Latest / The Slippery Slope / Who Do You Surround Yourself With?

Transcript

Who Do You Surround Yourself With? · The Slippery Slope

• 0:10
  Hi, I'm Jay Fallon and you're listening to the Slippery Slope
• 0:13
  podcast. So today I want to talk about
• 0:16
  something simple, but I think absolutely foundational in in
• 0:22
  your life, in your faith, your marriage, my life, my faith, my
• 0:26
  marriage, even the direction of our nation.
• 0:29
  On the weekend I heard Patrick Russell, pastor Patrick Russell,
• 0:34
  I've had on this show before. He said something.
• 0:36
  He asked a question. He said, who do you surround
• 0:38
  yourself with? And it got me thinking, who do I
• 0:42
  surround this surround myself with?
• 0:45
  Because the people around you, the voices you let in, the
• 0:52
  examples you follow, they shape your character, they shape your
• 0:56
  decisions, they shape your future.
• 0:59
  And the same is true for nations.
• 1:02
  The voices we elevate, the leaders we trust, the experts,
• 1:07
  experts we platform, they shape the destiny of a country.
• 1:13
  So I think about two years ago, I released an episode.
• 1:18
  It was called Love is a Choice. In it, I talked about my cousin
• 1:23
  and her husband. There are two people who had a
• 1:26
  who had a massive influence on my marriage, especially in the
• 1:30
  early years. I didn't learn about love from
• 1:34
  Hollywood. If I did, it was all wrong, I
• 1:37
  suppose. I didn't learn from Hollywood.
• 1:39
  I didn't learn from social media.
• 1:41
  Back then, there wasn't any social media, really.
• 1:44
  Not like now. I learned.
• 1:46
  I learned it from watching, watching people who I lived with
• 1:50
  from my, my parents and from my, my cousin and husband who I
• 1:53
  lived with at the time, watching all these other family members
• 1:56
  who were married and who were living their lives.
• 1:59
  So their marriage wasn't, it wasn't loud or, or flashy.
• 2:04
  It wasn't performative. It was steady, faithful,
• 2:08
  sacrificial. The same with my parents,
• 2:11
  steady, faithful and, and without even trying, they
• 2:15
  discipled me. They showed me that love is a
• 2:19
  choice you make every day, a commitment you honour even when
• 2:25
  it's hard, a reflection of Christ's love for us.
• 2:30
  And that example shaped the direction of my life for good.
• 2:35
  It taught me something Scripture has been saying for thousands of
• 2:39
  years. And that.
• 2:40
  And that's not to say that I didn't.
• 2:42
  You know, make some big mistakes along the way and almost screwed
• 2:46
  up everything. But those examples really did
• 2:50
  shape the direction of my life. So as I said this, this all
• 2:55
  taught me something that Scripture has been saying, has
• 2:59
  said for thousands of years. Proverbs 13 verse 20 says he who
• 3:04
  walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers
• 3:11
  harm. That's Proverbs 13 verse 20.
• 3:16
  So who you surround yourself with matters.
• 3:20
  That's what I was thinking after after hearing Pastor Patrick
• 3:25
  Russell say that on the weekend. Who do you surround yourself
• 3:28
  with? Who have I surrounded myself
• 3:30
  with? And who you do surround yourself
• 3:32
  with absolutely matters. Now here's here's the twist.
• 3:39
  Most people today aren't being shaped by family or mentors or
• 3:44
  godly examples. They're being shaped by
• 3:47
  algorithms, influencers, news feeds, activists, celebrities,
• 3:54
  echo chambers. Your circle is now digital and
• 4:00
  the question becomes who is discipling you?
• 4:03
  The Bible or the culture? Because one leads to wisdom and
• 4:08
  the other leads to confusion. So I was thinking from a
• 4:16
  national point of view and asking who does Australia
• 4:20
  surround itself with at the moment?
• 4:22
  If the people around me shaped my marriage, then who was
• 4:26
  shaping our nation? Who were we as a nation walking
• 4:31
  with? Who were the voices whispering
• 4:34
  in the ears of our leaders, our leadership?
• 4:37
  Because a nation is influenced the same way a person is
• 4:42
  influenced. A country is shaped by the
• 4:45
  leaders we elect, the bureaucrats it empowers, the
• 4:52
  experts, you know, experts that we listen to, the global
• 4:56
