Beyond Sunday Ep 22 (Living with Conviction)

Welcome to Beyond Sunday, a ministry of the preaching

ministry here at LEMC. My name is Joseph Penner.

I'm the associate pastor here at LEMC, and I'm joined by our

discipleship pastor, Jonah Chitty.

How are you doing today? I've got the giggles.

Got the giggles, Joe. When do you go by Joseph?

And then, then, then you switch and go to by Joe.

I noticed. It's funny you say that because

I've noticed that the last couple weeks.

So for anybody who's coming to our church, you know that I

introduced myself as the associate pastor in both

services. I've noticed the last couple

weeks in one service I'll say Joe and then the next one I'll

say Joseph. So you're more relaxed in the

first service and the second service you're more on, more on

like more formal. Maybe I I wouldn't know which

one I say which in I just sort of noticed my I'm like wow, I

said it different this. Interesting.

It is interesting. Like I my name, I just say

Jonah. I don't have AI, don't have a

short, I could say Joe. Have you ever been called Joe?

No, never. Interesting.

I've been called Joner. Joner.

My grandpa called me Joner and I and I would correct him every

time I like, no, it's Jonah. And he would be, like, laughing

and say Joner. And then he would, he had, he

had all dentures and he would just, like, shove his teeth out

of his mouth. I'm unlocking a childhood memory

as we're talking right now, which is a little weird.

Yeah. What?

That was kind of par for the course for this podcast, so.

Yeah, that's fitting at Christmas time.

Oh man, he would, he would take him out, throw him in the glass

and like while we're sitting there, it's like, oh, okay, that

happened. Whatever.

Dentures are weird man. Yeah, that is super.

Not as much of a thing anymore, but.

Right. Well, yeah, I I prefer Joe,

honestly. I just feel like it's.

That's a good segue back to the name.

Tell me the. Original question, I prefer Joe

just because I feel like it's more casual and I'm totally fine

with that. Joe is great.

Yeah, I would say Joe, you are casual business cash is what I

think when I think Joe and he's going to be wearing a polo shirt

or maybe AT shirt, but mostly a polo shirt and some khakis maybe

pair just you just look business cash.

Business cash. So yeah, Joe makes more sense to

me. Yeah, well, Merry Christmas,

everybody. We Merry Christmas.

Recording this on Monday December the 23rd, 2 days before

Christmas. Christmas, Adam.

Christmas what? Adam, my kids.

I don't know, I think maybe I made the joke once before and

they just latched on today as Christmas.

Adam, because Adam came before Eve.

Oh, that's funny. And they carry it on to the

absurd, like, you know, yesterday was creation, like

whatever part of creation it was.

And they go by all the way anyway.

Yeah, ridiculous, ridiculous children.

Ridiculous. Anywho.

It's Christmas, Adam. It's Christmas.

That's just we we call it Christmas Eve Eve.

Oh, that's that's even. I don't know if that's also

weird. I agree.

But yeah, eve eve anyway. Anyway, you preached a sermon

this last. Let's just get to the heart of

the matter. Nobody came here for all of

that. I.

Think they probably just come here for that and they put up

with the other stuff maybe. Yeah, you preached this last

Sunday and you finally, you closed out our sermon series

through the book of First Corinthians, and you got the

last sermon. So how did it feel to be the

closer? I don't know, it was, it was

kind of fun to like just like that.

I, I just typed, I typed this in my notes and I was like, after

you read the text, that's it. It's over there.

It is the final, the final chapter in First Corinthians.

I don't know, it felt good. Did it feel good listening?

Yeah. And finishing it out and like,

I'm looking forward to the next series, learning from the Old

Testament. Really excited about that.

So I think there's part of that. But then, yeah, we had a lot to

learn from the last chapter. Absolutely.

I always find it so incredible. Like this section, it's like

Paul is closing the letter and it, like you said, it's sort of

administrative. He's sort of tithing up loose

ends and giving some, some last minute exhortation on his way

out. But it's really interesting.

Like you read those passages and sometimes you're like, OK, you

know, sometimes you just breeze through it.

Like we're done the instruction, we're done the heavy hitting

stuff. And now here's just like, Oh.

Here comes a dozen names I can't.

Find out exactly make sure you say hi to this person, welcome

this person and you're just sort of like, OK, whatever.

This is just the ending of the letter, right?

And you don't really pay all that much attention, but will

you slow? Like you sort of you encouraged

us to slow down and and to really see what was there.

It's amazing how much is still there so.

Yeah. So, yeah, I'm always I'm always

surprised about the names. Like, I don't know, for me, it's

like it does a few things, but like for one, like what?

What is it about these people that makes like makes him

commendable? So that was obviously that was

the last point, Like Paul's commending someone for

something. It's OK to do that.

I think in our culture, sometimes it's hard to give

praise or maybe you feel bad about giving praise, but it's OK

to do it and you should. I think it's right and good to

do that. And based on this text, I think

it's biblical that we should be doing that.

But like, so like, what is it about these people that made

them like, so like outstanding that they're mentioned.

It isn't always mentioned. Outstanding people.

He mentions this guy named Dimas in another letter.

He was like somebody to abandon the faith by name, which is kind

of crazy. Like, not even the guy who was

messing around with his mom or stepmom or whatever in this

text, his father's wife gotten mentioned by name, but Dimas

did. Yeah.

So that tells you something, too, about what Paul says in the

very last part about cursed being on someone who doesn't

love the Lord. Yeah, maybe he has someone like

that in mind. Who's who maybe, like, fooled

everybody into thinking that they were Christian and then all

of a sudden turns out they're not.

And so. But the names are always

something that stand out. So like.

But So what did they do? That's commendable.

The other thing is like, this is a real person writing this

letter. That's something else to think

about too. This is very personal side of

the letters. And so like in Romans, he gives

us like the long list of people. He does it here and he does it

in other places too. It's just like, but thinking

about Paul as a person, I think is the is something that makes

it real to me. Yeah.

So, well, and it sets forth an interesting principle that that

we will, we, we do apply in our lives as well, which is

recommending good people and, and then not telling, not

recommending other people, right?

Like if someone comes out to me, I, I've had this happen to me

where someone says, Hey, you know, I listen to, you know,

this preacher and I'm like, I don't know that you should be

listening to that preacher, right?

You know, and, and there's other times where you're like, oh, I,

I listen to this preacher or I went out for a coffee with this

guy. I'm like, yeah, that is

absolutely a guy that you should be like spending time with

because there's such an encouragement and such a

blessing. And I think we as believers need

to be doing that. If if there's somebody that we

know is a a false teacher or a teacher that preaches a false

gospel or we know is skeptical, then we ought to be warning

people about them, right? And if there's people that we

absolutely would recommend and we should be recommending them.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

I hadn't thought about this, but like when you were talking about

that, it just made me think maybe we should be recommending

people more than we should be discouraging people to go to for

the false. That's right.

So like, because that's the that's the easiest thing for us

to do is to mark and avoid people and to like bash on them.

