Well Jack I'll let you go ahead and start bringing it to me today. Okay so I was- Well you'll have an intro. I don't have an intro. I was trying to figure out an intro.
Okay we'll be on. So I decided to try something a little bit different. Okay. Since we kind of going with this whole like apocalyptic but not actually apocalyptic thing, I wanted to go with something that you might not have realized might actually be an apocalyptic movie.
You ready for this? Oh yeah. Yeah I love this game. Okay so did you know that Aladdin is quite possible- Yeah I've read that theory.
That theory is awesome. Do we need to talk about my theory about Dirty Dance? I think we need to let our audience know about your theory about it dancing. So first of all four of my top five favorite movies ever made are all like post-apocalyptic slash dystopian movies.
My favorite movie of all time ever is the 1984 feature film Red Dawn. Sorry Patrick Swasey, Charlie Sheen, C-Thomas Howe, Jennifer Gray, Leah Thompson. What's the guy that he got played the the pilot? Oh I definitely don't know his name and I've forgotten it.
So anyway 1984 feature film Red Dawn. It's about a group of high school students plus Jid played by Patrick Swasey who is older, probably 22-23 that the Cubans and the Russians and the Nicaraguan's in Bay the United States, they're in Colorado, they're high school gets attacked, they take off to the hills and find refuge and fight as gorillas. About a third of the way into the film they go back to a farmhouse that an old man is helping them and the old man gives, not gives them, he sends his two granddaughters to go to be in safety with them. One of his granddaughters is about to crush on the plane pilot.
That's one played by Leah Thompson from Back to Future. But Jennifer Gray, her and Jid Patrick Swasey's character had this awkward tension throughout the whole movie. You can tell they like each other. And so my theory is a 1987 feature film Dirty Dancing starring Patrick Swasey and Jennifer Gray.
My working theory is- Well we should say that there's some spoiler alerts right here, right? No I can just say there are multiple points of time at the end of Red Dawn after many characters have died where Jid, by Patrick Swasey, has an extreme amount of introspection. What if the entirety of Dirty Dancing happens in Jid's mind throughout Red Dawn as this like fantasy land of what could have been and this crush slash relationship slash infactuation he had with Tony that was played by Jennifer Gray. So what if Dirty Dancing is just Red Dawn too?
I mean that's crazy. I mean that's also just extremely interesting, just like escapism right there. And I think everyone does that a little bit. You see everybody makes fun of this theory but then people start thinking about it and realize that this has some validity to it.
I mean I still think Aladdin has more of a post-apocalyptic validity. And for those of you who are like wait what are you talking about Aladdin? Basically saying that the genie was asleep for 10,000 years and he makes a lot of references to our past culture like 13th century stuff like that. And so what is saying is genie does not have four knowledge because he was completely surprised by a lot of stuff.
Ergo it has to be in the future and if you actually play the Aladdin video game they're like stop signs buried in the sand, there's an atomic bomb that pops up at one point. And plus it also explained the talking parrot. Yeah. See there's a lot of very interesting theories about that sort of thing.
So yeah okay so fun apocalypse movie in droves. Yes fun apocalypse movie in droves. Great. So before we jump in I'm going to tell you what last week, we've always done these special episodes, have always done very well.
But last week, man y'all downloaded the first revelation follow up like crazy. Do you see that Jack? Yes you see that. That's a big spike.
Yes. That goes on for a long time. So thanks so much for listening, engaging. Now if you want to jump in on this more, talk to Jack.
Or just comment on the threads where you see this being announced on social media. So we love to feed back with your apocalyptic thoughts. If you want to listen to the sermon, you can go back to the sermon from Revelation chapter four from this past Sunday and wherever you podcast you'll see it'll be the immediate episode before this one. So Jack let's get rocking rolling.
Okay. All right. So he started off Sunday and he talked about the dirt ladder, which is a mountain. Well we're on high, but we're pretty steep hill.
So yeah, the dirt ladder. So you talked about explaining something you don't have words for. Yeah. And I just want to say something I can top that.
I took an ASL class, which is American Sign Language, my second-to-last semester of college. And like if you didn't know how to say something in sign language, I'm just like, well, make it up. Make it kind of look like it. So I look like the wacky wave and flatable arm guy in this class trying to explain something I literally did not have words for.
