In this episode, CCEF faculty discuss the importance of self-examination. They explore how self-examination is not merely a self-focused endeavor but a process that involves God and others. The conversation highlights the benefits of self-examination, including personal growth, awareness of one's weaknesses, and the recognition of God's grace. They also address common pitfalls, such as self-shaming and misguided approaches, and emphasize the need to also look for the good as part of the biblical self-examination process.

00:00 Introduction & Fun Facts with Darby, Esther & Gunner
05:28 Defining Self-Examination
14:55 Biblical Features of Healthy Self-Examination
22:08 God's Purposes in Self-Examination
27:46 How Self-Examination Can Go Wrong
33:30 Looking for the Good

Hello and welcome to our CCEF podcast, Where Life & Scripture Meet. My name is Gunner Gundersen and I have the privilege of being a faculty member and the Dean of Faculty here at CCEF. And I'm here with my colleagues Esther Liu and Darby Strickland, who both serve as faculty members as well. It is great to see you all again and great to be together.

As we begin, I would love to just share something that's coming up in 2026. Registration is now open for courses in our School of Biblical Counseling, and that is for our January 2026 term. This January, we're going to be offering Helping Relationships with Ed Welch, Scripture for Life & Ministry with Aaron Sironi, and Counseling in the Local Church with Michael Gembola. So if you're looking for an opportunity to grow personally, along with being trained to better serve those around you, please do join us. You can learn more at ccef.org/school. That's ccef.org/school.

Well, as we kick things off today, I thought we have a good opportunity here to let our dear listeners know just a little bit more about ourselves. So I wanna ask if you would share, Esther and Darby, a fun fact about yourself, you can decide how fun the fact is and we'll find out how fun you are with the fact you share. No pressure. Fun facts about Darby, Esther, and of course I'll share one myself as well. What would you like our friends to know?

I guess when you say that, Gunnar, the only thing that comes to my mind—I don't find myself to be that interesting of a person, but I'm trying to think of things . . .

I beg to differ.

. . . moments in my life that were, moments in my life that were fun. So yeah, things that I really enjoy are being on the water. I love kayaking, love swimming, love taking walks by lakes. I think most of the fun relaxation that I have probably involves some water. I swam in college and so there's just something about being by water that's just particularly sweet for me. So those are probably, I don't know if it's a fact per se.

So does that make late spring, summer, and early fall some of your best seasons because water is available weather-wise?

Yes, but I will seek it out in the winter.

That is commitment.

So if I have to travel, yeah, or even drive to a lake in the winter, just how much it changes in the seasons.

I love that.

I love it that much, yeah.

I wish listeners could see our video right now and the panic that descended on faces when that question came up. My fun fact is that I'm a person who never has a fun fact to share when people ask for fun facts. So that's one. I think the second thing that I can think of off the top of my head right now is that if I could redo my life and could re-choose a vocation, I would want to become a professional hip hop dancer.

Yes.

That's awesome.

I've always loved watching people who are good at dancing. I love that kind of music. If I could redo my life, that's the direction that I would want to go. But I started too late, realized that too late, the ship has sailed. So I have a broken back now. I can't bend at all. I'm not coordinated at all. So it will be a dream not realized. But if I could relive my life, that's what I would do.

I have a daughter who's a ballerina, so I'm dying to know why hip hop, of all the forms of dance. Yeah, what about that is appealing?

The music, the movements. I just love seeing the power accompanied with such a good beat. Just the combination and that experience that is just very energizing when I watch it. And it's just so beautiful what they're able to do even as a team together collaboratively. There's something about all of that together that is the full experience of what I think would just be really blissful if I could do it myself. Yeah.

You introduce that fun fact as though it wouldn't be any fun, and then it overshadows all the fun facts that we might share. So I think you're doing fine.

Thanks, Gunner. What about you, Gunner?

I'll stay kind of in the musical realm, but a slightly different direction. I played the violin from four to fourteen using the Suzuki method. And I didn't like it at the time, but I'm really glad that my parents made me practice 30 minutes a day, cause you don't have time to do that kind of thing when you get older. So, grateful to have played the violin. People always ask me, Can you still play? After 10 years, it's like kind of like riding a bike, but different also in that I was fourteen then, so was a long time ago. I can pick it up and basically play, but not nearly as refined as I wish, but I'm grateful.

