Testimony... The Good, The Bland, and The Point? | GET TALKIN' with Kimberly, Chris, and Ryan

Music.

Well, hey, good morning, good afternoon, good night. Welcome to Get Talking.

Get Talking is a podcast ministry out of Vine Worship, which is the contemporary

worship ministry at Kingwood Methodist.

And we exist to have fun, inquisitive conversations about our Sunday scripture

to help people fall in love with God's word and inspire conversations with others.

My name is Ryan, and I'm joined with Chris and Kimberly. Hello.

How you doing? I'm living the dream. How are you doing, Chris?

For the first time in eight years I will not be watching playoff baseball and

it's a bit sad I gotta be honest it is really crazy why is that?

Because Houston didn't make the playoffs this year oh I've literally never been

down here when the Astros weren't in the playoffs so like I really don't it's hard to remember,

it's been like Astro week at the office like every year I've been here so it's

gonna be weird Blake was already talking trash on the staff email,

I haven't really waded into those waters.

Well, your cubbies are still in. Well, yes.

And like three years ago, I bet- It still wasn't a but.

Yeah. Yes, but. Yeah, well, they're in, but like three years ago,

I think, do y'all remember the Sunday I had to wear like all Astro gear?

Oh, you made a bet with somebody. Well, okay, I made a bet with the pastors that like if-

And I think the Astros at least went to the World Series, if not won it that year.

It's like, whoever's team goes further in the playoffs, like,

you have to wear the opposing team's jersey to preach to the league worship.

See, I thought there was some other element to that bet.

No. Is there not? Okay. But the most embarrassing part of the whole situation

was that, like, I think the Astros had a first-round buy, and then the Cubs lost in the wild card.

So, like, I lost the bet before the Astros even played a game. Oh, man.

And it was like, I mean, I was the butt of jokes for, like, weeks,

especially because I think they won the World Series yeah it was 22 they won

the World Series well you can turn that around this week can't you?

I'm alright you know I'm living in I've never felt this before your Bears won

yesterday too okay the Bears won,

A&M won and the Cubs you're not an Aggie and the Cubs won the season series

or the Cubs swept the Cardinals to end the series like none of my teams lost,

even one game this week I don't know if I've ever experienced that before I'm just content.

Tech had a bye week, so we didn't really have anything to watch this weekend.

I mean, the Cowboys game last night was pretty wild.

Did y'all watch it? That is so rare. That is weird. We didn't finish watching

it because that's way past my bedtime. Oh, okay.

How bad would you have felt if you did stay up and then they tied?

And you're like, really? I stayed up late to watch a tie? You didn't actually tie?

Yeah. That's lame. And they did. They did.

That was like once every five years maybe or something. There should be some

sort of sudden death where the quarterbacks just get up there. It's just something.

What would be, okay, this is a good question. What would be your ideal sudden death?

If you were the commissioner of the NFL, what would be your sudden death?

It can be football or like non-football activities.

So here's the thing that you might not know about me. I actually think there

are way too many rules in football. Okay.

Like the newest rule where the kickoff.

Line can't even start moving i'm like what

a bunch of weenies it's like it was like a concussion lawsuit

that they started doing that you know what they people

were getting seriously injured because they ran when

the ball got kicked off i mean come on yeah it was like the

top speed you reach and then like colliding with someone caused

a lot of concussion issues well i'm sorry

i mean all right there is a

risk reward benefit to every action that you take in

your life like a huge lawsuit against the nfl and somebody

got money from that and good for them all right everything is

risk reward this is economics 101 okay anyway i

think i'm just thinking i'm just thinking this off the

top of my head okay there would definitely be a kickoff like a punt and like

one guy who catches it okay and has to run it back okay but there's like the

they can pick whether they want their biggest defender out there or their fastest defender out there.

Okay. And it's just one-on-one.

And whoever gets the farthest back down the field, they each get to do it.

And whoever makes the most yardage off of that run wins.

