"This Isn't a Fairytale"
EPISODE 166
Fill Your Heart With All the Best Things
Well, we’ve come to the end of the What’s Good study, and we hope it’s highlighted some of the many reasons we have to praise and thank our God. He has filled our world and our lives with his excellence. May we notice and appreciate it every day! This week’s conversation focuses on “whatever is pure” (Phil. 4:8). We start with what Jesus Said about the pure in heart (Matt. 5:8) then dive into a classic example of purity, in a segment we call, “Hello, My Name Is … Daniel.” Along the way we talk about how we can practice purity in quiet simplicity, how sin is like a virus attacking your system software, and how purity is like a password for entry into God’s presence. Find a PDF of the full 13-session What’s Good study guide and all the videos and resources at biblegeeks.fm/good.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Filling our hearts and minds with goodness leaves no room for the filth of sin.
This Week's Challenge: Take time to be holy this week.
Episode Transcription
This isn't a fairy tale. There isn't. Once upon a time, there was a man named Daniel. Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Weekly Podcast. This is episode 166. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much everyone for tuning into our final conversation in this What's Good Guided Study that we've been doing. We have covered a whole lot of ground and Now we are wrapping this thing up with a discussion on purity. And of all the virtues that God gives us, maybe purity is the best one to sort of end with in that it kind of just gets right to the core of what's going on on the inside of us. Yeah. It sort of does bring together a lot of the concepts and virtues that we've talked about. So it is a good place to bring it in for a landing. All right. And speaking of bringing it in for a landing, we dropped a daily download episode as a conversation starter not too long ago, and that was called "Snow in November." (silly noises) This is what's good. Snow in November. I looked out my window this fall morning, expecting to see brown, but instead everything I saw outside my window was covered in snow. Untouched by footprints or car tracks, It seemed to have baptized the world I knew, parked cars, trees, mailboxes, under a blanket of white. When you see how clean it looks, sparkling in the sunlight, you understand the Lord's invitation. "Come now, let us reason together. "Though your sins are like scarlet, "they shall be as white as snow." He says, "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. "Remove the evil of your deeds from my eyes." and he wants his people to learn to do good and seek justice for the oppressed. Isaiah 1, 16 to 18. So let's complete our study with one final praiseworthy virtue, filling our hearts with whatever is pure. So here's the big idea. Filling our hearts and minds with goodness leaves no room for the filth of sin. After David's sin, he prayed for God to wash him whiter than snow, but he didn't stop at a prayer for forgiveness. Instead, he asked God to create something new in him. "Create in me a clean heart," he said, "O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Psalm 51, verses 7 and 10. Rather than impure fleshly thoughts, those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. Romans 8, 5. The old you died. In baptism, you rose with Christ, who reigns above. So set your mind on what's above and put to death what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Colossians 3 verses 2 and 5. What do supermarket labels mean when they say 100% pure? Purity is about completeness. It's 100% pure Canadian maple syrup only if the entire product is Canadian maple. And we are pure in heart when we devote ourselves entirely to the Lord with single-minded sincerity. So here's the big question. What sin is it easy for you to overlook? And how can you give it more attention? So follow along this guided study at BibleGeeks.fm/good and may the Lord bless you and keep you today. Shalom. So this big idea here as we wrap up this conversation about purity, filling our hearts and minds with goodness leaves no room for the filth of sin. I think it's a really cool picture. And when I think about that, I think about how my wife is like one of these people who has a vacuum to vacuum her vacuum. (laughing) She is like, she is one of the people who loves to clean and she is the person who just has no tolerance for dirt. That's the kind of person she is. She's very fastidious about those things. And I think if we gave that same kind of attention to our hearts and filling up our hearts with good things, our minds with good things, there's gonna be no room in our life for the kind of sin that we talked about in that conversation starter, those kinds of defiling sort of influential things that can live within us. I think it's super important for us to always fill ourselves with goodness so there's no room for all that other garbage. - I think I'm understanding better just with that comment why our wives get along so well with each other. (laughing) I think my wife's most prized possessions are like her five or six vacuum cleaners, each of a different variety. And yeah, that commitment to cleanliness, of course, we're talking about now that inner cleanliness, being able to find purity. And the big question is what sin is it easy for you to overlook and how can you give it more attention? What a