All right, so to use an appropriate pun, we're going to get to the heart of the matter today. I just thought about it just now. Well, when we talk about the heart, what are we talking about? Here is just my own, I guess, compiled definition. using other sources or whatever to bring together some general idea of what the heart is. It is the core of one's being. It is the seat of life. It is that from which all issues of the individual spring. His desires, motives, feelings, thoughts, emotions, attitudes, reactions, everything comes from within the heart. That's Those are terms that are used in Scripture to speak about what's going on in the heart. Even that language of issues of life springing, that's from the Bible. So there are several passages there that we want to look at briefly. Proverbs 4, verses 20 to 27. Say, my son, be attentive to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart. Keep my words, keep my sayings within your heart. Why are we to keep these wise words in my heart? Or why is the son supposed to keep these wise words in his heart? for they are life to those who find them and healing to all their flesh. These words of wisdom give life to the individual when taken into account, when applied. Keep your heart with all diligence. So be, or vigilance rather, be vigilant about what is going on in your heart. Examine your heart. Why? For from it flow the springs of life. Then we see some manifestations of wisdom. You'd be putting away crooked speech, put a devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left, then, or turn your foot away from evil. How are we going to know if we're turning right or left or how to put away crooked speech if we even have crooked speech? We need to examine our hearts. We need to be constantly vigilant about what is going on in our hearts, the core of our being. There's much more that can be said about that text, and maybe in the future will, but just getting a cursory overview of the heart through some biblical texts here. Luke chapter 6, famous passage, verses 43 through 45, no tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of a good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." So here we have two trees, the good tree and the bad tree, and each tree, each kind of tree, is representative of an individual. You know that because Jesus says, There's a good person and a bad person, evil person. The good tree equals the good person. The bad tree equals the evil person. And if you are a good person, we'll have to nuance that obviously as we go on, but if you are a good person, then what kind of fruit will you expect to see? Good fruit. If you are a bad, evil person, then what kind of fruit should you expect to see? bad fruit. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Matthew 6, 19 to 24. Just look at verses 19 to 21. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. If you want to know what someone treasures, what someone prizes, what someone values, what someone honors, what someone esteems, you have to look at the heart. And you will actually see what the person values. You will see what the person's heart is like based on the responses that they have based on the words that they speak when they speak about praising an individual or when they speak about a particular object that they love. You will see a little bit what's going on in the person's heart. The treasure is in the heart. And that heart treasure is manifested by our words and actions. and our conversations. Now there's a big problem. Jeremiah 17, nine. It's a big problem. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? That's a really big problem. For the unbeliever, he's in a hopeless state. He's desperately sick. His heart's deceitful. He deceives himself. We've talked about, well, maybe we haven't. I never remember in what audience, in what audience I say the various things I do. But in John chapter eight, for instance, you have the children of the devil who do the will and desire of their father. Their father, the devil, is a father of lies, is a murderer. He's been one from the beginning. And all those who are in this father do, they're enslaved. And they do what really is pleasing to their father. But they are willful slaves. No one's putting a gun to their head saying, you must lie, you must murder in your heart. They do that willingly because that's who they are. They haven't been changed. So they are self-deceived. Their heart is sick. There's that language of sickness to refer to sin. You get that sometimes in scriptures. That's why God will often speak about healing a person of their sickness in terms of their sin. That's a really big problem and we have to pay attention. We have to recognize that our heart, the heart of the unbeliever is is going to pop up and manifest itself and going to... How do I say this? I'm not sure. I just lost my train of thought there, but that's all right. We'll just move on. Well, that's true. Here's a verse that James is speaking to believers, but he's also highlighting the passions that are within. He says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? There's the question. We'll talk about this when we look at anger later on, but why do you guys fight? He doesn't give you much time before he answers it. Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? That's the main problem. You have passions, you have heart attitudes that are at war within you and that are at war with those heart attitudes of another and you're clashing, you're conflicting. You are at war with each other because you have war from within. You desire and you do not have, so you murder. You covet and you cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. So, fundamentally, we have a clash of desires. We have a clash of hearts. That's why there's this conflict. Those are just a few passages. There are many more that speak of the heart. It's a big deal in the Bible. But James 4 reminds us that these surface-level problems don't terminate it at the surface. They're much deeper. There's a deeper problem than the word that you spoke. There's a deeper problem than looking at something that you ought not to have looked at. Problems are with the heart. So I'll give you 10 questions here. looking at the main problem in a given example here. So is the impatient father's problem really the object of his wrath, his children? If his children would just get their act together, then all would be well. Maybe the answer is sometimes. Is the porn viewer's main problem the object of his sight? I would say is his main problem, and of course the answer would be no, but is his main problem the business concerns that produce the pornographic images? People blame pornography on the people who make it. That's another way of phrasing it. I don't know. Alcohol isn't de facto. I mean, it's not from the beginning bad. It's not essentially bad. Whereas porn is bad, bad, bad. There's nothing demeaning about it. You can take a little wine for your stomach. A little bit more. Yeah. Is the abusive husband's problem his wife? If his wife would just stop speaking nasty words, if she would just stop berating him, if she would just get the dinner at the table on time, if she would just sleep with him as a number of times a week that he requires, if she would just do these things, is that going to solve the problem? No. How about the teenager and his video game? Is Fortnite the problem? Fortnite might be a problem, but is the video game itself the problem for the kid's response to what's going on? Or can two teenagers play the same game, and one play one well, and one play one sinfully? Is it the game itself, or is it the heart that responds to what's going on in the game? Now, of course, that does open up for the value of video games, and I'm not going to get into that. This is the main problem, the tongue for the one who lies or cuts people down. Just cut off the tongue, and then everything is going to be fine. Everyone needs to have a tongue removal. And then there will be no sins of the tongue. Well, as James would say, the issue with the tongue in chapter three is really the heart. How about Facebook or Pinterest? Is that the problem for the mother whose life doesn't fit in as the mom compares her life to the lives of others that she sees on Facebook or all those wonderful arrangements that are done on Pinterest? Is Facebook the problem? Is Pinterest the problem? It might not be. Perfect, but is that the problem? Or is it what's going on in the heart of the woman? She feels like she has to compare herself, or she has to have certain things that the other women have. She doesn't look like that person, or she doesn't have that that person has. The problem is with the heart. Discontentment, yeah, is the main problem that we don't have, and you just fill in the blank. We don't have an extra couple thousand dollars a year. We don't have an extra car. We don't have more food. We don't have whatever. We don't have extra or more friends. Is that the problem? If we just had those things, we'd be set. Is alcohol the main problem for the one who drinks it in excess? No. Yes, Scripture does speak about alcohol being used well, but alcohol being used poorly. I think Jesus, with the wedding at Cana in Galilee, is going to remind us that alcohol can have its usefulness. The Scriptures do speak about it being a blessing, it gladdens the heart, but if used In excess, that's a problem. Drunkenness, problem. a drink of rest, you know, that's part of the reason why, you know, every Sunday we come in and we, you know, well not every, every time we come in, we go in and we drink wine and Christ says he won't drink this, you know, the fruit of the vine until it comes into his kingdom. Right. We look forward to drinking wine as it were with him, you know, when he comes again in final rest. Right. Because there's still restlessness even now, already, not yet. Yeah, the book of Hebrews talks about that too. Is traffic the main problem for the one who habitually arrives late to functions? Yes. Or traffic slash children. You have important places to go, everyone else is just lollygagging. Right. How about, is the PTSD sufferer's main problem the horrible trauma that she experienced? Now, actually we'll talk about PTSD, there will be one lesson on that later on. But there are definitely spiritual issues going on with PTSD. And there are differences between how some people respond to their trauma. horrific trauma there's no doubt about that and there are There are physical connections while that we will talk about as well, but at least you want to say something go ahead I was wondering about the the way this particular question is constructed as opposed to the others, because the other ones are constructed as the problem being like something that that person is doing wrong. Like the use of husband, I mean this is somebody who is hurting somebody else, or somebody who is an alcohol problem, and PTSD. Yeah, but the PTSD sufferer, That's not necessarily saying that they're doing something wrong, it's saying that they're in pain. So how does that fit with, is their pain the result of horrible trauma? So I'm just kind of wondering, because it seems to be constructed differently than the others. Regardless of where the pain comes from, the heart responds to it. And so that's what basically I'm asking. Okay, so it's not that you're wrong to suffer PTSD, it's that... No, not at all. It's a hard thing. Right. Thank you for drawing that out. So point C here, and I mentioned this I think last week, the main problem is not always the reason why the counselee has come to you. And so that's the presenting problem. I have X problem and I need you, counselor, to solve it for me. Walk me through this. Well, we would do well to actually address that. If someone is coming to you, you cannot just by default say, well that must be the essence of the person's problem. That is the sum total of all of her