Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Ep. 414 - The Danger of Becoming Spiritually Unimpressible

Transcript

Ep. 414 - The Danger of Becoming Spiritually Unimpressible · The Living Waters Podcast

0:52
SPEAKER_02: The power of the cross is never manifested more than when we're connected with what it did to us, with how it transformed us.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: And we walk around possessing this priceless treasure as if though it's nothing.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: Whereas when we first received it, it's all we could talk about.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: It's all we could think about.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: It took everything within us to hold back the tears when we thought of the cross and what Jesus did on it.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: Because it was at that moment we recognized our unworthiness, our utter sinfulness, our wickedness.
1:22
SPEAKER_02: And then against that backdrop, you did that for me.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: And being in awe of that, remembering again, not just something we heard or something we learned, something that happened to us that changed the very core of our being and the trajectory of our life and our eternal destiny.
1:41
SPEAKER_02: So when we connect or rather reconnect with what once filled us with awe, it'll refill us again.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: Guys ready for this?
2:06
SPEAKER_03: You gonna do the Jeopardy theme?
2:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh here comes a lost one.
2:11
SPEAKER_03: Do you know how much money the guy gets that invented that little?
2:14
SPEAKER_03: Does he still get royalties?
2:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I think he's dead now, but he did get royalties every day.
2:18
SPEAKER_03: A lot of money.
2:19
SPEAKER_03: So catchy.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: You know that guy, Let's Get Ready to Rumble, gets paid like$100,000 every time anybody.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: The announcer, dude?
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I actually have to pay him right now.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: I had an uncle, he would get a half a penny for every time the Lowen Brow beer sold.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: Your uncle?
2:36
SPEAKER_01: My uncle.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: No.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: Because he he invented the label, and so that the contract didn't do that.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: Is Lowen Brow still around?
2:42
SPEAKER_02: I don't even know.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: I heard the same about the cat's eye, the guy who invented the cat's eye reflectors.
2:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:47
SPEAKER_03: That really pays to make sure you sign a contract when you invent something.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Harrison Ford, they couldn't afford him for Star Wars.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: No, it was real.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't afford him for Star Wars, and so he did a guaranteed royalty contract.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: So he gets paid so much money for being in Star Wars because he's I don't believe anything you said because one and only one.
3:13
SPEAKER_02: Lion Cage Caretaker.
3:15
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
3:16
SPEAKER_02: Top of Tall Trees Beehive Honey Retriever, Deep Sea Fisherman, High School Bus Driver, or It's a Small World Ride Operator.
3:27
SPEAKER_02: That's off.
3:28
SPEAKER_02: That's immediately scratched off my mind.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what he's talking about.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: How does that last one go?
3:32
SPEAKER_01: Which one?
3:33
SPEAKER_04: It's a small world.
3:37
SPEAKER_02: It's a small move.
3:39
SPEAKER_02: Have you guys seen uh those those uh honey retrievers from beehives up in like oh yeah, they climb the trees and they're barefoot and they barefoot and they got like a thing, they light it and smoke and they hold it with they're like sticking nails in the trees.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: So crazy.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: I think I could go either bus driver or deep sea fisherman.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: I think deep sea fishermen would be pretty fun.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: You know those guys, like it's one of the most dangerous jobs.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: You ever seen those?
4:03
SPEAKER_00: That's why it would be so fun.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: I should have figured out.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: When you say deep sea fishermen, are you talking like those Alaska?
4:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know those shows where they go on then the sh in the storms.
4:12
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
4:13
SPEAKER_02: I could be the cook.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: High school bus driver.
4:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh man, that's that's torment.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: Why?
4:20
SPEAKER_02: I think I'd do a lion cage caretaker and carry a gun.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: Lion cage.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: So you're saying you're in the cage.
4:26
SPEAKER_02: You'd go to prison for life or shooting a lion.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Wait, so you're not a caretaker of the lion, just the cage?
4:31
SPEAKER_02: Well, you gotta go in and feed into it, but you gotta No, no, no.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: You said lion cage caretaker.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, good one.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: You've seen those.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: Where are the lions?
4:38
SPEAKER_02: There's not even a lion in there.
4:39
SPEAKER_02: No, but there's there's videos of lions getting loose and then chomping on you.
4:43
SPEAKER_03: That's like high schoolers.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: Eaten by a lion?
4:45
SPEAKER_03: You know what the worst part?
4:47
SPEAKER_03: About eating my lion, what what are you gonna offer first?
4:49
SPEAKER_03: I mean, if you're if you're in a Roman Coliseum and you're waiting to be eaten by lions, what are you gonna offer?
4:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna start with my left foot.
4:55
SPEAKER_03: Well, you know what I'd do?
4:56
SPEAKER_03: I've I've got a training session on what to do if you find yourself in a coliseum.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: Find it here at Living Water.
5:02
SPEAKER_03: Okay, this is it.
5:03
SPEAKER_03: You bend your head down and run a little wall at 50 miles an hour.
5:08
SPEAKER_03: Because I'd rather knock myself out than be eaten by a lion.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: You're like a fainting goat.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Your strategy is fainting goat.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: Right?
5:17
SPEAKER_02: It's a whole course on it.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:19
SPEAKER_02: I'd love to see it.
5:20
SPEAKER_03: All right, time for the cool classy club.
5:23
SPEAKER_03: Before you do, can I just mention something?
5:24
SPEAKER_03: Does anyone else hate earbuds?
5:26
SPEAKER_03: No, I learn the things that you're in the ears.
5:30
SPEAKER_03: Because I find myself talking to myself when I've got to talk to someone that's got earbuds and I can't see.
5:34
SPEAKER_03: I did it this morning, one of the workers.
5:36
SPEAKER_03: Hey Trevor, how are you doing?
5:38
SPEAKER_03: He didn't even look around because he's got his earbuds and listening to music.
5:41
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't know it.
5:42
SPEAKER_03: She heard every word.
5:43
SPEAKER_03: And it happens.
5:44
SPEAKER_03: But it happens in Huntingdon Beach.
5:46
SPEAKER_03: People walk past, you don't see the little earbuds, they're getting smaller and smaller, and they're just in another world, and you're talking to yourself.
5:53
SPEAKER_02: No, the worst of all now is people constantly talking to their phones, and you think they're talking to you, but they're talking to Siri.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: And that drives me nuts.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:02
SPEAKER_03: What was that about Siri about that?
6:04
SPEAKER_03: Jesus.
6:05
SPEAKER_02: Marcus.
6:08
SPEAKER_02: A cool classy comment.
6:09
SPEAKER_02: This is from Australia.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: Australia, Oz.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: Hey Living Waters, my name is Arabella.
6:14
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to send a thank you to Ray Comfort, Emile Easy Zwain, Mark Spence, and Oscar Navarro for all your biblical teaching and wisdom.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: I've been a Christian since I was 17, five years now, and have come back to this podcast regularly.
6:26
SPEAKER_02: I've grown in my walk with Christ and learned so much and had my life changed greatly through your teaching of the word and even just the little habit changes like slow living, putting away the phone, things as such.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: I love children's ministry and have been deeply praying about and considering missionary work to gospel poor places.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: I trust that God is sovereign over each day and his plans for our lives.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: So I'm resting in Christ with great joy and listening to teaching like yours continually.
6:49
SPEAKER_02: I truly desire to grow and appreciate examples like yours so much.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: May God bless, keep, and shine upon you for every day he gives us till we see his wonderful face, hands, and feet with lots of love in Christ, Arabella.
7:03
SPEAKER_03: Hearing emails like that makes me just really rejoice in the fact that people are so mature when they send us.
7:08
SPEAKER_03: You can tell the maturity, either that or they put it through chat.
7:13
SPEAKER_02: No, you could tell this is genuine.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you could tell it's genuine.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: All right.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Arabella.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: God bless you.
7:19
SPEAKER_02: And uh what you tell chat to put in typos.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you could probably do that.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you just make the sound like an idiot and put in typos.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: Uh thank you, Arabella.
7:29
SPEAKER_02: God bless you, sister.
7:30
SPEAKER_02: Keep going strong.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: You've just entered the quality quotes section.
