God’s gift to whatever it. It doesn’t matter, just this, you know, you’re lucky to have me, that kind of thing, you know? And then, as I’ve, you know, I wake up in the morning and my back hurts and it’s like, oh, well, that’ll never be the same again, and it’s over, yeah, and how I will look. It’s something I’ll be like, Well, I would never do that. That’s dumb. I’ll hurt myself all the while knowing and like, this slow dawn on my consciousness that I’m gonna die someday, you know. And with that comes a humility, and with that comes a greater dependence on Jesus. It doesn’t have to, but it has. It has definitely been this, like,

Iain Duguid  40:21

Well, it’s God’s work, isn’t it?  That’s why it doesn’t have to. I mean, if God is not at work, people don’t get smarter. They just, they just continue on. But God’s work, through the Holy Spirit in his people, typically, is in that process, even, you know, making us more aware of our vinciability. Is that a right word?

Jim Lovelady  40:40

Yeah, our vinciabliity. Just absolute dependence on Jesus. Like, what is it that Jesus says to Peter? One day someone will carry how’s it in John 21 carry you what you don’t want to go? Yeah? And it’s like, I feel like there’s, there’s a trajectory of all of us going toward that right, complete and utter dependence, which is the way that we actually always are. We just didn’t realize it until we’ve been brought to this place at the at the cusp of our own death, I suppose.

Iain Duguid  41:09

And again, we see this in the Old Testament, right? God brings Israel out of Egypt, parts the sea in front of them. You’re Israel. You’re thinking, this is how it’s going to be from now on, right? We’re going to march into the promised land in about six weeks. We’re good, right? And God could have done that, right? So He has the power to do that. Instead, he brings them to Marah, where the only water there is is too bitter and they can’t drink it, and within three days of crossing the Red Sea, they’re complaining. And we think, how can they do that? Well, yeah, how could we do that?

Jim Lovelady  41:41

Within three days?

Iain Duguid  41:42

Yeah.

Jim Lovelady  41:43

Really?

Iain Duguid  41:43

Yeah, three days. Why would a sovereign God do that? Well, because He wants to show them their hearts, that otherwise, they don’t see. And then after that, He brings them to elim, the place of 12 springs and 70 palm trees, and they get to have a rest, right? And that’s God’s goodness, right? He doesn’t, He doesn’t leave them in Marah all the time, right? He turns the bitter water sweet, he brings them to oasis, right? They’re going to spend the next 40 years in the wilderness. Why? Well, because God is going to show them something about who they are, That they could never have learned if you just marched them straight into the promised land and given it to them on a plate.

Jim Lovelady  42:17

And he’s not petty.

Iain Duguid  42:20

No, no. He has good purposes, right? They don’t know their hearts. Yeah, right? They think, you know that the hot stuff, and it’s when they get into the desert that their hearts are revealed. You know, I mean, there’s, there’s no great merit in saying, you know, I love God, and I’ll follow him all my days when you’re in green pastures and, beside still waters, right? It’s when you’re in the valley of the shadow of death. That’s when you find out,  the Lord is my shepherd.

Jim Lovelady  42:47

It’s when your church shuts down, and you go…

Iain Duguid  42:49

Exactly…

Jim Lovelady  42:50

fill out the form for unemployment.

Iain Duguid  42:51

Yeah, is God still good? Yes, yes. And I don’t know that because I’m here filling out the unemployment form. I know that because of what he’s shown us in the scriptures. And he tells me He’s good, He shows me He’s good, so I gotta believe it. I don’t have a choice. I gotta believe it.

Jim Lovelady  43:07

So when I did church planting assessment back in it was 11 years ago, one of the assessors said to the group of us, he said, What would you do if the Lord called you to plant a church? And He said, I want you to plant a church, and in 10 years, it’s gonna die. What would you do? And everyone’s like, Oh, that’s it. I remember, just the weight of that, right? So I want, I want you to speak to them.

Iain Duguid  43:35

Yeah. We’ve, we’ve got this model as if church planting success means, it means that, you know, a constantly growing church. I remember being at a church planting conference once, and the speaker was talking about three phases of a church, you know, the incline when you’re growing rapidly, recline when you’re leveled out, and decline when you know when you’re shrinking. And he was telling us all these strategies to keep the church constantly in the incline mode, constantly growing, growing, growing. Yeah, we have a word for things that that keep on multiplying and never stop. It’s called cancer.

Jim Lovelady  44:08

Oh, wow.

Iain Duguid  44:08

That’s not how trees work, yeah, actually, the, what he called the recline, the the static state for most trees is actually the fruitful period, right? You know, when they’re growing rapidly, they’re not producing much, you know, much fruit, because they’re so busy growing. And it’s, it’s maturity is actually, for a tree, quite static, which, you know is intriguing to think about as a metaphor.

Jim Lovelady  44:32

Interesting.

Iain Duguid  44:33

But then, you know, the implication that, you know, if you’re overseeing a declining church, you failed somehow.

