Ellen Krause: 0:04

At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast, oOur goal is to help you delight in God’s Word and thrive in Christian living. Each week we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian walk. We are so glad you have joined us. Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. This is Ellen, your host.Ellen Krause: 0:32

You know, in today’s fast-paced world, we can often feel distant from peace and true rest. The constant rush and endless to-do lists can leave us drained. If we want to know God more deeply and experience the peace and rest that he offers, we have to engage in theology every day and let go of the to-do list. Spending time in the presence of God brings true peace, hope and rest. Our guest today, Mmary Wiley, author of the new devotional Our Highest Good 90 Days of Knowing and Loving God, knows firsthand that dwelling in God’s presence is the key to finding rest in the God that never sleeps. We can start by finding peace in his sovereign care, enjoying security in his promise of eternity and experiencing joy in his great love. Trusting him for every need, finding comfort in his spirit and living out our faith as an overflow of his grace are essential steps as an overflow of his grace are essential steps. Continuing to chase after the world’s ways, however, is a vicious cycle that leads only to more exhaustion. So let’s explore the connection between cultivating rhythms of rest with exercising theology today.Ellen Krause: 2:02

Mary Wiley is a Bible teacher and author of Everyday Theology and two books for kids Life as a Christian and the Gospel Story. She holds an MA in theological studies and is also pursuing a PhD in the same. Mary serves as the associate publisher at B&H Publishing Group. As the associate publisher at B&H Publishing Group, working with authors to develop their books each day, she and her husband, John, have three children and live in the Nashville area. Her new book, Our Highest Good, is now available nationwide. Please welcome Mary.Mary Wiley: 2:41

Thanks so much for having me, Ellen.Ellen Krause: 2:44

Mary, I’m so thrilled to have you on our podcast today, because theology, the study of God’s word, the study of who God is is all about what we are here at Coffee and Bible Time, so why don’t we just start out by having you tell us about your story? You obviously have a lot on your plate as an author, bible Ph. D student, teacher, mother, publisher. I don’t know, you probably have other hats in there too. How do you personally cultivate rhythms of rest?Mary Wiley: 3:20

Yeah. So rest is something I’ve not always been good at and, full disclosure, I’m not always good at every day either, but for me, what has really been formative is to see that rest does not mean that we’re just not moving right. Often, I think a day of rest is laying on my couch and no one is bothering me, and that’s not actually what rest is, and it really is quite an impossibility. When you have two eight-year-olds and a three-year-old running around, it’s not really an option to sit on the couch and not do anything. And so what I realized in seeking out what rest truly is is that rest is not ceasing motion, but rest is changing your motion in the right direction, and so what laying on my couch for 24 hours could not do for me?Mary Wiley: 4:14

God could, and so spending time in his word and being fueled by the encouragement of his people really is where true rest comes from. And so to really rest in Christ, we have to know him right, we have to rightly see him, and we meet with him in the pages of scripture and in prayer. And so when I think about rest, I don’t think about spa days and Instagram perfect moments where we can say we’re taking a break from all of our responsibilities, moments where we can say we’re taking a break from all of our responsibilities. Instead, every moment can be restful if we are holding our responsibilities in light of who God is and seeking to honor him in each of those moments.Ellen Krause: 4:57

That’s a really great perspective of looking at it and, I think, probably different than what a lot of people think of when it comes to their mind. I know for me specifically, just kind of building that into my routine as much as possible, as far as like getting trying to get up earlier in the morning so that I’m not a morning person, so that I can spend that time with God in the morning and have some time in his word. Well, you say that the clearer our vision of God, the deeper our worship runs. Tell us what you mean by that.Mary Wiley: 5:42

That’s right. So I am a big believer that we need to know the God we serve, and so it’s very easy for us in today’s world to create God in our own image if we aren’t learning about him from where he’s revealed himself in his word and in his son. And so when we are allowing the world to form our understanding of God, we will think God is aloof and far from us. And I’ve even heard Gen Zers tell me they’ve been afraid God was going to ghost them or just suddenly disappear, because their friends do that sometimes and they’ll go weeks without texting back and they wonder if their friends are still their friends. And it’s really easy for us to assume that God is like us. And so the only way for us to beat that, for us to not create God in our own image, is for us to meet him in the pages of scripture, to see what is actually true of him, to meditate on his goodness and the truth of his beauty and to really just be enraptured by that, that he is better than any relationship that we hold on earth, that he doesn’t respond, even like a frustrated parent at times. We are never seeking to be frustrated with our children, but there are times where, when I’m asked the 47th question in the hour that I’m like hey, I think you’ve met your quota for questions. Today, mommy is closed for questions, and yet God has never closed for our questions. He never does not welcome us back with open arms.Mary Wiley: 7:18

