Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / September 18, 2026
Transcript
- Greg: What's up, dog fans? It is Friday, September 18th, and ⁓ well we have talked enough, we have analyzed enough, we have wondered long enough how good Gunner is, how good this defense is, and how good is this team. We're done talking about it. Tomorrow we get football. And more importantly, tomorrow we get SEC football. Georgia, Arkansas, Fayetteville, noon kickoff, which means I have one simple message for each and everybody listening today. Act accordingly and get your priorities in order. Look, get whatever crap you gotta get done today. Get it done. Cut the grass, go to publics, take your wife wherever she's been asking you to take her. Spend some quality time with your children. Tell them you love them. Be present, be attentive, be the husband and father that God has called you to be. Because tomorrow at noon, Daddy's got plans. And look, ladies, this applies to you too. If you're the dog fan in the house, tell that man to figure out his own crap for about that four hours tomorrow. We have waited all offseason for this. First two games were fun: 63 points, 70 points. Everybody got to play, probably even some of y'all. The freshman got some reps. Somebody's cousin got in in the fourth quarter. It was great. But now we're playing SEC football. And there's just something different about it. Road Stadium, SEC crowd, idiots wearing plastic hogheads. And screaming at twenty-year-olds. It's college football. So, tomorrow morning, do it right. Get up, get your coffee, watch college game day, eat something irresponsible for breakfast, put on that favorite lucky Georgia shirt, maybe pour yourself a little bourbon if that's how the Lord leads ya. I'm not here to judge. And then at noon, go dogs. That's it. That's the message today. I'm not predicting fifty points. I'm not predicting gunner throws five more touchdowns. I'm not even telling you that Georgia has something to prove. I don't think this is a real good Arkansas football team. I just want to watch my football team play an SEC game on Saturday afternoon. And I want to enjoy it. We spend nine months a year waiting for these 12 Saturdays. And then when they finally get here, we spend half the time just worrying about the playoffs and worrying about what's happening down the road. Not tomorrow. That's not my plan. Tomorrow we're going to eat something that's bad for us. We're gonna yell at an official that can't hear us. We're gonna question at least one decision made by a man who knows approximately forty seven thousand times as much about football as we do. We're gonna check our phones to see who's winning and who's losing. We're gonna laugh and chuckle when something stupid happens in that Florida Auburn game. And for about four hours tomorrow, we're just gonna enjoy being Georgia Bulldog fans. The serious stuff can wait till Monday. Tomorrow, it's simple. Beat Arkansas. Have yourself a blessed weekend, and as always, go dogs. We've had some rather serious topics and and some poignant messages here lately, or at least that was my intention. ⁓ but I think that's by design. We we live in a tumultuous world, and I I think we need to get anchored in scripture and really figure out how to live biblically in this crazy world. But ⁓ today we're gonna we're gonna change things up a little bit. We're gonna have a little bit of a a ⁓ lighter and more optimistic message, and today I'm gonna share some good news with you. You are in fact allowed to enjoy your life. God didn't give you today just so you could worry about tomorrow. It's Friday and I don't know what kind of week you've had. Maybe it was great or maybe work beat you to death. Maybe the kids have been driving you crazy. Maybe you're worried about money. The economy sucks. Maybe there's something going on in your marriage that you're just trying to get through. Maybe you've got a major decision hanging over your head. Maybe for you, Monday is already sitting somewhere in the back of your mind, just waiting on you. But today I want to give you a little bit of a different message, and it's not terribly complicated. It's nothing particularly heavy. I just want to remind you of something that I think a lot of us, and myself included at times, I think we occasionally forget. You're allowed to enjoy life. Seriously, you are. God didn't put you on this earth merely to survive it. And he didn't give you today just so you could spend it worrying about tomorrow. Sometimes you're allowed to just have a good day. I think as Christians, sometimes we get a little bit weird about enjoyment. You know, we it's easy to understand the biblical sacrifice and discipline, and we understand suffering, and we understand denying ourselves for him. We understand that this world isn't our ultimate home. All of that is true. But if we're not Careful, we can start acting like anything we genuinely enjoyed must somehow be spiritually suspicious. You had fun? ⁓ you better repent. You took an afternoon off, you lazy devil. You ate a great meal and enjoyed it. You're a total glutton. You played golf? Well, okay, on that one, depending on how you play, there might actually be some repentance necessary for a round of golf. But you get my point. We can become so serious about being faithful that we forget that God created an Awful lot of things for us that are simply good and fun and enjoyable. And look, the Bible actually talks about this, I think, more than some of us realize. In Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 12 and 13 tells us there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and do good as long as they live. Also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. That is God's gift command. Listen to it, it's right there in the Bible. Be joyful, do good. Eat, drink, take pleasure