Navigate Podcast
Welcome to Navigate. We got tired of the same ole answers when we started looking for help when it came to our walks with God. So together we go deeper than most would on topics that most people have heard or were taught but never fully understood. It is our way of simplifying concepts that we may have over complicated throughout our lives. Bringing theology and life experience into each episode. It is our hope and desire to help you Navigate your Christian walk.
Navigate Podcast
Finding Fulfillment in God's Wisdom: Trusting His Plan Amidst Chaos
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TJBHpodcast@gmail.com
Verse Reference: 1 Corinthians 25-27
Isaiah 55
Is it possible that what society deems as foolish is actually the key to a more meaningful life? Join us as we explore the stark contrast between worldly wisdom and godly wisdom, and uncover how living out Christian faith, often seen as irrational by secular standards, can lead to a truly fulfilling existence. Through moving stories like children leading their families to Christ after life-changing kids' events, we witness the transformative power of faith. We also delve into the cyclical nature of societal trends, from the current fascination with hallucinogens to the spiritual awakenings of the 1970s Jesus movement, showing how God's intervention can appear in the most unexpected ways.
what's up guys? Welcome back to navigate. I'm with justin what's? Up bro, how are you, man, doing? Good man, another week another record.
Speaker 2Let's go. We were out of the loop for a little while, so we got to get our.
Speaker 1Get it back together, back together, man seriously, that's a little wall this week until the big, you know, our vBS next week, you know.
Speaker 2Oh, they hate when you call it VBS Tim.
Speaker 1They hate that you can change the name, it doesn't make the meaning different.
Speaker 2We have a huge kids event with like 1,000 children showing up. It's going to be awesome, yeah, but yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 1It's a long week.
Speaker 2There's always spiritual warfare around it. You know what I mean Because you're like dude. We're about to have a massive impact on a huge amount of kids. We always see a ton of kids give their life to Jesus. Some of the stories that are my favorites are these kids that get saved, go back into their homes with their secular parents and then their kids or their parents end up coming to church and getting saved too. I'm like okay that's amazing when that happens. But hey, dude, what are we hitting today? What's the goal?
Speaker 1So there's some ideas floating around this week for me.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1And it's the idea of what the world perceives as foolish is what we would call put their life to shame, basically.
Speaker 2Okay, okay, yeah, I mean just worldly wisdom versus godly wisdom and the foolishness of I had this.
Speaker 1I wish I would have. So we did a study on this. Actually, a few days after this, it had an incident happen and somebody was just making fun of the fact that I'm a believer, and how could.
Speaker 1I be that, you know whatever. And afterwards I kept thinking, after I kind of heard this whole shame, foolishness idea, man, I was like you know the way, how I believe in christ and the way I live my life, plus the way you live to shame and you call me foolish. Yeah, you think I'm crazy, you know? Yeah, and I was like I'm married like you're not yeah you're divorced. My kids love me, yours don't like. Yeah, you know you're drunk every night.
Speaker 2I'm not like, there's just yeah and they're like you're totally enslaved, bro. Yeah, you're a christian. You fool. You know you're drunk every night. I'm not like there's, just you're totally enslaved. Yeah, you're a.
Speaker 1Christian, you're full, you know you're fool, but yet being a Christian puts so many other people's lives to shame.
Speaker 2Dude, I think there's. I mean there's just a lot there. I'm trying to think of the verse. It's proclaiming to become fool or proclaiming to be wise, they became. Or proclaiming to be wise, they became fools is Romans one. You know, we were just talking about this type of worldly wisdom and it's weird, man, because it happens in cycles, like I was just.
Speaker 2I was just thinking about where we're at and how we're almost back in the seventies. You know what I mean. Like everybody's doing ayahuasca and DMT. And you know doing doing, let's say, really hard drugs or hallucinogens. You know psilocybin. They're doing like you know mushrooms and stuff to try to find a spiritual experience. And I'm like we're back in the.
Speaker 2This is like MKUltra nonsense. You know what I mean. It's like it came out of that and then we went into the whole Jesus movement in the seventies. You know we had hippie buses and everybody's smoking weed and it's like make love, not war. And I can't help but feel that Satan just keeps people on this kind of pattern of it's like we move towards rationalism. You know what I mean. And it's like we start and we're getting. It's like, oh it's, we're naturalists, of course God doesn't exist and this kind of thing. And then it's like everybody's like yeah, no, that's not really true. We all agree that there's more going on, but we don't want to agree that it's the thing that we already know. So we're going to do a lot of hard drugs and convince ourselves that we're the sane ones because we've attained to the divine intelligence through jacking our brains up, by pumping it full of freaking chemicals.
