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when you subscribe at prolonlife.com/now. This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm
1:20
your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. Hi guys, Steve. Got a special guest on the podcast.
1:24
His name is Tim Chally. He is a theologian, pastor, author, and blogger. He was a very,
1:29
very early adopter of the blog format. We talk about that a little bit in the show.
1:32
In his blog, chalis.com focuses on theology, social, and cultural commentary and also book reviews.
1:38
He has written a lot of books. He's done a lot of things. His latest book that he released,
1:43
is this book right here called Seasons of Sorrow. The subtitle is The Pain of Loss
1:48
and the Comfort of God. Whenever I was made aware of Tim, I was made aware of him by some of the
1:55
people here that do some stuff here with Undaunted Life. I was like, "Oh, I want to look into him."
1:58
Then I was reached out to by his publisher. This book, it's a brutal book because it's about
2:04
what he went through in the first year after his son, his 20-year-old son, suddenly passed away.
2:10
This happened in November of 2020. He immediately starts writing because he's a writer.
2:15
And this book follows the first year of mourning, the questions he had for himself, the doubts,
2:22
the tears, the faith, the development. We get into all of that in this interview because in the
2:28
interview, I obviously talk about how he got his start as a writer and a pastor and those things.
2:33
We talk about another book of his called The Visual Theology Guide to the Bible. This guy has
2:36
a tremendous reverence for the Bible and where he gets that. What are his thoughts around Christians
2:40
that don't actually read the Bible? Because I know there's a lot of those out there I've had
2:43
certainly parts of my life where I basically haven't read the Bible at all because I've been so busy
2:47
doing other things and making all kinds of other excuses. But then when we get into seasons of sorrow,
2:52
we talk about what it was like whenever he first got the news and then how can he be confident
2:56
that he's going to see his son someday in heaven because there's obviously some debate about that
3:01
regardless of the circles that we're in. What he did to honor his son whenever he and his wife
3:05
decided they didn't want to actually view the body after he had passed away. The inner dialogue
3:10
of mourners and the things that they go through feeling like, you know, a kid's death is their
3:14
fault even if they weren't even there because he was in Canada at the time and his son was in
3:17
Kentucky whenever this death happened. Then we dig into, you know, the power of God's sovereignty
3:21
and how this almost like this entire circumstance really changed him and changed how he viewed God
3:27
and how he viewed God's sovereignty and those things. And then we talk about some other things
3:30
within the book. We also talk about reformed theology and Calvinism a little bit. So that's
3:34
gonna be some red meat for some of you guys out there. We don't get too far into that, but we do
3:37
get into it. We talk about men's ministry. We talk about what it means to be a godly man.
3:41
And I really liked his answer and I thought I was very unique. So really, really interesting
3:44
interview guys. This is not one to skip, especially if you've had any type of hurt in your life or
3:48
if you've lost somebody, this gives you a little bit of a scaffolding with which to build upon if
3:53
you're going to, you know, become better for it in Canada, maybe even turn that into your own
3:57
ministry. And before we get to the interview with Tim, I do want to remind you guys about a
4:00
couple of our sponsors and supporters of the show. And that is the upper room in the King's
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council. So for any of you entrepreneurs out there and a lot of soon to be entrepreneurs have
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been reaching out to the guys over there, I want to make sure that you hear about this organization.
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So this organization, their mission is to create wealth and provision for the purpose of establishing
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God's covenant on this earth. And they do that by equipping entrepreneurs with all kinds of
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tools that they need to start to grow and, you know, send out their business and their products
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and all the things that they're doing. And one of the great ways that they do that is through a
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mastermind group called the upper room. So some of you guys are familiar with mastermind groups.
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So you'll have a bunch of, you know, movers and shakers in this industry or that industry,
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kind of getting together to kind of give everybody best practices and how they can maybe cross
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reference some different things and send some business different places. But a lot of those
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places aren't gospel centered. They're certainly not kingdom centered. But that is one thing that
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the upper room strikes to do and they want to make sure that that is a place for a bold
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kingdom leaders to basically develop as an entrepreneur. And so that's what the upper room is.
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It's very, very customizable to whatever your business is. I've spoken to their group before.
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If you want some more information on that group, go back to episode 355 of this podcast side is
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with the founder of the upper room and the king's council, Riley meek. It's called the king
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entrepreneurship and money. And on that episode, Riley basically said, hey, if you're people want
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to get in touch with us and see if that we can help them to be able to equip them to standardize
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some stuff in their business and to send it to the next level, they need to text upper room
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to 727-472-3860. Again, that is upper room upper space r o o m to 727-472-3860. That will be in
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the show notes. And when you do that, you will be able to schedule a one on one with Riley me,
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who is the founder of the upper room and the king's council. And you know, it would be a
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tremendous thing for you guys to be able to go through that to see if he can do some things to
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help you to really aid your business if you're in this growth structure. So again, that's upper
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room upper space r o o m to 727-472-3860 to schedule your one on one with the founder of the upper
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room and the king's council, Riley meek. So guys, again, I really enjoyed my time with Tim chalice
5:58
today. So without further ado, let's get into it. Tim chalice, welcome to adulthood life of man's
6:03
podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm happy to have you today. There's an interesting thing
6:08
about you's you've got a lot of words that someone can use to describe who you are and what you do.
6:12
So as a wave introduction, you are a theologian, a pastor, an author, and a blogger. And I'm sure
6:19
there's some other things in there that you would add to a resume sheet or something like that. So
6:22
I guess now's the time let's correct the record. If I got any of those things wrong,
6:26
let's add some stuff. If I miss some stuff, and I guess explain to me, how did you come to what
6:30
you're doing today, you know, being able to do all those different things? Sure. Yeah. RCs for
6:36
all would say we're all theologians. So I'm a theologian in that sense, not in the sense of having
6:40
formal theological training. I think the others are true. I came to what I'm doing. So I'm a writer
6:46
and an author, a blogger and an author is what I do. And I came to that by being one of the early
6:51
adopters of that medium known as blogging way back when I jumped on it early, just out of interest.
6:57
I love to write and had some things I wanted to think about. And the way I think about things
7:02
is to write about them. And so I got in early, started writing about stuff. Other people started
7:07
reading what I was writing about stuff. And it grew up from there. Okay, very good. Now,
7:11
one of the things as well, the what I gather is that you're also a reformed person or reformed
7:16
theologian or reformed Christian or something like that. So I think some people will claim that mantra
7:22
without claiming all the dictates that potentially go with it. I know that there is a, I mean,
7:27
there's been a fight going on in my comment section on Instagram for the last week as of the
7:31
recording of this podcast, one person on the Calvin side of things, reform side of things,
7:34
one person on the not the not side of things. And they're just going to town as if either one
7:38
of them is going to change their mind. I'm just getting my popcorn watching this nonsense go back
7:41
and forth. So for you, I guess give us just so people can kind of have an idea definitionally,
7:46
what is a reformed person? And I guess what, how does that apply to you? What do you believe? I
7:50
guess if we can catch it that way? Sure. Yeah, so reformed and non reformed people should be able
7:57
to affirm one another as Christians, people who love the Lord, who have so much in common,
8:02
but just some things that distinguish us and at the same time, we all admit none of us have
8:08
everything right. So surely some of us are wrong in every way. So I hope we approach these differences
8:12
with humility rather than with fighting and all the rest. There's enough fighting in the world,
8:18
enough fighting in the Christian world that we should be battling at over this stuff. But instead
8:22
showing a lot of tolerance, a lot of love, the reformed faith would be distinguished with a
8:26
reformed understanding of Protestant Christianity would be distinguished by what they call the
8:31
doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism. And essentially it's just an understanding of God
8:37
that begins with this sovereignty that God has sovereign over all things, ultimately sovereign
8:42
over election, therefore sovereign over salvation. So it's God himself who chooses who will be saved
8:48
and who will not be saved. And we're on the non reformed side, you would want to ground that
8:53
in human free will on the reformed side, you would tend to ground that in God's own sovereignty.
8:59
The call of the gospel goes out to all men. It's a genuine call. All men should turn to God and
9:04
repentance and faith be saved with their sins. And yet only those who God has specifically called or
9:10
gained from eternity past only day will then decide to heed that call and come to faith.
9:15
So one thing it's interesting that you you said from the very beginning and I echo this sentiment
9:21
that we need to come to these conversations with humility, not be so disputations in the ways that
9:26
we basically can port ourselves. But I got to be honest, the people that argue the most are the
9:31
reformed guys with their peers and their cigars and they just they can't even let a small
9:36
difference in opinion on a single Greek word that doesn't even matter to the story go. And if you
9:42
don't believe every way that they believe, it's not possible for you to be a Christian because
9:46
I love listening to John MacArthur. But then there are sometimes when I listen to John MacArthur,
9:49
I'm like, good Lord, I don't know if I'm a Christian. Is my fruit sweet enough? Do I believe all the
9:53
right things? I just listened to an hour and a half long sermon where he basically said every
9:57
single Catholic on the planet is going to hell. And I'm just like, Oh man, like it's just hard
10:02
for me to go there. So I guess you're you're a much more calm or measured guy. That's how you
10:07
at least present yourself. But talk to me a little bit about that because surely you've noticed.