But like the the other thing is better.

I think Paul's giving a good example of that.

I mean, he could have bashed any number of those in in Corinth

church or in the surrounding area saying, you know, avoid

those people. But he like picked up on and

says, so maybe, yeah, it's really good to think about.

Like, you're right, though, we should be looking at people to

command and also but we should be warning people too.

So, but yeah, I think that's that's an interesting thing.

You just really made me like, now I'm spiraling in thoughts.

Sorry. Yeah.

The title of my sermon was living with conviction or living

convictionally. I don't know if it's the

Canadian keyboard or what, but convictionally is always

misspelled. Like spell check doesn't spell

it. And I look it up and it's like

not a word. I know it's a weird adverb.

So I don't know. I so I had to change it because

the OCD part of me on my paper wouldn't let me keep the red

line and I wasn't ready to put learn this word.

So living with conviction was the name of the sermon.

And yeah, my points, I felt like they, they flowed pretty much

from the text was the first point was planned purposefully.

Paul's talking about it's administrative.

It is what it is, right? It is an administrative portion

of the letter, which can be boring, like if you're not

looking for what's there, you know what I mean?

Like you said earlier, it's like you're tempted to read through

it quickly get get done with it. This is an easy chapter today.

If you, if you bump up against like these chapters in your

reading plan, we're going to hit some when we go to Nehemiah.

There's like full sections. I listened to that this morning

as I was getting ready for work. I, I just, it's an hour long on

normal speed. If so, if you can listen to the

whole book in an hour, which is really cool to do it every day,

but like there's like a long list of names.

A few times. And his descendants and Joe and

his descendants and Joseph and his descendants.

So those are things that you're tempted just like to skip over

or to read through really quickly and not pay attention.

But I think there's things that are there, and maybe we'll have

to do a lot of homework, you know, maybe that requires us to

think about like, what is it about these people?

Anyway, yeah, because just so people know that we have

mentioned this to some people, I don't do we mentioned it on the

podcast, but we are going into the book of Nehemiah next.

And so that's where that's where we'll be starting on January 5th

and. So I don't know if we've

mentioned it, maybe we did mention it once here.

I know we've talked to several people about it, right.

There's no surprise. We're going to Nehemiah.

I mean, unless, unless, unless we get like a curveball thrown

to us, which would be fine. But right now all all plans are

first sermon in in January would be in Nehemiah 1, right?

But you bring up that that it is a good principle to be thinking

about because you're right, we can look at certain passages and

want to quickly pass them over. But I remember one of the

encouraging things that, like our professors told us, is that

you constantly have to be asking yourself, we we believe that the

scriptures are inspired. Yeah, the whole thing, the

whole. Thing is inspired by God, which

means that the Holy Spirit in his wisdom decided that that was

important to include in your Bible.

And so you need to be asking yourself the question why?

Why would the Holy Spirit choose to include this in Scripture and

at least ask yourself the question And genealogy's, you

know, sometimes they're harder. But even in the even in

Matthew's genealogy, like coming up to Christ, like, you know,

maybe you don't know all the people, but you recognize some

things in there like Rahab, right?

And David and you're like, oh man, God works through sinful

people to bring about the Messiah.

And so there's something to learn there about about those

sorts of things. But I think sometimes we can be

maybe fascinated too much with like, well, why didn't God tell

us this? Why didn't God give us more

information about this? That's not the right question to

be asking. The right question to be asking.

Because why did he say this? Why did he say what he did say?

And so we need to be faithful to try to understand and and

consider it important that God did include certain things in

the Bible. Like, like for instance, in

First Corinthians 16, he says, you know, first I want to travel

through Macedonia for I'm going to travel through Macedonia,

which is super weird worthy. I don't know.

I don't know if it's just the English translation doesn't get

it right, but I know in the Greek it's mentioned twice as

well. It's like, those are kind of

weird, like things. It's it shows the personal side

of the letter, right. This is like, like, hey, by the

way, I'm going to Macedonia. Just like he's like, yeah, just

so you know, that's where I'm going.

And so I headed there first. So don't like, freak out.

Relax. That's the kind of the tone I

felt like when I was reading through.

It's like, OK, it's cool, everything's fine.

I'm on my way to you, but I'm going to go to Macedonia because

I'm going to Macedonia. So, but yeah, it is what it is.

We got it. But I think like the I've used

the illustration of the glass bottom boat, you just have to

slow down and you don't, you don't know what you're missing

if you just blaze through. And I think that's the, if

anything, if I learned anything in seminary, like that's what

hit the most. Like I learned that I read the

Bible way too fast. I read the Bible like I'm

reading whatever, like something somebody else wrote or

newspaper. And that's just not the way that

we need to be reading Holy Scripture.

And so, yeah, it's a good point to make.

So he's going through, he's planning all these things, but

he's got, he's got purpose in mind.

He's got meaning everything he's doing has a purpose.

And one of them, he's wanting to stay there for a little while

longer in Ephesus because there's this wide door of

effective ministry that's happening, but it's, it's being

vehemently opposed, like to the point of death.

And then I moved on to after that, after I talked to that a

while, I moved on to like how Paul brings out this, this these

5 commands. And I at my point was living

principled lives, living under convictions like you.

It's hard to, to like, to be alert, to stand firm in the

faith, to be courageous, to be strong if you don't really know

what it is that you're standing on, right.

And so like be stand firm in the faith is, is the central part of

that. And so like he's, he's giving 5

quick commands. He's saying to do all this in

love, which it really is. This, this like these two

sentences are like a summary of the whole, of the whole letter.

I think your, your last verse of, of 15 is the, the final like

exhortation. In my, in my view, that should

have been where the, the letter ended.

And I think that's where it, I think that's really where his

argument stopped, like, like, you know, because it's broken up

in all these different sections. You can, you can see arguing for

marriage and relationships here. He's arguing for this year and

he's doing this and the end of 15 is where the text stopped.

That's where he stops his argument.

Now he's getting to all this stuff, but he's not like done

teaching. And that's what, that's

something we need to remember about these chapters is like,

there's still stuff to get. And I think we've, we've

hammered on that enough. And then the last point was

about serving others. And then he he gives these list

of people and we've already sort of talked about that a little

bit, but like he served Timothy. He served Timothy very well.

That was something to emulate from Paul's personality.

And Paul's character is that by by commending Timothy to the

Corinthian church, knowing that Apollo's wasn't going to be

there and Timothy was most likely coming before that.

I think that's, that's Paul serving his son in the faith.

Like he's he's as an act of service.

You can trust him just like you trust me, is what he's saying.

He's trustworthy teacher, not just like don't just take care

of him because he's like my, you know, he's my protege.

No, no, no, listen to him. Like he's doing the same work

I'm doing. And so I think that was a good

like just, it's just a good reminder, you know, and then and

then all the different things, like the Stephanus's household

is somebody to to copy. And then all these three guys

were there. They delivered the letter and

and they had done something to Paul, like like in his heart,

right? Like just being there, the

ministry of presence. We've talked about that.