Speaker 1I watched the documentary. I think it was like how Christian music kind of came about A lot of the big they talked about like the Jesus movement in the 70s, yeah, and how PCP put a huge part in it. I don't think that was the intention. That's what I received as a message right. It's like these people were having these crazy spiritual experiences, like Jesus, with nowhere to go because the churches wouldn't let these hippies in.
Speaker 2I've heard this.
Speaker 1yeah, Because they weren't dressed up in suits and ties and some people came in barefoot, so they started their own churches. And this whole Jesus movement happened Like huh, so drugs kind of propelled Jesus a little bit I mean and I've told you.
Speaker 2There's several stories now of people that I know that were trying to just get absolutely blazed or whatever and ended up God met him there and it was like you're done, they're like, okay, you know what I mean and dropped drugs and never did them again. But God met him there. You know what I mean. And that makes it hard because in some sense you're like but they did the wrong thing, why would you meet them there? Well, actually that's all of our story. It turns out some of us just different places and different things, but all of us were running the wrong direction when God found us you know what I mean and did a work in our life. But yeah, man, there's a weird rationalism that leads to postmodernism, that leads to, let's say, agnosticism, that then leads to paganism and eventually, in my opinion I would say, goes right into more like legitimate Satanism. You know what I mean. So if you look at even in Genesis, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2Tim, I did that whole thing on 2 Peter, which we call the Genesis cycle, which is kind of this process of the end state, of all of these natural progressions of people thinking they're smarter than God end up with people worshiping the devil Right in God end up with people worshiping the devil Right. And it really goes back to Samuel where, you know, scripture tells us that rebellion is, as the sin of witchcraft right, and we've talked about this, I think, a little bit in the past, but it's like Saul is rebelling against God. You're like, okay, how are you going to compare rebellion to witchcraft? What does that have to do with anything? And then, like two chapters later, he's sitting at the witch of Endor you know what I mean Calling up Samuel. And you're like, okay, maybe there's a small connection here that I should pay attention to, but that's the picture. It's like ultimate rebellion against God leads to Satan. It doesn't lead to nothing, it leads to Satan. That's where that ends, because the king of rebellion, the prince of darkness, is the king of rebellion himself.
Speaker 2And so I think what we're seeing in our world today is all these people that are going back to Satanism. And don't you think we're seeing more of that, especially in, like the media and all these different places we're looking? More and more people are drifting back into Satan is cool, satan is fine. And even if you look at into, Satan is cool, satan is fine. And even if you look at oh my gosh Pike some of the writings from the Illuminati, I mean some of the stuff, there's basically going to be three world wars and the second world war will be I'm trying to think what they said the first one, the second world war, they're like B would basically be like an anti-Semitic war, and then they'd come out of the anti-Semitic war and the third world war would basically be to eradicate, like basically the entire Arab nation and all that different stuff, to establish a one world government you know what I mean and bring in this kind of Luciferian.
Speaker 2Actually, satan is the light bringer and that's the final state of the world is Satan reigns and they're like that's what's going to happen. Well, two down, yeah, that's problematic.
Speaker 1I can see it.
Speaker 2I mean it does seem to be strangely consistent with some of the biblical narratives, at least with the rhythms of how things go. The problem is that every time Satan builds a tower, god smashes it. He's like that he's the younger brother that the parent comes in and just kicks over the Legos. The parent doesn't even notice and the kid's like my bike, you know my tower. But I mean, it's true though, like that stuff, that's where it takes you. And it's so interesting to me. It's like you can't kill morality. You can't kill you know rationality, or deconstruct yourself into nothing. You actually deconstruct yourself into something, and I think people don't realize that. They think like, oh, I'm just me, now I've totally gotten free from all this stuff. And then you end up with guys like who you were talking to. He's like divorced, messed up, family's not put together, alcoholic, telling people who have families, who are holding jobs, who are contributing to society that they're so enslaved.
Speaker 1And man look at that.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's like that's pretty wild, but it's weird. I mean, but that's what he says in 1 Corinthians, I think right 25, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, but because the foolishness of God is wiser than the weakness and the weakness of God is stronger than men. I'm trying to think where else he says it to, but he basically says he makes the point that the foolishness of the cross is, you know, the power of God to those who are actually being saved. People look at this stuff and they're like, well, that's ridiculous. Who could possibly believe that? And when I look at some of the other stuff, people believe it's pretty, pretty hilarious to me. But tell me, tim, like what do you think are the salient distinctives between godly wisdom and, like, worldly wisdom?