10:11
Sure. Yeah, I think there is some relationship between people who like to have a good fight and
10:19
people who hold to the Reformed faith. I don't think there's anything in the Reformed faith that
10:22
necessarily call. I mean, there's nothing that calls you to fight. But I think there's a sense in which
10:28
you're a minority in the Christian world and therefore maybe have your back against the wall a
10:33
little bit. And the doctrine, I mean, the theology that Reformed people hold to should be theology
10:41
that forces you to be humble because it's saying there's nothing in you that would incline you to
10:47
turn toward God. So if there's any good in you, any, any reason you turn to God and repentance and
10:52
faith, that's entirely a work of God. So that should be something that brings you on your face in
10:57
humility before the Lord. Unfortunately, it does cause some people to to fight it out. And again,
11:03
I think that's because they sometimes feel backed into the corner. Now, I'd want to distinguish,
11:07
you mentioned Roman Catholics there, I would want to distinguish Roman Catholicism from Protestantism
11:12
in the sense that we as Reformed and non-Reformed people agree on some of the fundamentals of the
11:19
gospel that Roman Catholics would not agree upon. And so Protestantism arose at the time of the
11:27
Reformation as a response to the errors of the Catholic Church, errors that have not been changed.
11:33
And so we can say we're brothers to people who are who don't hold to the Reformed faith,
11:38
make consider themselves Arminian or something. But we would not necessarily say that to Roman
11:44
Catholics because their doctrine is very different. They anatomatize much of what we believe. In other
11:50
words, they say to believe in what Protestants believe, especially Reformed Protestants believe,
11:55
is to be anathema, to be, that's a doctrine of hell. And so I think we've got to be careful
12:01
with who we who with the way we relate to those two different groups.
12:04
I appreciate you going into that. And on my notes here, I literally have a little box where I say,
12:08
go down the calvinus rabbit hole if you dare. But if as I look at the rest of my my interview and
12:14
all the questions I want to ask you, if we have some time at the end, I want to come back there,
12:17
but I want to put a pin in that for now because I think there's some other areas that I think
12:20
would be potentially more important because something that's very clear about your blogging
12:25
and your writing and anytime that you speak is you don't just read the Bible, you don't just like
12:30
the Bible. You seemingly have a very tremendous amount of reverence for the Bible and you've actually
12:36
provided a resource that I just read and finished here in the last week. It's this a visual theology
12:39
guide to the Bible. I mean, it's literally what it sounds like. It is a visual theology. This is
12:44
like a an infographic, but in book form about the Bible and my goodness, my respect for how we
12:50
got the Bible for the things inside of it. There were things that I thought I understood
12:53
having been a Christian since I was a teenager that didn't really make sense until I read this book.
12:57
I thought it was a fantastic, fantastic read, but for you, let's talk about Christians that
13:03
don't read the Bible because part of my contention, and I would love if you would disagree with this
13:07
or go your own way with it, I think we don't read the Bible because it's so easy to read the Bible
13:13
because we can have a stack of them in our office. We can have several apps on our phones and just
13:18
never have to actually read them and dig into it. But then the other side, Tim, and then I'll let you
13:22
get in here is I feel like people think they can't just read the Bible. They have to study it.
13:27
And as a guy that's very, very busy with young kids, it's like, okay, I have time to read something,
13:32
but I couldn't study that something. And so I think some people think if they're just reading
13:36
the regular words of the Bible without commentaries, without cross-referencing, that they're not actually
13:41
doing the right thing. So just talk to me a little bit about just how I guess how you got this appetite
13:45
for the scriptures, but then how we treat the scriptures in modernity.
13:48
Yeah, I would say a Christian who doesn't read his Bible is like a husband who doesn't communicate
13:55
with his wife. You're putting yourself on a path that you ought to be concerned about. It's not to say
14:01
you're not a husband. It's just to say if you continue on that trajectory, you're going to have
14:05
trouble in your marriage because marriage is fostered by communication and a marriage without
14:11
communication is really no marriage at all. And so a Christian who's not reading the Bible is a
14:16
Christian who's not relating to the Lord. He's not listening to God speak and probably then not
14:22
speaking to God in prayer. And so there's not much of a relationship there and that should
14:27
concern anyone. As you read the Bible, you see how desperately we need the Bible. You see people
14:34
talking about it as food, as life, as something that sustains us and builds us up. And we need the
14:42
word. We need to be in the word. We need to be reading it. We need to be meditating upon it. We
14:47
need to be basing our lives on it. The fundamental question we should be asking in any situation is
14:52
what does the Bible say about this? That whenever we come across any situation, whether it's times
14:58
of great joy, times of great suffering, times of great questioning, what does the Bible say? And if
15:03
the Bible says something, why am I not already doing it? And so now I'm not trying to keep guilt
15:08
on people and there are times where life is busy and perhaps we don't have a lot of attention to
15:13
give it. And as you said, I think sometimes we make reading the Bible more than it needs to be.
15:17
We don't need to be studying it as pastors studying it day by day. There's times to go deep,
15:23
but there's also times just to go wide, so to speak, or just to get the Bible in you. And so like
15:30
Donald Whitney, the theologian, talks about Bible intake as a core Christian discipline. And so in
15:37
what ways are you taking in the Bible? God can only conform you to the degree that you get that
15:41
Bible into you. You can only be conformed to the scripture, to the degree you encounter the scriptures.
15:46
And so how are you reading it? How are you getting it into your life? These are key questions we
15:50
need to be asking. Well, if you don't mind me asking you, I'm always curious because I've got
15:55
a group of guys that we kind of do some Bible study stuff together. And there's some stuff we
15:59
have coming up here soon that will relate to that. And everybody does it differently. And I love
16:04
hearing how they do it. Because some people exclusively listen to the Bible. One of my favorite things
16:08
that I own is I own a copy of all these CDs of Johnny Cash reading the New Testament. I just love
16:15
hearing him reading the scriptures through his voice. And I'll listen to James Earl Jones read the
16:18
Bible. But then I'll read it for myself and I'll do different things. But when you're reading the
16:22
Bible for study, like when you're studying the Bible, how do you do it? How do you like to do it?
16:26
What's your style? Right. So I'll say day by day, I go out for a walk in the morning and I listen to
16:33
the Bible. So I take it in that way as my part of the course, standard spiritual discipline, I listen
16:40
and then I pray. And I listen to the whole Bible once a year, sort of just follow a plan. And that's
16:46
been working for me for years. When I study the Bible, if I'm preaching or teaching, what I tend
16:51
to do is I tend to copy and paste it in the version I prefer into a Word document. And then I just
16:59
print that off. So I take out all the verse markings as much as the paragraph stuff makes sense to take
17:04
out. And I just start with a blank sheet with nothing but the Word on it. And then I try and
17:10
study that very closely. So get rid of all the notes, all the commentaries, just spend time in the
17:14
Word. And what I'm really looking for is structure. I'm looking for words that are repeated. I'm looking
17:20
for metaphors. I'm just trying to understand it without relying on other people. That builds my
17:25
skill. But it also means I'm not relying on other people. There's time for that later to go to the
17:31
commentaries to go to the study Bible. But I like just to be alone with that printed piece of paper
17:36
with the Word of God on it and starting there. And so one thing that you talk about in a visual
17:41
theology, you know, you obviously don't get into how you study the Bible. So I appreciate you getting
17:45
into that. You just casually mentioned that in the future, there's going to be a potential for
17:50
something called like neural downloads. And people have kind of heard of this if you're
17:53
following the stuff Elon Musk does or whatever. But essentially, it's the implantation of information
17:57
directly into the brains and into the memories of people. And I guess you talk a little bit
18:01
about that. You have another book here. I just have a stack of your books in here called The Next
18:04
Story. And this really gets into, you know, the digital explosion and what our lives could potentially
18:08
look like, you know, talk to me a little bit, because again, you just mention it because you
18:12
weren't really digging in too far into that into that book. But gosh, that can seem a little bit
18:16
dangerous. And are you getting the implantation of the full Bible as we would see it in whatever
18:22
version that we prefer? Are you also implanting someone's commentary, which is not actually the
18:26
Word of God? I mean, talk to me a little bit about that because I've heard that all before.
18:30
Now it would be cool if I could take a pill and all of a sudden be able to speak Spanish.
18:33
That would be awesome. But I'm a little bit concerned about, you know, maybe we're getting
18:37
these pills from the Chinese Communist Party, and they're putting stuff in our brains that help us,
18:41
you know, not be able to see the gospel. Take me through that.