Thank you for the fun facts. Maybe we'll bring out deeper fun facts as we go along in further episodes and give Esther panic again.

So our topic for today, and thank you for joining us, is one that we think is important for a number of different reasons. And one that you find in Scripture and one that we practice sometimes purposefully but often is going on in maybe a less conscious way or a less purposeful way. And so the topic we'd like to talk about is self-examination. Self-examination. And before we delve a little bit into what self-examination means and what are some ways we might describe it to get at what Scripture is addressing when it invites us and calls us to examine ourselves in various ways, before we get to that, I'd like to just share a quick illustration. During the school year in the fall and spring, students are walking through their educational process and that includes exams or tests. So students are placed in learning environments and then along the way, they are regularly tested or they are examined. Smaller versions of this include quizzes. And these tests or exams have a number of different purposes to them. But it becomes clear when you think about education that our growth as students would be pretty limited without having these enlightening tests or exams that we end up taking along the way. And there's even kind of self-exams or self-tests, right, if you will. So I would use flashcards in my elementary Greek class my freshman year of college, where the Greek word would be on the front and then a short English definition would be on the back. And I created those flashcards for myself so that I could test myself and examine myself and see the truth about, in that case, what I knew about these words. And everyone in the class did the same thing using those kinds of flashcards. And so that kind of examination has a way of enlightening or bringing to light something that was on the inside of me and putting that on the outside and seeing kind of where I stood, if you will, but that's just one really simple illustration of self-examination that just invites us into the category, but there's so many deeper ways to actually consider this. And even some ways that analogies like that can miss some of the heart of what self-examination is about. Other thoughts here about how you would define self-examination, how we might describe it or illustrate it as we get into this topic?

Yeah, I think, Gunner, in keeping with your school analogy, I know when I was teaching my Counseling Abusive Marriages class, I wanted the students to be honest with me about what they thought or what they didn't know about abuse or how they had mishandled cases in the past. So I was really clear that I was going to grade for growth. I wasn't going to grade for right answers because I wanted the students to actually say where they were, what they were wrestling with, what was confusing to them. And so sometimes, we can even think about it as on those flashcards, like you remember those things for the moment to get through the test. Where I was really after something deeper, I want to know what was on the inside in such an inviting way that you weren't punished for not measuring up, but that you were like invited into growth to explore your heart, to then compare it to Scripture’s call. And so I think sometimes the examination part, we tend to think of pass/fail, but I think the Lord is actually inviting us into, yeah, to be on a path of growth with him.

That so relates, Darby, to I think a theme verse that we all really wanted to talk about and really wanted to, I guess, color this conversation. That would be Psalm 139:23–24, after that rich psalm where David reflects on the Lord's nearness to him, the Lord's constant presence, the Lord's knowledge of him in every way. He prays, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” And when you were sharing, Darby, that last phrase is really what stood out to me, that “lead me in the way everlasting.” There is this growth-oriented, forward-looking, hopeful, “the Lord is with me” vision that is behind David's prayer as he asks the Lord to lead him forward, lead him out of grievous ways or show him even the Lord's own goodness in this process.

I feel like as I hear the two of you speak about exams and just examining yourself, exams, the metaphor of school and classes, etc., I think there are two directions that my mind is going in. I think the first one is the way that exams function, and you guys have said this, to grow in awareness, just to grow in where am, I locating yourself. Being like, okay, now this is how much I know in the beginning of the class, this is how much I know by the end of the class. It's a way to just know where we're starting, to be oriented in that way, to locate, know, to be aware, that part of self-examination is trying to grow in that. A way to be honest, too, is something that stuck out, that it's not something that we're pretending to be better than we are, or we're trying to put on a mask or a facade, but it's… the examination part of that is I'm willing to be honest that these are where my current weaknesses are, these are where my current gaps of understanding are. And how can I be honest with that? And how can I bring that to the table? How can I bring that out? So I just appreciate how that facet of awareness, of knowing, of locating oneself is actually embedded in some of these metaphors of school exams and class, like classroom examples.

I think the second thing that really sticks out to me that I really appreciate was already brought into this conversation was just how much it's rooted in goodness and grace rather than this strict disciplinarian. When I think of exams, when I think about school, I don't have fond memories of taking tests and exams. It was a stressful, cram all night, make sure that I do well, high standards, perfectionism, all of this stuff, stress. And yet, so it is beautiful to even bring in that there's a goodness and a grace to being able to grow in awareness and that the best of exams, the best of examining ourselves is actually grounded in something fundamentally good and gracious because it's rooted in the Lord and that is his heart towards us. So I'm just riffing off of things that both of you have said that I really appreciated as strands that came out in my own thinking as I heard you guys share.

