The Bible Provocateur
The Bible Provocateur
LIVE DISCUSSION: The Frustrated Will (Part 2 of 2)
What if the clearest sign of living faith isn’t comfort, but fruit? We explore how Jesus’ own yardstick for judgment—feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visiting the sick, and mourning with the broken—reframes every part of daily life. The theme is bold and practical: trust Christ enough to leave the bubble, love with discernment, and let your choices preach before your words ever do.
We get specific about hospitality that’s wise, not reckless, and the subtle courage it takes to befriend people who don’t already like us. From buying a tense coworker a coffee to sending a handwritten card to an adversary, we map out small, decisive acts that disarm hostility. Generosity stretches beyond money into time, presence, prayer, and simple availability. And we challenge the habit of sharing success without naming the Source—learning to say, with joy and clarity, “Look what God did.”
We also set guardrails for digital life. Not every comment deserves our energy. By blocking chronic disruptors and cultivating sincere dialogue, we make room for honest questions and deeper growth. The conversation ends with a vivid lesson from Navy life: when the battle comes, a crew drops its divisions and moves as one. The church can do the same—laying aside petty disputes to serve the mission, strengthen the body, and invite the lost. If salvation changed you, it’s meant to change your world through you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review to help others find the show. Then tell us: what act of bold kindness will you take this week?
BE PROVOKED AND BE PERSUADED!
So we all have a mission to see come about. A mission for fruition. A mission to see others produce fruit unto God. This is where we're all. Christianity is not supposed to be some kind of a selfish endeavor just for you, so that you can feel security in your faith. Your faith needs to go to work. Amen, brother. Fruit is the evidence of God's work in us, in us. Can't say that any better than that. Can't be said any better than that. Fruit is the evidence of God's work in us. That cannot be said any better than that. So, Christians, what are you gonna do? What are you going to do? What is your Christian life like? Jesus spelled out certain things when he told us what the judgment was gonna be like, what the white throne judgment was gonna be like. He said that he's going to bless his sheep and say to them, Welcome into my kingdom, because you have visited the sick, you have mourned with those who mourned. You've given a cup of cold water to someone who was thirsty, you fed someone who was hungry, you've dressed someone who was without clothing. And they're gonna ask, Lord, when do we do all these things? When do we do all these things to you? And he's gonna turn to them and say, When you've done it unto the least of these of mine, you have done it unto me. So, Christians, here's my question for you now. And I always have a bunch of questions, which is designed to provoke thought, hence the Bible provocateur. I want you to think. I want to think. Have you visited someone who was sick? Any of you, you don't have to say it, but have you ever visited anyone at a hospital? Anyone? Have you ever visited someone in prison? Anyone? Anyone? Have you ever fed someone who was hungry? And I'm not talking about throwing your leftover to some homeless guy that stands outside the restaurant. Have you ever invited a stranger to your home? A stranger. Somebody you didn't know. But somebody who you wanted to show hospitality to. I'm talking about people you don't know that you got to know, that you met. You said, come to my house, let me let me break bread with you. I'm just asking this for you to think about it. It is it's there are so many ways to be a blessing to other people. When I say stranger, I'm not talking about somebody off the street and just go, hey, come to my house. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people that come outside your family circle. Someone who already doesn't love you. Someone who you you met and you want to get to know, or you want them to get to know Christ. Everybody is so afraid of everybody. I understand you don't trust strangers. And you don't have to trust strangers, but you do have to trust Christ. And if you trust Christ, he said that our best rewards come from entertaining strangers. But this is what I mean. I don't trust strangers, so I'm gonna stay in my little bubble. I have my own little Christian bubble at home. I have my own little Christian bubble at church, and I don't break that bubble, I'm gonna stay safe. I'm not ridiculing anybody. I'm just saying if you trust Christ, you don't have to trust a stranger. He will handle the outcome of that situation, whatever it may be. I'm not saying go out of your way to go find strangers on the street to say, come to my house for dinner. That's not what I'm saying. People are so literal these days, it's beyond the imagination. All it takes is a little bit of a little bit of discernment. Somebody just said, using discernment, of course, be led by the Holy Spirit. Yes. You may have somebody, a coworker, that you don't like, and you're not really sure you have a good reason not to like them. And that coworker gets on your nerves to no end. That co-worker is always getting in your way, is always trying to undermine you because they don't they want to be more favorable to the boss than you are. And so you have this antagonistic relationship between you and this other coworker or colleague. Did it ever dawn on you to take that person to go get a coffee and say, you know what? What can I do for us to do to be to get along better? What can I do to be a better colleague to you? Have you ever done that? This is what I'm talking about. Have you ever gone to somebody who you know hates you and you can't figure out why? Have you ever offered to them and say, you know what, let me come take, let me take you to lunch. I want to understand what about me you despise so much. I want to earn your friendship if I can, if you're