Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / Wednesday May 13th 2026
Transcript
- Greg: Good morning, what's up guys? It is Wednesday, May 13th and you have reached Beliefs, Ballots and Bets. I'm your host, Greg Miller. Sorry for the week off guys, it wasn't intentional. I was not abducted by aliens. I am not a nuclear or any sort of spatial related scientist, so I was not abducted for that either. Truth be told, even here in 2026, I have not had home internet for darn near a week now. Apparently some... some specially skilled driver of an automobile ⁓ ran into a transformer box that AT &T either doesn't have a replicate of or doesn't have the logistical ability to get one here. But finally we're back, we're out of the dark ages, we have internet at the house again and I wanted to say a special thank you to all the followers who reached out and checked on me to make sure I was okay in my absence. ⁓ That's a joke, clearly nobody's listening because I am speaking into a vacuum and absolutely nobody missed me and nobody checked on me. But that's not important because truth be told, this is all just done as my daily devotional and I'm just recording it for posterity's sake and if anybody happens to hear you this and makes something useful out of it, then that's just a blessing from above. I take no credit. That is God's will, not mine. Speaking of God's will, let's get into today's word. We're going to the book of James, chapter one, verses 22 through 25. Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself immediately goes away and forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do. It's a... The Bible at times can be a little tricky to decipher and kind of hard to put into modern terms or really even understand what it's trying to teach us. This verse clearly isn't one of those. ⁓ This is not an overly deep or complicated verse. And thankfully, my daily devotionals seem to understand I'm not an overly deep or complicated guy when it comes to theological matter. So it tends to to send me some simple verses like this. And quite simply, it's simply saying that hearing or reading the word isn't enough. It's habitual doing that is the point. James is trying to reframe discipleship in this case, not as some sort of like one-time dramatic conversion moment, but as an ongoing apprenticeship. It is something we continue to work on. You look at the Word, you act on the Word, and then the repeated doing of these things is what will reshape you as a person. The mirror image shows us how quickly insight can fade if it isn't translated into practice. And our spiritual life can be threatened by this level of passivity if everything just becomes theoretical. Grace remains abstract until it's embodied, until we do something with it, until we commit to things. Practically, this looks like what a lot of us see. You go to church on Sunday and you get these sermon highs where you feel it and you're all in and you're committed. And absolutely none of it translate to anything on Monday morning. None of your Monday decisions or weekly decisions are affected by that sermon the way they should be. Your good intentions from that Sunday sermon, that emotional, that philosophical and theological, biblical high from that good sermon, it doesn't translate into your intentions. And your intentions just evaporate. And that's when we're left with what most people and most professed Christians, unfortunately, I believe to be true. It's a faith that talks well, but truly deep down it lacks the formational muscle to really show itself the way God calls us to. James is calling for us to embody the faith. That's what it's all about. It's not reading it, it's not interpreting it, it's not understanding it, it's applying it. It's doing the small and sometimes costly things, even when the spotlight's not on you, even when nobody's looking. The gospel is calling us to reform our internal character, not just our external outputs. We have to reframe our vocation and services as practice fields for obedience. It's not doing them for the outcome, it's doing them because it's what's going to shape us into the person we are supposed to become, the person God has called us to be. You know, choose something that you can do. Choose a specific little, you know, costly fidelity. Something that's not gonna come easy to you. Something that may actually even cost you a little bit. And it can be something simple. Like it can be taking, you know, little extra time to help a neighbor without them asking. It can be, you know, trying to make an extra care and an extra effort with a difficult colleague or something like that at work. Just something where you're going out of your way and in some small way you're even sacrificing something. to do something you know the Bible would call you to do. And we can focus on that. You can compare that with some micro rituals. Like for me, and I've shared this, and it's kind of a weird personal thing, but I have become so accustomed to whenever I step into a shower, no matter where I am, in a hotel room, in my house, wherever, when I step in the shower, I'm gonna pray. At some point in my shower, I'm gonna pray. That's just a little micro ritual that I have created. And it can be something like maybe you pray while you're brushing your teeth or maybe you commit to five minutes of Bible reading just before bed. Something so that the acts you're doing are not merely professional and performative, but it's doing something to change you inside. And ask yourself the question, am I doing this to be seen or am I doing this to be formed? Let that question kind of redirect your motive. If you're doing things to be seen, you're not growing in the Word, you're not growing closer to Christ in that manner. If you're doing things to have them become rituals, to have them become habits that ultimately form your character and shape you more into who God's calling to be, that's the goal we're after. And it's small things, small things that you can repeat is what shapes people. Most of the holiest and most saintly people we know, just simply went through their day trying to make all of the small decisions to the best of their ability and make all of those small decisions to the best of the way they interpret God's will for them. All right, now on to the plays. We've got three baseball plays today. We were on a pretty good run before the internet cut us out. I think we were 11 and three in our last 14 plays or something. So we did have an 0 and 3 day mixed in there somewhere. So it may be a little off from that. I don't remember the records after a week off, but. Anyway, onto the three plays today. I really like all three of these. We got Tampa Bay Rays at the Toronto Blue Jays, going with the over the total of seven and a half here. Got the San Diego Padres at the Milwaukee Brewers. Give me the Brewers at home, minus 120 is what I saw. And then we're take the Phillies on the road, plus 115 at Boston. Looking to go three and oh, we'll gladly take two and one with a plus odds play mixed in there, but. Three and O is always the goal. Let's hope to have a little bit of luck on this and see if we can get things back on the track we were on before we got cut off. Before you guys shut down for the day and before we all log off, let's focus on this. Let's don't let the insight we receive evaporate just into intentions that never materialize. Let's turn one insight into some sort of immediate. And it can even be a small, even tiny little act, just a one minute phone call, a quick text or a sentence of prayer that you know somebody could use. This is how we allow our obedience to become formative. Share with yourself, like be honest with yourself, share with somebody else what your intentions are and have that accountability partner we always talk to. We're not just called to perform, we're called to reform. And if we reform, then the performance that follows will become more natural and more godly as a whole. Always remember guys, when we close this thing, it's the same thing every time. Get in your Bibles, say your prayers, love one another, and tell the truth. God bless.