Tag: Hearing God’s Voice

As I was planning out episodes for our Scrupulosity series, I realized that we’ve never really done a deep dive into the Holy Spirit, and we’ve never addressed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit concerns. I chose to interview our pastor because I really feel like he has been able to communicate very clearly some of these spiritual truths about the Holy Spirit from scripture, and I know that I have been learning and growing in my own journey in this area of my spiritual life and wanted to share a little bit of that with you all.

Welcome, OCD Warriors, to the Christian Faith and OCD podcast where we are all about reducing shame and stigma of struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories and replacing uncertainty with faith as you develop practical tools for greater peace. I’m Carrie Bach, Christ follower, wife, mom, and licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.

I pray you are blessed by today’s episode.

Pastor Jeremy Pickwell is the founding pastor of Alinea Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which began in 2021. He is passionate about helping people grow in their faith, discover their purpose, and take meaningful steps in their relationship with God. Jeremy is married to his lovely wife, Jennifer, for 22 years, and they have two sons, Wyatt and Weston. They’re a very adventurous, outdoorsy family who likes visiting national parks and have visited 36 across the US. I appreciate Pastor Jeremy’s transparency and authenticity in the stories that he shares in this episode. Okay, Pastor Jeremy, so how would you explain the Holy Spirit to a new believer?

Pastor Jeremy: It’s a great question. The Holy Spirit ultimately is God. He’s not a force. He’s not an influence. He’s not a vibe. He’s the third person of the Trinity, so fully God with personhood, which I think is important because he speaks to us. He grieves. He intercedes. He leads. I remember someone once said that the manger is God with us, and the cross is God for us, and Pentecost is God in us. It’s the Holy Spirit who comes and indwells us. One of the most fascinating scriptures in the Bible is when Jesus said it was better for him to leave so that the Spirit would come, which I think is kind of staggering.

Carrie: Yeah, that must have been kind of shocking to the disciples. What do you mean it’s good that you’re going away? We need you here.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah, I know better. This is not good. We need you here. So I think that’s a fascinating thing. So the Holy Spirit is God in us now and leads and guides the believer, and unfortunately we tend to treat the Holy Spirit as kind of like the weird uncle in the attic that we don’t wanna talk about. We either ostracize him as some kind of theological abstraction or we lean so hard into charismatic experiences, and I don’t think either one of them really does him justice. So he’s the third person of the Trinity. He’s a person to know, not a concept to figure out. He’s there to help us.

Carrie: Yeah. This is really great. I shared in our last episode, and you wouldn’t know about this information, but I’m gonna repeat it for anybody that missed it. I’ve been on this journey where I grew up in a very knowledge-based faith and then swung over into some more charismatic, Holy Spirit-led expressions. I’ve been struggling, I think, for a while to find the balance and find the middle ground and have felt very much like, okay, this camp over here is too far to one side and this other camp is too far to the other side. And I think my husband has had his own wrestlings with that because we grew up very, very differently. When we got together, he was on the knowledge-based side and I was on the charismatic side. Anyway, it’s been an interesting journey, but I just say all that to say that it’s okay for people to examine what they have been taught in the church and to continue to seek God through the Word and the Holy Spirit and prayer to reveal things to you. Maybe you were taught some things that are not in alignment with the Word of God.

Pastor Jeremy: Absolutely.

Carrie: How do you see the role of the Holy Spirit as being different in the Trinity versus God and Jesus?

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah, man, this is like back to my many years ago, my master’s program, my MAR. Scripture reveals that they have distinct roles of Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s work in the believer’s life: it says that he convicts of sin.

Carrie: Right.

Pastor Jeremy: He regenerates us. He indwells us. One of my favorite scriptures is that he is a sealing, a guarantee of our inheritance. He illuminates scripture to us. We just went through as a church in 2025, looking through Acts, and all throughout Acts is the Holy Spirit, who is the power for us to complete the mission that Jesus has set us out on. He produces this character in us through the fruit of the Spirit. He intercedes for us when we don’t know how to pray, which is also another beautiful verse. When you just kind of get to those moments where you just don’t know what to do, the Holy Spirit is right there like, hey, I’ll take it from here. He truly is a helper. That’s what Jesus called him, the Paraclete, the helper. And I think that as Jesus has given us this mantle to bring heaven to earth, he has also given us the Holy Spirit. One of the most frustrating things as an individual is when you’ve been empowered to do something but you’ve not been equipped to do it. You’re responsible for this, but I’m not gonna give you the tools to complete it. Well, Jesus empowered us to do what he’s called us to do, and then he’s also equipped us with the Holy Spirit indwelling us. That’s my view of the Holy Spirit, that he is transformational power to complete the task that Jesus has for us.

