Does God Love Us? Part 2

00:00:00] Cody: Hi, thank you for tuning in to the Logic of God podcast. I'm Cody. 


[00:00:07] Gina: I'm Gina. 


[00:00:08] Ben: And I'm Ben. If you're returning, thank you for coming back and if you are a new guest, welcome. 


[00:00:20] Today we're going to continue on with our core assumption discussion around does God love us? We'll tackle topics around divine hiddenness, how could God love us if he allows sin and death? And just his presence and theophanies throughout time and how that displaces love to us. I hope you enjoy today's episode. 


[00:00:48] If God loves us, why would he even allow sin in the first place? If it's so bad for us, if it is so damaging to us, if it prevents us from the relationship with him. Why even allow sin in the first place? 


[00:01:03] Gina: The world is a dollhouse. I'm just kidding. 


[00:01:06] Ben: Oh, okay. That was a twist I was not expecting. Yeah, didn't expect that one. 


[00:01:11] Gina: No. Cody and I have these like, you know, intellectual conversations about The purpose of the serpent and sin and the fallen world and all of it and you know, I think you have to Decide based on what you've studied and taken time to understand do we have free will or not? Does God love us enough to let us choose him? 


[00:01:35] Or does God control everything? And if God controls everything, then then the world really is a dollhouse. But if we have free will and God wants us to have the ability to say, no, I love you because I want to, because I know you because I have a relationship with you and you're good and you're perfect. 


[00:01:53] Like, that's the only way to that response, is to have the ability to sin. I don't think that God wants us to sin, I don't think He wants us to choose that. He wants us to choose Him, but we have to have good and evil in order to choose good. 


[00:02:08] Cody: No, and I think we covered this kind of previously, but if his desire is for us to be free agents and be able to choose for ourselves, and his will is that we are able to love him, uh, what kind of love would it be if we didn't have a choice? 


[00:02:28] And what kind of love would it be, or what kind What would it be if every time we sin, there's this giant sword in the sky following us around that strikes us down anytime we do something wrong? That wouldn't be love, that would be fear. And that, that wouldn't really be a god worth pursuing. And ultimately, I think that's how we come to the idea that he loves us. 


[00:02:51] He loves us enough to let us make our own decisions, and not force them. What he he knows is best for us on us. We're still free agents But he does know what is best for us and calls us to be the best that we can be 


[00:03:08] Ben: Yeah So this does beg the question if the two of you could snap your fingers and make it so that your children Had no choice but to love you and do whatever you said Would you do it? 


[00:03:19] Do I want robots? Essentially, yeah. 


[00:03:23] Cody: No, I mean, again, what kind of love would that be? Like, if you're forcing somebody to love you, it's not really love. 


[00:03:30] Gina: Most of the fun in having our girls is the personality differences and the character that comes out. Even when they disagree and, like, wrestle each other, it's still, like, there's an element of the fruitfulness of the joy and the goodness. 


[00:03:46] I don't think, I don't think we would feel that way if our kids were like, Yes, mommy. No, mommy. Whatever. Perfect little 


[00:03:54] Ben: Steppard wife children? 


[00:03:56] Gina: Ellie's a bag lady. Like, it drives us crazy. She finds bags everywhere and fills them with random things like trash and broken crayons and coins and stuff she shouldn't have that she takes off our desk. 


[00:04:08] And she'll throw it in the car and it'll Disappear for three months one time our keys were found in the freezer But like it's part of what makes our lives with them so much fun. And so entertaining I don't know. Maybe that makes me a really bad mom 


[00:04:22] Cody: I don't think so. 


[00:04:23] Gina: That's 


[00:04:23] Cody: the in between and like I know it'll be easier for parents to understand I don't know how how much people without kids could relate to this but If you tell your child, come sit with me and cuddle me and let's watch it, and you force them to do it against their will, or they decide to come, just plop down in your lap and love on you and snuggle with you. 


[00:04:46] What, what's more rewarding? Rewarding, yeah. Mm-Hmm? . Because it, it's definitely not when you, you force them to do what you want. 


[00:04:53] Gina: No. And when we try too hard, they let us know 'cause they don't come close. If we're like, please come here, let me hold you. Like I do that a lot with the little one. And she's like, no. 


[00:05:04] And she runs away. I would do the same thing. 


[00:05:07] Cody: Yeah. But what kind of love would it be if you forced them? Would that really be love? Yeah. 


[00:05:14] Ben: I think though, that the hangups for a lot of people in this specific discussion is, yeah. Okay. So. Having the ability to choose is important, but the choice is either loving God or death. 


[00:05:28] Is that really a choice? 


[00:05:30] Cody: Can you unpack that a little bit more? The only choice is loving God or death. 


[00:05:35] Ben: An eternal separation from God. So either you can choose to have a loving relationship with the Almighty, or you're separated from Him for all eternity, and that is essentially an eternal death. So is that an actual choice? 