Jim Lovelady  44:34

Yeah, that’s what it feels like.

Iain Duguid  44:38

It is what it feels like. And the assumption, the assumption behind that, though, is, is that it’s, it’s all about us. If we do the right thing, you can make your church grow.

Jim Lovelady  44:51

Maybe I’m missing a strategy somewhere.

Iain Duguid  44:53

I had a pastor here in the States when we were going to Oxford, say, with $60,000 in three years, I can planet church here in the US, can you guarantee me the same results? I said, No. And you know, I didn’t elaborate fully on that, but if I had elaborated, I just said, well, England is, firstly, is an entirely different place. There if at the end of 10 years, you have 75 people, and you’re still surviving, you’ve done, you know, you’ve done really well. What he was talking about was essentially doing your demographics right and finding the right place, and it had nothing to do with the work of the Spirit. But if it’s the Spirit’s work, then firstly, we’re not in control of it, and so we don’t have the right to say to God, I’m serving you, you know, and you owe me a constantly growing church? Secondly, I think we undervalue what’s happened in the church in those 10 years. You know, if you have 10 years in which your church has held out the gospel to people, has fed the sheep faithfully, has seen you know, some people come to faith in Christ, and other people shaped in their ministry. In our little church in Oxford, one of the people who was attending there was Phil Ryken.

Jim Lovelady  46:06

Oh, really.

Iain Duguid  46:06

Then subsequently became minister of Tenth and now President of Wheaton College. You know, Phil and Lisa would say that their time in our church was in some ways formative for their view of ministry. Yeah, I don’t say that to boast, but there are things going on. You know, we have a chance to shape people’s view of the gospel. People read the Bible the way I hear it preached, and if they’ve been sitting under our ministry for 10 years and their view has been shaped towards the gospel, that’s a beautiful thing. Most churches are going to close. You know, if you look at most the churches in the New Testament, they’re not there now. Many cases there’s no gospel witness, or very little gospel witness in those communities. My sister’s village in Eynsham, the church she goes to, has been there for, you know, almost 1000 years, right? Six or 700 years. But that’s the exception, rather than the rule. If you look at where most of the churches that were planted in the 1400s are now, they’re gone. And that’s one reason why we need church planting, is because churches don’t live forever. I think we need to not undervalue the ministry that’s happening week by week. When I was working on sermon evaluation, my original sermon evaluation form had a category for how much do you remember of the sermon a week after which I think it’s an interesting category, but I’ve stepped away from that, because if you think about sermons as food, how many of the meals you ate a week ago do you remember. Or a month ago or a year ago, but they still nourished you at the time? And certainly there are recipes that just, you know, you identify with your family, right? They’re classics that you eat. And you can’t necessarily remember all the dates over the last 20 years when you’ve had those, but it’s been so regularly part of your diet that it just, you know, you know that that meal, through Well, in the same way, if we’re feeding people with the gospel, they they, they’re not going to remember all our sermons. But that doesn’t mean that those sermons haven’t deeply shaped them in the moment and over the course of time, and particularly the repetition the themes that they hear regularly from us will shape them and have profound impact on their hearts and lives.

Jim Lovelady  48:15

Oh, that’s so good. I think about a number of our missionaries who have had 30, 40, years on the field, and they’re having to come, come home for this or that reason. Some good, most of them, most of them, are not great reasons. You know, they’re not in, they’re not like, Yay, let’s, let’s leave this place that I’ve given my life for the last 40 years. You know, you say most, the vast majority of churches come to an end somewhat someday, you know, the vast majority of ministries and whatever’s happening in that place is going to come to an end. It’s like the feeling of, was this all for not? It’s like, no, the fruit of the whatever duration that that was and and what the Lord is going to do in that well, that’s the natural order of things. The tree drops its fruit. The fruit gets buried in the ground and comes up a tree, you know? And life keeps going, right, and the church keeps going.

