What if the deepest desires you’ve carried your whole life — the aching need to be loved, the burning anger at injustice, the longing for something pure and true — weren’t weaknesses or distractions, but actually by design? In this episode of Truth in Love, Kim and her dad John discuss one of the most profound truths in Scripture: that we are created in the image of God. And that changes everything about how we understand ourselves.
Drawing from Jeremiah 9:24, Genesis 1:26, and Micah 6:8, they explore how God’s nature — his love, his justice, and his righteousness — is woven into us from the very beginning. This isn’t a theological lecture. It’s a deeply personal conversation about why we feel what we feel, why we want what we want, and how knowing God more fully leads us into the life we were actually made for.
Key Takeaways:
Jacob Paul: Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast with your hosts, Kimberly Faith and John Mac. The Truth in Love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.
Kimberly Faith: Dad, this is a topic that I really, really think is not something I’ve recognized before in my walk with God. And that is how important the image of God, the fact that we’re created in the image of God relates to our deepest desires.
John McLarty: That’s a very great subject. Yeah. The idea of being created in the image of God is very interesting.
Kimberly Faith: It has really
John McLarty: Let’s dig into it.
Kimberly Faith: Profound implications. It really does. And I think, just to kind of give our listeners an idea of where we’re going, you know, we’re going to talk about our great desire, our greatest desires for to be loved, to see that the wrongs that we’ve experienced or that we’ve seen are someday made right, and the longing we have for purity, for real purity, those are
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: We want to validate those.
John McLarty: Love, a sense of justice, and purity.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. And I think we want to validate those. So the point of this podcast is to help us to see why those are valid desires, and how knowing God in not just salvation, but just walking in the way he created us to walk. Not just validates those, but it really opens the door for us to know exactly who we are, or at least more of who we are in Christ, and to live a deeply satisfying life.
John McLarty: I’m just going to stop you right there because I’m just thinking about kind of, chasing a little bit of a rabbit here, but the idea of evolution versus creation and just mankind and why it’s not true that humans are only searching for survival and just survival of the fittest and dog eat dog. There really is this universal desire in humans for love, for justice, and for this sense of purity, what’s right. And how could that just come from, you know, if we’ve evolved from a single cell? Where did emotions come from and those desires for these characteristics of moral characteristics of the soul, so to speak?
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: Where did it come from? We’re going to delve into that.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And just taking that example a bit further, you know, we all have, we all know people who are agnostics or atheists, but they really do think that at least some of the 10 commandments are a great idea for culture.
John McLarty: Sure. Some moral standard.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: And where did that come from?
Kimberly Faith: Because they don’t want people stealing their stuff. Why don’t they want people stealing their stuff? If they’re just a purposeless cell, why does it matter? You know, an evolved bunch of cells, why would it matter? They really do want to feel like they belong, like they’re loved.
John McLarty: Loved, accepted.
Kimberly Faith: If we have no purpose beyond this existence, this physical existence, then why does love matter so much? You know? So that’s an, I know that’s a different topic, but it’s
John McLarty: But the fact is humans across the whole planet do have these deep desires for love.
Kimberly Faith: Absolutely.
John McLarty: To be loved and to love.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: And for justice and for a sense of right and wrong.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s start with
John McLarty: Very good.
Kimberly Faith: The big idea on this podcast, which is that we are created in God’s image. And I’d really like for you to just launch into this because I think that talking about the, you know, we can start with Jeremiah 9:24 that, you know, just about who God is. And that verse says, but let him who boasts boast in this that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth. In these things I delight, declares the Lord. You know, the idea, God says I delight in those things. Whatever our nature is, is what we delight in.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: Whatever we love is what we delight in. Well, you know, God is love. And he, as love, delights in these things. And so let’s kind of start with who is God? And, you know, and talk about, let’s just extrapolate on those a little bit.
John McLarty: So God’s nature, yes, He is, this tells us, this is a great verse, Jeremiah 9:24. He practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness. And this is not a whole study on the nature of God, that we’re made into his image. But these ideas that God is love, I mean, that’s right out of the Bible. God is love.
Kimberly Faith: Right, all through the Bible.
John McLarty: And God is righteous and God is just. I’m just telling the listeners, this isn’t some verse pulled out of context.
Kimberly Faith: Exactly.
John McLarty: This verse sums up this massive amount of biblical knowledge that God’s nature is love, he’s just, and he’s righteous.
Kimberly Faith: And you just give, I mean, we talk about this like old hat in a lot of our podcasts, but I think it’d be worthwhile to explain the difference between just a basic description of, okay, this is God’s nature, loving, justice, righteous, but that’s different from his attributes.
John McLarty: His attributes are He’s omniscience. He knows all things. He’s omnipresent. And he’s
Kimberly Faith: Omnipotent.
John McLarty: Omnipotent, all powerful.
Kimberly Faith: He’s a spirit.
John McLarty: He’s spiritual and he’s infinite. So he has these attributes. And it’s kind of like, to put it in human perspective, somebody might have some attributes that he’s like could be a wrestler. Like somebody’s just built to destroy, you know, could just slam you to the floor. So he has the attributes. But then if he walks into a room, you’re like hoping, I hope this is a loving person.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. Yes.
John McLarty: And not somebody that’s going to
Kimberly Faith: Just wrestle me to the floor.
John McLarty: Wrestle me to the floor and steal my wallet and run off.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: So that’s his nature. So what a person does with their attributes is their nature. So God has these attributes, but we’re focused kind of on his nature. It’s what motivates him to do the things he does.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Because we don’t have the attributes of God.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: We have human attributes, but we were born with the desires for a very important reason, to have the nature of God in us, for a very important reason, that the Bible tells us in Genesis 1:26 that God made us in his image.
John McLarty: Yeah, let me just kind of, you know, again back up to that. God made us in his image. But when you think about God, I wanted to use a verse here out of John 4:24, God’s a spirit. And those that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. So this idea that the image of God, that humans looked like, that God looks like humans, like a man, is just totally silly. God’s a spirit. So we’re made in his image to reflect his spiritual qualities. And that’s just this justice, loving, and a sense of right and wrong.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. I appreciate you saying that.
John McLarty: That’s very, very interesting.