[00:05:48] Cody: I mean, do I think it's an actual choice? Yes. Do I think that people realize the gravity of the decisions that they're making on the day to day? No, it is, especially in the culture we live now, just look at what we have in big cities. Like you can walk outside and you, you might see a few stars here and there, but think of thousands of years ago, walking outside that just Demands the response of giving God glory that that 


[00:06:17] Ben: something's there I think that hang up does make sense to an extent but only because we're looking at things in the scope of eternity it's okay, you can either have an eternal relationship with God and be happy and fulfilled or You're eternally damned. 


[00:06:33] You're just cut off from him forever, and that's an eternal punishment. That doesn't seem like an actual choice. It's like, here, you can either have five grapes, or I can punch you in the face. Okay, I guess I'll take the grapes. I didn't feel like there was a choice. But, when you remove it from that and put it back into the scope of relationships, again, with your guys kids, your kids actually have a very similar choice. 


[00:06:55] It all be it not one that has eternal ramifications. They can choose to have a good relationship with you guys. Or, they can choose to have a poor relationship with you guys. They can choose to accept the things that you say and honor you and give you love, or they can choose to reject you. That's the same kind of thing. 


[00:07:15] The aspects of God are revealed in His creation. And when you look at creation, that same dichotomy exists. We can choose We can choose to do good to other people, we can choose to love, we can choose to do the right thing in our everyday lives, or we can choose not to. I think there are a lot of people who try to say that, no, there's tons of gray area, and to be fair, sometimes there is. 


[00:07:38] But more often than not, we know the right thing that we're supposed to do, and we choose not to do it. And there's always repercussions for it. Not even always just to ourselves. And so, when God presents us with that decision, it's the same kind of decision we've been making our entire lives. You do the right thing that you know you should do, or you don't. 


[00:07:58] But this time, it has eternal consequences, one way or the other. People's hang ups are with the eternal part, that we actually have consequences, finally, to something that we're choosing. Rather than temporary ones where we have the chance to turn around. But I think the reason that in the end it's eternal is because eventually you get to know God in his entirety. 


[00:08:21] And when you're finally face to face with your creator, and there's no more running, there's no more excuses, there's no more I didn't know. God has revealed himself entirely in his goodness, you know who he is, and you know what you're choosing. In the end, there is no coming back from that choice. There has been some debate about something that the Bible describes as the unforgivable sin. 


[00:08:44] Generally, it's accepted that that is blaspheme of the Holy Spirit. And the reason given for why that is the unforgivable sin is because the only way you can blaspheme the Holy Spirit, or blaspheme anything really, is if you truly know and say something that's slanderous, to reject it. If you've gotten so close to God that you know the Holy Spirit, that you felt the presence of God move powerfully within you, And you mockingly reject it. 


[00:09:08] You have been given understanding of God, and you have rejected him directly. So, that's, that's what I would say to the idea of, Okay, well, it seems like it's not really a choice. No, it is a choice. And it's the choice that we make all the time. It's just, it happens to be eternal. The consequence is there. 


[00:09:24] Gina: So then, For people who don't know God the way that you or I do, for the people who are seeking or like maybe just went to church for the first time at Easter, what would be your advice to them on knowing what the right decision is? Because I think sometimes it can be, you know, when you get out of bed in the morning, the first three choices that you make, you know, what would you say is the most practical way of discerning For somebody who doesn't know the full truth yet, how to know which decision to make, what the right thing is, and how to maybe even hear from God personally. 


[00:09:59] Ben: Well, so there's, there's the obvious, which is, okay, start reading the Bible. Yeah. But, I think there's a bit more to it than that. Dr. Jordan Peterson, while he wouldn't call himself a Christian specifically, I don't think, Actually does give some pretty good advice to this effect in that a while back, he describes his journey towards being the person he is today and that he realized that most of the things that were coming out of his mouth were either false or things that made him feel weak, and there was a tiny voice inside of him that was always saying, Well, you don't really believe that. 


[00:10:33] Well, you don't really think that. That's not the whole truth. Yeah, I do love doing the Kermit voice whenever I do. I hope Jordan Peterson never actually listens to this to feel horrible about that. But, I think he gets that a lot. No, he does. And he's actually a good sport about it. The point is, is that when you start analyzing the things that you're saying and the things that you're doing, and you start to choose to filter out the things that make you feel weak, That you know are wrong or that you know are lies. 


[00:11:03] Start with your speech. 


[00:11:05] Gina: So, go to Philippians 4. 


[00:11:07] Ben: 8. And what does that say? 


[00:11:09] Gina: Whatever is true and lovely and good and pure. Think of those things. Yes, ma'am. 


[00:11:15] Ben: That's a very good spot. Very good spot to start. It all starts with how you think and also how you speak because from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. 


[00:11:26] So when you analyze the things that you're saying, It's going to change the way that you act because it changes the way that you speak and speaking is an action. Now another thing that's also very important is to just start spending some time in prayer. And it may be tough if you've never really done that before in your life, but start with five minutes. 


[00:11:44] Ideally, five minutes in the morning. The first thing you do when you wake up. It's like you said, the first three things you do. And you may not even take the full five minutes, but just get up. And rather than just laying in bed and shutting your eyes, be intentional. Get up, sit on the edge of your bed, or get on your knees, if you can. 


