Honest Psalms and Job's Prayers

How do we hold together confidence before God and a proper sense of his holiness? Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Joe Minich take up a pastoral question at the heart of Christian worship and prayer. Working from the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, Job, and John 8, they discuss the dangers of both presumption and paralyzing anxiety, the relationship between knowledge of God and knowledge of self, and why assurance is less a fact we verify than a relation we inhabit. Along the way: Isaiah's vision, Calvin on "stupid" prayer, and what Alcoholics Anonymous teaches about showing up.

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• 00:00 - Introduction
• 01:17 - Confidence and holiness: the central tension
• 02:52 - The Lord's Prayer and the dynamic of approach
• 04:48 - The honesty of the Psalms and Job
• 09:16 - Boldness in prayer: the unjust judge and friend at midnight
• 11:11 - Hebrews and the two mountains
• 13:45 - Name-it-and-claim-it vs. petitionary prayer
• 14:45 - Being seen by God rather than seeing God
• 16:50 - John 8 and the woman caught in adultery
• 19:50 - Owen, Calvin, and "hard thoughts about God"
• 23:51 - "There is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared"
• 24:34 - Judgment and absolution in forgiveness
• 29:13 - The joy of approach and the glory of God
• 31:13 - Calvin, Isaiah, and the knowledge of God and self
• 33:58 - The erasure of sin in Waugh and Eliot
• 36:25 - Assurance as relation, not calculation
• 39:13 - Adoption, marriage, and secure identity
• 41:11 - Two kinds of self-absorption
• 45:48 - Alcoholics Anonymous and staying in the game
• 50:10 - Distorting the game itself: Jeremiah and the den of thieves
• 52:30 - Pastoral wisdom: who needs what
• 55:05 - Closing