problems. If that would just be solved, then she can go on, he can go on his way living well. That's not the case. So, take pornography for instance. this guy's looking at pornography all the time. Well, if I just remove his access to pornography, that's pretty easy, right? For the most part, you could get that done in a day. You could put up some accountability and you could take away his phone and give him a non-smart phone and do things like that and get him on a plan where every place he visits that has some kind of electronic device there would be some way of removing that access to him. It could be done. It could get a little convoluted. But is that going to solve the problem? Just removing the access? No. Just looking at it's not the problem. It is a problem. He shouldn't be looking at that. But we need to dig deeper. Why is he looking at that? And what kind of pornography is he looking at? That's going to tell you about something as well. I'll save that particular thing for when we talk about pornography later, but I'm just giving you some examples. The presenting problem is not necessarily the essential heart problem that needs to be looked at. It should be addressed. But you need to dig deeper at times, or always. Yeah? Yeah, I'm just saying, I guess you're saying that the root of the issue goes beyond pornography. Pornography is just an external symptom of the heart. It's a manifestation. Right. Carl? The same thing as any addiction, like any drug or alcohol addiction, you could put the person in rehab for a month, but then there's a lot of people, as soon as they get out, they go back to what they were in there before. Right. And it might not be, or let's just say it's not alcohol, maybe it's now overindulgence with ice cream or something like that. Okay? I'm talking about myself too. You're talking about any type of destructive behavior. It's either physical, psychological, emotional, destructive behavior that the person manifests in some form or fashion. That's what you're talking about. Yes. It doesn't, whatever that blank is, what you have there, there's something in your life, there isn't something in your life, and there's an external manifestation that you are exhibiting that is impacting you and the people around you and your relationship with God. Absolutely. Or otherwise said, how are we interacting with this difficult culture? Are we letting it destroy us with the power, with the value of the fruit we produce? Or are we taking our power from somewhere else, from God, to try to live in a righteous way in the midst of all of this? That's it. Yep. Good. Now D here is again getting at the spiritual reaction to or the spiritual response to whatever happens inside or outside us. And you can have the same experience for the most part, same external stimuli, circumstances, and two people are going to respond differently. to them, we need to ask ourselves what's going on inside of the person. Is the person struck by fear? And fear manifests itself in a variety of ways. Is the problem some kind of anger or control problem? Or is there despair? Usually, and I don't want to say that everything is reduced to these three, but a lot of problems can be reduced biblically to these essential problems of having a fear problem, fear of man, for instance, versus fear of God, an anger control problem, which is connected to pride, trying to basically be the one who runs life, and then anger coming out of that because you can't control those things, and then despair How do we view our suffering? Do we become hopeless? And how we view ourselves, how we view God, how we view life, that's essential. Whenever we talk about the heart issue with someone, we have to be, whenever we talk to anybody, we have to be looking for, listening for, the person's view of himself, the person's view of God, and how he understands what's going on with life. So here's a list of just a number of hard questions. When you sit down, you talk to somebody, these are the kinds of things that you'd want to ask. This is not an exhaustive list, and you don't need to be very clinical about it, like, okay, question A for you. Also, ask yourself these questions. Remember, this is not just to help others, but hopefully you are self-examining. Hopefully you are looking into your own heart, what's coming up? What issues are springing forth from your own heart? What do you intensely desire, crave, and wish for? Ask yourself or ask counselee that question. Look for what the person really desires. You're gonna see that by how the person lives his life. B, what do you pursue with great intensity and time? What do you spend your time doing? It's not to say that what you spend your time doing is necessarily a bad thing, but it does show that that's what you value. So if you take that away, what's going to happen? And does that dominate your heart? So if you don't have that, you're discontent. These are the kinds of things you'd want to ask yourself. So is having a physique that is just Gorgeous and tone and all that is is that your desire? And does that desire get in the way of Any other desire is that what the person pursues with great intensity and with time so you you know that the person Spends all this time Being in shape. Well, what happens if that is pulled away if you don't have the time Or what happens if your body weakens and you can't exercise the way you want to? What happens? What's going to happen in your heart? Your heart's going to show you, based on your reactions, how much you value that. And it's not bad to value that. It's not bad to value a good thing. What terrifies you? What are you really scared about? Everyone worries, so what usually is the object of your worry? Is it finances? Is it the safety of your children? Is it, well, your own job security? Is it the relationship you have with your spouse? What is it? And that's going to, again, get at what you value. Because sometimes we get into terrifying situations. And how