[00:12:00] Fold your hands, close your eyes, and pray. You don't have to have specific words, just pray what's on your heart. Learn Thank God for the day. Ask Him to help you to be honest, to not cheat people at work, to not cheat on time. Ask Him to be present in your mind. And then, maybe those five won't be enough. 


[00:12:21] Maybe you'll go a little farther, maybe you'll go a little less. But the point is, is that you start with intent. And you start with discipline. And you'll find that when you start inserting discipline into certain areas of your life, you're going to find other areas very quickly where you can add that discipline. 


[00:12:36] And it's going to be a slow change. For most people. For some people, it, it, they take to it like fish to water. It's incredible. But for most of us, changes to discipline life is very difficult. But, over time, you're going to find that there's a voice inside of you that grows stronger and stronger. And you're going to feel wrong when you're not doing the right thing. 


[00:12:58] Even for things that you've done a thousand times, suddenly you're going to start thinking, this doesn't feel right. And when you continue to listen to that voice, it is only going to get stronger and it's going to be harder and harder to do the wrong thing. So yeah, that's what I would recommend. 


[00:13:11] Cody: Nobody's perfect, so, I mean, I think a lot of people get hung up in this, okay, I'm a Christian now, I have to start acting like all of these people who are around me say they are, of these perfect, non sinning believers, and 


[00:13:27] Gina: Yeah, take the Christianity as the people side off of the pedestal. 


[00:13:31] Cody: Yeah, it's, let God work in you. 


[00:13:34] Like, it's not, like you said, I don't think for most people, it's not an instantaneous, sanctification is a big word. And for new believers, they might not. Know that but it's a process. It's not instant 


[00:13:47] Gina: and you never really arrive. 


[00:13:49] Cody: No No, so it's a process you try to get better like anything else to its practice you know, there's some people with just God given talent who can play any sport and pick it up super fast, but for Most people it's, you gotta practice at it. 


[00:14:05] If you want to get better at basketball, you know, you need to dribble. And if you want to get better at shooting and making baskets, you have to practice shooting and making baskets. You can't just expect to think that you're there and not try to get better at all. So that comes with the five minutes, starting with five minutes in prayer, starting with five minutes in scripture. 


[00:14:28] And I dislike when people, you know, Start out with, uh, or, or say, Oh, the, the first 15, that's all you need, because if you're truly getting into the process, it's going to be way more than 15 minutes and it should be, but you got to start somewhere. 


[00:14:44] Ben: What do you think, Gina, what would be your recommendations to newer believers? 


[00:14:48] Gina: So, I have two that come to mind. The first is, you need to take it seriously, the verse, take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ, because you have so many outside influences trying to convince you that God doesn't love you. And the Bible actually tells us that the world hates us and will hate us the more into our faith that we grow. 


[00:15:11] And so you just have to be prepared to be rejected by people who don't understand and don't want to know. And you have to be prepared to take captive every thought that tells you that God doesn't love you and isn't for you and isn't good for you. Because he is and you're going to see yourself grow in ways that you could have never imagined and you're going to feel healing that you never thought you could have had. 


[00:15:31] But the second thing is just with prayer, I was not raised knowing how to pray. Nobody sat me down as a child and was like, this is how you talk to Jesus. And so for me, it's not a formal thing where I have to get down on my knees and some people are very regimented like that and that's what makes them feel close to God. 


[00:15:48] But like I love praying in my car when I'm driving, I just imagine that Jesus is in the passenger seat and we're just chatting and that is the easiest way for me to unburden myself to God. And for me to feel like God cares about what I have to say because I can envision Him with me, listening to me, and then responding. 


[00:16:10] And, so I just want to encourage you, like, you can say the Lord's Prayer word for word and that is sufficient and that will get you somewhere, but if you really want to experience the relationship that God has for you, I would encourage you to talk to him like he's your old friend and not just some guy in the sky. 


[00:16:27] Ben: Yeah, I agree. And you can absolutely talk to God anytime, anywhere. And I do too. I do it all the time. One of the reasons I recommend that people be intentional to start out with is one, it's mostly the discipline. Because discipline is something that you have to learn. It is a skill. And when you're intentional about the way that you're talking to God in the morning, instead of just a thing where you're rolling over, your alarm's going off, you're like, well, okay, I gotta pray. 


[00:16:54] Ugh, God, thank you. No, you know you're gonna be groggy. You know you're gonna be tired. And if you need to, what you can do is you do it at the end of the day. But another reason that I kind of say you might want to be intentional about the way that you're doing it. God is gonna hear you no matter what. He already hears you. 


[00:17:11] And I think that most of the time when you pray, it should be as to an old friend, as to a man, your father who loves you, Abba father. But looking at modern culture, it seems that there's a lot more familiarity that we've gained with God and a lot less reverence. 


[00:17:27] Gina: And 


[00:17:29] Ben: I do think that the familiarity needs to be there because looking at the way the church interacted with God in the past. 


