Disenchantment to Delight: How the Gospel Restores Weary Hearts

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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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0:00:22.5 Jim Lovelady: Hello, beloved. Welcome to a new season of Grace at the Fray. In case you’re new to this podcast and to the ministry of Serge, we’re a cross-denominational global mission sending agency, active in almost 30 countries across five continents. We’re committed to keeping the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel of His grace, central to all that we do. So we know that we never outgrow our own need for grace, even as we take the good news of that grace to the nations. And we believe that the power of God for mission is uniquely expressed through weak people who know they need Jesus every minute of every day. And for us, this podcast, well, it’s both a window and a water fountain. It’s a window into the gospel culture of our organization, and it’s a water fountain for everyone who’s thirsty for God’s grace. We also have an ever-growing library of ministry resources that you can explore at serge.org/renewal.

And at the end of this episode, I’ll highlight a few of those that’ll help you continue to grow in the realm of today’s conversation. So lately on the podcast, I’ve been on a search for ways to understand and experience just how radical God’s grace is, and not just as an abstract concept, but how it gets worked out in real life in all the most unlikely of places. In the story of The Wizard of Oz, the little dog Toto, he pulls the curtain back to reveal that the almighty and all-powerful wizard is just a little old man. And we all resonate with the disappointment of being duped, our hopes dashed. And I think this captures the sentiment of our culture today. We live in a culture that is so accustomed to pulling back the curtain to see what’s going on behind the scenes and discover the disappointment of being duped and controlled. And many people feel this way about Christianity, duped and disenchanted. But my guest today is in the business of re-enchantment. Today’s guest is a long-time personal friend of mine and friend of Serge, Pastor Jerry Fourroux. He shepherds the congregation of Lycoming Centre Presbyterian Church in Williamsport, PA. And he’s been taking his folks through the Book of Revelation, which is all about looking at what’s really, really going on. And if you find yourself disenchanted by what you’ve seen and experienced in your own spiritual life, Jerry wants to tell you to keep looking, because if you do, you will find the deeper mysteries that will enchant you and capture your imagination and give you something to live for that’s way bigger than yourself. And the key to this is from one of the most unlikely of places, a lifestyle of repentance. So maybe your expectation is that when you mess up, fall into sin and failure, that God will be disappointed with you until the moment that you confess your sins, repent, and straighten up your life. Only then will God be pleased with you and show you His kindness and mercy. But today’s episode flips that expectation upside down, because it’s not your repentance that leads to God’s kindness, it’s God’s kindness that leads to repentance. And maybe you have another expectation that your life is supposed to be spent repenting of your sins until Jesus returns or the day you die. So repentance seems tedious and boring to you. Maybe you’ve become disenchanted with repentance when it should be leading you to the joyful and mysterious experience of fellowship with God. If either of these things is true about you and your understanding of repentance, listen in. This is a fantastic conversation on repentance and re-enchantment.

 

 

0:04:20.6 Jim Lovelady: Crazy redhead Fourroux?

 

0:04:22.0 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:04:23.6 Jim Lovelady: Fourroux, Jerry Fourroux. Welcome to Grace at the Fray. Fourroux means crazy redhead.

 

0:04:29.5 Jerry Fourroux: Well, we think it does.

 

0:04:31.6 Jim Lovelady: We think it does.

 

0:04:32.8 Jerry Fourroux: I’m not exactly fluent in French, but I do know that Van Gogh, when he was in France, they called him Crazy Red. And I was reading and it said Fourroux. I’m like, that’s my name. So I think it might mean red wall or sheath, but Crazy Red sounds more fun.

 

0:04:46.8 Jim Lovelady: Crazy Red. Well, I can vouch. I can vouch for it.

 

0:04:50.4 Jerry Fourroux: There you go.

 

0:04:50.9 Jim Lovelady: Dude, it is fantastic to have you on finally. I think that I looked at my records, I’ve been trying to get you on the podcast since season two.

 

0:04:58.6 Jerry Fourroux: Oh, wow.

 

0:04:58.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. So I’m so glad that you were able to…

 

0:05:00.6 Jerry Fourroux: I’m delighted to be here.

 

0:05:01.6 Jim Lovelady: And we’ve been talking about since season two, you and I, just offline.

 

0:05:05.7 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:05:06.3 Jim Lovelady: I love all of those conversations, which would probably end up getting me fired, but that’s okay.

 

0:05:11.1 Jerry Fourroux: That’s fine. That’s a pastor-pastor conversation.

 

0:05:15.0 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:05:15.5 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah. Exactly.

 

0:05:15.6 Jim Lovelady: Where it’s like, okay, well, what does repentance look like? What does re-enchantment look like?

 

0:05:19.1 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:05:19.5 Jim Lovelady: And I love that you… So I have the Van Gogh painting. Starry Night. I normally have it right here, but it reflects the light back. And so if you’re watching on YouTube, it’s like, don’t do that. That’s tacky. But why is that your favorite?

 

0:05:34.2 Jerry Fourroux: It’s my favorite because it’s just, there’s so many things going on. It’s the him looking out of his window, and he sees this landscape, and he sees the church, the spire goes up. He sees the tree, the dead tree, but it also it’s something almost gothic in front of him, as well as just the way this the sort of music of the spheres kind of idea in the sky. And just that it is like a re-enchantment, if you will. It is sort of like the magic to the irregular night there in wherever it was. I forget exactly where it was, but that he sees things. And, you know, the idea of the Crazy Red. He was called Crazy Red. You know, we say crazy, but maybe he saw things differently, and maybe he saw things in a way we need to see them. And maybe he brought us to a place where our imagination can see things the way they really are.

 

0:06:23.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:06:23.9 Jerry Fourroux: Maybe he gives a window into something that was more profound and more beautiful than what we see just with our eyes. He gives, he makes us attached to something bigger and something more powerful, more beautiful than we think we do.

 

0:06:37.0 Jim Lovelady: And he was painting it through the window of an insane asylum.

 

0:06:40.0 Jerry Fourroux: Through an insane asylum, yes. That’s another tidbit that I love about it. Yeah.

 

0:06:44.0 Jim Lovelady: Every time Lori and I go to, is it in the Met? I think it’s in the Met or the MoMA. Every time we go to New York we will go into, I feel bad that I can’t remember which one it, when it’s… Last time we were there, we were like, “Should we go to the Met or the MoMA?” And I’m like, “Whichever one’s got Starry Night.”

 

0:07:05.0 Jerry Fourroux: Starry Night, yeah.

 

0:07:05.4 Jim Lovelady: And she makes fun of me because I’ll stand in front of it for like 30 minutes. And she’s like, “You want to see anything else?”

 

0:07:10.1 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah. Now, have you heard the Donny McLean song, Starry, Starry Night?

 

0:07:14.8 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah.

 

0:07:15.7 Jerry Fourroux: I mean, there’s like. That’s the B-side of American Pie. So like, so that…

 

0:07:18.9 Jim Lovelady: Oh, it’s all… That’s the only Don McLean song record that you need.

 

0:07:23.5 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah. Starry Night on one side. American Pie on the other. Don McLean is, you’re done with that.

 

0:07:28.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. You’re good to go. You know, so I’ll tell you why it’s my favorite.

 

0:07:30.9 Jerry Fourroux: Okay.

 

0:07:31.2 Jim Lovelady: And I also have The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt over here.

 

0:07:34.0 Jerry Fourroux: Which is both of one of our favorites.

 

0:07:35.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. So I need to figure out how to put them up so that it’s not glaring all these studio lights back at me.

 

0:07:40.2 Jerry Fourroux: Superimpose it maybe with a graphic or something like that computer, AI…

 

0:07:43.9 Jim Lovelady: I didn’t go to seminary for that. To learn how to do that. I didn’t go to seminary to learn how to set up lights. I just have really good Hudson Marsh.