Speaker 1Distinctives.
Speaker 2Huh Well, I'm just trying to think, like when you actually have this conversation, you think like, okay, what are the things that people are pursuing from a worldly perspective, what are just like the visceral? This is in my guts, I must have this kind of thing. Like I think, obviously, like you could say power if you wanted to say power, but I think you could say like wealth, okay, respect, but by that we mean power in a sense, the ability to make decisions and have things happen or whatever. I think lust obviously is a whole nother portion of that, like the whole sexual revolution, sex and all that. Obviously everybody is pursuing that Identity. Yeah Well, tell me what you mean by that, like recreating yourself, you mean.
Speaker 1Recreating, yeah, all the gender ideology stuff going on now yeah. God messed up in the womb apparently, so I'll correct him.
Speaker 2Well, I mean, it is. That's the heart of Luciferianism, is that Satan was the great liberator in the garden. He came to Adam and Eve to help liberate them from the cruel master that was God. And it cracks me up that I'm like, oh yeah, that's still what they think. I mean it's Psalm 2, right, let us tear their fetters apart and cast their cords away from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs, he scoffs at them, know, like, okay, weirdos.
Speaker 2But I mean there are demons who are driving a lot of this stuff and it's kind of weird that, like, we've kind of gotten to this place where I don't know Tim, some of them might be the generation that I'm a part of. I feel like what I see around me is people acknowledging Satan, almost agreeing that he does exist and being interested in walking that direction and doing stardust work and stuff like this and the finding your twin flame and connecting with your divine self and all this different stuff. And then you have the previous generation that doesn't believe in that at all and thinks they're all just playing oh, they're just playing silly games with their Ouija board. You know, it's like we don't believe in that nonsense. Actually they do, and in a lot of ways it's working. You know what I mean For them and what they're trying to do.
Speaker 2I mean, and you see this stuff too I'm trying to think where the Tim, what's the giant ranch that all the political people go to to like burn effigies of things? It's a giant ranch. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. It's a giant ranch. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. And there was like Hillary Clinton was burning like effigies to like Molech or something like that I'm like.
Speaker 2I don't know, man Pretty sure it's.
Speaker 1Skinwalker Ranch came to mind, but that's not it.
Speaker 2It's a different episode. It's a different episode we haven't done yet Whole different episode.
Speaker 1It's a place up in California somewhere.
Speaker 2Yeah, it does seem, tim, that the battle for Christianity seems to be the battle for Christian thinking, and what's weird to me is that there's people who do witchcraft that will call themselves Christians, and I'm like they don't get it.
God's Justice and Judgment Misunderstood
Speaker 2So we have a ton of Christians walking around who don't have Christian worldviews or don't think like Christians, which tells me that the battle is for the mind and kind of always has been right. Because if you can get people to believe that certain things don't matter about the faith, or this isn't important or that isn't important, then kind of you just end up abandoning those things. And well, what do you end up doing? Well, I believe in Jesus and I'm not going to hell, and that's the most important thing. And after that I can kind of spell whatever else out I want, because you know God is uh, god is super kind and loving and he knows it's. It's kind of this weird um belief that God is just okay with sin. It's a it's. We don't believe in justice, we don't believe in judgment, we don't believe in any of those things. We just want to feel like we're clean so that we can act how we want to act, and it's.
Speaker 1I think it's more. I don't think people believe that it's our place to address that in somebody else.
Speaker 2Holy cow, Do you? I mean, yes, Tim, I think you're right. But what I don't want us to say by that is that they don't think they should address things in people's lives, Right. What they mean is you're not allowed to address what I don't want you to address in my life, Because somebody is allowed to tell you that you should raise your children to be gay because that's the right thing to do, but if you tell them you should raise your children to be Christians, they'll sing songs about converting your children. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2Like there's it's not that they're not OK with telling people what they should do, it's that they're not OK with you telling people things that are different than what they want. I find that pretty hilarious. Like sometimes, Tim this is when I read the Old Testament I'm like it would say things like hey, if there's a witch in your midst, go ahead and just kill them. You just stone them, get rid of them. You know what I mean. And we're like why would you say something so cruel, God? And you're like have you ever seen what happens when those people are rampant on a society? I mean, I need to be careful how I say it, but there's a sense in which capital punishment for ultimate rebellion to God and getting rid of the thing that actually destroys society itself is probably a good thing.