18:43
Yeah. So we're just looking forward. And I wrote the book with Josh Byers. He did the
18:50
illustrations. We're looking forward a little bit and suggesting just some of the things that
18:54
might be coming in real. The point in all that is to consider what does it mean to even know
19:00
something? And so if you go back in time, the Bible for many of the people who first encountered
19:06
it, it wasn't written, it was transmitted orally to them. So they never read the Bible. Not only
19:11
that, they would consider it less than if you read the Bible. They would say to know something,
19:16
you need to memorize it, you need to get it deep into your mind. And that's when you can say you
19:21
know something. But now we have the Bible printed or we have it on our devices. That's a whole
19:26
different way of having the Bible and therefore of knowing the Bible. We can know about the Bible,
19:32
or we can content ourselves to know where to find something in the Bible. But that's different from
19:37
truly knowing it and almost that sense of having intimate knowledge of it. And so as time goes on,
19:44
what does it mean to have the Bible implanted? If that's a thing, and certainly there's people
19:48
working on this, and it may be in the future that you can have the whole Bible available
19:54
at your recall because it's been somehow planted in you. But would that be knowing it? Would your
20:00
life, would you be a better Christian? Would you be living in a way that brings more glory to God
20:05
because you had a chip implanted in you or something? I think not. So that just calls us to understand
20:11
what it means to really know something and then to really, what is God calling us to do as He calls
20:16
us to know the word? I think beyond that as well, you can quote a lot as Shakespeare and not live by
20:22
the dictates of the tragedy of Julius Caesar. I mean, it's kind of one of those things like you
20:26
can know it, you can quote it, but it's whether or not you've actually accepted it and live your
20:29
life by it. That changes. One quick thing before we get to your new book is one thing that is brought
20:34
up constantly, and it's really been popularized, if you can say that, by a guy like Joe Rogan who
20:39
has, you know, take your five best friends and my five best friends and all the people we listen to
20:43
and combine them all is still not even a quarter of what Joe Rogan gets to one episode. The guy
20:47
has the biggest microphone on the planet and he is so ignorant about the transmission of the
20:52
scriptural texts to where we have ourselves in modernity. He is convinced an entire swath of the
20:58
population of the globe that the Bible that we have today is nothing like how it was written down in
21:03
the original language because he probably, you know, saw some YouTube video 15 years ago and that's
21:07
just his paradigm. But you know, even if you're not a Joe Rogan fan, there are a lot of people that
21:11
have no idea, Tim, how we have the Bible that we have today. And they will say things casually,
21:17
like, yeah, this thing's been translated so many different times. And it passed through so many
21:21
different people's hands. We don't even have the originals. So gosh, you know, do we really know
21:25
that Jesus walked on water and not in water? It's like, we can't actually know. I know today is not
21:30
like a deep apologetics dive into how we got the scriptures for today. But if you could, could you
21:34
give us maybe a spark notes version, just a 30,000 foot overview of the accuracy of the transmission
21:40
of the text and how we got them here today? Yeah, that's not my area of expertise. And I'd
21:44
encourage you to get someone on the show who could really talk about that. Because it's a fascinating
21:48
study as you talk about textual criticism, how we did get the Bible and how we can consider it
21:54
reliable. And what Joe Rogan is saying, a lot of people think this is original or this is new and
21:59
they've backed Christians into a corner. This has been going on forever. There's no new arguments.
22:04
Christians have had to wrestle with this forever. But there is the science of textual criticism
22:09
that is able to look at the vast amounts of fragments of scripture that exist and through them to be
22:15
able to work backward toward the original text with great, great confidence. And so with where we're
22:21
at today, there's very, very few pieces remaining that are at all disputed. And the ones that are
22:28
disputed really don't have any bearing on the fundamentals of the Christian faith. So we can
22:32
have great confidence that because the Bible was copied so much so often in so many places and so
22:40
many contexts, we can gather all that we can have great confidence that we have reconstructed it. So
22:45
it's not a gotcha argument to say that we don't have the originals. No Christian believes we have
22:49
the original. Nobody's claimed that for hundreds, thousands of years. And that's absolutely fine
22:56
because we still know what they say. Absolutely. So I appreciate you getting into all that detail
23:01
and now it's probably appropriate for us to transition into your new book. So guys, if you're
23:04
listening to this on time, this book is out. It is called seasons of sorrow. And so you've written
23:09
a lot of different books. This is the only book that you've written that is like this that is in
23:12
this vein. And so from your own mouth from your own words, what is this book about?
23:16
This book is about a year of my life, a year that began with the very sudden and unexpected
23:24
death, my son. And that ended precisely one year later on the first anniversary of his death.
23:30
And in November of 2020, my son Nick, he was a seminary student at the Southern Baptist Theological
23:36
Seminary. He was doing well in life. He had just gotten engaged, was looking forward to getting married
23:40
in just a few months. And just very suddenly, very unexpectedly, his heart stopped for reasons
23:46
that we've not been able to surmise. Doctors have not been able to pin any cause on it,
23:52
but his heart stopped. He collapsed and he was gone. And that obviously came as a great shock,
23:58
a great sorrow. And that very night, as we began to head down south, we live in Canada,
24:04
he lives in, he lived in Louisville, Kentucky. So we we hopped on a plane, we started making our
24:09
way down. And I started to write and eventually became a book. And so the first words of the entire
24:16
book or this November for 2020, in all the years I've been writing, I have never had to type the
24:20
words more difficult, more devastating than these. Yesterday, the Lord called my son to himself,
24:25
my dear son, my sweet son, my kind son, my godly son, my only son. And I mean, I just got to be
24:32
honest with you, Tim, as I've as I read through the book, you know, I just usually lay here in the
24:37
floor of my studio and read the books. And I've got a two year old son and a seven month old son.
24:41
And I'm just at different points reading this book. I can't even like see the words on the page
24:46
because I'm crying. And I'm just like, man, this sucks. And I'm just, I'm sad for you. I'm sad for
24:52
me just reading this. And you know, I obviously put myself into those crazy situations. I guess
24:58
that leads me to be like, what is the feedback that you're getting from this book? Because we're
25:01
gonna dig into a lot of the things from the book here in a second. We're still kind of keeping it,
25:04
you know, 30,000 foot view. But is that the feedback that you're getting a lot of people are maybe
25:09
putting themselves in your shoes? Maybe that's helping them change some of the things in their
25:13
lifestyle to make sure they can spend as much more time with their kids and their family as they as
25:17
they would. What's the feedback them like? Yeah, so it's been five, six weeks from the time we're
25:22
recording now, working back to on the book release. So there's not been a tremendous amount of feedback
25:27
yet. Because not as many people have read it yet as will eventually be the case. But so far,
25:32
the feedback has been really positive and really encouraging. And I do think what I've done in the
25:37
book is allow people in. And so it's a real time, very heartfelt journey through a year of grief.
25:44
And grieving is a universal experience. None of us go through life unscathed. None of us
25:50
get away without grieving somebody, losing somebody. And so I think the universality of it is what
25:56
people can latch on to so they can see themselves in there. They can see their own children in there.
26:01
And in that way, I think it's encouraging to some and helpful to some. But I do think there's some
26:05
who just can't can't deal with it. Some of them probably just had to put it down because it is too
26:10
painful because of the way they put themselves in in that picture. And you know, it's important to
26:16
say God gives us grace to endure our trials. But that happens when we endure the trials. So the more
26:22
we sort of picture ourselves in something and feel all the emotions of it, that can be helpful to some,
26:27
but for others, it just overwhelms them. Yeah, and obviously we're gonna spend a whole lot more
26:31
time talking about the book. But I'll just as a quick aside and quick commercial guys, this book
26:34
is in the show notes. I wouldn't let that scare you that you're gonna potentially feel some emotions
26:39
when you're reading this. I would find it very difficult to read through a book like this and
26:42
not feel those emotions. But I would urge all of you guys to lean into those emotions. Because we all
26:47
tend to lean into the emotions that can potentially do us harm. Whereas this one, I think, could push
26:51
us towards some some major life changes. There's another quote that's early in the book that I think
26:55
brings up something interesting. And it's this, and so I know in my heart of hearts that I have said
26:59
goodbye for now, and that I've said farewell for farewell for a while, that Nick has not been sent
27:04
away, but merely sent on ahead to that place where death is no more, where mourning pain and
27:09
sorrow are gone, where God has already wiped away every tear, and where my son is now waiting
27:13
safely and patiently for his father to join him. So obviously that's that's a an ode to what we see
27:18
in Revelation, where we can all look forward to a day like that. This is where you get a lot of
27:23
consternation and debate from Christians about the confidence that we will even see our loved ones
27:29
in heaven, because there are two whole different disparate views on that. Like, no, you know, you're
27:33
not gonna have time, you're gonna be worshiping God too much to even have your friends and family
27:37
there. Other people like, no, clearly it says that we're gonna see them. I've thought about like,
27:40
if I die in a car accident, my wife gets remarried, and you know, they they're married for 60 years,
27:45
and then everybody dies. Like, you know, it's the same thing as like, is she my wife in heaven?
27:49
Is it his wife in heaven? Like, is it gonna be awkward hanging out? Is being a throuple in heaven?
