David Powlison

Welcome to the Westminster Podcast.

I am Pearce Taylor Hibbs, senior writer at Westminster Theological Seminary, and we're doing a three-part series with the Reverend Dr. Alfred Poirier about the late biblical counselor David Powlison.

We're celebrating David's work in a forthcoming book from Westminster Seminary Press titled Dissecting the Heart, which I had the privilege of annotating, editing, and introducing.

Alfred, we are, uh, delighted to have you on the podcast.

Uh, he was such a godly, uh, uh, man, uh, a l- a lover of, of Christ, his word, and, um, he's, he's one that really helped pastors like myself counsel, um, my people and counsel them better.

Hmm.

Well, that's-- uh, for people who may not know much about David Powlison, uh, we all tend to have stories of our interactions with David.

Um, so well, we can maybe we can start that way.

But let's not pretend this is a problem for professional athletes.

I want us to ask ourselves, "What are our inner rings, and where are our false homes?" And so on the screen behind you will be several questions adapted from David Powlison's excellent article about X-ray questions for the heart.

We just have three of them adapted, but if you want thirty-five, just the QR code is right there, and, uh, uh, there, there you go.

So the first question: Where do you fret or worry or get angry or lose sleep? Where do you seek comfort or approval or power or control? What do you default to in an unclaimed moment when you have nothing else to do, whether it be doom scrolling or worrying or something else? And one more question: If AI could generate a video of your deepest thoughts and desires, everything hidden and everything secret made visible for everyone to see, what would that video show? Verse eight says actually that video is reality.