 

0:07:52.8 Jerry Fourroux: It’s a nice setup.

 

0:07:53.6 Jim Lovelady: And other folks. Anyway, so it’s my favorite because he wanted to be a pastor. And like you said, he was kind of disturbing in the way that he related to people, and people were uncomfortable by the way he behaved. And so he’s like training to be a pastor, and he takes this position as I don’t know if it’s like pulpit supply or whatever. And he’s having… He’s really taking the commands of Jesus seriously and like living, embracing the idea of poverty. And he lives in a barn, I guess, and he doesn’t really shower and…

 

0:08:28.9 Jerry Fourroux: Cuts off his ear.

 

0:08:29.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. All of those things. So he’s just, people are uncomfortable by him. And the clergy, I think, were kind of put off by him because of how seriously he took things. And they’re like, “Hey, dial it down, buddy. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Anyway, so he got fired. And so I love that painting because you look at the town, and every light in every building is on.

 

0:08:54.2 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:08:55.2 Jim Lovelady: Except for one. The church has its lights turned off.

 

0:08:58.7 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:08:59.1 Jim Lovelady: To Van Gogh.

 

0:09:00.0 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:09:01.0 Jim Lovelady: But where are the brightest lights? Who has their lights on, like, frenetically dancing?

 

0:09:08.6 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:09:09.2 Jim Lovelady: Well, it’s God.

 

0:09:10.0 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:09:11.0 Jim Lovelady: So what does God think about Van Gogh? Every light is turned on, dancing with joy and delight.

 

0:09:17.0 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah, music of the spheres.

 

0:09:18.9 Jim Lovelady: It’s the music of the spheres.

 

0:09:19.7 Jerry Fourroux: Absolutely. Yeah.

 

0:09:19.8 Jim Lovelady: And I love that because I know many people who have been hurt by the church, and I’ve been hurt by the church as a pastor. And I look at that and I go, “Okay, well, the Lord our God is with us. He’s mighty to save. He will dance over us with His love.” So I will stand in front of that. I will go to the MoMA or the Met. I’ll ask the guy on the street, “Which one has Starry Night? I can never remember.”

 

0:09:50.1 Jerry Fourroux: It’s all right.

 

0:09:50.7 Jim Lovelady: I’ll follow. My wife knows.

 

0:09:52.3 Jerry Fourroux: Right.

 

0:09:52.6 Jim Lovelady: She’ll take me there. She’ll plop me in front, and I’ll just stare at it because it’s God’s delight in us. And you’re right, it’s this idea of I want to see something that’s going on behind the scenes. Because what I see right now is darkness. The lights are turned off. I want to see something bigger.

 

0:10:09.9 Jerry Fourroux: And the spire, the spire also points up.

 

0:10:11.9 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:10:12.7 Jerry Fourroux: That’s what all spires always did. Lift your eyes up. And that’s what beauty was supposed to do. That’s what architecture is supposed to do. Lift our eyes to something bigger, transcendent, and beautiful.

 

0:10:21.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Anyway, so who are you? What are you doing here?

 

0:10:23.5 Jerry Fourroux: Who am I and why am I here? Well, that’s great. So, my name is Jerry Fourroux. I’m a pastor. Friends with…

 

0:10:32.6 Jim Lovelady: Long-time friends.

 

0:10:33.0 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:10:33.4 Jim Lovelady: 20 years. This is our 20-year anniversary.

 

0:10:35.0 Jerry Fourroux: Is that about right? My goodness.

 

0:10:36.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:10:36.7 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah, that’s crazy. So, anyway, we’ve been friends for a long time. I love Serge and support Serge missionaries. I was so impacted by the gospel of, you know, Jack Miller and the teachings and his writings. And that’s pretty profound to me. I remember I went to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and there’s a church down in Franklin called Christ Community. And all my friends wanted to go there because there were Christian music stars who would lead worship.

 

0:11:03.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Great music there.

 

0:11:04.1 Jerry Fourroux: So I didn’t know anything about CCM or anything like that. So I’m just going with them. And I’m intrigued by this pastor. His name’s Scotty Smith. He’s a friend of Serge. And he kept talking about grace and talking about grace, and it was so magnetic. I just wanted to… It’s like he was standing at the ocean trying to show me the ocean with the word grace. And I’m like, “I don’t know what he’s talking about.” And the Sunday after Easter, my freshman year, Jack Miller passed away. And Scotty spent three sermons talking about stories about Jack. Even just the stories of how he mentored Scotty, stories of him and his kids, his kids’ story. And I read all his books when I was in, right after that, in college. And just really it captured my imagination. It re-enchanted me just right there. And it helped me to begin a lifelong lifestyle of repentance, which is what I really how I describe what that is. And it led me to go to Westminster Seminary because I remember going on campus and like these are where the people who I really respect and read, they walked, they taught here.

 

0:12:07.7 Jerry Fourroux: And I wanted to go there because they were there. And the first Sunday I go into a church, it says New Life. And I knew New Life had some connection to Jack Miller. I go to this church, New Life, and these people ask me over to a picnic, a bunch of young adults are doing it, and they say something about a conference where someone quoted Tim Keller as saying, “Cheer up, you’re worse off than you think.” And just before I could be the nerd and go, that’s actually not Tim Keller.

 

0:12:30.4 Jim Lovelady: Actually, Jack Miller said that.

 

0:12:31.5 Jerry Fourroux: Jack Miller said that. And it was Jack Miller’s granddaughter, you know. Oh, okay. You know, it was like, oh, okay, well, these are my people, you know. And then going through that, being part of that church, being part of New Life Dresher under Ron Lutz and our mutual friend Mike Hollenbach really taught you and I about grace and about life. And, and so re-enchantment, repentance are all things that I talk about all the time. It’s really a driving force of my ministry. And I love to talk about it. So, this is apropos. And this could be a three-hour podcast, it could be a 20-minute podcast. I don’t know where we can go with this, but it’s just everything I do as a pastor is around that. So, for example, right now I’m finishing up a year-long study I’ve done on the book of Revelation. And the reason I’ve done Revelation is I want to train the imagination of my congregation. I want them to think and see things the way the scripture does. I want them to see the things that are happening in the world not as something outside of God’s control, but that He is in control and that we are called to endure. So endure no matter what you see. But also know that whatever things you see that are going wrong, God has His sovereign hand on. It’s cut short for the sake of His people. But it’s all God. It’s from beginning to end. It’s Him in control. It’s Him promising us. It’s Him giving us a new name. It’s Him refining us in that. And it’s so powerful. It’s a different way to look at things like, you know, the idea of like, oh Lord, take me out of this versus Lord, change me in this. And that leads to further repentance, further enchantment and things like that. So that’s what I try to talk about. So I use the word enchantment if people have not heard of that word before. There’s a famous economist, Max Weber. He was a German in 1917. He’s just talking about the state of the world. And he said that the world has been stripped of its magic and its spirituality. It’s kind of, it’s created this disenchantment of the world where people, because of bureaucracy, because of science, because of the war. It was during World War I at the time. Like, there has been a dullness that has crept into the way people see the world. And that disenchantment sort of challenges the plausibility structure of Christianity. It’s sort of a pre-obstacle to people embracing Jesus.

 

0:14:47.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. And it makes Christianity feel more unlikely, more unbelievable.

 

0:14:52.3 Jerry Fourroux: Right. More unbelievable.

 

0:14:53.4 Jim Lovelady: Than ever.

 

0:14:53.6 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah, exactly.