challenging question. It was funny, as I was reading this question earlier, preparing for the podcast, an alert came up on my computer for my antivirus software, clean my Mac, and just like something small can wreak havoc on your computer, it just occurred to me, like a Trojan horse can sneak in trouble, sin can backdoor its way under the radar into our hearts. And so I think a question like this helps us scan our system, so to speak, and bring awareness and alertness, which I think is the key to the second part of the question. How do you give it more attention? That awareness, that alertness. Adrienne and I brainstormed what kinds of sins go overlooked as I was thinking about this question. I asked her, what do you think shows up sometimes without you really knowing about it or a lot of people knowing about it? And man, once we started brainstorming, there's a lot of sins that can go overlooked. You think of gluttony, maybe complaining. I think coveting can be sneaky and small. Just, that's just a little, little bit of, I want this, or I wish that I was, or whatever. I think we talked last week about all the little ways pride rears its ugly head. But once you start the scan, so to speak, again, the red error messages are all over. There's warnings, the alerts, and you realize you have to keep your guard up because purity, that 100% idea, that's just gonna take a constant vigilance and constant grace from the Lord. - That's a super nerdy way to start this thing out. Anti-virus software for our hearts. Come on, I mean, that is a perfect segue, I think, into our icebreaker question this week, which is what do you do with the junk in your house when someone stops by to visit? - And so the cleanliness conversation continues. One move that I've pulled more than once, I've learned my wife hates this, so it might be my last time, but if we just cook dinner on like a cast iron skillet or a crock pot or something, rather than cleaning it in a pinch, somebody arrives, I'll just put it in the garage and after the company leaves, hey, it'll still be there to clean up and put away, no harm, no foul, everything's okay. - Wow, don't look in the Joy's garage. You might find a whole bunch of dishes that need to be washed out there. - No, no, no. It's just, you know, just for that one hour of them visiting or whatever. - Yeah. Mine is kind of the same, but just ever so slightly different. What do you do with the junk in your house when someone stops by to visit? I shut Ashlyn's door, and that's about how I deal with the junk in the house when somebody comes by, because that seems to be where all the junk is in the house. I don't know how it happened, but over the years, Sharilyn and I have developed like a regular practice before bed, we go through the house, and we de-junkify the house before bed, so that every morning, kind of like Groundhog Day, we wake up and it's exactly the same every morning. Everything's clean, put back in its place, except for Ashlyn's room. And our poor daughter, I love her very much, but cleanliness and organization is definitely not something she inherited from her mom and I. And so when someone comes over and we need to hide the junk, we just close Ashlyn's door, and it's all taken care of. (laughing) - It's nice to keep it all in one place. - That's right, it's all in there, we know exactly where the junk is. - It's like your house junk drawer. - That's right, pretty much. All right, so let's move into our first segment here on the episode, and that is Jesus said we are gonna go to a place where Jesus has something very powerful to say about purity, and of course, if you're thinking the Sermon on the Mount, you're thinking the same as we are, and that's Matthew 5 verse 8 is where we're going today. - Why try to be too inventive whenever the obvious is so good? So the verse is blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. And so when we bring that verse up, Brian, what does that bring to mind to you? - Yeah, so I was thinking here, because these verses are so familiar to us, it's easy for me maybe to overlook its true meaning or what it might have meant to the people of Jesus day when it was said. And I think this is one of those cultural landmine verses that I may not realize the power in right away. It's sort of that, where is the emphasis here in this sentence? Like, is it blessed are the pure in heart or blessed are the pure in heart? And that may seem like a minor difference, but I usually tend to grab on here this idea of pure being the idea being conveyed by Jesus, the pure in heart. But I don't think that's exactly what's going on here because the Greek word here used for pure is this word that's also translated in the Septuagint back in the Old Testament all throughout the Bible as this word clean. And yeah, usually this word is used as pure and innocent and clear. But if you remember that this word also means clean, and yeah, that's talking about all of the Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus kind of clean laws that God enacted for his people under the old law. They were to eat clean. They were to handle themselves with cleanliness. Things that they did were supposed to be pure and clean. So when Jesus is using this word here, I think there's a whole lot of deep cultural baggage and he's moving on to a greater point. Basically when he says blessed are the pure in heart, he's using this word pure and all of a sudden to a Jew's mind