Iain Duguid  49:14

Part of the challenges we we are right. We like to write the rest of the story as if we know what the rest of the story is, you know, think of David Livingstone. You know, most people don’t think of David Livingstone as a missionary, but he was, and he had one convert. That’s why we don’t think of him as missionary, right? You know, he was more successful as an explorer, but, but missions was an important part of his own sense of self calling, and he saw very little fruit from that. But you go to the places where he was, where he explored, and you look at the church now, in many cases, growing explosively, there are connections between his ministry and all of the Christians who are there now. They’re not necessarily direct and simple. But we can be overly pessimistic about what will happen when we leave the stories from China, of course, so very revealing, right? You know, when all the missionaries were kicked out in 1949 everyone you know wrote a dire repertoire from the Chinese church. And yet, in the providence of God, the church has grown and in many ways, gone from strength to strength, but even if it, even if that’s not the case, right? We have to trust God that He has given us the privilege of sharing the gospel in that place, whether it’s one year or three year, I don’t know which is harder, right? I mean, a short ministry has its own challenges. The long ministry has the challenges. Sometimes we can have a ministry and things seem to be going well. We passed it on to somebody else. Somebody else, and then it’s torpedoes. Yeah, we’re not in control. It’s not our church. It’s God’s Church, and so he has the right to say, actually, what I’m interested in, in this particular setting, primarily, is my work in your heart, and I think that’s important. So that’s what I’m up to right now. And we say, well, yeah, I wish that wasn’t the work you were interested in, because that’s really hard right now. But Lord, you have the right to do that. You have the right to crush my ambitions. And say this is not about you, to leave me without any human trace, but when we get to glory, and you know, the angels are looking at what God has done, one of the things that they will take delight in is God’s work in us, yeah, and the way in which he’s produced good fruit out of those difficult circumstances and glorified himself, because this person was willing to pour out their life again, whether one year, three years, 30 years in this place, without seeing the fruit that they would have liked to see, but they were faithful. Yeah, that’s precious. We write books about the people who get shot on the mission field, right, and or murdered, like Jim Elliot’s with the Alka Indians. But in some ways, in some ways, that’s a very simple form of faithfulness, right? For one moment, you’re faithful. I don’t want to make that sound too simple, because obviously you’re going to get killed, but it’s a momentary faithfulness. But the people who show up day after day after day, month after month after month, year after year, seeing hardly any converts and are still faithful in that place. That’s a different kind of martyrdom, and martyrdom is part of God’s plan for the church. Right in the book of Revelation, the martyrs ask, How long O Lord, before you avenge our blood? And we expect the answer, well, it’s gonna be a little bit longer, because I still have more people to save, right? Which is not a wrong answer, right? You find that in First Peter, but the answer that’s given to the martyrs is it has to be a little bit longer until the full number of the martyrs is complete. You know, there’s a uniqueness to martyrdom in bringing glory to God. If we’re trying to show the world that God is more precious to us than everything, how could you do that more visibly by than by laying down your life?  And I would argue, not just by laying down your life in that one moment you know, deny your faith or I shoot, but in this long obedience in the same direction. Using Eugene Peterson’s phrase of constantly showing up day after day, even though this, there’s no human reward for it, because God is worth it. That’s that’s precious to God.

Jim Lovelady  53:35

Amen. I love the picture of that your giving of the long obedience in the same direction. It’s a type of a modern martyr. It is.

Iain Duguid  53:42

It is. It’s a hard martyrdom.

Jim Lovelady  53:44

Would you give your life for Jesus? You know, talk about martyrdom. Would you give your life for Jesus? And that’s a noble thought, right? Well, would you give today to Jesus? And it’s like, oh, well, that’s not his. That’s hard.

Iain Duguid  53:58

Yeah. You know, nobody’s gonna make movies about me for doing that’s right.

Jim Lovelady  54:03

That’s right, yeah, and it’s okay that my ambition gets crushed because Jesus is in control and Jesus loves me. Well, thank you,

Iain Duguid  54:13

Yeah. Always fun.

Jim Lovelady  54:23

This conversation was so helpful for me, because if I’m honest, I struggle to trust God’s sovereignty and goodness in my life. So it’s it’s both convicting and encouraging for me to watch someone continually cast themselves on the sovereignty of God and discover He really is in control, and He is good, and His sovereign goodness is showing me how dependent on Him I really am, and how foolish I’ve been to go it alone. Have you ever said, God, is this really part of your plan? Seriously? Is THIS part of your plan? Is failure, a part of your plan is loss, is broken dreams? And you know the right answer. You know God is sovereign, but your heart still asks these questions. But did you know that God’s sovereign goodness is big enough to have room for these questions? It’s the depth of God’s grace to not shut these questions down. In fact, in those dark places, that’s where we discover the Lord is our shepherd. God has custom designed goodness for you today, the risen Christ is at work in your life right now. Do you see it? Do you need help seeing it? If so, I want to recommend some resources to you. The first is a webinar that Iain did with us a while back called Rebuilding What’s Ruined. It focuses on battling discouragement and facing opposition and learning how to wait on the Lord. It’s a perfect follow up to this episode. I’ll leave a link for that in the show notes, as well as links to other to a number of his other books. He’s got a lot of books, so I’ll just leave a few. But especially I want, I want to bring your attention to his new one Turning the World Upside Down. I know that you’ll find this one encouraging and energizing. So my prayer for you today is that you would experience God’s sovereign goodness in new ways, in in surprising ways that that propel you out on mission. And if you feel like you’ve been living life on mission and you’ve met one dead end after the other, and things are clearly crashing down, remember this, the Lord is with you, and He is at work in your life. He is sovereign, and His goodness is chasing you down, and you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So go your way to love and serve the Lord with this blessing: may the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you, turn His bright eyes to you and give you His peace in the name of the Father, the Son And the Holy Spirit, one God, life everlasting. Amen.

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