27:54
So talk to me a little bit about your confidence there, because you do seem pretty confident
27:57
that that wasn't the last time you saw your son whenever you told him by the last time he flew to
28:01
Louisville. Right, my confidence is not in what I believe about heaven. My confidence is not in my
28:09
understanding what the Bible says about heaven. My confidence is in God and in the character of
28:14
God. And God makes it clear that he is good, that fundamentally he is good, which means he can do
28:19
no evil, he can wish no evil, he can want no evil, and he'll certainly bring me no evil. God loves
28:24
me. He's a father. He's inclined to me. And so my confidence is fixed there. As I look forward to
28:30
whatever is to come, life beyond the grave, I know that it will be good. I also know that we like
28:37
Jesus will have a new body. The Bible makes that clear as well. We will truly live on the far side
28:44
of the grave. We need to distinguish between this intermediate state, we call it, what Nick is
28:48
experiencing right now, and what he and I will experience after Christ returns, after this world
28:54
is wrapped up, and then we get to the new heavens and the new earth. We should distinguish between
29:02
those things. And it's in the new heavens and new earth that we'll receive these new bodies,
29:07
and we will the heavens and earth will be, depending how you see it, reconstructed, renewed, refreshed,
29:13
and we'll live upon them. And so as we think about heaven, it's wrong to think about this permanent
29:19
existence sitting on clouds and playing harps and simply worshiping in the sense of raising our
29:26
hands and listening to music. We'll be working. God made us to work. He made us to live upon his
29:33
earth that he had made. This was the right dwelling place for us. We'll be on earth and we'll be
29:38
carrying out the kind of work that God gives us to do. So I think heaven will be more earthly
29:43
than we sometimes think, but it will be without any sin, without any sorrow, without any jealousy,
29:49
even without any marriage. And so whatever you and your wife's next husband experience in that time,
29:57
it will be without jealousy. It will be without envy. It will be without marriage, without sex,
30:02
without all those things that are associated with life here. God makes it clear that whatever is
30:07
to come will be different in that way. Some of these things are temporary for this earth,
30:12
whatever we experience there will be good, no matter and perfect, no matter what we experienced here.
30:17
Well, the funny thing is, you know, when I find myself thinking about heaven, I try to just like
30:20
stop it because it's like, dude, this I have no idea. Like, so me imagining it, but every time I
30:25
imagine I imagine as I would imagine a dream state, because you're when you're having dreams, it may
30:29
seem real, but it's still like your entire world is buffering a little bit. You can't really feel
30:33
things. You can't really run as fast as you would run real life and those types of things. So I try
30:37
to leave the ethereal to the ethereal. Now, there was one part of the book that was especially difficult
30:42
to read, and I'm sure it had to be especially difficult to write and then also just to do,
30:47
but you wrote a letter to your son that was going to be placed in his sweater pocket of the garment
30:53
that he would be buried in, right? And I believe if I remember correctly, y'all decided that you
30:58
did not want to see your son after he had passed away. You wanted to kind of leave your memory for
31:03
the last time you saw him when he was alive. So in that, you included the words of an old
31:08
hymn. I won't read the whole thing here, but the end of the old hymn says, good night till then,
31:12
good night, good night, good night till then. And then you kind of, you know, write your own little
31:16
note to your son and then kind of put it in there. Just just walk me through that, because I know
31:21
there's a lot of pain. I've gotten the emails and the DM's from people in my audience that have had
31:26
to kind of deal with that. I've been to a funeral for a baby that lived for one hour.
31:30
Like it's, there's some rough, tough stuff out there, but this is how you chose to get your words
31:36
out to your son and to honor him without actually seeing him and putting it in his pocket, you know,
31:42
as it were on his actual chest. So kind of walk me through that whole situation.
31:46
Yeah. Contextually, if you, if you wind back to November 3rd, 2020,
31:56
well, there's a big election going on in America that day. My mind was elsewhere, of course, but it
32:01
was the relatively early days of the pandemic. And all that came with it, vaccines hadn't been
32:08
yet invented. People were still a little bit nervous. Some of the certainty that's come with time was
32:12
still very uncertain then. And one of the realities in Canada is once we came back from the United
32:18
States, we were locked in our house for two weeks. Nobody locked us in. We were told we had to stay
32:22
in our house for two weeks and not leave. Nobody could come onto the property, etc. So we were very,
32:27
very isolated. And it was in that stretch of time we had to make a lot of decisions. And one of the
32:33
decisions we had to make was whether we would, as soon as we were released, go out and see next
32:39
remains that have been sent back from America to Canada. And we chose not to, as you said, but
32:46
we knew that he was going to be placed in his coffin and that would be his final resting place.
32:51
And so it just felt right to me to send something other than clothes. We had to choose clothes that
32:56
we would send for him. And so yeah, as you said, I wrote a little letter to him and that took some
33:05
words that I had written to him in a letter months prior and rehearsed those, but then found that
33:11
him that him started playing in my mind. And for those who are listening, look it up. It's called
33:16
"The Long Good Night" by Matthew Smith. It's an old to him, but he adapted it. So "The Long Good
33:20
Night" by Matthew Smith, a beautiful him. And it's written from the perspective of somebody who is
33:26
dying speaking to his loved ones that are remaining behind. I just thought it was appropriate to
33:31
capture those words that include that lying good night, good night till then. And it's been a great
33:38
comfort that the thought that the Bible speaks often of death being sleep. Because when we
33:45
die in Christ, we die as Christians, it's a temporary state, not a permanent state. We fall asleep
33:51
knowing we will awake. We die, knowing we will arise. So that brings up some interesting things
33:57
just about what your mind state was at that time, but then also the internal dialogue that you,
34:02
as a mourner, as a father, have. And so you kind of speak to that here in another quote in the book
34:07
and it's this, "Could it be that Nick's death as God's discipline toward me? Could it be that Nick
34:12
who was some kind of an idol in my life and to lose my grip on him, God took him away? Could
34:17
this all be my fault? I'm haunted by these thoughts and questions." So obviously, as you're writing
34:23
this in the book, that's part of your own kind of journal entries as you're going through this
34:27
first year of mourning. But I'm curious for you, you know, being that it's, you know, almost a couple
34:31
years down the road, do you still struggle with that? Because there are mourners that feel that way,
34:37
that, you know, obviously, if you're physically responsible for someone's death, that's different.
34:41
But when somebody is disjointed from you and not near you and they pass away,
34:44
I know parents that are like, "Oh my gosh, I should have fed them different food growing up,"
34:47
because in this, you know, they wouldn't have gotten this cancer or they make up all these other
34:51
different scenarios. Just kind of take me through where you're at, I guess, when you wrote that,
34:55
and then how you progress to where you are today. At that time, so after the funeral,
35:02
my wife and my two daughters and I, we flew out west in Canada to the Rocky Mountains. We just
35:09
needed to get away and we needed to be in nature. And, you know, God speaks to us through His word,
35:15
but God also speaks through creation, and we just needed to be there. We felt a deep need,
35:22
and so we flew out there, and it was at that time that these questions were really going through my
35:27
mind, really trying to work that through. Could it have been something I did? And, you know,
35:32
I've read a lot of the Puritans, those writers from the 1600s, and, you know, they would speak
35:37
often about these sorts of things. What the Bible says, God chastises the ones you love,
35:41
just as you, as a father, sometimes have to discipline your kids in order to correct their
35:45
behavior. The Bible makes it clear that sometimes God has to discipline us to correct our behavior.
35:50
If we won't just read the Bible and do what it says, sometimes God has to intervene in some ways.
35:55
And so I was, for a time, really haunted by the thought that maybe I had done something,
36:00
and this was God's way of rebuking me for it, but it was out in nature. I was in the Rocky Mountains,
36:07
and again, this is where the pandemic worked well. I had the Banff National Park pretty much to myself.
36:14
There was almost nobody there. I could go to some of the prime spots and be by myself,
36:18
and so I got up early in the morning, drive out there, and just stand in the mountains,
36:24
and it was there that I came to realize that, no, I've been putting myself in the center of the
36:29
universe, as if something I did, God would take out on my son. It doesn't sound like something God
36:35
would do, so I had to think about the character of God again, and then I had to think about myself.
36:40
So when you stand before a mountain, it's hard to think great thoughts about yourself, I find.
36:46
When you look up at the night sky, it's hard to think that you're the most significant creature in
36:50
the universe. You realize that this world doesn't revolve around you, and I think that was the
36:54
understanding I had to come to, that I'm at the center of the universe. I'm at the center of
36:58
Nick's universe, and so whatever transpired between God and Nick was between them, and isn't it more
37:04
likely God took Nick out of love than out of spite or out of punishment? Who knows what? I don't know
37:11
God's reasons. I can speculate a little bit. We don't know God's reasons. He doesn't owe us answers,
37:15
but we can trust his character and just believe that he's good.
37:18
Well, and Tim, you used the phrase there, the character of God, and so, you know, this was the
37:24
part of the book that I highlighted, starred, like, okay, make sure you asked him about this.
37:27
So I'm going to read this quote here. "Perhaps the reality is that I fear God in a new way,
37:31
and that some kind of innocence has been shattered. Before Nick's death, I understood that God had
37:36
power, but now I know that he has power. Before, I understood that God would exercise his power in
37:41
giving what I love, but now I understand that God will also exercise his power in taking what I love.