What about that? All right, I like that. Yeah.

What would be your idea, Chris? I'm trying to think of something that would

be fair, like in the vein of the soccer kickoffs or whatever.

You want something entertaining. Yeah, something entertaining,

but also something kind of fair. No, not at this point. If you're tied, it's beyond fairness.

So, like, I think you would go, like, I was thinking one of two routes.

So the first route, which I think would be not nearly as interesting,

but might be decently fair, is just like a kickoff with your kicker.

And so we're going to start at, like, a 50-yarder, and each kicker gets a kick

at 50-yarder. Like, no defenses, no nothing. Okay, got it. You know what I mean?

And then you move to 55, and then we move to 60. Oh, what if you did it with

the kicker for field goals?

Yeah. And like each kicker, is that what you were saying? Yeah,

field goals. Oh, I thought you were talking about like a punting.

No, no, no, like a field goal.

Yeah, and whoever makes the longest one. Yeah.

So that would be one. The other one I think would be interesting is more like

a, what's the game you play with your friends where like five or six of y'all

are all way back and the quarterback throws it and then like whoever jumps up

and like catches the ball. Oh, like 500.

Yeah, right? I do like a game of that with like the QB throwing to the end zone

and you have like your three receivers and then three defenders.

And it's like, can your receiver come down with the ball? You know what I mean?

And then the other team gets to do it until someone doesn't get.

You know, maybe you do it three times, four times, whatever.

But, you know, some shootout type of like scenario like that. Yeah.

That would be more fun, I think. Yeah, it's got to be something that gets –

because if you're in a tied game And you've been through, what,

how many rounds of overtime?

They only do one now. They only do one? Yeah. Well, that's another lame roll. Okay, I've...

I did not think about this question ahead of time, but this is going to sound

as though I was thinking about it all night.

I think if, and so it's a 10-minute overtime.

Both teams do get the ball. So a full, I don't know, 70 minutes or 80 minutes

of game play is happening.

I think every NFL team, every game, should have a ticket lottery to select a

fan that if it gets to the spot where it's a tie.

That fan has to come down and do a three-legged race with the largest pound person on each team.

Wow. From like end zone to 50 yard line. That's so goofy. What you would want is like a kid to win.

Can you imagine it though? Yeah, you'd want like a kid to win the lottery and

then the big, you know, 300 pound defensive lineman, he just like straps him

to his leg and just picks him up and goes.

It would kind of be like David and Goliath. Yeah. It would be like David and Goliath.

Like think about like Eli.

Eli, like strapped to Michael Parsons. Yeah.

Yeah. That would be awesome. Yeah. That would be so good. So NFL, if you're listening.

We have all the answers. Those are your three options. Yeah.

So, well, we're continuing, or actually finishing.

Finishing. This is the last week of our Discipleship Distinctive series.

And Kimberly's got the scripture, and then Chris will get us kicked off.

Yes. So we are in 1 Samuel 17. Football pun.

He's got the dad jokes today. All right, we're in 1 Samuel 17. I'm going to start in 32.

And David said to Saul, may no one's heart fail on account of him.

Your servant will go and fight this Philistine.

But Saul said to David, you are not able to go against this Philistine to fight

him for you are only a youth while he has been a warrior since his youth.

But David said to Saul, your servant was tending his father's sheep.

When a lion or a bear came and took a sheep from the flock, I went out after

it and attacked it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.

And when it rose up against me, I grabbed it by its mane and struck it and killed it.

Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine

will be like one of them since he has defied the armies of the living God.

And David said, The Lord who saved me from the paw of the lion and the paw of

the bear, he will save me from the hand of this Philistine.

So Saul said to David, Go and may the Lord be with you.

So we're talking this week about the eighth point and what it is to be a disciple.

And it is to basically tell your story, give your testimony,

show how God has been faithful in your life.

And the scripture here is talking,

David is justifying why he can do what nobody else thinks he can do.