I talked with a sweet girl this week at church. She had come to church this was her second week and she said she had been really far from God and she wanted to come home. She wanted to come back, but she wasn’t sure that she could. She felt like she had wandered too far. She didn’t know if God would be willing to have her back.Mary Wiley: 7:38

And what a sweet moment it was for me to say hey, God is not like the people you know, who might be mad that you left, who might be mad that you have not kept your end of the deals. Your God is not like that and the God we serve is the same yesterday, today and forever. And the God that welcomes you home the day you became a Christian is the God who welcomes you home today. I was able to tell her the story of the prodigal son and how God doesn’t just have grace for the one who left and came home, but he also has grace for the one who stayed and whose heart tended to be far from him. And so there’s just so much grace for us if we know the truth of who God really presents himself to be in scripture, where he has revealed himself to us.Ellen Krause: 9:13

Hmm, do you find, in working with a young person like that, that there is maybe a lack of like reading the Bible or just being taught these qualities of God that are the importance of being in his word Is that? Have you noticed that?Mary Wiley: 9:36

Definitely I think this is true not just with young people, but with all people is the internet has trained us to want instant gratification, instant like oh, I understand what you’re saying. And now I get to scroll to the next thing and determine do I agree with this? How do I feel about that? Is that pretty, is it not? Do I like it with the little heart button, or do I not?Mary Wiley: 9:59

And so often I find that we’re approaching God’s word in the same way. We want one verse to deeply speak to our heart. And in the moment when we’re in the book of Leviticus and we’re like what is happening, this does not feel warm and fuzzy to me. This one verse I read does not transform my heart today. I think there is a misunderstanding that we think every time we approach God’s word, we’re going to leave with warm and fuzzy feelings, and that’s just not the way that ancient literature was written and that’s not the point way that ancient literature was written and that’s not the point of God’s word. The point of God’s word is that he would reveal himself to us across its whole and that we would read books of the Bible as they were intended to be read, that we would read the whole thing and that we would, you know, be deeply ingrained in these words that he has given us, not that they would be a sort of hotline for an emergency situation where we’re just dialing in. You know, I was terrible about this in my early years, where I just flip the Bible open, point my finger and think this is what God has for me today. Now, god’s word never returns void and there is benefit in even reading a single verse. And if a single verse is all that your listeners can do today, do it. Don’t neglect the reading of his word. One verse is a great start and God does use his word.Mary Wiley: 11:25

I was reading an article recently and was really struck by this author’s understanding of how those passages that don’t feel transformative for us, the Spirit is still using in our lives. Although we likely won’t see it clearly that, even as we read lists of the family of God, of the genealogies, the censuses and numbers, that the Spirit is still working because this book is alive and changing us, changing our hearts. And so, yes, I think a lot of our friends listeners and not are not spending the amount of time that I would love for them to spend in God’s word, but what I do know is true is that God is faithful to his promises and that he is transforming our hearts through his revelation to his promises, and that he is transforming our hearts through his revelation, and so every time we come to him, he is meeting us there, whether it is in the book of Leviticus and you got to move as fast as you can to keep the momentum up so that you don’t stop reading or if it is in, maybe, the gospels or the epistles, where we often do feel more of those warm, fuzzy feelings, but that God is not just a God seeking to create warm fuzzy feelings in our heart, but he really is seeking to develop faithful followers who are Christ-like, who are his image in the world, and who not just know him but love him. Not just know him, but love him. And so, as we really move into a time of not just literacy being not as high as it used to be when it comes to reading long form, I would say we’re moving into a time where we’re not just biblically illiterate, but we’re actually illiterate in many ways when it comes to reading more than a tweet or more than an Instagram post.Mary Wiley: 13:14

Most people aren’t reading further than a paragraph, and so there are things I think we need to learn from that. We need to seek to draw people into the beauty of God so that they might be drawn back to his word. But yes, I see it not just in younger people, but across the board and even in myself. Sometimes.Mary Wiley: 13:35

I don’t always want to sit down and read two or three chapters. I’m like, no Lord, I’d really just like to read this one sentence and be done, because today’s really busy and mama’s on the call might be in that same world. When we think about quiet time, we think about this really special moment where we’re sitting down for an hour and a lot of my friends talk about their unquiet times where their kids are running around and you know, their kids see them with their Bible in their lap, and those moments of my childhood seeing my mom with her Bible in her lap, were the most formative thing for me as a child. And so just to really release that pressure of, hey, you need to spend three hours in the word every day so that the Lord will move. No, he will move. This is his word. He will move. But we do need to be committed to reading.Ellen Krause: 14:24

Yes, absolutely. I thought one aspect of what you wrote was so rejuvenating. You said you define theology as a relationship, a glorious meeting, an ongoing conversation with the God who created all things. How did redefining theology in this way change your perspective?Mary Wiley: 14:51