this means very specific things to them. This means I gotta eat the right things, I gotta wash the right way, I gotta do all these things the right way. But he doesn't say the pure of hands or the pure of feet or the pure of meals like they might expect. He's saying pure on the inside. And of course, I think here the emphasis is on the heart piece of it. He's saying, don't be pure on the outside anymore like you always have been, be pure on the inside. I think this goes with what God says through Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 29 verse 13, where the Lord had this against the people that they draw near with their mouth and honor him with their lips, but their hearts are far from him. And that idea that their hearts would be pure just like he's trained them on the outside to be physically pure, their whole existence really, now he wants them to focus on being pure from the inside. - I'm totally with you on this. And if your heart is pure, then your hands will be pure. Then you'll do the clean thing. Like we'll see later with Daniel thinking about how he eats or what he does because his heart is pure. It's not one or the other. And they were just stopping at the surface and cleaning the outside of the cup sometimes. So it made me think of this thing that our kids do where they stand in the doorway to the kitchen and demand that we say a password. And of course, we don't know the password. - Of course not. - Makes it like, okay, I'm trying to cook dinner or I've got some things to do here. So you say, what's the password? And then they whisper it to you and then you say it and you get in. So what was the point of the exercise? Well, they wanted you to say a password they had in their brain. And I think God is doing the same thing here in a kind of something like that. When he tells us what he wants, he uses this phrase pure in heart, which I think looks back to Psalm 24 is where that's used by David. And it's one of these temple entry Psalms where he asks, who may ascend the hill of the Lord, who shall stand in his holy place and it's asking who gets to go in and be near God and the answer is given. He gives us the password right after that. He who has clean hands and a pure heart who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. So to be pure in heart as our conversation starter said is to be a hundred, to be a hundred percent. haven't ever sinned but that what we do with our hands matches our hearts like like what we're talking about we're we're clean so the purity of our thoughts and our intentions leads to those pure actions and if we do that then Jesus says we will see God what a promise and so just like the old temple system required purification we have to be pure in coming before God whenever we want to draw near to Him, we have to be honest with Him and confess our sins and turn away from anything and turn our lives back a hundred percent to Him so that our hearts and our lives are completely in submission to Him. Yeah, that's all really good. And I think that's a great way to start out this whole conversation because, you know, as we think about Jesus being a perfect example of purity and everything that He did, He calls on us to follow His example and Connect what we do with what we say and what we believe and so let's move on to our second segment here on the episode And that is hello. My name is Thanks Lionel no, we're not looking for you we are looking for Daniel here Yeah, my name is Daniel and I think Daniel as one of the great figures in the Old Testament It's a great example of someone who stayed pure in all the ways that we've been talking about so far on this episode Yeah, isn't it strange that we haven't gotten to Daniel yet of all these figures that we have told either the story of or done These character studies of it's good. I guess we were saving it up for this purity study. I think it's really fitting Yeah, I mean Daniel obviously is known for the lion's den but also for his impeccable diet and for being a man who has good taste in friends. Yeah, and the story takes place in the early days of exile in Babylon. So this is before Jerusalem fell when they're brought in kind of the first batch of exiles in 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar took some of the best and brightest of Judah into his court. And so that's the setting for a lot of this these stories of Men out of place far from home, but they're interacting with people at the very highest levels of power in the world I can't help but think about people like Joseph as an analog to Daniel They're their stories are so so similar, but we see here in Daniel chapter 1 Daniel chapter 6 and Daniel chapter 9 is where we're gonna be really focused on this episode There's a lot more that happens in the book of Daniel and a lot of the dreams and different things that go on Also with his friends that are recorded there, but chapters one six and nine It's kind of where we're gonna focus here on the episode. So for the story here in chapter one I think we see how Daniel has a purpose and he has a direction and he is willing to take a stand for his faith Absolutely Daniel and these three other young Hebrews Chadrak Meshach of Edna go are training to be royal advisors They'll go to sort of the Harvard of Babylon for three years and they're gonna eat the best food Babylon has to offer and This is all according to the King's orders except that last bit is a problem because as Jews