Podcast: Real Faithfulness Is the Kind No One Sees (Glenna Marshall)

August 23, 2021 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Perseverance When It’s Hard

In this episode, Glenna Marshall talks about the life-changing practice of Scripture memory, the oft-given advice to give ourselves grace, and the importance of being transparent with other Christians when perseverance in the Christian life isn’t easy.

Everyday Faithfulness

Everyday Faithfulness

Glenna Marshall

This book explores what daily faithfulness to Christ looks like when spiritual growth seems hard to measure, working through the unique challenges to faithfulness during seasons of waiting, doubting, caretaking, suffering, and more.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:00 - What Is Faithfulness?

Matt Tully
Glenna, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today on The Crossway Podcast.

Glenna Marshall
Thanks for having me. It’s an honor.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to discuss the topic of faithfulness in our lives as Christians, especially in difficult or dry seasons of life that we’ve all faced at different times. I think that word faithfulness can sometimes suggest different things to different people. It’s kind of a loaded word that we hear a lot of, but it sometimes goes undefined. If you were to define faithfulness as simply as possible, how would you define it?

Glenna Marshall
You could break it down pretty simply as just being full of faith, but when we’re talking about the Christian life, we can use the word interchangeably with steadfast or persevering. We’re basically talking about following Jesus—being wholly devoted to Christ—for all of life. We see that scriptural call to faithfulness pretty much with all the New Testament writers. They talk a lot about persevering to the end and maintaining steadfast faith. Paul, Peter, John, Jesus—they all talk about it over and over again. I would just break it down simply. It’s being wholly devoted to Christ from day one of following him until you see him face to face.

Matt Tully
It seems like even embedded in that definition—and even in those words like persevering or steadfast—there’s an underlying assumption that it won’t be easy to remain committed to Jesus, wholly committed to Christ. Should that be baked into our understanding of faithfulness?

Glenna Marshall
Absolutely. When I came to Christ as a child, just growing up in the church, I thought, I’ll follow Jesus and everything will go well for me—somehow missing the fact that following Christ is taking up your cross. It’s taking up your implementation of execution and following a Savior who suffered. Following Christ faithfully puts us at odds with our culture and with the world that we live in. Following a Savior who suffered will mean that we suffer as well. So I think we should expect it to be difficult and it does require perseverance, but I also think we can’t let that overshadow the joy of following Christ and the eternal benefits of following Christ faithfully.

Matt Tully
Why do you think it is that even though Scripture does, in many places, seem to pretty clearly and explicitly say that there is going to be a cost—that we are picking up our cross in a very real sense when we follow Jesus—nevertheless, it can be surprising when we have to pay that cost? Have you ever felt that way? Have you been surprised when you felt difficulty in the Christian life?

Glenna Marshall
In some regard, we’re afraid to sell Christianity that way to others. Maybe we feel that we need to make it more palatable, that if you follow Jesus, everything is going to be wonderful and it will give you joy and peace. Those things are true, but it doesn’t cancel out the fact that we will suffer. I also think that we sort of misunderstand blessing and suffering. Sometimes they are really two sides of the same coin. I think a real careful study of Scripture will show us that not only does Peter tell us to not be surprised by suffering, as if something strange is happening to you. Basically, suffering is something that God uses to refine our faith and to grow perseverance and faithfulness in us. James also says, “We consider those blessed that remain steadfast” (he’s addressing suffering Christians in James 5). I think that we equate blessing with just ease and comfort, but Scripture often couples blessing with suffering. There is true blessing in holding fast to Christ in the midst of trials.

Matt Tully
As I reflect on my own experiences at church or in a small group, and even things that I’ve said, we can so often link that idea of blessing—we praise God for his blessing—when things are going well. When we get that promotion or when we get that new house or a new car or we have a healthy baby, we speak of God blessing us. Those are the only times when we see God blessing us. Is that something you’ve seen? Should we be more intentional about praising God for his blessing at other times of life?