Yeah. So I have always been a really curious person. So at the age of 14, I was asking way too many questions of my poor youth minister, who was fresh out of Bible College, and eventually he just handed me his textbook, his systematic theology textbook, and said hey, I think you’ll like this, there are lots of answers in here. Go home. And about a month later I came back with a list of questions. I had read it from cover to cover and he, of course, was like well, that’s not really how we read reference books, it’s really you just. Ok, let’s talk about your questions. And so what he really thought was going to happen was he was going to give me something that took too much time, that was going to just keep me out of his office, and unfortunately that backfired on my poor youth minister. But he had so much compassion for all of my questions.Mary Wiley: 15:44

And so, as I have learned over and over and over again, I’ve just been reminded that theology is not about memorizing the right things. Now, there are right things to know about God, but it’s not just memorizing propositional statements and hoping that those somehow trickle down into our hearts. It really is seeking to know and love God, to intercede for others to be with Him in the moment. And so I think often we’re really guilty I’m really guilty of talking a whole lot about God, thinking a whole lot about God, and not talking to God and not praying to the one who has the answers. And so I found this amazing quote from an early thinker named Igrius who said a theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian. And so, as I thought about just my normal rhythms of let’s read for 50 minutes and then spend 10 minutes in prayer, it’s like that has to be flipped on its head, so that it is this intentional meeting, that it is this invitation to time with him, that we aren’t just thinking about him, that we are thinking with him. We’re allowing him to invade our thoughts and to help us think wisely about him.Mary Wiley: 17:08

And so I think that when we just memorize propositional statements, it can create in us a desire to be the one that can win all the arguments, but not a Christ-like heart that loves the one they serve and can approach others who maybe disagree with our propositional statements, to approach them with compassion. And so I think we see angry, really smart people who know a lot about God because they’ve done a lot of memorization, they’ve learned a lot about God, but they haven’t really spent a lot of time with God. And so, for me, theology, or the study of God, is what that word means similar to a biology, which absolutely gives me hives when I think about biology from college. But it is not the same, because God is not simply a subject to be studied. He is a person to love, to obey, to follow, and so often we do approach him like he is a biology textbook, like the Bible is a textbook to be memorized and not the meeting place of humanity with God.Ellen Krause: 18:17

Oh Mary, I think what you said is just so profound, Like if we could all just really take that to heart, it would help so much. Because I find myself in the exact same situation, oftentimes sitting down to just read, and it was never like good morning, Lord, this is the day that you’ve made. How are you Just this conversation and relationship? I think when our pursuit of theology changes from being solely academic to just simply knowing and loving God, it seems like it just takes off a lot of self-induced pressure.Mary Wiley: 19:02

That’s right, that is right.Ellen Krause: 19:04

Because that is something anybody can do.Mary Wiley: 19:07

That’s right, and everyone really is a theologian, because everyone has thoughts about who God is and what he’s doing in the world. The real question is are you a good one? Are you a good theologian? Do you know the God of the Bible or are you just kind of guessing? And so we all are making assumptions based on what we believe about God.Mary Wiley: 19:28

Every decision, as trite as what we eat for breakfast, is really coming out of what we believe about how God’s created our bodies, how he intends us to be fueled, and so, of course, that’s a silly example, but often we pretend like God only has authority over our really big life decisions where to move, who to marry, what to do. But God’s truth is for every single moment of every single day, and if we’re only leaning on him like a crisis hotline in those moments when we have to make big decisions, then we’ll miss the beauty of who he is and how he’s promised to walk with us every day. Now, he is always with us, but we choose whether or not to see him with the spiritual eyes he’s given us, or to close those eyes and attempt to live on our own.Ellen Krause: 21:00

So, Mary, if someone’s listening to this and they’re thinking to themselves, okay, wow, I can do that to themselves, okay, wow, I can do that, what are some ways that they can exercise theology in everyday life.Mary Wiley: 21:17

Absolutely Well, I think the best way to exercise theology is to know and love God, and so that means rehearsing the truth to ourselves every day. We’re really forgetful people. I’m a really forgetful person. I think we see that that is hardwired into humanity throughout the text of scripture.Mary Wiley: 21:36

God literally tells Moses like these people are stiff-necked. They keep forgetting who I am. They’re not being obedient, despite seeing me daily leading them in this pillar of fire or pillar of cloud. The same is true when you get to the book of Judges and God’s people are doing whatever is right in their own eyes. Over and over and over again, they’re just forgetting the goodness and the glory of God. And then God sends the prophets to help remind God’s people that judgment will come for those who are not following him. Because he’s just not because he wants to punish all the people and because he’s like an overlord with a bronze fist, but because he loves his people and he wants them to know what is best for them and that he really is what is best for them. He is their highest good. And so, over and over and over again, we see man, we are a forgetful people. We have to rehearse over and over again what is true about God.Mary Wiley: 22:33