Carrie: Yeah. And I just wanna insert something in here about OCD recovery too, because when God calls you to do hard things and you feel like, I can’t do this, I can’t do this thing that you’re asking me to do, that’s what you’re saying. It’s not supposed to be something that we’re supposed to strong-arm and muscle through, but God gives us the Holy Spirit to empower us to do that work that he has called us to do. And I think that people can get that really confused. It’s that whole idea of, I don’t wanna surrender my life over to God because he might call me to go be a missionary in Africa and I don’t wanna go be a missionary in Africa.

Pastor Jeremy: Right. I think when we say, well, I can’t, I would say, yeah, you’re right. We can’t in and of ourselves. We need the Holy Spirit. So when God calls us to do something, where God calls, he equips and he provides. And the thing about how I am wired is that a lot of times I won’t attempt something because it’s not perfect. A lot of times I won’t attempt something because I can’t see the win, or I can’t see an end game that makes me feel good about myself, and that’s not what we’re called to do. When Wyatt was in kindergarten, he’s my oldest and he’s 18 now, he got a note sent home because in kindergarten he would not draw a picture of his family. We sat down with him and said, why won’t you draw? Are you not proud of us? What’s the deal? We love you. And he said, I’m not drawing stick figures because it’s not going to do the family justice. He was not gonna draw something that didn’t represent who his family was. And I think a lot of times for us, we can get locked into that as well. But as a parent we would’ve said, I don’t care what you draw. This is beautiful. This represents me working through you. And I think that’s what the Holy Spirit wants us to understand. Stop worrying about what you think about the situation. Let me work through you. You may see it as imperfect. I see it as beautiful because I’m the one who’s working through you. It’s in your weaknesses that I’m shown strong.

Carrie: Yeah. I wanna shift things over to more personal life examples. God took you through this process where you were called out of Virginia and moved to plant a church in Murfreesboro. How did you see the Holy Spirit work through that process of basically uprooting you from one area and planting you in another?

Pastor Jeremy: Man, I wish I could take so much credit for that. I wanted to be part of just a growing, life-giving church. We were part of a church plant in Texas originally and we knew that God was calling us out, but we didn’t know where. I applied everywhere. Resumes sent out everywhere and nothing worked out. We ended up going back for me to get my master’s just as a fallback plan. When I did that, I ran into a guy who had been asked to come up and preach on the weekends for a church. I asked him if he wanted somebody to lead worship, just let me know. So that was in 2005 and that was 50 people. I remember when I went to get my master’s, I was angry. I was bitter. God hadn’t opened up a door. I was going back to get my education. I wanted to be at a church and no one thought I was good enough. That was primarily why I got a lot of no’s. I was just not good enough in their eyes. And so it really kind of messed with how I felt about who I was. We ended up at this church, and I thought at the time it was just a short-term thing. I get to lead worship, I get to pursue my masters, it’s gonna be fine. 15 years later, we went from 50 people to 5,500 to 6,000 people in six locations. And I had no part in that in the sense that I wasn’t smart enough to pick that. And I think that is evident when you look at how I left LifePoint in Virginia to start Alinea in Murfreesboro. It was not a clean, linear line of us hearing God and then leaving. It was kind of like the same thing when we left Texas. It was a lot of ups and downs. It was a lot of feeling like you’re twisted around like a pretzel. It was a lot of, okay, we’re gonna stop worrying about this. We would lay it down and then we would pick it back up and worry about it again. We would pray and we would go on long walks. We just couldn’t get a clear answer. I knew I felt something. Someone once told me that when God’s calling you, there’s a push and a pull. You feel like there’s a push. I remember even speaking with my pastor at the time and he said something very clear to me. He said, if you don’t feel like you can accomplish everything God has called you to do here, then that’s a great push. That’s a great understanding that maybe there’s something else in you. And then there’s also a pull. We had been homesick for Tennessee for 15 years. I was born in Tennessee. Jennifer was born in Tennessee. Songs about Tennessee would bring tears to our eyes because we missed Tennessee so much. And so there was definitely a pull. There was a guy who wrote a book called God at Work. He’s a businessman from England. His name’s Ken Costa. He’s very measured, very sophisticated, very academic, and he came and preached at LifePoint. It was kind of not really the kind of personality that fit who we were at the church. I mean, we had power preaching, powerful worship, and here you have this kind of guy that feels like he should be teaching at Oxford or something. So he comes and preaches for us. Then he does a staff meeting, and in the staff meeting he says something so out of character, like, what in the world is he talking about? He said these words: if you’re praying about leaving here, stop praying about it every day. You’re going to drive yourself nuts.