Glenna Marshall
I really think so. I have a grandmother who’s 94 and if you say, I was able to pay that bill or We narrowly escaped a car accident. Isn’t God good?, she’ll say, He would have been good if you couldn’t pay the bill. He would still be good if you had ended up in a car accident. She’s quick to correct you, but she’s right. The Lord is good and kind to us even when our circumstances don’t always immediately reflect that in the way that we’re looking at them. I think there is blessing in walking through some trials. I can think of the suffering that the Lord has called my husband and me to walk through, with years and years of infertility being one of those things. That’s a hard path to walk. However, I can see that it’s one of the things that God has used to draw me into deep study of his Scripture, just because in suffering I wasn’t sure who he was. Was he being good? Was he being faithful to me? Is this what faithfully following Jesus looks like? Is it walking through hard things? Am I doing something wrong? But what I see in Scripture, once he drew me to see who he was and who he proclaimed himself to be, I could view my circumstances through the lens of God’s goodness. There is blessing in walking through trials and seeing that Christ is with you. He is your sure and steady anchor. There are some things I wouldn’t trade for having learned that lesson in suffering.

07:07 - Means of Faithfulness

Matt Tully
Back to that topic of perseverance and steadfastness and that being the main lens through which you view faithfulness, it seems like sometimes we can think of faithfulness through a different lens, a lens of maybe doing big things for God or big acts of faith (however that might be defined), maybe big decisions or sacrifices that we might make throughout our lives. Yet, it does seem like most of life is actually made up of very small things—very mundane things—and small decisions. As you look back over the past year of life—a very crazy, difficult year that we’ve all had, and as you’ve said before, you’re a pastor’s wife and you’re a mom of two young boys—what does simple faithfulness look like for you?

Glenna Marshall
I think that we like to look at those big, grand demonstrations of faithfulness and call that real faithfulness. But I think real faithfulness is the kind that no one sees but maybe the Lord or the people in your house. I think it is getting up every day and turning your heart to Scripture, confessing your sins to the Lord, spending time talking to him in prayer, saturating your day with the word, and, when possible, being as plugged into the body of Christ as possible. Those are not glamorous things. No one is going to clap for you for reading your Bible, you’re not going to get applause when you spend some time praying, but those simple acts of faithfulness are the things that God has given us to be faithful. Those are the means that he has provided. In Hebrews 10 the author of Hebrews talks about Jesus dying on the cross, not just to reconcile us to the Father but to give us access to him, to give us the word so that we hold fast our confession of hope, to give us the body of Christ so that we don’t fall away. There is a warning embedded in that. Jesus has given us everything we need to maintain faithfulness, and those things are very ordinary. They are very small decisions. I’m going to read my Bible today and know Christ today. And then tomorrow I’m going to get up and I’m going to do the exact same thing. It feels kind of slow and ordinary, maybe kind of plodding through the Christian life day by day, but the culmination of days and weeks and months and years builds faithfulness into your life because those are the means that God has ordained for us to grow in godliness and to hold fast to him. He’s given us what we need. Our responsibility in that is to follow through in obedience in these very small, ordinary things.

Matt Tully
I think you nailed it in that sometimes those small things can feel mundane and plodding, but have you ever had the sense—on the flip side—that they are so simple and so ordinary and, in a sense, so doable, and that’s what we’re called to do. We’re not called to look for the next big thing that we can do and accomplish for God, that oftentimes it’s just being committed to those smaller things. Does the smallness of it ever encourage you?

Glenna Marshall
I live in a small town with ordinary people, and the calling for every Christian is the same. Nobody in my church is going to go and speak at big events or become famous or have a large following. We’re just ordinary people living in community and following Jesus—loving him more today than we did yesterday. But that same calling applies to everyone who follows Christ. It is a call to follow him until the very end. Persevere until you see him. Hold fast to your confession of hope. Maintain faithfulness. These calls are in the New Testament over and over. It’s the same thing for me as it is for you. I’m very encouraged that there’s no hierarchy there. We all are given the same tools, we all have the same Spirit, and we’re all walking a path that all the saints who have gone before us have walked. It is encouraging to me to know that when I’m struggling through my Bible reading—I just got through reading the book of Joshua with my Bible study group, and we’re working through land allotments and tribal boundaries. I’m thinking, This is hard! What am I supposed to be learning here? But the fact is that I am sitting with a group of Christians and we’re all struggling through the text and the Lord is helping us to understand and we’re not the first Christians to do this. There’s just something so unifying about that. It’s Christ that unifies us. It’s the word that is our foundation. So, it’s really encouraging. It’s simple and mundane. Sometimes it’s a little bit hard, but it’s good and it’s right.