Now that starts with daily Bible reading, using wise resources that can point you to the right direction in your Bible reading. We are people of a book, and it is an ancient book, and we do not live in the same culture that the people of Genesis did or the people of even Romans or the later books did, and so it is okay to struggle through reading scripture, and I believe that the text is so beautiful and that we’ve been invited to experience the beauty of God through it, that he meets with us there that if we could just see his beauty, we’d be far less committed to our own beauty. And yet it is okay to say, hey, this is really hard, I didn’t get anything from the text today. That is a fair thing to say, because it is an ancient book and it is challenging for us to read in our Western context. However, God is moving even when we feel like it’s really challenging, and so we want to rehearse that truth.Mary Wiley: 23:37

We want to continually preach the gospel to ourselves, the good news that Jesus died for our sins so that we could have eternal life with the Father forever. That one day we will see Him clearly, as we do face to face, that we have this hope that for the Christian, the best has never come like. The best is not behind us, the best is always in front of us. And so to really capture that into our hearts and rehearse it daily will give us hope and peace. And then to really seek to make even small, silly decisions based on what we know is true about God, and so the decisions of who do I talk to, how do I spend my money, where do I spend my time, how do I break from the very American desire to do whatever feels good, whatever is what I want to do?Mary Wiley: 24:33

We live in a culture that is very individualistic, and yet the culture of the Bible, the culture that Christ calls us to, is corporate, that we would be part of his body, part of his people, that we would love them well as a family, and so every moment of our day can be informed by what we know about God.Mary Wiley: 24:54

So we want to rehearse his truth, we want to live within his truth, answering those questions, and we want to continue to seek to develop a love for his truth by meeting with his people, asking for wise counsel and by prayer, spending time with God. I know you guys are really good at encouraging people to journal and to work through the text, and there is no better way than really becoming curious about the Bible, asking as many questions as you can about passages and continuing to grow in your knowledge of his word, not because you want to be the smartest in the room or because you want to win arguments. Because you want to know the God that you serve, because he is the most beautiful thing, the best truth and the highest good.Ellen Krause: 25:42

He sure is. One of the things I was thinking of as I was preparing, for this is for me, I think nature walks are just one way where I can see God’s beauty, and it does give me more of this conversational dialogue in my mind that I can have with God too. I think that’s another one in worship music, there’s so many ways that we can come to grow closer to God each and every day.Mary Wiley: 26:22

That’s right and the beauty is that he’s given us eyes to see, so as you walk. Those who do not know the truth are not going to experience God in nature because they don’t have eyes to see. But for those of us who are Christians, god has given us spiritual eyes and an opportunity to see his work in the world. And what a gift that it is to be able to praise him not just as we read the Bible, not just as we pray, but as we go throughout any part of our day nature, walk, frustrating moment at work, drive home, in the traffic every opportunity is a great chance to praise God for what he’s doing in the world.Ellen Krause: 27:04

Absolutely Well. You focus on the aspect of God as considering him as our highest good. What does it look like to acknowledge God as our highest good?Mary Wiley: 27:20

Yeah. So we all want to live a good life, right, and the philosophers of every important moment in history that was. The same question they were asking is how do we live good lives? And so Plato and Aristotle all had ideas of what that meant, and many times it was moral greatness or reaching this high point of beauty. What is the most beautiful thing must be the highest good. Some was, hey, we want to succeed.Mary Wiley: 27:50

Right, I see this in American culture that success, financial security, health is our highest good, because maybe it’ll give us a few more years on the planet, right. Then we want to feel comfortable, we want to feel secure, and yet in the pages of scripture we don’t see any of those things as our highest good. We see our highest good as a person, and it is Christ. And so if Christ truly is our highest good, then again we are making decisions based on him as the one that we want. He is the prize. God is not just an ends to a means, which is how we often treat him, that hey, I need this, and so I’m going to pray and ask God and hopefully he will provide. And then, in those moments when we don’t feel like he’s providing, we lost a dear friend, very young, to cancer recently, and so many of my dear friends have struggled with, hey, we asked God for what seemed good, for what seemed right, that she would get to stay. She was a missionary, had to come off the field because of her diagnoses. And so what do we do? When what doesn’t look good, god is still the highest good. How do we tell our hearts that God is good, even when the world feels really bad and our situations don’t feel happy? And so, to really redefine good as God, as he is the prize, he is the one we are running after we want to run as to win the race, that he is the one from whom joy comes, not our situations, not a clean bill of health, not even an answered prayer that goes our way, that that is not the end to the means.Mary Wiley: 29:37