 

0:14:54.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:14:55.1 Jerry Fourroux: And so the greatest news you ever heard is Jesus. The greatest news you ever heard is His love. But if you categorically put out anything supernatural, you categorically said that that can’t happen, then you don’t open yourself up to the power and beauty of repentance, the power and beauty of transformation. And so that’s where I’m trying to get sort of sneak past the sleeping dragons of our hearts as C.S. Lewis would say, and get to the heart through this re-enchantment, taking the dullness that the way people see life, everything is a crisis, everything is, I guess, you know, cynical, you know, the cynical nature of our world and our Christian world too. A lot of former Christians sometimes are just evangelicals who saw how the sausage was made and they just grew bitter and cynical. And so I want to say, so what I’m trying to do is to say, “Hey, there’s more than meets the eye and the final answer isn’t our sin. It’s Jesus. It’s His transformation. It’s the Spirit’s power and presence with us.” And so I talk about those things in terms of re-enchantment. And so, you know, that repentance is always coupled with faith.

 

0:14:59.4 Jerry Fourroux: You can’t really have faith without repentance and repentance without faith. And so like the Romans 2 passage, that is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. Like that is such an important part of faith.

 

0:16:09.5 Jerry Fourroux: I can’t ask anybody to repent until I tell them the kindness of God. Well, how do you tell them the kindness of God when everything is dull and gray and explainable and no mystery, no…

 

0:16:18.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, if everything can be explained through chemicals, if everything is explainable through science, that’s a facade of an explanation because when you say, “Well, what is that really?” Well, we kind of don’t really know. We just have a name for it now. Well, just because we have a name for it doesn’t mean we actually understand it, but it does mean that we feel like we can control it. Well, now we have a world that we think we can control and…

 

0:16:44.7 Jerry Fourroux: It’s not controllable.

 

0:16:45.7 Jim Lovelady: It’s not controllable and it’s boring. And it’s just like, is this it?

 

0:16:48.1 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah, and that’s the hard thing. It’s like the idea that the world is out of control because we can’t control it means it’s out of control. And that’s where Revelation comes in and says, no, it’s it’s yeah, it’s under control. To you it may look like out of control, but it’s under control. And its other side of it, like the way that I want the world to be and the way the world is doesn’t match up.

 

0:17:07.9 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:17:08.3 Jerry Fourroux: And there’s a starkness to that, right? There is a reality of the way the world works that is terrifying and terrible and power driven and all of these other things and violent and all of those things are true, but it doesn’t mean that God’s not in control. This is what revelation does a whole bunch on. It’s like, hey, when you hear this, when you hear rumors of wars and wars and all these things are happening, understand the control of God, that God in His kindness is leading us somewhere. He’s taking us to the place of transformation. He’s taking us to the place of repentance and faith.

 

0:17:43.5 Jim Lovelady: All right, what we’re going to talk about is repentance and re-enchantment. Yeah, clearly we’ve said we’ve said those words a lot.

 

0:17:49.2 Jerry Fourroux: Seven times.

 

0:17:49.8 Jim Lovelady: And and like the interaction and maybe the overlap of how these two ideas come crashing into our imagination and shape our lives. And what’s interesting is this imminent frame, the Charles Taylor imminent frame where it’s probably, it’s the easiest time in history to not believe in the transcendent and not to not believe in God because of the plausibility structure that you… So that also goes for repentance. And so what I find very interesting is how when I say the word repentance, the average person’s going to be like, “All right, I guess I’ll go to confession.” Or yeah, “I probably should say sorry more.” Or it’s always kind of like self-pity. It’s like repentance and self-pity so closely go together in our imagination. And I want you to like jettison the self-pity part and talk about the joy of repentance and and talk about how this is more than repentance is actually more than what we have thought it is, it’s this boring thing of like, yeah, I probably should do that.

 

0:19:00.0 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah. I mean, I say repent is like, you know, there’s a part in repentance in the 20th century man or or just repentance that I’ve never forgotten.

 

0:19:08.2 Jim Lovelady: Jack Miller book, right?

 

0:19:09.4 Jerry Fourroux: Jack Miller book. Yes, thank you. And in the book, he talks about how when they first went into Uganda after Idi Amin and any anybody in Uganda, a fellow Ugandan believer would see a Christian downcast. And they would say, it’s like, “What’s wrong? Why are you downcast, my brother in Christ? Have you confessed your sins? Have you seen the cross today?” And it was a joyful thing. Have you seen the cross today? And so that’s that’s the picture. You know, I read that in like, what, 1997? And that has continued to be the repentance is joy. The greatest joy you’ve ever experienced is the fact that repentance is true. Like, that’s the exciting thing. So when I talk to… I do a football league, an Upward football flag football league.

 

0:19:47.5 Jim Lovelady: At your church.

 

0:19:48.2 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah, yeah, our church. And well, we partner with indoor fields, but..

 

0:19:52.6 Jim Lovelady: Rightly so.

 

0:19:53.2 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah, exactly. So we do this league and then at halftime, I talk about, you know, different parts of the scripture, but I talk about the race. The race run is the race in a way to get the crown, to get the prize. And the idea of like, you know, when you’re on a football field and you’re running the wrong way, some of my little kids are just starting to play football. They’re running the wrong way. Every coach is like, “You’re on that way, run that way.” And that’s what that’s what we’re saying. Repent, you’re running the wrong way. That’s what it is. It’s like, run to that will… You’ll be out of bounds. You’re going to score for the other team.

 

0:20:20.0 Jim Lovelady: You’re scoring for the other team.

 

0:20:20.8 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah. Or when you run to Jesus, there’s so much grace, there’s so much love, there’s so much goodness for you. And you’ll feel that goodness even today. You’ll get a taste of that finish line glory in the moment.

 

0:20:36.4 Jim Lovelady: Oh, I love that.

 

0:20:37.1 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah. And that’s and that’s what like I want to hold that out to my congregation in their imagination, in their hearts. Repentance isn’t a dirty word. It’s a word. It’s a ticket to joy. It’s a ticket to that. Even there was a friend of mine in seminary as I was struggling with some of my sin. I remember he came over to my house and we’re talking, and I was just talking about, you know, when you go to seminary with counselors, you know, it’s just like their friendship conversations turned really. But he just said, “Hey, walk me through that.” That’s all he did. He just said, “Hey, walk me through that.” And just walk through all the decisions I made to end up at the place where I was. And I was like, man, all these times Christ was trying to get me to repent there. He’s trying to get me to repent here, trying to get me to repent here. And it’s like the shame and the pride that says, “Oh, I’m such a mess.” No, he is such a fixer. He is such a savior. He’s such a redeemer.

 

0:21:31.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Kindness here. Kindness here. Kindness here.

 

0:21:34.3 Jerry Fourroux: All the way He was helping me. And just because, you know, now I’ve made a bed not to sleep in it now, doesn’t mean He’s like, no, this is still His kindness. He’s still coming to me saying, “Jerry, come. Come this way. Don’t run out of bounds. Don’t run the other way. Run to me.” And that’s what repentance is. It’s that running to joy, running to Jesus, and not looking at what’s behind, but pressing forward to what is in front of us. And I think that is what I mean by repentance. It’s the faith of that. It’s the beauty of that. And it’s the communion with God that we have with that.

 

0:22:11.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Not just what you’re running away from, but what you’re running to.