[00:17:36] There were periods where it was 100 percent reverence, there was no familiarity. He is a cold, distant man who is going to smite you with thunder and lightning. But now we've kind of gone in the opposite direction. Where it's, it's not that God is God. That he is beyond our understanding. That he is something we should be in awe of. 


[00:17:56] We're just kind of, okay, he's, he's there. 


[00:17:58] Gina: Yeah, hey God, how's it going? Hey buddy. No, you don't want to be like that. No. 


[00:18:02] Ben: And Like I said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with just talking. Sometimes when you're having a hard time, you just say, God, could you help me out here? And that is every bit as legitimate a prayer as someone who gets down on their knees and folds their hands and close their eyes. 


[00:18:18] All I'm saying is that there is a point in your life where you should be intentional, where you give God a measure of deference and you're intentional and you're disciplined about the way that you do it. Just as there are times in my life where I'm intentional and deferential to my parents. Not always, but sometimes. 


[00:18:39] Gina: No, that's a great point. And for somebody who is seeking, having a routine, having spiritual disciplines, if you don't know what that is, you should look it up because that will help you figure out your routine for reading your Bible and praying and you have times of fasting and supplication and there's just different ways of praying and of speaking with God that Show him different levels of reverence like you were saying ben. 


[00:19:06] So thank you. 


[00:19:07] Ben: Oh, no problem And thank you for bringing up that they don't have to because I do think that we're going to have some Some people who are seeking god maybe for the first time in their lives and they don't know very much and they they may be Intimidated when they go to church for the first time and they hear all this church speak Yeah, and it sounds like everybody's got everything figured out and there are all these rules and say the reality is is that there are no rules Specifically when talking to God he has heard you your entire life and there are probably points where you have Specifically prayed to him and maybe not even realized you were doing it So I would encourage whoever is listening if you are one of those people who doesn't know anything about church at all And all of this seems intimidating to you, and all of it seems scary. 


[00:19:50] Don't let it scare you. The church speak develops over time because it's kind of just a cultural thing. But you don't have to be fluent in it. Please don't let it scare you, and please don't let that drive you away from church. 


[00:20:01] Gina: And don't feel like you have to know the big words to talk to God. Like, I'm several years in now, I've been a Christian for almost eight years, and sometimes the first words out of my mouth are, God, I'm so angry! 


[00:20:14] Cody: Well, the Bible actually tells us not to have big words. Yeah. That's true. Like the pagans. God doesn't hear 


[00:20:21] Ben: bigger words better. I actually do think he can get bored. I've known some people who, who would pray like, Oh, heavenly father. Oh God. Oh Lord almighty. The one who raised up the dead raises the dead. 


[00:20:35] Now the God, the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Oh God, the almighty, the provider, the, and they go on for a good 


[00:20:43] Gina: alphabet of every name of God, 


[00:20:47] Ben: the ABCs of the almighty. Oh, I pray. And, and God, I imagine is, is sitting there in the audience going, is he going to get to it at some point? I don't think the prayer started yet. 


[00:21:03] Cody: Obviously, we need a podcast on prayer though, because we got a little bit off topic. Just a little bit. Yeah. But, uh, but 


[00:21:10] Gina: that's a huge part. 


[00:21:11] Cody: It is. It is. I don't think the church does a good enough job of. Teaching people what prayer is and how to pray agree If you 


[00:21:21] Gina: want to feel love from God prayer is your avenue you want to if you want to really think about The relationship side prayer is the relationship side 


[00:21:31] Ben: Because all it is is talking to God and you can't really have a relationship with someone unless you speak to them 


[00:21:36] Gina: Right. 


[00:21:36] Ben: But 


[00:21:37] Cody: prayer can also be listening too, like it is the relational aspect. So being silent in prayer is also a good thing. 


[00:21:43] Ben: Which is another one of those things that is frequently passed over in terms of prayer. We always talk about things we should pray about. But oftentimes we're not told to just have moments where we're silent and we're seeking God's word in our lives 


[00:21:57] Gina: I think that's called being prayerful 


[00:21:59] Ben: prayerful 


[00:22:02] Cody: Yeah prayer is not used to unload on God of all of your wants on this relational aspect though If God loves us Why does he seem so distant the the average person if if even churchgoers? 


[00:22:20] You would say that they've not had a real burning bush encounter with God. And if he loves us, why doesn't he give us that? 


[00:22:31] Gina: And I think you should add that you've literally said those words about yourself. I'm 


[00:22:36] Cody: speaking that from experience. I've, I've said that, like, why don't I get that burning bush experience? 


[00:22:43] Like, where's my, you know, why can't I go into the 10 of meaning every night and just glow and. What you would expect from our worldly view of relationship. 


[00:22:57] Gina: Can I interrupt you to share like a quick story about that? 


[00:23:00] Ben: No, but you can tell a quick story. 


[00:23:04] Gina: So. Cody used to talk about really wanting that burning bush moment, and I was not very knowledgeable at that time in scripture. 