I don't know if we've talked about on this podcast, but you

and I have talked about it a lot.

Sometimes just being there with brothers in Christ or sister,

you know, brothers and sisters, you're just being there spending

time with each other. That's a ministry in itself, you

know, encouraging somebody that you don't have to be on with all

the time. And it seems like that was kind

of what he was, what he was experiencing with these guys.

And so, yeah, that was that was pretty much the sermon.

Well, you just even like the Ministry of presence.

I, I know I, I shared this with you last week.

I think it was I remember talking with somebody, an older,

wiser mentor and I was telling you how it just it really struck

me that the whole time I was sharing he how like focused and

intent and intently he looked at me like in my eyes and I just

said to you, I said I felt so heard by him just looking so

intently at. Me.

I'm looking at you right now. We're we're like looking we're

locked right now. But I just it was amazing to me

like it it. I felt so heard and I just.

I know eye contact is harder for some people than it is for

others. It's getting more and more hard.

There's we can talk about that for.

Right. Well, I'm just, I'm, I'm trying

to teach some of my kids are better than others.

And there's one in particular that I constantly have to

remind, look in people's eyes when you talk to them because it

means something. It values something.

And I, I, I want to be like this guy was to me.

And I, I try to do that in conversations.

Maybe people think I'm being creepy or weird.

I I think you're being creepy and weird right now.

No, I'm kidding. Well, so, and again, I, I had AI

had a professor who sort of fleshed us out a little bit.

And he says, if, if you just stared at each other constantly

for like 30 minutes straight, that would start to get weird,

right? Like so naturally in

conversation when you're looking.

Just glance away you. Glance away every, you know, 5

to 10 seconds or whatever. But anyway, my point with that

was being, being a close enough friend to someone that you can

look into their eyes as they're talking into like feel and like

hear them and to show them that you're focused.

And we've talked about this too, where it's like our kids, you

know, like kids when they're little and, you know, sometimes

we're distracted with our phones or whatever and, and they sort

of recognize that you're not listening to me because you're

not looking at me, right? And sometimes, you know, your

kids will grab your face, turn your face towards them and say,

Dad, look in my eyes. And we recognize that human

connection that comes with eye contact.

And so like you said, to be there for people and, and to

hear them and to just support them just to be a listening ear,

right? It doesn't always have to be

like you don't have to have all the answers.

Yeah. And then honestly, you almost

never have to have the answer, right?

Like I was talking to somebody recently about about like this,

and he was talking. He's like, yeah, I was just

sitting with this guy who's been going through some stuff and

like, he laid out the whole argument like he was, he was

like, passionate, like, this is wrong, you know, like, and then

like 30 seconds went by and he just, like, did the whole

devil's advocate. Well, you know, but I need to

really be doing this, yadda, yadda, yadda, because this is

what it's supposed to be doing. Sometimes just being there for

somebody is what matters. Most of the time it is.

Most of the time it is. People will be able to, if

they're a Christian, the Holy Spirit's going to work in them.

And you just being an encouragement by being there is

something like if Job's friends had just kept their mouth shut

the whole time, it probably been way better than what they said,

right? Right, it's very.

True. So, but yeah, the, the sermon,

like I told you earlier in the week that I was a little nervous

about that sermon because it came so fast and I don't know,

maybe there's a like a combination of reasons for it to

come so fast to me and so quick. But I was done writing on

Wednesday, which is it never happens.

You know, we had some scheduling changes too in the week.

So we didn't have our normal Tuesday meeting, which gave me

more time on Tuesday than I would have had.

But like I worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and I'm

like, I'm done. Normally it takes at least till

Thursday, sometimes into Friday. So I was nervous about about it,

but I feel like, I feel like it came together and you know,

hopefully the Lord used it. Hopefully so anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know in the first point,

like you're like your first point planned purposefully

again, talking about Paul, talking about what he wants to

do. He, he wants to spend time with

the Corinthians. He wants to, he doesn't just

want to pass through, right? Like, right.

And that's why that's part of the reason for his delay, right?

He's, he knows he has other things to do and he probably

could just go and do a quick visit, but he doesn't want that,

right? He wants to stay there for a

time because he loves them. He wants to pastor them.

He wants to encourage them, and he wants to be encouraged by

them, and he wants to give them time.

But he's also sensing, like right now, there was an open

door for ministry. Even though there was many

adversaries, There was, you know, there was a lot of

conflict. There were people who were

opposing him. I didn't realize how long he'd

spent in Ephesus. You know, it says in the text 2

years, but more it was longer than that because he was

teaching up until that point. Then it said he preached and

taught another two years. Which is to me is like he stayed

in Ephesus a long time, right? Like, he stayed there a long

time and he wasn't in jail there.

Like, you know, maybe he was part of the time, but right, he

stayed, he stayed in Ephesus for a long time.

Well, it was because of that open door, right?

Exactly. And you, you sort of shared part

of that story going back to Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

And you had said so. So because of the preaching that

Paul was doing, a lot of these people had come to faith and

they burned their books and you had done.

We did them after church. I didn't do the math before, but

like we were, we were talking afterwards and I, I looked it up

and I looked up like the like the total dollar amount, it says

30,000 pieces of silver is what they said it the total value was

right. And so I like, OK, Google, what

is the, you know, the current value, whatever that would have

been in X 19? These people had burned their

books. Burned their books and this is

the total accumulated value would have been $6 million.

Unbelievable. $6 million worth of goods that they just like

they burn and destroyed because of the heart change.

And obviously that's going to cause an uproar in town.

Like that's a huge, like blow to the industry, specifically the

names of silversmith who calls up all the trouble, like start

up the riot and Paul has to retreat and like basically be

arrested as a Roman citizen. So he's protected by Rome.

And, and it's such a crazy story.

I didn't get to that part of the end, but like, there's he's got

to be protected by Rome, which is insane to think about.

But yeah, anyway, it's a good story, $6 million, that's a lot.

Yeah, and the, and the thing that came to my mind is like,

well, what, what in our day would sort of help us to

understand this a bit better. I, I sort of use the greenhouse

industry as an example. I, I don't know that it actually

equates right. But I just thought like, you

know, what if through the preaching of the gospel, you

know, take this analogy just to its full extent.

Through the preaching of the gospel, all these all, everybody

working at a greenhouse all of a sudden came to came to faith and

they were ready to like leave their jobs.

And all the greenhouse industry just sort of failed, right.

Like that the greenhouse industry is, is providing a ton

of, of work for people in our area.

So it's like here is that that's sort of what's going on here

with this false God, these false deities that like they're

providing work and income for these people who are making

idols and making gods. And it causes such an uproar

that it sort of throws the whole city into an uproar.

And Paul recognizes there's an open door here.

Like the Lord is working and are you gonna he, he just was like

I'm gonna continue to work here because of this open door here

even though like you. Said I may die, yeah.

Yeah, he he might have died. You know he would.