 

0:22:14.5 Jerry Fourroux: And that’s also part of this. Like, when we talk about repentance, people think it’s just like, you know, the illustration that John Owens used in his great book, “The Mortification of Sin”, is that he says, “You take the weeds and you pull them out by the roots,” right? And so that’s mortification. You’re putting to death the misdeeds of the body. But also is like you make alive by the Spirit. What does that look like? And that’s where the things of God become enchanting again. The things of God become something that, man, I want to read more of this scripture. I want to spend more time with the saints. We’re praying to God. I want to spend more time here. Like those things become more precious to us, more beautiful to us. So things like communion, things like baptism can move me to tears because it’s the places of the Spirit moving people and changing people. And that’s where that vivification, that making alive of the things of God is really what re-enchantment is about. And the things I’ve seen, you know, part of that’s a history. It’s also in the sacraments, also in beauty. And there’s just different ways for us to not in nostalgia, like, oh, everything was, you know, better back in the old days. It’s not that. It’s much more of like there’s a grounding in a way of seeing the world with our brothers and sisters who are no longer with us to help us lead us on this race, you know, the great cloud of witnesses.

 

0:23:28.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

0:23:29.2 Jerry Fourroux: Like, that’s a real verse, right? It’s like part of the great cloud of witnesses is to be inspired by the way they ran, right?

 

0:23:34.8 Jim Lovelady: Absolutely.

 

0:23:35.7 Jerry Fourroux: And so I found myself just being, you know, going back to biographies. That’s a great way to re-enchant. Christian biographies are just tremendous. Now, I’m a story guy. I love stories. And so I think all of reality is trying to reveal Jesus Christ. So I will take any movie and I will make it fit and talk about Jesus. You know, I will talk about, you know, “KPop Demon Hunters”. It’s like, “Oh, somebody had to sacrifice for her to live.” Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve read that story before.

 

0:24:02.5 Jim Lovelady: I’ve heard that before.

 

0:24:04.4 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah. So it’s like all the stories, they tell these stories, that’s how we’re made. And so I believe that. And I do believe that the people who have gone before us in history, in our families, those people have marked out places for us to run as well. So we hear their stories, we hear their race, and we move forward. So that’s sort of part of the re-enchantment are those things.

 

0:24:26.7 Jim Lovelady: I love how you subverted how repentance is boring.

 

0:24:31.3 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:24:32.1 Jim Lovelady: Because repent, yeah, you’re right. It’s like, you’re running the wrong way.

 

0:24:33.0 Jerry Fourroux: You’re running the wrong way. Hey, run, run.

 

0:24:34.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, I love that.

 

0:24:39.4 Jerry Fourroux: Nobody’s trying to tackle you though when you’re running the wrong way. No one’s trying to tackle you. You have free rein to do that. There’s no, no stumbling blocks to run the wrong way.

 

0:24:46.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, the metaphor is awesome because there’s no neutral territory here.

 

0:24:49.1 Jerry Fourroux: Right.

 

0:24:49.3 Jim Lovelady: You’re either running in the direction of the glory that is in store for you. And I love that you said the repentance, the joy that you have is a foretaste of the glory. Like, that glory comes zooming from the future into the present, and it becomes this. And it’s almost too much to handle. It’s like the light in the sky. It’s like one little sliver of light. Like, I’ve zoomed in as close as I can to Van Gogh’s painting without getting the guy, the guy who’s like, he, like, grabs me by the shoulder and, like, pushes my shoulder back. I’m like, “Oh, sorry.” He never says a word, just like, he moves me back. But it’s like, I just look at one stroke and it’s glorious. And this is like, that’s what you’re talking about. Of, hey, just you wait. Just you wait.

 

0:25:31.5 Jerry Fourroux: Just you wait. That is the spectacular part of it. And in those of us who’ve walked in faith for a long time, we know those places. And that’s a good reminder as we go into the future. You know, I tend to, you know, the worst things that, you know, that could possibly go wrong, go wrong in my head right before they ever go wrong in reality. And I remember, you know, my son just passed his driver’s test, and he’s got a license now, and I’m just like, “Okay. I was a terrible driver, so.” Oh, no. I’m a good driver, but I’ve had accidents. I’ve been distracted while driving, you know. So, I’m just like, oh, the son of mine is going to, you know, get behind a car and just there’s a little bit of anxiety there, but I’m like. And at the end of the day, what I come back to is, like, if, God forbid, the worst things happen, there will be grace. Yeah. There’ll be grace. And like, that’s my confidence, is that I can’t predict grace in the future. I only can experience grace in the now. And to say, any suffering, any hardship that happens in the world or in my future, there’s grace for the moment. Because I have felt that as I’ve run this race and to trust Him that He will give that grace. And that’s the testimony of those who have walked through grief. That’s the testimony of so many of our people who have walked that path before us and have run that race is that grace did show up. That it made them closer to God, closer in getting to that finish line and feeling that that taste of the finish line.

 

0:27:05.6 Jim Lovelady: I want to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge fieldworkers 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 the Middle East. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that You would bless these folks. Guide them into repentance and re-enchantment. 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 that they serve. Heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness and 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. 

 

0:28:05.3 Jim Lovelady: So what I think is interesting about the idea of enchantment and disenchantment.

 

0:28:11.9 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:28:12.3 Jim Lovelady: That you talked about from Max Weber.

 

0:28:14.5 Jerry Fourroux: Weber.

 

0:28:17.1 Jim Lovelady: In just this like, well, I guess that’s all there is, kind of perspective, mentality. At the end of the day, like, I love the band Death Cab for Cutie. It’s like every one of their songs is a longing for transcendence. I really wish that it were true that this could be.

 

0:28:34.2 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:28:34.7 Jim Lovelady: You know, it’s just this longing for transcendence. And there’s this reality of how the lights have gone off for us in the church. And the whole category over the last decade or so has been deconstruction, where it’s like, okay, I’ve deconstructed from the faith that I thought was transcendent. And now I see how the sausage is made. I see behind the curtain. All those disenchanted kinds of emotions of… I mean, it’s like legit when you see behind the scenes, and it’s like, oh, really? That’s what’s going on.

 

0:29:14.1 Jerry Fourroux: Right.

 

0:29:14.8 Jim Lovelady: You know, and how that’s just happening not just in the church, but just kind of everywhere. You know, like in politics, in Hollywood, in mainstream media, in all of these places. We’re like, oh, I see more. I wish I could…. It’s like the guy from the Matrix who goes, “I wish, I know it’s all fake, but put me back in. And I don’t want to remember any of it. I want to go back into the facade.” And what you’re saying is it’s not about being deconstructing and then some sort of naivety that brings you back into reconstruction. I love this thought of like, okay, let’s deconstruct from all the things that we actually do need to repent of as Christianity in the West. But let’s re-enchant.

 

0:30:03.0 Jerry Fourroux: Right. So this is where I see re-enchantment rather than deconstruction.

 

0:30:05.6 Jim Lovelady: Right. Or reconstruction.

 

0:30:06.6 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah, well, but even like the idea of what a construct is, is a power move. So I don’t believe that Christianity, I don’t believe that any of these things are made to control us. I don’t believe that they’re…

 

0:30:16.5 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s good.

 

0:30:17.2 Jerry Fourroux: They’re given to us to manipulate us, to conform or control us. That’s when you see things as a construct, you deconstruct because you see behind it, the reality was just to control you. And that’s false. And so I don’t use that term deconstruction because I don’t believe. Some people use that word to mean repentance. I don’t just because I think I’m not saying that faith in Christ is a construct. I do believe it’s the true reality. There is no other reality besides that.

 

0:30:42.3 Jim Lovelady: That’s good. Yeah.

 

0:30:43.0 Jerry Fourroux: And so every, all reality flows from that fact. And so I would say, you can get to a place where you think, oh, this happened. Well, that’s just people’s sin or that’s just someone, you know, being duplicitous. That’s just so that that word just. Does it make sense? That’s the severing of the magical, of the transcendent.

 

0:31:01.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. I figured that out. It’s just blah, blah, blah.

 

0:31:02.7 Jerry Fourroux: It’s just that. Or you know, that church is growing. Oh, they’re just manipulating.