is our heart going to respond to those terrifying situations? What do you want to do more than anything else? I know the answer to that question for everyone is read. You want to read more than you want to do anything else. I know. You're just like me. And eat ice cream. Simultaneously, absolutely. Whom do you trust? Is there a long list of people that you can truly trust? Is there a short list? And what is the reason that these people are trustworthy and those people are not? If you've lived a life being the object of a person's mistreatment, I'm sure the list of trustworthy people is very small. And what is it about those people that is trustworthy? Who or what do you believe can make things better? Is it your spouse? Is ultimately your spouse the one that can make things better? Is it your children that can make things better if they live a certain way or if they are successful in a certain way? And if they're not, then things are going to be ruined for you. Who can make things better? And if they're the people that can make things better and they're out of the picture. What does that mean for you? What's going to happen? How are you going to respond to that? If you were dying, would you sum up your life as having been worthwhile? And then on what criteria would you base that assessment? Here's one that's not in there, but who are your heroes? Who do you look up to, whether present day or past, and why? What was so valuable about them? Why do you look up to them? How do you define right or wrong or success or failure in any given situation? Is it purely external? Is it some kind of, is it a monetary success? If you make X number of dollars in any given transaction, then it's a success? Or is it something else? In your relationships, is it keeping all of your relationships without any kind of confrontation? Is that a success? Well, you're gonna fail that, I'm sure. in this world where basically nothing is right or wrong, how are you going to define it? Is there still all right or wrong? I really hope you'd say yes, there is. But how do you know? Yes. Excuse me, I'm getting a little off topic here, but it almost seems like there's more conflict when there's no specifically defined right or wrong, because then there's arguments going on. It's a bit more streamlined and easier for, more efficient for peace when you're on the same page. When you're on the same page, yeah, these are the things, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no, yeah. You're over here. What makes you happy? You look at your life, what are the kinds of things that make you happy? And then follow up, why do those make you happy? What makes you feel secure? Is it the alarm system? Is it your strong husband? That's right. Is it the dog that makes you feel secure? Are you trusting in your dog? What causes you the greatest pain? Would that be a physical cause? Would that be a relational cause? Think about what could be the worst pain you experience and ask yourself why that would be worse than any other pain. What are your rights? What do you deserve? Ask yourself what you deserve, what you are entitled to, if anything. That's gonna be a really important question. Because if you think that you're entitled to A and you don't get A, then that's going to direct, your heart's going to direct your actions in a particular way. In what sorts of situations do you feel tense? And how do you escape those situations? Do you resort to ice cream to escape? Do you resort to alcohol? Do you resort to pornography? Do you resort to, you name it. What will give you that escape? Maybe it's four hours playing a video game. Maybe it's Netflixing, to have a verb. Maybe it's Netflixing, binge watching. Is that going to be the proper escape? And so then your refuge is entertainment. Your refuge is whatever. What do you pray for? That shows your heart. Are you always praying for yourself only? Or are you praying for others? And if you're praying for yourself, which you ought to, what are you praying for? And if you don't get the thing that you're praying for, what's gonna happen? How is your heart going to respond? Why are you praying for other people, and why? That they might serve you, or that you might serve them? That you might be a blessing to them, or that they would be a blessing to you? How are you praying for them? What do you talk about most often? How do you spend most of your free time? for those who don't have a PhD, who aren't looking for getting a PhD, I guess. Sure. What things do you want so bad that you may be willing to sin to get them? Oh, I would never sin to get something, right? Of course, that's what we want to say, but can we always say that? I want my children to be at peace, to be quiet, so maybe I want to sinfully express my anger at them and just shut them up. Am I willing to sin to get that? Because I want peace in the home. False peace. False peace, not quote false peace, that would be real peace. How do you, not how, what do you want so badly? What defines who you are? That's really important. Is your identity in a spouse? In the job that you have? in the possessions that you have? In the certain relationships that you have? Is your identity in any of those or other things? Is your identity in Christ? I think R is basically the same as P. What are you willing to send in order to keep? What do you run to as a refuge or for comfort peace. Where or what do you spend almost your time money. So repeat where is there chaos in your life and where are you discontent with your circumstances. These are all getting at underlying heart issues. because they all in one way or another point to what we value more than other things where our desires are what we are motivated by the emotions that we have come from our values so look for these things pleasure power, love, comfort, meaning, control, freedom, peace, happiness, reputation, respect, success. Look for these categories when you ask people questions, when you ask yourself