What were we trying to explain? Honestly, I don't remember what that class I dumped it. I told you to not take sign language. You did tell me not to take sign language, but I didn't actually pass with a B.
So I don't remember any of it. So where did you come up with the word fantastical? You know, that word it gets it's not I didn't come up with that. What's so funny is that word gets used by a lot of people writing and thinking about revelation and it kind of pops up inside of it.
So it's just kind of a grammar of the images is where that that's come from. Okay. I guess I mean, it's definitely a very interesting version. I mean, I'm just like when I went started reading through it, I'm like, oh, the world do you like decipher this.
It was a it was kind of rough. There's a lot of radicals you can chase and stuff like that. But you so you jump in and you start talking about the first thing that he sees is worship. Yep.
So how would you define worship? You know, I really think that basic worship is adoration is recognition and adoration of God. Okay. And I think that's what you see in this biblical picture of what's going on is just that.
I mean, it's just there it's recognizing who God is and giving him praise to for what he has done and for what he will be doing, which I think when you look in Revelation chapter four and then chapter five, I'll come with this Sunday. You see is kind of paradigmatic of what's going on inside of these stories. Okay. I understand that.
So is there different forms of worship? It was my next question because obviously, you know, we go to church on Sunday. We sing sing our songs and we praise God and stuff like that. But is that all?
Is that it or is there different ways throughout the week? He talks a little bit later on about private worship as well. What does that kind of look like? I think it comes down to me.
What does recognition of an adoration of God look like? And like also along I've been reading a lot of, I think it's just kind of to put things in perspective. Also along I've been reading a lot of biographies of like 19th and early 20th century preachers. Like A.W.
tells your biography. Like I had you read them a couple years ago. That you used to see worship being broadly used as the term to recognize who God was. That's really only in the last probably 20, 30 years we've kind of applied our very narrow viewpoint wise of song to it per se.
But I mean, I think that's it's you. Also, there's also a thing about worship and you see it in Revelation. And you see, you're gonna see it's kind of a big point this coming up a week with chapter five is that worship is necessarily both individual and corporate. And there has to be distinct boundaries between those two.
Remember a few weeks back on a preaching and why worship matters. We have to talk about the corporate nature of what worship is. I think you see representative of this in chapter four between the living creatures and the elders. You see all of creation and all of the church worshiping and unified voice together inside of those passages.
So that brings me to something I was kind of thinking about. And it's almost kind of freaky. You know, which I mean, there's honestly a lot of freaky stuff in this passage, but you know, it talks about like what the beasts are saying, you know, saying you're worthy of God or Lord God and stuff like that. And then you have the elders, you know, also praising God.
So they're saying these different verses that we say often in the church. And it's, you know, not only are we joining other people on the planet, saying these things, but we're also joining these eternal beings out there. You know, and I kind of started thinking about that. I was like, whoa, yep.
Yep. That's weird. Yep. Right on.
And that's what you realize that I mean, that those are consistent actions. And so like if you hold him holy, holy, holy, like that first verse kind of something pretty familiar to you when you're reading Revelation chapter four. Like there is, if we believe in kind of part of the whole centerpiece thing from last Sunday, is that we're pushing ourselves into viewing our life in God's world, we say those things because they're being said elsewhere right now. Does that make sense?
Mm hmm. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, I just, like really, like Rob L spoke to me when you said, you know, worship reminds us that we are not the sinner.
That was something I definitely struggle with, you know, is, you know, how is this going to get done if I don't do it? Mm hmm. So I guess another thing to just talk about worship because I've wrote a good bit of a nose about it. How can we tell what we worship in life?
Well, what do you put the center of things? What makes a decision for you? What drives you? Um, what causes you to get up?
What I say is very, that it was the first thing you think about in the morning, what's the last thing you think about before you fall asleep? Yeah. Like what do you, what do you have that you believe provides a strong of an anchor for you? The things like, what do you spend your money on?
What does your browser history tell about you? Uh, what does, uh, the conversations that you have with people? Where does that mean? I think that we, when we step back and look at what our behaviors are, they really do show us what happens.
Um, and then, uh, getting Jamie Smith, I think it's Jamie, uh, it was Greg Beale, um, who's wrote a bunch on Revelation, uh, really influential theologian. I mean, he has this phrase that we become what we worship and that we worship what we become. And so, I mean, really, it steps back to that. It's like what, what is, what is formed you and what drives you?