 

0:31:06.5 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:31:06.9 Jerry Fourroux: It’s just, you know, like it’s all of those things. Instead of thinking in terms of the idea of like, hey, God is a great conductor of the whole world. And sometimes there are bass notes and sometimes there are explosions. Sometimes there is, you know, soft violins playing. But all of it produces a work of art. All of it produces beauty. We may only see one side of it. So I was just watching on the reels, you know, my kids just saw this summer the “Lord of the Rings” movies. And some of them have read them, some of them haven’t. But, you know, so now everything on my algorithm is “Lord of the Rings”, you know.

 

0:31:43.2 Jim Lovelady: Rightly so.

 

0:31:44.0 Jerry Fourroux: Rightly so. Well, there’s like this one this, you know, one of the battle scenes is like there’s just a person with a chain on like a symbol. It’s like that sound during I think it’s the battle of Helm’s Deep. And it’s just all that is. It’s like that’s not beautiful. It sounds weird. But when it’s surrounded by the other music, now you can appreciate it. Now you put the scene in. Now you can appreciate the wonder of that. When you isolate it to this one place and you think about, oh, that one person or that one church or that, you know, one country or whatever, you don’t see the orchestra that God is building. And that’s part of the book of Revelation as well, that God is orchestrating a lot of things at the same time. And so understand that this is what He’s doing. And because of that, we can trust Him that He is putting together His masterpiece. We don’t see the whole picture and we never will. So I’m not, I don’t deconstruct from that. I can deconstruct from the idea that I would have to see it all. I do come to a humble place.

 

0:32:40.1 Jim Lovelady: And that’s a good place of repentance.

 

0:32:41.8 Jerry Fourroux: So this is why like, sometimes people get re-enchanted with politics and things like that. And the idea of standing up for the other. That’s, they’re the champion and they have this self-understanding of their identity as a champion for this person and they’re going to bring about this change. And the reality is that you don’t see the whole picture. You don’t see the whole picture. And none of us see the whole picture. But you can try to navigate this one area, but at the same time, there’s a story writer who’s running something bigger. Now, part of your story may be to help someone. It may be to reach out. It may be those kind of things. And that I can trust that my work is still meaningful, right? And what I do is meaningful. But the fear or the anger, which aren’t fruits of the Spirit, those are works of the flesh, right? So the fruits of the Spirit kind of guide me into saying, “Okay, how do I look at this, this masterpiece? I’m not God. I can only see parts of it. I don’t see the whole thing. And part of that re-enchantment is I wonder how this will work out. And a trusting in God’s what they used to call providence.” You remember that old word, providence? But it’s also the sense of like, how do we make peace with the way the world is? And it’s like, part of that is, well, yes and no. Understand our humility and our brokenness and that all of our good works are filthy rags. Like, knowing that aspect and part of repentance, but also knowing that we can have true obedience and acts of true love and service. They’re not completely, not perfectly, but they’re true.

 

0:34:18.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s a good distinction. See, so like, yeah, unpack that a little bit more because I think that that’s a really helpful category. Because I mean, I’ve read Edwards on like, hey, if this isn’t genuine repentance, it’s not real repentance. And I’ve like, fallen into despair with like, well, none of my repentance is like…

 

0:34:35.8 Jerry Fourroux: Right, yeah.

 

0:34:36.5 Jim Lovelady: I said, I say sorry all the time and then five minutes later, I’m doing the same thing.

 

0:34:40.3 Jerry Fourroux: So, you know, as an aside on Edwards, don’t ever read the first part of “The Religious Affections” and not the second part. Just read the third part. Yeah, read the third part and just read that. Because ultimately, it’s like those first few chapters, like, a despair of like, oh, you can go through your whole story and like, it’s false repentance, false repentance. But the reality is that God gives true repentance. I remember, you know, I remember as a kid watching, you know, televangelists always accepting Jesus into your heart. And so I accepted Jesus into my heart again and again, born again and again. And so, you know, what really stopped that was this understanding of the gospel of lifestyle repentance, that I’m not where I will be or I want to be. I’m not where I will be, but I can experience true remorse. But that remorse is more about God’s glory, not about beating myself up, right?

 

0:35:28.9 Jim Lovelady: Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

0:35:29.1 Jerry Fourroux: You know, it’s that sense of like, I can’t remember where I heard it, but just this, and I repeated this again and again in my sermons. So I’ve stolen it from some of listeners, probably, who’ve mentored me and been by my side. But it’s an idea of like, it’s like, oh, man, you get so in touch with the Spirit, you get to feel the presence of God, and then you’re like, oh, man, I need to try harder. What? No, no, no. You’ve gone, you’ve gone from a dependence on God and experience of God in Christ’s presence with us by the Spirit to yourself and your pride. And it’s so sneaky.

 

0:35:58.8 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah.

 

0:35:59.2 Jerry Fourroux: So sneaky to get.

 

0:35:59.7 Jim Lovelady: It’ll turn back in on myself.

 

0:36:01.0 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah, it turns it back in. And that actually, you know, it’s the stunt to our growth and repentance is to look at our pride and just keep looking at ourselves and go down the sort of, oh, you know, more and more into my history and more and more into my personality and all those things like, at the end of the day, I’m a sinner. And there’s ways that my sin will be revealed to me as I go through life in my family, in my church, and everywhere. And I have to trust the Lord that He has mercy and there’s preemptive forgiveness for the mess that I make, you know, of my world. And then to understand and to be repentant and to be humble to crawl back to a place of, I need Jesus. I need Jesus.

 

0:36:41.8 Jim Lovelady: So the way that you’re talking about repentance feels a little bit like premarital counseling.

 

0:36:45.9 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:36:46.3 Jim Lovelady: Where it’s like, just wait when you’re… You’ll understand when you’re married, that kind of thing. It’s almost like, hey, seriously, when you repent, you will find grace. When you repent, you will discover the love of God and the joy of God, you know, but it’s like, so the analogy is like, hey, just wait when you get married, you know?

 

0:37:07.4 Jerry Fourroux: Right.

 

0:37:07.7 Jim Lovelady: So, so like, what kind of courage is required or what kind of step is required for it to actually be like, okay, I’m going to believe. And I am going to, I am going to repent.

 

0:37:21.9 Jerry Fourroux: There’s a mentor you and I both had, and he always signed off on his emails, keep it in the light. And so when you keep it in the light, there’s a going public aspect of this, of like, of our repentance and our, and to say, “Hey, I need help.” Right? That, you know, it was a, I think a Serge leader one time, I remember preached a sermon one time that said, “The most humble thing you can do is ask for someone else to pray for you.” Because you’re saying, “I need, I need help here.”

 

0:37:49.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:37:49.7 Jerry Fourroux: And that’s the beauty of repentance, is that you’re not just repenting yourself. You’re in a community of repenters, right? You’re in a community of this. And every time, I tell you what, every time that that’s come up and someone said something or they’ve gone public with something, I’m like, “Hey, you know what, you need to talk to this person. They’ve had the exact same thing. You need to talk to this person. They’ve dealt with that.” They’re like, this race is being run simultaneously.

 

0:38:10.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

0:38:10.7 Jerry Fourroux: It is like the Boston Marathon. We’re all crunching together, but we think we’re the only ones running, you know, because we know ourselves so much. But when we look around, hey, there’s a lot of people, they’re dealing with things where they are running the other way. They are running out of bounds.

 

0:38:23.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

0:38:23.6 Jerry Fourroux: You say, “How do we bring each other back?”

 

0:38:25.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. When you’re running the wrong way, I’m going to bump into you and…

 

0:38:30.0 Jerry Fourroux: You’re going to hit me.