in your work, enjoy God's gift. It's all right there in the Bible. Solomon doesn't tell us, well, you should feel vaguely guilty anytime you're having a nice afternoon. He says right there to us that there are things that God has given us in life, and we're just supposed to receive them and enjoy them. We go on in James chapter one verse seventeen tells us every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. Every good gift. And and when we hear that, I think sometimes because it comes from above, we naturally tend to think of think about the big things. My family, my health, my home, my job. Absolutely. Be thankful and enjoy all of those things. But what about the little things? What about just a really good cup of coffee? What about the first cool fall summer or fall morning after a brutal summer? When you just sit on the porch and enjoy that coffee? What about a dog that's just ridiculously excited to see you every time you walk back into the room? A a great meal with people you love, your favorite song coming on at the right time, hearing something that's so funny, you laugh so hard with somebody you just can't breathe. And sometimes it's a Saturday afternoon with absolutely nowhere that you have to be, and yes, a full day of college football. I am completely comfortable including college football under God's common grace. Maybe not every officiating crew, but college football itself, absolutely, that's a gift from God. Here's what I think we miss sometimes, and that's gratitude isn't only being thankful and saying thank you for the gift. Sometimes gratitude is actually enjoying the gift. Think about giving somebody a present. You spent the time to pick it out, you thought about them, you just knew that they would love it. And they open it and say, ⁓ great, thank you so much. And then they put it in a closet because enjoying it would somehow make them feel guilty. I mean, that would be strange, wouldn't it? Wouldn't you say, Hey, hey, use that thing. That's why I gave it to you. Sometimes I wonder if if God looks down on us exactly the same way. He surrounded us with all of this goodness, but sometimes we're too distracted, too worried, too busy, or just too guilty to actually receive them. In Psalms chapter 118, verse 24, we're told, This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. It doesn't say that this is the day the Lord has made, so we need to worry about next Tuesday. No, this day, today. And I think that's just something we struggle with because we're almost never present where we actually are. Our body is sitting at the dinner table, but our mind's already at work tomorrow. We're watching our kid play, but we're checking our email while we're doing it. We're sitting on the beach or in the mountains on vacation, and all we're doing is thinking about what's waiting for us when we get back home. It's lying in bed on a Friday night and already dreading Monday morning. So often we are physically present. But mentally we're totally checked out or somewhere else altogether. And I'm gonna tell you that you can miss an awful lot of your life, even when it's happening right in front of you if you live that way. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter six, he talks, you know, specifically about anxiety, food, clothing, worrying about tomorrow, all the things that people worry about. And then in Matthew chapter six, verse thirty four, he says, Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Love that. Beautiful. Tomorrow has enough going on. Let tomorrow handle tomorrow. Monday will arrive, I promise. You don't have to go get it. Monday knows where you live and it will find you. So why spend Saturday morning mentally sitting in Monday afternoon's meeting? Why spend Sunday morning worrying about an email that hasn't even arrived yet? Why ruin a perfectly good moment with a problem that currently only exists in your imagination? We all do this. Jesus keeps pulling us back to today. Not worrying about the future. Focus on today. Now look, obviously that doesn't mean that we never plan. The bibli the Bible routinely talks about wisdom and preparation and stewardship and responsibility. You absolutely should plan. You should pay your bills. You should handle your business. You should prepare for what you know is coming down the road. I'm not telling you to sit here and be irresponsible. We're talking about the difference between preparing for tomorrow and living in tomorrow. And those aren't the same thing. Preparation says, I've done what I can. Anxiety says, now I'm going to mentally rehearse everything that could possibly go wrong for another 47, 48 times. At some point, you just have to have the peace to let it go and hand tomorrow to God. And maybe that's part of what faith actually is. Maybe faith isn't only trusting God when everything falls apart. Maybe faith is also being able to say, you know what? Everything's not falling apart right now, and I'm not going to worry about it falling apart in the future. I'm just gonna enjoy this moment. I'm gonna enjoy this season. And that's so much harder for some of us than it sounds. We're all waiting. We're waiting for the next problem. When things go well, we get suspicious. So instead of enjoying it, we're we're scanning the horizon, looking for something bad coming. What am I missing? I know something's gonna happen. Well, look, maybe nothing is happening. Maybe today is just a good day. Enjoy it. Ecclesiastes come back to this idea repeatedly. Chapter 5, verse 18, it says, It is good and fitting to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in the work God gives us during the days of our lives. Chapter 9, verse 9 says, Enjoy life with the wife whom you love. And I love how incredibly ordinary that is. Enjoy your wife. Enjoy your husband. And by the way, I enjoy my wife. My wife is