12:06 - How Memorizing Scripture Is Changing My Life

Matt Tully
As I was preparing for this interview, I noticed something interesting that you posted on your Instagram page. It was a few weeks ago, and you noted how easy it can be to become over familiar, and maybe even a little bit bored, with certain Bible stories or passages. That’s something that I’m sure all of us have experienced before. Then you said that one of the best ways to push back against that tendency that we have is through Bible memorization. You posted this picture of some note paper where you had written what looked like completely random letters.

Glenna Marshall
It looks like gibberish!

Matt Tully
Yes, at first I thought you were writing out the text of Scripture to help you memorize it, but then as I looked closer I could see that was not what you were doing. So, I want to ask what that was, and then I want to get into more about how Bible memorization is helpful.

Glenna Marshall
It does look like complete gibberish. It’s the first letter method of memorization. If you’re memorizing a passage of Scripture, if you’re going to work on memory everyday, it takes too much time to write out an entire text, especially if you’re doing a chapter or a longer portion. Your brain goes a little faster than your hand when you’re writing, so you can write just the first letter of each word as you recite it out loud or in your head. I just do that over and over again to work through memorization. It’s a really helpful tool because your brain fills in the blanks there. There is an app you can use for that, but I do better with pen and paper. It does look like another language!

Matt Tully
Where did you first learn that method of trying to memorize Scripture?

Glenna Marshall
I’m not really sure. I have seen, especially on a social media platform like Instagram, a resurgence in Scripture memorization among women specifically. That first letter method is one I have seen crop up here and there that a lot of people are using. I’ve seen people writing it on their arm or their hand. There’s even a company that puts out a temporary tattoo that’s got that first letter method for Scripture memorization. So it’s really encouraging. There are a lot of tools out there to encourage that. It’s been super helpful for me.

Matt Tully
Is that the primary method that you use to try to memorize Scripture?

Glenna Marshall
Weirdly, no. My primary method is to print out the text, put it in a Ziploc bag, and tape it to my shower wall.

Matt Tully
A Ziploc bag?

Glenna Marshall
Yes. You slide it into the Ziploc bag, tape it to your shower wall, and then if you attach Scripture memorization to a task that you do everyday, then it becomes natural. If you step in the shower, then you immediately go to Scripture memorization. I also have one taped over my kitchen sink where I wash dishes. It’s funny to say, but the shower is where I do most of my Scripture memorization!

Matt Tully
How much of pursuing faithfulness—whether it is Scripture memory or Bible reading or prayer or other mundane spiritual disciplines and habits—how much of that is thinking a little bit strategically like that compared to just persevering? It’s thinking, Where am I going to spend consistent time everyday? It’s in the shower, it’s getting ready in the morning. It’s preparing yourself to encounter Scripture at those times. How much of it is that versus just hard work and perseverance?

Glenna Marshall
It’s really both. I think if you’re committed to making just a few decisions at the beginning—like, if you don’t have a plan for Bible reading, make a plan. Pick a place, pick a time, pick a Bible reading plan. Make all of those decisions, and then all you have to do is apply them the next day. You’re going to just reapply the same decisions over and over again. If you’re going to memorize some Scripture, pick a passage, pick a book, pick a chapter, pick a couple of ways that will help you memorize, and then it’s just follow through. I think follow-through is where we struggle. There is some discipline required, but I really think if you build your life around individual spiritual disciplines and the corporate spiritual disciplines of being involved in your local church, rather than just fitting those things in where you can, if you build your life around it, you are more apt to be faithful. That sounds a little bit formulaic, but there is room for discipline when it comes to spiritual disciplines. That’s why we call them that, or habits of grace. Anything that you’re going to do regularly, you need to build your life around it. If you think about a marathon runner, if they are going to run the marathon—and finish and survive in one piece—they make a thousand daily decisions. And those are the same decisions over and over. They lay their clothes out at night so that in the morning all they have to do is put on their running gear and then go run. So there is some preparatory work to do, but if you will take the decision making out of it by making all of your decisions ahead of time, then all you have to do is just follow through. You don’t have to re-decide every day. Just apply.