 

0:38:30.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. And I want to encourage you to go, you know. So I love that you talk about needing help because recently, I’ve been doing a renovation in the house, and it has become all the more brutally evident of how fiercely independent I am. Because Lori’s like, “Hey, you should call someone over to come give you a hand.” And I’m like, “I don’t need a hand. I got this.” “Hey, are you going to do that drywall by yourself?” “Yep.” “Hey, are you going to…”

 

0:39:01.5 Jerry Fourroux: I got YouTube. What else do I need? Yeah, that’s right.

 

0:39:03.5 Jim Lovelady: And so, you know, which is interesting because like how many times I’ve looked up on YouTube on how to do the various steps of this, where and I just in that reality is, I need someone. I need… And YouTube has almost become like the father figure who goes, “Hey, I’ll teach you, boy. I’ll teach you how to do this, let me show you.”

 

0:39:25.9 Jerry Fourroux: It’s funny is I can watch, yeah, same thing. I can watch all the videos in the world, but until somebody comes over, that’s not going to happen.

 

0:39:31.4 Jim Lovelady: Oh, really?

 

0:39:31.8 Jerry Fourroux: Right. Yeah. So it’s, like, that’s that’s like my… So for Christmas, my wife wanted me to put in a back door. She wanted a new back door for our house, but also installed. I said, she asked for the… I want it and I want it installed. And I was like, okay, I can give you like in the middle of winter. I was like, I can give you a date where that can happen. You know, and it’s like, okay, so it’s set there in my garage after Christmas. I showed it to her Christmas. “Hey, look at this.” But it wasn’t installed. The job’s not done, right? So my friend comes over and I thought about doing it, doing it, doing it. And then I realized I’m like, oh, when he comes over, I have to get it done, because that’s accountability.

 

0:40:06.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

0:40:06.8 Jerry Fourroux: And so there’s a sense of where like I’m not, I’m not, you know, he didn’t do a lot of the work. But anyway, but it was like…

 

0:40:11.0 Jim Lovelady: But he was there and that was the catalyst for you to actually do the thing that you needed to do.

 

0:40:15.4 Jerry Fourroux: And that’s and that’s good. So repentance is always going to be a communal aspect, right? So it’s a communal in the re-enchantment. It’s also a communal in, you know, severing the weeds, pulling the weeds up by the roots. Like the community participates in all of this.

 

0:40:29.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:40:29.6 Jerry Fourroux: So one of the places that I talk about that we need the most vivification is corporate worship. So corporate worship isn’t just the singing. Corporate worship is the prayers. It is the word. It is the singing. It is the giving. It is the the blessing at the end. It is the sermon preached. It is all of those things. It’s the communion taken. It’s the washing with the water. It’s the eating at the table. All of these things are reviving our hearts and our imaginations to see the world the way God has us to see it. So in my service I talk about God’s story. And our worship service is based on creation, fall, incarnation, resurrection. So it’s just the story of God in the Bible. And so, you know, God brings us together. He gathers us together. He creates the church, and that we sing and we celebrate who God is in those first few songs of worship service. But then we go to the fall. Hey, we need to confess our sins. We are also in a fallen world and we have a mission to go to that fallen world. So we’ll talk about our missions moments and our times of what we call it, we call it minute for mission in our church, where people come in and talk about their mission. We talk about what our church is doing. And then I have a kids’ time. We’re bringing up our kids in this fallen world. So I want to bring them to the word to them, but also to say, hey, we got these gifts here that we have that we’re entrusted with in the midst of the fall. We have these beautiful children to raise in the faith. And then we go to the sermon. It’s God speaking to us by the incarnation. The word speaks to us. We’re better than any double-edged sword, right? And then as we do that, we finish that incarnation by an affirmation of faith, like the Apostles’ Creed or Nicene Creed. And then we move to the table. We do the Sursum Corda, lift up our hearts, you know. And then we…

 

0:42:12.3 Jim Lovelady: We lift them up. It’s like a reflex.

 

0:42:14.7 Jerry Fourroux: Exactly, exactly.

 

0:42:16.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:42:17.2 Jerry Fourroux: So it’s that, so we go from there to a pastoral prayer and the Lord’s Prayer and then we do communion. But all of it’s moving towards the place where the wedding supper of the Lamb is the last part. And so…

 

0:42:30.3 Jim Lovelady: And suddenly the future glory is brought, comes in, and there’s just another stroke of beauty.

 

0:42:37.0 Jerry Fourroux: Yep.

 

0:42:37.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:42:37.7 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah. And this is also beauty. Beauty’s important here. Like we talked about, you know, Van Gogh. But so much of beauty isn’t just an eye of the beholder. Beauty is fundamentally interwoven to our world. It is objective in our human experience, in the way the world is created, and also because God is transcendent over that. So, you know, just looking at even just at the imminent frame, it’s there’s still a objectivity to beauty.

 

0:43:02.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:43:02.6 Jerry Fourroux: And I think that’s an important part to unlock for us in terms of, you know, reimagination or re-enchantment. You know, beauty lifts the soul and also it provokes moral sensibilities. Because now you want to protect what’s beautiful, right? If something’s beautiful, you want to protect it. You want to do something good for it. You want to give it good, right? And so that’s where beauty has a moral component to it. But this all sets up in a world that God made, right? You know, it’s an understanding of the world that the Bible gives us that is really the lens for which we see everything.

 

0:43:39.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:43:39.8 Jerry Fourroux: And so when we take on that and we say, “Hey, the tree isn’t just a tree. The tree praises God.” The tree is like the spire that lifts us up. You know, the dead tree that Van Gogh sees there, you know, one day will spring to new life again. There will be fruit there. There will be leaves there. You know, if not this life in the next. You know, like that aspect of the, at the end we see a tree, right? It’s the healing of the nations, this tree of life that we’ve been chasing our whole existence as humanity. And that, all of that, by looking at a tree, you can do a lot of worship in your mind and in your heart by looking at where we have come from, where we’re going and what God is doing.

 

0:44:22.6 Jim Lovelady: There’s an idea of our modern scientific worldview, which I love science. I love science. I love that we have stuff flying in space, taking pictures of Saturn. I love that. You know, I love that there is medicine. I love that there are roads that I can drive on. The Pennsylvania roads, though. I don’t love the Pennsylvania roads. So, but I love science. But you peel back the curtain in modern scientific worldview, you go, that tree is actually just blah, blah, blah, you know? And it’s like, no, no, no. Peel it back again and see what. And that’s what the book of Revelation’s doing. It’s like, pull the veil back again. Like, keep looking. You haven’t looked deep enough to what’s actually going on.

 

0:45:10.7 Jerry Fourroux: Right. And so that’s the whole idea. It was called Revelation. It’s a revelation of Christ and what Christ is doing in history. And in the same way, like, reveal, open up your eyes, right?