They've been out there for weeks and weeks.

Facing this Philistine army. Goliath has been taunting them for,

I think, 40 days is what Cabe said.

I may be pulling that out of thin air, but anyway, it's been going on for a

while. This has been an ongoing saga for a while.

And David just points to where the Lord has been faithful to him,

where he has been allowed to do things that his size,

his stature, he should not have been

capable of doing so whatever even if

it's like the smallest little black bears that's still

huge for a kid out tending sheep right yeah or whatever this lion was we were

debating before this about what kind of lions they have in the middle east is

it like the mountain lions in west texas or is it like the big maimed lions

of africa you know i have no idea it doesn't really matter because either way,

it's a ferocious animal.

That this child, this kid, because he's been doing this since he was a child,

there's debate about how old he is when he does this, but I think we can agree

that when he faced these lions and bears,

he is a very, not a young child, but a older child,

early teenager type situation.

And so he is pointing to where God has been faithful.

And there are other times I know we see in the Old Testament where a prophet

or somebody points to where God has been faithful to the whole—and David's just talking about himself.

You know, there's other passages where somebody is reminding the Israelites

how God has been faithful to them as a people over and over.

And I think we all have stories like that. But so it's just really a really

great point to make about how we sometimes have to remind ourselves to look

back and see where God has been faithful, but we don't keep that to ourselves.

We have to provide that testimony so that others can see.

And I will say, and then I'm going to hand this off, that happened to me on Sunday.

I was sitting with my friend and I was complaining, and it was shocking.

And was talking about how God had not answered this prayer that I've had.

And she pointed out, she's like, but he's answered this other one that you've

had for years. And I was like, yeah.

So sometimes we even need to have others.

That's where community comes in to share our concerns, share our testimony with

each other, because sometimes we don't even see where it is.

Others can see where God has worked in our lives. So it can go both ways.

Yeah, I think that's good to understand. And I like, we were talking a little bit pre-

Recording about the difference between having like some sort of like prepared

testimony that you share at like an event or whatever, or Bible study or whatever, right?

Versus like everyday, like normal life occurrences like you had on Sunday.

And I think one of the things I was thinking about coming out of this is like

that, that latter one, like you had with on Sundays, I think is much more like

our target for like just normal everyday Christian life.

I want to encourage people and myself also to like, when I'm thinking about,

Hey, okay, I want to be a better disciple.

And if being better at this means me being more comfortable with sharing God's

faithfulness, it's not necessarily like, okay, I have to have like a planned

testimony to share, but it's rather like,

am I looking for ways like in everyday life to remember what God's done or to

remind other people what God has done to like encourage them to be more faithful

or encourage them to like strengthen their faith or whatever.

And I love it. I think it's beautiful.

We talked beforehand also about a couple other stories in the Bible.

Yeah. With the demoniac or whatever you want to call him.

Demon possessed. The demon possessed man. Yes, who lived outside of the Decapolis.

And then also like. I think Kimberly started that conversation with like,

do you remember the pig story? Yeah, the pig story.

That's right. The pig story. That's right. And I knew exactly what she was talking about. Ryan didn't.

I didn't read my mind. Right, yeah. Or the woman at the well,

like the Samaritan woman we talk about.

And in both of those stories, they were encouraged to go back to their people.

Yeah, and tell their story. And tell their story. And then we see in that telling

of that story, there seems to be an increased receptiveness to Jesus in those areas.

Yeah. Yeah, because at first in the demon-possessed man, I kind of joked earlier, so when...

When Jesus does that, they see what he's done, and they are like,

the people are like, you need to get out of here. Please leave.

And I can only imagine that it's like, you are disturbing our life here.

You just ran somebody's herd off of a cliff.

Yeah. You know, now they were pigs, so they probably were neither Israelites

or. Well, they're in the Decapolis, which would have been like a region outside.

Yeah. Right. So this would have been someone who, a Gentile of some sort is how I should say that.

