Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / August 26, 2026
Transcript
- Greg: Greetings and hello to everyone. It is Wednesday, August 26th. I'm your host, Greg Miller, and this is the latest episode of Beliefs, Ballots, and Bulldogs. Our ⁓ our Georgia themed question of the day is ⁓ kind of what's the most Georgia thing about this team? What's what's that identifying character characteristic, so to speak? ⁓ not the best player, the biggest concern, not any the things we've talked about, the toughest game, but but what just feels like the most Georgia thing about this particular team? Is it You know, you can look at the tight end room where we've just been recruiting out of our, you know, what's and just big bodies, great athletes, just matchup problems. It it it feels like Georgia has focused on tight ends and making tight ends part of an identifying characteristic of the program. And you could say that that is that is a Georgia thing. Could be the defense. Obviously, Georgia is known as a defensive defensive program. Young talent everywhere, speed all over the field. And and certainly that expectation that that eventually if you're a defensive player at Georgia, you're gonna turn into a problem. ⁓ Georgia is a a defensive first mentality, and so that's an identifying characteristic of this team. It could be the running back room, just super depth, you know, maybe not, maybe not that true alpha, but just a wave of guys that can wear you out. Could be the offensive line or the defensive line. We know Kirby believes, hey, Georgia football is built in the trenches. It it all starts up front, you know. Or look at the secondary, Ellis Robinson, KJ Bolden, some of the young kids, some of the transfers, just a bunch of talented kids who that you know can bring some swagger back there. But but for me, I think when I look at it at who we've become and I think what's going to be one of the identifying characteristics or traits of this year's team, it's really gonna be more about just the overall competition. I I think a lot of the play, ⁓ a lot of the positions, we may not have that true alpha, ⁓ but you just got waves and Depth worth guys that are just going to be competing all year long for playing time. You know, at Georgia nowadays, being talented just gets you in the building. It doesn't even get you on the field. You can be a big-time recruit, but you're still going to have to fight. You can be a veteran or a leader, and you're still going to have to earn your PT. You may flash in camp or show some things in practice, but hey, you got to prove it on Saturday with the lights on. That's Georgia football now: depth, pressure, competition. Ain't no free snaps, no comfort for easy body, no easy path. Your your position is not secure. And honestly, I I love that that's where Kirby has this program right now. The the standard is so high that good and sometimes even great players are still fighting for to prove themselves and become trusted players. So that's that's my opinion, dog phase. I I love the competition I think this year's team is gonna be gonna be dealing with internally just all year long. I think people are gonna still be trying to prove themselves that they could step up, but But what do you think it is? Tight ends, defense, the defensive backfields, running backs, one of the lines? Who who do you think is is gonna be, you know, maybe not position group, or but what position group or what characteristic, what do you think is gonna be the identifying thing about this year's Georgia Bulldogs? All right, guys, we get into it's day three of Proverbs Week. And the ⁓ the message today is about the fact that ⁓ the people around you are changing you. And the the Bible knew about influence long before we knew what influencers were. Don't tell me who you want to become. Show me who you spend time with. Show me who you call when you've got a problem. Show me who you text with. Show me whose opinions matter and influence you. Show me who you're listening to in your headphones. Show me who's in your social media feed. Show me who gets that hour of attention every morning. Or another hour there at night. If you show me all of those things, I think I'll have a pretty good idea of maybe not who you are, but who you're becoming. Solomon had figured this out roughly 3,000 years ago before anybody had heard the word influencer. Proverbs chapter 13, verse 20. Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. It's a simple little verse, but man, there's a lot in it. Welcome to day three of Proverbs Week. And today we're we're asking the question of who's influencing you? And and notice notice the way the word is used in this Proverbs of walks. When we read that verse again, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. Solomon's not saying here, whoever occasionally asks a wide person for advice or whoever may follow a wise person online. He says whoever walks. I think that's I think that's important. I think he chooses that word intentionally. Walking with somebody intimates a level of proximity. There's a relationship, there's a repetitive nature to a walking relationship. It's doing life beside somebody. And Solomon says something happens when you continually walk beside a wise person. Eventually, some of it starts rubbing off. You start listening differently, you think differently, you make different decisions, you start seeing situations through a different lens. Ultimately, you become Wiser. But unfortunately, the opposite is also true. Foolishness can be contagious. Proverbs chapter 22, verse 24-25. Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. Did you catch that phrase there? Lest you learn his ways. Solomon is saying that if you spend enough time around certain behaviors, Eventually they will start to feel normal. If you hang around angry people long enough, you're going to become angrier. If you hang around cynical people, you will become cynical and everything will start to look terrible. Hang around people that like to gossip, and soon you will be talking about everybody else's business too. Hang around people who disrespect their spouse, and eventually that will start to sound normal as well. If you hang around people that have an obsession for money, Pretty soon you'll be measuring your life by the material things that everybody else has. Hang around people who complain and you'll forget how blessed you are. Because here's something Proverbs understood long before modern psychology started studying social influence. What surrounds you eventually starts shaping you. And most of the time we don't even notice it's happening. Our circle is different now, and this is where things get really interesting. When when Solomon wrote Proverbs, the people influencing you were primarily people you actually encountered. Family, friends, neighbors, people in your direct physical community, people you walked beside, as he said. But today sometimes the most influential people are are people you've never met, people who live thousands of miles away, and those people can spend hours inside your head. I mean, think about that. Are you podcasters, YouTubers, TikTok creators? Not all of them are as wise and wonderful as me that you should be listening to. It's people everywhere that you've never shaken hands with, and yet you hear their voices more frequently than some members of your own family. So maybe when we're thinking about Proverbs chapter 13, verse 20 today, we need to, we need to expand our definition of who we're walking with. We all know, we hear this all the time, the the algorithm is discipling you. And here's a sentence I really want us to think about today. The algorithm is discipling you. Like it sounds dramatic, but think about what your feed does. It repeatedly tells you what deserves your attention, what should make you angry, what should make you afraid, what success looks like, what beauty looks like, what your relationship looks like, what you should spend your money on, what you should die, what you should desire, who you should admire, who you should despise. And every time you stop, click, watch, like, share, the algorithm's learning a little bit more about you. And then it's just going to give you more and more of that same stuff until eventually, and we've talked about this on here, you can live inside a world that is specifically designed to just continue to reinforce whatever gets your attention. And Proverbs ask you a very harsh question here. Is any of that stuff making you any wiser? It's a question worth asking. And look, don't give me a pass. Not just because I'm sitting behind the microphone talking about the Bible. Look, check me too. Anything I tell you on here, open the Bible yourself. Read the passage. Make sure what I'm telling you actually lines up with scripture. If something I say doesn't agree with the Bible, the Bible wins every time. Look, Christians know wisdom isn't about finding the right personality to follow. It's about learning to follow Christ. People can help us, teachers can help us, pastors can help us, friends can help us, even podcasts can help us. But none of these people, myself included, should replace God's word and what it can do for you. So I think this is where I think Christians sometimes we can we can misunderstand ⁓ the problem. It's not telling us to get rid of anybody. It's not saying only associate with Christians who already think like you. Jesus certainly didn't live that way. Jesus ate with tax collectors, spent time with sinners. People, Jesus hung out with people that respectable society didn't want anything to do with all the time. He repeatedly went towards the broken people. He loved people who were radically different from him. So biblical wisdom isn't telling us to build a little Christian bubble and just hide out inside of it. Here's the distinction I think we need to pay attention to. Jesus loved everybody without allowing everybody to lead him. You can love someone without letting them shape your worldview. You can serve someone without allowing them to determine your values. You can be friends with somebody without giving them any sort of power over your convictions. You can love people who are heading in a direction that you refuse to follow. Not everybody you love needs to get a vote in who you're becoming. So who does get vote? I think that's something we should all be asking ourselves. Who gets a vote in our life? You know, when you have a major decision, who do you call? When your marriage is struggling, who do you listen to? When you're angry, what's in your ear? You know, when your faith is struggling, where do you turn? Because the wrong person at the wrong moment can tell you exactly what your emotions want to hear. Leave, get even, forget them. You deserve better. Do whatever makes you happy. But a wise friend sometimes tells you something completely different, something you don't necessarily want to hear. Which brings us to another famous proverb as iron sharpens iron. Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17. Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Everybody loves the verse, even seen it on a t shirt. But think about what sharpening of iron actually involves. It involves friction. The people who make you better aren't always the people who make you comfortable. A real friend celebrates you, encourages you, supports you. But sometimes a real friend also will pull you aside and say, brother, I think you're wrong here. You're not treating her right. You need to apologize. You're drinking too much. You need to become better. You're making bad decisions. You need to get back in church. You need to get your priorities right. Those conversations aren't fun, but that's sharpening. And if God has put somebody in your life who loves you enough to tell you the truth when everybody else is applauding your mistakes, don't run that person off. That's a gift. Now let's turn the whole thing around. We've spent the entire episode asking who's influencing you? Who's in your circle? Who's filling your feed? Who's getting your attention? Who gets a vote in your life? We ask. But there's another question that's buried inside of this. And it might be even a little bit more uncomfortable when we turn it around on this. If walking with wise people makes someone wiser, what happens to people when they walk with you? Think about it. Maybe instead of auditing everybody else all the time, maybe we need to be auditing ourselves. What kind of influencer are we? What happens to our spouse because they walk through this life right beside us? What happens to your children that you're raising? What happens to your friends, your coworkers, your teammates, the people that you lead when you enter a room? What arrives with you? Is it peace, wisdom, encouragement, joy, integrity, faith? Or when you arrive in that room, does it bring drama, anger, gossip, complaining, cynicism, temptation? Do people become better because you're in their lives? That's a much harder question than are my friends good influences. Maybe the better question is: Am I the wise person that somebody needs to walk with? Somebody's always watching you, and that's what makes this important. You may be influencing someone that you don't even realize is paying attention. Your kids are watching how you treat your spouse. Your coworkers are watching how you handle the pressure. Your friends are watching how you respond when life doesn't go your way. People notice what you laugh at. People notice what you complain about. People notice how you talk about other people when they're not in the room. People notice how you treat somebody who can't do anything for you, how you handle success and how you handle failure. Whether your faith only exists on Sunday or whether it's something that actually shapes your life. We're all influencing somebody. The question is, towards what? So here's today's challenge from Proverbs. I want you to audit three things. Audit your circle. Who gets access to your life? Are they sharpening you? Are they making you wiser? Are there people close enough to tell you when you're wrong and that you might actually listen? Audit your circle. Audit your feed. Who gets access to your mind? Look at what you're consuming online. After 30 minutes with that content, are you wiser? Are you more grateful? Are you more informed? Are you closer to God? Or are you just angrier, more envious, more, more afraid, more convinced that everybody out there is an idiot? If so, maybe it's time to clean up your feed a little bit. And then the third thing, audit your influence. Who gives you access to their life? And what are you doing with that responsibility? Are you sharpening them? Are you encouraging them? Are you pointing them towards wisdom? Are you pointing them towards Christ? Somebody may be walking beside you the same way you're walking with somebody else. You never know. And do one more thing today. Think about one person who's made you better. One person that somebody, somebody that God placed in your life who you know has sharpened you. Maybe it's your spouse. For me, it absolutely is. Haley Lynn Miller never lets me get comfortable. And I'm grateful for that. Maybe it's your parents, maybe it's a friend, a coach, a pastor, a coworker, just somebody who encourages you when you need it and corrects you when you need that. Text that person, call them. Just tell them. I don't say this enough, but I'm grateful that God put you in my life. Don't wait until somebody's gone to tell them how, tell everybody else how much they meant to you. Tell them now all they can hear. Proverbs chapter 13, 20 says, Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. Three thousand years later, from the time Solomon wrote that, is it still very much true? Be careful who you walk with, be careful who you listen to. Be careful who gets unlimited access to your mind. Love everybody, serve everybody, pray for everybody. But choose your influences wisely because what surrounds you. will eventually start to shape you. And while you're looking for wise people to walk beside, don't forget the other side of that equation. Become one. Become the friend who sharpens. Become the spouse who encourages. Become the parent who models wisdom. Become the person somebody can call when life gets difficult and they know they're going to hear the truth, not simply what they want to hear. Because somebody else may be walking with you. So make sure you're taking them somewhere worth going. That's it for today, guys. Thanks for signing in. As always, get in your Bible, say your prayers, love one another, and tell the truth. God bless.