 

0:45:19.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:45:19.7 Jerry Fourroux: You know, open up your servant’s eyes. Like that whole phrase in Jesus’s ministry and the prophet’s ministry, to see things the way God sees them. And that’s a different realm. And this is like where the art, art does help us see that, right? Tolkien makes us think, oh, there’s Ents, there’s a wisdom here, there’s an ancient… People who are the trees. It helps us see the world differently. That’s what good art does, what good beauty does, to re-enchant us to see things. And I love science too. Everybody, you know, no one, no one says, “Oh, I hate science.” It’s just a matter of does, you know, the reason I love it is because it testifies to the unlocking of the creation that God’s given us. And you think about something like, you know, the Lord’s Supper, something very, very simple. It’s bread and wine. And so how do you make bread? You have to crush grain. You have to let it ferment. And when you let it ferment and you mix it with water, and then you can create bread. You bake it and you heat it. Same thing with a grape. You take a grape and you crush it. And the yeast on the outside of the skin, you know, converts the sugar inside into alcohol. It’s like we have these two things of the Lord’s Supper that are unlocking the potential of creation, which is what science was always wanting to do, to think God’s thoughts after Him. Like the Kepler line there. Kepler, the famous astronomer. You know, it’s that idea of like there is a world of potentiality that God has given us and that we get a chance to unlock that and to see that. You know, one of the aspects, I can’t remember the name of the pastor, but he’s a pastor who wrote a sermon, and he was going against Malthus, the guy who’s talking about the population bomb and the fact that there will be overcrowding in the earth and things like that. And this one pastor, he’s in Yale, and he just in a sermon, he says, “But the potential of more generations will create more opportunities for us as humanity, to grow more answers.” So Malthus, when he’s alive, like the world can’t sustain this population. What happened is people were born the next 200 years who created inventions, who did, you know, crop yields, who changed the structure of our world. And that’s also why new life is always good. That’s why I’m always delighted when, you know, parents welcome a baby, is because that’s new potentiality in the world to unlock God’s creation and to move forward in this race to Jesus. So I think seeing things like that is to take something ordinary and see it the way God does. That revelation, that revealing of what’s really going on. It’s not just.

 

0:47:56.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. It’s not just.

 

0:47:57.1 Jerry Fourroux: It’s not just bread and wine.

 

0:47:58.4 Jim Lovelady: Right, right.

 

0:47:58.9 Jerry Fourroux: It’s a whole way of looking at the world, right?

 

0:48:01.8 Jim Lovelady: That’s so good. So the word enchantment

 

0:48:04.6 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:48:05.1 Jim Lovelady: Comes from the Latin chant.

 

0:48:07.4 Jerry Fourroux: Yes.

 

0:48:07.9 Jim Lovelady: Which means song.

 

0:48:09.5 Jerry Fourroux: A song. Yeah, yeah, music. Yeah.

 

0:48:12.1 Jim Lovelady: So part of why I love that word is because I love music.

 

0:48:15.3 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:48:15.8 Jim Lovelady: You know, don’t start.

 

0:48:17.2 Jerry Fourroux: I won’t. So, yeah, we have a game that we always play.

 

0:48:20.2 Jim Lovelady: I hate this game.

 

[laughter]

 

0:48:22.1 Jerry Fourroux: I start singing a song, and I’ll hear Jim singing it. So it’s like…

 

0:48:26.2 Jim Lovelady: It’ll be in my head forever.

 

0:48:27.5 Jerry Fourroux: It’s like an ’80s Mötley Crüe song. And he’s like, no, stop.

 

0:48:30.2 Jim Lovelady: Don’t even do that.

 

[laughter]

 

0:48:31.4 Jim Lovelady: So I love this word because we are re-enchanting. We are brought back to the song.

 

0:48:39.1 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:48:39.6 Jim Lovelady: We are brought back to this beautiful story that is sung, you know? And so then I go back to the Psalms where it’s like, sing to the Lord a new song.

 

0:48:50.3 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:48:50.6 Jim Lovelady: For me, whenever I read, sing to the Lord a new song, it’s a call to repent.

 

0:48:54.3 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:48:54.5 Jim Lovelady: It’s a call to be re-enchanted. Let the song be put back into your heart anew. Let’s sing to the Lord a new song. And so as you’re talking about enchantment, it’s, it’s like…

 

0:49:07.8 Jerry Fourroux: Makes you want to sing.

 

0:49:07.9 Jim Lovelady: I want to sing, you know. It makes..

 

0:49:09.4 Jerry Fourroux: Makes you want to sing.

 

0:49:09.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. So.

 

0:49:10.3 Jerry Fourroux: And singing and poetry are the parts of the beauty that would, you know, they do expand our souls. They do expand our capacity to take in more of the glory, take in more of the beauty in those things. I think there’s an expansion of that, of who we are as we worship the living God. And that’s the foretaste of glory divine too. That’s where we’re going. It’s like we will be bigger vessels to take in God’s glory. And we grow as we worship as well in that sense. You know, you talk about enchantment. I like the etymology of gospel, right? I talk about the gospel, and this is like every welcome class to my church, I’m always like, the gospel means good spell. And spell was a story. And everybody knows a good story is quite enchanting, isn’t it? So spell became enchantment because of the way stories are. But it’s a good story. Right. You know, gospel, it’s a good spell, right? It’s to frame people’s understanding of that. I remember there’s a sense of when we start telling stories, we immediately become friends, right? Like that’s the beginning of every friendship. C.S. Lewis says is like, oh, you, you too?

 

0:50:17.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, you too.

 

0:50:17.9 Jerry Fourroux: I thought I was the only one. You know, like that telling the story brings us together and in a world divided and a nation divided and households divided, like, what does it mean to tell stories and to hear the story of Jesus in new ways and creatively tell stories, tell people story of the brokenness of their life, that God is putting it back together. Tell them the story of how God redeems His saints and how in our history, there’s always someone who has struggled with what you struggle with. Who has experienced what you’ve experienced. And the vastness of that is profound. And I’m not Roman Catholic at all, but I do appreciate the idea of a patron saint. Like a saint you can look to, somebody who’s gone before you.

 

0:50:57.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

0:50:58.2 Jerry Fourroux: But just to look at their lives and to say, “Wow, that’s powerful.” And so I use stories of martyrs. I use stories of saints because it helps us say, “Oh, we’re not the only ones. We’re not the only ones who’ve done this. We’re not the only ones who discover that there’s more here than we realize.” I was talking about hospitality, and I talked about Martin of Tours and how Martin of Tours, you know, he saw this man who was, you know, shivering in the cold, and he took his, you know, six foot by three foot cape that he has as a Roman soldier, and he cut it in half, and he covered the man, and then he went on his way, and he had a dream that Jesus was saying, “Martin has clothed me.” Like it was like the least of these kind of aspect. And like how his cloak was so much a part of his ministry because he worked tirelessly to win the Franks over to the gospel, and then the Franks to most of Northern Europe. And the kings after him would keep that cloak, okay, in a special room in their castle, and they would call it the cloak room. Well, in Latin, it’d be the cappa, which is what he did, the chapel. The house of the… So the chapel, we get the word chapel from is from Martin of Tours and the cloak room, a demonstration of God’s charity through this man who worked tirelessly for people to, who was a missionary to tirelessly for these people to come to know Jesus. And so another reimagining thing, right? It’s there so… Like this is what I want to help everyone see. Like there is so much that the Lord wants to open up your mind and your eyes to see that is beautiful and is good and is true. And that will change you in this repentance. But repentance seems like a dirty word. I get that when people I say repent, you know, you see the crazy guy on the sidewalk…

 

0:52:45.4 Jim Lovelady: Right. Not helping.

 

0:52:46.3 Jerry Fourroux: You’re not helping. But it’s the sense of like, you know, I remember being in context where people would yell repent or something like that in a place. And I remember the most powerful thing where people was just people praying and praying for people who were walking by. There’s just people on the sidewalk praying, praying for people. That’s all. And we’ll just talk to people. And that was much more effective and much more Christlike than just yelling for repentance because they were showing you, here’s how you run the race, you know, and to say, “Hey, I’m I trust in the Lord. I want the Lord to bless you. I want what’s good for you, not what you think is good for you, but what God knows is good for you.” And so that’s that’s the helping to turn that to the prayer and the witness and the friendship, the conversation, all of those things. This opens up hospitality to us too. The writer of Hebrews, do not give up showing hospitality.

 

0:53:39.6 Jim Lovelady: Never know.

 

0:53:40.1 Jerry Fourroux: Because you might be entertaining angels. Like that’s the aspect of like, hey, there’s something good that someone you bring into your world is going to bless you. It’s going to expand your capacity for grace. It’s going to expand who you are. And you know, your Christlikeness to be shining through. And their Christlikeness is to bless you as well.

