How do we hold together confidence before God and a proper sense of his holiness? Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Joe Minich take up a pastoral question at the heart of Christian worship and prayer. Working from the Lord's Prayer, the Psalms, Job, and John 8, they discuss the dangers of both presumption and paralyzing anxiety, the relationship between knowledge of God and knowledge of self, and why assurance is less a fact we verify than a relation we inhabit. Along the way: Isaiah's vision, Calvin on "stupid" prayer, and what Alcoholics Anonymous teaches about showing up.

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00:00 - Introduction
01:17 - Confidence and holiness: the central tension
02:52 - The Lord's Prayer and the dynamic of approach
04:48 - The honesty of the Psalms and Job
09:16 - Boldness in prayer: the unjust judge and friend at midnight
11:11 - Hebrews and the two mountains
13:45 - Name-it-and-claim-it vs. petitionary prayer
14:45 - Being seen by God rather than seeing God
16:50 - John 8 and the woman caught in adultery
19:50 - Owen, Calvin, and "hard thoughts about God"
23:51 - "There is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared"
24:34 - Judgment and absolution in forgiveness
29:13 - The joy of approach and the glory of God
31:13 - Calvin, Isaiah, and the knowledge of God and self
33:58 - The erasure of sin in Waugh and Eliot
36:25 - Assurance as relation, not calculation
39:13 - Adoption, marriage, and secure identity
41:11 - Two kinds of self-absorption
45:48 - Alcoholics Anonymous and staying in the game
50:10 - Distorting the game itself: Jeremiah and the den of thieves
52:30 - Pastoral wisdom: who needs what
55:05 - Closing