So a better word, a more comforting word, Esther, might be discovery. Locating where I am, where I hope to be, being realistic about, yeah, who I am, how I'm living before the Lord and other people, I'm there to discover it. Versus, yeah, it could be a different angle even.

And it makes so much sense because when I think of seasons of life where I wasn't really taking time to examine myself, I think of seasons, like I would describe that as maybe running on autopilot. I was just going through the motions, bleary-eyed, just getting things done, checking things off the to-do list, but not really being aware of what's going on inside of me. Where am I? How am I doing? What are the ways that the way, the path that I'm going may not be serving me well. What are ways that's not aligned with who I want to be long-term and who God is calling me to be? So I even think of when I'm not engaging in self-examination, it's this autopilot, frenetic, just keep going, don't really know where I am and where I'm going, this disorientation and yeah, how the opposite of that is, like you said, Darby, this discovery and the slowing down of, okay, this is where I am and I can be honest with that. And where do I go from here? There's a clarity that it brings.

This discussion already is highlighting how that image of a school exam and the way we often approach that kind of school exam is really insufficient and even misguided if we translate that directly to God's call to examine ourselves and his purposes in that, because in a school exam, it's so easy to approach it like, let me cram for this, I think as you said, Darby, so that I can show that I had the right answer momentarily. But then it's fine if I forget everything. I'm not actually maybe changing or growing or having this be a positive progressive sanctification or a relational process, even much more than that, as I go, but rather something where I have to present something and to perform in a certain way that then earns something, but then can kind of be left aside actually after I present that image in that classroom or as I click submit on the exam on the computer. So it's helpful to think about how Scripture fills out this vision in a way that goes far beyond some of the daily ways that we face exams or tests. What would you say are some biblical features of healthy self-examination?

Probably the most obvious is just that opening, the opening four words in Psalm 139, is just “Search me, God,” right? It's not a self project, it's not a self thing we're doing by ourselves. We're actually beginning to ask, or starting with the question to God, reveal to me what I cannot see. There's so much of our own hearts that are unknown or blind to us, you know, left to myself, I'm gonna minimize things that I need to bring my own attention to or might excuse that I was just tired that day. But really it's just saying, Lord, help me see who I am. And that's a great comfort. Like I don't have to figure this out. I trust that he wants to show me these things and the things that are the most important things to him, not to me. My list, the things where I'm struggling might not be the most important things to him going on in my heart too. So I think it's just recognizing it's something that we do with the Lord, and he does graciously reveal things to us.

I remember, Darby, sometimes looking back on some interaction I had with someone, where I said or did something or failed to say or do something that I regretted or that embarrassed me. And I found that as I worked through my heart in those instances that I had to be honest that the main thing that bothered me was wondering whether or not they recognized the embarrassing thing that I had done or whether or not they were bothered by it. And as much as I knew, like Psalm 51 says, that our sin is ultimately before the Lord if I had indeed sinned or if I had indeed really mistreated someone or misspoken, that even if that was true, that the highest and best relationship I'm in is my relationship with the Lord. And so that's an illustration of how in my own conscience, I could be caught up in something that was so important to me, and yet I had to even recognize there's something far more important to the Lord in this and how those processes the Lord would consistently use to show me, remember me, remember your relationship with me. Not that that diminishes the way you treat people, it actually makes it even more significant, but in a way where you have help and you have grace and you have me to shine this light that will help you see. But it had a way of reprioritizing for me.

It's easy to keep the “self” in the self-examination at the center, right? Instead of Christ or our relationship with the Lord at the center. And so I think, yeah, healthy self-examination is meaning we're doing it with the Lord, with his priorities, with his Word, with his body. And that's, it takes a lot more work and intentionality, but the results are much more beautiful and productive.