7:34
SPEAKER_02: Well, quotes quality questions section.
7:38
SPEAKER_02: This is from Brian Gardner.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: Uh episode suggestion is a subject.
7:43
SPEAKER_02: Hello, happy new year.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: Would you please consider doing a podcast where you talk about your quiet times or devotional or prayer times and how you go about them and that topic?
7:53
SPEAKER_03: What I'd like to do is give an example of a quiet time.
7:56
SPEAKER_03: Do one.
7:59
SPEAKER_03: That was that.
8:00
SPEAKER_03: Quick.
8:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
8:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, unless I have quick, quiet times.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know what?
8:04
SPEAKER_02: Let's just have one of us go at random.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: We can maybe from time to time throw that in.
8:07
SPEAKER_02: Uh Oscar, what do you do for your quiet time?
8:10
SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, my morning routine, wake up.
8:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, why don't we do it as a program instead of stemming?
8:14
SPEAKER_02: We've done it over the years on different things here and there.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: But I like to go downstairs, cup of coffee, read God's word, and then I will read either a commentary or devotional on God's word.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: So right now I just repeat reading through Acts over and over again for the year.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh read a commentary, devotion on acts, and then intentionally put the books away and just sit there with the window open and praying and meditating while looking outside.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Pretty simple.
8:43
SPEAKER_03: Fighting mosquitoes.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Fighting mosquitoes, that's right.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Thankfully not in SoCal.
8:47
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I hate that sound.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, meditation is one of the lost arts, I think, of the Christian life.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: Because I think we all can be so task-oriented.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I read my chapter or whatever, I read my this, that.
8:59
SPEAKER_02: But to sit and chew on it, you know, and and let it simmer and and just saturate it's is so important.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one of the other things that I I don't want to skip over, which is something that I started practicing a couple years ago, and it's really been a game changer for me, which is I pick one book in the Bible and I just read it over and over and over again at no particular speed or frequency.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: I I might read a chapter in the morning, and then next morning I might read two chapters.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: I might spend the morning reading the whole thing, but I just repeat it for a period of time.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: It could be six months, it could be for the year.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I've really enjoyed this is because, you know, God's word is like a lotus flower.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: The more you watch, the more it reveals itself to you.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: And so the more time you spend in one section of God's word, the more at first you pick up all of the big themes, the story of God reconciling the world to himself, and then you start diving in, you start seeing the small little themes that are in there in each chapter and in each paragraph and each sentence.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: And so it really just kind of comes together after six months or a year.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: You feel like, okay, I've got a good glimpse of what Acts is or what Romans is or Ephesians or whatever book.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I've I've been really enjoying that process.
10:15
SPEAKER_03: I spend 15 years on one chapter usually.
10:20
SPEAKER_02: Why so little, right?
10:22
SPEAKER_02: That's great, Oscar.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for uh for sharing that.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we all have our different approach to devotions, but the key is that you're sitting with the Lord, you know, like uh uh Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus instead of being Martha running around and and serving the Lord, but not sitting with the Lord.
10:39
SPEAKER_03: Making the coffee.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh coffee.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: You still drink coffee every day.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes with cream?
10:44
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: What's your favorite creamer?
10:46
SPEAKER_03: It's uh that French stuff, I think.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: French vanilla or uh hazelnut?
10:50
SPEAKER_03: It's French vanilla, I think.
10:51
SPEAKER_03: Hazelnut?
10:51
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
10:52
SPEAKER_02: I never look at the it all started here, Frank.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: Life-changing.
10:56
SPEAKER_03: I did an interview yesterday, and the guy said, What's the key to your zeal?
10:59
SPEAKER_03: And I had to tell him.
11:01
SPEAKER_03: Coffee.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: Emile helped to bring the zeal.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: Ooh, that's the deal.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: Bring back the zeal.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: GK Beal.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: And now, a radically revolutionary resource.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: This podcast is brought to you.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: Bang! The million-dollar Gospel of John.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: I still get a kick out of that.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: I st I serious.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: Like, great, you've done a lot of things, most of them failures.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: But this one, this one, Ray?
11:26
unknown: Oh.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: That's true.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: Seriously, there's just something about it.
11:29
SPEAKER_02: The size, the look, the feel, the, and uh, there you have it, friends.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: Gospel of John.
11:34
SPEAKER_03: I remember what Lynn what Lynn Copeland said.
11:36
SPEAKER_03: Did you know what Lynn Copeland said when I told her?
11:38
SPEAKER_03: I said, I want you to design a book, Gospel of John, no cover title.
11:43
SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's right.
11:44
SPEAKER_03: No spine and nothing on the back.
11:46
SPEAKER_03: She said, That's never been done.
11:47
SPEAKER_03: And I said, We're doing it.
11:48
SPEAKER_03: We did it.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: You were hanging out of the side of a van, minivan, hockey.
11:54
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad we have a video of that.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: We do.
11:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:56
SPEAKER_02: You almost fell off.
11:57
SPEAKER_02: By the way, Franz, this lovely box here is the vault.
12:00
SPEAKER_02: The vault.
12:01
SPEAKER_02: And uh it opens up and then you can uh put these in it.
12:05
SPEAKER_02: I see, I think they come in a hundred.
12:07
SPEAKER_03: You don't put them in it.
12:08
SPEAKER_03: You take them out of it.
12:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
12:10
SPEAKER_03: No, but you can't.
12:11
SPEAKER_03: What happened to Living Waters?
12:12
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no, no, no.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: What happens when the vault is empty?
12:14
SPEAKER_02: You what?
12:15
SPEAKER_02: It won't get you revolt.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: Ah, which means you put them in.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
12:18
SPEAKER_02: You can take them out again.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: So it's refillable, friends.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: The Arab was around.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: Never tell an Arab he's wrong.
12:23
SPEAKER_02: Make sure to check it out.
12:25
SPEAKER_02: And don't forget the Living Waters mug, the new new new new mug, from which you can chug.
12:31
SPEAKER_02: Love this.
12:31
SPEAKER_02: Good job, Oscar and team.
12:33
SPEAKER_02: And don't forget having a study Bible, Living Waters TV, all that.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: LivingWaters.com.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: And don't forget the podcast YouTube channels, tens of thousands of subscribers.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: Let's make it zillions.
12:45
SPEAKER_03: Why am I nervous when you hand over to Oscar?
12:48
SPEAKER_03: Was such a weird thing.
12:50
SPEAKER_03: You usually hit it, Oscar.
12:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he did.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: All right, free, young, young.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: Today we are talking about the danger of becoming spiritually unimpressible.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: Spiritually unimpressable.
13:03
SPEAKER_03: Is there such a word?
13:04
SPEAKER_03: Or did you make it up?
13:05
SPEAKER_03: No, it's a word.
13:06
SPEAKER_03: Really?
13:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: I looked it up to make sure.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: It is a word.
13:11
SPEAKER_02: It's not one you use every day.
13:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:12
SPEAKER_02: I'm not impressed by that.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know what?
13:14
SPEAKER_02: I have a question for you guys as we kick things off.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: Is there anyone?
13:18
SPEAKER_02: You.
13:22
SPEAKER_02: There was an axiom.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: Is there anyone well known that comes to mind that that just speaks unimpressible?
13:32
SPEAKER_02: Like someone who just can him.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
13:37
SPEAKER_02: Actually, I wasn't thinking of Ken, but nobody feels impressive.
13:41
SPEAKER_02: That is so true.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: Hey Ken, look, Jesus is returning in the clouds of heaven.
13:51
SPEAKER_03: Oh, we love Ken Ham.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: We do?
13:54
SPEAKER_02: Lawyers.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: You know who comes there who comes to my mind as like the epitome of being unimpressible?
14:01
SPEAKER_03: That guy that did the eye advertisements.
14:03
SPEAKER_03: Ben Stein.
14:04
SPEAKER_03: Ben Stein.
14:05
SPEAKER_03: That's who I met.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: That's who I met.
14:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Ben Stein.
14:10
SPEAKER_03: But that was so brilliant.
