Revived Conversation: Jonathan Edwards' Resolutions

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[00:01:09] This is Troy and Joel, and you're listening to Revive Thoughts. All right. All right. It's time for the first Revive Conversation of the year 2024. And I'm excited to do these. These are episodes where Troy and I just talk about something that we want to talk

[00:01:29] about related to church history and how it affects our society today. It is, as I mentioned, the first Revive Conversation of 2024. We are cruising through January here coming up on the end of it. Troy, did you make any New Year's resolutions? Do you do that?

[00:01:45] I always try to do a couple of New Year's resolutions if I can. So for example, and sometimes they're really simple. Like I'm just going to do my Bible reading year in a plan.

[00:01:53] And I did that last year and I stuck with the plan and I finished it on time. So I feel like that was kind of my resolution. This year, my resolution. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I was going to announce them. Oh, you go, go and announce them.

[00:02:05] Go on and announce them. Thank you. I got it. Okay. I got three this year and they're all like, none of them are super spiritual. I've never, um, I don't know why. I guess like I normally, like if I'm going to find my identity in Christ more this

[00:02:16] year, I don't, I don't feel like I really do those. I feel like New Year's resolutions to stick need to be very practical and something you can actually do. And so for this year, I'm going to drink this one addicting drink, this boba tea

[00:02:27] that's in town less, um, because my students say I drink it too much and they're all convinced I'm going to get diabetes. And I don't think I'm going to get diabetes from this drink, but they seem to be really concerned about it. They mentioned it a lot.

[00:02:38] So for them, I'm going to drink this, but this delicious boba tea less. I'm going to, uh, I'm going to try to memorize more scripture this year. I used to be really good at memorizing scripture. I'd memorize like letters of Paul granted, like the short ones, like first

[00:02:52] and second Thessalonians, but still I was memorizing like, you know, a lot more. And I just haven't been doing that in the past couple of years. So I want to get back to that because I think it's a good habit and I think

[00:03:01] it's just a discipline I have fallen out of. And then what was my third one? I had a third resolution that I was like, Oh, I was going to work out a lot more,

[00:03:09] but then I got a stomach illness that has kept me out of working out a lot lately. I know everyone does the workout one, but, uh, I already work out a lot.

[00:03:17] So I was like, if I just amp it up a little bit more, I was, I probably was just jealous of you, Joel, with your half marathon last year. I was like, I got to jump it up. I did a half and a full. That's right. Sorry.

[00:03:27] The full and the half. So you did a full marathon and a half marathon last year while your wife was getting ready to have another baby and you were traveling. I was like, I got it.

[00:03:34] I got to pick it up if I want to keep it up on Joel's level. And I have not started the year doing that, but hopefully by the time you're listening to this a week from now or so I'm back in there and I'm back at it.

[00:03:45] Troy, you're talking about sugary drinks. Uh, nevermind. I actually had like one of those, like Facebook memory photos pop up from literally over a decade now, back to our college years as we get old.

[00:03:59] Uh, and behind Troy in your dorm room, littered the walls with dozens of empty Calypso bottles. Do you remember your Calypso? I loved Calypso. I don't know. I don't know if everyone. So for the listener doesn't know Joel and I went to Bible college together.

[00:04:18] We've known each other for a very long time. Uh, so this wasn't like a business podcast where one day, you know, two guys of similar businesses were like, we're going to know, like we know each other for

[00:04:26] years and in Bible college I had like a two year phase where I was very much addicted to a sugary lemonade drink called a Calypso that was probably. 600 calories per bottle. And I don't, I don't really see him anymore. I think they got outlawed at some point.

[00:04:45] Probably for the nicotine. Cause I had a cravings for those things that were strong. I remember this is unrelated to anything we're doing, but like I was sitting at somebody's house for one summer because I didn't have anywhere to stay and my

[00:04:56] family didn't live in the city that our college was in and I was working and a friend of mine let them, uh, let me stay at his family's house. And I remember she told, she told him, she was like, he's just like, I'm worried

[00:05:08] about him cause there's just always these glass bottles of lemonade that he's drinking. Well, and they even look, they look, they do look like they could be alcoholic do like based on the bottle. So I would, would be concerned as well. Oh, but those things. Yeah.