amazing. Enjoy your family. Enjoy dinner. Enjoy work when you can. Enjoy the people that God has placed around you. Because here's the uncomfortable truth. None of this, this moment, does not last forever. Your kids won't always be little, your parents won't always be here, your friends won't always be available or live nearby. You won't always be physically able to do some of the things you can do today. Seasons change, life moves, and sometimes we don't even realize that something was a gift until it's gone. So maybe don't wait until it's gone. Enjoy it now. There's another danger here though, and the Bible is very clear about it for us. There's a difference between enjoying God's gifts and worshiping God's gifts. Food is good. Food makes a terrible God. Money can be very useful, but money makes a terrible God as well. Sex is God's creation and it's a beautiful thing, but it makes a terrible God. Your marriage is a gift from him, but your spouse cannot be your God. Sports are fun, but they can't give your life meaning. Success can be a joy, but success will never save you. That's the balance. You have to receive the gift without replacing the giver. And ironically, I think we we enjoy things better when when we stop asking them to be God. I don't need football to give my life meaning. I can just enjoy football. I don't need my wife to complete every broken part of me. I can simply love her and enjoy her for who she is. I don't need money to give me the kind of security that only God can provide. I can appreciate what money allows to do without serving as a master. When God stays in his proper place, our gifts can stay in theirs. First Timothy chapter six, verse seventeen has this beautiful little phrase. Paul describes God as the one who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. There it is, again, to enjoy. God is not opposed to joy, he invented it. He's not sitting in heaven waiting for you to start having fun just so he can shut it down and say no. The problem isn't enjoying your life. The problem is when the enjoyment becomes worship or when the pleasure becomes your master. But enjoying something that God has given you with an era of gratitude and without making an idol of it, that's not unspiritual at all. That's receiving a gift from him. And I think some people might need to hear this for another reason. You might be in a really hard season. And sometimes when life is hard, you feel guilty for enjoying anything. Maybe you're grieving. Maybe someone you l you love is sick. Maybe your marriage is struggling. Maybe money's tight. Or maybe there's a problem that you know isn't going away anytime soon. And and then something makes you laugh for ten seconds and and you just forget about the problems. And then for some reason you start to feel guilty about that. Like, am I even allowed to enjoy this when when something else is gonna go wrong? Yeah. Believe me, you are. Joy doesn't mean the pain isn't real. It just means that pain doesn't get to own every square inch of your life. You can grieve, you can laugh, you can be worried and still enjoy dinner with your family. You can be going through something terribly difficult and still watch and enjoy the dogs winning on Saturday. Those things aren't contradiction. Life can contain sorrow and joy at the same time. The Bible does. So maybe that's what part of what Nehemiah in chapter eight, verse 10, is is trying to remind us of when he tells us the joy of the Lord is your strength. Joy isn't always the reward after things get fixed. Sometimes joy is what helps you carry things that aren't fixed. It's different. But maybe you don't have to wait until all the bills are paid. Maybe you don't have to wait until the relationship is fixed or the diagnosis changes. You don't have to wait until the job gets better or the kids straighten up or the problem disappears. But maybe there's something good that God has placed in today, right in the middle of all that unfinished bad stuff. He has placed something in today for you to enjoy. Don't miss it. So as we head into this weekend, here's what I want you to do. Not twelve things, not a checklist, just this. Notice what's good. That's it. Just notice it. Put your phone down long enough to see it. Drink the coffee while it's hot. Sit outside. Call your mom, hug your kids. Kiss your wife more than you have been. Cook something good. Laugh with your friends. Watch the game. Take a nap. Go fishing. Play golf. Go to church. Sit on the porch. Whatever it is. And while you're doing it, just recognize it's a gift. You don't have to turn everything into some giant spiritual exercise. You don't need a worship playlist playing you behind you while you're grilling hamburgers. Just be grateful. Occasionally just look up and say, thank you, God. This is good. Here's what I don't want for myself. I don't want to reach the end of my life and look backwards and realize God gave me thousands of beautiful moments along the way. And I just worried through all of them. I don't want to spend my whole life preparing to live. I want to actually live it faithfully, responsibly, gratefully, and with Christ at the center, but also with joy. So whatever's waiting for you till Monday, it can wait. Handle today. Love the people in front of you. Do something good. Eat something great, laugh, rest, worship, be grateful. And if God gives you a beautiful Saturday, have a beautiful Saturday. Don't feel guilty about it. Don't spend that Saturday looking for something to worry about. Just receive it and enjoy it. Because maybe enjoying God's gift isn't a distraction from the Christian life. Maybe receiving those gifts with gratitude is part of the Christian life. Get in your Bible, say your prayers, tell the truth. Thank God for what He's given you, and remember to enjoy it. God bless and have a great weekend.