Speaker 1See, and I would agree with you here. But I've had conversations too where people are like well, that's Old Testament, that's before Jesus. Jesus is here and everything's fine, everything's cleansed. Now Jesus is here, and everything's fine, everything's cleansed.
Speaker 2Now, that's it. That's it. They're right. So the Bible doesn't matter, jesus came throw the Bible out. Thank goodness.
Speaker 1Not that the Bible doesn't matter, but that God doesn't do that stuff anymore to us because of Christ.
Speaker 2I don't think that's true, do you?
Speaker 1No, of course not, I'm just saying this is the conversations I have.
Speaker 2I think we created a painting of Jesus where we amplified the things that we love and the things that we don't like we turn down. You know what I mean. So it's like Jesus talked about hell more than anyone else in the Bible, more than Paul he talked about hell. We're like sweet Jesus, he's kind and never brought those things up. And it's like clearly you have not read the Bible. Clearly you're not talking about the Jesus of the Bible, because the Jesus of the Bible is also the Old Testament Jesus. In fact, the Bible tells us that nobody has seen God, the Father.
Speaker 2We have a lot of incarnations of God, the messenger of God going out in the Old Testament and doing stuff. Okay, hot, take for you. The angel of death or the messenger of death in Exodus, a lot of people think was Jesus Like the one that went and took the lives of all the firstborn. You can neither say well, this is some angel that God had. That's basically a grim reaper, but actually it seems like Jesus talks about being the one. I'm sorry. The Bible talks about Jesus being the one who comes to put to death the deeds of darkness. Jesus is the destroyer. He is the one who comes to destroy the works of darkness. And even in the Old Testament, every time you see a messenger from God, the idea for a lot of people is that those are actual theophanies. That's God himself, pre-incarnate, coming down and doing what he said he was going to do.
Speaker 2So when you look at these things that happened in the Old Testament that God did we would say, yeah, that was Jesus. Jesus killed all the firstborns in Egypt. Jesus rained down hellfire on Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus put 187,000 to death of the Assyrians that were sitting outside of Jerusalem. That's that Jesus, that him. And we're like, well, he wouldn't do that. And look, let's just take it a step further. Let's say, okay, it was an angel of the Lord. It doesn't mean the messenger was specifically Jesus. Let's say it was an angel.
Speaker 2Okay, is God unsure of what he did? Was Jesus up to like don't do it, father and everybody? And he's like I'm going to murder those kids? No, no, there's no disunity in the Godhead. There's no miscommunication. There was justice being done and the Lord Jesus executing justice on a bunch of people who, in rebellion, are walking the opposite direction. And I'm telling you, if you see these cultures and people that are in absolute rebellion to God as cancers on God's good planet. He's going to go in and do surgery and that's what he does, and sometimes that's his own people and he goes in and he removes a lot of nonsense.
Speaker 2This is why in Joshua, chapter one, right Joshua goes out to the angel. He's like you on their side or our side. He's like neither Loser. Get it together, Serve the Lord Christ or perish. You know what I mean. Like that's the. We don't serve a safe God. You don't.
Speaker 2And Jesus is not different from the Old Testament God. This was an old heresy called Marcionism, by the way. He actually took basically the Old Testament God and portions of Luke and portions of the Bible that he thought were like this represents the Old Testament God and was like that's Old Testament, that doesn't count, and basically used text from the New Testament to try to create this new God that he felt was more polite and better. It's actually the roots of dispensationalism and I got to be careful about this because I have some dispensational friends out there, and no, I'm not calling you a heretic.
Speaker 2I am saying breaking up the Bible in sections where you disconnect how God works in one section from how he works in another. It's the same God. He works all throughout history in different ways, but under the exact same principle. He never changes what he's doing or what he's bringing about. He may change the way that he brings it about in certain portions, but I'll tell you this all accounts in Scripture point to, at some point, sinful people. God calls in the chips and it does not go well and it seems like, based on especially Revelation, the one who is leading the charge is the one who's riding on a horse with a sword coming out of his mouth, the king of kings and lord of lords to devour the nations, trotting out the winepress of his wrath with blood running through the streets.