It feels like having the Lord's goals in mind for our examination matters, that there's a way in which we can get lost in, “Oh, I just want to understand myself better,” or kind of that endless, “I want to make sure I'm okay,” and all those things are good and the Lord wants us to grow, the Lord wants us to be aware of those things, but it feels like a healthy version, a biblical version of self-examination has in mind why we engage in that and the goal for it. And one of the goals of healthy self-examination is worship, worshipping our Lord, becoming aware of where we are and where we need him, and clinging to him for his mercy and his goodness. And not only relying on him to illumine our hearts for ways that we can't see for ourselves need to be illumined, but also that as that illumination comes, it moves on to a deeper awareness, dependence, and gratitude and worship of the One who receives our honest selves with grace and pours out his mercies on us.

Yeah, I think too, as you're talking, Esther, the other occasion in becoming better worshippers of the Lord is aware of how other people experience us. That's that other side of that great command, loving others. And if we're not self-aware, we're not examining ourselves, sometimes we really miss how other people are experiencing ourselves. We're caught up in our intentions, right? Self-awareness can leave us going down the wrong hole, versus the trail of how other people are experiencing me. And what is that saying about how I value them and the Lord? And that gets, I think, at a different angle to help us. Yeah, I learn a lot if I ask my children for feedback about how I'm doing or how, you know, have I been patient lately or where have you seen me wrestling? I think it's really helpful to think in that second category as well.

So helpful as we're talking to kind of highlight that as we talk about self-examination, which we usually think refers to us being the self who examines ourselves and then also us being the self being examined, it can have this self-referential focus. But as we've been talking, we've said Psalm 139:23–24 starts out with, “Search me, O God.” So it's the invitation of another person outside of ourselves actually to search us and to be the main one who searches us. And then secondly, as you shared, Darby, there's also inviting other people to kind of search us and to share with us and to be a form of light that the Lord uses to help us see more about ourselves. And so we immediately expand outward from just self-examination to having these other people that are God's grace to us, specifically him, and then his use of others to help. So it's not alone, and it's not meant to be alone.

And the end product, I think, the comfort is the end product isn't alone either because whatever we find, we run to Christ with it. So it's not like it's baggage we're left carrying on our own. It's something we're handing over, praying about, repenting and confessing. So even our own examination, it’s not like we're left with the test results. Oh, now what? It's like, we are then to bring them to the One who can help us sort through them, improve, love better, love him better. And that's such a great comfort is that, yeah, I think that self word trips us up, right? Because now what am I supposed to do about it? Instead of how do I bring this to the One who can help me grow in these areas?

What are some reasons why God calls us to self-examination? And a self-examination that includes the other features that we're talking about, not just a solo project, but why does God call us to self-examination? What are some of the benefits of it? What are some of the outcomes of it? What are some of his purposes in it?

One of the things that I alluded to earlier was just in terms of when I'm not engaging in self-examination or any type of reflection or processing, I end up operating in an autopilot mode where it's just about doing stuff and I just become disconnected with bigger things, bigger priorities, values, where am I trying to go, long-term goals, what is God doing in me? What is he calling me to? And there's a way, I can think of specific seasons where, well, I'd actually say that probably some of the most significant moments of growth for me were in the process of self-examination. It was either I was journaling something and something that had just been so stuck in my life for such a long time, all of a sudden it felt like the light bulbs was off and it went o,n and I suddenly saw something new that helped for the first time where I realized, all of this time, for example, for a while, I was struggling with anger and I really hated the anger. I knew that it was wrong. I knew that God was calling me to something better, but I was constantly just like, don't be angry, don't be angry, don't be angry, be more patient, etc. And it was in this process of kind of extensive journaling and self-examination and processing with the Lord and prayer, et cetera, that I came to this point of realization and the Lord brought the realization to me that actually so much that was underlying the anger was actually anxiety. That all of this “I'm angry” was actually “I'm scared.” And my way of trying to address my fears rather than face them with the Lord was to try to control my surroundings, to try to control all these things, external circumstances around me. But it took so much time of really spending time with myself and writing things out and processing and examining and writing out prayers that that moment came. And it was such an important way for me to grow from that, that it was so much more than just don't be angry, don't be impatient. But it became, you're scared, Esther, and how can you bring that to the Lord? How does the Lord comfort you in that fear so that you don't need to resort to anger or control or all of these things to address some of that? But I just feel like so many of those moments in my own life wouldn't have come had I not slowed down enough to really ask hard questions and to really allow the Lord to search my heart and praying Psalm 139 over my life for those moments to come that have been so meaningful to my Christian journey.