14:11
SPEAKER_03: You stop whatever you're doing to hear the most boring guy in the world advertise eye stuff.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: Did you guys ever watch his uh stump Ben Stein's stuff?
14:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: A million dollars of money.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
14:24
SPEAKER_03: Money.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: It was like a game show.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Win Ben Stein's Money, that's what it was called.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
14:29
SPEAKER_00: He was the game show host.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: And you had to like stump him, right?
14:32
SPEAKER_00: You had to like go against him intellectually or something.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
14:34
SPEAKER_02: You know what's funny is the only time I actually saw him impressed was with R.C.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: Sprawl.
14:39
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
14:40
SPEAKER_03: Remember?
14:41
SPEAKER_02: He did?
14:42
SPEAKER_02: You shocked it in Twitter.
14:43
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's worth watching seriously.
14:45
SPEAKER_03: He says, You're a genius.
14:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:47
SPEAKER_02: That's the only thing.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Why did he interview him?
14:49
SPEAKER_02: I have no idea.
14:50
SPEAKER_02: He was doing that.
14:51
SPEAKER_02: Was it for that educated documentary?
14:53
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it was for that.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
14:54
SPEAKER_03: I could say something.
14:55
SPEAKER_03: We went to Hollywood and watched some premier thing.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was that.
14:59
SPEAKER_03: Ben Stein was there.
15:02
SPEAKER_03: He wasn't impressed with my intellect.
15:03
SPEAKER_03: I met him and we just chatted.
15:05
SPEAKER_03: Didn't say anything like that.
15:09
SPEAKER_02: So guys, this this scares me, to be honest with you.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: This subject.
15:13
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
15:13
SPEAKER_03: We should have Ben Stein reading the Bible.
15:17
SPEAKER_03: I think people would probably listen to it.
15:20
SPEAKER_03: Moses.
15:21
SPEAKER_03: Moses.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: He's still around, right?
15:23
SPEAKER_00: I think he's a little bit more.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: He probably haven't heard anything.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's his ashes might be around.
15:28
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
15:29
SPEAKER_02: So this scares me, guys, honestly.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Ben Stein?
15:34
SPEAKER_02: We're not going to get through this podcast.
15:35
SPEAKER_02: I know.
15:36
SPEAKER_03: Is Ben Stein Jewish?
15:37
SPEAKER_02: I think so, yeah.
15:38
SPEAKER_03: Is Einstein and Ben Stein?
15:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: All the Steins?
15:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: The thought of being unimpressed spiritually, unimpressed by the Lord, his glory, failing to be in awe of God absolutely terrifies me.
15:57
SPEAKER_03: Here's a quote.
15:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:58
SPEAKER_03: Every Christian should be awful.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: Ooh.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: Full of?
16:04
SPEAKER_02: Awful.
16:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it it scares me.
16:08
SPEAKER_02: I had a good friend of mine, the pastor, the pastor's a big church, and he was just telling me his his biggest fear is to have a dead church.
16:18
SPEAKER_02: Like a large church that's full of people and they do their thing, they go through the routine, but no life.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: Like not being impressed with the Lord and constantly in awe of him.
16:28
SPEAKER_02: Laodicea.
16:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Laodicea.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: Talk on that, Oscar.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Laodicea.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Spell it.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: You can spell it to get time.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Oof.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I mean, the the scripture warns us of this.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: There's there's a potential for us to well, Jonathan Edwards um did a really good job explaining this.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: He talked about novelty information versus information of the senses or of the heart.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: So what Jonathan Edwards points out, he says we can have the information, the intellect, the doctrine, the knowledge of everything we need to know, and yet lack a taste.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: And he he didn't, you know, Jonathan Edwards, it's important to understand the man in that he wasn't an emotionalism kind of guy.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't saying what we need is sensory overload.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: We need more emotionalism in our faith.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: He talked about it as two different forms of knowledge.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: And so he said, you know, you look at the demons, they have all of the knowledge and yet they cannot taste and see the beauty.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: At one point, I can't remember the sermon that he's preaching in, but at one point he talks about it's like having the shadow of a thing without ever experiencing the actual thing.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: And so a prime example I think of is the Matterhorn.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, we live here uh in Southern California, which means you can drive down the five freeway and look off to your left if you're headed north.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: And what do you see?
17:52
SPEAKER_00: You see the Matterhorn peeking out from Disneyland because Walt Disney built one, right?
17:57
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a small little building that's in the shape of a Matterhorn.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people don't realize the Matterhorn is a real building in or a real real building.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a real mountain.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: It's a real mountain in Switzerland.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: And to get there is quite a trek.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Like you have to, you have to fly to Switzerland, you've got to take the ice train up, then you have to take this exhausting hike.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh but having been there and having laid my eyes upon it, I can tell you it is otherworldly.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: It looked like the finger of God pointing out, jetting out from the clouds into the sky, pointing to his glory.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you just sit there in awesome wonder at this thing, you know?
18:44
SPEAKER_00: And a part of the journey is the difficulty of getting there, the exhaustion, the fact that you're at 14,000 or 17,000 feet elevation, whatever it is, and people are getting sick and you are short of breath, but then you witness it.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: And can you imagine, can you imagine driving down the five freeway, looking over to your left, seeing that version of the Matahore and going, okay, yeah, I got it.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: All right, don't need to go see the real thing.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Right?
19:08
SPEAKER_00: That's the difference between uh novelty and sense knowledge.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Both of them are intellectual, both of them are knowledgeable, one of them are is more experienced.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: And I think, I think a part of the challenge today is that we are experiencing what Charles Taylor called disenchantment.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Disenchantment is this idea that he put forward in which he says, before we were, we were porous.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: It's like we believed the world was full of magic.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm using that word as hyperbole.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: We think it was enchanted, full of God's glory and wonder and goodness.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: And so we looked out into the world to find meaning and to understand our place in it.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: But he says we've become buffered in this enlightenment or in secularism.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: And the buffered self doesn't look out into the world.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: It's disconnected from enchantment, from beauty, from awesome wonder.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we look inside of our hearts to find the magic, to find the wonder, to find the purpose, to find the identity.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: And so we have disconnected ourselves from the amazing wonder that is in this world so that we become blind.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: And this is going back to Jonathan Edwards, he says we've become blind to the beauty and awesomeness of God.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's like trying to explain to a blind person what the color red is.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: They can have all of the intellect ever about the, you know, the kind of rods and light waves, and they can probably explain to you exactly perfectly the science behind the color red.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: But imagine that person gaining sight for the first time at 35 years old and laying their eyes on the beauty of red.
20:49
SPEAKER_03: Oh, red makes you angry.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Go for blue.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: The beauty of blue.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Right?
20:56
SPEAKER_00: It's it's something different entirely.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
20:58
SPEAKER_03: Imagine that person seeing and getting really mad.
21:01
SPEAKER_03: Why I can't get his eyes out.
21:04
SPEAKER_03: Hence the anger of So the the Disney made a movie on the Matterhorn called Third Man Mountain or Third Man on the Mountain in 1959.
21:13
SPEAKER_03: It's a really good one.
21:14
SPEAKER_03: You ever seen that, Pasco?
21:15
SPEAKER_03: It's really good.
21:16
SPEAKER_03: It's about people getting killed on Matterhorn.
21:17
SPEAKER_03: It's great.
21:19
SPEAKER_03: But it yeah, it's a magnificent mountain.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: It is.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: Some guy wanted to conquer the mountain, wasn't it the story?
21:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:26
SPEAKER_02: Is it?
21:27
SPEAKER_02: Is it um close in height to like Everest?
21:30
SPEAKER_02: No.
21:30
SPEAKER_02: It's not a height thing.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: It's just I think it's it's when you see it, it's like it's just so it's such a starch contrast from everything around it.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, it doesn't, it doesn't like gain in all elevation, it's just all of a sudden there.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: It's remarkable.
21:46
SPEAKER_03: Nothing like going there and seeing it, but second best is 80 inch screen TV on HD, sitting back and just drinking coffee.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: You don't die.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, Oscar, as you were talking about that, especially highlighting the whole aspect of, hey, look within, right?