What is actually the prize? The prize is not health. The prize is God with us, and he is with us, whether that is what we would call good or what we would call not so good. And yet we also know that God never calls evil good and that everything about God is good because good comes from him. And one of my favorite attributes of God is his infinitude, because it applies to every other attribute. And so when we think about his goodness, and we know that it is infinite goodness, that he doesn’t have a basket of good things that he is doiling out to people, and when that basket is empty, he has no more to give. He is the source of goodness, and so he never runs out. There’s never so much of an ask we never pray and ask so much of God that he’s like oh, that is beyond my resources, I can’t help you.Mary Wiley: 30:31

And so for us to really see the goodness of God, to see the infinitude of all that is good, to know that we know God sufficiently, but we don’t know him exhaustively.Mary Wiley: 30:42

But everything that we don’t know is good and likely better than we already know.Mary Wiley: 30:49

And so to really see him as our highest good is to put all of our eggs in that basket, to say God, you know, I may not have health, and that’s okay.Mary Wiley: 31:01

And even if I don’t have good health, that doesn’t mean that you’re not good, because you’re with me and you are the prize, not this, this fleeting moment on earth that I’m hoping to, to make the best that I can of it, but know that eternity, this moment with God that will last forever is really the prize, and so he is our highest good, because he is good, and anytime that we assume the good life can be found anywhere but him, we are going to be so disappointed because it will fail us over and over and over again.Mary Wiley: 31:35

Our friends and our family and our children, which we often put all of this pressure on these relationships that we want to make us feel okay, that we want to make us see the goodness of our lives, they can’t handle that pressure. They’re not built for it. They will be crushed under it every time, and so the only one who can carry the weight of our burdens, the weight of our expectations, is God, and he really is good. We can trust that he is good, that he has good things for his people, that we may not see them on this side of heaven, but there is a day coming when good will be all that we see, and so we can trust him today as the highest good.Ellen Krause: 32:19

Absolutely. You know, one thing that’s kind of maybe slightly tied into this that I was thinking about is when we acknowledge God is our highest good, when our fear of God is greater than our fear of man and we are bold to share our love of Christ in the gospel message. I just think that when we feel this urgency to make sure that everyone we come in contact with, who doesn’t know the Lord, hears the message because their eternal destiny depends on it. To me also, that was kind of just acknowledging that God is so good that you want everyone to know about it and be a part of it.Ellen Krause: 33:10

That’s right, mary. One of your goals for the devotional series is for the reader to seek to know God, his person and his attributes and his work in the world, and Christians tend to have, I think, a pretty good understanding of God the Father and God the Son. Let’s talk about the Holy Spirit. What can we learn about the Holy Spirit that shows us the goodness of God?Mary Wiley: 33:39

Yeah, so the Spirit is the one that the Father and Son sent to be not just with us but within us, right? So we know that the triune God is consistently with us. It is not just the Spirit who is active on earth, but we do see him most active. In the end of the New Testament, into the letters and beyond, we see that he empowers his people to take the gospel into the entire world. That through 12 people I mean it is astounding that from these 12 disciples that a whole world would know about the Savior and only the Spirit could do that. That he is opening the eyes of people to see the Spirit could do that. That he is opening the eyes of people to see.Mary Wiley: 34:24

What I love most and I teach most often too I teach second grade Sunday school every Sunday. It is just my favorite thing to do. They are so precious and we always are talking about how the Spirit helps us understand God’s Word. That he gives us eyes to see, and that to have eyes to see is to see the beauty of Christ, not just to read the words but to really be transformed. And that we can’t have those eyes without the Spirit. That he is the only one who gives us eyes to see. And so, as we read the text before we ever open the Bible, my kids know that every week, what do we do?Mary Wiley: 35:00

First, well, we pray and we ask God to help us because we cannot understand his word on our own, that it is a work of the spirit, that we would be able to see God as good, that we would be able to understand him as our highest good and we would be able to see that in his word.Mary Wiley: 35:17

And so often the Holy Spirit is neglected because he is not as easy to pinpoint. There’s not this moment in the story where he becomes incarnate like Christ does for us, where we can see really clearly his work and his life. And yet he is so active and is the one calling us back to Christ. He is helping us see our sin, giving us eyes to see our sin, giving us eyes to see what is true about God and his word, but also giving us eyes to see in the world, convicting us, moving us, compelling us to tell others, and so, in so many ways, when we think about having senses, and so, in so many ways, when we think about having senses, senses that sense God and understand how to operate in the world that he is, he is communicating with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit being, like I told you, like I prompted you so many times, just you know, I didn’t.Mary Wiley: 36:30

We’re a forgetful people.Ellen Krause: 36:32

Yes and and stubborn, because a lot of times I do feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit, but I’m like not right now. No, I was kind of geeking out myself on the Holy Spirit. You use that term in the book, and one commentary that I was looking at brought up this great point that the Spirit is given, not gotten. You can’t buy the spirit. You can’t follow step-by-step instructions in a YouTube video to get the spirit. It can only be given to us by God’s grace, as a result of our expression of faith, and I see God’s goodness in that, in that he gives it so freely to anyone, everyone who chooses to receive it.Mary Wiley: 37:24