37:47
Before, life was easy because God's sovereignty always seemed inclined toward the things that I
37:52
wanted, but now life is hard because I see that God's sovereignty may also be inclined towards
37:57
the things I dread, the things I would never wish for." And so, Tim, when I read that section,
38:02
I immediately thought of another book by a pastor named Matty Montgomery out of Tennessee. It's a
38:06
book called Scary God, and it's about, you know, literally learning about the fear of the Lord and
38:10
how, you know, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom and those types of attitudes.
38:16
But some people might read that paragraph, Tim, and get really, really scared, or just be like,
38:22
well, that's not the loving God I know. I mean, we talk about the Lion of Judah a lot on this show
38:26
because, you know, the Lamb of God is really, really easy to grasp, and you want to just hug
38:30
the Lamb of God and snuggle with them. The Lion of Judah kind of scares us a little bit,
38:34
but I just want you to, I don't want to even set it up any more than that. Tell me about your feelings
38:39
when you wrote that, because that for me was one of the most powerful things to try to put myself
38:44
in the, I guess, the shoes of a morning father and to have those thoughts. So please give us a little
38:49
more on that. When we were going through this time, we had to anchor ourselves to something.
38:58
Something had to be true. So our world had been utterly rocked. It's like you're going through
39:02
an earthquake and the ground is bouncing and everything around you is turbulent. You know,
39:07
I'm in the basement here. I would grab ahold of that metal pole and I would hold on to that
39:11
because that's something that's going to stay fixed. And I think in much the same way, we needed,
39:18
in our time of trauma to reach out and grab hold of something that we knew was true. Whatever else
39:24
was going on in the world, this was true. And what we latched on to was the character of God
39:29
displayed specifically through His goodness and through His sovereignty. And so we just said,
39:34
we know that God is good. Whatever else is true in this world, whatever else is true of our circumstances,
39:39
God is good. And God is sovereign. There's nothing that happens in this world that God doesn't know
39:45
about. Nothing that in some way hasn't passed through God's hands. Even the evil things that
39:50
happen in this world, in some way God ordains or permits, depending how you want, what language
39:55
you want to use. But Satan doesn't ever get the final victory here in terms of he doesn't sneak
40:01
around God. He doesn't hold on over on God. God didn't fail to notice some condition
40:07
in Nick's heart. None of that is true. So we anchored ourselves to God's goodness
40:11
and sovereignty. And the question was, we were so glad to accept these things when they were
40:16
inclined to what we wanted anyway. Oh, look at the sovereign God. He granted me a lovely son or
40:22
look at the sovereignty of God. He granted me a wife that I love so much. Well, God takes away.
40:27
Are we still going to say this God is good and this God is sovereign and we're bowing the knee
40:32
to Him? That's always a question. Will we believe the same things are true about God and our sorrows
40:37
that we do in our joys? And I think what you're you're talking about there is trying to link
40:43
ourselves to something that's more tangible than a feeling because we kind of have this
40:47
feelings focus in just modern society, but certainly in modern Christianity. And I think that ties
40:51
to another quote from the book here. I realize I have been trusting too much in my feelings and
40:55
I must submit them to facts to truth into what is imminently more trustworthy. My feelings rotate
41:01
like the earth. My emotions come and go like the seasons. But the truth is as fixed as and constant
41:06
as the sun. When I focus on what is true, I understand that God is present with me.
41:11
So with that, Tim, obviously, I think, you know, men and men's ministries, they get a bad rap
41:16
because they're like, they want men to not engage in their feelings. And you know, if you're going to
41:19
be a modern man, you need to be a feelings driven man. But it's like, feelings are fine, but we
41:24
shouldn't be driven by them. I think that stoicism has kind of been demonized in modern culture,
41:30
even though stoicism in and of itself can be an incredibly valuable tool, especially, you know,
41:35
as, you know, someone like a thinker like George Peterson would say, is be the man at your father's
41:39
funeral that everybody else can attach themselves to and depend on for strength. Like, just putting
41:44
yourself in that mindset changes how you feel about feelings, not just completely disregard them
41:49
forever. But it's like, in this moment, nobody needs extra feelings. We need something that we
41:54
can rely on. Is that kind of where you feel like you you've gotten to or maybe am I putting too much
41:59
on that? Maybe a little too much. I think what I would say is that we need to subject our feelings
42:05
to truth. And what we tend to do is the opposite. So we go through this tremendously difficult time.
42:11
We're feeling all the feels. And what we do then is reinterpret our theology on the basis of our
42:16
feelings. I feel miserable. Therefore, I need to believe that this is true of God. I feel this is
42:23
God has wronged me in some way. So now I'm going to overturn what I believed about God based on what
42:28
I'm feeling far better. And I think what God calls us to do is to say, I'm going to I will feel grief.
42:36
I will feel sorrow, but I still need to even anchor my feelings to what is true. And so I can
42:44
grieve but not despair in my in my loss because I know that God is good. I know that God is sovereign.
42:51
I know that Nick loved the Lord. There's no reason for despair in that sense. And so, you know,
42:57
I think stoicism has some attraction to men these days. And I'm, you know, I understand where that's
43:02
coming from as a pushback, but to just threads that are going on in society. And without getting
43:09
too deep into it, Christians are not stoics. There might be some common truths or something,
43:15
but we should feel our feelings. And you know, when Jesus lost his good friend Lazarus,
43:20
he stood before the tomb and he wept and he was unashamed and unashamed in his weeping before the
43:26
tomb of his friend. And that was a, here's a perfect man living a perfect life and really
43:30
just pouring out his heart and tears. And we should do the same. But what he didn't do was
43:35
revoke his, his understanding of God or change his theology on the basis of his feelings.
43:40
I appreciate your, your opinion on that and some of your thoughts on that. One thing about that
43:46
was interesting as I was reading through the book, Tim, is you could just feel almost this
43:50
disputacious attitude in your, in your soul where you wanted something and then you didn't want it.
43:55
You wanted to leave something there, but you also wanted to pick it up. And one of the times in the
44:00
book is when you were kind of thinking about the afterlife, which it wouldn't make any sense to a
44:04
non-Christian is like, why wouldn't a Christian be thinking about the afterlife all the time? It's
44:08
supposed to be awesome. It's supposed to be just the land of milk and honey and golden roads the
44:11
entire time, right? But let me read this quote here and then we'll back into a question. But I can't
44:15
deny that I have often looked forward to that day and feared that day with equal measure. I've
44:20
wanted to be with Christ, but I've been low to be away from all that is here. I've long to be faced
44:25
to face with him, but I've been afraid to leave the familiarity of this world for the uncertainty
44:29
of the next. I've sometimes referred earth to heaven, sight to faith here to there. Tim, I've
44:35
been exactly in that place to where it's like, when Christians seem really, really scared to die,
44:40
you know, they get the, the cancer diagnosis or when they get into a big accident and you know,
44:44
they realize that the time is limited, they seem terrified. Part of that might be because they
44:49
don't know for sure if their name is written in the lambs book of life, maybe, maybe they've been
44:54
listening to John MacArthur too much, you know, sorry, John MacArthur, but like, maybe there's just
44:57
something there where they're just like, is it crisis of faith or maybe it's just, they're sad
45:02
because they're leaving their family behind or maybe there's projects that are going to be left
45:05
undone and they know they're never going to get done. But talk to me a little bit about like what
45:09
that's like with you because I think everyone in our audience to a certain degree feels this.
45:13
This life can be pretty good. And I think we need to just be honest with that, that we experience
45:19
many joys and many pleasures. Those of us who have, I think, an honest self-assessment should
45:24
realize we don't deserve those things. We can sometimes feel very entitled to them. But honestly,
45:30
we don't deserve all the goodness and all the graces we experience in this life. But we get
45:36
them and we appreciate them and we come to expect them. And it's well and good to really enjoy
45:42
life's pleasures. You read the book of Ecclesiastes. Just read into chapter 11 and you'll see,
45:47
here's these, enjoy this. Enjoy these pleasures. That's a right thing to do. It honors God when we
45:53
just enjoy a good cup of coffee or when we look long and deep into the eyes of the one we love.
45:59
These are good things. Enjoy our children. But what we can't do is fail to long for
46:06
the end of all sin, the end of all evil, the end of all pain, sorrow, suffering. And we can get
46:12
really attached to the things of this earth and then fail to really long for heaven and long for
46:18
the promises to be fulfilled. And I think that's because we often don't trust that things really
46:21
will be so much better there. That the pleasures we experience in this life are actually just
46:26
pointing us forward to greater pleasures. And so the joy and the intimacy of marriage is absolutely
46:34
wonderful. But even that points to something big or something better, something that's going to
46:38
bring us more joy and more pleasure. And what I found through my loss was that it really did
46:46
help me see this world is broken and this world has many sorrows. And just one example of a sorrow,
46:53
I'll look forward to letting go of. The only way I'll ever let go of the sorrow is to die. It's the
46:57
only way. I'm never going to stop being sad. I'm never going to stop missing Nick. I'm never
47:01
going to stop longing to see him again. But that will come only when I die. And so over time, I think
47:07
God pulls our hands off these things. You know, we prize our fingers off this world so that we can
47:14
really look forward to the world to come and to his presence and to all that he's got stored up
47:19
for us. I think that's that's a great word and a great point on that because when you think about
47:23
the pleasures in this world, they're the big ones that all of us can kind of think about and
47:27
everybody has that for themselves. But I remember a Matt Chandler sermon way, way back years and years
47:32
ago before he was canceled. But it was basically like taste buds. How awesome is it that God gave
47:38
us taste buds where we can taste the food and the texture of food and the temperature of a food
47:43
and that to like lead to a little bit of happiness inside of our soul, even just for that one minute.
