Rebellion, Despair, and the Cross

Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Jim Davis, Gretchen Ronnevik

How should we share the grace and truth of Jesus with sinners and sufferers in our day to day life and ministry?

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Assurance of SalvationSuffering

How should we share the grace and truth of Jesus with sinners and sufferers in our day to day life and ministry? Join the main speakers of Sola’s Binding the Broken conference for this honest and intimate (and often hilarious) Q&A.

In this Video

  • Assurance of salvation rests on the promise of the gospel, not on the strength or quality of one’s own faith.
  • Music and the Psalms give Christians language for the full range of emotion, including lament, sorrow, and anger.
  • The hope of the resurrection reframes present suffering as “light and momentary” compared to future glory, without minimizing real pain.
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This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

  1. 00:04

    Brannon Ellis

    This is for anyone: could you elaborate on how you counsel those struggling with assurance of salvation to keep their eyes on Jesus rather than the ups and downs of how our faith is experienced?

  2. 00:23

    Michael Horton

    Well, I think the first thing all of our traditions would say is that you're assured by the gospel. You're not assured by looking inside yourself to see if you have the right habitus, or aptitude, or the right kind of faith. The danger with the Reformation was — now people say, “We're not saved by works,” but then, “How good does that faith have to be?” We're always going to turn faith into a work, the gospel into a law, if we can. That's just the way we are. So I think the first thing is to tell people: look, you wouldn't be having this problem, you wouldn't be asking this question, if you weren't a Christian. The natural person does not even understand the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them. You're in turmoil because you're a Christian who sins. Welcome to the church — that's what I would tell people. Now, take your eyes off your act of faith and keep them on the object of faith.

  3. 01:56

    Brannon Ellis

    I think — I mean, everybody knows this — there's a rise, whether through the more charismatic movement or going back to Finney or whoever, in the emphasis on how much faith you can muster up. And when we have trials in our life, we begin to think, “Do I have enough faith? Is it a lack of faith that brought this trial on?” My wife had cancer when she was twenty-nine — she's fine now — but I had somebody sit across the table and say, “Well, this is happening because she,” and maybe both of us, “don't have enough faith.”

  4. 02:31

    Brannon Ellis

    And it's the closest I've come to punching somebody in my adult life. But like you said, the Bible doesn't say to have faith the size of a mountain. Jesus says to have faith the size of a mustard seed. The emphasis isn't on the amount of faith we have, but on the object of our faith, and he will give us what we need in these times. And I love how you said — if you're asking these questions, you should be assured. If you desire this kind of faith, that doesn't come naturally; it comes supernaturally.

  5. 03:12

    Michael Horton

    Can I throw one more minute in? I've got to get the Heidelberg Catechism in here. Where does this faith come from, if we're justified by faith alone? The Holy Spirit creates it in our hearts through the preaching of the holy gospel and confirms it through the use of the holy sacraments. So if you want to know where faith comes from, it comes from the preaching of the gospel. If people's faith is struggling, it's probably because they're not hearing the gospel. And if the Lord has called them and they're part of his flock, they will hear his voice and come to him, if that word is preached.

  6. 03:56

    Michael Horton

    And baptism — I've got to tell a little story.

  7. 04:03

    Michael Horton

    One of my kids was really struggling a few years ago with some things and felt like she was being judged at our church. She wasn't, really — nobody knew what was going on with her — but existentially, she felt different, and judged. The elders came over for a huisbezoek, a house visit, and the older Dutch elder listened to her very carefully, heard her concerns, and said, “Hmm — get baptized.” And she said, “Yes.” And he said, “Well, that's Christ's gracious invitation. We'll see you at church next week with all the other sinners. Why do you think you're any different?” Isn't that great?

  8. 05:15

    Brannon Ellis

    In what ways have you seen — this is to anyone — in what ways have you seen music show the grace and truth of Jesus to sinners and sufferers? And personally, do you have certain music you turn to in times of struggle?

  9. 05:41

    Gretchen Ronnevik

    I mentioned before that our pastor passed away a couple of years ago, and he was extremely talented in music — he and his wife both had amazing voices. While he was struggling with leukemia, she was struggling with multiple sclerosis, so both of them together —

  10. 06:04

    Gretchen Ronnevik

    I don't know if you've ever gone to a pastor's funeral that he designed for you to attend, but the song he picked for us to sing at his funeral was “The Goodness of God” — “All my life you’ve been faithful. All my life you’ve been so, so good.”