22:03
SPEAKER_02: It reminded me of how so large the world's bully pulpit is in terms of its influence.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: Uh and you see that by the fact that people repeat these mantras, right?
22:15
SPEAKER_02: You hear it everywhere.
22:16
SPEAKER_02: Look within, you know, follow your heart.
22:19
SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, look out for number one, like all that stuff.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: The world influences us.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's one of the key factors that makes us lose our awe.
22:29
SPEAKER_02: We're listening to other voices that distract us from the glory of God and who He is.
22:36
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and you know, Mark, I I'd love you to touch on this.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: You know, as a new believer, uh, I was so enthralled by the Word because I didn't grow up with the Word.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I knew the Bible had a children's Bible, but I I never really read the Bible.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: Bible.
22:52
SPEAKER_03: That made me laugh.
22:52
SPEAKER_03: Then when you said thrilled with the word, I thought, word are you talking about?
22:56
SPEAKER_03: Magnificent.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh, but you're talking about the Bible.
22:59
SPEAKER_02: The word of God.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I remember especially reading the Proverbs.
23:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, whoa, like the wisdom was jumping out at me.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: What happens, do you think, that makes us lose our awe of the word, of the presence of God, of the glories of the gospel?
23:15
SPEAKER_01: I think we uh we drift into the daily grind of life and we don't saturate ourselves in fellowship, in word, and worship, in evangelism.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, Matthew 24, 12, on the other hand, it says, because lawlessness will increase, the love of many will grow cold.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for bringing that up.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think that, you know, God, the promise still remains, right?
23:42
SPEAKER_01: Because God hasn't gone anywhere.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: If you draw near to him, he's going to draw near to you.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: Right?
23:48
SPEAKER_01: That we we can't we we find ourselves where we we can't worship, sing songs of praise and adoration because maybe our our our tongue has been clipped by partaking in course, jesting, uh tasting the things of this world, tasting vile things for which Christ died for.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, you begin to just accumulate all of these things, you put them together, and what happens?
24:16
SPEAKER_01: You're you're just kind of drifting.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying that you have gone into a place of grotesque, adulterous sin, just small little things where you think it's not that big of a deal.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: Right?
24:29
SPEAKER_01: You you have some leisure time, and then with that leisure time, instead of running to the Lord, you you run to something else, a broken cistern that can't hold any water, right?
24:40
SPEAKER_01: We we pay homage to things that just don't matter, and we get caught doom scrolling.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: You think, well, it's not that big of a deal.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: All right, so I doom scrolled for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, six hours, whatever it is.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't have to be vile TikTok videos, it can be stuff that feeds into your algorithm.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, the the Republican Party.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: And before you know it, you're just angry, you're just upset, and now you have a harsh tone with the people around you.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: So for I think that maybe lawlessness will increase, your love grows cold.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: I think that you start tasting the things of this world, and and it just it kind of satisfies, you know.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: I think remember uh Jamie Kennedy, he had uh he had this food show where he would go into these school cafeterias and he would say, Hey, what what's what's for lunch today?
25:30
SPEAKER_01: And here these kids are eating what's called pizza, and it's whatever it is called pizza, cardboard, and they were and they were into it.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: These kids were actually into it, and the kid's response was well, I'm no longer hungry when I'm done eating it.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: And he he was beside himself with that answer.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: Of course you're gonna feel full, but what is it doing to your body?
25:53
SPEAKER_01: And so when you're not filling yourself with God's word, you still will fill yourself.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: DL Moody, fill me up because I leak.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: You're we're continually leaking, so we're continually filling ourselves up with something.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and when you fill yourself up with the things of the world, it's not gonna come come back to you know in a wise way.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: Man, I think you're tapping into something so important, and I don't want us to miss what you said earlier.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: It's not even the things that you look at are grotesque necessarily.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: I think the challenge is um, I heard one person call it novelty saturation.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Novelty saturation.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: So what's interesting is that I was just uh listening to this interview by Christopher Nolan, who's a famous director.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: He's made like all of the latest and greatest blockbusters.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: He just did the Odyssey, he's done some remarkable films, right?
26:41
SPEAKER_00: And uh the interviewer was surprised to find out that Christopher Nolan doesn't have an email account and he doesn't have a phone.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: He is not connected to the internet at all in his life.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, no text messaging, no nothing.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Terry Bradshaw's the same way.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Lives in the boom.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Is that football?
26:59
SPEAKER_01: It's a football.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: Like a quarterback has an announcer.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: You want to get a hold of him, you gotta send someone to get a hold of him.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so they were like, Well, how do you do it?
27:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, he goes, Well, you know, I'm pretty busy, but I I have somebody print out emails that people will send.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: And so then he reads them uh and writes down his responses and hands it off.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: So he comes disconnected.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: So they're like, Well, why?
27:18
SPEAKER_00: Raise it about the raise about the phase.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: But they ask him why.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: And first and foremost, whether you like Christopher Nolan or not, you cannot deny the creative magnitude of this man.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: That's a great he's in his 50s, I would guess.
27:34
SPEAKER_03: Maybe 60s, yeah.
27:35
SPEAKER_03: Um I don't I'm not familiar with them.
27:37
SPEAKER_03: What does he do?
27:38
SPEAKER_00: He's done uh he just did the Odyssey, he did Inception, he did the Batman movies, he did uh Interstellar.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Most of his movies are clean, not all of them.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: Most of his movies are clean, though, which is something that's helpful for many people to be able to watch them.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: 56.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: 56, there you go.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: And so the person is like, why?
27:57
SPEAKER_00: And his response was fascinating to me.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, there's just so much beauty and wonder in the world to keep me busy.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Why would I, or where when would I have time to get on a phone?
28:11
SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was a fascinating response.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: And what it reminded reminded me of is novelty saturation.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Novelty saturation is this idea that we are so overly stimulated that we become numbed to the actual beauty of the world.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: And so I would say it like this uh what porn is to pleasure, novelty is to wonder.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I mean by that.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Pornographic images dilute the brain.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: We know through observing and interviewing people that the more exposed you are to grotesque images online, the more difficult it is for you to experience pleasure in the real world, right?
28:55
SPEAKER_00: That's why, like, we, I mean, God, God was intentional in the way he built our brains when he told us to hold ourselves from these things.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of, he's trying to protect our joy, right?
29:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: So what pornography is to pleasure, novelty is to wonder, we can doom scroll, and it doesn't even have to be anything grotesque.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: We can see Mount Everest, we can see images of Machu Picchu on our 80-inch screen.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is, I know Ray was joking about this, but the problem is that we actually settle for that as being enough rather than actually going to this place and experiencing the thing.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: And so, like our modern digital lives, we are over-stimulated, our nervous system is overstimulated.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: We have no frictionless, we have no friction in our experience that we become numb and bored like drug addicts to fake AI slop images of whatever, of two superheroes fighting, of fake AI images of, you know, of the Egyptian pyramids.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we have so much oversaturation on our phones that we've become numb to the actual real life embodied beauty and enchantment of the world around us.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the strawberry illustration that you asked Vodi Bakum about.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember that.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: I I was blown away by that and and how it how we become desensitized, you know.
30:24
SPEAKER_02: Like Can you can you share the illustration, please?
30:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um he he's just talking about how you know uh this company started to produce strawberry flavoring that was artificial, and uh people became accustomed to it to such a degree that they they thought it was pretty much the real thing.
30:50
SPEAKER_02: And because of that, they missed out on the glories and the beauties of an actual strawberry.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: And it was just so powerful.
30:57
SPEAKER_02: And his whole point in it was is how we become desensitized to the beauties of the gospel because we're we're feasting on imitations and we think they're the real thing and they're not.
31:09
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's really powerful.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: Um, Ray, on that note, I I wanted to highlight uh this this verse from the Psalm, Psalm 51:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit.
31:24
SPEAKER_03: Oh no, no, finish the sentence.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: That's really great.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: Um people forgetting uh the joy of their salvation.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I'll I'll see you go through a little challenge, and it's rare that I see you lose your joy, but but you'll come back and you say, I got my joy back.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: I got my joy back.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: How how important is that?
31:45
SPEAKER_02: Reflecting on our salvation that God has given us.