47:49
And how much more and how much greater is there for us on the other side of this world when taste
47:55
buds are the small thing that can give people a tremendous amount of pleasure. And the other
48:01
thing that I think is important as you talk about in your book is you talked about endurance.
48:05
And the way, well, I'll read this quote and guys, if you're talking to me reading quotes,
48:09
I got a couple left, just follow me here. But here's another quote from the book.
48:12
And if in the early days, we needed strength to keep our heads above water, you're talking
48:16
about your family here, strength to simply keep us from drowning in sorrow, we now needed endurance,
48:22
the fortitude to carry a heavy burden through a long journey. So from the beginning of undaunted
48:28
life, Tim, we've talked about the difference between strength and resilience, or I guess you
48:32
could call it endurance. So strength is something that we're all attracted to. We like the strong
48:36
man competitions. And it's like, Oh, where are you spiritually strong or weak? And that's the
48:40
paradigm we think of it is. But I always think about resilience. What is your ability to bounce
48:44
back? Because even if you're really, really, really strong on one day, well, time over time,
48:50
you're you're going to get weaker regardless of what you're talking about, unless you work on that
48:54
and you work on that ability to bounce back. And you kind of are giving a commercial there for
49:00
endurance or resilience, because strength is going to leave you at some point. There's going to be
49:04
that day when, you know, the meal train has stopped, no one's coming by just to see how you're doing,
49:09
and it's just you. And if you're depending on strength in that moment, you may be found wanting.
49:15
So talk to me a little bit about when you realize strength is what you had, but what you need now
49:20
is resilience or endurance. It's enduring the first few days, the strength you need to use
49:28
your paradigm here to get through the first few days is one thing. But there's, as you said,
49:33
there's such support networks early on. And even then there's there's more going on. Your mind is
49:37
really dulled. You don't feel things normally your, your heart, your soul, your mind, your body,
49:43
everything is just taken over by your grief. But over time, things begin to write themselves.
49:49
You sort of discover this new normal. But what you realize is you've endured two months. Now,
49:57
you've got another 45 years of this thing to go. And, you know, you got through the early trauma,
50:03
but now you've got this long path to walk carrying a sorrow. And that sorrow, as we said before,
50:07
we'll never go away. I'm never not going to be sad. That's just impossible. Never forget Nick.
50:11
I'll never stop loving him. And that means I've got, let's say, you know, with the Lord's God,
50:15
for me, let's say another 40 years of carrying that. That's a different kind of strength they'll
50:20
need to to endure that over the long haul. And yeah, so I think that's what I was pointing to in the
50:26
book and using the metaphor of carrying watering cans to Nick's grave. You know, it's one thing to
50:30
lift up those watering cans from the point where I put the water in them, but it's quite a long
50:35
walk to his grave. And so carrying those over a long period of time is a different kind of thing.
50:40
And often leaves you very, very tired. And what I want to, what I want to push myself to do then,
50:47
or what I'm really concerned for, is I would be able to endure this and that I would not lose
50:52
heart. I would not lose faith. I would not continue to rely on God. I would not, I would can, I just
50:57
want to rely on his grace all the way to the end and not give up the fight before that.
51:03
Well, I appreciate that word. I want to end with one quote from the book, and then we'll put a
51:06
wrap on seasons of sorrow. And it was just because I feel like it really summarizes the book. And
51:10
guys, we're barely scratching the surface on the book. So if some of this stuff is speaking to you,
51:14
there's a whole lot more here. I'm just going into the stuff that I keyed into. But let me read
51:18
this quote here. I must allow his death to make me godlier, to make me holier, and then to love
51:23
and serve all the more. And then quite a bit later in the book, there's another quote.
51:27
I'm convinced this is a ministry God has called me to the ministry of sorrow, a ministry of faithful
51:34
suffering. And so Tim, there are people in this planet that when something befalls them,
51:38
when they lose a loved one, as is what we're talking about today, it changes their life. And then they
51:44
become a naval gazer for the rest of their life. They always see the internal side of the sorrow
51:48
that they're feeling. And they don't try to see how that is supposed to direct them outward. But you
51:54
literally describe describe this as a ministry of sorrow. So you're coming out of seasons of sorrow,
51:58
because your book is broken down into, you know, fall, winter, spring, summer, right?
52:02
But now you have a ministry of sorrow, which Tim, you could have done without having lost your son.
52:08
You know enough about the Bible. You know enough about the goodness and of God and his ability to
52:14
provide for his children. But now you are uniquely qualified to speak to somebody that has experienced
52:20
something in the same way that you have. I know if you had your brothers, you might rather do
52:25
something else than that you might have him called you to being like, you know, race car driver
52:30
ministry or something cooler than that. But like, take me through that to where you feel like, no,
52:35
this isn't just something that happened to me and my family. This is now my new ministry.
52:39
Okay, so first I want to say ministry when I'm using that word, I'm primarily thinking in the
52:45
local context. And so what God calls us to, I hope he calls us to first in the local setting. So
52:52
I'm not the least bit interested in a speaker who's out there on the circuit preaching great
52:57
sermons, but isn't part of a local church. He's off. We're grounded in the local church. That's
53:03
the most important thing we'll ever do is care for our family, care for our local church, care for
53:07
the people right around us. So what we believe is if God is truly sovereign, then he's shaping his
53:14
people in a way that serves his purpose. And one of the ways he does that is by calling people to
53:19
different ministries. He puts people in the church who can preach, people in the church who can
53:24
sing, people in the church who can serve in all sorts of different ways. And for some people,
53:29
he fits them for service by taking something, by making them pass through this time of grief.
53:34
And so because God has done that, I think he's now called me, called my wife, called my family,
53:42
to he's enabled us to reach out to other people who are going through a sorrowful time.
53:48
As you said, it's not to say I couldn't do it before, but now I've got something,
53:55
I've got experience to draw upon, which makes me more credible, but also just gives me knowledge
54:00
that I can bring to bear. I know now more of what's effective and not effective. So I don't want to
54:06
say if you've not suffered deeply or useless or anything like that, not at all. You still got the
54:10
word. You still got the spirit. You can still reach out to people and bring them comfort. But I do
54:15
think there's people, God, he quips in special ways just by having them pass through something.
54:19
And I tell you, there was something about having people who had lost a child come alongside of us
54:24
and love and care for us. That was just such a tremendous blessing and tremendous comfort,
54:29
because they could say things like, you can do this. And we felt that same thing. And that's
54:34
normal. And that was just such such a comfort. I want to say something to your audience. Before we
54:40
went on air here, you talked about who your audience is, primarily men. And so I want to say
54:45
something that I think is an important message to men, which is if you go through a time of deep
54:52
sorrow, deep trauma, there will be that sense you talked about to just drop out, to become a navel
54:57
gazer and to just drop out of the race. But I think what you'll find and what you need to ponder
55:04
is that when you're most broken is also when you're most needed. So you go through a time like this,
55:10
you don't get to opt out of being a husband. You don't get to opt out of being a dad and then
55:14
functioning like one. Your family is going to be in desperate need of your leadership
55:19
right at that time that your heart is absolutely shattered. And so in that moment, you need to
55:24
look to God for strength and you need to man up and you need to just lead your family right
55:29
through the valley of the shadow of death. I think that's so, so important. The worst thing you could
55:35
do is just become useless to your family in that moment when they most need you when it's when our
55:40
countries go to war that we want our leaders to be leaders, you know, it's when we need them to
55:44
lead the most. And it's when your family goes through trauma, that right there is when you need to
55:49
prove your leadership tops and you need to lead your family to the best of your ability and trusting
55:54
that God will equip you to do so. That's absolutely a great word. And one thing that I would add to
55:59
that is sometimes something will befall you that you could not have prepared yourself for similar
56:05
to I mean, you were looking forward to this long and illustrious life that your son was going to
56:09
have with this new wife and and all those different things. This wasn't even on your radar. But for
56:13
a lot of guys, it's putting in those daily deposits, right? Because I don't care what your hobbies are
56:18
because again, a lot of these men's ministry groups, it's like, okay, you have to camp, you have to
56:20
hunt, you have to eat beef jerky, you have to have a beard. And it's like, no, those things are
56:24
those things are fun. Those are awesome. But those things don't make you a man. I care if you're
56:27
developing and cultivating spiritual mental and physical resilience on a daily basis. Because
56:33
let's say you're you're in really good shape and you're like, hey, I feel like God wants me to be
56:36
in really good shape. I don't I don't know why, but I'm going to keep putting in the miles or keep
56:40
putting in the way, you know, picking the weight up and putting it back down. And then one day God
56:44
calls you to something that requires your body to work really, really, really well. And right now,
56:50
not 90 days from now when you have a chance to train, not two years from now after you've gotten a
56:53
bunch of professional coaching, he needs you now. So that's an example that most of my audience can
56:57
understand, because most of my guys are Jim rats. But I think that's absolutely right. Guys, the
57:02
things that you're doing in your life right now, put the time into the word, put the time into your
57:06
worship into your prayer life, put your time into your community, into your family, so that you're
57:10
creating those deposits, you're making those deposits every day, because one of these days,
57:15
you may have to go to the bank and take some of it out. And if you don't have a lot in there,
57:18
you're going to be in trouble. And so before we let you out of here, there's a couple of other
57:22
things that I did want to bring up. But I really do appreciate you letting us get so far into seasons
57:26
of sorrow. Because as I told you all fair, I know that this sucks, because I wish you and I didn't
57:30
know each other, right? But we know each other because of this book, right? And so that's just
57:35
what we're going to do now. We're going to try to bless as many people as possible through this
57:38
conversation and push them to that. So again, guys, seasons of sorrow, it is in the show notes,
57:42
but something that you brought up a little bit and you obviously just addressed the men here on the
57:45
show. I want to talk a little bit about men's ministry, but maybe even broaden that out to just
57:50
overall godly masculinity. Because again, as I've said, there's the cultural caricatures of
57:56
masculinity, you know, Chase's women dips and, you know, place football and all those different
58:00
things. And that's fine. And then even in the church, a lot of these men's ministries,
58:03
you wouldn't believe some of the books I get sent that are they're trying to just redo John Eldridge's
58:08
wild at heart, but they're not nearly as smart, not nearly as poetic. They're just trying to rewrite
58:12
it in their voice. And I feel like a lot of men's ministries now are missing the mark entirely,
58:18
because they're not basing this masculinity in, in what we see from Jesus in the Bible.