of course as we have already alluded to this idea of ritual ceremonial purity or cleanness they don't eat unclean foods and There's probably a host of reasons that the King's food and drink broke those kosher laws that we find in Leviticus. So Daniel resolved, as it says in the English Standard, or I like the way the New American Standard says, he purposed in his heart, he resolved within him that he would not defile himself. In fact, he asks permission not to defile himself, and the eunuchs that oversaw this whole program were scared it wouldn't go well, so Daniel proposes a test. Hey, give us 10 days of just veggies, put us on the vegan diet, throw some water at us, and see if we waste away into gaunt, pale little wimps who can't concentrate on our studies, or maybe you'll see that God will bless us. And when they're brought in before Nebuchadnezzar, everything that the king asks them about is responded to with an insightful answer, a helpful answer. And this part of the story, a lot of times gets attention because of this so-called Daniel diet, but this was really about devotion to God. It's not the purpose of this is not, here's a template for how to eat, but really it's about here is what it looks like to be committed to God. And as we go into scene two, we really see this devotion to God brought home even more. - Yeah, I love how this sets the stage for Daniel's character, right? It shows him as a really upstanding young man, and it shows that he's willing to take a stand and put out there his faith. He's not gonna compromise, he's not gonna give in to the whims of what's going on around him. And that's exactly what leads into this next scene in chapter six, where Daniel stays consistent. You could understand why he might try to fit in and try to fly under the radar, but he's not doing that. Despite being this captive Hebrew, the king acknowledges Daniel as an upright and trustworthy man. And we've had chapters and chapters here between chapter one and six, where we see his favor in the kingdom really taking hold, but he's trustworthy to the point where the king elevates him to become one of three high officials. He is like at the top of the food chain. And so the people start to get really jealous over Daniel's newfound importance. And they set on a course to find a reason to kill him. But here's the problem. How do you kill a leader who was put in position by the king himself? How do you kill a leader like Daniel? And so what they're gonna do is they're gonna use the king's pride to kill him and make a new law that they knew Daniel would have to break. That's such a cool story here. They knew exactly what they were doing when they told the king to put into effect this law that everyone would have to pray only to the king for one month. And they knew as soon as they did that, that Daniel was gonna have to break that. I mean, how predictable is Daniel's faith to where they can weaponize his devotion against him? That's consistent. And so of course, Daniel keeps on praying in his customary way, at his customary schedule three times a day. The king though finds out, and rather than being angry, it actually seems like the king is heartbroken by this fact that the king doesn't want to put Daniel to death. He doesn't want Daniel to be the one who's suffering as a result of this condemnation. But as the stone is rolled over the lion's den, the king basically calls on Daniel's God to deliver him. And so the king can't sleep, although in the morning Daniel is alive and the king praises God and commands all the people to do the same thing. And it's just a weird story, but all Daniel really did in this story was just keep on swimming. I mean, that's all I can think about. He just kept-- - Keep on swimming. - Exactly, he was just consistent the whole time. He never wavered or faltered. He just kept doing the right thing. - Absolutely, what an example of steadiness. I mean, consistency is so underrated, right? But that is the essence of faith at a certain level, of walking with God or any relationship that you wanna have. It's about building it over time and just staying loyal. And Daniel is the epitome of loyalty here to God. And it shows up in that same period of time our third scene when Daniel prays for God's people. So this is still in Darius' first year, and Daniel reads the book of Jeremiah and learns something new. He sees in Jeremiah 25, 11, or maybe chapter 29 of Jeremiah that God plans to bring the exiles back. What? He's bringing us back to Jerusalem after 70 years? And so he finds hope. And he also recognizes the sin of his people, which of course Jeremiah talks a lot about in this scroll that he's reading. And so he begins a confession and a prayer. And it's not just for his own sin. I think this is a real example for us as we think about our commitment to God and to the holiness of his people, a bride ready for our bridegroom. He prays for all of God's people's rebellion. He gives up food, he dons the sackcloth, and he begins his prayer. "Oh Lord," he says, "the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments." Interesting that he brings up God's steadiness here as we're talking about His steadiness. He says, "We have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. And so this prayer goes on for most of the chapter. He says, "To us belongs open shame." And he recognizes that everything that's happened comes from the curse that was promised back in the law, back