Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - How Does God’s Character Comfort My Anxious Heart? Jonny Ardavanis and Alistair Begg

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode, Jonny Ardavanis sits down with Alistair Begg and together they discuss how the character of God provides stability, serenity, and peace to the child of God. In Jonny’s forthcoming book, “Consider the Lilies: Finding Perfect Peace In The Character Of God” (Zondervan) he expounds on this theme and in this episode, Pastor Begg articulates some profound truths that ought to encourage you if you are anxious and comfort you if you are despairing.You can pre-order Jonny’s book wherever books are sold! Releases October 8, 2024!Watch VideosVisit the Website Pre-order Consider the LiliesFollow on Instagram

Hey folks, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial-In. I want to thank you all for continuing to support Dial-In Ministries and I do pray that the resources that we are producing are a benefit to you personally and to your community and your local church. There's been some exciting things that we've been doing the last couple months that I want to make sure that you're aware of. We started doing daily devotionals, which go out really three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as a rhythm right now.

But those are three to five minute reads that hopefully ground your day in God's word. You can sign up for that with just your email on the dialinministries.org website. Furthermore, as many of you know, my book, Consider the Lilies, Finding Perfect Peace in the Character of God, comes out next month on October 8th. I want to thank so many of you that have pre-ordered the book. I don't know how many of you have ever pre-ordered a book before, but it's actually really helpful because it helps with visibility. So anybody who's looking up books on anxiety or the character of God, when a book is pre-ordered, it helps go up the rankings online and people are able to see it that may not know me personally. I'm thankful that the book is a part of the best-selling list in both the devotional and spiritual growth

categories. And I'm just praying that the Lord would use it to encourage people and comfort them and then root their thinking in the precious promises of God. And in that vein, in this episode, I sit down with a man that helped shape the tenor and tone of the book and whose preaching and writing has really shaped my life. And that's Pastor Alistair Begg. And I ask him about how the character of God, the promises of God, buoy our anxious hearts and provide us with comfort and confidence in a world of chaos. And in that regard, let's dial in.

Pastor Big, thank you so much for sitting down. One of the issues that we hear of often from both children, teenagers, young adults, and many people that are elderly is the problem of anxiety, that they're anxious about things in the past and anxious about the future. How does, from a pastor, how does the character of God enable the children of God to trust him, even amidst the temptation to be anxious or fearful? It's a good question, and it's a relevant question. As you say, I've always been held by the fact that Jesus is actually asking his own disciples, you know, why are you anxious? So that the issue of anxiety is not an uncommon thing, and the things that they were anxious about

had to do with the fact that, as he goes on to explain to them, well, if you argue from the lesser to the greater, if God would be looking after grass and flowers and birds and so on, would he not also look after you? And so he was teaching them about the fatherhood of God. And I think that when I deal with people, deal with myself, I mean, deal with anxious thoughts when they come, it reveals whether I have a solid grasp, a believing, trusting grasp of who God is and how he actually operates. And it can be quite unsettling. And also part of it has to do with not only do I believe that God, Psalm 139, that God knows everything when I sit down, when I stand up, that God is everywhere, that God made me and so on.

Do I actually believe that at a gut level kind of believing? Because that's, you know, when you run into your own diagnosis with cancer, when you run into the challenges of raising your children, when you lie in your bed and you say to yourself, I don't know if I can face tomorrow, it seems like the bedclothes have formed up like the Matterhorn, I'm not sure I'll be able to get over it. The Puritans had a great statement where they said, you know, providence is a soft pillow, that recognizing that our times are in God's hands, that there is nothing that comes our way, but that passes through his hands to us. And that, I think, for me, I realize,

maybe in a silly kind of analogy, you know, when you're flying on the plane and it gets really turbulent, do you actually trust the fellow up front? Well, of course, you have to, you don't have an option. But if you knew them, let's say, if it was someone that you knew and you had confidence in, then you could rest in that. When Peter addresses it in his letter, he says, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. That's an imperative. Then casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. Part of the problem is pride, that I think that I can handle it or I misguidedly assume that I'm supposed to handle it

when in actual fact, I'm supposed to rest in the surety of who God is and how he's made himself known. You know, for example, Isaiah 26, three, you will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. So that there is a cognitive element to it that we have to, we've got to talk to ourselves. You know, Martin Lloyd Jones in Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Cure, he does that thing about half of our problems have to do with the fact that we're listening to ourselves rather than talking to ourselves.

But then we have to talk sense to ourselves and we have to close out some of the silly explanations that are given. The idea of just distracting ourselves from it with a prospect away in the remote future or believe in silly things. I don't think that it helps at all. What you're saying about even in Isaiah, you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you. And you mentioned Psalm 139. It strikes me that David talks about when he's considering the character of God,

not just the immensity of God's omniscience, but the intimacy of it. I think sometimes we look at the attributes of God as the antidote to anxiety through a depersonalized lens, meaning that we can say God knows everything, God loves everyone, and God is power over all. But even what you said in 1 Peter is that we can cast our cares upon the Lord because he cares for you. Where is the balance between having maybe, obviously, a big view of God, but also understanding the intimacy of God's power and character in my own life personally? Well, I mean, what you're actually pointing out there is vitally important. And it is right that what David is saying in 139 Psalm is that he knows, you know me. Yeah, even in our embryonic form.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. Before, you know, unnumbered comforts to my soul, your tender care bestowed before my infant heart conceived from whom those comforts flowed. That reality. Well, you know, I think that the combination of things, if you think about it, we're not learning these things. I'm not learning these things about God in isolation. The scriptures are as presented to us. We go to the scriptures and it explains things to us about God. We have friends in the gospel who help us in community. The worship gathered congregation of the people of God,

meeting in prayer. Often it's in the combination of all of these things that our souls at least begin to be settled. The idea of being able to just sort of work things out on our own, God has not actually brought us into a relationship with His Son that we might live in isolation and figure it out, but that we might live in the context of the provision that God has made for us. You mentioned spiritual depression by Martin Lloyd-Jones.

And even when you're talking about that, part of our problem is that we listen to ourself instead of teaching ourselves. I think in that same chapter, he says that faith is not like wishful thinking. It's a reasoned response to the revelation of God's truth, meaning that faith is a rational thing and it's a meditative thing where you're considering truth. Just lastly, what does the practice look like to actually meditate on God's character? What does that look like beyond the scope of just believing something to be true and considering and contemplating that reality? You know, come back

to the flying illustration, you've got to fly the instruments i mean those guys are not looking out the window yeah they they are they're flying the instruments they are bringing they're bringing their minds underneath the jurisdiction of what is true what is objectively true and that has to be a starting point that we are actually we're saying uh lord i know that this is what it says, and I want to believe it, and I want you to help me to so absorb it that it comes into my inmost being. It's pressed upon our hearts. Yeah, that it's done there. But it's, I tell you what, the challenge in dealing with anxiety for ourselves and dealing with others is that we

become very doctrinaire. And so the people who listen to us think that we don't even really know what we're saying. And it's better in many ways felt than it is tellt, as they would say in Scotland. Well, that's so helpful. I love what you mentioned even in Psalm 139, that sometimes we often even forget that David is reflecting on God's character. And he was on the run for his life for a decade and he was anxious or fearful or melancholy in the miry bog. So that's such a helpful reminder to consider God's character. So thank you, Pastor Big.