Kimberly Faith: I appreciate that because we spent the whole last podcast talking about Jesus being incarnate. So Jesus came to earth and showed us what the heart of God looks like when lived out in human form, you know? And so it’s not like some spirit saying be like me and then not giving us any idea of what that looks like all through because Jesus is the word. All through the written word, we’re told, I mean the 10 commandments is a great example, you know? The fruit of the spirit, a great example of what God looks like. But then Jesus came, and we have the four gospels that tell us exactly how love reacts, how what justice looks like, what righteousness looks like.
John McLarty: Right. So it’s just the moral characteristics.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: So Adam and Eve being created in the image of God are to reflect His spiritual qualities.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. That’s an excellent point. Something that helped me also understand the nature of God, because I think, if you understand God’s righteousness, justice, and love, and I’m a little bit off topic here, but I just want to hammer this home, is when we understand that God cannot operate outside of his nature or he is no longer God. One of the examples, just a super simple example. If I say, dad, this is ice, and I hand you a bag of ice, you’re going to expect certain things about that, what that bag is going to feel like, and it’s not going to be hot, right? If it’s hot, it’s no longer ice. Because the nature of ice is to be cold.
John McLarty: Sure.
Kimberly Faith: So that would apply to boiling water, to steam, you know. But that’s just a very simplistic example that God’s nature of righteousness, justice and love is something that is his nature, that is basics. And when we understand that, we understand so many more answers to so many more questions like, why can’t he just let me come into heaven if I only commit one sin, right? I mean, those are, that’s foundational. I diverge off the topic a little bit, but I think it’s worth pointing out.
John McLarty: It’s been said everything is the way it is because God is the way he is.
Kimberly Faith: I like that.
John McLarty: And one of the keys to these nature qualities is he’s infinitely righteous. He’s infinitely just and infinitely loving, which means he can’t be unloving. He can’t be unjust and he can’t be unrighteous.
Kimberly Faith: He’s limited by his nature.
John McLarty: And that really guides, you might say God’s interaction with humans.
Kimberly Faith: It does, and what’s interesting, you said he’s limited by his nature, but that doesn’t ding his sovereignty.
John McLarty: No.
Kimberly Faith: It just defines who he is.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And any more than it would be insulting for, you know, hot water to be called ice, because it’s just not.
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: You know? So to kind of tie this into our image, if we were created in God’s image, then we as people, to reflect his spiritual characteristics, that would make sense that we carry this deep built in desire and we have since the beginning of time, to experience love, experience what’s right and pure and experience justice.
John McLarty: And I like where we’re going with this because not only do we reflect God’s image, like a mirror reflects our image, but he made us have those characteristics. It’s like we want to experience love and give love because we have that inside of us. We’re not just making it up. It’s not an act. It’s coming from deep within us. God designed us that way.
Kimberly Faith: He designed us that way. And, you know, you think about just an obvious example. You know, if a cat decided it wanted to be a bird and was constantly jumping off, you know, 40 foot buildings to try to be a bird, the cat would never ever be a bird and would be miserable and banged up and probably dead in its birdness, you know, and acting like a bird. That’s a really silly example, but it’s
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: It’s just true, you know? And for anybody listening to this podcast, look, you know, this is the human struggle. We ache for these things. We ache for the experience of true, unconditional, absolute, all encompassing love. The burning anger that you feel when a child is abused, when people are trafficked, when people are enslaved, and abused, and killed, and just mutilated, all those horrible things that go on. That’s because you have a nature that is supposed to be operating like God’s nature, you know? And that’s because he put that in you.
John McLarty: That’s a great way. Yeah. He designed us that way.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: He put that in us, those characteristics.
Kimberly Faith: And we want to validate that, you know? The ability to love, you know, virtue and purity, those things, those are valid. Those are valid experiences. And when I was studying this topic, and it connects, it’s always interesting how God just reveals a little at a time for me because I’m not real fast. I’m a slow class kind of, it’s like he keeps bringing me back to this. Like the other day, I was listening to a podcast and the lady was describing how she was, as a child in Britain, she was sold into a slavery ring owned by some men from a different country and basically abused her entire childhood until she was able to escape that. And I just felt this ick rising in me that just wanted to, you know, put a hammer to the head of every person who’d done that to her.
John McLarty: You use the term, it just makes our blood boil
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: To hear of people being treated like that.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: Absolutely.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. So I say that not to put bad images in people’s mind, but just to say, look, there’s a valid reason for that. Just to take that example a little bit further, as I was driving down the road thinking about that, the first thing I could feel that just rising, that anger rising in me. And I just asked God, how can you just watch all this? How can you even know all this stuff? And the answer is my mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. He loves those icky people just as much as he loves me, because I am one of those icky people, you know? It goes back to, and that mercy, we have to learn to view people through the myriad of God’s character, I mean, his nature. Does that make sense?
John McLarty: It does. And you just think about God is love. He’s also just in this whole tension between justice and love.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And of course the result is the cross.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Is that God satisfied, he loved us, but had to satisfy justice on the cross.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: So in our human experience, that’s good that you kind of sorted that out.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Well, it’s because of this
John McLarty: Righteous anger.
Kimberly Faith: Yes, it’s from God.
John McLarty: Is from God, but then also there’s that loving that even the sinner, as we were and are, is still loved by God and can be redeemed.
Kimberly Faith: You know, it was interesting because the end result of that whole little micro conversation with God was, this is just so mind blowing to me. He kind of just reminded me, he said, do you think the people that did those horrible things are any less deserving of my grace than you are? And why don’t you pray for them? Boy, that was a, I mean, but that’s who he is.
John McLarty: Jesus said forgive them for they know not what they do, because he was being crucified.
Kimberly Faith: And you know what that did? What that did was it took the boiling anger and dissolved it, and I had peace because I did. He’s right. And so, Lord, these people, that prayer was Lord, these people who are torturing children all over the world, break their hearts, bring them to you, you know? And of course, I always pray for these people that are being tortured, but I’m just saying, I was released to that anger because God intervened with his mercy.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And that’s again, this is just a little micro example of what learning, what God’s teaching me and you through this study is doing practically in my life.
John McLarty: Right. And of course, that’s not to say that these actions need to be, that justice needs to prevail. Somebody needs to get caught and those people should be protected.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But ultimately, the eternal soul of those people doing that are just as worthy of redemption as anybody else.
