Welcome to another podcast of Struggling Well, and Jimmy asked me to introduce news this week because what we're going to talk about was something that popped up in my head and I am really hoping that it has some sense to it. Jimmy, help me here, babe. I feel like I'm drowning. We're going to we're going to take your thoughts, which I think were good thoughts that you've had and we're going to try to put them into a cohesive broadcast.
Okay. and we've also invited Tim to He doesn't even know what we're talking about, but that's because I want it fresh. I want him to weigh in here in a fresh way. So, let me give you a little context for where my brain has been going. and most of the time my brain is like pingpong balls in a dryer. So, we never know what's going on. it's an interesting way to live. But let me tell you where the Yeah, for you, I bet. so I've been thinking lately. We just recently had a friend from church pass away, and we really really enjoyed this man. tremendously and his wife. They encouraged us every week. There were times in the past years when we have been in a hard place and they have noticed and they have turned around cuz we would sit behind them. They've turned around and ask good questions and been in incredibly compassionate and promising to pray and I know that they did. So, the reason why I'm telling you that is I've been thinking a lot about how and Jimmy you use this phrase a lot that we come into people's lives in different chapters like we've known Timap
chapters of their lives we've known Tim how many years have we known you
I think I would have met you guys in 2008 n
okay
so
so we came into your life your kids were young
you were new on staff so we began to know that chapter of Tim's life now we've been fortunate to be able to know him still know him and watching his life watch him develop as a man, as a pastor, as a father, as a husband. So, this is the thought. Again, this is just crazy. I don't have a cohesive thought yet, but I'm hoping these gentlemen can help me with this. So, this man or any man, let help me, Jimmy. I feel like I'm blubbering again.
Well, no, you just you're wanting to know
how you perceive somebody, how you see somebody, and how that could be different perhaps from people who experienced them at a different time. in their life.
Okay.
Okay, there you go. Like for instance, both my parents are deceased. and my father growing up was an interesting man. He made some terrible, terrible choices. he loved us. He loved my brother and myself. but he made some interesting choices in his life. If you had known him then, you might have made a decision about the kind of man he was. But if you had known him in his latter years, you would have seen him in a different chapter in his life. And so the conf losing part is and Tim if you can jump in here when you feel comfortable doing so is all right so when that person passes away and you go to their funeral and people are talking about how wonderful that person was well you may have experienced them at a time in their lives that was really hard for you and so people saying oh your father was a wonderful man but you experienced him in a certain pocket of time and so there's this disparity between that man and the man that he was so how Do we give people the gift of slow change of letting the process of sanctification of letting that process carry on? And I'm thinking a lot like with our kids. So you see them at a time in their life where they're maybe rebellious and you know talking back and all that, but it's not over. That's not the only picture. Has any of this made any sense? Because I kind of feel like it hasn't, but that's what's fun about this podcast is that we don't care. No, we do. So, jump in.
Yeah, I can jump in and Jimmy, you can clarify all the things I missed.
Good luck.
Yeah. Well, what you're talking about reminds me of something I heard recently about how our kids never had the same parent because they're different ages, they get us in different seasons of our life. And so, how we were as a parent with their first child is different than how we were with the third child because they got us in those formed of years in different seasons of our lives with different responsibilities and griefs and sins and all that.
So what you're saying you're talking about the complexity of human nature of like
in one season you know we may have been in this healthy part of our life and in another season we were not. And
it sounds like with this gentleman who passed at church you got to experience him in a very fruitful part of his life and a season of his life where he was giving and loving to you all and that's a sweet thing.
But you're right in the sense that human nature is so complex and even though we are the same person in one sense all the way through our lives,
what God's up to in our lives and how we're reacting to that can be vastly different. And so if we were to look at someone's life as a whole,
we would want to have that perspective of in this season of life, here's where their struggles were at. In this season, here's something different.
and we should have grace
grace for that. and to have kindness in the sense of and sympathy of the ups and downs of life.
Yeah. And it's that whole sense of Suzi used that phrase. We've used it when we've taught on marriage before to give one another the gift of slow change and to realize that the life that God's called us to live is not a straight line existence. It is cyclical in its nature. And so God is constantly working out and bringing about us looking more and more like his son.
Mhm.
And so can I have that same maturity when I look at an individual to patiently see that they may be different now than they were then? there are changes in their world that how I experience them may be different than how other people had experienced them. But can I be patient enough to say that God is working in their life to bring them into if they know Christ to bring them to conform more and more like his son.
Yeah, I appreciate that from both of you because obviously I was floundering there because this has been heavy on my heart about the disparity that sometimes occurs when especially when somebody passes away and you're telling this kid how great their parent was like I said earlier but they've not experienced that. but I think about my own life the different chapters of my life there are chapters that it that I was at the time judged by that one chapter. And I may have talked about this many episodes ago, but I remember a particular chapter in my life where I was a wreck. I was dealing with some of my background stuff, some of my history, and it wasn't good. And I remember getting a note from a woman saying, "Until you can pull yourself together, I will not be friends with you anymore." And I remember the devastation that I felt. Well, Here I am, you know, 30 years later and God did an incredible has been doing this work of sanctification and transformation in my life that particular person just took that one chapter and made that my whole existence. And thankfully God's sanctification in me has been ongoing and constant. I'm not that same person. But it's like I guess I don't know I've got so many thoughts right now. My head is just full of so many thoughts of how we often can throw somebody away when we haven't. We've come in mid midbook, mid chapter, and we think that's all of who they are. And yet there's so much more to them, past and future to come. And so I just have been thinking about that in light of when people pass away and how people had perceived them at the time.
Yeah. And so to me it want to make it simplistic, but a huge part of it is to be patient, to have a patience with what God is doing in another person's life and be willing to give them time to allow the spirit of God to work change in their heart and change in their life.
What just came to me and I hope this is the spirit of God as I was just thinking about when Jesus chose the disciples and he chose Peter,
right?
Well, Peter was, you know, bold and crazy and impetuous and all these things. And when if he had just taken the story of Peter when Peter denied him and that would be the end of Peter and yet that wasn't the end because God had vision for Peter and knew what he was going to become. And so as I look as we look at one another, can we look at our kids? Can we look at our spouse? I don't care how long you've been married. Can we look at each other and know that there's still opportunity for sanctification and transformation? to occur and look like God does at us with a long picture in mind.
Yeah. I was just thinking how good the good news of the gospel is where without the gospel perhaps what's true of us is the worst part of our lives. because that's what our record shows, you know, that's who we are.
But in Jesus Christ, the good news is we're accepted despite that. But our truest self is in Jesus and when we are being sanctified and we are being fruitful and healthy in the best parts of our lives. And so that's just really comforting news I think to anyone who's wrestling I guess with their character, their legacy is that in Jesus we're not defined by our worst moments. And we can have compassion for ourselves in those moments knowing that our truest selves, our best selves, are in Jesus being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
Thank you, Tim. I so appreciate that.
And thank you for listening again this week. And I hope that this is an encouragement to you. No matter where you find yourself right now, whether there are things that you want to see changed, allow God's spirit to take to bring about those changes in your life because the only real change agent that we have in our lives is the spirit of God. We hope you have a great week.