willing. Have you ever done that? Have you ever done that? How hard can it be to show a little bit of Christ's love? Have you ever sent flowers to someone who can't stand you, but honestly sent a nice card that said, I want to quell this problem that we have. See, the whole idea is to make people see Christ in you. Which means that you have to step outside of yourself in order to be effective to someone else. You have to step outside of yourself to be effective for Christ. You know what I'm saying? You actually have to give up something about your personality in order to be effective for Christ to bless someone else. Your free will, as we've been talking about, is never going to make you go out of your way to be a blessing to someone else, especially if they despise you. You will never do it. Your will always makes you rationalize not doing what Christ has called us to do. So for all of those of you who believe that you have some kind of free will that can make magic happen, you can't. You're lying to yourself. You're lying to yourself. Kindness kills. You're so right. Being generous to someone else. I'm not saying generous with just your money. You should be generous with your money. You should be. You should be. If Jesus were alive on earth today, he's alive, but if he were on earth today and he were giving us direction on how to handle our money, people would accuse him of being a socialist. That's what they would accuse him of. But generosity is not limited to just money. How about your time? How about your time? Have you ever called someone that you haven't called or spoken to in like forever? And just said, I'm calling you just because I was thinking about you. You can be generous with your time. You can be generous with making yourself available to provide comfort to someone else. You can be generous in your prayers for someone. Or lunch, or offering to take somebody out to breakfast. You can be generous by sending a greeting card that you wrote with your hand. I was thinking about you, I care about you. You can be generous by mourning with someone who is struggling. In whatever capacity. This is how we take down the kingdom of darkness. This is how it is done. Showing someone the love of God doesn't always mean preaching on 40 videos like I do. It doesn't mean that. You have to like make yourself available for the building up of Christ's church, strengthening it, for providing, making yourself a conduit through which others, people other people who are lost can come to Christ. If your salvation is only about you, you need to question whether or not you actually have it. When was the last time you told someone you need to come to Christ? And you tell them, I know what you're going through. I was there. But this is how I got out of it. This is how I shook loose from all those things that frustrated me. Christ showed me a better way. When was the last time you've done this as a Christian? Because if you haven't questioned whether or not you are a Christian, you should. It's kicking back. Came into your heart just to chill, not to get busy. Does that sound like how God works to you? I don't understand selfish Christianity. I don't understand people who are always making excuses why they can't speak up or stand up for Christ. Oh, I can't because this is not the right place. I can't talk about him at work. I can't talk about him around my homies. I can't talk about him around this girl because she might not be interested in me if I bring up Christ. If she's not interested in you because you bring up Christ, you shouldn't be interested in her. And vice versa. This is what people do. You make excuses because you don't want to talk about the Lord, what he's done for you. If he's done anything for you, how could you not want to share that with other people? Listen, my daughters, whenever something good happens to them, they got 40 people on a text message sending it to everybody, telling everybody what happened. Job promotion, this or that, got a new car, got a new house, whatever. And it's good. It's good. But yet, so many of you, the best thing in your life that has ever happened to you is when Christ saved you from your sins. When you turned to Christ and you felt that goodness wash over you, when you felt that salvation, that blood of Christ wash over you, the best thing that ever happened to you, and you don't want to talk about it. Because you don't want to hurt nobody's feelings. If somebody gave you a gift as sizable as salvation, as magnanimous as what God has given us, how would you not want to talk about it? I don't understand that mentality. And don't give me that, well, I'm just a quiet person, or I'm not the mouth on the body of Christ. I hate when people take that passage and start saying, well, no, I'm not a mouth, I'm just a foot. I just walk around and be Christian. I don't really do anything, I just walk around. Thinking that people are gonna just look at you and go, wow, what a Christian. Wow. Look at them. So holy. Walking around all Christian like. You know what? I'm gonna return for my sins now because that person just looks so godly. See what I mean? So when you have what happened to you, when you have what Christ, when you understand what Christ has really forgiven you for, and what all of that means, how can you be silent? How is that possible? You know, you get that new job or you get that new car. You tell all your friends, hey, look, I finally did it. I finally got it. I got the promotion I wanted, I got the job, I got the pay raise, I got the car, I got the house, I got the new, you know, I got the new baby. We're having a baby. You know, all these blessings you tell everybody about. You have all these blessings that God has given you that you tell everyone about, but you focus on the blessing when you tell people, but you don't talk about the one who did the blessing. How often do you say to somebody when something happens to you, look what God did for me. Look what Christ just gave me. Look what I've just been entrusted with. He gave me this mansion with 20 rooms. Now I can have all my family come over there and look out after