Kimberly Faith: And we don’t like to think of it that way.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: We just don’t. And because our sense of righteousness, what should be right, what should be done, is violated, and that’s okay. You know, we don’t, I obviously am not in a position to, you know, bring to justice the people in The UK who have done this, right? I’m not but, what I can do and I’m going to tell you something else the Lord’s been doing. You know, we have such a thing, they say, well, we can’t really fix it, so we just need to pray about it. I have decided I’m not going to use that word just to modify pray anymore. That’s a diminution of the value and the power of prayer. It’s like, no, I get to get out the big weapon. And I get to pray.
John McLarty: Yeah. I’ve found myself really limiting thinking about why would I say just? Not just in terms of justice, but, you know, like
Kimberly Faith: Just pray about it.
John McLarty: Just pray about it.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Like,
John McLarty: That’s all you can do.
Kimberly Faith: That’s all you can do.
John McLarty: There’s not much.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s such a diminution of the value of prayer.
John McLarty: Just get over it.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Alright. So let’s go back on topic. So let’s, we’re going to break down God’s nature a little more, and then also just, you know, kind of drive it home with how we’re created and how our response should be and can be. So let’s talk about first God. God is love. And we’ll start with First John 4:8. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. That’s an indictment. I mean, if you think about it. It’s not meant to be an encouragement. But you think about even just the example I just brought up.
John McLarty: Whoever does not love does not know God. Because God is love.
Kimberly Faith: And we’ve talked about this a lot, but what is the essence of love? And I don’t remember which podcast we talked about this, and we talked about the definition of love in First Corinthians 13. You know, love is kind and suffers long, and all these things, right?
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And you think about the essence, the other night when I was teaching the Bible Foundations study, I asked, I always ask, I always re ask this question. Okay. What is love? And, you know, everybody kind of looks at me like, this is a trick question. It’s like, what’s the opposite of love? And almost inevitably, everybody says hate, right?
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: But that’s if you compare what,how the Bible defines love, that’s not the opposite of love. It’s selfishness.
John McLarty: Selfishness.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: Selfishness is a sin, which is a violation of God’s love. And so that would make love selflessness.
John McLarty: Selflessness. Yep.
Kimberly Faith: So when the Bible says whoever does not love, whoever’s not selfless does not know God because God is, I mean, Jesus was a complete emptying of self.
John McLarty: Right. Caring for others more than we care for ourselves.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Which are the first
John McLarty: Setting self aside.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And really in practice, there’s only one way we can really do that. And Jesus said it in the two great commandments, you have to love God first, which means you have to selflessly submit to him. Because we can’t generate the fruit of the spirit on our own. The spirit has to generate those within us, which means we have to get rid of ourselves. And that’s the only way we can then selflessly love others without any expectation of reciprocation, right? So, I’m sorry, I just kind of went off on that.
John McLarty: That’s good. That’s good clarification.
Kimberly Faith: So when we talk about the first part of God’s nature being love, how do you think that relates to our desire? Like, how does that validate our desire?
John McLarty: I think it goes, you know, God created us in his image and it’s these spiritual characteristics and God is love. So we have that love within us. For sin, number one, just to point this out, sin has corrupted all this, but it’s still in us. It’s like through a glass darkly. It’s still there. It’s still part of us, but it’s imperfect. But it still drives us because it’s still how God created us. So, I don’t know, I think of maybe somebody that used to be a great athlete but they got into whatever, alcohol or drugs and now they’ve lost that prime. But it’s still recognizable. Oh, that person had these great attributes, these great characteristics, could be a great, you know
Kimberly Faith: That’s a great example. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great example.
John McLarty: It’s still recognizable.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe a Hollywood actress who used to be beautiful but now is a drug addict.
John McLarty: And you know, a lot of times those, yes. And those people like that have fallen, just like all of us are fallen
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: We still can view ourselves as that former self. And that’s how I kind of view humans. We have fallen, but there’s this image of God within us that we know is there.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: It’s just been kind of corrupted and covered up and grunged over. But it’s there.
Kimberly Faith: I love that you use that example because love is, when we think about love, we often think about it in terms of being loved, not giving love. We all want to be loved. But the way that God’s love works is different than human love. We experience the love of God, it’s almost like we’re a stream. We’re in a stream, right? So God’s love flows in us when we love him with all of our heart, soul, and mind. His love flows in us, and it must necessarily flow out of us. We don’t get to just keep, if it’s truly God’s love, we can’t just keep it to ourselves to truly experience it. Because if it’s selflessness, then it has, we have to be a stream. We can’t be the Dead Sea. Does that make sense?
John McLarty: That does make sense. We see this, you know, humans even in our fallen condition, you still see this amazing, the love of a mother.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: You know, that mama bear, I’m going to, you know, go into a raging gunfight, save my baby.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Men have those characteristics too. They’ll go jump on a grenade to save their buddies. So as imperfect as sin has brought us into a condition of imperfection, those innate qualities are still there.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like you mentioned seeing through a glass darkly. I like to view, and I think we were talking about this earlier today when we were kind of talking about doing this podcast. If we’re looking in a mirror, right, and, we know that we have capability to look really good, right, a lot better than what we’re seeing, because there’s dirt smeared all over the mirror, We want to clean the mirror off.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: So we can really see who we are supposed to be, not what we’re actually seeing. And the dirt is sin, right? And you know, so just to clarify, we’re not talking about people who have not yet been born again. Their mirror is black. You can’t see anything, right? But for people who’ve been born again, and we have allowed sin to splatter our mirror, that is, we’re seeing darkly what we could be. And I’ll tell you, you know, I was talking to a lady the other day and she just kept saying, I just hate who I am. I just hate who I am. And I just asked her, well, what do you think you would need to know or do or experience to love who you are? She just, kind of her jaw dropped. She goes, I have no idea. I said, well, do you think therapy is going to do it? Do you think, you know, the right man’s going to do it? The right job? What’s going to make you love who you are? She’s like, I don’t know. And I said, well, can I just share with you why I absolutely love who I am today? And she says, yes. I said, because I’ve been where you’re at, and I tried to stuff all these things in there to make my image better.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And all I did was make myself less liked by myself. I said, the more I got to know who God is, because I was willing to give up my own way in favor of his ways, the more he showed me who I was intended to be. It was like God has this image of you that he created you to be. The Bible says he’s created you for wonderful things. He’s planned wonderful things for you before the foundation of the world.
John Mclarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: And the more you scrape away the crust of your own will and your own way and your own selfish desires, the more you see in that mirror clearly exactly who God made you to be. And I promise you, you will love that person because that’s who God made you.
John McLarty: And that’s so fascinating that God, we’re made in God’s image with these characteristics and he wants that fully revealed in us. But we’re not all these little vanilla cookie cutter souls.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And it is God’s infinite variety, like no snowflake is exactly the same. We’ve talked about that before, exploring who we are in Christ.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: And letting that, you know, cleaning that mirror up.
Kimberly Faith: Well, David said, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. That my soul knows well.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And how does, if his soul’s born again, who’s showing him how fearfully and wonderfully made he is? It’s Jesus Christ.
John McLarty: So how did that lady respond?
Kimberly Faith: She was just floored. She’s like, I’ve never heard anything like this before in my life. And I’m like, well, it’s right out of the Bible. I said, you know, and of course, when I meet people in different situations, you know, I, of course, always say, look, you can learn more about this on our website, but if you ever want to get together and talk
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: Because that’s what Jesus did, you know? He discipled people in the streets. And that’s also been, you know, talking about love and giving up things, right? One of the big shifts in my own life in experiencing God’s love and growing in that aspect of my life has been giving of my time. Being willing to say, okay, I’m going to forego the workout to meet with this person who wants to know more about Christ. And that’s not like a one off. That’s a daily challenge. It happens every day. I’ve got a plan, then God sends some person, and I have to weigh. Is my to do list more important than this person, right?
John McLarty: And then I know you because we all experience that. But when you do that, you’re actually fulfilled by letting God’s love take over.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. It totally
John McLarty: Like he who loses his life, he’ll gain it or save it.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. And so you think about, I just want to shift for a minute and talk about what we as humans are willing to do to experience love. Because I think that if you look over the, all the great quote love stories of history, right? You know, all the Shakespeare, you know, Cleopatra and Mark Antony. I mean, all these great love stories in history that really, what was the point? I mean, Antony and Cleopatra both killed themselves basically because they thought each other was dead. They left their children orphans. Is that really love? Is that really a great love story? You know?
John McLarty: Not so much.
Kimberly Faith: Not so much. It was kind of a selfish thing. So I don’t want to confuse this desire for romantic love
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: To what God offers us, which is infinitely better. Because like we said in the last podcast, the only currency we take with us is the souls of people, right? And so, you know, you mentioned soldiers throwing themselves on a grenade for a brother, I mean, that’s a great act of selflessness. And I do not want to diminish that. It’s 100% worthy of praise and thankfulness. But what Jesus did for us, it extends beyond any barrier or, I guess, outward edge of love that we can even conceive.
John McLarty: Yeah. It’d be more like a soldier throwing himself on that grenade to save an enemy combatant that had been killing his fellow soldiers. That’s the difference between God’s love and the human form of love, which reflects God’s love, but it’s not God’s love. But God wants us, we can, who being born again, we can have God’s true love.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: As fallen humans we can still reflect these distorted images of God’s love.
Kimberly Faith: 100%. Yeah. And I think that, we’ve talked a lot about the lies that Satan told Eve in the garden and is still telling today. And one of the most deceptive, destructive lies is that God’s love is conditional. That somehow, if we don’t be this or do this, that he’ll stop loving us.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: It’s not that God ever stops loving us. It’s that we walk out on his love. It’s that when we choose to sin and we choose to live our own way, then we
John McLarty: Him, He’s not leaving us.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. We divorce ourselves from the presence of his love. And, we have to remake our image, the image of God in our own minds and replace the thwarted image that the enemy wants us to have. You know, I was talking to a young man and he said, I just, you know, my life is too messy. It’s too complicated. It’s too inconsistent. You know, God will never really want to clean up this mess. And this particular person has a three year old child. I said, do you feel that way about your child who, you know, you have to wipe her butt and you have to you know, she throws up or she makes a big mess in her room, do you feel that way about her? That you just are going to give up on her and you don’t like her because her face is covered in spaghetti sauce? And he looked at me and he said, of course. And I said, is your love greater than God’s love? Because he died for you when you were his enemy. And it was like one of those moments he just kind of went, wow, I never thought about God that way. But, you know, again, this is, when we think about our desire to experience this thing called love, which is think about if you had, you know, well, I mean, the relationship you and mom have. You guys have a great relationship. You both serve each other. You anticipate. You know, like, if mom’s upset, she doesn’t have to say it. You know that. And you try to like, earlier, she was trying to pin me down on podcast time because she had things to do. And I was oblivious. And you stopped me and like, so let’s talk about the schedule.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And I was like, oh, dad’s picked up, oh mom’s, okay, mom needs to have, she needs to be taken care of. And I wasn’t getting it, but you live with her. And your selflessness in not just running over that need that she has is a good demonstration of what grows in us when our
John McLarty: It grows. Exactly. Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Didn’t start out that way, But it grows. And this is what we can have in God. When we grow closer to him, our capacity to satisfy our need for love, it is
John McLarty: Yeah. That’s so perfect. That’s Christian growth and growing closer to God, and we know more of a sense of what he wants.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. Yes. And then even when we experience love that is very conditional, it doesn’t crush us because we have a love we need in God.
John McLarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: You know? I remember a time in my life when I was trying to help somebody, and I was really afraid to commit because I knew that person would probably flake out on me. And so I was kind of debating, do I even help this person knowing that they’re probably going to be a flake, I’m probably going to waste this time, waste this money. And the Lord just, it was like a boom from heaven. Gosh, I’m glad I don’t feel that way about you because you wasted a lot of my time and money and get out there and do what I’ve told you to do.
John McLarty: God has his way of showing us his perspective.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. Yes.
John McLarty: And changing our perspective.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. So let’s, just to reiterate about, you know, God created us in his image with this nature of love and us feeling the desire to not only be loved, but more to experience love, which is a better way to put it. In other words, experience the love of God flowing into us, but loving him back, and then that flowing out to others, that’s completely a valid experience. But we can’t let that be distorted by the, quote, love definitions
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: Of the world.