[00:05:25] I drink them a lot and I've always had like the one drink I'm a little too addicted to. And for years it's been coffee, but I stopped drinking coffee last summer because it was giving me headaches and I don't think I was running healthiest and I'm

[00:05:36] doing a lot better. I think that was a good thing to let go of, but I seem to have replaced it with Boba tea now. And so I got to let go of Boba tea and everyone says I should drink water. But water is boring.

[00:05:49] And so I'm probably going to become addicted to something else like Pocari sweat or something. So that's, that's what I do. That's where I got, if you're not sure what Pocari sweat is, it's an overseas drink in Asia that's made in Japan.

[00:05:59] It sounds gross, but it's like Japan's version of Gatorade. And I've already started to drink them a lot because they're pretty tasty over here. So that will probably be what I transitioned out of coffee and Boba tea into if I'm honest.

[00:06:10] Well, I'd be curious to compare the ingredient list on, on your Boba tea compared to the Pocari sweat. Uh, cause I've had both those and I feel like the Boba might be slightly more healthy for you. Although I don't know. It certainly doesn't have to be intellectually.

[00:06:22] Not the way I'm drinking them apparently. From what other students have told me, I'm drinking like the sugariest drink on the list. I see, I see the one that you're drinking. Yeah. We gotta, we gotta keep you out of the diabetes realm, Troy. Exactly.

[00:06:36] I mean, if the listener is imagining me, I'm not like, you know, extremely overweight or anything. It's just this, I have this one unhealthy, you know, everyone has that thing they struggle with. And for me it is drinking sugary drinks. I gotta, I gotta work on that.

[00:06:48] I gotta do better this year. Um, so that is my resolution on that. So there were my resolutions. Joel, what about you? What are your feeling on New Year's resolutions? I don't really, I really don't do resolutions.

[00:06:58] I, I guess I do kind of occasionally get caught up in the, um, let's try to do better as something, you know, just like the vibe in the air. And I feel like it's that just because it's really, as you know, it's wintery.

[00:07:11] It's cold here at, you know, January 1st and you kind of don't do anything between Christmas and New Year. So you're just kind of loafing around and then you get antsy and you're like, I need a, I don't know what day it is. I don't know.

[00:07:26] You know, I haven't been to work in like four days. What's going on? And so I feel like it naturally kind of, uh, bubbles up some type of like longing for productivity to where you be like, okay, you know, I'm going to be

[00:07:37] better at this or I'm going to do something like that. Uh, I ended up buying a, um, a specific book of the Bible, Bible journal type thing where it's just, uh, you know, there's one for every book, the Bible.

[00:07:50] And it's, you know, one page is the scripture and the other page is just your, your college rule, you know, note area to fill in. So it's made for, uh, just like heavy note taking through a book of the Bible type of thing.

[00:08:04] Not, not these, not these little lines in the margins type of journaling Bibles, but like full dedicated, we're going to give you a full page of notes per page of scripture type of thing.

[00:08:14] Uh, and so I've been going through the book of John, um, for the past few weeks here and enjoying that. But again, not that like in my head, I'm not correlating it with new years per se or new year's resolution.

[00:08:29] I just think it, I just, you get antsy around that time to want to better yourself somehow. And so you, you seek out ways to do that. I don't know. I gotta say you sound, you sound to me like the guy who's like, Oh, I'm, I'm not,

[00:08:44] I don't, I don't go to McDonald's. I just, I happen to be in the neighborhood and I just, I don't know how this McDouble got in my hand. All I'm saying, man, that's unrelated. I don't do just around the new years. Let's not put labels on things.

[00:08:54] You know, I just like McJacobs. Unrelated to new years, around new year, I started this new Bible plant. No, um, I, so, okay. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm brainwashed. Yeah. The listener is like, this says resolution of Jonathan Edwards.