when, remember Moses on the mountain saying, "If you don't keep this covenant, here's what's gonna happen." And the people saying, "Amen, amen, this will happen." And this is what has happened. And Daniel sees it and he sees their wickedness and he asks God to hear the plea of his servant, remove the shame, and he says, do it for your own sake. This is your holy city. Oh Lord, hear, oh Lord, forgive, oh Lord, pay attention, and act, don't delay for your own sake. And then this is the really cool part. Before he finishes, an answer comes. In fact, this answer was sent as soon as he opened his mouth to begin. How long does it take God to answer a prayer? well, God isn't really limited by time, right? And so the angel Gabriel appears saying, "At the beginning of your pleas for mercy, a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved." That's so beautiful, you're greatly loved, and I just need to interrupt your prayer to answer it. (laughs) And so he explains things further, and he outlines what he calls 70 weeks. And like you said earlier, the Book of Daniel's full of these kinds of visions give clarity and hope to all of God's people. But for our purposes, I think this is a fitting place to end Daniel's story and to think about the purity that he brings before God, not just in those acts of faithfulness, but in this prayer for God's people and the way that God reaches back out to Daniel and says, "You are greatly loved." I was thinking here in these conversations about Daniel how there are so many of these moments in our life and I think like we see here in Daniel's life that you've got to take a stand and that's what I'm struck by here in Daniel's story is like I hope Daniel isn't one of those guys that we like relegate to our kids story book. Daniel like Joseph is a young man who accomplished a whole lot by staying pure in the middle of an ungodly situation and that just tells me right there that Daniel is somebody that I can learn from today because we live in the middle of an ungodly world. And what do we do when it's time for us to take a stand? What do we do when it's time for us to show what our faith is all about? He is an example here of a guy who just quietly does the right thing. And I love that about Daniel, kind of like Joseph. He's not out there on the street corner shouting to everybody about his obedience and about his faith in the Lord. He is just going to do the right thing quietly and he's not protesting, he doesn't have some big tweet storm going on, he is pure, but I think that shows me that being pure in an impure world doesn't have to be obnoxious. It doesn't have to be overly confrontational for others. It's kind of like what Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 11, "To aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs "and to work with your hands." I think that's what we see Daniel doing here. He took a stand, he absolutely did not waver in his faith with the Lord, but he was also very respectful about it. And he did it in a way that inspired other people and motivated other people to do the same. He wasn't hiding, but he also wasn't trying to beat people over the head with his faithfulness. - There really is a simplicity to purity and to this lifestyle that Daniel brings, right? And I liked how you started that. I hope that we aren't thinking of Daniel as like a kid's story. Like you said, this isn't a fairy tale. There isn't, once upon a time, there was a man named Daniel. This is a guy who faced these real challenges and God is holding him up and saying, "Hey, this is for you to do too. You can do this." And I think that's a really important thing for us to see at such a time like this, to quote another exile story, to think about the way that we live with honest commitment to God. Adrian just brought up with me how sometimes you watch movies and shows and you see people attending church, but then going out and living a very different way than what we would think that goes with, with no guilt or no sense that any of it matters. It's not like, oh, I slipped up. And I think the message that these producers, at least what I get, and it seems like it's intentional, I actually think some of these folks are trying to give religion some good PR by saying, see, you can be a Christian without getting all uptight about all the stuff that people do, And you can be religious in this other way and isn't this nice. And I don't want to be cynical or anything like that, but I think Daniel is an example of someone who took this stuff really seriously. And I think it can be both challenging and refreshing. He could have said, what's the big deal? God didn't mean for us to get so caught up in all these details. And he could have thought just like Jesus says, be pure in heart. That was in the Old Testament too. be pure in heart. That's all he wants is for a certain kind of purity and then what we do doesn't matter. Not realizing that to be pure in heart means to give ourselves in devotion to God. He repeatedly risks his life to live with purity, both in his private life and in his public life. And we could again bring up the other three Hebrews as another example, this same thing. Are we for real about this? Do we take what God says seriously? Do we We take God seriously. Do we take our purpose in life and the good life that He intends for us seriously? And are we willing to take it on and just, like, do you believe that this is the best way to live? If