John McLarty: Yeah. Romanticized love.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. So let’s talk about the second nature of element nature of God. God is just. How would you describe God’s justice, dad?
John McLarty: Well, I’ll read a verse first. Psalm 9:16, The Lord is known by the justice he has brought about, the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands. Justice is kind of hardcore. Justice is a crime will be punished. Justice is, you know, even shown in the physical world, justice of two, you know, you’ve tried to violate the law of two masses, can’t enter the same space.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You have a collision.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: So equal to the power that you’re trying to overwhelm that law. Well, justice is just the idea that sin or crimes will be punished.
Kimberly Faith: I think about, I think that’s good. And I think about when we teach the law of sin and death, you know, we don’t have any beef about the law of gravity being
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: Constant law. Anybody who has learned about the law of gravity knows that if you jump off a 50 foot building, you’re not going to fly, you know?
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And nobody has, how could the law of gravity be so unjust? No. It’s a law. And so that totally ties into that God’s justice in the spiritual sense. The soul that sinneth, it shall die.
That’s okay. That’s just like the law of gravity. It’s a spiritual law. And I really like Deuteronomy 10:17 and 18. It says, for the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty and the awesome God who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. You know, this is not some abstract thing. This is God’s keeping, he’s keeping score. Okay? But if we let Jesus, he settles the score, you know?
John McLarty: When I read this verse, I just thought about this. What if God was just but not loving? It would be a pretty harsh situation for us.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You know, we’re sinners and that’s, you know, we’re violating God’s righteousness, you know. And if there’s only justice and not loving. But I love this verse, it says, he executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner giving him food and God combines justice with loving, loving kindness. And your example you gave to hearing about some horrible things, we need to do that also.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: Combine our sense of justice with love. Not to wink or overlook or, you know, do everything we can to stop human trafficking.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But understanding.
Kimberly Faith: To make it personal too, you know? There’s such a rage in the world right now over violation of, you know, of basically rights. You know, my rights have been violated, and therefore I can assassinate you. Or I’m justified in destroying your property because you have this and I don’t or whatever, you know, because of the color of your skin, your race, your national status, whatever it is, okay? Therefore, my rage is justified. You know? Look, that is not just people who have gone out there and done violent things. That’s all of us. We all have felt violated on some level. I remember when somebody broke into my house, and somebody broke into my car, and stole and destroyed. And I felt so violated. But if, and that’s, that is, we were created to feel violated and want justice.
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: You know, that is part of how God made us. But what do we do with that? Well, the Bible has an answer. The Lord says, vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord. He frees us from our own sense of having to enforce justice in a spiritual sense, right? So that we are free then to exercise the same love that Jesus Christ exercised.
John McLarty: Good example. Yeah. There ultimately be, for, you must say human traffickers, there ultimately will be justice.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You know, eternal separation from God. And then if we have the love of Christ, we want them to be redeemed.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: We want them to stop what they’re doing.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: But we want them to experience the love of Jesus and salvation like we’ve experienced.
Kimberly Faith: And that’s not to
John McLarty: You know, we’re all sinners saved by grace.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And that’s not to say that, you know, we’re saying, oh, you know, we shouldn’t stop the oppression of evil. I mean, you know, the things that there are some, you know, groups of people that have enslaved and tortured and, you know, made women into objects of, you know, just childbearing. I mean, just all these things that we’ve seen and are still seeing throughout history. That doesn’t mean that I mean, our government should reflect God.
John McLarty: Right. It’s like Hitler had to be stopped.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. That’s right.
John McLarty: We can’t just like, well, God will
Kimberly Faith: We’ll just pray for Hitler.
John McLarty: Take care of that.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. No.
John McLarty: Hitler had to be stopped.
Kimberly Faith: That’s where the Holy Spirit, you know, gives us discernment, right? I mean, the American Revolution, I’m glad that it happened. You know, I’m glad that we have a First Amendment, that we have a constitution. The people in Britain don’t even have that. And, you know, I was just listening to a podcast the other day and talking about how, they don’t have a First Amendment, so the government can put them in jail for a tweet, you know? And it’s like, there’s a lot of them that are recognizing the value of what the USA has in the First Amendment. That it takes a lot of free speech, to really say this is dangerous, and therefore, we’re going to, the government’s going to step in.
John McLarty: Right. Right.
Kimberly Faith: So, and I’m not trying to talk politics, that’s an example.
John McLarty: Well, but think about this. Here we are, the 250th anniversary of America. We like to say we’re a nation of laws. So where does that come from? We’re not a nation of just a free for all
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Hedonistic, everybody just do your own thing, rob, steal. We’re a nation of laws. Where does that come from? Our sense of justice given to us by our creator, that we want a just kind of governed society where crimes will be punished. I can’t just go rob my neighbor and
Kimberly Faith: Kill them or whatever. Remarkably enough, our government talks about our rights coming from God, not the government. It’s just so, it was just that, there was so much foresight that went into that. But the point is that we as humans, our sense of justice, that we want justice, not just for offenses against ourselves, but globally, you know, generally. We know that, you know I mean, even like, for example, after World War Two, Nazi hunters hunted down. They spent their whole lives hunting down war criminals.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: Not because they wanted money or they wanted that career, because of their sense of justice.
John McLarty: They wanted justice.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And, so, you know, and then of course, I need to, we were talking about this earlier, but the counterfeit, we have to be careful because Satan always wants to, he always wants to make up a counterfeit, right? And the counterfeit I see that’s happening that’s raging across many countries right now is bitterness and rage.
John McLarty: Bitterness. Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And those are, that’s taking justice and then turning it into something that perverts justice, right? Because if it, let’s say if rage and bitterness were the rule of law. Well, if somebody, you know, cuts me off in traffic, let me just shoot them.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: I mean, that’s where you end up. And that’s kind of where we’re going, and we have to rein that in. I mean, we talked about this in the podcast, about how to preserve our nation for another 250 years, you know? Gotta go back to the basics, you know, our relationship with God. Our country is going to be changed one person at a time, not from the top down. It’s gotta start with us.