Speaker 2I'm like, oh, my word, that's. I mean, smoke your cigarette and ponder that for a second. You know what I mean. Like, take that in before you. Just go to the New Testament and try to unthink about those things. Sometimes, the most uncomfortable things about God and the Bible are the things that you seriously need to consider, because you have a safe version of God that can't save anybody and doesn't uphold any justice. You just like the idea that he's going to hold you. You know what I mean. That is not a sufficient worldview. Hold you. You know what.
Speaker 1I mean, that's, that is not a sufficient worldview. I heard, uh, today actually he's the thing, you know, this genie mentality of God. If I just pray, I make a wish, you know. But I heard today a better kind of analogy. It was that we treat God like our Butler, you know, like he's the one who's supposed to keep our life in order.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. And if something gets out of order we're like what's going?
Speaker 1on. Why aren't you doing this? Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2Yep, I mean, I think that's a. That's a unfortunately fair illustration that rings too close to home. Honestly, in my own life man I'm not. I constantly have to catch myself and be like man. Why am I upset when something doesn't go the way that I want in my life? Yeah, like a principle that I teach people all the time.
Speaker 2Tim is just rigid flexibility. If the statement is true and I think it says it like six times in Proverbs Tim right, a man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. And the whole point of that is that you don't know where you're going. You don't, you think you do, and when it doesn't go the way that you want, you pray that God would give you your way. And the whole Bible is trying to scream at you. You don't know what you're doing. Good news, though God does Right, and if you're not driving and he's driving it would do well for you to follow the cloud, follow the pillar of fire, follow God where he's trying to take you instead of doing.
Speaker 2You know what so many people do, what Jonah did, why he got swallowed, why he tells, why he tells Paul in Acts hey Paul, why are you persecuting me? And he says it's hard for you to kick against the goads. What he's saying is it's you're trying to go the opposite direction, quit fighting me. Yeah, like it's just you're just going to die tired. You know what I mean. It's that mentality. He's like no, you're coming, you're coming with me either way.
Speaker 2Now, now, come and do this. Now we can either take the long trip or you can jump on, and this is going to because I love you and I care for you. But if you don't, man, I got all day, you don't You'll get old and tired by the time you're ready to finally cave and I'm fine with that. I'm not in a hurry. You know what I mean. I mean that's.
Speaker 2I just think I don't think we think about God that way. But if you have I brought this up in a message the other day, tim If you've ever gotten on, you're like driving and for some reason you know, a Russian missile hits a satellite or something, and now your Google Maps isn't working and it keeps glitching out and you end up taking like four U-turns because you're trying to get to the place that you need to go. I just think sometimes following God is a bit like that. You know what I mean You're like where am I going? And you get so frustrated because it seems like the map keeps changing. You know what I mean, but the reality is is you don't actually know.
Speaker 1Yeah or that you're not actually going anywhere. I've had that feeling too.
Speaker 2Well, consider this too, anybody. You know in the Bible, tim, where God was like, hey, you're going here, and he just took them directly there. Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, almost none of them Like so often God is like this is what I'm going to do in your life and they're like, can't wait. 17 years later, David finally takes the throne. You think during those 17 years you know, david was like, hey, maybe, uh, maybe I did this wrong. You know, did I screw up? What did I do? What happened?
Speaker 2And God, the whole time, is using David for exactly what he wants to. He's using him as a scourge against the Philistines. He's using him as a scourge against unfaithful people in Israel. He's using him to make Saul an example because of his rebellious attitude. He's using that time to make David the fearsome warrior that could actually hold down the kingdom that he inherited without being a mess or a laughing stock to everybody else.
Speaker 2He slowly took David through a process to accomplish way more than David thought he was going to accomplish and, let's be honest, way more than David ever understood he would be understood, as I mean, david now is seen as the proverbial, typological. Christ. Jesus is going to sit on the throne of David. But David probably had days where he was like this sucks, I don't want to do this.
Trusting God's Plan and Ways
Speaker 2You told me, king, it doesn't feel like king right now, right, but he didn't fight against it. He wrote poetry to cope, you know what I mean. And then he, like he continued to do what God had asked him to do. But I think it's important that we understand that, like you aren't driving your life and I'm going to make it worse for you All of this happens one day at a time. Yeah, like you're just, you're going to have to take time and process through this and the map is going to change a lot. And the more you're pissed off at the map changing, the more you don't understand the reality that God is the one directing you. You're not directing God and if you see God as your butler following you, you're going to be really upset when the butler, you know like, puts you behind a door that's locked and makes you sit in there for a while to figure some stuff out.