Cause that's really what you're worshiping. Okay. Man, this speaks a lot. Yeah.
There's like, Jamie, Jamie Smith book, you are what you love is really accessible and approachable, um, to the average person. Uh, that would be a big, a big kicker indicator. Okay. So moving on a little bit and we're still talking about worship here.
So when we worship a foundry, um, and this is, this is a meeting. It's not, you know, anybody else. It's just kind of how I am. But when you worship, you know, I sometimes feel like I'm there.
I'm in the moment, you know, I'm singing. I'm, I'm really kind of feeling it. I'm getting my dose of the ghost. Um, as you put it the last week.
Um, and then suddenly I'm just like extremely aware of all of the people around me. And I just like, I climb up and I just feel like really awkward. And I'm just like, oh, what are these people thinking of me? You know, like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a stand there.
You know, fairly conservative with how I worship and stuff. And, uh, but I mean, even still though, I just get this really awkward feeling. Like what would you have to say to that? I think that there's a couple of things that's going on in, um, and I think in a lot of ways, Revelation 4 and 5 are fantastic chapters to talk about worship because you see a heavenly perspective of worship and you see a worship as multidimensional.
And you see worship that is happening consistently like is in character of the heart, which is what you see in chapter 4. But then also going to be examples in chapter 5 of individual, um, expression and movement and change. But I think that to a point, you have to, we have to begin moving outside of that reality. Of corporate worship being an individual action, which is something that, uh, is really difficult to do because so much of the last 15, 20 years, especially in modern or contemporary church culture, we really do think of it as primarily an individualistic action.
And so there's also, there's some, there's some design points to it. Like right now we are in, in, in, in, in, in St. Andrew's, Jim's, kind of tough. Like we had a lot of comp, like all the years I spent, uh, as a worship leader and so in creating worship, like we thought about volume a lot, like we kind of run a little bit hot at Foundry.
And one of the reasons we do that is so you can necessarily may not be able to hear the person that's around you. And that's just like one thing that, that I've learned over the years is, uh, giving people the space and not comfortable with personal expression. But what you see, that the actions going on in Revelation, this is so much, this is, this is an attitude and a characteristic of the heart. And if we really just try to draw this whole thing down to one hour, out of 167 hours, the week we're going to miss the point on it.
Uh, and, and, and when we really are offering ourselves to God consistently, there will be the times we just kind of willing, we'll become willing to get over ourselves during those 25 minutes of the week we might actually be seeing in front of people. Because I bet you, when was the last concert, you went on work to her last weekend, right? I did go to work to work to work to work. I bet you sang in front of a lot of people at work to work.
Honestly, I didn't know a lot of the songs because it's a bunch of stream of bands. Yeah, exactly. So, but you know, there was a bowling pursuit. Yeah.
So I did like a bowling suit. Like we do this other places. This weird thing we bring into church and we just, it sounds a little kind of harsh, but we have to get over it. We have to just force ourselves to get over it because it's something much more important than just that.
Um, everyone I was leading worship, we were out one place and, uh, there was a deaf girl in the church and like it was front row for her most services. Um, and I mean, and she, her, her, if you've ever talked to someone who's deaf, sometimes they will be able to form words and communicate in some range. She couldn't. And, and so this back when I was running production, I was running front of house for this group, pretty heavy level production.
Uh, we always had a microphone facing out into the crowd, just to get room noise inside their inner monitors in their ears. And, uh, that week he was awash, because all you can hear is this girl just making noises. Not, not anywhere close to on pitch or anything. But it's like her body and her spirit, she knew that she needed to respond by vocalization.
Hmm. So in other words, I need to give myself. Yes, checking. Well, if anyone's met me, that's, uh, they know that's gonna be a hard deal.
Uh, let's see what's next. Uh, yeah. So worship. So we are not at the center.
That's a, that was a big takeaway point for me. I mean, just even yesterday when I was sitting there and I was getting all these notes again, I was like, oh man, I really, I really went kind of like play some video games or just kind of chill. And I was like, I know what I need to, I need to get this done because I wanted to have a six this morning, do some stuff for Wesley. But, um, the next part since we're talking about getting a dose to the ghost in verse two, it says, uh, Johnny's like, he said, you know, selling him in the spirit, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So we also see this pop up in chapter one, this idea of in the spirit and, and what's interesting. So like, and we see him in chapter one, I said, I was on the Lord's day and I was worshiping in the spirit.