John McLarty: It’s interesting, we instituted governments or groupings of human culture to help institute justice. So it’s not just vigilantism.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: We have the sense of justice but then this, really the United States is a good example of that. Ruled by laws and kind of different levels from the county sheriff to the federal marshals. And so it can be done right and proper. And that comes from humans wanting this sense of justice. But in a reasonable and fairly administrative way.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, the best, it’s an imperfect system. Nobody’s saying that our system of government’s perfect because it’s run by imperfect people. But the point is that when we substitute bitterness and rage for, because justice maybe has been delayed. Maybe we’re not getting the immediate justice we think we deserve.
John McLarty: But that doesn’t mean I can go rob a convenience store
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. That’s right. I mean
John McLarty: Because I’m broke.
Kimberly Faith: Exactly. Yeah. And so it’s very effective, I mean, this is a lie of the enemy because what it does by substituting bitterness, rage, all these things for actual justice, we basically are saying God doesn’t care. If he did, he would have stopped it. You know, but the proof of our suffering isn’t proof that God is indifferent. It’s proof that he created us in his image and that our reaction needs to also be in his image. Because he promises he’s going to make all things right. I mean, Romans 12:19 says Paul writes, dearly beloved, avenge not yourself, but rather give place unto wrath for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord. You know? God is keeping score. And this brings us back to the great white throne judgment. You know, we did a podcast on the difference between the great white throne judgment and the judgment seat of Christ. At the great white throne judgment, you are going to be weighed in the balance if you’re not written in the book of life. You know, the lamb’s book of life is the only thing, if your name is written there because you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, then you are safe. Because Jesus has made all of your wrongs right. He has covered you.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: The price for your sin is paid. But those who are not in the Lamb’s book of life, is God saying, okay, I’ve been keeping score. And even though just one sin could have condemned you forever because I’m righteous, there’s a big, big long list here. Like Hitler, and there’s probably a pretty hot place in hell for you. I mean, Hitler you know what’s interesting about Hitler is that he used, he was like, he had Satan’s playbook. He used Christianity to justify what he did to the Jews.
John McLarty: He did.
Kimberly Faith: You know?
John McLarty: That’s doubly evil.
Kimberly Faith: Doubly evil. And so, you know, it’s look, God tells us, I love Micah 6:8, where the Bible says, He has shown you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.
John McLarty: And just think about how that combines the thought we had of if you just have justice with no love, what a harsh world it would be.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But here, God tells us what is required of man to do justly, to love, but to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. That’s perfect.
Kimberly Faith: It’s kind of like the title of our podcast, Truth in Love. We chose that title, I believe the Holy Spirit inspired that because truth without love is cruel. Love without truth is cruel. You gotta have them both.
John McLarty: Gotta have them both.
Kimberly Faith: And you only have them both if you walk humbly with God, you know? You know, the bottom line is no one suffered more apocalyptic personal injustice than Jesus. No one. And he was the only truly innocent person who lived. And when I start thinking about, you know, like I’m in a situation where someone has been unfair to me, or I think in, has treated me wrong, all I gotta do is think about Jesus and think he was falsely convicted. He was publicly humiliated, brutally tortured, executed, he bore the sins of every person in the world that wronged him. And he did this. He chose to do that before the foundation of the world. I mean, you know, I don’t, and then the night before his crucifixion, he says, you know, these things I have spoken to you that in me you might have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.
John McLarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: You know? So it’s you know, if you’re listening to this and you feel like you’re oppressed or you’ve been wronged or you are trying to enforce your own rights, man, you gotta give that to God. You gotta give it to God. He’ll show you what to do.
John McLarty: Yeah. We quoted already Romans 12:19, but dearly beloved, avenge not yourself, but rather give place unto wrath for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. We can
John McLarty: Again, not that we don’t have some role, you know, to go stop the Hitlers
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You know, and, you know, have sheriffs and
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Policemen and
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You know, law enforcement. But ultimately, the Lord’s got justice taken care of.
Kimberly Faith: He does. And that’s a promise we
John McLarty: Even though we have a role in it. Big governments.
Kimberly Faith: It gives me such peace knowing I don’t have to fix everything, you know? It’s like, wait a minute. I can’t fix this, but I can pray. I can pray that justice will roll down. Like, was it Hosea or something? Old Testament?
John McLarty: Yeah. Roll down from the
Kimberly Faith: It will roll down like a river or something. Yeah. And I don’t mean I’m going to pray for the person who offends me and says, I hope your brakes go out, right? It’s no, let me pray that God gives me my part and I do my part, and I let him take care of the rest.
John McLarty: Not let it ruin your life.
Kimberly Faith: Exactly.
John McLarty: Not let an injustice ruin the rest of your life.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah.
John McLarty: That’s key because that can happen to us.
Kimberly Faith: It’s happened all around us. It’s happening all around us. These young kids who are trying to assassinate, trying to pillage, they’ve ruined their lives.
John McLarty: They’ve ruined their lives.
Kimberly Faith: For what? You know? And some of them, you know, don’t even know why they’re doing it. They’re just, you know, they’re just trapped in a delusion. But we can all be there. And I’ve been there. I remember being trapped in a relationship where I was just like, why am I so, why am I so depressed and angry right now? Oh, because I’ve allowed myself to be mad at this person for not treating me right. I don’t have to be that way. I was trapped. I had allowed myself to be trapped.
John McLarty: You can give it to the Lord.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. So finally, the last part is that God is righteous and you want to read Psalms 71:19?
John McLarty: Sure. Love this. And again, when we pointed out in Jeremiah that God is just and righteous, loves righteousness, this idea is just the Bible’s permeated with this idea. But here’s another example, Psalm 71:19. Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you? So God is righteous, but he’s made us in his image. So we have that sense of, and righteousness, you know, it’s become confused with this idea of self righteousness, which is a horrible thing. But righteousness is just wanting what’s right.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Self righteousness is a counterfeit.
John McLarty: Self righteousness is a counterfeit.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s counterfeit that deceives so many of us. I mean, I’ve been deceived. I was talking to one of my team members yesterday, and I don’t remember what we were talking about. And she said, I just gotta get off my judgmental self right now. You know? And it’s true. We have this we think we’re the judge, but it’s God’s righteousness.