31:48
SPEAKER_03: Well, the joy of the Lord is just strength, and without the joy, you've got no strength.
31:51
SPEAKER_03: So it's important to maintain that joy and find out what feeds it.
31:54
SPEAKER_03: What we're talking about when we talk about being unimpressed with the things of God is what Oscar touched on, the Ladicean church, leaving their first love.
32:02
SPEAKER_03: That's what's happened.
32:03
SPEAKER_03: We look at a new Christian, what's he got?
32:05
SPEAKER_03: He's got his first love.
32:06
SPEAKER_03: What's his life like?
32:07
SPEAKER_03: He cares for the lost.
32:09
SPEAKER_03: He's on fire for God, wants to tell everybody about Jesus, how they can find everlasting life.
32:13
SPEAKER_03: That's what consumes him.
32:15
SPEAKER_03: But what happens is he matures and he becomes theological.
32:19
SPEAKER_03: Talking about the things of God, the theology, eschatology, and all theologies.
32:24
SPEAKER_03: We mock uh prosperity preaching because it's so obviously an error.
32:31
SPEAKER_03: And we say it's all about self.
32:33
SPEAKER_03: It's all about self.
32:34
SPEAKER_03: But there's a little prosperity preacher in each of us that's about self.
32:39
SPEAKER_03: And that is we don't become rich in money, but we become rich in knowledge.
32:45
SPEAKER_03: And so we mature and we lose our zeal for the lost.
32:47
SPEAKER_03: And what's actually happening is we're becoming like the Dead Sea.
32:52
SPEAKER_03: There's no outlet.
32:53
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
32:54
SPEAKER_03: And the Dead Sea is rich in minerals.
32:58
SPEAKER_03: And you can float in it.
32:59
SPEAKER_03: We floated in it.
33:01
SPEAKER_03: But you can't sink.
33:02
SPEAKER_03: And so you may be rich in knowledge and lose your zeal for the lost, and that may float your boat, but you're dead if there's no outlet.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: And that's the layer to see in church.
33:13
SPEAKER_03: You say that you're rich, but you're poor, you're blind, you're wretched, miserable, and naked, and I'll spew you out of my mouth.
33:18
SPEAKER_03: So hold on to that first love.
33:20
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
33:21
SPEAKER_03: Don't lose your zeal for the lost.
33:22
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's so heavy.
33:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, we we went to Laodicea, guys.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: We did.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: We did our trip, and it was amazing to walk around and to see what was historically.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't amazing.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: It was just kind of lukewarm.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: I was trying to think of something like getting spewed out of Laodicea or something at the airport.
33:41
SPEAKER_02: It was it was an affluent place, you know, but um, but the one thing that was known about Laodicea was it's it's poor water quality.
33:52
SPEAKER_02: And the Lord is drawing on that illustration.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: It's like mocking them.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because the water was brought in from from faraway towns.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: From Colossae on the east, and then from that town where you won that challenge, I think, up in the north.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: We used the hot water commission.
34:05
SPEAKER_02: We gave them yeah, but but that that illustration, you know, of it's like, hey, it's it's not it's not uh refreshing to me.
34:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:16
SPEAKER_02: This this this uh you know lukewarmness of not being a person who's fully in love with me, dedicated, devoted to me, you know.
34:25
SPEAKER_02: One of my favorite books is a book by uh Paul Tripp called Dangerous Calling.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: Every leader, ministry leader, Christian pastor needs to read this book.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: I I just recommended it to a pastor friend.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: I just recommended it to a pastor friend, and he's just on fire about it.
34:41
SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: He's like having his pastors read it.
34:44
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's we read that together.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we did.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: We did.
34:47
SPEAKER_02: It's it's just it's so powerful.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: But uh he um he gets into uh the importance of recognizing the power of remembering who the Lord is.
35:00
SPEAKER_02: And um and he he says this he says, What is the overriding worldview?
35:06
SPEAKER_02: And he's he's taught touching on a psalm.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: He says, it is that every human being has been hardwired by God to live in daily awe of him.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: This means the deepest, most life-shaping, practical daily motivation of every human being was designed to be the awe of God.
35:21
SPEAKER_02: This is the calling of every person.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: This is the umbrella of protection over every person.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: This is the reality that is to define and give shape to every other reality in a person's life.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: What does this functionally look like?
35:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, it should be the thing that in some way motivates everything I do and say.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: Awe of God should be the reason I do what I do with my thoughts.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: It should be the reason I desire what I desire.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: Awe of God should be the reason I treat my wife the way I do and parent my children in the manner I do.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: It should be the reason I function the way I do at my job or handle my finances the way I do.
35:55
SPEAKER_02: It should structure the way I think about physical possession and personal position and power.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: Awe of God should shape and motivate my relationship with my extended family and neighbors.
36:05
SPEAKER_02: Awe of God should give direction to the way I live as a citizen of the wider community.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: It should form the way that I think about myself and my expectations of others.
36:13
SPEAKER_02: Awe of God should lift me out of my darkest moments of discouragement and be the source of my most exuberant celebrations.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: Awe of God should make me more self-aware and more mournful of my sin while it makes me more patient with and tender toward the weakness of others.
36:29
SPEAKER_02: It should give me courage.
36:31
SPEAKER_02: I would have no other way and wisdom to know when I'm out of my league.
36:36
SPEAKER_02: Awe of God is meant to rule every domain of my existence.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: Whew, that's it.
36:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, and and we what we do is sadly we segregate it.
36:49
SPEAKER_02: We we kind of look at the awe of God as the end all and be all in the sense that I'm in awe of God.
36:56
SPEAKER_02: It's like there's no repercussion to it or ramifications or no, the awe of God should spill over into every area of our lives, into all that we do, and then Ray ultimately culminating in what?
37:10
SPEAKER_02: Taking the gospel.
37:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
37:13
SPEAKER_03: That should be our passion.
37:15
SPEAKER_03: The zeal of God's house should eat us up.
37:17
SPEAKER_03: And I've talked about it before, I just want to talk about it again.
37:20
SPEAKER_03: What gives me awe, probably more than anything, and it happens daily, and it's gonna sound really dumb.
37:26
SPEAKER_03: In and out.
37:26
SPEAKER_03: But excuse me.
37:27
SPEAKER_03: In and out.
37:28
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: We've got a sheepskin rug on the floor, and if I lie on that sheepskin rug, my dog will run to me immediately, because she knows exactly what's gonna happen, and she'll roll over and we go face to face, eye to eye.
37:43
SPEAKER_03: And I look into her eyes, and I uh again, I've mentioned this before.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: I say, we had a good time today, didn't we?
37:49
SPEAKER_03: We saw a cat.
37:50
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Oh, it's we went on the bike.
37:54
SPEAKER_03: We went up to that cat, didn't we?
37:57
SPEAKER_03: You chased a rat today, didn't you?
37:59
SPEAKER_03: And I can see that eye processing that information.
38:04
SPEAKER_03: I can see the soul of that dog receiving what I'm saying.
38:09
SPEAKER_03: And I'm a human being, and this is another creature.
38:12
SPEAKER_03: And I just don't think, what a cool dog with a nice eye.
38:15
SPEAKER_03: I think, how could God make a dog's eye?
38:19
SPEAKER_03: It sounds so dumb, and familiarity breeds contempt.
38:22
SPEAKER_03: We see dog's eyes all over the place.
38:23
SPEAKER_03: I'm looking at your eyes.
38:25
SPEAKER_03: 137 million light-sensitive cells in every eye, focusing muscles that move and estimate a hundred thousand times a day.
38:33
SPEAKER_03: And God made it.
38:34
SPEAKER_03: And so we should be in awe over everything we look at.
38:37
SPEAKER_03: When I collect the eggs, I mumble gifts from heaven.
38:41
SPEAKER_03: Gifts from heaven that you can post-fry, scramble, or make into an omelette, hygienically sealed packages that come from an idiot bird that doesn't even think.
38:51
SPEAKER_03: We feed it trash one night, leftover vegetables, and it gives us this hygienically sealed package the next morning that I can eat and it's good for me.
38:58
SPEAKER_03: It's full of protein, gives me energy.