His life was in danger and they were ready to kill him because

they were taking away their business.

And the Corinthian church should be like celebrating the fact

that he wants to stay, I think. I think that's kind of where

he's getting at. He's like, look, I've got so

much to work here. That's so good.

There's so much good happening here.

I can't come to you right now. I want to.

Which is interesting because the the Corinthian church was

struggling, right? Like you see from this letter

that it's like, oh man. But Paul is sort of like when

you talk about, we talk about theological triage, but you talk

about like making a hard decision, right?

Do I go like, they this church has the gospel, they have the

truth, they're struggling with it and they need a lot of help.

But here is like people who are living in darkness.

And so what's, what's the greater 'cause, right?

And so he chooses to stay in Ephesus.

He chooses to stay, but he sends someone.

I think that's something to think about, too.

He does choose to stay in Ephesus to work a little longer

up until Pentecost. So he's not staying a long time.

He's he's got plans to leave. But he he said, he says

Timothy's coming, right? Yeah, you know, he says if

Timothy comes, but I I really believe he thought he he felt

like Timothy was on his way and then he says Apollo says he's

coming too. He's just not ready yet.

So just you're going to be OK. Like here's some instruction for

now. The 16 chapter letter.

What I wouldn't be chapters for them, but just be one wrong 1

long run on sentence all in caps Greek is weird, but but yeah, so

here it is. You know, if you guys will do

this in the meantime, you're going to be OK.

You can get to the point where it, when, when we get there,

we'll be able to like really knock some of this stuff out.

But I, I really think he wanted to come to them, but this wide

door was open. He wants to come because he

loves them. And I think that's the, that's

the thing that that we need to remember is like, that was such

a hard letter. Like there's not much like like

positive encouragement, like I don't understand why people like

there's churches back home that just name their church First

Baptist Church or for the current Corinth Baptist Church

or something like that. And you know what I'm like, why

would you do that? Like, you know, it's like, no,

let's not, let's not name our church Corinth because that's

not somebody that we want to emulate, right?

But the thing that Paul wants, he's like he said all these hard

things. He wants to go and demonstrate,

Hey, I really do love you. Like it's hard, man.

We know emails and texts does not.

It doesn't convey love. Like you know what I mean?

Like you tone doesn't come across, not at all.

And so I think he really wants to go.

He just can't right now because there's so much, there's so much

exciting stuff happening where he's at.

He just can't drag himself away just yet.

Right. So and so your point in that

point was, you know, Paul is willing to stay in this really

hard place because of the open door that the Lord had given.

Yeah, there were many adversaries.

There were many who opposed him. And you sort of begin to flip it

and turn it into application for us.

And you ask the question, are you willing to stay in difficult

circumstances because of what the Lord is doing?

Yeah. And I thought that was really

interesting. And I just guess just want to

ask more about that. Like, how could, how could

people apply that more, that principle more to their lives?

Because we tend to think, if I'm doing the Lord's will, then

wouldn't good things come? Yeah.

Would good things happen? Wouldn't you know, wouldn't it

be smooth sailing? The first like example that

comes to mind is like, I don't know, maybe you're in still at

home. You're you're young, in your

late teens, maybe early 20s, but you're still at home.

You've just come to faith and you're living in a household

that's not like it's not Christian, maybe a Christian

name, but not really Christian. You come to faith and then your

sister or brother does too, but they're like 1512.

They can't leave. So I would say the best thing to

do in that case, there's there's a wide door of effective

ministry and, and you're ministering and discipling your

sibling. You should stay.

You should probably think about staying for at least a little

longer. And even though maybe there

might be some opposition, maybe you've gone to a church that's

different than what you're you grew up in.

Now you're going to a different church and you're getting

opposition. I just could.

This is like a real world thing, right?

This happens. Your, your sibling is there.

They're saved now if you leave them there, that's going to be

hard for them. So being there, that's one

thing. Other real world examples, it's

that nothing's popping to my head right now other than

missionaries on the mission field.

That's a that's a very like a lot of times you just think

there's so much good here, but there's like I've heard stories

of like there are people coming to faith like like really like

one after another, sort of like what Paul's talking about.

This is when like in Brazil and like missionaries are going

there and on the way, like witch doctors are like doing

incantations, like to try to keep them from coming.

And like, that's just like strong opposition, like a witch

doctor in a community in like in the, in the, in the Bush in

Brazil is it is they are the person in charge.

They can make life just like horrible for families who live

in that community. And if you know you're but

ministry is there, people are coming to faith.

And what happens if the if the witch doctor gets saved, you

know, that's that's amazing too. So anyway, yeah, I just think

like it's sometimes, sometimes ministry is hard, but there's

good things happening. Yeah.

Like I think we've all experienced that in some at some

level, right, You know? Well, the example like you sort

of mentioned going to a different church, I think I

mean, I've spoken to a number of people in our church who've done

exactly that. You know, when you leave, you

know, a traditional church and you come to this church, a lot

of times there's like families that, you know, if maybe it's

for a season of time, they don't want anything to do with you,

right, right. And that's opposition that

you're facing and you have a conviction, you have a

conviction, you know, to go to a certain church, to grow in your

faith, to, to be fed and to go to a healthy church.

And, and when you make that change, it's like you face a lot

of opposition, right? And I, I think it's just helpful

for people to know that a lot of times when we're doing the right

thing, you may have to suffer for that.

You know, it may not always be, but you may have to suffer for

that. Like you think of, like there's

countless stories in the Old Testament of that, right?

Like Joseph suffers for doing what is right.

And you know, and many other people do, but I think that's an

important principle to know. It doesn't just because you're

following the Lord doesn't mean it's going to be smooth sailing.

It doesn't mean everything's going to go well.

You're going to face hardship, you're going to face criticism.

The Lord wants to stop the good work that's happening, right?

And, and Satan is going to be at work.

He's going to be did I say the Lord is going to?

No, OK. The Lord The Lord is working.

Maybe, I don't know. Satan is trying to stop that.

He's fighting against you. He's fighting against your

family. He's he's active and he's at

work and you know, we can't be haphazard walking around.

We need to know that when there's difficulty, we need to

lean into the Lord. We need to, we need to call on

him and we need to trust that he's going to carry us through.

Would you say you you need to feed your love for the Lord?

You you would like a feed like an auger?

In a BBQ grill. Sorry, I did it myself.

Jonas said it's a very constant second service.

In the second service, Jonas said Some of it a BBQ grill,

which and then you said Joe, I just said BBQ grill, which for

people, maybe people don't know exactly what was going on there,

but you, you coming from. It's just a grill.

It's a grill. You call it a grill.

I would never put the the barbecue on the front.

Maybe there are is a food group, right?

Maybe there are purists here in Canada, but generally speaking,

we call it a BBQ. Yeah, the the physical thing

that cooks your food, we call it a BBQ.

Yeah, you call. You call the propane cylinders

BBQ tanks. I'm like.

Is there a barbecue in there? And so we have this ongoing

debate and I'm always trying to Canadianize you.