[00:09:06] Um, but I, my last thought on that is I never put any notes in my Bible. Cause I'm always like, there's nothing I feel so confident in my thoughts that a year from now I will be script, you know, in the middle of a sermon,

[00:09:18] flipping to that page and see that note and go, wow, great work. I'm really glad I remember to write that down. And so I've had those note Bibles and they're always just empty. Cause I'm always like, it's like a tattoo.

[00:09:28] I'm like, am I sure that I want to put that in the Bible that I'll want that, want to see that five years from now? This dedicated one was that I can mark it up and it wouldn't affect it.

[00:09:38] But I do often like have moments where I am like, man, this is a great correlation. This is a great, or this would turn into a great devotional or sermon or something like that. Um, and then like six months later when someone asked me to speak,

[00:09:56] I'm like, oof, I got nothing, nothing prepared. And so I wanted to have something that I could go back and reference to, to, to form, you know, different messages out of. That's very smart. And I think that's a good idea. Okay.

[00:10:10] So this episode, I feel the listener deserves to hear. We are going through some of the resolutions of Jonathan Edwards and it probably should have put the sermon earlier in the month, quite frankly, if you're at this point or you're probably like it's too late for resolutions, but

[00:10:24] there's no evidence. Yeah, sorry. Not a sermon. It's just like his way of life. But I'm just so used to saying sermon on this show. Um, but, but Jonathan, but there's no evidence Jonathan Edwards did this as a,

[00:10:37] as a, as a, not a sermon, golly, as a new year's resolution. Like, I think this was resolutions he made and he stuck to them and his goal was to live his life. So this is beyond a new year resolution. This is like a life resolution. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:52] And this is, well, we're going to have it linked in the show notes. So dear listener, please feel free to click through. Um, it is not a small list. 65, uh, life resolutions. Is this 70? 70. The list here, I'm looking, I pulled up the list. It's, it's numbered up to 65.

[00:11:14] Oh, they're out of order. Some of them. Yeah, they're out of order. So we're looking at these not on like, uh, Jonathan Edwards' personal diary. We just, I found these on the Desiring God. I've known about these.

[00:11:25] I mean, you, you probably have heard of these maybe too, if you're listening, but if you haven't, it's no, it's no big deal. I found these on the, the quick link I found to them was on Desiring God. It has them kind of organized by group.

[00:11:35] So it'll say like, this is the resolutions towards overall life. And this is a resolutions towards time management. So kind of has them organized a little bit nicer, which I think is really great. So that's what we're going to take a look at here. Yeah.

[00:11:48] And again, we're not going to talk through them all because there are too many of them, but, uh, we might shout out a few of them here and just kind of talk through a Troy and I's thoughts on insights into what, what Jonathan Edwards is up to.

[00:12:03] You know, like why did he structure his life like this? Pros and cons maybe, uh, and just kind of contrasts with what we see in today's day and age. Okay. So let's take a look at just this first one. Joel, do you want to read the first one?

[00:12:18] Because I feel, I love the first one so very much. Um, but I feel like you got this. Resolve that I will do whatsoever. I think to be most to God's glory and to my own good profit and pleasure in the whole

[00:12:32] of my duration without any consideration of the time, whether now or never so many myriad of ages, hence resolve to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general resolved to do this whatsoever difficulty

[00:12:50] I met with how many, how great so ever. Okay. I love it. Okay. So on the one hand, like, yeah, you know what? That is the perfect first resolution. It covers the base.

[00:13:02] Like I'm going to do this, everything I do to the glory of God at the most with all my profit, all my pleasure, everything's going to be in this one thing. And yet at the same time, I love it because I was telling Joel before that we were

[00:13:14] recording. This reminds me of if you've ever seen The Office where Michael Scott goes, like, where David Wallace is like, uh, meets with Michael Scott and goes, you know, what's your secret? And Michael just goes, I never under any circumstances ever want to do anything to

[00:13:28] anybody ever for any reason whatsoever for any, any time. And that's what I feel like some of these are where it's just like, okay, was there no easier way to say that? Like, I know you're being complete, fully complete.