39:01
SPEAKER_03: So eggs send me off into worship.
39:04
SPEAKER_03: Dog's eyes send me off into worship.
39:06
SPEAKER_03: The sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds, Mark's face, everything sends me off into worship.
39:12
SPEAKER_02: You blew it, right?
39:13
SPEAKER_02: When you got there.
39:13
SPEAKER_02: You're doing well.
39:14
SPEAKER_03: First time, first time ever he's ever complimented.
39:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that wasn't a compliment.
39:18
SPEAKER_03: I didn't finish the sentence.
39:19
SPEAKER_03: Oh, oh no.
39:20
SPEAKER_02: Ray, that's so good.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: You know, that and that that's what I'm talking about in terms of being impressible, like a person who who's just blown away by everything.
39:29
SPEAKER_02: You know, I I've often talked about that, right?
39:31
SPEAKER_02: That is, as you mentioned pornography earlier, Oscar, that is the problem.
39:35
SPEAKER_02: It's that we're using features and functions and mechanisms that should cause us to be in awe of God.
39:44
SPEAKER_02: We're using them as weapons against Him, ourselves, and others.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: Because when you're when you're lusting, what are you using?
39:50
SPEAKER_02: Man, you're using these eyes that Ray just talked about.
39:53
SPEAKER_02: You're using a brain that has a hundred billion neurons, more telephone lines and all, you know, more neurons than all the telephone lines in the world put together.
40:00
SPEAKER_02: 200,000 living thermometer cells, a half million pressure sensing cells, three to four million pants sensing cells, all the signals from your eyes, ears, nose, taste buds routed to this brain.
40:07
SPEAKER_02: It's keeping everything working in perfect order and harmony.
40:10
SPEAKER_02: Then you think of just the whole thing.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: How do you memorize that?
40:13
SPEAKER_02: The whole mechanism of intimacy.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
40:15
SPEAKER_03: You gotta think about easy's brain, being able to memorize that.
40:19
SPEAKER_03: It's just a hunk of sponge that's about four inches long, feed it to a dog, it'll eat it.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm saying.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: And it's a computer sense.
40:26
SPEAKER_02: It's a bunch of meat with folds and and mind-blowing.
40:30
SPEAKER_02: And then you think of mind blowing for that.
40:33
SPEAKER_02: And you think of intimacy itself, right?
40:35
SPEAKER_02: And all that that that's involved in that attraction and and and unity and oneness, procreation.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: I mean, but we we're blind.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're desensitized.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, in Mark 6, 3, you know, when Jesus comes to his hometown, he says, Is this not the carpenter?
40:53
SPEAKER_01: Or they're unimpressed.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: Is this not the one we grew up with?
40:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we we saw the way he acted.
40:59
SPEAKER_01: He was terrible at tag, right?
41:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, whatever went through their mind, they were unimpressed.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't think he would have been terrible at tag.
41:05
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't start a doctrinal tag.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: Listen to this quote from Paul Tag Church.
41:12
SPEAKER_01: Paul Washer said, in the last week, how much time did you spend grasping and striving to know God and his word and in prayer?
41:20
SPEAKER_01: Knowing that apart from God and his work on your behalf, you weren't going to be able to make it?
41:25
SPEAKER_01: Oh, see, it's so easy to say, I'm so weak.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: Your problem is not that you're so weak.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: Your problem is that you think you're strong.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: I can prove it just by looking at your devotional life.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: Weakness is not a hindrance to power, weakness is the catalyst to spiritual power.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: Everything that is demanded of you in the New Testament is absolutely impossible for the natural man.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: The right mindset here is in recognize your weakness, it should drive you to God.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: So when you're not in the Word, you're not in fellowship, you're not in worship, it's because you're self-reliant, because a nervous man is a brain man, somebody who knows what he's capable of doing, realize he's not capable of doing anything other than terrible things.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: So it drives you to God.
42:10
SPEAKER_03: When you say I got a quote from Paul Washer, his name is appropriate.
42:13
SPEAKER_03: He's a washing machine.
42:14
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna get bounced around and spat out when you're finished much cleaner.
42:19
SPEAKER_03: But you just expect, if you don't fast for 40 days and 40 nights every day, you need to repent before God.
42:25
SPEAKER_03: Parker.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, I had a roommate, uh Bruce.
42:29
SPEAKER_01: You may you know Bruce and Stacey Bruce.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: I said, Bruce, you know, hey, I just want to say if you wake up in the middle of the night and you you see me crying, you see me singing, you see me dancing over here in the corner, it's not because I'm some spiritual elitist.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: It's just I realize how much I need Christ and I'm calling out to him and crying out to him.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: Hope it doesn't bother you too much.
42:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, uh Rachel and I went to lunch with Paul Washer um maybe six months ago.
42:55
SPEAKER_01: Is this gonna be a long story?
42:56
SPEAKER_02: Very, very, and he was so mad at Mark.
43:01
SPEAKER_02: I had never no, he was um I we I mean, of course, as you would expect, Rachel and I were in tears just hearing him talk.
43:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the guy's all passion, but you know, he was talking and he shared it publicly.
43:14
SPEAKER_02: He is constantly in chronic pain, yeah, like all the time, intense pain, where sometimes you can't even touch him.
43:22
SPEAKER_02: His skin it hurts his skin if you touch him, you know.
43:25
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but he talked about how this keeps him dependent on the Lord.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it keeps him in a place where he knows all he has is Christ and it makes him cling to him even tighter.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, I I had uh texted him uh years ago uh when um text in a word.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: Text.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: It is now and I said, I heard the following story, I share it regularly.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: I just want to make sure that I'm hearing it correctly and I heard it correctly.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: And I shared the story with him, and he called me up to talk about it.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Don't you ever share that story.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: So that was a conversation.
43:58
SPEAKER_03: So what was it?
44:01
SPEAKER_01: Um but it was it was an amazing story to know.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: It was it was an absolutely amazing story uh when he was a missionary, and he said, Look, I I don't want anybody to to know you know about that, but it's it was actually like this, and it was much more amazing than what I was told that it was.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: I have not stopped thinking about Jesus playing tag.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: I would imagine he attacked somebody and then run out in the middle of the.
44:28
SPEAKER_02: Here's the next theme, here's the theme for the next chosen episode.
44:32
SPEAKER_03: I was just trying to say chosen when you didn't want to break the channel.
44:37
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
44:38
SPEAKER_03: No, I'd finish.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
44:39
SPEAKER_03: I'll hit enough.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: Um I was just thinking, re reflecting back of kind of the process and where we're at, right?
44:45
SPEAKER_00: So if Charles Taylor's right that the world has become disenchanted in secularism, what he meant to Say, is even the Christian will feel more removed from God's presence than he wants to be.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: He feels like God is more far, more distant than he actually is because we've become disenchanted with the world around us.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: And so you imagine like this disenchanted human being, disconnected from God's beauty and goodness.
45:11
SPEAKER_00: There's this emptiness.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: And so what do we do?
45:14
SPEAKER_00: We filled it with novelty saturation.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: We filled it with that doom-scrolling experience that we have.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: And that doom-scrolling experience is like this drug that has left so many people feeling exhausted and numb and meaningless and tired.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: And what do people do from there?
45:36
SPEAKER_00: I think some people start to look towards faith, but here's the danger is that we will look towards a sensationalized version of faith.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: We'll look towards churches that have these sensational Sunday experiences that's big and loud and obnoxious.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: Or we'll go online and look for sensationalized Christianity with two-minute or 90-second or 40-second viral, fact-based reels that are just causing us to become overstimulated again, right?
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, we're just filling the void.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: We're just putting the label Christian on top of it.
46:09
SPEAKER_00: So what do we actually need?
46:11
SPEAKER_00: We need to slow down and become more connected with God and the world around us.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: And here's where I know I say this often, but here's where a gospel-centered church that walks you through the gospel every Sunday matters so much.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: To be able to experience the gospel in an embodied way, to show up and confess, to reflect on the written word, to take communion, to worship in song, and to do that in an embodied community that knows you and loves you.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: What it does is it disconnects you from the oversaturation.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: It grounds you in the enchanted, embodied world around you, and allows you to actually experience and taste.