58:24
When you go up and just ask random men, not in church, you know, who are the manliness men from
58:28
history, they're going to tell you, you know, Teddy Roosevelt or Jack London or John Wayne,
58:33
or they're going to give you those kind of culturally masculine guys, they're never going to think
58:37
Jesus of Nazareth. Part of me thinks that's because of this unbelievable emphasis on the lamb of God
58:43
and the complete ignoring of the line of Judah, men go to church and they feel like they're singing
58:48
these Jesus is my boyfriend songs and they don't really get how this guy could possibly clear the
58:53
temple because he seems like such a, you know, soft and soft smoking guy that would never really make
58:58
anybody mad. But talk to me a little bit about godly biblical masculinity because I feel like
59:03
we're losing that and I'm trying my best to yank people back on the other side.
59:08
I think what you said about culture is important because our view of masculinity is shaped by our
59:14
culture and the more you travel, the more it messes with what you believe is masculine. So you can go
59:19
to some countries where the men hold hands with one another as they walk around and that's normal
59:24
and good and doesn't have any sexual overtones. But I would imagine if you and I were in the same
59:29
place and they took your hand just to walk around a conference center or something that wouldn't be
59:33
deemed particularly masculine would probably weird you out a little bit. So we need to understand
59:38
these things are culturally bound. What struck me as you were talking is that the Bible calls
59:44
men as elders and pastors. It says nothing about how heavy a load they can lift. It says nothing
59:52
about how fast or far they can run. It describes only character or character and one other thing
59:58
which is the desire to do it, the ability to teach. But other than that it just describes character.
1:00:04
So in the Bible describes a man who would be an elder, a man who would be a pastor. It's talking
1:00:08
about his character. He's a one woman man. He is committed to the word. He is faithful. He is all
1:00:16
these different things. There's this long list of descriptors of that man and none of them have to
1:00:22
do with either the cultural form of masculinity or cultural form. You know a woman chaser. It has
1:00:28
nothing to do with John Eldridge's form of masculinity, swinging swords or you know living on mountains
1:00:35
or whatever. It just calls us to be men of character and that's the Bible's concern.
1:00:42
The rest of what you do again is culturally bound. You should probably be masculine in ways your
1:00:46
culture says says you should be. But that's not the Bible's concern. It's concerned with our
1:00:51
character, with how we live before the Lord and how we relate to the people around us.
1:00:55
With that in mind, obviously guys don't hear what Tim's not saying. He's not saying, Hey guys,
1:01:01
if you work out, you're not honoring God by any shape or form. Like obviously God gave you a body.
1:01:04
You need to take care of your body. That includes the things you put into it. That includes your
1:01:08
output, all those different things. But I would agree with that. And I've certainly struggled with
1:01:12
that in my lifestyle because I've been an athlete my entire life. And so it's easier to go to those
1:01:16
things. It's easier for me to sprint to the end of the parking lot as opposed to digging into some
1:01:21
like obscure theologian and trying to figure out what he has for me and how it can elucidate the
1:01:25
text even further. And so I think it's a message for men out there about a well-roundedness to your
1:01:30
approach to your own godliness and understanding that the character of you and how you operate in
1:01:36
your family is way more important than how big your biceps are or how easily you could take someone
1:01:41
down while I think those things are awesome. And I think those things are fun and it's good to
1:01:44
kind of dedicate yourselves to some of those things to better yourself to increase your resilience and
1:01:49
all of that. To bring it back to the whole Reformed and Calvinist thing and we don't have enough time
1:01:54
to really really dig here. But when I've been in discussions here recently, Tim, with people of
1:01:59
all stripes, so people that would consider themselves to be Calvinist, some that would consider themselves
1:02:03
to be Armenian, some that have no idea what either of those things are, but they believe this one thing.
1:02:08
There's this consternation and I've expressed it earlier in this conversation about how do I
1:02:13
know that I'm saved? Because if you listen to a Reformed guy, if you raised your hand at church
1:02:18
camp, you're probably going to hell because that wasn't it. You didn't do it, right? Or, you know,
1:02:22
if you were sprinkled as opposed to dipped in fully immersed and everyone's got their own story of
1:02:28
salvation, but even as some people are describing it, there's that hint of doubt that, oh man,
1:02:34
I hope I've done it right. I hope I've listened to the right pastors, the right theologians. I
1:02:37
hope I've read the right version of the Bible because obviously you can't get anything from the
1:02:41
message. It's got to be English standard version. It's got to be NASB or whatever. But I guess from
1:02:46
your perspective, give a message to the people in my audience and me included where you're like,
1:02:50
you're thinking about, am I saved? Like, am I going to be with Jesus someday? Because if I'm not,
1:02:56
how can I leave my voice to do that? And, you know, a lot of my guys in my audience feel that way.
1:03:00
So I'm asking you, I guess, to pastor me and my audience a little bit here and kind of walk us through
1:03:04
that. Yeah, I would say what you're doing as a Christian is you're not looking to yourself,
1:03:10
you're looking to Christ. If we have any hope at all, that's hope that's fixed in Christ. We're
1:03:14
looking to Him and our hope, our confidence, our faith, our trust, however you want to determine it
1:03:20
is in Christ. And so if you're thinking about, well, I know I'm a Christian because I do this or
1:03:25
because I have done this. It's not fixed in the right place. You're looking to Christ and you're
1:03:29
saying Christ has paid for my sins. He's called me to believe in Him and I've done that. Therefore,
1:03:35
I can have great confidence that God will be true to His promise. He will save me. He has saved me.
1:03:40
He will bring me home. But we do have to examine our lives. And we do have to look and say,
1:03:44
so am I living as a Christian? Because maybe we did raise a hand at a youth camp once. But maybe
1:03:50
our lives haven't had any substantial change. So we're not living like a Christian, even though we
1:03:55
did do make a motion as a Christian. So we are called to examine our lives to see if we're truly
1:04:01
in the faith. And I think the way to do that is not just to do it internally, but to ask people
1:04:07
around you. If you're having doubts, you need to talk to men around you, trusted men, pastors,
1:04:12
elders, people who have that character and have been identified by the church as leaders in the
1:04:17
church. Talk to them and say, do you see saving faith in me? We can have other people assess us.
1:04:23
Ask your wife. She'll tell you if she sees you living as a Christian. And if what you profess
1:04:28
to be true matches who you are, she's going to have this close-up view of you. And she'll be able to
1:04:34
say whether you're a complete hypocrite or whether you're living in consistency with your
1:04:38
profession. Because at some point that profession of faith, what you say you believe and how you're
1:04:42
actually living, those two things need to align. They'll hopefully come into closer alignment
1:04:48
over the course of your life. And so just remember, we're saved by grace alone through faith alone.
1:04:54
We're not saved because of the greatness of our faith. We're saved by the existence of our faith.
1:05:02
Faith of a mustard seed. In Christ, in His atoning sacrifice, that's what it takes to save us.
1:05:09
And so if your hope is fixed on Him, you're saved. You can have great confidence. But do,
1:05:14
do then ask people, are you seeing the evidence of that in my life? You can use that phrase,
1:05:18
the evidences of grace. You see evidences of grace in my life,
1:05:21
evidences that God has saved me. And that is now sanctifying me that I'm living for His glory.
