I think people are looking for some kind of technique, some sort of new method or approach

that is going to really give them the sort of secret key that unlocks all the mysteries

and makes everything great.

First of all, don't sell these topics short.

Think about what we're saying when we're talking about Scripture as hearing from God. We believe that God is speaking to us in and through His words. You're hearing from the living God,

and there's a depth to that that will not be exhausted anytime soon in this life or the life

to come. This is a sort of infinite treasure here for us.

Matthew Bingham serves as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Church History at Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, Arizona. He's also the author of A Heart of Flame

for God, a Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation from Crossway.

Well, Matthew, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast.

Thank you. Great to be with you.

So you opened this new book that you've written with a discussion of some of the weaknesses,

I would say, of the evangelical church today. You highlight some of these. You reference Mark Knowles'

landmark book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which really called attention to the intellectual

weaknesses or deficiencies of evangelicalism of a certain time. But you also, in your book,

you start off by highlighting some of the spiritual weaknesses or deficiencies or confusions even that sometimes can mark us as evangelical Christians today.

And you actually reference this thing you call the sanctification gap as kind of an important thing that we need to be aware of and thinking about.

I wonder if you could start by explaining what you mean by that term, the sanctification gap, where you got that from

and what it's referring to. Yeah, thank you. So the term sanctification gap comes from Richard Lovelace

and his book, Dynamics of Spiritual Life. And it was a term that has caught on.

You hear people reference it.

And I think he puts his finger on something very real,

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