It's getting there. I was very amused that you call

it a BBQ grill. Well, the fact that The funny

thing to me was that I that I caught it in my head and I said,

Joe, I just said BBQ grill from the pulpit, which was a little

bit. Weird.

That's funny. That's fine.

I find myself now saying American things.

Yeah, like you say, you did say this in your sermon, and I have.

I have caught myself saying it. You might can.

Oh, do I say that? Yeah, you might can go to the

store and and find some BBQ sauce.

You might can. You might can that's true.

That's that's not just American, that's probably just like

southern redneck. You might can yeah, you might

could say that a wide door for effective ministry doesn't mean

an easy street, right. Like I wrote, I think that was

like I said I'd, and this is true.

Like I don't know why I did that.

Like I don't know why I'm hedging.

This is true. I in the sermon, I said that

this has been something on my mind for the last like 6-7

years. And it has been, it's like this

verse has come up like since before I started seminary.

And and then like I was looking in my notes in Logos, you know,

if you write a note or whatever and Logos Bible software, like

it'll pop up, it'll have like a little note card on what you

highlighted. If you've written a note for it.

And it said that's exactly what it says, like an, an open door

for ministry. It doesn't mean an easy street

because there's going to be people.

Satan wants to oppose us. He doesn't want the Lord's name

to be made great. He doesn't.

And and that's the that's the point there.

I think Paul says I got to fight this a little longer.

Well, and you and yeah, you did say that, like you said, Satan

is trying to ruin your testimony because then when he ruins your

testimony, he ruins the the Lord's witness, right?

He ruins his name. He's sort of dragging the Lord's

name through the dirt. And I thought that was a really

helpful way of thinking through that.

Yeah. And then we don't that that was

part of the second point when I can't when I brought that up

because I was talking about like staying awake.

Like I think like like be alert or be watchful.

I don't know what what version is what, but in in the CSB it's

be alert. It literally means stay awake.

Like be awake. Like just don't go to sleep.

Don't don't like don't rest, don't sit on your hands.

You don't have time for that. We are not in the.

We just don't have the time for that.

Well, that's and that's a really interesting perspective because

you use the you use the story of Joshua in the Old Testament and

the reason Moses encouraged him to be strong and courageous.

The reason even the Lord encourages him in the beginning

of the book of Joshua to be strong and courageous is because

there's a war coming. There's a lot of hard work to

do. Like you can't just sit on your

hands and be exactlyable. And I feel like so much in our

life we're, if we're being honest, like we're, we're being

sort of, I'm trying to, I can't think of the word.

We're being coddled like our our world is teaching us to be

comfortable. We're being brainwashed to think

that life is all about comfort and ease and everything going

well and we're buying into. It.

Yeah, 100%. And we're buying into it, and we

think that everything should just go easy and everything

should be nice. And here Paul is like, be

watchful, be strong, stand firm, like be on guard.

Like you don't have the luxury of just sitting around like the

enemy has a plan, the enemy has a strategy.

And we're just walking around like we've talked about this in

recent podcasts. We're just walking around

aimlessly, like our head in the clouds or in our phone, and

we're just oblivious to what's going on.

And we're not recognizing the spiritual battle that's going

on. Yeah, exactly.

It's that that ESV and ESV almost every other English

translation says act like men, and I think that's that's true

like, but the CSPI don't know why they chose to be courageous

other than it's that fancy word for a word that's only used once

in the New Testament. Right.

I'm not going to say it you want.

To say it so bad. I want to mispronounce it

though, so I'm not going to. There's a word that describes a

word that's only used one time in the New Testament, but it's

used a lot of times in the Old Testament.

That's why I went back to Joshua and Deuteronomy because it

literally means like act like men prepared for battle.

That's what he's getting at. He's like, and that's why I

also, I think I also referenced Ephesians 6 and the standing.

He's not expecting us to fight. That's the thing we got to

remember too. He's be prepared to defend, to

stand firm, and then he's going to do the work.

And that's the same thing in salvation, like when we talk

about giving the gospel, it's not, it's not necessarily an

advancement, right? Like the Lord, the Holy Spirit's

the only one that can change a person's heart.

It requires us to, to do something right.

We, we, we recognize that, that we have to give the gospel

verbally. We have to do that.

That's part of it. And, and when we receive it, we

have to accept it in some way. The Lord, Lord gives us the gift

of that faith. I think that's the way I view

it. Some people view that they make

the choice, which whatever, that's fine, whatever.

We, we would all agree that the Lord has to do something.

And that's the, the idea of like armor is defense, all right?

Like you're putting on armor to defend yourself.

The armor is the word of God so that you can defend.

He's going to do the work he's done.

He fights the battles and like looking back to the story of

Joshua, when they go in, who fights the battles?

Joshua didn't fight the battle of Jericho.

They just marched around the city 7 times, you know, like

what, what is the Lord did that right?

He's the one who fought the battle.

So that's kind of the point. Like stand firm.

Just stand. Don't sit.

It doesn't mean sit. It means like, stand ready.

Be courageous. The Lord's got this all, all

throughout Scripture. When, when, when there's a

battle and the Lord's on your side, he's the one who fights it

and wins. And that's, that's proven out in

Revelation as well. Like in one breath, the whole

fight's over. So anyway, yeah, that was the

five commands in the second point.

It's, I thought I was going to camp there longer than I did,

but I don't think you have to, right?

Paul didn't. It's very self.

Yeah, exactly straightforward. But then doing everything in

love, you know, And that's sort of the tail.

Going back to 13, right? Yeah.

And that's sort of the end of those those 5 commands there in

verse 13. Let all that you do be done in

love. And I liked how you talked about

you. You shared a quote and

essentially it was like, you know, love doesn't mean love

doesn't mean you're, you know, ooey gooey and you let

everything slide, But it also doesn't mean that like, you

know, you're overly hard, right? Love is love is this thing where

we're willing to speak the truth, but we do it with grace.

And I love that balance of of those two things, right?

Like if you have, if you have too much grace, then you you

allow people to like willfully sin, right?

We need, we need truth to be able to call out.

Yeah, you allow them to not not just willfully, but think it's

OK, right. Like, like you not calling out

sin for sin, like what it is, is one of the most unloving things

we can do, right? It's I really believe that.

It's like, no, we need to know what's going on, what we're

doing wrong, that according to Scripture, this is wrong.

Not according to my tradition, not according to what I think I

need to know that it's truly sin, right when I call it out.

But like we were doing them like the we're not, we're not loving

them. It's not just a disservice.

I almost said we're doing a disservice.

No, you're not loving them. Right, right.

Exactly. But but too much, you know, too

much pointing at other people's sin.

It's like then we become the hypocrite in Matthew Chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

It's like, you know, how do you notice the speck in your

brother's eye and you don't notice the log in your own eye,

right. So we need to be recognizing sin

in our own lives first, dealing with sin in our own lives, and

then helping others, you know, and that there's the thing, the

interesting thing about that passage, Matthew Chapter 7, is

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

that he doesn't say don't take the speck out of your brother's

eye. He simply says you need to be

dealing with sin first in your own life, right?