[00:13:39] And that, that is typical of the timeframe he lives in Puritans and people of the 1700s tend to write like this. On the one hand, I love how perfect it is. Like you can't eat that is a great resolution for life.

[00:13:51] And on the other hand, it's hilarious to me because if somebody said that to me, I would, I would laugh out loud because that is such a, a kind of unbelievable way of talking. Very redundant and you know, like an unnecessarily confusing, like the first half

[00:14:06] you're tracking and then by the end of it, you're just like, what are you talking about? Yes. So, but now there's another resolution, just a couple under this, a lot shorter resolution.

[00:14:16] And I think it basically on some ways says what the first one did, but I like the way it says it. Resolution number six, resolved to live with all my might while I do live. And I'm like, that's, I like that.

[00:14:28] It says, I feel like basically the same thing, but it says it so well. It does. Uh, they kind of break these into categories. So we have, you know, resolutions that he wrote that were about good works and charity.

[00:14:41] For example, 13 resolve to be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberty, which I interpret as find ways to give money. Endeavor to find out the objects of charity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Things worth giving to. Yeah.

[00:15:00] And I think if you just stop right there for just a second though, I mean like if we as Christians just stopped on a regular basis and looked around us and we're like, you know, what can I give? What group can I help?

[00:15:11] Who, what do I have that someone else can use? I think that, that, that one action alone on an, on a regular basis would have a huge impact on the world. And so it is such a good little resolution.

[00:15:22] If we really are going to say, how do I, let me look around me and see what I could be using, what someone else could be using that's mine.

[00:16:06] So I'm fine. Shopify beat it up. I know I'm singing, sick and platform, a little tools on that online business off to bond. Cost and those tests and on business there, well, it present here and shopify.com day a straight straight tribe is open.

[00:16:21] I'm far shopify.com day a straight straight try and given on plus lane made for Germany powered by Shopify. Another category time management. He wrote a bunch about how to manage time. Something that I'm sure we could all benefit from, uh, relationships.

[00:16:42] He wrote a lot about relationships, you know, I want to go back to the time one because this one goes back to the conversation we just had resolved to inquire every night before I go to bed, whether I have acted

[00:16:54] in the best way I possibly could with respect to eating and drinking. So you see he wouldn't have, he wouldn't have the lemonade and the, the Boba drink tea problems that I have because every night you'd go to bed and go, did I eat the right stuff?

[00:17:06] Did I drink the right stuff? Now to me, my goal at night and at bed is to not think about the things I've done wrong. But Jonathan Edwards was fully embracing. He had a few others too at night.

[00:17:16] For example, he said resolved to inquire, inquire every night as I am going to bed. Where have I been negligent? What sin have I committed and where did I have not denied myself also at the end of the week and month and year as well.

[00:17:28] So again, he's really wanting to reflect on what he did, but I just, I, I, he has a very opposite bedtime routine that I would do. That's, that's very, that's very true. That is very true. Yeah.

[00:17:39] A lot of his, and I don't know, again, as always, we'd love to chat with Jonathan Edwards to pick his brain and see exactly what, what his like application routine is for this. How often is he examining himself on this?

[00:17:54] I love, so there's a category called mortification of sins and self examination. And who doesn't have a new year's resolution under the mortification of sins and self-examination category? Yeah. Yeah. Resolution 23 says resolved frequently to take some deliberate action, which seems

[00:18:14] most unlikely to be done for the glory of God and trace it back to the original intention designs and ends of it. And if I find it not to be for God's glory to repute it as a breach of the fourth resolution.

[00:18:28] And from that, so I mean, again, many questions. First of all, he says resolve frequently to take deliberate action. Again, I don't know how frequent frequently is. Is this a weekly thing? Is this a daily thing?

[00:18:39] But it also just shines a light on like, he's got a structure to this. There was like, it's like a, it's like a constitution of a country to where like, you do this on this day and see if it correlates with resolution six and seven

[00:18:52] and is not a violation of seven or eight. And then it will be deemed good. Yeah. See the way he talked. Yeah. These are his resolutions that as far as we know, are just to himself.