But, you know, they're being penalized very economically here.

And so they're like, please just like go away.

But the man wants to go with Jesus. Jesus gets into the boat with his disciples

and he's like, please let me go with you.

And, you know, so there's this dichotomy here of like a whole group saying, Jesus, get out.

And this other one that is like, but I want to be with you. You just did this for me.

And Jesus tells him, no, I need you to go and preach. Yeah, go tell your story.

Go tell your story. Yeah.

And I just love that because obviously he does.

I mean, Chris, you were alluding to evidence in other chapters.

Yeah, like two chapters later, Jesus returns. There's a whole group of people

that are waiting for Jesus to preach and to teach and to heal and do all the

things. And so seeds were planted.

And that's, I just love that.

You never know what your testimony is going to plant in somebody else you can think you have the,

We were kind of joking earlier, like, some of us, me personally,

have probably one of the most bland testimonies that there is.

Like, I grew up in a home, and we went to church, and, you know,

I was in the suburbs, and everything was just great. And then I went to college,

and, you know, it just kind of—it doesn't sound exciting.

But, like, in that unexciting story, God has been incredibly faithful through

every step of the way. And so it doesn't sound exciting to tell people,

but it does matter to plant those seeds, I think. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. And I mean, I think underpinning all this too is like how important

it is to tell your story of Jesus to like the next generation that you have the ability to talk to.

You know, if you're hanging out at a family barbecue, don't be the guy necessarily

that exclusively tells their testimony for two hours.

But I think, you know, something that I've been thinking about as we've been talking is,

I'm wondering if there's, I think there's a tension when we tell our testimony

that I want to just bring to us for talking out and thinking about it.

A lot of testimonies that I've heard have talked quite a bit about the like

linear time that we have been alive and kind of how like the Lord intersects

through like our story you know and I.

Think some of that's inevitable you

know like to tell a story you need like a time and

a place and a thing to happen you know it can just be like just ethereal conversation

only like for us to like understand it and be like okay I get your story like

when you just throw out pigs and you don't know where that's coming from yeah

it's like uh what you know but I do I think if there's a spot where in some ways in like,

I'm, you know, like Jane and I are really in this, in this spot where like life

has significantly slowed down from a uniqueness of places and times.

We've been in Kingwood for seven years, you know, like this is home.

Yeah. Not, not, not just like on an ideal wise, it's like, no,

we like literally pay a mortgage and we literally have kids and we literally go to jobs, you know?

And I think how do we maybe as Christians, as we grow in maturity,

but in a lot of ways grow in like stagnation in place.

Sometimes i think we feel our testimony getting less exciting and less powerful

because there's not as many like linear moments to connect christ's transformation,

to them you know because we're doing a lot of we're tending kind of the garden

of our families in our life quite yeah how do we how do we maybe look how do

we maybe tell a better testimony,

looking back that focuses more on christ as the author and perfecter of our testimonies,

and how do we envision life moving forward so that the center character continues

to be Christ's work and not as much our work. Hmm.

Okay. Kimberly and I are each like looking at each other like, who's going to talk?

Well, the first thought that came to my mind is... Good questions sometimes

require a little. Yeah. Require a moment.

I think to tell that story, you have to sometimes...

Okay, where I'm going with this is not that you need to have a rehearsed story,

But to see where those moments are, you sometimes have to tell your testimony to yourself.

I think you have to remind yourself where God has been.

And so what seems like a normal, calm waters moment of time in your life,

as opposed to like if you had a timeline and there were these peaks where something

monumental has happened, good or bad, but something that God was in.

If if you have lived a life where maybe the

peaks are really far and few between which is not

a bad thing i think you're probably missing peaks and so the reason i say that

is because i think in my own life i tend to downplay things that maybe others

would have a bigger part of their story,

And so I have to go and tell myself my story sometimes and remind myself of

things that I have just kind of, whether I blocked them out or just said,

eh, that was just something that happened. But it was a pretty big thing.