Um, and I think part of this is, this is interesting. This is interesting piece of revelation. It's interesting, uh, to, to stop up and it's there and it shows a, uh, it shows a, um, some of the transaction of reality maybe because we think about revelation so much in the scope of time, but rather should we maybe think about revelation in the scope of dimension. Does that make sense?
So it's not like John found like some time machine. Yeah. But instead of what is this, what is this? I mean, because we think back to that whole idea of revelation is an, it's an unveiling.
Um, and so that we get into the language of it, um, and chapter two, the ones I was in the spirit and there should have it. Um, this idea of I was in the spirit, like we just read this as a simple, like that's an easy word, but like what we see in, in, in Greek is translated so much thicker than this, um, because it holds the idea of I was becoming or creating. So once I was creating and it has, it has its own weird, like temporal, like we're getting nerdy right here. Um, but this whole idea of being in the spirit, like that, that he was taken to a place and shown something different.
And what's interesting is if you, when you combine this with the usage of it, so if we just read it in chapter four, oh, okay, it looks like something happened and some other action came upon him in the Holy Spirit sent this action upon him solely for the purpose of this different space, whereas we went back in chapter one and how this is used. This is a quality of John's worship, that he understood worship having that level of transformative power. In this first vision that we read about in chapters two and chapters three, which we didn't talk about in church, this happened, but he already was in that place. And second, a Latin, this would be called pro-leptic.
Pro-leptic that this is a, uh, that there is a dimensionality to being in the spirit. And the reality of God's world and our world. And we talk about that and it might just come across as an idea to think about or to behold, but what if, and you see this across, um, mystic, Christian thought and mystic Jewish thought, uh, you see in scriptures and divisions of Ezekiel and divisions of Isaiah and divisions of Daniel. Um, that these are people who believe and work and live in the Holy Spirit to a level in which there is a dimensionality to their life.
And we see this also in the witnesses across the church over the last 2000 years as well. So does this have something to do? I remember we had a conversation a while ago and I don't remember the group of people, but you're saying that they believe like when you worship in the space, uh, for a certain period of time that the- It's like the Celtic idea of thin spaces that you're thinking about. Yes.
Yeah. I mean, there's that, that's kind of part of this. And it's like, do we, to what level do we believe the Holy Spirit has a power to transform where we live? So the idea of thin spaces is, uh, because of time and because of worship, because the prayers of the people, that are places on earth where the veil between heaven and earth is just thinner.
Um, and I mean, you just, we have to think with the supernatural realities of what worship is. Yeah. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you're, you're wondering if I ever am just like, whoa, yeah, I mean, it's a lot of information to take in. He likes to say big words that sound like medicine.
If you have stomach pain, you take for a leptic. Oh man. What's next? All right.
What's next? Well, okay, back kind of to that subject though, because you see a lot in the scripture, you know, about talking about, you know, like the Holy Spirit being in us, right? So I thought it was interesting that he was this time in the Holy Spirit and he goes to heaven or sees this, um, representation or vision or whatever you want to call it. Who's taking to a place, who's taking to a place, but you know, when the Holy Spirit in us, what do you say that, that place is in us at that point, taking to us?
Yeah. Both. Both. And both.
And interesting. Um, so how many throne room experiences are there in the Bible? Do we know this? Oh man, I'm not in this research.
Uh, I sent you my notes. I know you did. I know you did. But I kind of like, I kind of an idea what we're going to talk about, but I don't like to, uh, I'm not forever like a bullet.
Let's see visions. I mean, we got revelation. We know we got a Zechul. We've got Isaiah.
Uh, but then you also have it spoken about, uh, so much in Psalms, uh, and in other places. But I mean, I think you really are, if I had to, with that digging too much into it, I think that you really have about three big points in structure that you have for that. Interesting. Okay.
So, you know, you talked about the imagery of the throne room and how God is big enough. You know, so last week we talked about how God is big enough to take care of the little stuff, right? And how it cares about it. And so now, uh, he can handle the big stuff too.