That is right, and we see even in the text, like Simon wants to purchase. He’s like how much money, teach me how to have this power. And his disciple God’s or Jesus’s disciples say like it can’t be bought. This is not power that you can purchase or that you can wield for your own account. Instead, it is the power of God so that his name might be made great.Ellen Krause: 37:48

Yes, absolutely Well. Beauty is an important concept that you also bring up. What is the beauty of God and why does it matter, and how is it related to theology?Mary Wiley: 38:03

Yeah, so beauty is something that God has taken me on quite a journey with. In my PhD work. I’m studying this guy named Hans Urs von Balthasar and yeah, fancy name, right, but he German scholar lived in the 80s or died in 88. So he sounds like a church father but he is not that far gone and arguably he’s like the most prolific scholar in the 20th century. But most of us don’t know about him because he lived on the other side of the pond and so he talks a lot about beauty as what is the undercurrent of all theology. Beauty as what is the undercurrent of all theology.Mary Wiley: 38:44

So in our world we think about beauty as things that are symmetrical, and right now, in culture very much the idea of beauty is to stay young, to seek the fountain of youth and beauty as like harmony and beautiful colors and just these happy things that we’re drawn to, art and the such. And yet Hans Urs von Balthasar would say, actually, yes, those are pretty, those are potentially moving, they may have a magnetic appeal because they have some aesthetic value, but what is actually beautiful is the story of a suffering man on a cross, because what is beautiful actually has to also be good and true. And so often in our American lives, beauty is too slow for us. We don’t want to think about true beauty because we want things that are fast, things that are marketable, things that are utilitarian. I ask often you know, I spent a little bit of time in Europe this last year for a trip, and even the streets are beautiful, like the trash cans on the streets are beautiful. The light poles on the streets are beautiful, and I came home really asking the question beautiful. And I came home really asking the question. They are beautifying every aspect of life, seeking to, and yet we’re comfortable worshiping in a black box, you know, like a bought out Kmart. We’re great with that, and so there’s just a an interesting dichotomy. Not that that is wrong. Certainly we want to worship the Lord.Mary Wiley: 40:18

There are a lot of reasons why we’ve moved in that direction, lots of them that we don’t have the time to really unveil today, but it does beg the question are we so committed to utilitarianism in the world of Western thought that we want things fast, we want it to be as easy as possible, we want it to be effective, that we don’t want to take the time to consider? What does it look like to bring the beauty of God into our daily lives. Now, I think Instagram makes us want to beautify our faces and our homes, and if I get another ad for clip-on eyelashes in the next week, I mean I’m going to have to buy them because, goodness gracious, I’ve seen them 48 million times. And so we’re so committed to these concepts of beauty when, in reality, they’re fleeting.Mary Wiley: 41:09

And true beauty is lasting. True beauty brings transformation, and so Botox can’t truly bring transformation, because six to nine months from now, you’re going to need some more. And so what brings true transformation is for us to look like Christ, for the cross to be that which transforms us, and so to really consider beauty is to look beyond our daily lives, where we’re trying to make things pretty, and instead to see the glory of God who, in the moment when his robe filled the temple, isaiah fell to his knees because it was so majestic and so amazing. And so I just believe, if we could really have eyes to see the beauty of God, that we would live so untethered to this world, so untethered to the things that take us hours every day in the work of trying to beautify our homes and our faces and our lives, that if we really knew that God was.Mary Wiley: 42:20

, but beauty is also a person that if we would look to him as the beautiful one, our lives would be far more peaceful, far more frustrating, and we would really get to sit in peace, because we’re not worried about being the beautiful one. Instead, we’re worried about reflecting toward the beautiful one. Worried about reflecting toward the beautiful one. Now, that doesn’t mean that we should live in squalor and not make, you know, not hang pictures on our walls. That’s also a way that we get to show the glory of God, but it is a very dim reflection, and so we want to make sure that we aren’t worshiping what is the equivalent of the moon, who cannot give any light, when really our eyes should be pointed towards the sun, the one who is the source. Now, of course, we don’t want to worship either, but in this analogy, we want to make sure we are worshiping the one who is the source, and that’s Christ.Ellen Krause: 43:15

The S-O-N, not the S-U-N, S-O-N, not the S-U-N. Mary, you know you are such a gifted writer and I made a note of one of your texts regarding this and I thought it was so beautiful that I wanted to read it for our listeners. You said his beauty is seen even if our sight fails, and his beauty is what will reverberate across the time and space of eternity. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but in the one whom we behold. He is the light through whom all sight and perception exists, and oh how bright that light is for those who choose him over the temporary beauties of the world.Mary Wiley: 44:03