  11. 06:28

    Gretchen Ronnevik

    When I think about music, I think about how much it meant to our pastor, and how directly he ministered to us through it — even though his preaching was amazing, his music was very much from his heart.

  12. 06:54

    Justin Holcomb

    When I want to mess myself up on purpose, it's “In Christ Alone.” And when I'm feeling stuck, or vulnerable, that song does it for me. There are other ones too — I just don't always know the titles, so I go find them. It was fun, though, because there was a song we sang this morning for morning prayer — what was it?

  13. 07:20

    Michael Horton

    “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.”

  14. 07:21

    Justin Holcomb

    “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation” — that third verse — and “Be Thou My Vision.” I mean, it was fun, because I thought, did y'all pick my favorite songs to sing today? Apparently they did.

  15. 07:40

    Jim Davis

    The last couple of years I've been on a big City of Light kick. What I love — and I love a lot of music, but they're just a church band, not a famous, big touring act — they're just a group of people who sing at church. I'm not very musically inclined, but good, gospel-centered music reminds us that we're not alone, in an interesting way. You're singing about God, but you can feel him. And then, like we did this morning, there's the aspect of not being alone.

  16. 08:21

    Jim Davis

    I was thinking of “A Mighty Fortress” this morning, just hearing everybody sing it. There's something about music, when things are hard, that reminds us we're not alone — God is with us, God's people are with us. It does something that few other aspects of life and worship can do; it gets to a deeper place. So it's not surprising to me that God has instituted that—

  17. 08:50

    Jim Davis

    as part of how we worship and operate together as his people.

  18. 08:55

    Justin Holcomb

    Yeah, and he gave us a covenant songbook — I mean, how awesome is that?

  19. 09:00

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, thanks for that segue.

  20. 09:02

    Justin Holcomb

    Put that ball on the tee for Mike.

  21. 09:06

    Michael Horton

    We've been working together for so long that we just create tunnels for each other, going back and forth.

  22. 09:10

    Justin Holcomb

    I know where he wants to go.

  23. 09:11

    Michael Horton

    For me — I came out of a non-Reformed background as a kid and have been in it a long time now — the Psalms have really grown on me. It took a while for that tradition to grow on me, like moss. Beautiful moss.

  24. 09:43

    Michael Horton

    Just as Calvin said, there's a psalm for every emotion. God knew not only what to say to us, but to give us the words he knew we wanted to say to him but didn't have. There are psalms for — I'll tell a family story — my son was struggling with something, and we were at church on Psalm 48; the sermon was going to be on Psalm 48. We got through the next-to-last verse, and I started crying. He started crying. He had to go out to the car.

  25. 10:32

    Michael Horton

    He came back after the sermon.

  26. 10:34

    Michael Horton

    and told the pastor, “I'm really sorry I missed the service, but I was in the car crying the whole time. I needed a good cry.” I've never done that through “Shine, Jesus, Shine” — I'm sorry, I'm just saying — or through little clipped verses, where you take the last two verses of a psalm that are happy and resolved, instead of the first three, where the psalmist is saying, “Why, Lord, why are your hands in your pockets?” Can I sing that? Can I actually sing that? Well, in my Psalter, it's the first three verses — I have to sing it. They told me I had to sing it. So it's bizarre to sing that stuff back to God. And then you think: God told me these are the words he wants me to sing back to him, because he knows how I feel. It's wonderful.

  27. 11:41

    Justin Holcomb

    I don't know what it says about Mike, but I have no problem with God's inspired songs — all hundred and fifty of them. I happily sing them, Mike.

  28. 11:50

    Michael Horton

    Well, we did this morning, just as we—

  29. 11:54

    Justin Holcomb

    There's no moss in my spirituality.

  30. 11:56

    Michael Horton

    No — just as we did it this morning.

  31. 12:03

    Brannon Ellis

    This is for anyone: what is the best book you could recommend for a Christian, written by a non-Christian?