Matt Tully
In that same Instagram post you wrote that you won’t stop harping on Bible memorization because it’s “changing my life.” In what ways is Bible memory changing your life? Speak to the person who has grown up in the church, who has heard all of their life that it’s important to memorize the Bible, and yet still really struggles with that. They feel a lack of motivation or feel like they’re just not cut out for it. What would you say to that person?

Glenna Marshall
I was that person. I grew up in the church and I did Bible drill as a child, but I had not practiced Scripture memory since I was a little kid—and I’m forty now. It’s really just been in the last eighteen months that this has become a new regular practice for me. It really was born of a desire to put an area of sin to death in my life that I felt like I just had no victory over. I was struggling with a lot of anger and short-tempered behavior and speech, and the Holy Spirit was just convicting me over and over. I felt like I didn’t know how to put that area of sin to death besides praying for it. We can’t just say to ourselves, Just don’t sin. There has to be something else. It’s more than just emptying your life of sin. You have to fill your life with something else. I was flipping through the psalms and I think it was in Psalm 119 where the psalmist talks about hiding God’s word in your heart so that you won’t sin against him. I thought, There’s the key. Not sinning against him is going to require that I hide more Scripture in my heart. So I began with a couple of psalms and then I moved to the book of James and I spent all of 2020 memorizing James. This year I’m working on Colossians. I’m moving a little bit more slowly through Colossians because Paul’s got some really long sentences! I’m just about done with Colossians 1. What I have noticed is that filling my mind with long passages of Scripture, which does seem overwhelming at first, but just take a sentence a day or a sentence a week. Just little bites each day really does make a difference. I’ve noticed that there is Bible reading and Bible study, which I love and really enjoy. But Bible memorization is sort of like flooding your mind with Scripture. You’re sort of saturating your mind with the same words over and over. I think the word in Scripture for meditating is mumbling out loud, which is really what you’re doing when you’re memorizing. You’re saying it to yourself over and over again. I have found that that process changes the way I think. It changes the way I react. It really is the Lord renewing my mind with his word. I’ve told friends it’s like he’s rewiring my brain. I don’t know if there’s a scientific explanation for that, but I think the work of the Holy Spirit, when you’re just saturating your mind with the words of the Lord, it does reshape your thoughts and your reactions. The Lord is using it to sand down this area of sin in my life that I have really been trying to have some victory over. The other thing is it comes up in my conversations all the time. It comes out in my prayer life. I just find that these sentences from James and Paul just overflow and spill out. If I’m thinking about a decision I’ve got to make, then I immediately go to James 1 about asking for wisdom. It's like having a treasure in your brain that you can access at any point. I always encourage people to start with Psalm 1. It’s six verses and it talks about the blessing of being rooted in Scripture, so it’s very motivating. It has diluted my desire for worldly things as well, and I don’t know how exactly the Lord does this in his kindness and in his grace, but it really is transformative.

Matt Tully
Have you been surprised at how you’ve been able to remember these long chunks of Scripture? I’m sure there are a lot of listeners right now who think, The thought of memorizing a whole book of the Bible—even a relatively short book like James—just seems completely overwhelming.

Glenna Marshall
When I set the goal, I thought, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do this. I have an autoimmune disease, and earlier this year I had a really bad flare up. Actually, December through April was particularly bad. One of the effects of this disease is I have something called brain fog. It makes things like memorization or, as a writer, it makes writing very, very hard because I can’t keep my thoughts in line. I thought, Okay, I’m going to be moving through Colossians a lot more slowly than I went through James. But that’s okay. I’ve noticed that by slowing down and working on one sentence a week—and I really do mean one sentence a week—I am chewing on these phrases over and over and over again. I almost feel like with the pause in working on one sentence for a long time, there is still so much to be gleaned and the Lord is still using it. So to someone who feels like they struggle with memorization, I would say there is not a race. You can go at a very slow race. If you work on it a little bit each day, I think you’ll be surprised by how much you can retain. Yes, we’re using the brain that the Lord has given us, which is capable of doing pretty amazing things, but we also have the gift of the Holy Spirit. We’re not memorizing the newspaper or a novel; we’re memorizing the living and active word of God. It’s no empty word, but our very life. I think with the combination of all of those things, the Lord can do something really wonderful with memorization. But we do have to take that step and try.