You talked about it's being over chaos, right? So I have trouble with that. Not like believing it, but just actually kind of living it out. How would you say I take those next steps?
I think of a center problem. I think that we have to, it's, it's, if you never, if we never put ourselves like one of our core values of founders, we've got to vision for this world is bigger than our vision for this world. It's the exact same thing you're doing with here. I think that if you, if we're never consistently taking out steps of faithfulness and learning what the faithfulness of God is like, we're going to consistently struggle with having a small vision for God being in our world because our vision for the world is larger than it.
And the only way that that grows in our life is through experiences of faithfulness with God. And you go back to the parable of the talents and what much has been given much will be expected. Um, now if we're not, if we're not growing and we're not, and a lot of this stuff is, it comes down to our responsibility here. God's not holding himself back from us, but God's protecting ourselves from it because like we cannot, we cannot handle understanding these things like John, we see this crazy vision that John had, but when we look at every single thing else we know about John, uh, here's a perfect person to have this vision.
Uh, I mean, he was, he was a disciple of Jesus. He was the only disciple to live this long. He didn't die in middle age. He surviving boiled in oil, uh, his level of, uh, I think I read something yesterday, there's 401 verses in Revelation, I think, and there's over 500, uh, references and illusions to the old testament that I'll ever actually directly quoting it.
Like John spoke scripture, I mean, John's experience with God and the faithfulness of God was so large that he had the capacity to handle a vision like this. And we get frustrated because we want to have biblical sized visions, but we've never been balling all before. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, that's, uh, yeah, man.
Yeah, because I get frustrated. I'm like, man, I really wish I could experience some of this cool stuff, you know, and then it kind of, I just, because Tommy Lee Jones, you can't handle the truth. Yeah, that sounds, that sounds, that sounds like me, but it's like what can, what can we, what do we have the capacity to understand, to see and to experience? And if we've done a crappy job with a little bit of faithfulness, what is there to think that we can handle gigantic large amounts of faithfulness?
Yeah. And so much of the story, these amazing people throughout the church are stories of decades of just small, small, small faithful steps before things happen. Or like I'm reading about a guy who got him e and bounds right now. Man, he had this crazy, cruddy life, but his faithfulness never changed.
And it's like, that's, that's why it's important to think about these things and to realize, and I think someone just is a modern issue, we expect everything, but we, we don't, we can't handle it. We've not done that. We've not done the work to do it to get there. And so we have to begin decreasing the size of our world and being very careful with how we center it, handing as much as we can over to God and recent, allowing him to re center us and him and then us taking steps of faithfulness every single day to increase our understanding of his vision for this world and his vision for our life as part of that.
Yeah. Like, you know, it's been going on in my life in the past year, but you know, I had an event happen and you know, it rocked me and it sent me to a rock bottom for a while. And it's also why I did not do too hot in the ASL. But excuses, you know, it was kind of one of those things that if I look back on kind of my testimony, I can see God preparing me for this event, you know, putting me in healthier and healthier places and you know, getting over some stuff and you know, but I was not where I needed to be because I'm a bit of a slacker and always did the baseline.
And so I was where God wanted me to be, but I could have handled that situation a lot better. And you know, I kind of think back to what you just said is like, not, I'm not ready. Yeah, definitely not right. So next is, I want to talk about the, the beasts for a second.
And how he called them a living beast. I thought that was really interesting that he went to say that they were alive. Yeah. Like, well, is there anything weird about that?
I mean, just these, no, I mean, it's just it's the reality. Would you expect it to be alive? It's doing that? Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying.
But like, like what you say at least, okay, it's alive. And let's just say it's dead, you know, so I'm just wondering if there's like some kind of interesting word or. No, it's alive. Okay.
I mean, it's a yeah. Well, and then I was reading this and the second time I listened to the sermon, you know, it talks about how one of them had a head, just like human face. And I was like, why is there a human face? And the thing is, this is where we get, this is where we get janking.
This is where if you remember the illustration, this is where we start putting toilets in our heads. Yeah, because we try to pass this on our bubble. This is John describing something that is out of this world. And there's these creatures that he's describing here that I think, I mean, Ezekiel also talks about them and he talks about them differently.