  32. 12:22

    Justin Holcomb

    That's a cool question — I wish I were smart enough to ask that question. I'll just get the ball rolling since one came to mind. Douglas Coupland — the phrase “Generation X” actually came from his novel Generation X. He also wrote a book called Life After God. In Generation X, he writes about the quest for something meaningful, and it's really compelling. In Life After God, one of his characters says something I read regularly for sermons: he's crying out that he can't be loving or good enough on his own, and needs help. So — Coupland, Generation X, which is my favorite, and Life After God — both have such an honest depiction of human reality, of those end-of-your-rope moments, and this yearning that something beyond the material world might be true. There's a line in Generation X where he writes about being unfairly stereotyped by his generation, while really just looking for some believable alternative to a purely materialist view of life. Because we all think, as Christians, that we need the best apologetic argument. And I teach apologetics — I want people to be able to defend the faith and give good reasons for believing it. But the fact that he was just asking for something believable and good — that yearning — I love that book. Life After God is a good follow-up. But Generation X is where the phrase came from. Do any of you read non-Christian writers? I'm just trying to think.

  33. 14:23

    Michael Horton

    Okay — for understanding the demise of Christianity in the West, Marcel Gauchet, who wrote The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion. And John Gray — my favorite atheist — Straw Dogs. If you get a chance, it's an easy read; you can get through it in an afternoon. There's insight in it — it's kind of like Nietzsche, no running story all the way through, more like aphorisms, as if he sat down in the middle of the night and wrote three paragraphs at a time. It's brilliant — real insight, even into what's wrong with atheism and how dependent it is on Christianity. It's kind of a Christian heresy. Anyway, it's a fascinating read by an atheist — John Gray, G-R-A-Y, Straw Dogs.

  34. 15:43

    Brannon Ellis

    Next question, for anyone: how do I discern when a loss of desire for God is hopelessness or rebellion?

  35. 15:57

    Gretchen Ronnevik

    Okay. I think we associate a lot of sad, hopeless, or depressed emotions as automatically evil. And, as Michael said about the Psalms, we don't allow ourselves the full range of human emotion that God does. I think of Elijah, who had his moments of despair and exhaustion. There are times we need to be fed and cared for in the church, and so often we feel guilty because we need to be fed, or guilty because we're tired — when it's not our strength holding on to God, it's him holding on to us, and he allows us that full range of emotion. I think we sometimes have an addiction to almost analyzing our spiritual growth based on what I've heard called a “conviction high” — wanting to be convicted all the time, feeling like a sermon was so great because it was so convicting. And if you walk away with rest instead, you almost feel apathetic, like, do I even care enough? We can overanalyze that. So I think it comes back to focusing on the fact that he's the one holding you, that you're allowed to be tired, and just keep leaning into the church that will minister to you in those times.

  36. 17:47

    Jim Davis

    I thought that was a beautiful answer, and I agree with all of it. The other side of that pendulum — and I can connect this to the music question — is that a big part of the modern Western church, when you look at what they sing, has no sad songs. We're stunting our growth by not going there and feeling all the emotions you read in the Psalms. David was all over the place, one page to the next. If I were sitting with this person, I'd have questions — I'd want to know what had happened, what emotions were involved. But without that context, when I think about the difference between hopelessness and rebellion, I think we're touching on how we understand the sovereignty of God. When you talk about hopelessness, there's a true lack of—

  37. 19:02

    Jim Davis

    I don't want to say “lack of belief,” because of our assurance conversation, but there's an improper understanding that leads us to think not only do we not control anything in this world, but neither does God — and the result is hopelessness. Rebellion is really taking control — I want to be in control, not God. So when I think about the difference, my mind goes to the sovereignty of God, and very different understandings of who is in control. You could even get to the goodness and the power and ability of the one in control. But I think that's part of this conversation.

  38. 19:47

    Justin Holcomb

    There are two questions across those two categories, hopelessness and rebellion, because one of the number-one commands in Scripture is to wait. The first is “fear not, because the Lord is with you” — there's a reason for that; it's not just “don't fear, be strong, have a lot of faith,” it's “fear not, because the Lord is with you.” The other is “wait” — wait on the Lord. He's good, he's trustworthy. So when I look at hopelessness versus rebellion — hopelessness has some time-bound quality to it, because you want something to happen. So the question is, “How long, O Lord?” That's a Psalms question, a Revelation question. That's how faith responds to suffering — how long? Are you going to do something or not? That's a faithful question. If I try to make up the rebellion question in ten seconds, it's more like, “Who do you think you are, God?” Even that's a safe question to ask, because the psalmist does it — but it's a different posture. I love that you answered like a pastor: “Why don't I ask some other questions?” — because you're a pastor, you deal with people's lives, you talk to them regularly. So whoever's asking the question — whatever that question really is — is it “How long, O Lord?” or is it “Who do you think you are?” And the good news is, when you ask “Who do you think you are,” he's probably going to bless you back to faithfulness. He doesn't stand there with his arms crossed saying, “When you get serious, I'll deal with you.” He's more like, “Watch this — I'm going to bless you now.” I experienced that. I went headlong into rebellion, and God's response was, “Of course you don't deserve it — I know you're rebelling, but you're also a covenant child, and I'm not going to let you go.” There's this language of being marked as Christ's own forever and sealed in baptism — there's a promise there. He's going to come get his people. So even in your rebellion, he can handle it. Nothing's going to pry you from his hand — not Satan, and not even yourself — you're not that strong. Your rebellion isn't strong enough to peel his fingers off of you. So in the rebellion, go ahead and dare him to come get you.

