Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / Tuesday 4/28/26
Transcript
- Greg: Hey there. Good morning guys. And welcome to the Tuesday, April 28th edition of Beliefs, Ballots and Bets. Just a brief show every day where we discuss faithful steps for wiser choices. I'm glad you're here today. We're going to practice some practical justice, some steady mercy and humble courage. The verse of the day is Micah. It's chapter six, verse eight. And the scripture tells us, he has shown you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice. and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God. This verse is somewhat of a, it's kind of a compact moral GPS, so to speak. Justice and mercy from a loving kindness standpoint and humility in our relationship with God. We need to hear this as somewhat of an operational checklist, not just a call to feelings. It's. doing justice, mean, you know, nudge everyday structures as who gets your resources, who do you use your voice to protect and things of that nature. know, love kindness is asking for an active and organized generosity, not just random kindness, but an actual impetus and a point to it. And walking humbly with God keeps us from becoming self-righteous. It's forming, you know, kind of a three-leg triad of, you know, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God, this sort of triad is something that we can use to apply to decisions at work, at home, and everything in life. And when we run this through these filters of, is this something that increases justice? Does it embody a loving kindness, and is it done with humility before God? And if one of those three items fails and you get yourself a no answer, might be time to kind of reconsider a little bit. You know, the book of Micah, think in this scripture is really trying to frame ethics as something that can be taught and something that God is showing us how to do ⁓ more like an apprenticing way of life, not just those internal and moral feelings. You know, some of the things we can do as to try to apply this to everyday life is, you know, do a justice check when you're in the middle of a decision. know, ask yourself, you know, from a a justice standpoint, who who benefits from this decision and who bears the cost? And is there anything we can do to more evenly distribute those things? You know, at the end of the day, most of us are well aware, you know, long term relationships need to be mutually beneficial. So if things are one sided and not just is not going to last very long. So doing a justice check from time to time in your relationships and in current situations just to make sure things are fair and balanced. It can be something that can be very beneficial long term. Second is kind of an intentional kindness. know, this is not something random, not just an impulse, but something that you know deep down will have some meaning and significance to somebody. And maybe it's a random note to somebody who's been going through something, but do something that is an intentional kindness. And what you'll find is that these... intentional acts become something that becomes habitual for you. And then what I call a kind of a humility audit, and that's maybe after a big meeting or after any sort of interaction that may have gotten a little tense, ask yourself, at what point was I trying to prove something to somebody? Was I trying to prove that I was right? Or was I consistently focused on trying to get the most just and fair outcome and the best outcome overall? I'm going to take a few moments and obviously with the title of this show being beliefs, ballots and bets, the ballots portion was designed to occasionally get into some of the political stuff going on. And that's not entirely what I want this show to be about. I do want the scripture and the word of God and everyday applicable ways to embody that. I want that to be the focus of the show. But with all the stuff going on right now, I just feel like I have to use my voice to talk about this and You know, most of you guys that know me know I'm pretty conservative as far as my leanings. I'm pretty rock ribbed in that case. And you know, if you're like me and you see everything that's going on right now and, I'm sure, you know, we're, all convinced that we're on the right side of all these matters. And it just feels like our country is slipping away at times and people are living in different realities. And sometimes it's even hard to understand. how other people can believe something so vehemently different from what we believe, we gotta be careful here. We can't let our righteous concern and those valid concerns degrade into just a corrosive and useless rage. We need to be clear about things. Some things demand a firm stand, and sometimes you have to stand up for those things, but that firmness must be disciplined, and you have to figure out how to... how to translate that outrage and translate that anger into something productive. Maybe it's a civic act or maybe it's getting involved in a local civic organization or even getting involved in your local government or volunteering somewhere or donate to a local effort. There's all things we can do, grassroots, to use the emotion we feel and the frustration we feel and try to channel it into something positive. We can all put boundaries on on our social media time and cut down on the doom scrolling that just fuels the anger and the emotions. And one of the things that I think is also very beneficial is we all probably know some folks on the other side of the aisle and some of them may appear to be a little more reasonable than others and keep some of those across the aisle relationships and... try to instill a regular habit of communicating with these people and try to speak to them and maybe even have the conversation ahead of time and say, look, we're clearly on opposite sides, but let's try to practice a dialogue where we can both listen to each other without trying to win every single exchange. And let's commit to this and let's just commit to an ongoing dialogue with people that we know we disagree with, but that we know we can keep it civil because that's a practice that we should all be implementing more. Because at the end of the day, we have to get back to the point where we can have dialogue and we can have debate on these disagreements, and it doesn't always lead to violence. And then I think one of the things we all need to work on too is getting back to just a reflective time. The Bible calls us to hold a Sabbath day, and I know that's really hard in this crazy world we live in to take a full day off of anything. But I think it's important to pause and remember that we answer to a higher judge than just public opinion. You know, the anger and the emotion that we feel during these challenging times right now, these emotions need to be sharpened by discipline so that it becomes courage and becomes something useful because left unchecked is just anger and emotion and that's always self-destructive. you you got to remember that we live in some weird times and from time to time you will be called to hold the line and stand firm. But while you're holding the line, Don't forget it's way more important to hold your soul. All right guys, let's get to the sports plays for the day. We've got four plays on the books. We, slipped up a little bit yesterday, had a, had a little one in two day, not ideal, never like losing money, but we're to get back to it today. Uh, the model gave us four plays to roll with today. We're going three baseball plays and a basketball play. Play. Number one is the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cleveland guardians. We're going over seven and a half. Uh, and then in that same game, we're going to take the Tampa Bay Rays plus one 15. Uh, this is one of those where the model gives them a better than 50 % chance to win slightly better than 50%. Uh, but it's a plus number, so we're going to take it, uh, similar there. We're going to take the Houston Astros plus one 20 at Baltimore. Same exact day model gives them a slightly better than 50 % chance to win. I'm getting plus money at plus one 20. So I'm going to take it. And then the final play of the basketball play is, uh, I've never been much of a hometown Hawks fan and I'm not backing them tonight. Atlanta at New York. Give me the New York Knicks minus six and a half. I have felt like New York's just waiting to explode, waiting to have one of those games where they put it all together. And I think this may be the game where New York puts it together and gets a nice double digit victory and gets a covers the six and a half to be sure. So those are the four plays we got Tampa Bay and Cleveland over seven and a half along with Tampa Bay plus one 15 got the Houston Astros plus one 20 at Baltimore. And then Atlanta at the New York Knicks, we're going to New York Knicks minus six and a half. So as we wrap up today, let's remember to run our choices through that list that God gave us in the book of Micah, that justice and loving kindness and humility. And let's apply those things to the decisions we make and the conversations we have. We talked yesterday about motives and... and motives really get down to being honest with yourself. And I think you need to make these things more visible and you need to channel those motives into a tighter relationship with God and allow him to search your heart and really purify where everything that you're feeling is coming from, All right, as always, I appreciate you guys listening. If this is in any way beneficial or fun to you or you just like the sports plays or whatever, Share this, like it, follow it, subscribe, click some buttons, swipe some things, do some things to help me spread the word here. Because at the end of the day, I'm doing this to try to share the word of God. It has been so impactful in my life and I hate that I was in my mid-30s before I found my relationship with God. And if I can do anything to help someone else find a little clarity ⁓ earlier in life than I did, then I feel like that's what I'm being called to do. So as always, I love you guys. Get in your Bibles, say your prayers, love each other, and tell the truth. Thanks for listening.