Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - From Lukewarm to on Fire: Dr. Beeke on Keeping Your Faith Strong After 40 Years

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

In this powerful interview, Dr. Beeke shares profound insights on maintaining a vibrant Christian faith throughout your entire life. Drawing from the biblical example of Caleb, who remained faithful for 40 years in the wilderness, Dr. Beeke reveals practical strategies for avoiding spiritual stagnation and growing deeper in your relationship with God.Key Topics:Following God fully like CalebThe importance of daily spiritual disciplinesMaintaining spiritual zeal as you ageThe danger of taking God for grantedPractical tips for spiritual growthThe role of Bible study and prayerThe importance of godly relationshipsWhether you're a new believer or have been walking with Christ for decades, this interview offers valuable insights on keeping your faith fresh and vibrant. Learn how to avoid spiritual complacency and maintain the excitement in your relationship with God.Watch VideosVisit the Website Buy Consider the LiliesFollow on Instagram

If God is God, and He is God, and He's worthy to be served, and He is worthy to be served, we're to follow Him fully. God is either worth everything or He's worth nothing, and He's a fake. Dr. Beeky, thank you for sitting down. I wanted to ask you an important question. You know, in the Christian world, sometimes we feel a tug towards worldliness. There's even, I think it's Dr. Sinclair Ferguson that says that the super glue of this world is still sometimes strong with even those who have regenerated hearts.

God has made us new, but we still feel that tug towards the things of the world at times. My question for you is, how do we live solely and wholly for Jesus Christ? And I'm assuming that's the desire of every true Christian, maybe even when they feel that temptation towards worldliness, they do go,

I do wanna live for Jesus. And the question is, how do we do that exclusively? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, my model for this is Caleb. And I preached a sermon once many, many years ago in my own church on Caleb on Numbers 14, 24. This is my servant, Caleb Caleb who has followed me fully. And in working with that sermon, I was really convicted that we have to just follow God wholly and solely. And you know, Caleb faced great persecution. numbers 14 verse 9 they actually were picking up stones to stone him to death because he said we should go into the land of canaan god's promised us victory and they were going to kill him and he didn't back down he didn't say

well let's let's go to negotiation table maybe we can compromise now he was ready to take the stones but then the glory of the lord appeared and God intervened. But Caleb is such a notable example because, you know, then Israel went into the wilderness for 40 years and they come back out. Imagine this, all the adults of the generation of 20 and older, they all perished in the wilderness, except for Joshua and Caleb. I did the math one time. That was 40 funerals every single day on an average. Can you imagine? And the Israelites are murmuring most of the time in the wilderness for 40 years. So Caleb is surrounded by all these murmuring people, and he never gives up, never gives in. And at the end of the 40 years, he comes out, takes his three or four boys, I don't know how many sons he had,

and goes into the land of Canaan himself as an 85-year-old man and wipes out the giants and takes over that land of Canaan. And they said before, 600,000 men couldn't go in and do this. And then it says in Joshua 14 and 15, he got Hebron for an inheritance because he followed the Lord fully. Same word. So he followed the Lord fully from his young days, followed the Lord fully through the wilderness of all these murmuring, dying Israelites, and came out and followed the Lord fully in his old age. That's what I want to be like.

And when I preached that sermon, this is a footnote, but it's a sweet thing. There was like five baby boys born in the next couple of months. I think three or four that were named Caleb. It was great. So what did Caleb really have here? Well, to follow the Lord fully, first of all, means to follow him consistently. That we don't pick and choose. We don't say, oh, well, I'm going to follow the Lord in maybe doing family worship or in private prayer, but I'm not going to follow the Lord over here in meditating, or I'm not going to follow the Lord

in living a godly life in this particular area. You know, it's not so bad if I sin a little bit over here. No, no, no. If God is God, Caleb is saying to us, and he is God, and he's worthy to be served, and he is worthy to be served. We're to follow him fully. God is either worth everything or he's worth nothing, and he's a fake. Well, of course, every Christian, I mean, even saying that makes me feel guilty. That's blasphemy. God is worth everything. So I want my life, like one of my parishioners used to always say, he's with the Lord now, but he always ended every single prayer he prayed. So Lord, help us to follow thee wholly and solely. That's what I want to do. So when it comes to worldliness, I want to live in the world, but not of the world. I want to be a notable example in the world.

I want people to see Christ in me. And when Christ is your life, don't forget, then the world becomes dull and drab and boring and gray, and God becomes exciting. And God becomes all and in all. And you want to serve him with the totality of your being. So the goal of life is not just getting regenerated and squeaking by into heaven. The goal of life is Romans 8, verse 29, that I will be brought into conformity to Jesus Christ.