  39. 22:11

    Michael Horton

    I think, too, we have to beware of a kind of complacency, where we act as though we're free to be children whining in the wilderness. No — we're never free to just complain to God about him not caring about us. If we develop that pattern, that behavior isn't well formed by the whole range of emotion we have in the Psalms, and the whole experience of the people of God through what he's done. That's why the psalmist appeals not to going deeper into yourself to deal with rebellion, but to going outside and looking at what God has done in history — remember the Exodus.

  40. 23:01

    Michael Horton

    okay, that's how we draw people out. We don't just wallow in either rebellion or despair — we tell the story again. And the second thing, quickly: a person is not rebelling when they say, “I can't understand how you can be good and sovereign at the same time. I can't understand why you're letting this happen to me, or to my grandmother, or to Gaza, or whatever.” When you're expressing that pain, that sorrow, you're praying or singing to a God you're acknowledging as responsible for it. Rebellion is saying, “You have no real role in history, in this world, or in my life” — I'm not even thinking about you when I watch the news, or when I think about my life. That's not what you're doing when you're crying out to God, “I don't get it. I don't get why. There are your promises on this side, and this reality right now, and they don't seem to match.” What you're doing is agreeing that God is sovereign and good — you don't understand it, you don't get it, precisely because you're agreeing with what Scripture teaches, and now your experience is making a mystery of it, because you can't fathom the majesty of God. So you turn back to the cross, back to the place where God reveals himself — not to his hidden will, which you can't know — not to the majesty, but to the mercy, the backside, where he preaches his goodness, faithfulness, and humility toward us.

  41. 25:34

    Brannon Ellis

    There are a couple of aspects to this next question — maybe a couple of different categories of people — but I think we can treat them together: how do you do the tricky work of ministering to people who either don't think they're broken, or won't admit they're broken? That's one category. Or those who, because of social pressure or expectations, believe that admitting their brokenness is a sign of weakness or a source of shame?

  42. 26:10

    Gretchen Ronnevik

    I sometimes have trouble with meddling, and I think God has been teaching me a lot to wait for the right questions — to wait for God to work in people's lives. I'm thinking of my kids, my friends, my siblings — people where we have the hard conversations, but there's very little I can control. So I find that loving them as best and as honestly as I can, praying for them, and waiting for God to do what he does — because if I've learned one thing about God, it's that he is very faithful to humble us. There was a situation a while back when I was working with a young man who was incredibly gifted, but he had an arrogance about him that was distasteful. I remember thinking, “Oh, God, be gentle with him,” because God had put me through that, and I knew what was coming next for him, and I couldn't stop it. So it was, “Lord, please be gentle with him, because I know what you have coming for him next” — not that God is out to get him, but he will form his people, convict them, and bring them to a place where they see their need, because he's good and gracious. I don't always have to provide the means of breaking them — I just pray, because God is faithful.

  43. 28:23

    Jim Davis

    This is a really interesting question, because I don't think about my ministry as going around showing people how broken they are — there are already plenty of self-aware, broken people who want healing, so there's plenty of that work to do. My wife's a counselor, and she says we have this idea that life is a long line of comfort and stability with occasional blips of trial and pain, but if you live long enough, you realize life is actually a line of trials and pains with occasional blips of comfort and stability — and at some point you realize that. In the addiction-recovery community, they say you have to wait until a person hits rock bottom; it's hard to intervene until they do, and in a similar way, God humbles people, and life is hard. There's a limit to what we can do, so our ministry happens when, through circumstance and the Holy Spirit, people arrive at that spot—

  44. 29:50

    Jim Davis

    and then we want to be ready to care for them, nurture them, and show them the hope of Jesus Christ. I think about the pastors who make it their job to break people in their sermons, and I want to walk away from that — not that we shouldn't preach sin, or teach what sin is; there are serious things in Scripture we shouldn't avoid. But I think more about being there for people when they realize it. That's how I think about it.