47:05
SPEAKER_00: Remember we were talking about tasting?
47:07
SPEAKER_00: Tasting, not just knowing, tasting the beauty and pleasures of the gospel that the Lord has for us.
47:15
SPEAKER_03: I so identify with what you're saying about doom scrolling.
47:17
SPEAKER_03: And for those who aren't sure what doom scrolling is, it's when you go on shorts and you just keep watching one after the other, and it just You know the Bible says, eat honey for it's good, but eat too much will make you sick.
47:26
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
47:27
SPEAKER_03: And you find the same with that.
47:28
SPEAKER_03: Sue and I often will pull something like that up on our TV and begin watching humorous things, especially with animals.
47:35
SPEAKER_03: And it's so funny, but there comes a point in time where you've laughed and laughed and laughed, and thinking, I just this is not funny.
47:40
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter what happens, you're killing something in you that you're you're oversaturating yourself with it.
47:48
SPEAKER_03: And I think with kids today, the parents just need to take them camping.
47:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
47:53
SPEAKER_03: Just take them camping.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Have you tried it, Oscar?
47:56
SPEAKER_01: Have you tried Doom Scrolling while your phone has been in that black and white mode?
48:03
SPEAKER_01: Have you tried to look at reels while you're when you you know you put your phone in that black and white mode?
48:07
SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: Is it it's hard to enjoy, you know, what we're watching because it's not just black and white, which is what Ray grow.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, you were before television, right?
48:14
SPEAKER_01: But black and white television is is a lot more difficult to enjoy than color.
48:20
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
48:21
SPEAKER_03: Spielberg would think differently when he brought out that movie.
48:26
SPEAKER_01: It's a wonderful life, James Stewart.
48:27
SPEAKER_01: He hated the fact that the colour.
48:29
SPEAKER_03: He was angry.
48:30
SPEAKER_03: He says, do not colorize the and I thought, what's wrong with the guy?
48:34
SPEAKER_03: But there is something special about black and white, especially Spielberg.
48:38
SPEAKER_03: It just was so radical.
48:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
48:40
SPEAKER_03: I've hated that movie.
48:42
SPEAKER_03: If you've not seen the movie, it's got nude to Dina, but you can watch it on that uh.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: That was an artistic decision because there is one scene that has color.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: The red jacket.
48:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I hate black and white.
48:53
SPEAKER_02: Um Proverbs.
48:55
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna say the same thing, pride.
48:58
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's true, because I'm brown.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because I when I said racist, Mark says pride.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: Proverbs uh 27-7.
49:08
SPEAKER_02: A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet.
49:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that that's the issue, right?
49:18
SPEAKER_02: It's in that we we are constantly in awe.
49:21
SPEAKER_02: We're always in awe of something.
49:22
SPEAKER_02: You often highlight Oscar, everyone worships something, right?
49:26
SPEAKER_02: We're all in awe of something.
49:28
SPEAKER_02: If it's not the Lord, we're gonna be in awe of the world.
49:32
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna be in awe of its trinkets, of its passing fads, of its money and its treasures.
49:40
SPEAKER_02: We need to be so satisfied with the Lord that the world is wholly unattraction.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let me let me ask you in a very practical way, then, Easy.
49:48
SPEAKER_01: What do you do to prevent the cross from becoming background noise?
49:53
SPEAKER_02: That's a great question.
49:54
SPEAKER_02: We talked earlier about meditation.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that I've made a goal in my life is to try to daily meditate on the day that I was redeemed, the day that I was saved.
50:08
SPEAKER_02: The power of the cross is never manifested more than when we're connected with what it did to us, with how it transformed us.
50:15
SPEAKER_02: And we walk around possessing this priceless treasure as if though it's nothing.
50:23
SPEAKER_02: Whereas when we first received it, it's all we could talk about.
50:26
SPEAKER_02: It's all we could think about.
50:28
SPEAKER_02: It took everything within us to hold back the tears when we thought of the cross and what Jesus did on it, because it was at that moment we recognized our unworthiness, our utter sinfulness, our wickedness.
50:38
SPEAKER_02: And then against that backdrop, you did that for me.
50:42
SPEAKER_02: And being in awe of that, remembering again, not just something we heard or something we learned, something that happened to us that changed the very core of our being and and the trajectory of our life and our eternal destiny.
50:58
SPEAKER_02: So when we connect or rather reconnect with what once filled us with awe, it'll refill us again.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: And our conscience becomes tender again.
51:08
SPEAKER_03: And share the cross.
51:10
SPEAKER_03: That'll do the same thing.
51:12
SPEAKER_03: Every time you share it, it's gonna confirm your own experience.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, I have a bit of a uh confession to make.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: I've gone out, I don't know, count hundreds thousands plus times of evangelism, um, whether it be uh door-to-door, one-on-one, open air, Friday nights, Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoon.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: I've gone out.
51:33
SPEAKER_01: It's it's endless, right?
51:36
SPEAKER_01: But I've never truly been bummed when I wasn't able to go.
51:45
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I was bummed because I I was gonna miss some fellowship, gonna be able to hang out.
51:49
SPEAKER_03: This podcast goes to New Zealand and Australia.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
51:54
SPEAKER_03: Let it go, I heard.
51:58
SPEAKER_03: Did you not know that?
51:59
SPEAKER_03: I've educated you about this sort of bum is what you sit on.
52:02
SPEAKER_03: You're singing if you ever go then, just be careful.
52:05
SPEAKER_03: Is this happening right now?
52:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this is happening right now.
52:07
SPEAKER_01: Because nobody would have caught that.
52:08
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
52:10
SPEAKER_03: Everyone in Australia, New Zealand's kid.
52:12
SPEAKER_03: Let it go.
52:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
52:13
SPEAKER_03: So I'm just educating.
52:14
SPEAKER_03: If you ever go to New Zealand or Australia, you're gonna preach from a pulpit.
52:16
SPEAKER_03: If you're gonna go to Germany, don't do a salute.
52:18
SPEAKER_03: If you're gonna go, if you're gonna go to the Australian New Zealand, and England, just be careful what you say about that.
52:23
SPEAKER_03: Just say you're annoyed.
52:25
SPEAKER_03: You've never been.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: Instead of saying what?
52:26
SPEAKER_03: Well, annoyed.
52:27
SPEAKER_01: No, what shouldn't I say?
52:28
SPEAKER_03: That other word.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: What's this word?
52:30
SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna quoted you.
52:34
SPEAKER_02: All right, time is running out.
52:36
SPEAKER_02: Mark, finish.
52:37
SPEAKER_03: Um do you still have it?
52:39
SPEAKER_03: But yesterday.
52:40
SPEAKER_03: It's bummed that you said that.
52:43
SPEAKER_01: Believable.
52:45
SPEAKER_01: Are we are we clocking this?
52:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:48
SPEAKER_01: All right.
52:48
SPEAKER_01: Um so I was so saddened yesterday when I could not go do evangelism down at Huntington Beach because I made a commitment to go uh share the preach the gospel or uh get give a message at a local church.
53:04
SPEAKER_01: Which you had fully forgotten about.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: Which I which I had forgotten about.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: That was a two and a half hour message.
53:10
SPEAKER_02: And then you're like, wait a minute.
53:12
SPEAKER_01: I was so, so saddened.
53:14
SPEAKER_01: Um but we're going tonight.
53:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Oscar and I were going down to Hunting Beach tonight, gonna set up a table and do some evangelism.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: But that was the first time.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: My confession is I've gone for many different reasons, and I've been a Christian for 36 years, but I've never been so saddened at times when I'd miss it, but I am so excited right now at this stage of my life to go evangelize.
53:33
SPEAKER_01: And I remember there was this time when when I went with Oscar, and when we were all done that that first Tuesday night, I watched Oscar's body reaction.
53:43
SPEAKER_01: He he went from this, you know, just kind of answering questions, then it was all over, and he went like this.
53:48
SPEAKER_01: And he went like this.
53:52
SPEAKER_03: A lot of people actually listen to this podcast.