[00:19:03] Like I don't, I mean, he shared them at some point we got them, but it's not like he's going around sharing these with town. Yeah. It reminds me of student council when you're in, you know, student council, you're

[00:19:11] in a student Senate as a kid and you're like resolve the board now recognizes so and so. And I resolve that this action be frequently taken to inspect, you know, like that's kind of what it reminds me of, but it's his own personal conversations since

[00:19:22] he's having with himself where he's going, have I frequently and deliberately taken action against this, you know, unrepentant Senate lately. And yet I also, I love that. Like he's so organized. He's so willing works. Yeah. He's so willing to dig in.

[00:19:37] And this is a guy who, when the revival of the great wakening broke out, he literally took out basically his science lab and pen and started writing down what was the scientific outlook of a converted soul? Like, what does that look like?

[00:19:50] And he would take notes on everybody he met and interacted with and tried to, you know, figure out what is the keys to conversion? What were the differences between fake converts and real converts like this guy?

[00:20:00] Although he was a theologian, he was probably one of the most scientifically theologians we have. So it's totally within his personality to approach his life in this very scientific, abstract kind of way. But it's just funny to talk to yourself in this way.

[00:20:16] And maybe you do, maybe you're reading this and you're going, what's weird about that? I'm always going, resolved. I have taken action against this unrepentant sin as I inquired on my bed at night of what I ate that day.

[00:20:26] But I think most of us could benefit from trying to do our lives more like this. I don't think any of us will ever get to this level, and I'm not sure that we should.

[00:20:35] But I think a lot of us would benefit from trying to be more, not all the way Jonathan Edwards, but just trying to take a very deliberate action to actually review where your life is going. It is, I feel, pretty unaligned with our current society's way of thinking.

[00:20:57] I feel like a lot of our spiritual approach to our relationship with God in this era is one of, like you, there's for some reason some disconnect with gritty spiritual disciplines of like this, like what Jonathan Edwards is doing, like laying out

[00:21:17] spiritual disciplines where you're organized and structured. For some reason, I feel like that is frowned upon in favor of just trying to embrace a relationship with God and trying to be open to having God move in your life and trying

[00:21:33] to invest in God and maybe memorize scripture more, maybe spend more time in prayer, but nothing too structurally rigid type of thing. And I don't know necessarily why we've gone away from the more structured way that Jonathan Edwards did things, and people of old often did things.

[00:21:58] I do think, I guess we find it more dated or more, I can see it leading to more controlling church environments that are not necessarily very healthy, especially if they're led by people that are not as God-fearing of men as Jonathan Edwards is.

[00:22:21] No, I think that you nailed that very well, Joel. I do think that we've, out of a fear of maybe being legalists and losing our relationship with Christ, we've almost gone, a lot of people I know, a great example

[00:22:34] is just this very day I was sharing with some of my students the Dadoke, which is as you, if you haven't listened to our episode, Fortifications for Faith, which we put out last year, a great episode. Go listen to it.

[00:22:45] You get to read some early documents, not just the Dadoke, but some really early documents. But this is a really, really early document of our faith that comes probably in the first century. And it was a Christian manual for living. And I shared it.

[00:22:57] I was like, isn't, I had the students read it and give me their thoughts. And I was really surprised because there are many strict rules in this document. But to me, I'm more just like, can you believe these Christians were already writing about these things?

[00:23:08] Like what an evidence of our faith. But my students were just like, wow, these guys were really legalistic. I don't even know if they knew Jesus because they were so focused on the rules. And I was like, I don't think that's true.

[00:23:20] And I think that they were really just wanting to live holy lives. But we've so disconnected the idea of trying to live a holy lifestyle in this world and so embraced, I think the idea that love and grace is all we need.

[00:23:33] That I worry that as Bonhoeffer warned about cheap grace, that we may have kind of almost veered too much into that camp where we just expect to chase that kind of, you know, cheap grace where everything's forgiven. So my lifestyle doesn't matter.