I really appreciate what you're saying because it's really, it's just noticing, the ability to notice and to name. Like once you begin to notice patterns and begin to name them, then the way you could approach the Lord with the specifics really change the trajectory of how you would entrust certain things to him. And so, yeah, again, it's like not about getting the grade. It's about noticing what's going on within me, what pattern, what is it saying about what I love, what I fear? And it's just sort of just I think a really great and gentle reframing of what the Lord is inviting us to. It's actually a conversation with him, like, hey, daddy, this is how I'm feeling. And I just think of those conversations with my children, trying to draw out from them what's going on underneath something. And God is just so kind and gentle when he has those conversations with us.

I love how there's this whole picture of us seeing what's happening on the outside and God inviting us to reflect on what's going on on the inside and him just warmly, gently shining his light there so that we can see what he sees. And then as he refines us and as he changes us, as we turn to him and we trust him and rest in him and ask him for help to change, then what he's changing on the inside comes out more on the outside, and what's coming out towards others and towards him on the outside is now slightly different as well. It could be radically different, but just highlighting the incremental nature of most of our change, that it's slowly changing over time. I like to think of it like rings on a tree that do flow from the roots underground and then it grows, but it's small and steady year over year. I just love how that whole process of self-examination is meant to then produce outwardly this love for God that includes the rest and the trust and the obedience and the peace and then a more outward orientation towards our neighbor and serving them better, caring for them better as we go.

What do you think are some misguided mindsets or some misguided approaches to self-examination? What are some ways that this important exercise or this important awareness can go wrong?

Well, I do this a lot, but self-shaming. Like I will notice things I don't like about myself or how I handled something or that, yeah, I'm struggling with a relationship and I'm very aware, over-aware, of what I'm not pleased with or what I believe the Lord, I know he isn't pleased with, but it becomes a shaming conversation with myself where I rebuke myself, scold myself, yeah, and I'm not turning it over to the Lord. Just it's all about, I get so focused in on lines of thinking that just are unproductive because they're kind of circling the drain. “This is hopeless. Will I ever get this right? I can't believe I've done this again.” Versus recognizing, yeah, as a child of God, I live this, my reality is very different from what I'm seeing, and the hope and the help that I have in him is very different. And I think it's very tempting when you notice things, the introspection can go in the wrong trajectory. We're left with, in those moments, I'm left without my Savior. They can be dark. And so I'm just very thankful that that's not where he would leave us or how he wants us to examine ourselves out of the context of our relationship with him, and definitely with the reality that he is a very present help to us at all times.

Self-examination without a savior is not what God intends for his children. And I so resonate with what you shared, Darby, in that that is so tempting and it's ultimately the way of the evil one, the slanderer or the accuser who wants us to live in a place of both accusation toward ourselves and then also outwardly towards others. And so even when the guilt before the Lord is real and I feel it, and when the shame is real and I feel it, I'm still, even when those things are as real as they can be and as deserved as they can be, I'm still not meant to live there and to stay there. And the evil one also loves to multiply false forms of guilt and perceived guilt and perceived shame as well, so it becomes this complex web of just smoke and mirrors, some of which is real, some of which is not before the Lord. And yet in all of it, I'm so grateful that the invitation is to consistently come before the Lord who alone shines light and truth and then has grace that is constant and constantly extended toward me in that covenant relationship. But self-examination without a savior is, it doesn't end anywhere but devastation or with pride.

Yeah, right? Because it can flip that way. I have to be good. I think, too, one thing that's helped me is my church regularly, every Sunday we have a prayer of confession and then a repentance, and then we're given a time, and it changes, and then we're given time for self-reflection. We're doing that noticing and naming those specific things in myself. But then comes a declaration of assurance. You know, verses are read that remind me, for whatever I have just confessed, it is done. It has been handled. And I think just that weekly pattern of being forced to be reminded, the Lord has reckoned with this and he's continuing to rescue out of this. That Sunday routine of having that formally spoken over me has just been such a gift. It's just not something I have to fight to do internally.