Matt Tully
It seems like that for Bible memory in particular, it’s probably less the destination than it is the journey that really has the effect on us. So there’s not, like you said, a race to get the whole thing done at a certain time.

Glenna Marshall
No. I think it’s just that act of doing it everyday. It’s absolutely just the process of memorization. It’s not really for the purpose of me standing up and reciting it to someone; it’s the process of saturating my mind with it. That’s where the treasure is.

23:37 - The Relationship between Faithfulness and Self-Discipline

Matt Tully
Sometimes spiritual dryness is due to feeling overwhelmed in life. For all kinds of reasons, we can just feel like life is out of control and it can make it hard to feel like we have time for spiritual disciplines that would be helpful for us in that dryness. In a recent article you published on your website you write, “When my first son was born, I didn’t pick up my Bible for months. I was so sure that I would arrive at the magical land of discipline later when my baby wasn’t so needy. I didn’t realize that keeping the habits of Bible reading and prayer when it was difficult to do so would have laid the path to Bible reading and prayer later when it wasn’t so hard.” I imagine a lot of people resonate with that sentiment of Right now I just can’t. Maybe later. Unpack what it is that you’ve realized since then and why that wasn’t the right way to think about it.

Glenna Marshall
That baby in that article is about to turn thirteen, so I’ve had some years to reflect on it. I thought that I would sort of grow into faithfulness at some point later in my life when I wasn’t so busy, when I didn’t have little kids, when I didn’t have the type of job that I had at the time. There was some idea in my mind that when I hit a certain age I would be mature in the faith, I would be much more faithful than I was then. I don’t know what I expected—just to magically wake up faithful ten or twenty years down the road. I realized that if I’m not investing in my faithfulness now, I’m really unlikely to just wake up twenty years from now that way. There are lots of days, weeks, months, years of investment in our faithfulness using those means of grace that God has given us and the culmination of that is where you end up walking faithfully with Jesus. I also do remember having babies and having a busy job and feeling like I didn’t have time. I think this is where Christians have to stop and examine. This is an area where we don’t live like the world. We survive difficult and dry, busy seasons differently than the culture. Whereas the culture would say put anything on the back burner that is maybe just asking too much of you, or something that you feel like you’re too tired for or don’t have time for, just move that to the back. You can get it later. You deserve to rest or relax or what have you. But Christians cannot flourish severed from Christ. We’re not going to grow if we cut ourselves off from the vine, who is Jesus. In order to survive those seasons and continue growing, we have to remain attached to Christ. While our spiritual disciplines might take a little bit of a different shape when you’re rocking a baby all night or when you’ve got a job that’s very demanding, we still have to somehow build our lives around the things that keep us attached to Christ. If we put off faithfulness until that season is over, or we wait until we feel inspired to come back to some form of faithfulness, we may never come back because we don’t know what season is right around the corner. We don’t want to waste those years wishing that we had been faithful, when persevering through those seasons puts us on the path to future faithfulness.

Matt Tully
You drew out some points in the article that sometimes even the way that we seem to think about these expressions of faithfulness would seem to suggest a certain misunderstanding of them. Namely, in those seasons when life feels out of control and we’re in survival mode (I think that’s the phrase that you used), we don’t view simple things—like reading the Bible and prayer and intentional times for that—those aren’t viewed as the means for survival. Those are kind of viewed as threats to our survival, which is why we put them aside for a time. What does that say about the way that we often think about this topic of faithfulness?