1:05:26
To further that, I super appreciate that. To further that a little bit. I know that there are people
1:05:31
that are okay, they experience God more through their intellect than they would ever at some sort
1:05:36
of a worship service or while singing a song, it's just how they're wired or who knows. But there
1:05:41
are people that would say, Tim, I have the knowledge that the only way that I am saved from eternal
1:05:48
damnation is Christ's death on the cross as a propitiation for my sin, right? He paid the debt
1:05:55
that I owed so that I could be close to the Father. You know what I mean? That type of a thing.
1:05:59
So they know that. It's an intellectual thing. It's as much for them as knowing that George
1:06:05
Washington was the first president and that they ate eggs and bacon for breakfast that morning.
1:06:09
They just know it. But maybe they wouldn't describe it as that they feel that, that they
1:06:14
believe it. They're going to describe it as they know it. Maybe I'm not making a whole lot of sense,
1:06:18
but I know that people really like splitting hairs here about what they know versus what they
1:06:23
actually believe because I would say I lean more towards the intellectual side to where it's like,
1:06:27
no, I believe that we're not just, you know, humans that used to be chimps, that used to be fish,
1:06:32
that used to be goo. Like I believe in all of that in the, you know, that the creation story and
1:06:36
everything. And Jesus dying on the cross and the resurrection, the evidence therein makes the most
1:06:41
sense out of all this. I believe that to be true intellectually. Am I making sense where people kind
1:06:46
of lean more towards the intellectual as opposed to the feel? Yeah, when God saves us, he doesn't
1:06:51
overhaul our personality. I mean, we are some of us are more intellectual. Some of us are more based
1:06:55
on feelings and God makes us different and that's okay. And so if you're an intellectual, it would
1:07:01
probably be expected that you'd have more of an intellectual relationship with your faith. If
1:07:06
you're more of a feeler, it would make sense that you would have more of a feeling relationship. That's
1:07:10
not to say the feelers have no intellect and vice versa, but you shouldn't expect that God will
1:07:15
completely overhaul who he has made you to be just because you've come to faith. And so I think
1:07:20
that those intellectually minded people are coming up with the other ones who are listening to the
1:07:24
apologetics podcast and really grounding their faith and all these evidences and they're clinging
1:07:29
to that. That's well and good. Other people have no interest in that. They just say, you know,
1:07:34
I heard the gospel. It made sense to me. I believed it and that's good enough for me. That's fine too.
1:07:38
So I don't think it's always that helpful to compare ourselves to other people to compare our
1:07:44
faith to other people's. What's helpful is to compare ourselves to Christ to examine do we really
1:07:49
love him? Are we really living for him, living for his glory? And over time, we're becoming more and
1:07:54
more conform to his image. That's, that's where we need to be looking. I appreciate that. I'll leave
1:08:00
this last question here. Those will be last question of the day because I know we're run up against time.
1:08:03
I've talked with fathers and I've talked with people that they would, for the love of God,
1:08:08
they would literally never bring this up in church. But when they kind of get out and about and then
1:08:12
you kind of get asked about this and then they'll kind of open up about that consternation about
1:08:17
whether or not children can be saved. Like the, the age of reason, the age of accountability.
1:08:22
And so I know like, I didn't grow up in any type of faith tradition. I grew up, I was born in Oklahoma.
1:08:27
So according to my parents, I was a Christian because I was born on the red clay of this great
1:08:30
state, right? There was no gospel in our, in our lives, the Bible was in our house, but it had an
1:08:34
inch of dust on top of it. But when people see a five year old raise their hand and say, yeah,
1:08:39
I'm accepting Christ and they get baptized and all that, I got to be honest, I'm a little bit
1:08:43
pessimistic about that, a little bit cynical about that. I'm like, but are they though? Like,
1:08:47
they can barely make it through the day without crapping themselves. Like what, what do they mean?
1:08:51
They're, they're accepting Christ. And I know this kind of back into the whole reformed Calvinist
1:08:56
theology. But I, I'm just asking you a lot of questions because you seem adept to be able to
1:09:00
answer them. Because I know people in my audience struggle with that, they struggle with that with
1:09:04
their own children, but also with, you know, the children that are part of their children's peer
1:09:08
group. And they want to be able to celebrate with these people with these families. But if they,
1:09:13
in their true heart of hearts, they're like, man, I just don't know.
1:09:15
I would distinguish between what a child can do. I think any child can put their faith in Lord
1:09:22
Jesus. Again, we're told to have faith like children. God commends that. And it doesn't take
1:09:28
great faith. It just takes faith. The existence of faith is plenty. But there's a difference between
1:09:33
a child being able to, and the church publicly affirming it. So I would say a five year old can
1:09:39
absolutely be a Christian. And we can, we can commend that. We can teach that. We should be
1:09:43
calling to the children off and put your faith in Jesus. And that's good. But I would hesitate to
1:09:48
baptize a five year old as, as the church's way of affirming that person's faith. I would want to
1:09:55
wait until they were a little bit older, really until they're that age where they can choose not
1:09:59
to. Five, most five year olds are going to do what their parents said. They're going to believe
1:10:03
what their parents says. So I think it's helpful to wait a little bit until they've had the opportunity
1:10:08
to rebel or until they've seen enough of the world, tasted a little bit of its pleasures,
1:10:12
and then had their faith tested in that way. So that's where absolutely, I believe, a five year old
1:10:18
very much can become a Christian. I think it's a little unusual. Most kids, I think, become Christians,
1:10:23
you know, were raised in the church probably a little bit later than that. But as a church,
1:10:27
I would want to hold off affirming that through baptism or through profession of faith over your
1:10:31
church does that until they're a little bit older, a little bit more mature, a little bit more able
1:10:35
to articulate those things. And again, to know that they face some sort of testing.
1:10:40
I lied. I have one more question, but it's a quick one. And it's related to the last thing,
1:10:43
just to follow up on that. You know, obviously, I mentioned in this podcast, I went to the funeral
1:10:48
for a baby that lived for about one hour. And you know, they're obviously like both of my sons
1:10:52
right now, they can barely talk, barely walk all those different things. I know a lot of parents
1:10:58
are worried that if their kids pass away, they don't know because I haven't had a chance to accept
1:11:02
the gospel. And I know you've dug into the scriptures. When I dig, I can't get a really solid answer on
1:11:07
this as to kind of what happens to those babies. My wife and I technically have four kids because
1:11:11
we didn't get to meet two of them because they died while they were in the womb. So what about
1:11:15
what about those souls? Because obviously, if you are pro life, you believe that from the moment of
1:11:18
conception, that that is a new unique image bearer of Christ, what could be our comfort that, you know,
1:11:25
where our kids are and where their souls are? Yeah, the Bible doesn't speak to it. I don't see the
1:11:31
Bible speaking to it with a clarity that some people do. So John MacArthur, my much admired,
1:11:37
he would his phrase is instant heaven. And he really believes that any child anywhere in the
1:11:41
world in any circumstance who dies before an age of some sort of reason instantly goes to heaven.
1:11:46
I'd like to believe that. I don't see that in the scripture. I don't know anyone who believes the
1:11:50
opposite who would just say all children who die in empathy go to health. I would line up more with
1:11:55
a group that says the Bible doesn't make it clear. So instead of saying definitively this is what
1:12:01
happens, let's just say we know that God is good. We know that God makes no mistakes. And so we can
1:12:05
have great comfort in his character. I think Christian parents especially can have tons of comfort
1:12:12
that, yeah, I think that the by far majority view of the church would be at least that
1:12:19
children who die in infancy and are children of Christian parents are in heaven and you have
1:12:25
nothing to fear, maybe a little bit more dispute about what happens to non-Christian children who
1:12:31
die, but ultimately whatever our view, whatever our level of certainty or uncertainty, God is good,
1:12:37
God makes no mistakes. We can have tremendous comfort in him.
1:12:41
Well, Tim, I think that's a great place to leave it. We've gone everywhere in this conversation.
1:12:44
I appreciate you. Let me go out through all these rabbit trails and things like that. But that's
1:12:48
all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? No, all good. Thanks for having me.
1:12:52
Tim chalice. Thank you for coming on Daunton life and man's podcast.
1:12:55
There you go, guys. Hope you enjoyed my time with Tim chalice, but before that you go,
1:12:58
we are going to do a quick resilience boost. Adam Daunton life or mission is equipping men to push
1:13:02
back darkness with content that for just spiritual mental and physical resilience. So again, just a
1:13:06
reminder text upper room to 727472 3860 to get your application or to actually schedule a one-on-one
1:13:14
with Riley meek of the upper room and the king's council. The link's I've got for you today. I've
1:13:18
got a link to Tim's blog that is chalice.com. I've also got a link to his Amazon page and to a
1:13:22
page where you can buy his new book seasons of sorrow. Guys, thanks so much for listening to
1:13:26
the show. We do appreciate it. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave
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1:13:47
thank the band August Burns Red for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on
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this podcast is our song, Cutting the Tides, which taught their 10th anniversary re-recording of
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their album Leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing
1:14:01
back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:14:31
[Music]