But the way I deal with things is I deal with them. I don't want to be like psychoanalyzed here.

I process things and then I push it out of the way.

I don't linger on them. And so I will actually forget what those peaks are in that timeline.

And so for me to be able to say, I mean, even just what I said five minutes

ago about like I live this, I mean, I literally glossed over some very significant things in my life.

And I mean, that's not fair to God's story, you know, because I am,

and it's just the way, and we all process things differently.

So the only reason I say that is I have to remind myself of what God has done in my life.

Because if I go to tell you, I'm going to be like, yeah, I just lived the easiest life.

I mean, I do. I feel blessed. I feel lucky. Whatever words you want to use to

describe, God has always been there in my life.

And maybe because he was there through those hard things, they don't linger

and they don't impact me long term.

But it's still a part of the story that I should not gloss over. And I do.

Before I get talking too much about this, like, I want to clarify,

are you kind of alluding to,

like, sort of what we talked about a little in the pre-talk about not just talking

about how God's been faithful in our individual lives, but, like,

throughout the history of the church or throughout the history of the Israelites?

Is that what you mean when you say, like, keeping Jesus, like, centered?

Or did you mean something a little different? I think maybe that could impact

I think like I just see like a lot of times and it's like and it's not bagging

on it because honestly I guess this is the space that I found myself telling my testimony,

a lot in meetings with like new worship volunteers or like coffees with you

know like new connections or something like that like I just talk a lot about

like I grew up in Chicago I grew up in a great home I grew up in a great church like,

I went to college and just like a lot of the narrative is kind of like about me,

you know, and, and, and how, how, you know, like, and, and not just like in,

in my head, like, like David's confidence in this passage that we read is coming from his.

Conviction that like the God of Israel is like a living God,

like the, the armies of the living God, you know?

And so like, I'm like, man, I just, on Sunday when I was thinking,

I was like, man, I just so much of like, when I process my testimony,

it like Ryan, Ryan Stuckerman is like the main character and God's kind of just

like peeking in, you know?

And, you know, we've introduced a new song that I said, part of this is that

we are like infusing our testimony into this corporate worship song.

So I think it can be both ways, but just to clarify.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of see what you're saying. I think we definitely want

to avoid the temptation of making it sound like we're the hero of the story.

I think my first like thought on that is like two, two things which are potentially

helpful in that regards is listening to other people's stories,

right? And how God has like worked in their life.

And like keeping that like on our brains and not just, you know,

I'm intimately aware with how God's worked in my life, but I have no idea how

he's worked in anyone else's life.

You know what I mean? I think can help us with that.

One of the things I like to do, I think, to try to keep me away from being the

main character in my hero story,

is that I try to filter, and this is where it really ties in with,

I think, one of our other principles of like reading and studying God's word,

is I try to filter my situation through similar biblical stories.

So it's not just how God's worked in my life, but like, and so in a real practical way,

The demoniac story with the pigs, the guy, like you mentioned,

was like, hey, Jesus, that was awesome. Thanks, man. Can I come and be part of your crew?

And Jesus is like, no, you can't. But what I want you to do is go back and tell

your people about what happened.

And then so if I have a similar scenario in my life, then maybe where I was

like, Jesus, I'd love to do this thing for you. And it didn't work out.

You know what I mean? Or Jesus asked me to do something different that it's

not just, I'm not just thinking of it in the context of me personally,

but I'm trying to think about it like, okay, well,

how did other people respond in the, in the scriptures to Jesus saying,

Hey, you know, that's nice that you would like want to do that,

you know, but I have different plans for you.

And viewing it in that regards so I was just thinking I was actually literally

this week going through my head of the people that didn't get picked.

And so who are people in the Bible who didn't get picked and how did they handle the story,

did they handle it well did they handle it poorly how did God intersect with

that how did Jesus intersect with that so that I'm not just trying to think

of my story in isolation but I'm trying to make it comparable to other Bible

stories and what not That's really good.

