Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / Wednesday 4/22/26
Transcript
- Greg: Hey, what's up guys and welcome back. It's the latest episode of beliefs, ballots and bets. I'm your host, Greg Miller. Today is Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026. We're going to do what we always do here. We're going to talk about the scripture. We're going to try to apply it to some real world stuff. We're going to talk a little bit about some sports gambling and release a few plays. And then we're going to wrap it up like we always do. And we're going to try to be done in about 10 minutes and get you on with your day. The scripture of the day is a really good one. It ties in nicely to yesterday's, yesterday in the book of John, we read through the scripture that we've all heard, you you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Today's verse comes from Romans and I think it applies nicely. says Romans chapter 12 verse two, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. You know, I think the, it seems pretty clean and simple and straightforward, and I don't think we need to overcomplicate this. It's simply saying, you know, don't follow the noise or the trending pressure to conform to things. You know, question things, question sources, question inputs, question everything. And that will help you lead to a more priority-based, ⁓ steady, consistent, and value-driven way of thinking through the world. And that discipline will help you make better choices down the road. I made a couple of notes. There's five kind practical ways to focus on that renewing your mind. The first one is to kind of curate your inputs. that's simply, man, we live in such a toxic society, and with social media just spewing toxic and malicious nonsense everywhere. you know, we need to be careful and we need to limit that. We need to, you know, be, try to avoid those things that try to force us to conform and we need to, along with that, intentionally read and listen to things that we know will build us up and solidify our beliefs. And that's part of it. Like, it's not just avoiding the negative, but it's supplementing that and intentionally pursuing the good. The best good I know comes from the good word and the good book. And that's the holy Bible and the word of God. Number two is to try and reframe our decisions by our actual values and not trends. And that's, again, it's pretty straightforward, but we all get caught up in the kind of go along to get along and while everybody else is doing it. So maybe I should do it as well. Or, you know, even if I'm not really going to participate, let me just keep my mouth shut and not really say anything and. Again, I don't think that's what the Bible calls us to do. If you know something to be wrong, know, not participating in it is a great start, but there's more to it than that. think we are biblically called to address wrongdoings and to try to help correct them. Number three is to practice regular reflection and self-recalibration. This is something that I've really been working on lately, and it's... you know, it's weekly daily time to just reflect and to try to re-center and to kind of think about things you've gone through in the past couple of days or weeks and where you might have been influenced or done things that you know weren't your choices and weren't things you really wanted to do or felt like you should be doing, but you did it to go along and get along, so to speak. I think as you reflect through those things, it will give you a chance to ask yourself and to try to recalibrate, hey, next time I'm in a similar situation, What do I want to do? And I think those types of reflective moments will help you because it's like anything else, the more you practice, the better you get. And so if you spend time reflecting on those difficult times or those times where maybe you caved and gave in on something you shouldn't have, I think this reflective time will allow us to keep that from happening in the future. The fourth one is to stay in a corrective community. This one is easy to understand, hard to apply. ⁓ This is something we all struggle with and this this calls us I believe to Stay in a dialogue and stay in relationship with people who challenge you people who correct you The Bible says as we all know as iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another Well as iron sharpening iron that's little chips and pieces of iron flaking off and that's not always comfortable but it's necessary and staying in a corrective community is around people who you know love you, who you know are looking out for you. And so that when those corrective moments come, you can take them as a positive thing. These are not people trying to hurt your feelings. These are people trying to help you. I've heard the saying for the longest time, it's one of the things I live by, know, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. You know, look around you. Notice the five, eight, 10 people that are closest to you and most influential in your life. Those are the people you will become like it's not rocket science. It happens every time. So surround yourself with people who you know, you can lean on in those hard times, but also the types of people who you can accept correction from. And we can all work on accepting correction. I am terrible at it. I take it personally every time somebody tries to correct me. And that's something I'm working on. Number five is translate your beliefs into small and consistent habits. And, and I'm a big believer in, you know, action items matter and actions as a whole matter. ⁓ It's pretty easy logically to think about, know, where the head or the heart goes, the body follows. ⁓ Things we love or want to do, it's easy to get our bodies to do. But I believe that the reverse correlation is also true. I think sometimes that what the body does, the head or the heart can follow. The best example I can give you is when I started my prayer life and now I pray so much every day it's hard to even explain. But at first I didn't know how to pray. didn't understand it. I didn't didn't want to do it wasn't comfortable doing but I made the commitment that every day every morning I was going to start doing it no matter what and it was awkward and it was uncomfortable. But now years down the road, I can't imagine my life without prayer and over time just forcing myself to participate in the activity brought my heart and my mind into a connectivity with that activity. So I can only recommend that and again, as far as if you're not consistently praying, that is the absolute one hard habit. would tell you, do it every day. For me, and I'll share this as a personal thing, my prayer closet is the shower. And so my brain now is wired. Every time I get in the shower, I have at least a brief moment with God. So find yourself a place like that where somewhere, maybe when you first get in the car or whatever it is, find you a place to where it becomes a consistent prayer place to where when you enter that place, your mind says, I need to talk to God while I'm here. And I'm telling you, that little regular habit, if you talk to God regularly, you pray regularly, it may be awkward, it may be uncomfortable at first, but I'm telling you, if you reach out to Him, He will come to you. All right. Well, after we talk about God and how wonderful he is, we're going to get into the degenerate gambling portion of the day. Nobody's perfect, right? Got three plays today. We got a, got two baseball plays and a basketball play. ⁓ we're going to keep it clean. Keep it simple. We were two and two yesterday. You know, again, not, what we want, but it's not going to hurt anybody. ⁓ today's three plays. We've got the Houston Astros. We're going to take them plus one 20 against the Cleveland guardians. Again, this is one of those where my model gives Houston a better than 50 % chance to win. If I can get them at plus 120, I'm gonna take it. The next play is we're going back to the well for a play that burned us yesterday. We're gonna go Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Royals under nine runs. Same logic, they burned us yesterday, but I'm still not impressed with these offensive lineups. I like that one to go under nine. And then we're gonna switch over to the NBA. We're gonna go Orlando at Detroit. Surprised that Orlando got the first win. I really expect Detroit to bounce back and get the win today. But the play I'm going with them going under the total. I think Detroit's gonna try to lock in their defensive intensity. I think both of these teams are gonna try to slow it down. think Orlando, having gotten the game one win, is gonna try to just hang around in this one to see if they can find a way to sneak up and get that 2-0 lead. And so I think they're just gonna try to keep it closed. I think it'll be a slow pace. Give me the under 2.18 and a half in that. So guys, as we get back and we're wrapping things up, remember that Romans chapter 12 verse two, it calls us to a renewed thinking and to not be conformed by the things around us. you know, this is one of those, is a very simple to understand verse, but I think it is very, very powerful and really something I think we should all work on trying to apply. ⁓ We work on controlling our inputs. We work on following... the standards and the core values of our heart, not the latest whims and whatnot that are going on around us. And then, you know, we rely on a documented process. We rely on the truths and the facts that we have seen to be true by living our life. ⁓ Repeated behaviors are a thing. If somebody has consistently shown you who they are, accept what they're telling you. That is who they are. You're not going to change them, but you can pray for them and God can change them. But the big thing is control what you can control. Don't get caught up in all the poisonous and malicious information and the toxic energy that is out there to try to make you spiral out of control. When you feel it happening, shut it down, get in the Word or say a prayer. That's what I do. All right, guys, let's have a great day. Hopefully we'll go 3-0 and we'll have some good news to report tomorrow. As always, get in your Bible, say your prayers, love each other and tell the truth. God bless. This is Greg Miller.