John McLarty: Just wanting to do, it’s wanting to do what’s right.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s interesting. You know, God doesn’t follow a moral code that is above himself.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: He defines the moral code because he is righteous. He’s not, you know, like, we follow the laws in the state of Arkansas or Missouri, the laws of the federal government, right, that were made by people that we don’t even know. God is the law. He makes the law. And his standard. What’s amazing about his righteousness, again, going back to what we long for. I really like to think about using the physical examples like Jesus did to explain our desire for righteousness. We long
John McLarty: Jesus was the master of that. The physical world that speaks spiritual truths.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. And we long, just some examples of how we long for purity. You know, water. Who wants to drink muddy water? Who wants to drink muddy water? I don’t want to drink, who wants to drink sewer water? You know, just to get gross.
John McLarty: How about, yeah, how about water that you just saw a cow pee in?
Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, and, you know, I mean, I don’t even like to drink city water.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: You know, I want my water purified. I want it from the well. And
John McLarty: Our whole hippie life was guided by finding pure water coming right out of the ground.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And think about what we’ll do for clean water.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: You know, we’ll pay a premium price. We’ll hike for miles to find that clear stream. But that is an indication of something spiritual in us. We long for purity.
John McLarty: Purity. And the big thing today is the food we eat.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Organic.
John McLarty: Pure food.
Kimberly Faith: Right. I mean, the air that we breathe, you go to a city that is smoggy and you can’t breathe or you, I mean, you walk into, I’ll never forget, I was driving my daughter up to Minnesota,she was moving to Minnesota, and it was November. We had to drive through Iowa. Well, I didn’t know this about Iowa. So I’m driving the box van. She’s driving the car. The box van doesn’t have a recirculation button on it. Okay? It has to be the air from the outside.
John McLarty: Oh, no.
Kimberly Faith: They had just laid down the pig
John McLarty: I’m sensing where the story’s going.
Kimberly Faith: The pig doo doo had just been put on all the fields, and I had never smelled it before. And I am gagging driving across the whole state of Iowa. I wanted to smell anything other than that. I was longing for pure air.
John McLarty: And smell goes right up into almost the center of your brain.
Kimberly Faith: I could taste it.
John McLarty: Think about it.
Kimberly Faith: So, food I mean, think about the cosmetic industry. How much money is spent across the world in just having the pure skin that babies are born with.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: You know? And none of this is a coincidence. I mean, every single one of these instincts that they draw us to how we were created in God, in the image of God, his righteousness, it is, His righteousness is pure. It is incapable of corruption, incapable of contamination. Because like we talk about, if he is unrighteous, then he’s not who he says he is and he’s not God, right? I also like to think about, you know, this is a silly little example, but I think about how people are so drawn to babies.
John McLarty: Children.
Kimberly Faith: Children.
John McLarty: Kind of the innocence.
Kimberly Faith: The innocence, right? They’re just who they are. They’re very much, you know, we long to be in that. We long to be in that wonder. You know, they see a grasshopper and they just, you know, I’ll never forget my daughter, Sarah. She loved little critters and she’s probably two or three and she came in the house crying one day and she goes, I said, what’s wrong, honey? And she said, mommy, I petted the wasp and it bit me. And, you know, and your heart just, oh, you poor thing. You know, she’s just innocent, right? And what’s remarkable is that Jesus, he knew this. And he said, truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of God. What do you think he meant by that?
John McLarty: Just the innocence of children. I think simple faith. We talked about even in people getting saved that they think they’ve got to have just the right kind of faith and it’s real hard. I just think about a child just falls down and says, mommy, pick me up.
Kimberly Faith: There’s no hesitation.
John McLarty: They’re not having, well, will mommy really pick me up? Do I have to ask just right? It’s just a child that’s in a proper setting that has been picked up. Well, just like mommy pick me up. And that’s faith, the faith of a child.
Kimberly Faith: I think that’s
John McLarty: Innocent faith.
Kimberly Faith: I think that’s why it’s so easy
John McLarty: Believing.
Kimberly Faith: For children to get saved. I know that
John McLarty: Absolutely.
Kimberly Faith: You and mom have talked about Taunya’s salvation, my sister. And, you know, she and I, you have to correct me, but I think if I remember correctly, she just went from being an innocent child to receiving Jesus.
John McLarty: She did.
Kimberly Faith: I mean, she just knew it was time
John McLarty: Because the spirit of God just tapped on her.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And she went from experiencing the spirit of God as an innocent child to losing that and immediately saying, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And she knew the gospel. So she knew what she had to do.
John McLarty: She knew what she needed to do.
Kimberly Faith: And that’s, man, as a parent, that has gotta be the goal, you know? We see our children’s innocence and we just say, I want to make sure that when that’s lost, the moment that’s lost, it’s so recognizable by that child that they want to get it back. But dad, this is so, this is what’s so amazing about this whole idea that we’re talking about. When we are living in the presence of God, because we are yielding to the Holy Spirit, we’re living in his purity, it’s such a tangible thing that we get our wonder back.
John McLarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: We get our passion back. Children are passionate. Sometimes about the most ridiculous things, right? Mom, you made a pie. Oh my gosh. I can’t wait to eat it. That’s the passion that we want to develop about our relationship with God.
John McLarty: Right. To let loose.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. Yes.
John McLarty: And you know, then as Christians and you go, you know, to culture and to nurture, to bring that out.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: To be like little children.
Kimberly Faith: And we, you can’t fake that.
John McLarty: No you can’t.
Kimberly Faith: Children don’t fake.
John McLarty: No.
Kimberly Faith: They’re not hypocrites. I think that’s why hypocrisy really bothers us. You know, I was the model hypocrite, if there’s such a thing, for so many years. I claimed to be a Christian. I did all the right things, but I was a rotten sepulcher inside. I mean, I just was, I was angry, I was ungrateful, I was unhappy, I was dissatisfied, and I had my side gig sins. What a miserable place to be.
John McLarty: I was going to say, and that brings unhappiness.
Kimberly Faith: Misery. Misery. Absolute misery. And now that I’ve been set free to enjoy and experience the presence of God, the hypocrisy of others doesn’t even really have that effect on me anymore. I just feel sorry for people because I’ve been there. It’s like, oh my gosh. You don’t even know what you’re missing. Why would you just pretend when you can have the real thing? Because that’s what Satan wants. He wants you to always have the counterfeit.