Speaker 1You know, Are there like signs or ideas or something that can help prevent us from going down all these U-turned roads?
Speaker 2Well, I think what you're asking is is there a way for me to get my way?
Speaker 1No, no, no, no. Is there a way for me to recognize God's way more?
Speaker 2Is there a way for me to know what God is going to do? Yes and no. So in some sense, you can always rely on the fact that God is going to do what he said he would do, because he does right. The problem is do you know how he's going to accomplish it? No, you can bet on his character, you can bet on his love, you can bet on his effectiveness. Which you cannot bet on is how he actually wants to get it done. And everyone throughout history has been scratching their head at what seems like the multiplied stupidities that we see throughout scripture that God used to glorify his name and get his will done throughout history. I mean and I've brought this verse up before but even in 2 Corinthians or is it 1 Corinthians 2, where it talks about if the rulers and authorities you know what I mean had known what was going to happen when they crucified Jesus, they wouldn't have done it. And the context there is like the heavenly beings, like the principalities and powers, kind of conversation.
Speaker 1So it's like even.
Speaker 2Satan is like ah, dang it. I don't know if we crucified him, we were screwed. You know what I mean. And every time Satan builds a babble again, it crumbles and it works to the advantage of God and what he wants to do. Nobody nobody sees the full picture of what God is doing. This is why Jesus says things like nobody knows the last days, not even the son, only the father.
Speaker 2He's making this point that God has this amazing plan, and even those who know God incredibly well, who are tapped into how he works and what he does, we still have to strap in and trust that he's the way maker and the one who's going to bring it about, not us. And our job is not to make the map for ourself, but to know ourselves and our God well enough to know how to act when the map changes on us. That's the picture, and so to do that requires an immense amount of trust for God. It requires an immense amount of trust for his ways and his character and what he's doing, and the crazy thing about it is that you learn yourself in that process, right? I mean Tim, we've used it. I think it's Mark Twain, right, we make the road by walking it.
Speaker 1That's really a title of a book I own.
Speaker 2Is it really? I was thinking it was Mark Twain for some reason, maybe it.
Speaker 1It could be. I got to think about that yeah.
Speaker 2I'm going to go find out now. You listener, google that, find out for us and let us know. It would be awesome. I think what's worth remembering just through this process is that, honestly, if God is the one that is control, and he's called you and he's told you that he has plans for you and he's doing all these things, your goal is not to try to build out the roadmap further than the next day you know what I mean and being faithfulness and being true to who he has called you to be, in light of who he says he is, and then walking that stuff out. Now that doesn't mean you can't make plans. It doesn't mean you can't do stuff. It does mean that God's going to monkey with your plans because his plans are better. I mean, they just are. They're flat out. They're flat out, better than than anything that we're going to do.
Speaker 2Can I take you to a text real quick, tim? Yeah, and it's a pretty famous text. Let me see. Yeah, okay, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. And it says for as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making a barren sprout and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will my word be which goes forth from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. Okay, I want to get to the beginning of this text in a second. That's Isaiah, right? Yeah, isaiah 55. Very famous text. Here's what I want to share. What all has to go into, what all has to happen for seed to be sown, plants to extend, ground to be watered, clouds to come, rain in the particular areas they fall in, in the particular places that he wants, with the particular flowers that he's decided on, in the particular like. When I think about this text, I'm like okay, how much has to happen, how much is God involved in for it to go exactly as he wants? Yeah, like. Let me pitch it to you another way.
Speaker 2One of the most crazy things in the whole Bible is reading the lineage of Jesus, because you read that and you're like how many things did God have to orchestrate to Like? You know how easy it is for you to just be able to, for you to just die and not have offspring. You know how many people can't have offspring. I mean, and I want to get into the biology of it, but like you're one in a million Tim, you know what I mean. And then when you think about who has to meet, who and when they have to meet, and where they had to live to make those circumstances work, and the age gap and the wars and the bat, how many things had to go into the generation after generation after generation after generation that eventually brought up the exact circumstance that God said would happen with Jesus and where he was born and how he went to Egypt and coming out of Egypt and living in Nazareth and dying this way and having these friends, what has to be orchestrated in somebody's life for Peter and James and John and Andrew and all of these different people in this particular time in this place, that God knew and saw what would happen and how it would happen. And he brought it about. And we're like, yeah, I'm just a little confused up here, god, I just, I just don't understand. Yeah, you're not gonna, you're not gonna get, you're not gonna get all of that. The goal is to rely on God and not try to come up with your own way and tell God to bless it, because you're going to be exhausted. Listen, god doesn't bless your way, god blesses obedience to his way. Okay, and the prior portion of that chapter I want to read it to you.