[00:23:47] And when you, when you live and think like that, when you see somebody like Jonathan Edwards writing like this, it seems foreign to you. It may seem legalistic to you, but I would encourage you if that is your response to this, to question maybe, maybe it's not though.

[00:24:00] Maybe there is something to regular self-examination because yes, Paul preaches Christ and preaches grace and preaches forgiveness. And I don't think that Edwards would ever deny that. But I also think that he very much encourages us that we need to be followers

[00:24:16] of God who are running the race and you're not going to run that race to win it. If you are not regularly checking how you're doing. I mean, Joel, I didn't run a marathon last year, but I imagine that you had to

[00:24:27] train and you had to double check yourself and see what was going wrong that last time I ran. And if you didn't do that, if you just said, I'm just going to run it because I

[00:24:36] feel it, I don't think you would have been able to pull it off. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The thing about Jonathan Edwards and people in this era in general, the thing that they understood is like the human condition. Like we're not very good at being consistent.

[00:24:55] We're not very good at knowing what we want. And those disciplines that are put in place there are put in place because we kind of need them. Like we kind of need to keep ourselves in check to have that checksum that we can kind of return to.

[00:25:07] And like that's something that they understood. And again, over the years it, as Troy said, kind of brought up this legalized condensation with it that we avoid nowadays. But in many areas we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to

[00:25:29] the reality of our human condition and how our brains work. And the reality is to develop and grow in a relationship with God, it takes work and it takes discipline and it takes intentionality and it takes systems that

[00:25:44] we have to establish for ourselves in order to do that. It doesn't happen instantly. That's something, yeah, again, that they understood back then. I'm curious to see another 200 years from now. What are people going to look back on this generation and be like, oh man, the

[00:25:59] 21st century folk, they did this and this and this is frowned upon now. And their culture has affected ours and our culture will affect the next generation as well. And I don't know if it's going to be for the better.

[00:26:16] I have this, so I run the social media and when I say the social media, I basically mean Twitter because at this point that's where I've spent most of my time. And you know, we do grow listeners over there and there is some correlation to it.

[00:26:28] So I do it. But one of these questions I ask probably like once a month or maybe not that often. I ask it pretty regularly though. But I just like to ask the audience, what do you think this era of church history will be called?

[00:26:39] And one of my favorite answers to that was the defamation. So you have the reformation and then we're the deforming of that. Like we've slid backwards basically. And I think there's some truth to that sometimes where people are going to look

[00:26:50] back at this era and go, man guys, like did you do, not that we're all bad, but come on, you made some real mistakes and some real blunders. I think that rejecting ideas like this, I'm going to work hard and not that I'm

[00:27:03] building my faith on my works. But I shouldn't even have to say that we should just know that naturally working hard for God is a good thing. Like we want to do that. It's a part of who we are because we love God.

[00:27:14] And these resolutions does not mean Jonathan Edwards thought he did them perfectly all the time. In fact, several of these resolutions were things like when I fail these resolutions to ask and repent, but there are at least goals for him to set.

[00:27:24] I wanted to read a few from the suffering category because I think this one was probably the category that I was like, wow, if you did this, if you regularly did this, I think it would change your life.

[00:27:33] If you did none of the others and you just did these, your life would be different. The first one was resolved to not to think much on all occasions of my own dying and other common circumstances which attend death.

[00:27:44] I mean that one alone, if you just regularly stopped and thought to yourself, Hey, you're going to die. And think about what that means. You're going to either shut down as an old body and crash, or you're just going

[00:27:53] to die and you're going to be in a casket and thrown into the ground, just like everyone else. That how much does that change the way you're living? How much would that we almost, I think run from the idea of death.

[00:28:03] And he's saying, I want to think about it because it's important. But then the next resolution resolved when I feel pain to think of the pains of martyrdom and of hell. Well, if I did that every time I felt pain, my complaining would go down significantly, wouldn't it?

[00:28:20] Every time you, you feel a little pain, if instead of getting upset or telling everyone, like, can you believe this happened? If you instead considered martyrdom and hell and then realize, wow, you have it pretty good.