all of them. You know what I mean? I'm just saying. This is what this is what uh is missing. People willing, people willing to talk about Christ and to say what he's done for them. What's interesting about having this discussion with you is everything I'm saying to you, believe me when I tell you, I am also being conscious of what I'm saying. I'm conscious of it having to impact me as well. So all I'm trying to do, believers, is to encourage you. That's all. That's all. I'm not trying to be anything other than a support mechanism for you. I love it when people come on here and they say something makes sense to them or they understood something for the first time that they didn't understand before, or that they just say thanks for the reminder. Or if they say I disagree with you, that's fine too. But if they're willing to stay, you know, because some people have said, you know what? I don't normally like what you say, but this thing makes sense to me. Christians, we're gonna be different. We're gonna have a variety of different perspectives on things. It doesn't mean that we can't have fellowship. That's what fellowship is. That's what fellowship is. And every day that I'm on here, I get introduced to people who have followed along for a while who finally speak up and they say, you know, they they tell me things like this. Like I wasn't feeling any of that. Like one person said to me, you know, I don't agree with most of the things you say, but I know you love God. And to that person, I said, thank you, and I appreciate you, and may God bless you. So anyway, and on a side note, Christians, I want to I want to tell you something that I uh I'm gonna make a little bit of a confession. Because I had told myself when I started TikTok that I was not gonna be the kind of person that blocks people who get unruly. That was a mistake. I realized in the last few days that from now on, when it comes to people who want to just fight for the sake of fighting, not for the sake of improving the body of Christ, I'm gonna block them all. You know, I realized that I was focusing on engagement. You know, but here's the thing I need to focus on agreement with Christians who want to exchange with me, and we can have dialogue with me, and then we have dialogue with each other in the comments and things like that. But some people, they just want to disrupt. They don't, they're not trying to be honest about anything, they're not trying to be intellectually honest, they're not trying to be uplifting or edifying. They want to just disrupt. Got no time for that anymore. Now, you can follow suit. It's up to you. But for those of you who have your own pages and profiles, and I always look at people's profiles, I would encourage you not to waste your time with these people. Block them. Block them. Make room for the comments of people who want to be who want to be built up. Make room in the comments fields for people who want to ask honest, sincere questions and want to grow in Christ. So I made it my business from now on on my regular video profile uh feeds. These people that just want to cause confusion and chaotic and name call, I'm deleting them all. I'm blocking them, blocking them all. Because I want to leave room for people who want to have a quality Christian relationship amongst ourselves and those, even those who aren't Christian, who want to have serious dialogue. I'm open for that. Just not open for all these people that just want to just go in on somebody because they want to try to show that they're right or that they're deep. You know, I I have very rarely seen somebody who actually was deep as they were trying to pretend by their comments. Very often, how people write can tell you a whole lot about their depth, the things they say, and you know, and how they write. So anyway, I was just telling you that because it might help you on your on your profile as well. Get rid of these people that uh that want to just disrupt and just cause you anguish and mental anguish. Don't argue with them, don't fight with them. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of time, a colossal waste of time. But anyway, thank you for listening to me right now. I appreciate you all, and I definitely find one area of covetousness that I think is acceptable, and that is if I can I can covet your prayers for me and all of those on here. We need to be sources of encouragement to one another. Because we have to go to war together. Together. I'm gonna tell you one last thing, and then I'm gonna be done. I was in the Navy, and when I first went into the Navy, you have all these guys that come from all over the country. From all over the country. And when I first went in, there was a lot of division, let's say, especially racial division. And it's amazing what can happen. And here's what I want to say. You had all these sailors were on a ship, and you got guys that hate each other's guts. Some just because they don't like personalities, some because they don't like your race, some because they don't like this or they don't like that. But one thing that I will tell you is that when we got into a serious conflict, when we're about to engage in the business of the military, let's put it that way, it's amazing how all those people come together and operate as a single unit. I'm telling you, it's amazing. The Christian church can learn a lot from American military, at least when I was in. What I'm telling you is that we had, if a ship was about to go into war or go into some situation like that, we will go to what's called general quarters. We go into battle mode. And every single individual does his job, and we work as a unit. No matter, so what I'm saying is all the nonsense is laid aside. It's all laid aside. Our racial differences, our personality differences, our age differences. Whatever was going on was gone. And we operate as a unit. And Christians, we need to be able to set aside petty differences and agree on what matters and get engaged in this battle to build Christ's kingdom all together. And with that, I will close. God bless you all. Have a great week, and may God richly bless you.