Speaker 2The prior portion of that chapter, I want to read it to you. Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come and buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me. Listen that you may live and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David. Behold, I have made him a witness to the people, a leader and a commander for the peoples. Behold, you will call a nation you do not know and a nation which knows you not will run to you because the Lord, your God, even the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you, okay, and then it goes into the seat the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have to compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon, for my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways.
Speaker 2And it gets into this portion, but here's what he's saying All of you are running, thinking that you know the right way to live and you're coming up empty. You're, you're paying valuable portions of your life trying to accomplish things that I've not set up for you to do, I have not given it to you to accomplish. And and it's exhausting. And he's like hey, if you're thirsty, if you're hungry, come to me. If you feel exhausted trying to do it on your own, come to me. If you feel frustrated that your plans are not working out and the things that you thought would happen didn't happen, go ahead and have a seat next to Jesus In a long line of people who are sitting there with you saying yeah, I had no idea this is what I was going to go through.
Speaker 2But as soon as I just released my grip on what I thought was going to happen and I just trusted him. It got a lot easier, like it was crazy, but at least I knew I wasn't in control anymore and I got rid of the illusion that I was in control of my life. Because, let's be honest, in one second something could happen and you could just drop dead to the floor, right. But I don't think we think that way. We sit here like how come my car didn't start this morning? You know God, what are you doing up there? And he's like hey, shut up, if you don't do this, you get an accident and you've ruined the bloodline that I need to bring about somebody really cool. You know, like I just think that's um, uh, I just think that's more of the way that people process and I just you know what I mean Like I think we need to thing Like return to me, return to me, return to me, yeah.
Speaker 1What was God actually like saying for them to do? I've always been curious. I think I mean Like come back and worship me.
Speaker 2What does it look like? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Start praying again.
Letting Go of Pride Through Worship
Speaker 2So, tim, let's bring it to the ground floor. What does it look like for an average person to get rid of their pride and actually start worshiping the Lord again? I mean, to me, the first thing is humility. The second thing is a loosened grip on the things that you thought you could control. The third is acknowledging what you don't know, and that's part of the humility.
Speaker 2But a lot of that comes after releasing the grip on stuff, because you have to stop holding on to things that your hands are full of so that you can actually have open hands to grab onto something else. And then, after that, begins worship and joy. You know what I mean? It's like suddenly like, oh man, I'm not in control. That's you know what. That's great. That makes perfect sense, because I've never felt like I was in control for one second of my life. Why do I? Why do I have this illusion that that's the case? I really only have the opportunity to deal with the next moment that I have. And, man, I am wasting away trying to come up with an idea or a plan for how I got to where I'm at and what that looks like. And look again, there's lots of podcasts we've done on planning and dreaming and all the things that come along with that. I'm just trying to avoid balancing statements right now, because I think the average person needs to know when we talk about rebellion and Satanism and all this stuff, most of that starts in bitterness. That takes you to your desire to control and get things your own way.
Speaker 2And Jesus is saying how about you come get a drink at the water man and stop trying to do all the crap that you're doing? Stop. How about you come get a drink at the water man and stop trying to do all the crap that you're doing? Stop running at this stuff so hard that it doesn't go anywhere. Are you tired? Why don't you come sit with me and let me drive Return? Come back, drink this water, eat this food. It's actually healthy for you.
Speaker 2And no, you're not going to understand my ways. You're not going to understand my thoughts. My ways are higher than yours. My thoughts are better than yours. Here's what I want you to know Every raindrop that comes down, that hits the ground in a specific area, that helps nurture and produce nutrients in a plant, that raises up this seed, and this time and this place, I ordained every drop. You think I don't know what's going on in your life. You think I'm like out there. Well, I had no idea that that was going to happen. He's like I put you where I put you, when I put you how I put you, and if you would stop fighting me on this, you'd actually find blessing and joy, not that you'd get what you wanted. That's not the goal. The goal is you get what you didn't want, which is actually better than what you would have done on your own. Yeah.
Speaker 1Just a ballpark number, if you could, okay. How many prayers do you thank God for not answering in your life? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2The problem is Tim is. I don't even know how many, yet you know, because I feel like I'm probably still counting.