 

0:53:56.8 Jim Lovelady: So here’s my last question. What do you say to field workers, ministers, people who are in the throes of ministry, wherever they may be. Whether a missionary overseas or a minister in your local church, congregants who are out trying to love people and they’ve been giving the cloak away. They’ve been given the cloak away and they’re tired and they’re discouraged, what would you say to those folks?

 

0:54:27.8 Jerry Fourroux: I would say, you know, in the topic of like where you’re talking to me, asking me right now, this minute, I might say something different tomorrow. So I would say find beauty. Find something beautiful. And then take it from there. Talk about it with someone like we talked about Starry Night today. But talk about it with someone and someone who’s a believer as well. And then begin to come back to God to say, “Lord, you are here and I need to see you. I need to pay attention to you.” And that’s the place of working your imagination out to see the gospel in a new way. And we always need to see that. I was meeting with a friend of mine who’s a pastor, really hard time at his church. And he said he’s just been reading Russian literature. He’s been reading Dostoevsky, he’s been reading Tolstoy, and it’s been amazing to him. It’s been so beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Beauty will win. You know, like that’s what we believe. And I’d say find something like that and then, then talk about that with a friend. Bring someone else into that. Go public and let’s have a conversation about this. And then, you know, try… I will sit down, you know, if anybody wants to write the comments, I’ll go have a cup of coffee with you. Tell me what’s beautiful and let’s talk about it for 45 minutes. Because that is energizing and having that opportunity. So I’d say, you know, find those things where you’re reminded of who God is and you’re reminded of the gospel story and you’re reminded of, hey, it’s not about me. You know, or when you’re caught in sin too. Like, that’s also like your shame and your pride. You want to do all these things and like, okay, just enjoy Jesus right now. Just come to Him as a weak sinner, knowing He is good. And maybe it’s just a simple song. Maybe it’s just Amazing Grace very slowly. Maybe it’s just the Lord’s Prayer as you pause every phrase. Maybe it’s coming and repeating those words that of like, I have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed by what I’ve done and what I’ve left undone. And just put those words, those well-traveled words to it. I think those are powerful moments to do that. But take the gifts you have. Take your scripture out, take the… You know, better is one day in your courts than the thousands elsewhere. To gaze at the beauty of the Lord. Like the Psalms are so important to that. The Psalms, you know, to sing the Psalms, put on music if you’re not musical. If you are musical, pick up the guitar, you know, play the guitar. Creating is so important. I think, you know, I have the benefit of creating every week as a preacher. And so I’m creating, I’m thinking. I’m always looking for stories and beauty and illustration. I’m like desperate to find something to say. And so I’m always like, oh, I hear something else. Oh, I’m going to steal that. I’m going to steal that, you know.

 

0:57:21.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s right.

 

0:57:22.8 Jerry Fourroux: But it’s provocative enough to where I’m like, man, this is beautiful. You know, and it gets me to that place of doing that. And also for me as a pastor, preparing for a sermon, preparing for a talk or a Bible study, the more I can tap into my imagination and God’s imagination by the spirit, the more it hits me, the more it’s preaching to me. And when I’m modeling repentance, okay, what do I need to hear? What does Jerry Fourroux need to hear from God about this? You know, what, what else has taken my, my attention and my, what has made me angry this week? You know, is it sports? Have I given myself to sports? Have I given myself to my news source? Or my Facebook feed? Or have I given myself to the Lord? And I think I need to work out that repentance, and I need to, to sort of let people in on that repentance when I preach as well. And most of the time, my applications are just the applications that I need.

 

0:58:21.9 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:58:22.4 Jerry Fourroux: Wow, you spoke right to me today. Jerry’s like, well, it spoke to me first, so.

 

0:58:25.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

0:58:26.0 Jerry Fourroux: You know, like that’s, and that’s that also that well-traveled, you know, race to Jesus. We’ve been there. We’ve all been there. And walking that race to say, “Hey, I’m not where I need to be, but I know there’s people who are behind me who can learn from my repentance and learn from that.” Yeah.

 

0:58:43.3 Jim Lovelady: That’s so good.

 

0:58:44.2 Jerry Fourroux: Yeah.

 

0:58:44.7 Jim Lovelady: This is a good way to celebrate 20 years of friendship.

 

0:58:47.1 Jerry Fourroux: How about that? I didn’t know.

 

0:58:47.6 Jim Lovelady: I didn’t think about it until…

 

0:58:50.4 Jerry Fourroux: Espresso for 20 years, right?

 

0:58:52.3 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:58:52.8 Jerry Fourroux: Wow, I forget that 20 years. I feel old now. Yeah, you were, I remember you did, you break-danced at my wedding. I’ll never forget that. That was one of my favorites, was you break-dancing at my wedding.

 

0:59:02.0 Jim Lovelady: There’s a lot of memorable things that happened at that ceremony.

 

0:59:07.2 Jerry Fourroux: Indeed, indeed, indeed. Yes, yes. So, yep, I’m very happy to do this. I always love talking about this stuff. And we could talk about this all day and even talk more about things if we want to, you know.

 

0:59:16.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, there’s…

 

0:59:16.8 Jerry Fourroux: If you want to do this again, let me know. I’m all with it.

 

0:59:18.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, it’s a further up, further in thing. I want to see what’s on the other side of that hill and then on the other side.

 

0:59:25.1 Jerry Fourroux: Of that hill.

 

0:59:25.6 Jim Lovelady: Of that hill.

 

0:59:25.9 Jerry Fourroux: Absolutely.

 

0:59:26.4 Jim Lovelady: So. All right.

 

0:59:27.4 Jerry Fourroux: All right. Thanks, brother.

 

0:59:35.3 Jim Lovelady: At Serge, we spend a lot of time talking about lifestyle repentance because we have experienced this kind of re-enchantment, this beauty and wonder and awe at who Jesus is and what He’s done. And we want you to live in that kind of freedom and joy. So we have lots of resources for you to explore what it means to live a lifestyle of repentance. And I’m going to leave a number of them in the show notes, like a daily devotion for the New Year and a free ebook that you can sign up to receive. And I want to take an opportunity to highlight a book written by one of Jerry’s mentors that he mentioned in this conversation, Scotty Smith. It’s a study of the very book that Jerry has been preaching through, the Book of Revelation, so it just feels right to tell you to pick up this book. It’s the Gospel-Centered Life in the Bible series on “Revelation: Hope in the Darkness”. And every pastor needs to listen to the episode of Grace at the Fray where Scotty was my guest. He’s amazing. In this conversation with Jerry, it was fantastic for me for many, many reasons. But one reason that I haven’t highlighted yet is how Jerry and his church, like Lycoming Centre Presbyterian Church, represent an aspect of Serge’s ministry that is critical to our work in global missions, and that’s church partnership. All over the world, churches are joining us in shaping imaginations for the Kingdom so people are freed to live sacrificially as generous givers and bold goers. Week after week as the gospel is preached, congregations are given a vision of God’s victory through the death and resurrection of Jesus and are sent out on mission in their own communities and across the globe. Our partner churches send young people on short-term trips to serve alongside our long-term missionaries, and when they return, they come back changed, renewing the spiritual atmosphere of the whole congregation. We deeply value these partnerships, and if you’re interested in joining us, there are many simple ways to begin. Explore resources at serge.org and make our books and materials available in your church, attend a GCL Weekend or invite us to host one of the Gospel-Centered Life Weekends at your church and send your missionaries through Serge and consider supporting Serge financially. Together we participate in what God is doing to form and send His people for the sake of the world. So as you go, renewed in the gospel, re-enchanted by His love, go with this blessing. May the Lord bless you and keep you and may make His face 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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