That reminds me of a beautiful story that I love so much about Fanny Crosby. Fanny is probably the most prolific hymn writer that’s ever lived. She wrote more than 8,000 hymns in her lifetime. And Fanny Crosby was blind, and so the story holds that at about six months she lost her sight, although some doctors have said she was probably born without sight and maybe this was related. So that is certainly questionable as far as how that lack of sight happened.Mary Wiley: 44:35

But there’s this story about her attending a church. Where she was, she was singing many of her hymns, she was leading the congregation in worship and at the end of this time together, the pastor approached her and said Fannie, you know, amazing job. Basically, can you just imagine what God could have done with you If you had your sight? And she smiled and said if I had it to do all over again, if I was in charge and I got to choose if I had my sight or not, I would choose to be blind, because the first face that I will see is the face of my savior.Mary Wiley: 45:15

Most if we all Mary like Fannie Crosby, how would the world be different? I believe that it would. I believe that our lives would be different, our churches would be different, our communities would be different, if we truly lived so that we would be looking forward to that moment when we see our Savior’s face, how might we live? How? How might we live, how might the world see his peace, enter his rest and enjoy his goodness? If that is the light that we shown in the world?Ellen Krause: 45:50

most definitely. Well, mary, as we start to wrap things up, maybe you could give a word of encouragement to someone who is going through some type of suffering right now and really questioning God’s goodness or faithfulness. What would you say to encourage them?Mary Wiley: 46:10

Absolutely Well. I think what was really instructive to me as I did the research for this devotional is I had always been really uncomfortable with the concept of God’s wrath. I felt like it was not a happy attribute, that it was a hard thing to study. And yet as I studied I realized God is not have an attribute of wrath. Attributes are things that are true within him that he is the source of, but that he is the source of justice and that wrath is the right outworking of justice. And so there is a story in Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves. He’s telling the story of a scholar named Miroslav Volf who grew up in a war-torn area I believe it was Yugoslavia and he, as he lost family members and saw the atrocities of war, he said he finally understood and really reckoned with the idea of God’s wrath, because as he watched these horrible injustices he knew that the only way, the only way for those wrongs to be made right would be God, that God would level the field and that he would do what was right. And God could not be good if he did not do what was right in those situations that he had to pour out his wrath at some point his judgment at some point on these oppressions, these terrible injustices within this moment of war. And as I thought about suffering, that has been a real encouragement to me that God is going to do what is just, even if it looks like suffering. Today and as we walk through suffering, we’ve walked through a really intense season of a couple of years of suffering with a handful of good friends, and I remember looking at one of my dear friends, my pastor’s wife, and saying are we just old enough to know about all of the suffering, or is it more acute today? I was like no, I think this is normal life and as children, young adults, young adults raising tiny kids who had no time to do much of anything else, we’re just now really seeing wow, the world’s really really broken and suffering should not.Mary Wiley: 48:30

The goal of suffering is certainly not that we would question God. Although he is big enough for our questions, he welcomes them. He hates suffering too, and so much so that he would send his son to do the ultimate suffering so that in him there would be no more suffering. So God hates suffering. He is not.Mary Wiley: 48:51

We are not in a cosmic classroom where suffering is being inflicted on you so that you learn something, and this is something I see a lot in Christian circles, because we do want to see the good in everything. We are hardwired towards that and God does work hard things for our good, but he doesn’t call hard things good and in the moment it is absolutely okay for us to say this is terrible, but also to not feel the weight of man. I must have not learned something the right way the first time for God to feel this is terrible but also to not feel the weight of man. I must have not learned something the right way the first time for God to feel like he had to do this to me. I want to release any listener of the. God is punishing me because of this suffering.Mary Wiley: 49:32

Now there is discipline for sin, there are consequences that we face, but often our suffering is not at our own hands or even the hands of a loved one. A lot of times our suffering is just because the world is really broken. I lost my dad to cancer as a 12 year old and it is not because I did anything wrong or my family did anything wrong. It is because the world is not as it should be and every Adam was infected when Adam and Eve chose to sin. Now we would choose the same and have chosen the same in our lives. And so not to put all of the pressure on the first Adam or the first or Eve, because we would make the same choice. But yet suffering is not the design of God. God’s design is that suffering would not exist.Mary Wiley: 50:23

And so while we walk through suffering, remembering that, although the days are really hard, god walks with us, that even if it is because of our own sin and its consequences, even if it is because of the sin of someone in our family and the consequences of those sin, or even if it is because of the sin of someone in our family and the consequences of those sin, or even if it’s at no fault of anyone, and we’re just walking through suffering because the world is broken, that he walks it with us, that he is grieved by suffering. We see Christ cry at Lazarus. When Lazarus died Now he knew he was going to raise him. He is God, he knows all things and he was still deeply grieved to see his friends suffer. And he is deeply grieved when he sees his friends, his friends who are listening on this call. His friends suffer. He is grieved by that, and so there is no easy answer.Mary Wiley: 51:17