53:54
SPEAKER_03: They don't know.
53:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, they're gonna have to get the video.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: I could do this every day.
54:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so let me just qualify what you're saying.
54:04
SPEAKER_03: When you're saying you're going out, you're gonna sit at a table with microphone set up, and it's very exciting and wonderful, and it's kind of new.
54:11
SPEAKER_03: And uh I I just think I can see why you're excited about it.
54:14
SPEAKER_03: If you were going door to door, I'll try and get out of it if you should come with me.
54:17
SPEAKER_03: But doing this is just very exciting.
54:19
SPEAKER_01: We we've a video from last week that we posted has close to a million views.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: With Omar?
54:25
SPEAKER_01: With Omar.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's cool.
54:27
SPEAKER_01: More than a million views.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: He's got unbelievable.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:30
SPEAKER_00: My favorite, you he sent me a comment as someone on YouTube goes, uh Mark did a great job.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: And the other guy had some really good points as well.
54:40
SPEAKER_00: The other guy was me.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: His new nickname is Other Guy.
54:42
SPEAKER_01: Other guy, yeah.
54:44
SPEAKER_02: You know, the beauty of it is the beauty of it is that um, as you've mentioned, uh, I think, Mark, it's it's the it's a fish jumping into the net, you know, and it's awesome.
54:55
SPEAKER_02: We're still you don't need to draw the crowd.
54:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're coming up, they want to converse and interact with you.
54:59
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to worry about a heckler trying to stir up the crowd and uh you know to bring more people in.
55:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, and then it's going and and in in some cases, like you mentioned, millions are seeing this.
55:08
SPEAKER_02: And so it's very exciting.
55:10
SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, so so uh this quote by Tozer, I think, is really good.
55:15
SPEAKER_02: He says, Complacency is a deadly foe to all spiritual growth.
55:19
SPEAKER_02: Acute desire must be present, or there will be no manifestation of Christ to his people.
55:26
SPEAKER_03: Did he say acute desire?
55:28
SPEAKER_02: Acute, A-C-U-T-E.
55:30
SPEAKER_02: Acute, okay, acute desire.
55:33
SPEAKER_02: Um and so, you know, and he speaks about you know being those kind of people who who are longing for the Lord, longing for his presence, longing to be in that place where his joy flows into you and then can flow out of you.
55:52
SPEAKER_00: I I just imagine easy reading that quote for the first time, going, acute desire.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh look, he's talking about me.
56:00
SPEAKER_02: Oh boy.
56:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so anyhow, uh just just want to stir you all up, friends who are listening, that that if you're in a place where you just kind of think of the things of God and you're like, eh, I'd rather uh I'd rather go and uh play some baseball today with my friends.
56:19
SPEAKER_02: I'd rather say that.
56:21
SPEAKER_02: I'd rather go, you know, I'd rather go and and just lounge and you know, veg and watch movies all day.
56:28
SPEAKER_02: Listen, anything that we do that's recreational and leisurely is great and wonderful.
56:33
SPEAKER_02: But if you're starting to see that the things of the world are impressing you more than the things of God, then maybe you've left your first love.
56:41
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you've you've misprioritized.
56:44
SPEAKER_02: And the good news is that you can return.
56:47
SPEAKER_02: The good news is that he's waiting, right?
56:50
SPEAKER_02: Maybe some of you are in a place where you have strayed, right?
56:53
SPEAKER_02: You're a prodigal.
56:54
SPEAKER_02: Remember, the father saw his son from afar off, ran, embraced him, kissed him, put sandals on his feet, a ring on his hand, a robe around him, killed the fatted calf, and rejoiced.
57:06
SPEAKER_02: That is the heart of the father, and he's calling you home right now.
57:11
SPEAKER_02: So run.
57:12
SPEAKER_02: We got an email uh that uh that blew us away of someone saying that they heard Ray in the square in New Zealand preaching years ago, and they heard him say, Come home.
57:28
SPEAKER_02: And that day, the trajectory of their life changed.
57:31
SPEAKER_02: They repented, turned to the Lord, and they're serving God in ministry to this day.
57:35
SPEAKER_02: This was from way back when you preached in the square.
57:37
SPEAKER_03: 40 years ago.
57:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:39
SPEAKER_02: And so, friend, if you're listening today, come home.
57:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's calling you.
57:43
SPEAKER_03: It's a book title.
57:45
SPEAKER_02: Oh, come home.
57:46
SPEAKER_02: All right, look, we got a few minutes, and and uh, I left some space intentionally because we we mentioned this on uh our last podcast, I think.
57:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're and everyone can hear Yoshi.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: I know these gargantuan microphones.
58:04
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's cameras on us, there's mics in front of them.
58:07
SPEAKER_02: We're here, and they think they're like they're they're just somehow invisible.
58:09
SPEAKER_00: Get away with something.
58:11
SPEAKER_02: All right.
58:12
SPEAKER_02: We talked about this poem uh last time, and we I didn't get a chance to read, so I want to read it today because I know some of you are interested in it.
58:19
SPEAKER_02: The Blind Men and the Elephant by John Godfrey Sachs.
58:24
SPEAKER_02: It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined, who went to see the elephant, though all of them were blind, that each by observation might satisfy his mind.
58:33
SPEAKER_02: The first approached the elephant and happening to fall against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to baw.
58:39
SPEAKER_02: God bless me, but the elephant is very like a wall.
58:42
SPEAKER_02: The second, feeling of the tusk, cried, Ha, what have we here?
58:46
SPEAKER_02: So very round and smooth and sharp to me, it's very clear.
58:50
SPEAKER_02: This wonder of an elephant is very like a spear.
58:53
SPEAKER_02: The third approached the animal, and happening to take the squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up he spake.
58:59
SPEAKER_02: I see, quoth he, the elephant is very like a snake.
59:02
SPEAKER_02: The fourth reached out his eager hand and fell about the knee.
59:06
SPEAKER_02: What most this wondrous beast is like is very plain, quoth he, 'tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree.
59:12
SPEAKER_02: The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, said, E'en the blindest man can tell what this resemblest most, denied the fact who can.
59:20
SPEAKER_02: This marvel of an elephant is very like a fan.
59:24
SPEAKER_02: The sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope, than seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope.
59:30
SPEAKER_02: I see, quoth he, the elephant is very like a rope.
59:33
SPEAKER_02: And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long, each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong, though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong.
59:46
SPEAKER_02: So clever.
59:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is very clever.
59:48
SPEAKER_03: What's the ending?
59:49
SPEAKER_03: The elephant stomped on the mall.
59:51
SPEAKER_02: The elephant sat on them, squished them.
59:53
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, the point is uh I think we applied it very much.
59:56
SPEAKER_02: Perspective.
59:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, know all of the attributes of God.
59:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_02: Don't hone in on one only.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_02: God is multifaceted, he's multitudinous.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's nutty guys.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: That poem is often referenced by um atheists and people who would hold like the coexist sign.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: They'd basically go, you know, all of these religions, um, the Muslim, the Christian, the Buddhist, you guys are all these blind men.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, pulling at, trying to tug at God, and all of you are wrong, but touching at something.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: So sort of like this coexist model.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: And Timothy Keller does such a good job dismantling this in his book, um, Reason for God, in which he says that perspective puts an emphasis on the author.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: The author is the observer who now knows that everybody's wrong and they are right.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: And so then he goes on to point out that the secular essentially is saying the same thing that the Christian is, in which they're making the same claim.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_00: Everyone else is wrong.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: This is the truth.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_00: Wow, it's just a new form of religion, isn't that good?
1:01:06
SPEAKER_02: Wow, good, very insightful.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_02: All right, for real, there you have it.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_02: Don't forget the million dollar bill gospel of John and the vault, so you can re-vault when it gets empty.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_02: Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_02: Podcast at LivingWaters.com with your thoughts and especially questions.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, for those of you that are out and about in different places, we want to hear from you.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_02: Wherever you're listening, uh, we want to be sure to connect with you.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_02: And so please be sure to reach out and email us there.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for joining us, friends.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_02: We'll see you here next time on the Living Waters podcast, where we have no idea what we're doing.