  institutions that it aligns, it aligns with, and the cultural
• 5:01
  voices it platforms. And right now, Australia is
• 5:07
  surrounding itself with voices that do not value truth, unity
• 5:14
  or biblical morality. We're listening to globalist
• 5:20
  institutions, ideological activists, corporate media,
• 5:26
  cultural elites and bureaucracies captured by
• 5:31
  identity politics. And then we wonder why we're
• 5:36
  divided, why we're confused, why we're drifting.
• 5:42
  Scripture warns us Bad company corrupts good character, says
• 5:48
  that in First Corinthians 1533. If that's true for an
• 5:52
  individual, then how much more for nations?
• 5:56
  Bad company corrupts good character.
• 5:59
  You look at Israel in the Old Testament, every time they
• 6:02
  surrounded themselves with corrupt kings, false prophets,
• 6:07
  foreign gods, ungodly nations, all the things that God said hey
• 6:11
  don't do, they surrounded themselves with these things.
• 6:15
  They fell into chaos not because God abandoned them, but because
• 6:20
  they chose the wrong influences. And I believe Australia is doing
• 6:27
  the same thing. We're surrounding ourselves with
• 6:30
  voices that reject truth, reject unity and reject God.
• 6:35
  And the fruit of that influences everywhere.
• 6:38
  You've got policy failures, social fragmentation, erosion of
• 6:44
  truth, censorship, confusion about morality, division,
• 6:52
  replacing unity. Influence determines direction.
• 6:59
  So you've got to ask yourself a leadership question.
• 7:03
  Who was our leadership? Who was really our leadership or
• 7:06
  who was whispering in the ears of our leadership?
• 7:08
  Most Australians never even think about this and I've spoken
• 7:13
  quite a lot over the years about leadership and where about what
• 7:17
  I see as people who manage. We'll put in positions of
• 7:22
  leadership, but they're actually just managers and they're not
• 7:25
  leaders. They manage a situation, they
• 7:27
  manage people. They don't lead, they don't lead
• 7:30
  people. Most Australians never think
• 7:33
  about this. But leaders are shaped by
• 7:36
  advisers, think tanks, lobbyists, academics, activists
• 7:43
  and international bodies. And if the advisers are
• 7:47
  compromised, the nation becomes compromised.
• 7:51
  If the voices are ideological, the policies become ideological.
• 7:56
  If the influences are globalist, then the decisions become
• 8:01
  globalist. And if the people surround
• 8:05
  surrounding our leaders reject biblical truth, then the nation
• 8:09
  will drift away from truth. It's inevitable.
• 8:14
  But so here's the good news. Just like I chose to follow the
• 8:18
  example of my my cousin and her husband.
• 8:21
  And you know that that episode that I did talking about love is
• 8:26
  a choice, realising that love is a choice and and that choice is
• 8:31
  something that permeates throughout our whole life.
• 8:34
  So just like I choose, I chose to follow that example.
• 8:38
  A nation can choose better influences too.
• 8:42
  We can choose. We can choose leaders who value
• 8:45
  truth, policies grounded in reality, voices that promote
• 8:51
  unity rather than at the moment, they all promote division.
• 8:55
  They all want to divide everyone up, you know, white Australia,
• 8:59
  black Australia, black, all this rubbish.
• 9:03
  So we need voices that promote unity, A national identity built
• 9:07
  on shared values. We're not all going to agree,
• 9:10
  we're not all all going to have the same values, but we need a
• 9:14
  national identity that's built on shared values because there
• 9:18
  will be things, there should be things that we share in our
• 9:21
  values. And we need a culture that
• 9:23
  honours God rather than rejecting, rejecting God.
• 9:28
  And individually, you can choose wise voices, biblical truth,
• 9:34
  people who sharpen you, and examples worth following.
• 9:40
  Because your circle shapes your future and our national circle
• 9:45
  shapes our destiny. Who you surround yourself with
• 9:52
  determines the direction of your life and the direction of a
• 9:57
  nation. So choose wisely.
• 10:01
  As always, this is just my opinion.
• 10:04
  I'm Jay Fallon and thanks for listening to the Slippery Slope
• 10:07
  Podcast. They just.
• 10:09
  Feel the desire