I want to be like Christ. I want to think his thoughts after him. I want to speak like him. I want to be like Christ. I want to think his thoughts after him. I want to speak like him. I want to act like him. I want to love him. I'm so loud to him, as the Puritans would say, you've got to be a white hot flame of zeal for the Lord of hosts. I want to live to his glory. Soli Deo Gloria. That's the way to live. I think, you know, from a Caleb perspective, it's really amazing that you, you're tracing guy that's in his eighties that takes the promised land. How do, maybe what's the tendency of people that you preached on this yesterday at our church of running the race with

endurance? Maybe just even as you observe the example of Caleb, talk about staying faithful to the end of going, Hey, it's not enough to start hot. It's not a 10-minute sprint, you said. Why this is even such a good reminder for people in their 60s and 70s and 80s to finish well and to continue to have that mindset. Christ is either everything or he's nothing. Talk about that. Yes. Well, I have a very close friend in Wales, a pastor who said to me many times, he's 87 now. He's still going strong. He's doing conferences all around the world, preaching everywhere, writing. Just a godly man. But he used to say to me when he was in his 60s and 70s, every day, every day, I pray that I won't

lose my zeal for the Lord. And he hasn't. So one help can be realizing how our affections, our emotions, our heart can just get desensitized as we get older. And you see friends dying all around you your age, and you can kind of get hardened, and you can kind of lose that cutting-edge relationship with the Lord. And you've got to pray against that as you get older. And you've got to pray that you'll stay fresh. And I think the thing that helps me the most is staying fresh in the Word. Keep studying the Bible. Keep immersing yourself in the Scriptures.

Keep surrounding yourself by good friends. I'm always on the lookout for friends that are more holy than I am. And I want to associate with them. And I want to go, I want to pay a few extra visits to my parishioners who are really mothers and fathers in Israel, really wise people, who, when I leave the visit, feel that they pastored me even more than I pastored them. So you want to associate with mentors in holiness. That's a big deal, I think, to stay holy, to stay fresh, to stay alive. And then the spiritual disciplines are so helpful here.

Getting in a Bible study group where people are really alive and really into the Word, that can really help you. Synergy, yeah. Yeah. And really taking notes as you hear sermons and thinking back over those notes. I have a lady in my church who takes the notes from the sermons she makes on Sunday, and she lays them on the bed, her bed at night. She gets down on her knees and she prays her way through the notes. And she said, sometimes the best part of my Lord's day is on my knees at night, praying through the notes. Anything you can do

like that to stay fresh in your relationship with God and not take each other for granted. You know, it's like a good marriage. You know, if you're married 10, 20, 30, 40 years, take a 40-year marriage. You're so used to each other, you can easily take each other for granted. But what do you need to do? You need to stay fresh. You need to keep dating. You need to compliment each other every day. You need to be excited about each other. You need to share your experiences together. You need to talk from heart to heart. And when you keep those things there, and when you have spiritual communion together with your spouse, your marriage actually gets more and more exciting, more and more loving, every part of it.

Well, it's the same thing with God. When you use the spiritual disciplines, that's what God designed them for. So John Owen said, would you enhance your relationship with God all your lifetime? Enhance your ordinary disciplines, not your extraordinary experiences. Through the ordinary disciplines, we can keep on growing. And I think you use some key words that I think are helpful delineations. Like even, it's different to be committed to the Lord and to your wife than you use the term zeal and excitement. And even I think sometimes that's

maybe what people can lose. You can have a marriage and stay faithful to each other from a commitment perspective and not breach the covenant you've made before God and to each other. But that's different than having the excitement and the joy and the vibrancy of relationship. And I think even as people grow older and, or even, you know, you know, I think I've been a Christian, you know, for 20 years and I'm obviously still a young guy, but I want the vibrancy of relationship to grow over time, not diminish over time. And Piper talks about this a little bit with, you know, you can have people that know the Lord and they spend the last 20 years of their life staying committed to God, but they've lost that joy and that freshness. And he says those should be the sweetest years, not the years where you're just kind of, he says, collecting shells. So I think that's really important because depending on how many days

the Lord gives us, you should be anticipating meeting Him face to face. Yeah, and one thing that helps me a lot in that whole area, I speak now as a pastor to pastors, but you can apply it as lay people as well. I like to be working at three levels all the time. So I like to be working at a very, very simple level, like doing chapels at the Christian school where I don't need any notes and I can just speak heart to heart to kids. And then I like to be working

at a level that's slightly below where you're at, like the preaching level. But I also like to be working at a level where I'm learning and growing a lot because I'm going out and expanding my knowledge in some area that's edifying for my soul. And that's one of the reasons why I love to study the Puritans, because they stimulate me. And I love to write about them because, oh, they're just so exemplary. And so they stir me up. So also as a layman, if you can find that where you're growing in some Bible knowledge area, you're also drinking in the sermons, and you're also speaking at a very simple level to your young children, working at different levels with the things of God, just growing, growing, growing. You know, there are 300 Bible texts that teach us to grow, like Peter says, in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So a Christian, if you stay stagnant,

if you only tread water, you'll actually sink. Well, I don't know if you'll sink, but you'll go backwards and you may sink eventually. But you lose that cutting edge. And you want to keep that cutting edge. You want to be excited about the things of God. Well, that's helpful. Thank you, Dr. Beeky, for your time, for your wisdom and perspective. Appreciate you and your ministry. Thank you. And I appreciate you too, brother. Thank you.