This is John trying to put into his words, his experience, but what he sees is like something like the face of a human, something like the face of an ox. So human high soul of creation of God, some of the face of an ox, which that time was considered to be the highest level of domesticated creature. There's a face of a lion, which obviously is not domesticated. Right.
And then the face of an eagle with a bird, I don't know why, I mean, but like all these images are across scripture as well. And so John's trying to explain what these beings are that are around the throne of God, that are protecting his holiness and that are declaring who he is. And so that this is where a lot of times we just get misstepped in revelations. We start trying to get into weird details and semantics and drawing things that actually you're trying to make a drawing of this and like reading way too much into details that John is just cruising through.
There's not a big deal to him. Well, they're saying the big deal to him. Yeah. So I mean, you said that you're saying that these things like represent creation, right?
And so like what I guess this is more semantics, but like they had six wings and the seraphimers were stuck six wings or any correlation there is it just? No, it's just God has a thing for six wings. Well, I mean, not something that I mean, it's like that's not something that he's just that's where you start putting a toilet bowl in your head. Yeah, you start trying to find out what this is this and this is this and this is this and this is this.
You are wearing a big with that. I'm not wearing a toilet bowl. Okay, I just thought that was pretty interesting. And so if the human face and this is, I'm not trying to be more semantic here, but you have the human faces, right?
But then you have the 24 elders who represent, I guess, the faithful, right? The people who believed. So would you say that the human face represents humanity that didn't believe, but even though that they didn't believe they're still praising God in some way, shape or form? It's just creation.
It's just that it's talking about all the elements of creation. You can't talk about creation without talking about humans. Yeah. But that is, I thought about that.
That's kind of an interesting, like, okay, but I gave about 30 seconds of thought. It's like, okay, definitely. Yeah, I was just kind of about this morning. It's like, yeah, it's interesting.
It is. Yeah. Okay. Moving on.
What makes you feel important? What is your crown? Huh. Oh, I think I think that we have to look at whatever whatever we believe ourselves to be good at, that the propensity to become arrogant and in judgy and confrontational and prideful is there.
And I mean, I'll joke as a handful of things. I think I'm pretty good at barbecue. I'm pretty good at reading way too much and recalling random information. I'm not a kind of person who likes to get like debates or verbal confrontation.
And so that's there. But I have to filter myself on Twitter a lot because I'm always like, there's people who want to get into some sort of that. I let it aside one time. I'll tell you what I get.
I'll tell you what I have to watch is knowing that I have the ability, if I really want to open up a can to try to, if I feel like somebody thinks I don't know what I'm talking about, it can get very bad. That's kind of been a trigger point for me for a very, very long time. There's been a couple of times where that's gotten pushed and I've decided to bite and go for it. I think you might hurt with the stories.
I mean, Drew, Causy one time seminary. Yeah, that's I'm not proud. I'm not proud of that situation at all because you get to the point where there's nothing holy at all. It's just about showing your supremacy over somebody else about that.
It's pretty interesting that you say that because I mean, if you get on Facebook or you get on Twitter, I mean, that's pretty much what it is. It's a trash fire. That's why that's why if you know the last six months, I've pulled off of it so much. I just want to be around that anymore.
What am I good at? I don't know. I'm good at technology. I like to think I'm good at communication and communication strategy.
There's certain parts of biblical studies and theology that I feel like I know a pretty good amount about. I mean, there's there's things that no matter what we do, I have to remind Facebook messaging who's there someday. He said, I'm really good at X. Just a part of his job.
He works with his hands for a living. He's like, that's my best bet in the world. How do I give that over to God? I think maybe what are we prideful about?
That might be a better way to put it. What are we very prideful about? Because that's probably a thing that's serving us a center in our lives. Yeah.
And also, it's interesting though, as we go back to our pride and especially if it's something that we're really good at, there's two cases. It might be something I'm thinking of my friends who have athletic ability. I don't. I mean, Jack work out together.
Jack knows I have utter lack of athletic ability, right? You're getting there? No, no, no, no, no. I have no athletic.
We wait left together. They're talking about the folks I have the genetics for. I don't have the genetics for. I just had to grind it out.
But I think my friends with athletic ability, you know, you've done your entire life, you've had that. But there's also folks who have gained something for the first time, and they're equally as prideful of that. I think I got so I think there's a point in time I've had to struggle with knowledge because I've been such a horrible student through elementary and high school and college that when I got into grad school in a pretty competitive program, I don't know how I pulled that off and begin excelling in it. I got pretty prideful over that because I had never been known as a smart person.