[00:28:32] I think that would be a pretty big game changer for most of us. And one more, after afflictions to inquire what I am better for from them, what good I got from them and what I might have gotten by them.

[00:28:43] And just what a good, what a good perspective. I feel like that comes up a lot in Revived Thoughts where we have these sermons on suffering and affliction that come up a lot because it was something people used to preach about a lot.

[00:28:52] And just to ask yourself after it's over, instead of thinking about how hard it was or painful it was or whatever the trial was, just ask you, am I better? What did I gain from that?

[00:29:01] And what could I have gained from that if I had had a better perspective? I don't think I've ever thought of, ah, there was a horrible trial. What could I have gained from that if I had been paying more attention to what God

[00:29:09] was doing and less to the trial? Fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff to look at, especially starting off a new year. Again, link is in the show notes of this episode. We encourage you, open it up and give it a read through.

[00:29:21] Again, some of them I think you'll probably find silly, but I think it's going to be hard to read through that list and not walk away a little bit convicted about your own life there. Yeah, I definitely, I have read these. I mean, it's been a long time.

[00:29:35] I had to do some stuff in seminary with Jonathan Edwards, so I remember reading them, but just reading through them again reminded me of how much I enjoy some of them and reminded me just how much I, you know, I think that this kind of stuff,

[00:29:48] this kind of reflection stuff is good. One more for you. This will be my last one for the day here. Resolved to endeavor to my utmost to act as I can think I should do if I had seen the happiness of heaven and the torments of hell.

[00:30:02] Respond to always try to act as if I had actually seen heaven and I know what hell is like and keeping that in mind at all times. I'm like, man, how would that change the way, if you're a pastor, how would that change the way you preach?

[00:30:12] If you're a parent, how would that change the way you parent? If you're a brother or sister, I mean, how does that change this? If you're a student, how does that change this? The way you live your life.

[00:30:21] If you feel, if you live and act as if you've already seen heaven, you've already seen hell, you know what they're like, you believe those places are real. And then if you consider he wrote that down in 1723 and 15 years later, he preaches and becomes famous. No, no.

[00:30:36] 20 years later, he preaches and becomes famous for sinners in the hands of an angry God, which people don't always like that sermon, but I have never heard anyone, never heard anybody say in all their critiques of Jonathan Edwards, no

[00:30:47] one has ever said, I don't believe Jonathan Edwards believes hell is a real place. You've never said that. You, the one problem it, he convinces you through that sermon that hell is a real place and it's terrifying.

[00:30:58] And I do think that part of the reason for that is because he resolved 20 years before to think and act as if those were already real to him. Yeah. This was my first time actually reading through this list.

[00:31:10] I hadn't done it previously to you suggesting it for this Revive conversation. And I'm glad you did. Cause it's definitely neat. I'm definitely going to bookmark it and return to it from time to time. All right. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Revive Thoughts.

[00:31:23] If you did, we ask that you share with a friend, maybe tell somebody, Hey, this is one of the Jonathan Edwards resolutions. I'm looking to do more. Maybe you read through the list and enjoyed it. Whatever it may be.

[00:31:32] If you enjoy what we do here at Revive Thoughts, we encourage you and hope that you will share these episodes with a friend. Tell them what's going on over here. Tell them what resolutions you enjoy and just, yeah, then take some time.

[00:31:43] I do hope that not only are you sharing our episode, but I do hope that you are also, even though it may not be the first day of the new year, but I do hope that

[00:31:51] you take some time to reflect on your own life, introspect, take a minute and ask what am I doing and what could I be doing better? Because I think that so often we get busy in the day to day of life and we don't do that.

[00:32:04] And I think Jonathan Edwards here is reminding us that that's really important. Yeah. And if you have a thought for something that you think we'll find interesting to talk about, let us know. Right in ReviveThoughts at gmail.com you can find the email and in the show notes

[00:32:18] again. Let us know something that you found interesting about church history, something that is an interesting conversation piece and we might talk about it on the show. This is Troy and Joel and this is Revive Thoughts. The commerce platform Shopify revolutionizes millions of companies worldwide.

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