The question of suffering is the question that keeps people from believing in God most, because suffering is real and it’s hard and it’s terrible, and yet God will have the last word. When I lost my dad as a 12 year old, I asked a lot of questions and definitely felt you know, why me, why my family, why my dad, why this? Why couldn’t it be a cancer that’s really easy to heal? Why do we have to walk through this? And I don’t have answers to that today and I never will.Mary Wiley: 51:47

And when we look at Job and Job often gets a little bit of a hard rep, because we look at Job and we basically say, well, god told Job to shut up and he kind of did, but he also he didn’t just tell him hey, job, were you there when I set the foundations of the world?Mary Wiley: 52:06

He did say that, but he also was so present with Job and we often miss that, that in that moment, yes, your devotional god was kind of putting Job in his place and sometimes we need to be put in our place a little bit but in that moment God was speaking directly to Job. What a moment that, the God of the universe, would you know, in that moment, from a whirlwind, speak to this man. And so, in our deep suffering, the promise of God is that you won’t walk it alone, and sometimes that doesn’t feel like enough, and that’s okay, but God promises that he will not leave us, he will not forsake us, he will not let us walk through suffering alone, and that one day there will be an answer for every suffering that we faced.Ellen Krause: 52:55

Thank you, Mary, for those words of encouragement. How can people connect with you and find out more information marycwiley. com?Mary Wiley: 53:09

I would love to connect and my website is marycwileycom. My book is available anywhere. Books are sold, so if you search Our Highest Good, you should be able to find it sold.Ellen Krause: 53:21

So if you search Our Highest Good, you should be able to find it Fantastic, and we will include links to those in the show notes. Before we go, I just need to ask you some of our favorite Bible study tool questions what Bible is your go-to Bible and what translation is it?Mary Wiley: 53:34

Yes, I use a note-taking Bible because I write in my Bible a lot, so I know some don’t prefer to time do that. I’m an underliner, a hey, I just had this thought in the margin kind of girl, and so I use a leather bound. It’s actually right here. It looks rough, it’s been through a lot, but I use a leather bound note-taking Bible religiously and it is a CSB, so Christian Standard Bible. I am a big believer in their optimal equivalence. So basically it is right in between a word for word and a phrase for phrase translation, and so it runs at about a seventh grade reading level, whereas ESV is more like 11th grade reading level. Some of the others are 11th or 12th. I think it’s the easiest one to read out loud as well, so I do a lot of teaching specifically with second graders, but also in women’s ministry do a lot of teaching, and so I have found it to be the most easily understood when read out loud. Okay.Ellen Krause: 54:35

okay, do you have any favorite journaling supplies or anything. that you like to use . to enhance your Bible study?Mary Wiley: 54:41

time. Okay, so I was at a conference recently and Mr Pen was there, and Mr Pen has highlighters and pens and they don’t bleed through the paper, and so I was gifted some of these and I will be a faithful, a faithful customer as soon as the ink runs out in these, because I have loved them.Ellen Krause: 55:02

Okay, excellent. We will include a link for those. Lastly, what is your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?Mary Wiley: 55:11

Yeah, I use Logos a lot. All of my books are in that app but I also love an app called EverAnd, and it’s actually an audiobooks kind of app. It also has eBooks, but you pay one fee per month and you can read as many books as you need, and so for me, I have even found a lot of academic books, and so I learn best if I can hold a book in my hand and also hear it out loud. Even when I’m editing manuscripts, I have Microsoft Word read it out loud to me as I edit, and so it has really changed the game for me. When it comes to reading resources about the Bible, I don’t use it during my quiet time, but I do use it to help me better comprehend what I’m reading outside of that time.Ellen Krause: 56:02

Okay, that’s really good to know. Yes, I do that a lot. I was taught that one time because I have ADHD, and they said and it reading and hearing it the same time like that was a game changer for me.Mary Wiley: 56:17

We live such busy lives so I can, you know, listen to a quarter of a book on my way to and from work every day, which has really helped me continue learning when really it will be easy to just sit and in the quiet and not do anything. So it keeps me consistent in continuing to learn.Ellen Krause: 56:35

Oh, that’s so awesome. Okay, we will include a link to that as well. Mary, I just want to thank you so much for spending this time together to helping us. You know, truly embrace that God is our highest good and he is our source for authentic rest and peace.Mary Wiley: 56:56

It has been a gift to be with you today, Ellen. Thank you so devotional,.Ellen Krause: 57:00

All right, and for our listeners, I highly recommend getting a copy of Mary’s devotional Our Highest Good. We will have the link in the show notes. We thank you all for listening. We would love it if you could leave us a review. That will really help us to continue having our podcast and we appreciate you listening. Have a blessed day.