Glenna Marshall
I think that at the root of some of it is possibly unbelief. We don’t necessarily stake a lot on that daily Bible reading or prayer or being with the people of God. Maybe we think there’s something else that will help us survive. I think at the root of it is I’m not sure that carving out time in my busy day to read the Bible is going to have any long term effect on my life, so I’m not going to do it. I don’t see the value of it at this point. If I think we could step back and see our life in terms of years rather than days, we would see that it absolutely has an effect on our life, but it takes time. We are not really primed for patience when it comes to spiritual growth and faithfulness. We really want instant returns, and if we can’t get instant returns then we’re just going to put it off until later. I think living in a culture of Amazon Prime and DoorDash where we can have everything at our fingertips really quickly, spiritual growth takes a long time. That’s not really something that we see the value of investing in unfortunately.

Matt Tully
It’s not uncommon to hear people talk about the importance of “giving yourself grace,” especially when it comes to being consistent. One possible push-back to some of the things you’ve said is, But we need to make sure that we’re not turning this Christian life into this list of checkboxes and a list of to-dos that if you just do those things then you’re going to grow closer to God by definition. How do you think about that idea of giving ourselves grace? Do some people need to hear that message?

Glenna Marshall
I think there are some of us who are natural born Pharisees, so if we can reduce Christ-following to a list of things that we do and that we can take credit for and sort of divorce ourselves from the work of the Holy Spirit, then yes. Heart posture really matters here. Why are we reading our Bible? Why are we praying? Why are we involved in the body of Christ? If we’re thinking, I’m going to do all of these things and bootstrap my way through sanctification, then yes, we have a legalism problem. Or, if we’re holding that over someone else who struggles in their spiritual disciplines and say, I’m a much more faithful Bible reader than she is, so God must love me more, we have an area of sin and pride that we need to confess to the Lord and repent of. I think we need to remember that we don’t read our Bibles, go to church, and pray in order for God to love us. We do those things because we are loved. We are already loved, and through Christ we have right standing before God. We have his approval. We don’t have to earn it through these things. I would argue, though, that we are more certain of God’s love and approval in Christ. While we have to check our motives and look at our hearts—and I have a legalistic bent and I was a little Pharisee growing up, for sure—yet, we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water. We can’t say, Just give yourself grace. You don’t need to read your Bible everyday. Don’t put that on yourself. That’s too far. That’s an over correction, because, again, these are God’s everyday means of growth. In everything that God calls us to do, we have to consider what is our heart’s motivation. Is it our glory, or is it his? Are we leaning on the help that he provides, or are we just checking a box?

31:47 - Dealing with Persistent Sin

Matt Tully
We’ve talked about seasons of dryness that maybe stem from stress or the busyness of our lives. Maybe another cause of spiritual dryness that we can experience is the result of some sin in our lives, some persistent difficult sin. You mentioned struggling against anger. What would you say to the person who, if they were being honest about their own lives—they would have to say, I think there is some sin in my life that is persistent, it’s there, and it is contributing to this dryness that I feel. I feel distant from God? Even though that person knows that God has forgiven her in Christ, it still feels like this weight that is keeping them away from God. What would you say to that person?

Glenna Marshall
I would say that you sort of have to listen to that voice in your head. If the voice is speaking condemnation, you need to go to Scripture and remember that there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ. The voice of the Lord is not condemning, if you are in Christ. He corrects and he disciplines. Hebrews 12 is very clear on that. If he brings an area of sin to light in your life and you feel like I did with anger—a little crushed by it, like I can’t overcome it, I feel like it’s following me everywhere I go—it’s actually his kindness to you to bring that to light, because he is going to help you put it to death. I would say that with areas of sin like that (sometimes we call them besetting sins, areas where we feel like we’re going to struggle our whole Christian life with that area of sin) you need to put guardrails in place in your life. You need to talk to other Christians who will hold you accountable. It needs to be an object of prayer all of the time. For me, memorizing Scripture has been very key in fighting that. Am I still fighting anger? Absolutely. It’s probably going to be something I fight until the day I die. However, the people in my life know about it and hold my feet to the fire. The people I attend church with, my husband, my small group, I have people who pray for me regularly, Scripture memorization is a way to deal with it, and prayer, of course, myself. I would say that as you broaden the circle of who knows about your sin, the body of Christ is a gift here. We’re not meant to walk the Christian life alone. When it comes to fighting sin, I think that when we speak it out loud to other people, sometimes it loses a little of it’s power over us because it’s not a secret anymore. So, broadening the circle, applying these same gifts that God has given us of Scripture and prayer and the church, again, it’s something I’m going to keep harping on because those are the things God has given us to fight sin and to maintain faithfulness. Know that you’re not alone in this. The Holy Spirit is with you and the Lord provides a way out of temptation. So as we seek to follow him faithfully over time, I think we do see our struggle get smaller. It’s not immediate for many of us, but over time I think the Lord sands that out of our life.