  45. 30:31

    Justin Holcomb

    I put myself in this question, because I don't like to admit weakness, and sometimes it feels like shame — especially in conflict with my wife or kids. My kids are fourteen and sixteen. There are moments when I'm in it and I think I'm right, or I know I'm wrong but at least I can defend myself a little. There's a voice that says, “Why don't you just admit you're wrong and apologize? This would all go away.” I actually know, pragmatically, that's what I should do, and that it's accurate. So I think we all have a little of this — admitting weakness isn't fun, and it does feel like shame. But then, I also grew up apologizing more quickly, because I had parents who apologized quickly. They converted in their twenties and hadn't grown up in a church culture, so for them, repenting was great news — “God's kindness leads to repentance,” that kind of thing. I grew up with parents like that. And — I don't like telling stories like this, because it makes me sound like a hero, and I'm not — our kids go to the same school, and—

  46. 31:57

    Jim Davis

    Play volleyball together.

  47. 31:58

    Justin Holcomb

    Play volleyball together. We've done parenting stuff together for years. And I yelled at my daughter — not quite barked, but I was angry and snapped at her, made her feel bad, and sent her off to school. I felt horrible, because what I'd done was horrible. I drove all the way to work, sat down, and thought, “I'm miserable, and I didn't even do anything — I mean, she has to feel horrible.” So I drove back and apologized. I got her out of class and said, “I am so sorry — I sinned against you.” Because I had parents who did that, I thought it was normal. So that happened, and then at lunch, her friend asked why her dad had come back, and she said, “He was pretty mean in the car, so he came back to apologize.” She told the story at dinner — I asked how her day was, and she said all the kids were shocked, because none of their parents had ever apologized to them; they were just dumbfounded. Something I thought was completely normal, because my parents did it. After half an hour of sitting with it, the Holy Spirit finally prompted me to do that. It makes me wonder — what's going on in that person's life, that they'd have a domineering parent, or feel they have to present as capable, self-sufficient, competent all the time, so that something as freeing as admitting you're wrong and weak feels shameful instead of free? Even growing up with parents like that, it took me a while to think I should apologize to my kid. There's this hardwired thing — no one wants to put their worst foot forward. We live in a world of putting our best foot forward. Showing up and telling your kid you sinned against her is humiliating — it's like, what kind of leader am I, that I'm the adult in the room and I can't keep my temper for a school drop-off? It's humiliating, but there's freedom in doing it. I can admit that if I'd grown up with parents who weren't gracious and humble, in the world we live in, it would make sense not to want to talk about being broken, or admit weakness or shame — because that's mostly the pattern of this world. We don't live in a world where you can do that; the church is the one place where you can, and it's safest to do it in confession, when everyone else is doing it too. That's the beauty of the church — the one place where you don't have to put your best foot forward, and the response is the comfortable words: “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, I will give you rest.” “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” “If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father.” “Jesus came to save sinners, not the righteous.” You're good. You only get that in church, with other Christians — so I lean into that. And I'd invite you to risk the shame.

  48. 35:28

    Brannon Ellis

    Let's take — does anybody have any questions out loud? I've got more, but does anything occur to anyone as we've been talking?

  49. 35:43

    Brannon Ellis

    Let me get it on record, unless you'd rather it be off — that's great.

  50. 35:49

    Jim Davis

    Thank you all for the answers so far. I was curious — in regard to our topic, I'd love to hear anyone riff on the hope of the age to come, the return of Jesus, and how that has influenced how you minister to sinners and sufferers.

  51. 36:13

    Michael Horton

    Well, that's my focus in my talk tomorrow, on why we have to die. I really do think eschatology is a salve here. First, it tells us who we are — we were made for a certain goal, a certain purpose, and nobody believes that anymore. You're a blank slate; create yourself; it comes in a box, with a smartphone, redo yourself — everybody constructs themselves differently. So the idea that humanity was created with a telos, a goal, a purpose — for glory, that God meant us for glory — that's nowhere in our culture. I think it's the best time to tell this story, because it's not just the best story ever told, it stands in sharp contrast to the nowhere man in his nowhere land making all his nowhere plans for nobody. So it's really important to go back to our reference point — it tells us who we are, what we're meant for, and what we're destined for. God is absolutely determined that even though we treasonously chose to glorify ourselves, he's found a way to be both just and the justifier of the ungodly, and to glorify us anyway — to make us as much like himself as it's possible for a creature to be. That's mind-blowing. And I think that's really helpful for people suffering real sorrow and pain — to know there's a future, that our present affliction is light and momentary — who could say that besides Paul? If I said it myself, it wouldn't carry the weight of Paul saying it after being pelted with rocks, shipwrecked, and bitten by snakes. We can't outdo him when it comes to suffering, and yet he says it's just for a little while — and it really is just for a little while, compared to the glory about to be revealed in us — not just to us, but in us. It's amazing.