[00:23:14] And one of the things that I noticed about him was that he would get so, like, hungry for God that he would just bury himself in the Word and, you know, all of these crazy books that break down scripture in ways that I had never heard of before. And I would tell him like, Cody, you glow, like you glow when you read scripture and when you're hungry for God, you do glow. 


[00:23:37] And I didn't know that Moses glowed. And he kept talking about all of these experiences of Moses and here he was and he was glowing. And so, you know, when I told him that, I think he started to realize that. He was having those experiences with God, but it's not something that came easy to him. And I think sometimes it takes being vulnerable and saying, I don't think I'm hearing from him in order to really hear from him. 


[00:24:03] Ben: Now, I think for a lot of the people who ask this question specifically, it's, okay, why doesn't God specifically manifest right in front of me? Why doesn't he just talk to me in plain English? Why do we have to go through all this rigmarole? Well, part of it is that he has done this in the past. He has revealed himself directly to individuals and The the example that was given earlier today when he revealed himself to the entirety of Israel Pretty much everyone was terrified and they asked him never to do it again So, that isn't to say that literally everyone in the world would have that reaction. 


[00:24:39] And there are actually stories that have been told, assuming they're telling the truth, of people who have heard directly from God, who have heard him speak directly to them, audibly, and in a voice that they could actually hear. There was one woman who was a former shock jock. What is that? Basically someone who's on the radio who says very shocking things. 


[00:25:00] Oh. 


[00:25:02] Gina: Okay. 


[00:25:03] Ben: Um, and she was one of the most foul mouthed people you could possibly hear. And she was constantly slandering God and saying absolutely horrible things. And she described one day when she was in front of a live studio audience, and then she heard the voice of God come from the audience. And he basically told her that she would not be able to speak. 


[00:25:22] Like, her mouth would be shut until she could recognize that Jesus Christ was Lord. 


[00:25:27] Gina: Oh, wow. 


[00:25:28] Ben: And during that specific show, she suddenly lost the ability to speak. Alright, that's God talking to you. So, there was more to her story than that as well. And it's a pretty good story. I wish I could remember her name. 


[00:25:41] But The point is, is that there are people that he does reveal himself directly to. And it does seem to be that there are frequently cases where It was just about the only way to reach somebody. And there are other instances where God has revealed himself directly through dreams and visions. It's actually a fascinating statistic. 


[00:26:00] One out of every four Muslims that comes to Christianity and converts came specifically because they saw Jesus in a dream. And Jesus came to them and told them that, I mean, obviously all the dreams are different. But the through line that you find through a lot of them is that one, they see Jesus. All of them actually recognizes Jesus to the point where there are actual billboards up in certain parts of the world with the image. 


[00:26:24] And it says, have you seen this man in your dreams called this number? And so they see the same man that everyone can recognize. And then he will tell them something specific. Frequently a person that they need to meet at a specific time. And then they go and At that specific place, at that specific time, they see that specific person they saw in their dreams, and then that person talks to them about Jesus. 


[00:26:49] So, I do feel like the question is more, Okay, so why doesn't he do that to everybody? 


[00:26:53] Where's mine? 


[00:26:54] Ben: Yeah, where's mine? Why do I not get that? And, maybe it will happen. But there are a number of reasons for why that might not happen. 


[00:27:02] Gina: And I would just like to tell for myself, It has not happened for me unless I was absolutely desperately seeking him and not because I wanted anything other than just intimacy with him like you can't just command God to speak and expect him to do so you have to chase him for the right reasons and you Even then you might not hear exactly what you're looking for. 


[00:27:33] Cody: You know, if you look at these encounters and I don't think people in myself when asking that really understood what we were asking for, because one, you mentioned that Ben, where He did present himself to people and they were just terrified. And throughout biblical theophanies, that's what you get is just people end up in the fetal position on the ground and terror, not being able to comprehend the glory that his presence demands. 


[00:28:08] And I don't think people realize that. And the second thing that I think kind of goes without acknowledging is, you know, if you do have this encounter, you're kind of removing the gospel call. You're removing salvation by faith. There is no faith if you know 100 percent for a fact that there is a God. So, you don't, I don't think you're gonna get that God is gonna just smack you in the back of the head, fly you through, you know, millennia past, and you're gonna see all this stuff for the average person. 


[00:28:46] I don't think that's a reasonable ask. 


[00:28:48] Ben: No, you're absolutely right. The more God reveals himself to you, the more responsibility you have for the decisions that you make going forward. 


[00:28:57] Right. 


[00:28:57] Ben: Because at that point, like we said earlier, the fool believes in his heart there is no God. At that point, God has revealed himself to you. 


[00:29:05] There is no question. But when you choose to sin, you are actively turning your back on a God you know is there. There is no question, no interpretation, no doubt. And as horrible as all of those things are, the, the, the inter Well, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was something else. And the doubts that you feel, those serve a purpose. 


[00:29:27] God is giving you a chance to turn back. He's always giving you the ability to come back from your mistakes. But once you know, more is going to be asked of you. But beyond that, too, one of the reasons that he will often not appear, maybe not directly, but, Giving you experiences, giving you miracles in your life, making his presence felt. 