Carrie: Wow.

Pastor Jeremy: He said, pick it up every two months, every 30 days, every three months, and then revisit it and pray about it again. And that’s what I needed to hear because I was obsessing over it. My wife and I were wrapping ourselves in pretzels.

Carrie: That’s just a timing thing. Like God has given me certain visions for this podcast or for my business, and I’m just not sure right now. I’m trying to find clarity, like what is the timeline on this? And I just trust God that when it’s the time, he’s gonna open the right opportunities or the right doors, and I’m gonna know, okay, walk through that. Do you think that was part of it, or do you think it was more like God was preparing you personally, on a heart level, to be willing to do that?

Pastor Jeremy: In that moment, I feel like he was rescuing me from myself.

Carrie: Okay.

Pastor Jeremy: That was probably a Monday. I think our staff meetings were Mondays or Tuesdays. My job was to visit all the campuses. So we had six campuses. I’d drive with my two boys and Jennifer and we’d go visit the campus that was a county above us and see how the pastor was doing. My wife and I were sitting outside talking about this very thing. How often are we gonna pick this up? Are we gonna pray about this? Every three months we’re driving ourselves nuts. And in that moment the phone rang and it was a friend of ours who was part of the church, and it was one of those people that you trusted. They weren’t far out in left field and you didn’t roll your eyes when they said something to you. And she said, I need to talk to you and Jennifer together. We went to the car, put her on speakerphone, and she said, I had a dream about you. If I do not tell you this, somebody else is gonna tell you. I know God wants me to tell you something. And I said, what? And she told me this dream. We were like, she’s about to tell me I got cancer. I’m gonna die. What’s going on? And she said, I’m supposed to tell you it’s not time yet.

Carrie: Wow.

Pastor Jeremy: And we just bawled, both of us. I think that God always has a way, when we are seeking him and seeking his will, to ensure we get the message. I think we can be like, what if I miss it? What if God’s trying to tell me something? What if I miss it? People may disagree with me. This is just where I’ve landed. I just believe that God’s will is not a tightrope.

Carrie: Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: I think a lot of times when we are pursuing, when we are seeking the Holy Spirit’s guidance, James says ask for wisdom, right? Don’t doubt. Well, then we’re like, what if I’m doubting? I feel like I’m doubting. And so we just kind of wrap ourselves in pretzels and we get up on this rope and we’re tightroping God’s will like, oh my goodness, if I miss his voice, I’m gonna fall off and all hope is lost, and God’s will for my life is thrown out the window. I just don’t think I’m that powerful. I don’t think I am the type of person who can derail God’s will from my life to that extent, as long as I’m the one who’s pursuing the will of God.

Carrie: Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: Right. There’s the opposite of that, like I could care less what God says. I could care less what his will is. I’m not even pursuing him. But if you’re pursuing him, seeking him, I could fall off, I could have missed that, but I feel like he knows what he’s doing. He can get me back on track. And I think moving from Texas to Virginia was like that. I think moving from Virginia to Tennessee was like that. Maybe there were some on-ramps that I missed where I was just too hardheaded or I was too afraid or whatever. But I feel like God is just able to keep ordering our steps and getting us where we need to be.