That's one of the things I love about reading biographies.

Yeah. You see what other people are going through or have gone through,

and it can often make your problems seem not so big or relatable.

Right. Because sometimes your problems are big, and it's comforting to know

that someone else has made it through to the other side with their big problems, too. Yeah.

So if I could add one thing to just for consideration,

like if I'm looking back on, I haven't really thought about my testimony too

much until this, too much recently until we haven't been adding a ton more worship

volunteers recently for me

to have that conversation necessarily because we've got so many already.

So, but one thing I just looking back and seeing this, having had so much like

spiritual satisfaction over the past like two years, I really think the thing

that changed the most was a rebalancing of my prayer life.

You know, I mean, in my kind of like, I feel like the moment that I kind of

circle is like, all right, Ryan really chose Jesus outside of family persuasion

or outside of culture was in college.

And I just remember like looking back on that, like my prayer life was so,

the end of it was max two weeks,

you know, like whether it was for tests or making groups or passing,

whatever, you know, and like, I just like, I don't know if this is like a shout

out to college kids or something like that, but like no paper I ever wrote got published in anything.

What? No group that I ever joined substantially changed my life,

you know, but like, but the person that changed my life substantially was Jesus.

And so if I could go back and tap, you know, freshman year college Ryan on the

shoulder, I would just be like, man, just like pray for your character.

Just just as much as you pray for the things that you think you need or the

things that you feel because that like.

When you are, when you are praying for an interceding, like,

cause a big part of our testimony obviously is how did God come through for you?

You know, like, like that's, that's the heart of it, like in a lot of ways.

And obviously a core way for us would be how did he come, come through with

his mighty saving acts for you.

But also like, once you get past salvation, a lot of times I talk about Jane

or I talk about moving places or musical opportunities or whatever.

And like, I just like looking back, I just, I just wish I had more and I'm so happy I have it now,

but I just have like more time where I just prayed about my character and prayed

for like wisdom and joy and hope and love outside of success or whatever.

And I have that from the past two years, but man, I really could have used that

in some really substantial ways when I didn't have it.

And, and, you know, I don't, and I don't have the testimony of like,

I chose to make bad decisions out of that. I just didn't have it.

But I think the Lord really wanted to deliver like

more than just my soul in some of those spaces and

I and I I don't have those testimonies and I think the heart of

it is because I just wasn't really asking for

it yeah no I think there's a lot to that because I mean just sitting here I

can sometimes think about really dumb things that I did or bad things that I

did and I'm the kind of person there's only a couple of moments in my life where

I'm just like, I still remember doing this.

I mean, these are very minor things. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was...

Threw a tortilla on the football field? I never threw a tortilla on the football field.

I think that's silly. Anyway, but I look back on those and I think,

oh, Kimberly, why did you do that?

That was so immature. That was so dumb. That was so...

You had no character when you were doing that.

And those episodes in my life really...

But they tug on my heart because I'm like, why did you do that? You knew better.

When I think about them now, and I look at my own kids, and I think,

okay, well, what mistakes are they going to make?

I pray that they're the mistakes that nobody's really heard on the other side, you know?

I don't want, you know, because we want that for our kids. We want them to have

this amazing testimony in love for Jesus.

But like, let's make it a nice testimony, you know?

I think about that with my kids and what their testimony is going to be.

You want them to have boring testimonies, too. I would love for them to have

boring testimonies. Yes.

It's definitely the other side of being an adult. But just think,

I mean, that thought just came to me here.

You know, when I'm looking at the next generation or I'm thinking about,

so I'm thinking outside of myself.

So I've got my kids. I have my parents.

Even the stories that my dad would tell about his mother and grandmother and

great-grandmother, he would tell me about their faithfulness.

Like I know that those three generation of women, his mother,

his mammy, and his granny were, you know, Jesus loving women.

I don't know anything else about them. I never met any of them.

