Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / Wednesday 5/6/26
Transcript
- Greg: Hey, what's up everybody? It is Wednesday, May the 6th. I am your host, Greg Miller, and you are listening to Beliefs, Ballots and Bets. Today we're going to practice guarding the wellspring of your life and that would be your heart. And we're doing this so that what we think and what we do flows from what matters most. Our scripture of the day is Proverbs, chapter four, verses 20 through 23. Proverbs tells us, My son, pay attention to what I say. Turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them and health to one's whole body. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. It's pretty straightforward. Whatever is inside of you is what will come out. And often it's... I love the old analogy of it's a cup, whatever you pour into that cup, when things get a little bumpy and things start sloshing around, what spills out of that cup is what was poured into it. And that's why it is so, so crucial that we're careful and we're attentive to what we ingest, what we consume, and things of that nature. The verse sort of refrains our spiritual formation in kind of an upstream work, so to speak. It is... instead of fixing our behaviors, we're trying to steward the interior things that lead to those behaviors, our affections and our narratives and our orienting desires. you know, it's essentially, it's our heart map. It's what do we prize and then what do we rehearse? And those become our dominant stories and our repeated choices and emotional anchors and things of that nature. If we neglect the wellspring, if we don't... take the time to go back and adjust what we're filling ourselves with, then we may be able to change our behaviors briefly, but we'll relapse. Nothing will ever stick, nothing will be concrete. If we can steward the wellspring, if we can go back and adjust the underlying things, then those habits will stick a little bit and you'll live a more fruitful and bountiful life. We find ourselves often in what you can look for and notice. When we're inundated with focusing on the behaviors and focusing on the checklist and the to-dos, I mean, it often comes across, it's all this impatiency and in a hurry to do everything and you mask it as efficiency, but it's not efficiency. It's just hurried impatience. We see it all the time where generosity is performative rather than genuine and prayer has become a transactional thing where... people are doing it to impress those at the table around them. And it's less about a one-on-one conversation with God. Our public faith for so many people has become shaped more by the image of being a faithful person than their actual devotion to it. We need to focus on practices that get below the surface to reorient ourselves to those things that we're putting out there to appear good. are actually genuine things that are coming out of us and out of our hearts, which will be full of good if we ingest the right things. One of the things I like to do, it's an accountability check, and we all have our circle of people, and what I suggest is block a 30-minute time to have a little chat with a good friend of yours, somebody you can open up with, somebody you can be vulnerable with. It could be a phone call, you meet for coffee, you can even go back and forth via text. but have a set time where you're allowing yourself to be vulnerable and be honest. And this can be a good friend, it can be a mentor, it can be anybody that you trust their advice and you know that they care about you and will be coming to you from a good space. But just share with them. Talk about an area where... where maybe you did something that you know was performative or maybe you did something that not even was just performative. Maybe it completely doesn't even line up with your core beliefs or what you did, but you just wanted to put it out there to fit in or something of that nature. But be honest and be accountable and be vulnerable to open your heart's orientation for examination. And David, again, we talked about it earlier, David asked the Lord to seek my heart and know me. And I think that's something we should all do. But let's do it here on Earth too. Let's have an accountability partner that we can go to and create a follow-up checklist, create an accountability check where that partner or that friend or that mentor will come back to you in a week or so and go, hey, here's what we talked about last week. Have you had any more struggles with that? The only way to improve is to practice and to commit to getting better. We see it all the time online, the public virtue signaling and the performative nature of what everybody puts out there. And we know most of it is just, it's a, look at me. I want to be on this side. Hey, I'm a good person because I believe this or I support this. And it's, it's really, it's, it's eroding our morals. It's eroding our heart and it's certainly eroding our true, true motives because we're triggered by the dopamine reactions from the platforms and the way they reward us with, you I talked about yesterday with likes and shares and retweets and all that stuff. And so people act a certain way and they put certain things out there from an image standpoint online. And it's definitely not an accurate reflection of them. And they're just trying to do it so they can get applause and get accommodations and feel loved. And this is exposed by Jesus. In Matthew chapter six, he mentions, righteousness done for praise is not kingdom fruit. If it's not genuine, if it's not truly of God, It will not be supported or rewarded by God. We have to guard our heart by trying to kind of tether our public actions and our public images to our private formation. If you find yourself routinely engaging in something or repeating certain behaviors or posting about certain things, ask yourself, is this a true reflection of who I am privately and who God knows me to be and calls me to be? And if you determine that some of what you're putting out there for public consumption is performative or is for attention or even if it's not performative and for attention, maybe it's actually not a reflection of who you want to be. And you can see that when you put it out there online. And it's not something that you can be proud of or that God would be proud of and call you to be. Well, that's a pretty good sign that maybe some adjustments are in order. And you can only do that by getting in the Word and truly focusing on going upstream and working on the things that are creating these actions and these desires and these behaviors. You can't just focus on tweaking the behaviors. Speaking of adjustments, we don't really want to make any right now when it comes to our sports plays. Had a two and O day yesterday. We had a rain out. Our game gets pushed and canceled. So not three plays, only two yesterday. But after two and O yesterday, that puts us on a nice little 11 and three run. I hope we can keep it going today. We've got three more plays today. We're going three baseball plays today. Milwaukee at St. Louis, give me the Cardinals at home minus 115. I got a chance to take my homer play. Give me the Braves plus 115 at Seattle. And then Toronto at Tampa Bay over seven and a half. Those are our three plays for today. Y'all can excuse the Braves play as a homer play, but if I can get my Bravos at plus money, I'm gonna take my chances. Let's get back to summarize the verse. know, Proverbs is calling us here to guard our heart because everything flows from it. And that is so common sense, so logical. It just makes sense that what comes out of us can only be coming from what's within us. So let's focus on that. And that formation of what's in us, it starts upstream. And if you tend the wellspring, streams will follow and the streams will lead to a fruitful and bountiful life. As always guys, I appreciate you listening. Share, like, subscribe, make a comment, engage with me online if you want to. Any of the social media's hit me up and we can chat. Let me know if you want me to talk about something. Other than that guys, as always, get in your Bibles, say your prayers, love each other, and tell the truth. God bless.