questions. I already talked about looking for how people view their circumstances, other people, themselves, and God. be very attuned to what a person says or doesn't say, with words or not, about God. Where is God in their suffering? Where is God in relationship to the sin? If it's a sin issue, if it's a suffering issue, where's God in this picture, if He is anywhere? How do they view God looking at them? Do I need to try to please God in order to be made right before him? Is he a distant God? Is he an angry God? How do I how do I view him? And who am I? Am I just a weak individual that does mostly good things, but occasionally I make some mistakes, and God really helps me out with just that area where I err? Or something else to the picture. Something else to the picture. Is it that I am a sinner, utterly hopeless, apart from the grace of God? right so we have to ask ourselves and ask others look for the person's worldview how does the person see all of life that's going to show you how they value or what they value and why so looking at real change Can the heart change, or do our hearts always express themselves Jeremiah 17 9-ly? So let's look at Jeremiah again. I think this passage is often misunderstood, and there needs to be a nuance, no doubt about it, but we need to ask ourselves, is Jeremiah 17 9 the only description of the heart? No. Is it describing the believer's heart? And I would submit to you it is not. or at least not in its new created status. So, we're looking at verses five through 10. Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land." So there is a description of someone who doesn't trust in the Lord. His heart's away from the Lord. He's cursed. He's condemned. He's judged. He's cut off because he's not trusting in the Lord. The reverse there, blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. So if you trust in man, cursed, if you trust in the Lord, you're blessed. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit. So the one who trusts in the Lord is blessed, and he bears fruit, doesn't he? What is this language of bearing fruit? What is bearing fruit in biblical imagery? Righteous living. Obedience. I think we can also understand curse not as something like punishment, but just unhappy. Because, you know, blessed is also often translated as happy. Happy are those I was just sort of, you're doomed. It's not going to work for you. It's not that I'm going to curse you because you had this wrong attitude. It's just, it's not going to work. Yeah, so it won't work. Omar, you want to say something? Yeah, I was just saying, it's more of a state of being category. In the first stanza, 5 and 6, the cursive man kind of like, I'm someone. And then from 7 and 8 is the blessed man. And then 10 is kind of like neutral. The Lord testifies to which side, where are you going? Right. Bless the cursed. So it is categories. But yeah, that's all. So in Jeremiah 17, is there then this possibility of bearing fruit? Sure. But this bearing fruit is tied to something in the context. What is it tied to? Trusting the Lord. Now, of course, the problem for every individual outside of union with Christ, the problem is that we're all in that cursed state. We're all desperately wicked. We're all sick and our heart is so deceitful that we require a heart change. We are, if in this first category, we are, if we remain there, condemned and we will be judged because we do not live rightly before the Lord, our Maker, the one who's given us life and breath in all things. But if we trust in the Lord, then we ought to expect some change. Oughtn't we? Yes, we should expect bearing fruit. But again, that bearing fruit is tied to being in the Lord, trusting the Lord. You get this in Ezekiel as well. Ezekiel 36. 25 through 27, God is saying, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you. Okay, now you got a new heart. Spirit is within. And what's gonna happen with this new heart, with this spirit-led heart, I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. So, if you don't have that new heart, can you expect to be walking in the statutes of the Lord? Can you expect to be careful to obey God's rules? Can you expect to bear fruit? No. But the reverse then is, if you have been given that new heart, should you expect to see walking in the Lord's statutes and being careful to obey the Lord's rules? Yes. John 15, four and five, Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches, apart from me you can do nothing. So if you're outside of Christ, you can do nothing, and the context of John 15 is, you can do nothing good, there's not one thing that an unbeliever ever does that is good, truly. And the confession talks about In order to declare an action good, there needs to be not just the external conformity to what the law says, but there also needs to be faith, and then there is the motive of glorifying God. There might be external conforming to the law for the unbeliever, but that's where it ends. So you have the civil good that Calvin speaks about. I think it's the Heidelberg that speaks about it as well. You have the civil good, but you don't have a truly good act before God unless there is that faith and then there is the motive to glorify God by loving Him. and loving neighbor. So if you cannot do anything good apart from the vine, then if you are attached to the vine, then you can bear fruit, right? You will bear fruit, yes. See some more of this in Romans 8. In Romans 8, Paul lays out for us a contrast of I guess you see a category of those who are led by spirit and those who are led by the flesh. In verse 5, it says, for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. Flesh here is in reference to sinful nature. If you live according to the flesh, you're going to set your mind on the things of the flesh. That's who you are. But those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. And then, verses, well, yeah, eight, let's go seven. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. If your mind is on the flesh, you cannot submit to God's law. It's impossible. You have to have a heart change. Those who are in the flesh, not may not please God, cannot please God. In the flesh, it is impossible to please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him, but if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. So you should be expecting life coming from within, because you've been given a new life. Galatians, you have the fruit of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, etc. Those are characteristic of people who have the Holy Spirit. Is demonstrating love and joy and peace, is that a good thing? Yes. Are those good things ever done by our own willpower outside of Christ? No. But I think we ought not to deny that those are good things. We ought to expect them. Christ tells us that. Tells us that we're going to recognize teachers by the kind of fruit they're teaching their behavior. But you can never say, well, look at what I've done. You must say always, as Jesus says in Luke 17, 7-10, we are, at most, unworthy servants. We're just doing our duty. We're just doing what is expected of us. We're doing it, but it's because God has changed us that we are bearing fruit. Yes? So, we know that there are unbelievers that are nice, right? Like we all have probably known someone that's an unbeliever, not a follower of Christ, but it's still like a really, really kind, loving, patient person, you know. So would you say, you know, that love that comes from an unbeliever is just not, what would you say about that? Like if someone said to you, well, I know an unbeliever who's one of the most loving people I've ever met, or one of the most patient or kind people I've ever met, but they're not followers of Christ. Yeah, I would say that that is due to the common grace of God restraining the person from really living in what he or she deserves, expressing himself in the way that he could were it not for the grace of God. And I would say that those kindnesses are God's gracious way of pointing to his own kindness, and they should be calls to repentance. Yeah? Is there a particular verse or passage that you go to for reference to common grace? Or, like, if you're having a debate with somebody, for instance, what would be your go-to passage? Yeah, I would say that Romans 1 and Matthew 5, those would be two that speak of common grace. I did a, I don't know, it was maybe the third lesson It was on special revelation, general revelation, and common grace. I think I gave a few more examples other than those two, but those are just two that come to the top. We have to remember also that the, we also have to remember Romans 7. And I'm not saying that every branch is only going to be bearing good fruit all the time. Okay, you have Romans 7. You still have Paul expressing his struggle with sin. Even though sin is no longer our master, we still have sin residing in us. We're not fully sanctified, so we're going to struggle. But what I want to emphasize is that we are new creatures in Christ, if we are in Christ. And so there needs to be We need to see real fruit coming from that. And we will see real fruit if the spirit is in you, he will produce real fruit from you. That's one of the evidences of your own birth, new birth. So new life will look like the following here. We're gonna focus not just on the surface level issues, but we're gonna look at our heart, what is our treasure. New life will look like confessing our sins. If you are a child of God, if you are in Christ, you will be acknowledging your sin and confessing your sin before God. Not only will there be confession of sin, but there will be repentance. There will be a turning away from the sin. Slow, gradual, as you are led by the Spirit, as you are tricing in God, there will be that. Turning away, you will be, in Matthew 3, verse 8 says, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. We'll have a lesson on repentance. Putting off old ways, putting on new ways of living, that would be the other side of repentance. Your life will be characterized by prayer because you know that you cannot bear fruit apart from the vine, apart from the spirit. You will love scripture. You will hide God's word in your heart that you might not sin against God. That's what that verse says. You will be involved in the church, the local body of Christ, that you will encourage one another to love and good deeds. Your real change is connected to, it's tied to the body of Christ. Christ has not organized the life of the Christian to be lived individually or individualistically, I guess. He's not on his own. He is connected to other members of Christ. Change happens in the local expression. consistent regular obedience. That's 1 John speaks a lot about that. There are a number of resources there that you can look at. The second and third ones are, I have PDFs of those. If you want those two, then you can email me and I can give them to you as an attachment. The other ones are books. That's why they're italicized. But those are really good books getting at, obviously, the heart. I try to give some resources for most of these lessons further study. Okay. Yes? Are the books in the library or on the table? These resources? Those are my own or that I know of. We do not have a robust biblical counseling library at present, but I am working on that slowly but surely. Yes. Yes, and it's not very large. Okay, let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for this time that we had together. Thank you that we had an opportunity to look at what is going on in our hearts. Help us, Lord, to use these questions and others to really examine ourselves, to To see what's going on, how we respond to just the day-to-day living and things that happen to us, help us, Lord, to see what's going on in our hearts and to respond in biblical ways and to make it our aim to please you in all things. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.