Carrie: That’s so good. And I think very relatable to this audience as well, who often feels like, I’ve gotta get it right. I’ve gotta get it exactly right and I’m gonna mess it up and I’m gonna somehow miss God’s voice. But God is very loving and gracious to us and redirects us as needed. Like, nope, not that direction. You thought you were going there, but sorry, over here. You said something several weeks ago that I was like, this is so comforting. You were talking in church about how we had prayed and I was like 85% sure that we were supposed to do this. I was just praying that God was really in it and that this was what God wanted us to do. That was so comforting to me, because our faith does require a level of faith. It’s not always just this clear map outline of what we’re supposed to do. God wants us to take these steps and trust him with the rest and trust him with the results.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah, and I think 85% might be high. Again, I think it really comes back to pursuing the heart of God. I don’t think a lot of the things that I say really translate if you’re not pursuing him. I remember my mentor, you’ve heard me talk about him all the time, Ted Wilson. He’s gotta be like in his nineties. I can’t remember how old he is. He’s probably still out mowing lawns or something. I was coming out of college and I talked to a church in another state about coming on and being their music director, and I really hit it off with the pastor. When I went down to visit, I told my parents, this is where I’m going. I don’t wanna live here. I agonized over it, turned myself into a pretzel, and started asking everybody’s opinion about what I should do. I just felt like I was Jonah in the whale and God was calling me somewhere and I was saying no. I remember calling Ted and I said, this is how I’m feeling, blah blah blah. He listened to me and he finally got kind of fed up with me, I think, and he said, what do you wanna do? I said, I don’t wanna go. He said, then don’t go. And I was like, is it really that simple? And it was the first time in my life that I realized that there are certain filters you can filter God’s will through. I should do this. I shouldn’t do that. Some of them are clear what to do. Some of them are clear what not to do. Paul gives us a lot of latitude, like some things are permissible and profitable, some things are permissible and not profitable. So you can kind of filter through that. But then after that, it’s just like, does this honor God? Does this elevate others? Is this good for others? You can still be like, well, this doesn’t really filter anything. You can ask yourself, what do I wanna do? Where’s my heart at? I think a lot of times when you’re praying and you really have a heart for something, you should listen to that and maybe scratch that a little bit and see what God is trying to do in your life.

Carrie: Yeah, not all desires are bad. I think sometimes people have been taught in the church that if I want something, that’s bad, because it somehow means I’m not surrendered to God. But you have to surrender those desires over to God and pray about your motives and things of that nature as well. I do that a lot. God, I think I want this. Do I want it for the right reasons? Is this what you want for me? I think if you’re seeking him and filtering in that way, God gives you desires and that’s a good thing. Someone asked me recently, how in the world did you get into OCD work? And I said, it was God. I wasn’t really looking for this direction and God has just really broken my heart for this people group and the lack of resources they have, especially resources speaking directly to Christians. I just can’t really explain that to anybody. I can sort of explain the process of how I got here, but where God has brought me to is not anywhere that I chose, and at the same time I love it. I love what I’m doing. So we receive the Holy Spirit when we’re saved, right? But I wanna talk a little bit about being continually filled with the Holy Spirit. I took some scripture references from one of your sermons where you were talking about this repeated phrase of “filled with the Holy Spirit” that comes up in Acts. Acts 4:8 refers to Peter being filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 13:9, Paul is filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 15:52, the disciples were filled with joy in the Holy Spirit. Talk to us about the difference between receiving the Holy Spirit and being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah. I come from a theological background where I believe in a baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I think that can be controversial, but I don’t think it should be. When we say baptizo, we just mean immersed.

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: And I wanna be immersed in the Holy Spirit, and I think all of us do. But I also grew up in a kind of Pentecostal background where I saw some things that I wrestled with theologically through college and seminary. I really kind of dug into the scriptures, and I heard a preacher say one time, and I loved it, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, you’ve got Pentecost in Acts chapter two, but we should also be believers who want to be filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter four.

Carrie: Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: Like this continual filling. I think that for me, it’s getting under the blessing and the provision of God. I think being filled with the Holy Spirit is a lot about aligning ourselves. It’s like an umbrella. A lot of times we can get ourselves out from underneath the protection of God and then we get out there and we’re like, God, why did you leave me? And he’s like, what are you talking about? Just get back under where my protection is. I think being filled with the Holy Spirit is a continual thing because the Holy Spirit is the person who empowers us to be able to do the things that God’s called us to do. And that’s why you see it all throughout Acts. It’s a continual filling. I made the joke in that sermon that it’s not set it and forget it. Some of your listeners will get that, a lot of them won’t. But it’s not this thing where you just say, oh, I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Well, that’s not the way the disciples operated. The disciples always operated from a position of, I need to decrease so he can increase. I need more of the Holy Spirit today. I pour out so that I want to be filled up. You’re a conduit. So if you’re a conduit, maybe conduit’s not the right word, maybe we’re water towers of the Holy Spirit, filled up with the Holy Spirit, and then you pour out. And I think it’s a continual process.