  52. 39:12

    Justin Holcomb

    And he's not minimizing the suffering.

  53. 39:16

    Justin Holcomb

    He's actually talking to people who have suffered, and he suffered too. He's saying, this is how bad it is — he's holding the suffering, not pushing it down and saying, “I won't compare the glory to this.” He's maximizing the glory. That's the telos. What a great vision.

  54. 39:46

    Jim Davis

    In the age to come, a lot of good things are going to happen. I remember one older pastor being asked, near the end of his life, what he thought about when he thought about heaven, and his answer was, “Sinlessness — I can almost taste it.” And that's true — some people say it will be reunion with loved ones, true; no more pain and strife, true. But if that's all we have, we're committing what Michael Allen calls “eschatological escapism.” The ultimate good is that we are with Jesus, and all those other good things are only great because we're with him — the one we were made by and for. What's it going to be like to be made fully human for the first time in our own experience? We only have the faintest categories for that. Let me give you two examples — I'm realizing they're both about dating and related to each other. I remember when I first started dating my wife — we hadn't been dating long, we were still hiding it from some people. We were at a coffee shop with other people, holding hands under the table, and it didn't matter what was going on in the outside world, because I was holding her hand. The world could have been falling apart and I would have felt amazing — that's the faintest glimpse of what Jesus is going to do when he makes us fully human, and we feel it. I was in college ministry for a long time and got to officiate a lot of weddings, and one of my favorite things is, while the bride is walking in and all eyes are on her, I always sneak a look at the groom — he's so excited. That love between a groom and his bride, everything happening in a Christian wedding, is the faintest picture of what God is calling us to in the wedding to come. We'll experience joy and satisfaction we've never known, fully human in ways we can't imagine. I think it was Augustine who said even the hardest of lives will feel like a bad night in a tent —

  55. 42:36

    Jim Davis

    the hardest of lives, when we experience Jesus in the age to come, will feel like a bad night in a tent by comparison — not minimizing the suffering, but by comparison. I could talk about that for a while.

  56. 42:53

    Justin Holcomb

    You can make quotes up and attribute them to C. S. Lewis, Augustine, Martin Luther King — you can just say it, so we'll quote you on that.

  57. 43:01

    Jim Davis

    When I was a new Christian, I had two people discipling me — a guy named Kevin Shoemaker, who led me to the Lord at Campus Crusade, and I was reading a lot of C. S. Lewis. I'd often quote Lewis but attribute it to him, the Campus Crusade staff member, and he'd say, “No, you can do that all you want.”

  58. 43:25

    Gretchen Ronnevik

    I have a story about how I was encouraged by someone else, and I honestly don't know if it should be on the record — I'll have to check with my husband afterward if it goes out to the whole worldwide web. Before my husband's dad died, there was a ramp-up — I don't know if you've ever met old farmers, but they don't like going to the doctor; they usually farm until they're dead. “Retirement” is always in quotation marks. He was retired, but there was growing tension as he wasn't able to do things anymore, and it fell on my husband to make sure things were kept safe, which made the tension even worse.

  59. 44:08

    Gretchen Ronnevik

    And then he died, and none of us saw it coming, and it hurt so badly. I was talking with our pastor afterward, and he asked how we were doing a couple of days after the funeral, and I said, “We're just really angry right now”—

  60. 44:34

    Gretchen Ronnevik

    because we miss him so badly. It's not that we were angry at the end, but we were angry after he was gone, because I wish so many things had gone differently. My pastor said, “You need to know, Gretchen — he is free of every one of those sins. They're all on the cross right now, and he is completely and totally free of it. When you have that anger, make sure you're bringing it to the right person, the one who owns that sin now.” That was life-changing for me, because I love thinking of him that way — being totally free, because it makes me feel totally free.

  61. 45:30

    Brannon Ellis

    Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

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