And then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your

brother's eye. And we talked about that earlier

in First Corinthians as well. Oh yeah, you're supposed to

judge each other. Yeah, you're supposed to judge

each other. This is a pretty like, it sounds

bad to say it that way, but it is true.

But we are supposed to be judging each other because

Paul's point is like, do you judge those outside the church?

No, you don't. That's not they're not holding

themselves up to the the standard of the word of God.

And even in Matthew Chapter 7, it says the same thing.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

Don't give to dogs what is holy and don't throw your pearls

before pigs. And I think.

Swine. Swine.

And I think in the context, I think, I think what Jesus is

saying is you are to be judging each other.

You're to be dealing with sin in your own life.

You're to be dealing with sin in each other's lives, but you may

not do that. You may not do that to like

people who are outside the faith.

And I, I don't think what he's saying is that you should never

share the gospel and show people that their their need for a

safety because of their sin. But I think what he's saying is

you going up to, to doing that to people who don't follow

Christ, who don't believe in the word of God.

They're just going to reject you.

You know, they're going to, they're going to trample it.

They don't consider the value and then they're going to turn

to attack you. It's like when you face people

who are hostile to the gospel, hostile to the Bible there,

there's there's no wisdom in just continuing to shove it in

their face when they don't appreciate that's right and they

don't value it. And so these are family matters.

These are things that we are supposed to be dealing with in

the church. And you're right, it is unloving

to to just to not tell someone that they're sinning.

We need to be doing that. Yeah.

That that there is like a balance.

Exactly what you said, though, like recognizing, and I think

that might be that might be part of it is like, you recognize,

Hey, I'm not perfect. I deal with, I deal with this or

I deal with this thing or I deal with something else that's

equally as bad in my own life. You know, being honest and being

vulnerable. That is what's missing in our

culture, man. We are, we are so afraid.

So we're terrified of being vulnerable with each other.

I know I am like I'm terrified of it, right?

Be exposed as a whatever, a liar, whatever, you know, like a

hypocrite. But we have to be, in order for

us to be genuine with each other, we have to be, we have to

be able to be vulnerable with each other.

And that comes down to the serving Part 2 at the end.

Like we need to serve each other.

The only way to serve each other is like to be willing to do the

lowest job, like be willing to do the lowest thing.

So, yeah. So that wrapped it up, man.

Yeah. It's so it was, it was a long

term and I think I don't know how long it is because.

I don't either. We haven't uploaded it yet.

It was good. It was good.

And I, and I think I was glad that you ended on that, that

serving note. Right.

Like, I think, I think that's an important principle.

You know, like we ought to be willing to serve others.

Devote devote your lives to serve others.

Yeah. Because I think so often it it

because we're self-serving, because we're always looking out

for our own interests. We need to be willing to

surrender for others and I, I think Jesus, I mean, we're

finishing the year in our Bible reading plan in the book of

Matthew and Jesus says that very thing, right.

If anyone wants to be first among you, if anybody wants to

be, you know your serve to be your leader, then you ought to

be servant, right? You ought to be willing to serve

one another. And I think that's just such a

wonderfully helpful principle. And I think so many times we're

selfish and we're looking for ways to be served.

And, and this is what other people should be doing for me.

And, you know, coming to church with this perspective of like,

I'm a consumer and I'm, I'm, I'm maybe judging the entertainment

value or whatever. And it's like, that's not why we

come to church. We don't come to, I was saying

this to some of the other day. I'm like, nobody's coming to

church because it's like, oh, those musicians are so good.

It's like, no, we're not, we're not professionals.

We, we're trying to do a good job.

We're trying to strive for excellence.

We're, we're trying to do the best that we can, but we come

together because it's, it's so powerful and it's so encouraging

to worship together, right? And to lift our voices to the

Lord together. That's right.

That's why we come together. And, you know, don't come to be

served. Don't come to be a taker, but

come to be a giver. Find ways to serve other people.

I would say that's the same thing with like the teaching

too. Like the sermons are not like

our goal is not to entertain you.

It's not a Ted talk. I'm honestly, my goal is not

even to like make you feel good about yourself, right?

Like I hope you're leave encouraged, right?

But maybe that comes back to the last thing.

Part of the letter is like the goal in the goal in preaching is

not, is not to make you feel better about yourself.

The goal is, is to strengthen you and like you talk about

working out a lot like in, in the disciplines that it takes to

work out like when you leave a workout, sometimes you don't

feel very good, right, right. But you get stronger because

you've, you've, your muscles have gone through some torture

almost at times, right? Like you get strong, you, you

come out of it stronger the next day, two days later, you're

stronger. Our sermons, like I've been to a

lot of different churches and heard a lot of sermons and like,

sometimes it's just like, oh, it's a Ted Talk, you know, it's

just like, oh, here's something interesting about the Bible.

Or, or maybe it's just like, it's just, I don't want to

ruffle any feathers. So I'm just going to kind of

just kind of go and it's just going to be like just a warm

soup, right? Chicken soup for the soul.

And that's not good either, right?

Like I, I that's, I think the goal of like all our preaching

should be just like exhortation. Yeah, here like exposing sin for

what it is. It as long as it's in the text,

go for it. And then just like stand on the

truth. And I think that's what Paul's

getting at the very end. He cannot fathom the fact that

there is a person a sing any any person in the church who doesn't

love the Lord. How, why, why would you do it?

Why would you subject yourself to to like being beat up every

Sunday, right? That's when I just got out of my

mouth. It's like, I mean, we're not

beating people up and it's not all fire and brimstone, right.

But but like, like being exposed to this, like, what's the point?

Why? Why?

If you don't believe it, if you're not, if you don't love

the Lord then. And he's just so he cannot, they

can't say it calmly. That's what that quote was.

That Leon Morris quote is just like he cannot understand how

anybody. And so just as a curse be on

you, like you're basically living a lie.

Yeah. And so, yeah, it's hard.

But the my plea there at the end was come to faith, like, you

don't have to have it all figured out, like.

Right. Like, like I think we were

talking. I don't remember who I was

talking to yesterday. Oh, yeah.

It was you and your wife. We're talking about salvation.

Like, like coming to faith early in life where, yeah, I had

faith, but it's different now. Like, as I'm growing, my faith

is stronger now. I understand it more clearly.

Like when you get saved, I think about the cross.

The cross, we always think like the cross is something that's

here, I'm holding my hand up in front of me and like that and

then you walk away from it like this is my salvation event.

And like a lot of people think, OK, there's salvation back there

and now I'm walking towards heaven.

But I think we got it wrong. I think like I think the cross

is out front and we see it very dimly.

Like like if I were to take my glasses off and it'd be super

blurry and I see it, I understand it, right?