[00:29:54] Things that are less direct, sometimes he does seem distant in those ways as well. And sometimes the reason for that is the barriers that we put up in our own lives. Sometimes we're actively making choices that are going to push him away. And if he was to break through those, that is a traumatizing thing. 


[00:30:14] It's like with the Israelites, when God emerges in his full glory and a thunderous roar emerges around you, What is true goodness is breaking through into you, into your life, through all of the barriers that you've put up between you and God. And that is a horrifying, traumatic thing. You're being broken apart. 


[00:30:33] That's one of the reasons why we can't stand before God as we are and live, because that would break us. And so in order for him to peacefully do this to a willing person, you have to examine your own life many times, and you have to look at each individual obstacle, which is one of the reasons why this is such a painful and long process. 


[00:30:55] Is that we have so many different things in our lives, and God slowly highlights them. It's why we always feel like, okay, I feel like this wasn't a problem in the past. No, it was. We frequently come to things and we think, okay, I didn't feel like I had an issue with this. You probably did. 


[00:31:09] It's 


[00:31:09] Ben: just God didn't make you feel horrible about it yet because he wanted you to address things one at a time, and God really does feel sympathy for us. 


[00:31:19] He is kind His. His yoke is light. It's one of the things that scripture says, and it does feel weird considering all the horrible things that we do and all the things we constantly doing wrong. But God doesn't expect you to become perfect overnight. It's one of the reasons he sacrificed himself for you is because is because he knows that you're not perfect. 


[00:31:38] And in this lifetime you never will be. And he is slowly sanctifying you. He is slowly exposing the parts of you that aren't right with him. And he's making them right. And so until all of that's right, you're not going to be able to stand before the Almighty. And during that process of sanctification, God is going to give you little road signs. 


[00:31:56] As C. S. Lewis talked about, you're going to see little things every once in a while. And sometimes big things. And sometimes the things that you manage to clean up in your life will actually bring you so close to God that it feels almost like he's in the room with you. I've known people like that. I think Gina's kind of like that. 


[00:32:13] I don't know Gina super well, but for my father definitely He's not a perfect man But the aspects of his life that would stand most strongly between him and God aren't there the same way that they are with me And so he's able to go into the Holy of Holies So often he spent so much of his life there And he spent so much time in the presence of God, and he's always hungrily waiting for more things to be told to him. 


[00:32:38] And, you know, it's something that I envy about my dad's relationship with God. But just because you don't have that, it doesn't mean that God dislikes you. Or he doesn't have favor with you. Because often times, the struggles that you have, you're having for a reason. And the understanding that you get through fighting those struggles is something you're going to be able to teach to someone else. 


[00:32:59] Gina: Well, and they're gonna, they're gonna teach you where to turn. 


[00:33:02] Ben: Absolutely. 


[00:33:03] Cody: There's a lot to the hearing God and one, like you mentioned Ben and Gina, is there could be something you're doing that's preventing you and you're getting in your own way. You could be hearing God and not recognize His voice. You could be hearing God and rejecting His voice because you don't like what He's saying to you. 


[00:33:25] But if, if you're also looking at the examples we have in scripture. Where even the, the old priests, the act of preparing themselves to go into the presence of God is lost on a lot of people today because covering themselves in blood and just the massacre that that is. And it's not to be gruesome, it's not to be gross, or God demands this weird stuff, but what it takes to prepare you to be in the presence of God too. 


[00:34:00] And we don't have to worry about that as much because we're on the Other side of the sacrifice of Jesus and his cleansing of us for that purpose of communing with God directly instead of having, and not necessarily having to, but the Old Testament has the kind of mediators like the prophets and priests and kings where we're called a royal priesthood after Jesus now. 


[00:34:28] That we can commune directly with him, but just the idea of preparing yourself for that mental space. How many people do that before they ask for this encounter? How are they preparing themselves for holiness or being in the presence of God? How are they preparing themselves for that? 


[00:34:47] Gina: So, I don't know, we're, our conversation is kind of reminding me of an experience that I recently had. 


[00:34:55] And just why it's a big deal to be in God's presence and, and how strongly his presence affects us because like we want the burning bush and we want the. overwhelming encounter, but then we're not necessarily prepared for what it brings. And, you know, the fetal position thing that Cody talked about, it's like, if you're fully in the presence of God, a lot of times it does bring fear. 


[00:35:20] My uncle died on Easter Sunday and I was there when he passed. And the presence of the Holy Spirit in the room was so overwhelming that I almost passed out. And I, that had nothing to do with me. It was all to do with my uncle. But God's presence is more powerful and impactful than anything that you could imagine. 


[00:35:43] And so having that desire, you should also have an awareness that you're asking for something more powerful than you've ever thought of in your mind. Like just his presence alone, you know, through the Holy Spirit can overwhelm you or heal you or kill you. But to ask God for his theophanies, it's, um, you're, you're biting off more than you can chew. 


[00:36:14] Ben: Now, you can't hope to contain the ocean in a thimble. 


[00:36:18] Gina: Yeah. 