John McLarty: Yeah. So that’s a good example. Righteousness should not be self righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: It should be simple.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: Simple as a little child’s enthusiasm, and just doing what’s right.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: Some kids do what’s wrong. But that sense of innocence and that excitement,
Yeah. And Jesus used them as a good example.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: Even though they can be little stinkers because they have that human nature.
Kimberly Faith: Oh, yeah. They still have the Adamic nature.
John McLarty: But it’s still yeah. It’s still undeveloped.
Kimberly Faith: Right. It hasn’t made a moral choice.
John McLarty: Yeah. It hasn’t made a moral choice.
Kimberly Faith: To violate righteousness, basically. But I just want to, you know, I like the fact that you bring up the self righteousness thing because I think that’s really important. I think when we learn to live in the righteousness of God’s nature, that God’s nature that he’s given to us, which we go back to. What is that loving God with all of our, we put our self aside. Okay? Then that displaces self righteousness as almost an abhorrent thing. Like, already know we are here by God’s mercy and his grace. And again, it makes us, I have a real compassion when I’m walking with God in sync with him. For when I see the misery of hypocrisy, the misery of self righteousness self righteousness has caused a lot of problems in our world throughout history.
You think about the persecutions in the name of even the church.
John McLarty: Right. Self righteousness. Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: I mean, you think about the murders and the wars that have been fought over our religion is better than your religion. Or if you don’t conform and be like this, if you don’t baptize your babies, we’re going to kill you. You know, all those types of things.
John McLarty: Well, here’s you know, Jesus said, they shall know you’re my disciples by your love, not by your righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: I love that. I never thought about that.
John McLarty: Not by your righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: That’s really good, dad. I mean, yeah, that’s really good. Yeah. That’s a great point.
John McLarty: Self righteousness is such a wrong representation of Jesus.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: And you just used all those examples of all the religions that just slaughtered each other over righteousness. Just throughout this conversation, this picture, this story has come to my mind of righteousness. There’s this old guy in our church, his name was Dallas, Dallas Taylor. And he was just an old, you know, from Farmington. He was telling us how the culture used to be in Northwest Arkansas. He said if you were driving or walking someplace and you found a pair of pliers, you would not think, oh, I just got a pair of pliers, like somebody had dropped, you know, a tool. He said, you would take those pliers and what you do is you take it to the farmer’s co-op and you turn it into a box that’s the lost and found. He says, because they weren’t yours.
Kimberly Faith: Interesting.
John McLarty: He says, to me, that’s righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: It’s not self righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: It’s just they were doing what’s right. And he said somebody worked and paid for those pliers
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: So the rightful owner needs their pliers back.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: My job’s, like you found a $20 bill at the parking lot.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: You’re just like, oh, great I found a $20 bill. Like, or, somebody lost their $20 bill.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Or their credit card.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty:The right thing to do is bring it into the store.
Kimberly Faith: And that ties back to love.
John McLarty: That just righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: That ties
John McLarty: Not self righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: Well, and think about it. That ties back to love because that is selflessness.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Selflessness is righteousness
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Because it is love. I never thought about that just tying right back into love.
John McLarty: Into love. Love and righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: Well, and you think about when it talks about the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, meekness, what’s the last phrase? Against such, there is no law.
John McLarty: No law.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. That satisfies the law. That satisfies the righteousness of God.
John McLarty: I’m so glad you brought up the self righteousness, which is such an evil plot of Satan to ruin the idea of simple childlike Christian and godly righteousness. It’s so different than self righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It is. And it’s such a different experience. You know, if you’re, and just as we’re wrapping up here, you know, what we want you to walk away with is the same thing we’ve been kind of just ruminating on and trying to build into our experience of our walk with God. And that is to, I don’t know how to say it better than this, but to fall in love with God. Because when we fall in love with God, that means He’s first. He’s first. He’s the center of every compartment of our life. Every room, he’s the center of it. And what that does is that puts us into the flow of who we were designed to be.
John McLarty: Perfect. Yeah. That image of God that he created in us. And then, you know, I just look at a verse here. Second Corinthians 5:21 says, for our sake he made him, Jesus, who God the father made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Kimberly Faith: That’s good.
John McLarty: So in our soul, when we’re born again, we have that righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And it’s kind of like we used the idea of the mirror that’s all cloudy can be obscured by our flesh, but the goal is to let that image of God just shine out.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: And you know, let others see Jesus in us.
Kimberly Faith: And we aren’t powerless to do that. Second Peter 1:3 says, his divine power has given us how many things? Everything. Everything we need
John McLarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: For a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. I mean, that’s like a mic drop verse, you know? He doesn’t give us just a few things. He gives us everything we need.
John McLarty: Everything we need.
Kimberly Faith: All the love you ever longed for, you can have it. All the justice that you want to see done, you can give that to God. You can experience the peace of knowing that he is who he says he is. He is keeping score. And even more remarkably, he has erased all of your score, you know? He has made the balance clean before God the
Father. And the purity that you long to experience, that version of yourself that is what your greatest self is found by losing yourself in Christ and becoming everything he made us to be in him. Not because we earned it, but because he gave it to us.
John McLarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: And, you know, I just want to encourage everyone listening because this is what encouraged me, this is what inspired us to do this podcast. The desires that you have, all the desires that you have to be involved and engaged in love, experience justice, feel like your life is pure and created for a greater purpose than you are currently experiencing, don’t give up on that. Dig deeper with God. Don’t give up on it because this is who God made you to be. He created us in his image, and he is working to transform us if we let him, if we yield to him. And man, what a great promise.
John McLarty: We can do that in him
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: And that’s becoming first his children, his born again children.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: But then through growth, just like we used the example of the baby grows and maybe goes through some rough times.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But then, you know, and become all that God wants them to be.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. I mean, Michael Phelps started as a baby.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And he’s an Olympic swimmer, you know, winning gold medals, right? He’s won gold, he’s not anymore, but he won gold medals. He didn’t start that way. But he had to be born for that to happen.
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: And if you’ve never been born again, you’ve never received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to begin the greatest journey of your lifetime, and it’s going to last through eternity. And it’s marvelous. It’s simply marvelous.
John McLarty: And then for that born again Christian to, just through God’s grace, to let those things develop. And so your life reflects God’s love, His sense of justice, and His righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: Not a better way to live, dad.
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