I understand what it means. It means that Christ died for my

sins, but as I'm, as I'm walking ever closer with him, I'm

walking closer and closer to I understand more and more what

his sacrifice means and the cross becomes more and more

clear. And like, I think that's the,

the picture is like that. No, conversion is the starting

point. The cross isn't the starting

point. The cross is what you're always

have in front of you. It is what we need to be looking

at. We need to always be looking at

what Christ did for us, how he saved us, how my sin is like

just detestable to him and and really just like understanding

it more and more draws us closer and closer to him.

So like, you don't have to have it all figured out.

That's the goal. Like the point you, you do have

to have some faith. Yeah.

And faith isn't easy, right? Like to not believe honestly is

it requires more faith, but faith isn't easy.

And so we just need to like, that's my encouragement for

those who are sitting out there, those who are listening right

now, believe, like ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes and so

that you can believe, just need a shred of faith and then Lord

can do something like a great work.

Yeah. And I think that's such a good

encouragement. You know, if anybody, you know,

we are running a baptism class soon.

And yeah, and maybe you feel like you do believe, but maybe

you think it's too simple or maybe you think that, you know,

you maybe you don't understand it quite the way you should.

What you're it the the faith, our Christian faith is a

lifetime right of our eyes being opened.

You know, I, I remember hearing a a pastor who's been preaching

the Bible for 50 years say every time I open the Bible and read a

passage that I've read countless times, I learned something I

didn't learn before. And that's the work of the Holy

Spirit. It is slowly unveiling himself

to you. You're never going to get it

all. And so if you have faith, like

take a step, you know, take a step of faith to put your faith

in the Lord. Take a step, right?

And if you have that faith and you believe that what Christ has

done for you on the cross, then tell tell someone about it and

start to look at the fruit of your life over the next few

months and pursue the Lord. And you know, if there's fruit

in your life and you believe that you're a Christian, then

get baptized and take that step. It's the starting.

Point, right, It's something like I think we talked about

this before too, is like they think they have to like you have

to get they have to be perfect or they have to get clean,

right? They have to get clean before

they can be baptized. No, the baptism is like telling

everybody that you just took a bath, right?

You're. Clean, you're right.

You're a Christian, you don't have to clean yourself up.

The Lord's going to do that cleaning, and it's going to take

a lifetime to get all the sin off of you.

Well, and that's a good reminder for believers too, right?

Like you talk about, you know, your starting point, but you're

always looking forward to the cross.

We never outgrow our need for the gospel.

So for the believers out there, don't read your Bible and pray

because they're checkmarks on your To Do List.

They're pointing you to a God who wants to be known.

Like I had someone met for coffee with somebody today and

they were talking about, you know, in the book of James where

it's like draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

And I just remembered that like when we read and when we pray

and when we do the spiritual disciplines, it's not about the

disciplines in of in of themselves.

It's who they're pointing us to. It's about a relationship with a

living God. And so draw near to that God and

he will draw near to you and, and draw near to the person and

the work of Christ and seek to, to know God, not just to know

more about the Bible, not just to have knowledge, but like you

said, constantly coming to Christ, constantly be reminded

that I need his forgiveness. I need, you know, the

application of his blood on the his sacrifice on the cross for

me so that I can walk in holiness and righteousness.

But we're never going to be good enough but pursue the

disciplines to pursue God, not just discipline and of itself.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, don't, it's not less

than discipline, right? You need to have the discipline.

But yeah, it is because we, we are so privileged.

We get to like to experience God.

We have the opportunity to do it every single day.

Yeah. Whether we're free to do it or

not, we can do it. Yeah, it's great.

All right, I got one question for you.

Oh. Yeah, all right.

Think back. Just putting you on the spot.

We've been in First Corinthians since like forever.

We're done now. What was your, what's your

favorite section or chapter? Maybe you preached or you heard

preached or whatever. What was your favorite?

My favorite that is really putting me.

On the IT was a divorce and remarriage, right?

That was Oh my goodness, no, that was hard.

That was a hard, that was a really hard passage, man.

I don't know. That's a really good question.

Feel like they were all really, really good.

Like Paul's emphasis on Christ. I mean, at the beginning of the

letter, you know, Paul emphasizing like you shouldn't

be looking to like one leader over the other.

Like, oh, I follow Paul. I follow Apollos.

I follow how? How?

How we're so prone to that? Yeah, and it's it's so easy to

to pick sides and and it's not about any of the leaders.

It's about Christ. You know, I that, that was, that

really struck me at the beginning of the letter.

And then even Paul's emphasis on, you know, like I preach

Christ crucified. It's not about like a big fancy

thing. It's like I have a very simple

message and I tell it everywhere I go.

And so I think his resolve, like his conviction to, to live and

do ministry a specific way. I think at the beginning of the

letter, probably, I mean the beginning of the letter, man.

I mean we could go, we could go back and preach the 1st 4

chapters and I would love. That honestly felt like looking

back we may not have given the 1st 4 chapters the justice for.

Real. Yeah, I.

Agree. Oh, they were really good.

I'm trying to think I feed the, the feed your love for the Lord

sermon probably is one that has has impacted me more than any

other sermon in the series and any other sermon in a long time.

Because the, that first of all, the illustration was like, I

mean, it's really good. Like you're feeding your love

for the Lord. And then like in my example,

like with my smoker, he had jammed, right?

Like it jammed up with bad stuff, like I was feeding it bad

pellets and it caused this jam that now and now my smoker has

never been right since. And it's sad to me, but the the

illustration clicked with me. It's like, yeah, feed your love

for the Lord with godly things Like what we're just talking

about those disciplines and those things that you do, the

prayer, fasting, Bible reading, all the different disciplines,

like talking about the Lord with others.

Yeah, that to me that I think that was probably my favorite

portion of the preaching for sure.

Yeah, Yeah. It was like it challenged all of

us, right. I remember as pastors, we talked

about it many times over the course of the last few months

and just, man, it was a it's a challenging book, you know?

Yeah. So you at the beginning, you

pick it and you're like, this is going to be great.

And you started getting into it and you're like, what did we?

Do you picked it? I'll say I'll say you came up to

us in a pastor's meeting one time.

We were in the middle of reading First Corinthians in the Bible

reading plan and you were really fired up about First Corinthians

and you're like, let's just let's just read it.

Let's let's, let's, let's do this one.

Let's do first Corinthians, let's do first Corinthians.

We're all like, OK, that sounds good, That sounds good.

And I'm like, it's going to like take, you're going to have to

put like First Corinthians Chapter 7 up on a whiteboard so

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

we can like draw all these like weird lines from this part, this

argument here, like in order to understand it.

And that was the hardest sermon for you.

But yeah, anyway, I mean, I had the hard, I think I had hard

text too, like the sexual immorality ones.

The the the middle part was hard.

Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Those are some hard, some hard chapters.

Chapter 8 was hard. Yeah, Jake had hard ones too.

Oh. Jake had Jake had the one with

head coverings, didn't he? That was hard.

No, that was, that was me too, Yeah.

I forgot about that. But yeah, it was, I mean,

there's a lot of hard stuff, but I think that's a really good

thing about preaching through books of the Bible.