[00:36:19] Ben: It's an interesting 


[00:36:20] Cody: thought experiment. 


[00:36:22] Ben: Yeah, that was another thing from, from Joy Lewis. Actually she, C. S. Lewis's wife, she mentioned during her conversion, how she felt the presence of God during an absolutely horrible moment in her life. Yeah. 


[00:36:35] where she was fully open and vulnerable and God stepped in. And it was only for maybe 30 seconds. But in those 30 seconds, God was present in that room with her. And those 30 seconds of just God being there, not saying anything, but just being there, was enough to completely divert her for the rest of her life. 


[00:36:56] And I don't know that she ever felt God's presence the same way. But that's the way she described it. It was only for 30 seconds, but Can you put, can you scoop up the sea into a thimble? You can't. 


[00:37:08] Gina: No. 


[00:37:10] Cody: And I think. Especially today, I mean there's a more modern philosophical thought going around of the argument of reasonable non belief or divine hiddenness, I think is another term that they use for it. 


[00:37:27] And the idea is that God isn't real because he doesn't make himself known. If he, Loved you he would make himself known but that kind of takes away from what we do have that we Know is from God or I expect from God, you know We have the Bible that is an expression that demands a response on God's end from us the same thing with The death of Jesus, you know, that was an ultimate act of love that demands a response from us. 


[00:37:59] So you have these different instances and you can go through the Bible like Adam clearly had interaction and he was active and Adam had a role to play in creation of naming and being the first and all of these different roles of the model idea that God had for us when he first made humans. And then sin enters, and you have Adam and Eve hiding from God. 


[00:38:32] So they were actually the first ones to hide from God, not God hiding from them. And then you can continually follow this out through the Bible, where it just seems like he's getting further and further away. You have the Israelites had the presence of God with them, and then they screwed that up, and that presence left. 


[00:38:51] And the more sin that enters in, or the more They let outside cultures affect how they interacted with God, that hiddenness almost became more prevalent in the interaction with God. So to take this modern philosophical thought of divine hiddenness, and you just have to throw away all of these steps that God has made towards us, and the relationship with us, and us knowing him, and just reject those to, to get to that point. 


[00:39:26] Ben: But I think that the philosophy also rejects the very concept of meaning itself as a proof for God's existence. So again, with modern sensibilities, we tend to say that, no, meaning is whatever you ascribe to something. If I decide that something has meaning, then it does. But I don't believe that anyone actually thinks that. 


[00:39:47] Like when, when you see a sunset, we understand that it's beautiful and beauty is in essence a describing of meaning, that there is something meaningful. Something truly incredible. Something unique and special about a sunset. That we would describe it as beautiful. Why? It's a sunset. It's, it's a bunch of clouds, and it's the earth rotating, and the sun also moving relative to a bunch of other planets. 


[00:40:15] Uh, celestial bodies and moving in a galaxy in a spiraling. 


[00:40:19] Cody: If you described it like that, I'm like, why in the heck would we think 


[00:40:23] Ben: that's beautiful? But the truth is, is that it is. 


[00:40:26] Yes. 


[00:40:27] Ben: And when we're talking about meaning, most of the time it's about us orienting ourselves around something that is objective. 


[00:40:35] If you don't see the sunset as something that's beautiful, if you don't find life a particularly important thing to preserve, generally there is something that is considered wrong with you. It isn't that you just subjectively have something different about the way you perceive beauty. And there are people who will say, No, you know, I find toilets beautiful. 


[00:40:59] And then they'll put them in modern art exhibits. But then, you know, When you ask, why? It isn't simply because, well, I just see it as that. No, they'll give it a Well, you see, a toilet is actually a thing that takes the waste of mankind away. It pulls it, and it takes it away from us. And then it takes that into an area where it can fertilize fields and bring new life. 


[00:41:23] It's taking something that is disgusting, and the justification for it being beautiful is other things that we find beautiful and meaningful. That's the whole. The arguments that they use to try to say that beauty and meaning itself is subjective relies on beauty and meaning not being subjective. 


[00:41:43] Because otherwise all you would have to say is, I just feel it. It just is. I 


[00:41:48] Cody: don't even know how to respond to that. It just is, because I said so. It 


[00:41:54] Ben: just is because I said so. And that's, it's something that does feel much more modern. And it's a bizarre thing. When you look at art from, you know, ages past in every single culture, There are throughlines through all of them, where you can see an attempt at mastery, at either attempting to capture reality in itself through paint, or to try to accent specific aspects of reality that we all would recognize as beautiful. 


[00:42:18] Every single culture throughout all the earth has produced art that is beautiful, that all of us can look at and say, it has value. And then there's some of it more recently where we look at it and we say, okay, what, what, what's the point? And even that stuff, you can argue is beautiful, or has meaning, or has value, because of things that we all agree objectively do. 


[00:42:39] You can say that Picasso's work has value because it's subversive, because it forces you to look at things in a new way, and that that in and of itself is valuable. And we all agree that looking at things in a different perspective is valuable. But yes, you have to use the objective standard to prove the objective standard doesn't exist, which is a bizarre thing. 