Speaker 1It's such like a. I think it was a country song too. Yeah, yeah, thank God for unanswered. I think it's.
Speaker 2Garth, oh, garth Brooks brought that to the forefront the great theologian.
Speaker 1But I'm always thankful for certain things in my life. I thank God he did not give me that.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, like well, that could have been pretty bad.
Speaker 1That could have gone far worse.
Speaker 2You know what I mean yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think just what we need to consider when we're processing this, where we're at in our world is a bunch of people striving and running and trying to get their way. That is ultimately what's happening. And when you have a family and you have kids and you're not an alcoholic and you're not sleeping around and you're holding on a job, to somebody whose whole goal is I want to do what I want to do and I want gratification. I don't want anybody in control of my life or anything telling me what to do.
Speaker 2What you get is destruction. And they look at somebody who's actually holding responsibility, doing what God told them to do, and they're like you loser, you're not getting what you want Instantly. You're like, yeah, I'm eating steak, not candy, and I realized the hit isn't immediate, but this is really good and it's better for you in the long run, like this will actually sustain you. And you know when God says rebellion is a sin of witchcraft, it's this picture of people who are in rebellion to God, who end up worshiping Satan, who, in the end, is thrown into a pit of fire, who constantly spends his life trying to thwart God's plan for his life and the lives of everyone else and finds himself being played. You know, congratulations, you played yourself.
Speaker 1These are people who are trying to find their own answers now right, who have gone on their own to be like. I figured this out.
Speaker 2But that's not even true. They're not looking for their own answers, they're looking for Satan's answers, because they're the ones they're most comfortable with. Look, let's be honest. People come to like answers and they're like. You know, I really thought I did a lot of research. Everybody walks away from Christianity. I just did the research and I landed where I needed to. This is what I found. I'm like you're sleeping with your girlfriend. You don't want to stop Shut up Like that.
Speaker 2Let's be honest, people are looking for reasons to rebel against God, and most of it is because they don't like that. God is in charge. The ultimate difficulty, the ultimate struggle that men have, is that they are not in control of their life. You are not God, and this is the whole narrative of Moses and Egypt with Pharaoh. Right, hey, you're not God, let my people go, no, and then he just gets romped and it keeps happening. And what's so interesting to me is that it says God hardened his heart. He's like you know what? I'm going to take this guy and I'm going to make an example, because I'm not just going to do what would be easy, which is crush you right now. I'm actually going to make a slow example of this kind of mentality to show people. That only leads to destruction. And it doesn't end up that way all at once. It's slow, incremental destruction over a large part of time, and the worst part is it just doesn't just ruin you, it ruins everything around you and in the end, even when you do, you know, finally cave begrudgingly to God, you end up hurling yourself headlong back into another assault at God. That ends really badly.
Speaker 2If you are interested, it's really fun to look at Exodus and to look at Revelation, because it's the same story same plagues, same stuff going on and the same. Oh, they got released and now they're in this thing. And then what do you have? In Revelation? A seven nation army that raises itself up and then God, in a heartbeat, just wipes them all out.
Trusting God in Chaotic Times
Speaker 2And in Exodus, what do you have? Well, they chase them all down and the entire sea opens up and swallows them whole. It's the same picture of do not put yourself up against God and wicked things that do eventually get destroyed. And all of those people are following demonic spirits and are following Satan, which is precisely why they end that way, because that's the way your father ended Satan. He ends in the lake of fire and that is the way that you will end if you follow that line of thinking. And, unfortunately, I look at our culture and I'm like, well, crap, tim, here we are, and the best thing that you can do is continue to trust God, because if there's anything that I know is God continues to provide an exodus for his people, even in chaotic, crazy times when that stuff doesn't happen. But you better have the blood over the door or it won't go well for you.
Speaker 1That's probably a good spot to end right there, dude.
Speaker 2Dang, that went fast. I didn't realize we were rolling, Okay. Well, hey, everybody I mean I think in this time, in this podcast, that we just did I would recommend taking a second reflecting, asking yourself the question am I letting God drive my life or am I irritated and frustrated because it's not going my way? And consider the fact that maybe God is calling you out of the way that you have and he's trying to tell you hey, you'll be a lot more rested, you won't be so anxious and frustrated if you would let me drive for a little while. I got it, it's going to be fine. Just trust me and in that, breathe out, write a psalm if you need to, like David, okay, and then keep walking Nice.
Speaker 1Awesome. Thanks for joining us. Have a.