It forces you to hit on things that you know, you might not

always, you might not choose passages like that to preach on,

but when you go through books of the Bible, it forces you to to

talk about hard things at times. And all of us are committed to

to saying hard things if we need to, right, because they're in

the Bible again, we're going back full circle to like the

beginning of our conversation, right?

The the Lord and his wisdom has chosen and his sovereignty and

his wisdom has chosen to include those things in Scripture.

And so we want to be faithful to teach on them when we can.

And so we, we're falling, we, we are going to get things wrong at

times. We're not always going to be

right, but our commitment is to to do the best that we can with

the knowledge and the wisdom that we have to be faithful to

the text as as much as we can. I think if like if I had to like

describe us and our desire, our conviction, if you will, our

conviction is to preach the word of God.

And that would be with song, that would be with Bible

studies, that would be with sermons.

Any other thing we do our our conviction is to put the word of

God in front of you so that you can learn from it, but

ultimately the so that you can know God.

Yeah, I mean that that would be our conviction.

I think absolutely. If I had to like summarize it in

one like our conviction is to to make the word of God the primary

thing because we ultimately get to know him through it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so that's my final word on

1st Corinthians. That's your final word.

I don't have anything I like today other than I'll do is have

something we're running. We were overtime, but it's fine.

You mentioned how comfortable we are, like how like prone and how

like basically we're lazy. Like we've been, we've bought

into this like idea of comfort. We need to make ourselves

comfortable all the time. There's a book called the

comfort crisis. It is not a Christian book.

I'm just trying to preface that like there's but the principles

in that are really good. It's it's time to break us out

of our comfort zones. And like I've been on this like

digital detox type of idea, thinking about like how can I

minimalize digital things in my life?

Like looking at my phone screen noticed Ezra this morning as I

was working. He was talking to me, but he was

not looking at me. He was sitting at the at the bar

and my little offices in another room in the kitchen.

He's realized now that he can talk to me and not look at me.

And that's I'm teaching how he's 2 years old man.

I'm staring at a screen for work.

Obviously I'm doing something, but at the same time, like I

need to like break when he wants my attention, give him some

attention so that he knows I'm involved.

But so, yeah, the comfort crisis, it's a really

interesting book. It's sort of made me think I

need to probably like ride my bike to work.

He doesn't say that. I'm just trying to think how can

I make myself uncomfortable, right?

At least for a part of a time, just to like to like to feel

alive, you know what I mean? Because like we're, I don't, I

don't have to be comfortable all the time, right?

So that's what I like. I don't know if you have

anything I'm putting on the spot.

Now during winter time, riding a bike to work would be really

uncomfortable. Yeah, but it's only three miles.

You know, you can do anything. Honestly.

It's not not. I'm not going to die unless I

get hit by a car. I could get hit by a car in

summer. You know what I mean?

Like the cold's not going to kill me in 3 miles.

It's not. So let's just just just be real.

I could put on layers and I'm going to walk into your office,

which is like 97 degrees. So I'm going to warm myself up.

It's not that. It's not that warm.

It is warm. I like, I like, I like the

warmth. No, I, I don't have anything

that I've, that I've been reading this week, but I having

conversations with people about technology.

I think that is something that I'll, I'll hide on too.

I think it's just, it's such a, it's such a crisis.

It is a crisis in our day technology and just how much we

depend on it and how much we we feed ourselves with it, you

know. Specifically the smartphone and

tablets and all that stuff. And time after time, you know, I

talk to people and they just, they recognize how much time

they spend on it and how much they waste.

And, and almost everybody is, is talking about that like, Oh

yeah, I spend too much time on my phone.

Yeah, I spend too much on my phone.

I need to, I need to be cutting that back and it, and it hinders

me from doing other things I want to be doing.

It does. And so I guess 1 encouragement

I'll give. I gave this a word of

encouragement to another brother, just that as you're

thinking through that, maybe maybe people are thinking

through the new year, what you want to change.

I would encourage you and I to, to be thinking of what you're

going to replace it with. Yeah, you don't, don't just take

something away and then have an empty hole because you're going

to fill it with something, right.

I I know I've heard people say, you know, well, I, I got rid of

my social media and then I started going on YouTube all the

time. Then I got rid of my YouTube and

then I started watching Netflix all the time.

It's like you're going to fill it with something.

You need to be deciding what you're going to fill it with

and, you know, whether that's the Bible and pray or prayer or,

you know, reading the Scripture to your kids or, you know,

whatever you're going to fill it with.

Maybe it's a really good book, right?

Even wanting to read, fill that void with something else and

create new habits and new disciplines in your life so that

you know you're not just, you know, being brainwashed by the

world to be on your phone more and more because their job is to

keep you glued to your phone for as long as possible.

Yes, they're really like, like they're hiring the hiring the

smartest people in the world not to solve the world's problems,

but to keep you looking at advertising.

It's crazy. And I could you can go down a

conspiracy theory on that, but it's true.

It is. Yeah.

So if you don't have this feature on your phones turned

on, turn on screen time feature on Apples and then like the

Androids have it too. And then track it for a week and

you'll be surprised how much you look at that little glass

rectangle in your pocket. And then another word of

encouragement I would say is just leave the phone in the car.

If you're going in for coffee with someone, make eye contact

with them, be seen, be heard. Let them know that you love them

and care about them. Their your phone conversation

can wait. It really can.

Like even dire emergencies can wait 15-30 minutes.

Like it really can. They're going to call somebody

else if they don't get you, you know what I mean?

So, yeah, yeah, that's that's really good.

So we won't have an episode next week.

That's what we said, no. Episode next week.

Yeah, we're going to take off next week, I think.

All the holidays and everything. Yeah, and we'll be back better

than ever after the first of the year.

Yeah, maybe better than ever. I don't know.

Maybe, yeah. So Merry Christmas to everybody.

Yeah, happy Boxing Day. Happy, happy.

We were talking about talking about Boxing Day.

What? What even is Boxing Day?

I don't know, but yeah, have Merry Christmas.

I hope you all enjoy a lot of wonderful time together with

your families, with friends, with people you love.

I know it's a wonderful time of year to to catch up with folks

and family members and stuff like that.

So praying that the Lord blesses you all with a wonderful season.

And yeah, Jonah, do you want to close this up here?

Yeah, Father, thank you so much for for this podcast thing, for

the opportunity to have one more place to encourage people, to

encourage each other. I know that Joe and I have

enjoyed it. And Lord, we thank you.

We recognize this as a gift from you to be able to do this.

And so, Lord, I pray for our church as we go into the holiday

season that we would remember that that you are the most

important thing that we could ever do with our time.

Spending time with you is the most important thing.

So, Lord, I pray that you would help us remember that, help us

to give the gospel to our families as we gather with them

over the next few days. And, and we're thinking about

the future. Help us to plan, but help us to

hold our plans loosely and help us to remember that giving you

glory and glorifying you is all satisfying.

And pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.