[00:42:59] Cody: Yeah, I like the argument from Beauty, too, because I'm gonna paraphrase Romans here, but, um, Romans 1. 20 talks about God's invisible qualities and divine nature is known from creation, and art has been something that's kind of transcended time, like, people still love art from hundreds, thousands of years ago, and That's going to be how it progresses through the ages, usually it grows in popularity. 


[00:43:25] But that's just a poor imitation of what they're actually trying to capture in the first place. You know, you have these landscapes. Okay, who made the landscape? You have starry night. To me, the stars just speak of the splendor of creation and the peak of creation. You know, how can you look at, if you've ever been to a dark night sky area and seen the Milky Way with your naked eye, like, it's hard to not just think, or to think, okay, this is just random coincidence that we're here, for me anyway, but. 


[00:44:05] No, yeah, I agree. 


[00:44:07] Gina: I want to close out just with this final question, and this is, I just want to know from everybody's perspective how you know that God loves us. 


[00:44:21] Ben: Well, for me specifically, the reason I know that God loves me is the same reason I know that my dad loves me. It's because he showed me. And ultimately, that's going to be the greatest proof for anyone. 


[00:44:34] It's not because you're specifically told. If I was simply told that my dad loved me by someone else, who wasn't him, like, okay, okay, it may be the truth, but how do I know? In the end, the best way that you're going to know that God loves you is that He reveals that to you. And He will reveal that, as we talked about, through prayer, through time with Him. 


[00:44:55] And that first time where He He shows himself to you, where he reveals even the tiniest part of his presence to you. It is a life changing event. Because you feel an ocean of love. You feel emotions that you don't really understand. You feel a magnitude of someone being there. You always feel when someone else is in the room. 


[00:45:22] Like you, it's, it's not as if you always sense when someone else is in a room, but whenever someone else is in a room, you, you get a feeling. It's a different feeling from when you're completely alone, but when you're sitting alone in a room and suddenly you feel the Lord come into it, it is a more full room than you've ever felt before. 


[00:45:40] It's as if the whole world is full and everything beyond it is full and there's nothing else but that room. Everything is full and nothing is there. And you're just there with someone who loves you, and he may not even say anything specifically to you in that moment, but you feel him there. For me, the first time it happened, it was only a fraction of a moment. 


[00:46:03] It wasn't even a few seconds, but it was there. And I felt God in his entirety. And it is enough to change a person's life. And when you feel him, it's impossible to ever conjure up the same feelings again. But your spirit remembers. It remembers. And if I ever turn from God, I'm going to have to reject that. 


[00:46:23] And I couldn't in good conscience do it. 


[00:46:26] Gina: Thank you for sharing. 


[00:46:27] Ben: Yeah, no problem. 


[00:46:29] Cody: What about for you? Why do you know God loves you? What's your proof? 


[00:46:36] Gina: I think I remember what it felt like when I didn't know who Jesus was. And I remember scrambling all the time. to find a way to feel the kind of love that I knew was out there for me, but I didn't know where it was. 


[00:46:56] And the second that I accepted Jesus, my life didn't dramatically change. I didn't have this, like, I'm brand new experience. My life got harder. But as I've grown in my faith and in my maturity, I've understood that God loves me and has saved me from more than I understood at the time. And the experiences that I have are going to help people who are going through the same thing feel like They're not invisible and it's just going to grow that love. 


[00:47:34] It's just going to spread it. And so that's, that's the thing that gives me hope is knowing that like the hard stuff I've lived through wasn't for nothing. It wasn't just you live and you hurt and you die and um, you know, then there's Christ. If you've ever watched the passion and just tried to imagine the kind of stuff Jesus went through for us. 


[00:48:00] You can't deny God's love, because there's not a single person on this earth that I would truly pull that off for Even my children like I don't I don't know how jesus bore that. What about you cody? 


[00:48:18] Cody: for me sometimes In the past i've thought to myself That I wish I didn't grow up in a Christian household because I didn't know the drastic difference with God or without God. 


[00:48:36] There's no time in my life that I can think that I didn't know God or I didn't believe in God. Even when I was going through processing my own beliefs, you know, after I got out of the house and you're introduced to the world and you're more pressured into that lifestyle and that way of life. There has never been a time where I, I just rejected God or didn't believe that there was a God. 


[00:49:01] But with that, I also think I've been blessed because I can't think of a time where I've struggled with a situation that I haven't been able to give to God. Like you mentioned earlier, because yoke is light. And it's not that I haven't dealt with difficult things in my life, but I've also always had this. 


[00:49:23] person, not necessarily a person, but this God, this dad to run to and give what I'm struggling with to, and that be taken away from me and makes no sense. So that's how I've felt loved by God. 


[00:49:47] Gina: Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our podcast today. If you liked what you heard, please feel free to subscribe and share and leave a positive review. And if you would like to connect with us on social media, you can do so on Instagram and Facebook at the logic of God. You can also send us an email at main dot the logic of God at gmail. 


[00:50:09] com. Thanks again for listening. We hope you have a great day.