so, then it's not like, oh, rules, these people with their rules. No, this is the good way. So embrace it and commit to it. It won't be easy, but live with that. Like you said, that simplicity, but also that kind of tenacious, gritty commitment that it takes to take this on. I love thinking about this as the good life. And of course, Daniel was not weary with all of his obedience, right? He was like, give me a chance to obey. I really want to obey. Let me show you what it's like to obey. So of course there, I think Daniel's a great example here. And moving on to our last segment here, our reach out discussion question. we're gonna continue this conversation about the good thing. ♪ Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪ - So this question really is bringing together all of these weeks, which is fitting, like we said, with purity, we talked about how we're filling ourselves with good things and the big idea. And so the question is, how have these gifts that we talked about the first eight weeks or so and virtues helped you elevate your thinking? - Yeah, I think it's funny how this conversation, this guided study has kind of snuck up on me a little bit. It's funny how I've seen these conversations that we've been having like seep into a lot of different areas in my life, the past couple of months that we've been having them. I've spent a lot of time over the last couple months thinking and reflecting about how I can use my talents and leveraging other people's skills to work together better. That's been some of my focus recently starting to show its fruit more in getting people involved in some of the work that I do, seeing people's skills, seeing the work that we can do as a congregation and sort of pulling people in and getting them more connected with the work. There are always better and more excellent ways to humbly serve people. And so showing kindness to others, reaching out and being more connected to people. I've been really trying to get more into listening and leaving space for other people to learn and to learn from other people's experience. That's been a big deal. But on the other hand, I've been more thoughtful about the importance of rest and time with my family and friends, thinking about these virtues and these gifts that God gives us. But we have so many opportunities to be together and to focus on singing and celebrating together. Actually, at Montevista, we just had a recent singing meeting where we had a brother come out and help us kind of learn new hymns and work on our song leading. And that was a really cool experience. but then today my family and I are gonna go camping. So it's like taking some time, being together, spending some restful time together. And I think these conversations have just helped me highlight the importance of being well-rounded with all the good things that we have the opportunity to do, celebrating with each other, singing with each other. And you know, honestly, it helps me to see that this life that God has blessed me with is a full life. And focusing on these good things like Paul talks about in Philippians 4 verse 8. The more time I've spent in God's creation, the more time I've considered all these things around me that he's blessed me with. I kind of find it hard to get bogged down with worry or sadness. It's a great life that the Lord has blessed me with in spite of whatever challenges that might be coming when I can focus on good things that we've been talking about over the last few months. - Amen, amen. I appreciate that emphasis on fullness and the good life as we just talked about with Daniel, it might've seemed like almost like a shotgun, like the scatter shot of all these different topics. But the picture you just painted is of balance and fullness because all of these things come from the same place and you're starting to see all of these different areas, how every part of your life is touched by God's goodness, both in the gifts that we enjoy and in the way that he directs us to walk and to think. And I love that. And you could see how we could have just taken one aspect of these things, like humility, or like the way that everybody has talents and really dug in. And that would have brought great fruit, but it wouldn't have brought the same kind of balance where it's touching every part of your life. And yeah, I think it's good training to think about these things. For me, it has been helpful. You know, it's like those brain training apps. Training isn't just something we do at the gym. You can train your brain to think in particular ways. And it's helpful for me to just spend some time thinking about the good stuff. It helps me notice it more. Notice, like you're saying, all these good things, the beauty of nature, the gift of good people in your life. All of these things are more readily accessible sort of like brain pathways, neural pathways, because we've been focusing on it. And the more you focus on something, you're telling yourself, this is important. I wanna spend time thinking about it. Notice it when you see it around you. And so it's been helpful to bring more praise to God and to bring more gratitude in my life. I think it's so easy to forget. For me anyways, all the stuff that there is right here and now to praise God for. As we look forward, of course, to the day that all the mess goes away and it's only good stuff and we don't ignore, like we just talked about with Daniel, we don't ignore