I've always been known as a screw up. I always kind of live in a dream world. And so I have to be careful. I mean, there's something like that.
It's a very tough place. I have to rely. I have to realize that because that's also a place where you can I could very easily choose to create a false center in my own abilities to make things happen. Yeah, no.
I mean, like I've heard you say before, you don't like the idea of the rock star preacher. You know, you don't like that idea of just kind of being up there on a pedestal and being a center. I don't. And it was someone who has always naturally had kind of a large personality that makes it even a bigger conflict to try to get around.
Yeah. Because that's not new. I've always just been loud and obnoxious. Oh, I'm not going to agree that you're loud and obnoxious.
Oh, I will say I'm loud and obnoxious. Well, I mean, that's a full of it. So apparently I'm pretty good at that. And then I will say I'm a very good dyslexic.
You are a very good dyslexic. Yeah. All your handwriting is dehorrible. Oh, man, I've got that doctor handwriting.
It's a sign of intelligence. Okay. Yeah, I keep telling myself. I'm going to read an article that says like a messy office is a sign of creativity.
But no, it's not a sign of life. See, I really like those articles that say if you're a bad speller, you're probably smarter than most people. It's not it's not an intelligent situation. That's that's you creating a false center.
And so we see how many problems I have. What's I'm going to have in problems? So it goes, you talked about completely making, you know, in God's image and of the heart. And you know how we talked about or how you know, you're touched by evil and you just feel like you can't be completely changed.
That is something that I mean, I still deal with it. I can look back, you know, four years ago, when I became a Christian and started kind of walking the walk more and see how much of a difference God has made and just who I am and who he's turning me into. But I can still sit there and say, man, there's just something about me that are not going to change. I think you have a false center there.
I have a lot of false centers. Uh huh. And that's what we do. We have to.
We're never not at one. Yeah. Like, that's the thing is, I mean, even if you kind of, and you know what this is, and without jumping to down a rabbit hole and that old school Wesley and I have the entire sanctification, and I believe there's people who have reached that point in state, they're always aware of where their sin can be. And especially looking to a Wesleyan understanding of sin, being a willful transgression of a known law of God.
Um, I'm going to write that down real quick that we will still, uh, we will always be fighting new centers, new false centers. Those won't go away. Uh, but what we'll find is that they grow in a different way and they come into things. It's just a constant gradual pruning.
If we think we have it all together, I'm going to laugh because I'm going to say that you don't. Yeah. I'm just by thinking that. So we're never going to not have, we're never going to not be finding these places where we want to keep things in control.
And what we might find out is there are rooms and places of our hearts that we cannot uncover until we clean out the room and then you find there's another door to the back of it. The least of different place. Does that make sense? Yep.
Yeah. All right. And so next, we're, you know, talking about de-sendering and re-sendering. Um, like does this music TV, like cars, phones, I mean, all this stuff by, for like our attention, like, yeah, I mean, that, right there, like the TV show that you watch, oh, that's, it's whatever it's not hurt me.
Like that actually is, huh? Well, thank you. It's a point for you. I was, what's good for you and what's bad for you.
And, uh, and I think I said this before, my friend Jason Howell and I read a blog post about this. I'll link to it. Um, uh, he asked me this question, um, when I was younger, or something I was trying to justify. I was like, Hey, girl, I was trying to justify to him.
And he asked me the question to make you anymore, holy. And I couldn't answer that. And he said, if it doesn't, if you're having that hard of a time with it, you probably need to not be doing it. And that question has shaped and shifted me over the last 20 years.
And what I found out is that that moves and that changes the older I get, the more my life experience changes, but also the more I'm willing to align myself with Jesus and to give things over to him and that he is more interested in doing, and I said, over the last 10 years, he's more interested in doing some serious hard work in my life than what I would call frivolous outdoor work, yard work. Does that make sense? Yes, but he had to do the yard work to get inside the house. Yep.
So, I mean, basically drawing a parallel between like just kind of things involved around you and then things involved inside of you. Okay. Yeah. No, moving back to the floor.