But that testimony has filed down through those generations. I love that.

It's good stuff. I like it. Yeah.

As you're saying that, I'm just wondering like, you know, like I'm just wondering

if some of this to like really praying through.

Because, okay, because obviously it's important in, like, sometimes Jane has

accused me in some ways of being able to, like, compartmentalize on,

like, a semi-insane level in some ways.

So, like, I'm not saying, like, when our kid is sick, I mean, we're praying.

We're putting him to bed and then we're putting our hands on that door and be

like, like, be healed in the name of Jesus, for sure. We tried vegetable oil. Oh, no.

We'll talk after. but but like so it's it's not to like it's not to say that

like that that doesn't like,

that doesn't matter but i'm just wondering like when i'm talking to like my

neighbor or like when i'm talking to someone who you know on the fence about

jesus or not in at all you know like hey how's how's it going you know like

it's one thing to say like oh like you know like i'm praying for,

I'm praying that they get better. You know, it's like, yeah, no, that makes sense.

You know, it's a bummer when they can't go to school, you know,

like for sure. But I'm just wondering. It is a real bummer when they can't go to school. Yeah.

But like, I'm just, I don't know. I'm wondering if it opens the door in some

ways to be like, man, I'm just like, I'm just like really like praying and hoping

for some like big things for my kid.

Yeah. You know, or like, you know, in a conversation with other believers too

and being like, man, God is just like, there's just so much going on in our life right now.

But like, I've just been really praying for and feeling the peace of the Lord.

Or, like, I don't know, I think that might inspire some more conversations or,

like, kind of leave a bigger crack in the door open for Christ to be magnified

maybe than just, like, weak of situation.

Yeah, I think being open to when those conversations—I mean,

I remember this conversation I had with my neighbor one time.

I was just—I did not expect it to go the direction that it did.

And because it was one of those, I'll be honest here, it was just one of those

few moments that I actually like listened to God.

I mean, I say that kind of tongue in cheek, but you know, how often do we hear

like God say, you need to listen to her right now? Because she was really struggling with something.

And I just asked her, I don't even remember what question I asked her,

I can't tell you. But I asked her, like, from God's perspective,

had she, you know, basically saw God in this situation?

And, you know, I am not, if anybody knows me, I am not the person who normally does that.

And it was just, it was a beautiful conversation. She came back to me a couple

weeks later and she's like, you know, I really, I really thought about that question.

You know, you never know where those are going to lead.

And I will say, if you don't know your neighbor very well, sometimes just,

how's it going? Fair. It's okay.

You're not. Yeah, fair. But if you want to get to know your neighbor better.

You know, you've got to be willing to open up. You've got to be willing to say

more than just, it's good.

You know, you've got to offer something. And so I think being ready,

they always say to be ready to give your testimony or give an answer to,

I don't know, there's some Bible verse about that. Give a reason for the hope

that you have. There you go.

Sometimes I feel like it's just you don't know what part of your testimony is

going to be impactful. So just listen for the Holy Spirit to just be in the

conversation of where you are, because you don't know where the other person is.

So you need to be willing to pivot or to just,

I say pivot, but like that's listening to the Holy Spirit and letting Him guide

to where you might be able to give something beneficial to what that person needs.

Because they may not need to hear that story from your, you know, childhood.

It might be. That's a great point. You know, because there's like a thousand

stories you could tell, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's good. I think part of underlining all that is like

really believing that God wants to and is able to use you to impact someone else's life. Yeah.

And I think that's something we need to really, the more like wrestle with the

reality of that and just believe it, you know.

Believe like David, believe that, well, God can work right here,

right now to take this giant down. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. Definitely. Well, y'all, thank you so much for joining us today.

We hope this conversation made you think about God and about his word.

And we hope this inspires you to start conversations about faith with those around you.

And if we inspired you specifically, that you would share this episode with others.

See y'all next week. Bye. Bye, y'all.

Music.