that there are challenges to trying to live the way we want, trying to keep our focus and our heart and our mind and our lives in the right direction. But man, there's a lot here to support us a lot here to enjoy. And we are meant to be a people of joy, a people of hope, a people of gratitude, of people who see that it's not just like this world is going to be crumpled up in a trash heap and thrown away, so what's the point anyways? It's like, no, the dawn has already broken. There is hope already. We are living the beginnings of a life in God's presence, and someday that will be more fully realized. - That's such a cool way to think about it too. I think it really does highlight the big idea that we started this whole thing out with, But when you fill your heart with good things, there's no room for all the rest of the filth of sin. It's a training exercise as we wrap up this series. So let's get into our challenge for this week. And yes, it is the last episode, but we do have a challenge. I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. So we encourage you this week, along with us, to take time to be holy. And of course, I think there's a song in that somewhere, but you know, it's just such a simple thing. Take some time. Carve away some space. If you're a calendar person, block out the time in your schedule, but take some time to do something separate and apart for the Lord. Be a Daniel. Yeah. Right? Think about the way he was. Just his three times of prayer each day as we think about what time are we setting aside for private reflection and worship. And I know you and I both have practices. For me, there's some of these practices that we talk about and I get excited about that I go with for a long time and maybe there's an ebb and flow to it. And then there's some that I've been able to hold pretty solidly too. And it's just, there's prompts in my day that just every day I'm going with. But I think this challenge encourages us to find some special time, do something maybe even beyond the norm to pray, to sing, to meditate on scripture, talk with a friend about all these praiseworthy virtues of the Lord or about the good gifts of the Lord, other way that we can draw near to God so that, as James 4.8 says, He'll draw near to us. Of course, there's more to being holy than just these times of special devotion, but I think that's what we're thinking about when we think about that song is those things that put us in the path of God's grace to really be strengthened and to receive help and power and encouragement from Him. All right, so let's close this thing out with a closing prayer. And the suggested prayer in the study guide is create in me a clean heart, oh God. And that comes from Psalm 51 verse 10, as we've referred to a few times throughout this episode. So let's go to God in prayer. Holy father, as we come before you, we pray that you would have mercy on us in your steadfast love. We know father that we want so badly to be in your presence, to be more pure, more like your son Jesus. And as we see our desire for those things, we're so sorry for the ways that we wander from you and that we wander from the right way. We ask that you would purify us, that you would see those sins of ours and that you would wipe them clean, blot them out, and wash us thoroughly through Jesus' blood. We pray that we can come before you with clean hands, not because of who we are or what we've accomplished, but because of how Jesus paid that price for us. We want so desperately to follow you with all of our hearts, and we pray that you would help us to love you more, that we would love righteousness more, that we would treasure everything that you love and that we would hate the things that you hate. We ask that you would bring your power and guidance to every part of our lives and that as we think about new ways to live before you, that you would help us to see the good things that we should fill our hearts with. We pray as we walk through this world that you would create in us a new heart, that you would refresh us and renew us. And in everything we do, we ask and pray that you would be honored and glorified by our lives. All this we pray in Jesus' name, amen. - Amen. - So this is episode 166. This, as we've talked about multiple times on this episode, is the last conversation in our What's Good guided study. Next week, we are going to be off as our usual break time, but we are going to have a new series coming after that, a new guided study, our third guided study. We did Training Wheels, we did What's Good, And now we're going to do a series that we dropped a whole long time ago, but we're going to bring it back. And it's called talking to yourself. It'll be a really short guided study, just about three episodes in length. So if you're wanting to have a conversation with a friend or your congregation or whoever that you don't want to last a whole long time, well, maybe that one will be a helpful resource for you. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in. You can find all of our episodes on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find the show notes for this one at biblegeeks.fm/166. And if you want to download the study guide for this episode or the study guides for all the episodes, you can go to our website at biblegeeks.fm/good. I know that's a mouthful, but thanks so much everyone for tuning in and may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. [music]