But but but then again, there's some silly justification stuff like, a couple of years ago, I realized, you know, I have watched a gone order SVU my entire adult life. I just watch a lot of crime television. I finally realized like, man, I got to quit watching. It's just, it's just surrounding me with things.
I just don't want to be surrounded by them. I go on order SVU. I mean, it's a lot of these shows are there some that are more like you look at this kind of sketchy chat, but some of these are like, I wouldn't call them wholesome, but they're definitely like you can show them the middle of the day that doctor's office waiting room. But it's just like the larger content of what's going on.
Like, but very often we watch blue bloods though, because I think that blue bloods is a show that is continuous about good and evil injustice and injustice and right and wrong. And so that it shapes and shifts. I'll say that the things that I consumed that I feel guilty about and convicted and change are drastically different than any thought I had about what I was consuming 10 to 15 or 20 years ago. And so that recentering is going to consistently be moving and changing and shaping and shifting us just about to what level am I willing for him to do that?
Yeah. Is this going to be an openness, a hearing and a response and an openness and hearing and response? And so this is a tug and pull that we do with Jesus, but we're always the primary actuator of it by making ourselves open to him and then hearing from him, expecting to hear from him and then making the conscious choice to respond to what we heard from him. Yeah, you're not going to accidentally fall into Holy Living.
You are not going to accidentally fall into Holy Living. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely something I see in my life that I need to do. Like, I need to, like, this podcast is good for me because I'm actually sitting down reading my bible and critically thinking about it. And it's also really good because I'm not having to answer questions.
It's actually, I get to read it to ask questions, which helps me dig deeper into it and, you know, kind of frame it a little bit better. But that kind of leads into our redneck alignments. Like, do you have any examples? Oh, man, I got so many examples of that.
I mean, it's like half the crap I've messed up in life have been a redneck alignment. Yeah, I got too many to talk about almost. I'm just trying to fix ourselves. I was trying to fix things ourselves.
Not really. I'm God. We're in the cars, we're going in the road at a weird angle. You know, we're going in the right road.
You know what I mean? Yep. So I'm going to get to the same place. Just a lot more tired.
Yeah. So then you talked about deliberate practice of like prayer and worship and scripture. And there are times that there are seasons of life that I actually get into these. But then I just feel like I'm doing it wrong.
Yeah, I think that we can get so caught up in the method and the madness that it's just a long, Eugene Peterson called a long obedience in the same direction. She's just put ourselves in that spot. We just put ourselves in that spot. Just put ourselves in the spot.
Like, I started this week going on in Instagram live in the morning. And just I'll do my devotion really early. And I'll come back about an hour, hour and a half later. I thought about it for the morning while I'm kind of doing everything else around the house and sharing what that looks like.
And it's just, I think it's about just getting just the pattern. We have to begin. We're not going to accidentally stumble upon this. Yeah, that's your work.
And we don't. I mean, I heard from one of my friends earlier this week, they said, I don't have the time to do it in my life right now. And I said, just want to respond, you don't have the time to not be doing this right now. I mean, but my bad thing is that I do have the time to be doing it.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm just lazy. And, you know, I don't know how I made it to college.
So I guess my last point to ask about is scripture and meditation. Yeah. And like, so I mean, you know, we think about the words meditation and we think more, I guess more of a just turn and clearing your mind with with the Bible and scriptures exact opposite, right? It's filling yourself.
Yeah, it's not an emptiness, a feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Any tips? Any tips across like, no, just I would say just read, just read and just read slow. The older I get the more I read slow. And you have to be familiar with if you're not familiar with it, you're going to be struggling.
And so not like you don't know enough, just like you have to put yourself into the slow patterns. You know, sometimes I'll find myself reading the same thing for a week straight. Mm hmm. Have you noticed like the theme, the recurring drum beat throughout this whole sermon has just been slow and consistent?
Yes. So yeah. Yeah. Well, man, I'm out of questions.
Well, I hope this just kind of goes to show you this revelation. There's so much deeper things to this than simply trying to be date centers and trying to that sort of a thing. And so I hope we've got part of any of our conversations that has actually been a bunch of revelation, but it's been about these places that when we happily ask, we think about what's going on, they take us to. So thanks for tuning in.
Share this with your friends. We'd love to hear feedback. So it's pop on comments or find Jack on Sunday. And we will be back next week with follow from Revelation chapter five.
Adios.