Matt Tully
You said that we’re not meant to do the Christian life alone, and that’s a sentiment that we’ve all heard before. We would all agree, in theory, and we would all say that we believe that. But when it comes to besetting sins or this simple faithfulness that we’re pursuing and our struggles with our faithfulness, it does seem like it can be really hard to be honest with other Christians about those struggles. Why do you think that is for so many of us?

Glenna Marshall
I think it’s fear. If they really knew the struggle that I have, they would look at me differently. I feel like that as a pastor’s wife. Gosh, if people really knew what some of my thoughts were, they would fire my husband from the pastorate immediately. But I think that in that, we are fearing man more than we fear God because we’re willing to keep a sin a secret instead of fighting against it as the Lord has called us to do. I think if we were really honest and there was more transparency regarding sin with our brothers and sisters in Christ, we would all see that we’re all on a very level playing field here. My sin is just as ugly as yours and vice versa. We all need God’s grace. We all need his grace to overcome it. We were all dead in our sin before the Lord saved us. I think we have to get rid of this hierarchy in our heads that some sins are worse than others. Any sin that we have committed was paid for at the cross, so there’s not a hierarchy. That can be hard. I think certain sins do carry different consequences or stigmas in our society or long-term repercussions, but we have to separate guilt and shame from consequences when we talk about sin.

37:00 - Think like a Farmer

Matt Tully
You open your book with an encouragement for readers to think like a farmer. Why do you say that, and why is that important to highlight when it comes to this discussion of faithfulness?

Glenna Marshall
That comes from James 5 where James has encouraged a group of suffering Christians. He’s corrected their sin, he’s encouraging them to hold fast, he’s talked to them a lot about suffering and the joy that’s found in perseverance. When he gets to the end of his book, he tells them to be patient as they wait for the coming of the Lord and to see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth—being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. And then he says, “You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” I really like that picture because living in an agricultural area, I can see that very clearly. I do a lot of running and biking, and in our town anywhere you go there’s a field real close by. So I can watch the metamorphosis of the field—from plowing to planting to irrigation to just waiting out the summer until the fall (depending on the crop and the time of year that they harvest), and then they harvest. Then they burn the fields, let the fields rest, and then they start the cycle over again. What the farmers do is they do a lot of work. They do a lot of investment in their plowing and planting and irrigation and pest control and things like that. Each season calls for a different type of work, but it also requires that they wait and trust that the harvest will produce some kind of fruit for them to reap. I think that’s so true in the Christian life. God has called us to be invested in our own sanctification. He says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, he gives us these means of grace to hold onto to maintain faithfulness, but the other part of that verse says “for it is God who works in you.” It is him in you that is even willing to do the work and investment, so you have this both/and. God is calling us to obedience to work and be invested in our sanctification, but also we are wholly and dependent on him to bring about the harvest. Just like the farmers, they do a lot of work, but they can’t actually grow a plant from a seed. Only God can do that. He is the one that cultivates growth. So as we wait for the Lord to return—whether that’s for him to come and take his church home or for us to die and see him face to face, whichever comes first—we can know that he is coming and we will be with him. We have a lot of living to traverse that’s difficult. Our calling is to stand firm and to persevere, to do the work of investment in our sanctification, but to trust that God will bring about the harvest of growth and fruitfulness, because he is faithful. Our faithfulness hinges on his faithfulness, which is such a relief to know.

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