All of this reminds me of a question that David Powlison would ask. It shows up in his book Good and Angry and a few other places, but question is along the lines of when you do fail, because we all will, who do you turn to and who makes it better? Who makes it okay? And I really appreciated the reorientation of that question because the reality is as we engage in self-examination, there are ugly things that come out and come up. And we are led to confront ways that we have fallen short, ways that we haven't loved, ways that we’ve failed and we're still stuck in sin. And yet that question invites an ability to not deny those things, to not deny or minimize that those things are true, but gives us a completely different direction, as both of you are saying, than beating myself up, being trampled by self-condemnation, going into this frenetic moral self-improvement project, but to ask who makes this better, who makes this okay, and to realize that the answer is not me, actually; it's Jesus. It's just been a really helpful reframing, perspective-shifting question that has searched my heart many times as someone who often tries to save herself after moments of clarity that come with self-examination.

As we start to conclude here, one final question that we've agreed is very important, and that is, how do we in self-examination look for more than just the negatives or the weaknesses or the things that I think we tend to think are the focus of the self-examination process? Are we also meant to look for other things in this process, or are we also meant to have other things shown to us in this process by the Lord? Can we just talk a bit about that?

I think that's so important when, I’m thinking of some of my long-term counselees where we've been talking about a particular struggle or sin pattern that they've had for a long time. And one thing I want to do is I want to point out to them, these are the ways I've seen the Lord grow you. This is where I've seen you conquer sin. This is the evidence of the grace. This is where I've seen your prayer life change. And I think that's just equally as important is noticing where we are maturing, what has the Spirit done in our hearts, particularly when you're discouraged, just noticing that the Lord is up to many things. We don't want to miss the good when we're, it's just so easy to focus on the failure.

That was probably one of the biggest turning points in my Christian life was as a seminary student taking Ed Welch's Helping Relationships and he introduced this concept that we who are trained to be counselors need to learn to look for the good, the hard, and the bad in other people. That it's not just sin hunting, looking for the bad, here's how you're falling short, this is the passage to address your sin struggle and you're going to be, send you off with that. But the fact that there are two other categories that actually matter to the Lord and so matter to us as counselors is where do we see the good in this person? Where do we see how they reflect God and the heart of God and the heart of Christ? And the hard is what is the suffering that they're facing? What are the struggles that they're facing that are painful and that we ought to grieve with them, etc.? And particularly the category of the good was a paradigm shift for me because I was very used to self-examination being purely looking for the bad, looking for the sin. Where was I selfish today? Where did I choose to not love? When did I compare myself to someone else, etc.? When was I prideful and impatient? And it was one of those, yeah, it was a paradigm shift for me to, not only for me with my counselees, but also me with myself, to be like, what is the good in my life? And how that actually led to a different kind of self-examination that I'm not only focused on my failures, but I do see the grace of God everywhere in my life and imprints of his goodness everywhere, ways that he's growing, ways that if I look back at who I was five years ago, I'd realize, wow, I still really struggle and I'm still really messy of a person. I'm still very much a work in progress, but I'm not where I once was by grace. And I do feel like adding that into the self-examination, into the reflecting, the processing, the self-awareness, has been one of the deepest joys of my own life and learning how to do that for myself, but also one of the deepest joys as a counselor that I get to do for other people, that when they can't see anything good in their lives, when all they see is their failures, I can actually point out and say and identify the beauty that is in them and the ways that the Lord is so pleased and the ways that he's at work. And so, really thankful for Ed Welch and that class because that truly has been transformative for my own life and I've seen it transform the lives of those that I help as well.

So because of what Christ has done in us and what Christ continues to do in us and what Christ promises to keep doing in us, we can go grace hunting and not just sin hunting, and to know that grace overcomes sin and grace forgives sin and grace empowers us to put it aside. And grace also enables us in our weakness and empowers us in our weaknesses that are not sin but that are part of living in a fallen world and being finite creatures. It's really encouraging to talk about and to end on that note. And we just encourage those of you listening, if you want to do a really fun exercise, if you're a parent, look for evidences of grace and growth in your children's lives, whether they be tiny or whether they be adult children off leading their own lives outside the home. If you're a pastor, look for evidences of grace in your congregation and share those during or before or around your sermon when it comes up next Sunday. And if you're a friend, look for the ways that God is at work in your friend and share that with them, how you see what he is doing and see how they're responding. And it's really a beautiful way to see the Lord's grace so actively at work in our lives as we go. And it has such a way of giving us good lenses, even as we look at the process of self-examination and we invite the Lord to look into our lives.

So I'd like to close here as we began, with Psalm 139:23–24 as a prayer for the three of us and also a prayer for all those who are listening. “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” Amen.