Carrie: Awesome. Well, I wanna talk briefly about this concern about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. This is a very scary scripture passage for some people. Matthew 12:31 and 32 says, “Therefore, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or the age to come.” What in the world does this mean?

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah. I think this is such an important question, especially when it deals with OCD, because there’s so much fear and worry behind it.

Carrie: Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: Like, have I committed the unpardonable sin and is all hope lost for me? I really wanna be very careful and precise here. I think what’s important about that passage is Jesus says every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit. I think that one of the things we should start with is, wow, what a grace-filled passage. Like everything. Everything is gonna be forgiven. Think about the world and how broken it is and what a swath of grace Jesus just laid out there. But I think that when he is talking about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the context is that he has just cast out a demon. The Pharisees are watching this in real time, and they attribute his work to Beelzebub. And the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit in that moment is not careless and not final. It’s not a season of doubt. I think we’ve all had seasons of doubt.

Carrie: Sure.

Pastor Jeremy: I still continually have seasons of doubt where I’m like, God, where are you? What am I doing? And think about David in the Psalms, how often he is pouring his heart out to God and a lot of these prayers are not elegant. A lot of his prayers are very angry. Like, what is going on? Why have you left me? I think that’s the heart that God wants us to have. He wants us to be real. But in this instance, it was settled for the Pharisees. It was settled. It was deliberate. It was eyes wide open.

Carrie: It was basically saying that something God was doing was attributable to demonic forces.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah. And I think it’s unforgivable, not because God refuses to forgive. That’s not what’s going on there. It’s because the person has permanently rejected the only means of forgiveness. It’s like refusing to take the only medicine that cures the disease. The cure is available, but the person won’t take it. I’ve heard someone say, and I think this is beautiful, that if you’re wrestling with that, then chances are pretty good, a hundred percent, that you have not blasphemed the Holy Spirit, because what you’re worried about is your posture with God. The Pharisees were not worried about their posture with God. And I think what we’ve gotta understand is that intrusive thoughts are not the same as a settled, volitional rejection of Jesus. That’s my take on that particular passage.

Carrie: Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, I think our brain makes a lot of noise. There are thoughts that just come into our head that are intrusive and that we don’t have to create extra meaning out of. We can say, that was an intrusive thought, I’m not gonna go down that pathway. And sometimes that takes a lot of treatment, practice, and intentionality. But then there are thoughts that we intentionally think, and God knows how your brain works better than you do. God knows the posture of your heart and your desires to please him. Sometimes in spiritual life, even just as you’ve been talking about in this conversation, we want certainty. There’s a general desire to know, yes, exactly, a hundred percent. This is God. This is exactly what he wants me to do. But our relationship with God means we’re looking through the glass dimly. Things are a little bit messy right now until we get to heaven. One day things will be a lot clearer. So I appreciate your perspectives and your stories on this. I think they’re very relatable.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah. I think on that particular passage, the fear is just indicative of a soft heart. I think the soft heart is what we’re called to have. That’s why I think if you’re fearful of that, you’re not there. You’re not blaspheming the Holy Spirit. You’ve got a soft heart, a soft and contrite, broken heart. That’s what the Lord gravitates towards.

Carrie: When we got off the air, I told Pastor Jeremy that some of what he said today was for me and I really appreciated it. I think I had been stuck on some business decisions, trying to make sure that I was making the right ones or focusing on the right projects for my business and the podcast. And it helped me to be able to let go and say, you know what? I’m surrendered to God and he’s gonna lead me in a direction when the timing is right, and I don’t need to continue to mull over this so much or have it all figured out right now. That may be a great thought for you if you struggle with rumination, to just say, you know what? I don’t have to have it all figured out right now, because there are many things in life we can’t figure out right now, and that’s okay. We’re living in that tension and that everyday uncertainty that we can trust God with.

Pastor Jeremy: Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Carrie: Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.