The right kind of failure is trying for a pursuit or a goal. And and I I it's an inspiration. And so to anybody out there that like has not yet walked up to a stranger on a street, the right kind of failure is recognizing it's not gonna go perfect every time. But the more you do it, the more you fail, the more you're able to learn, and the closer you're going to get to that home run, to that amazing moment. Um, and so I apply this to everything. Like you and I have talked about this conversation when it comes to writing, right? The wrong kind of failure is never writing because we think we're not good enough or we're afraid of making a mistake. The right kind of failure is writing 150 books because one of them might become a New York Times bestseller. And so I just as an encouragement to everyone out there, the right kind of failure is pursuing a good endeavor relentlessly and learning and growing along the way. Amen.
SPEAKER_03I love you. I
love you more. Typical reply. Okay. But that's not sufficient for this humble, non-extremist Arab. Whenever Rachel says, I love you, my reply is always I love you more than you've ever loved me, could ever love me, would ever love me, even if you could love me more. There's wisdom in that. And Ray at this moment is thinking, I let this man marry my daughter. This is dumb.
SPEAKER_05Oh, I get it.
SPEAKER_03Dumb it, dumb intros ever. It really was. Very Barbara.
SPEAKER_00That was well done.
SPEAKER_03For today's theme. Well dumb. Come on, guys. We all know well dumb. You know, that's that'd be a good way to order a steak. Well done. Well dumb. That's how you order your steak. We're talking about extra well dumb. Extra well dumb. Oh, I'm gonna do that next time. I do look, guys, we all That'd be a good insult for someone.
SPEAKER_00You're extra well dumb.
SPEAKER_03Well done. We all have our our oft-repeated sayings. And um and dumb. And um and dumb. Yeah. Uh Rachel, she she does have the roll roll your eyes syndrome, which we all have toward Ray, of course. How many times, Ray, have we heard your lines?
SPEAKER_01Rake your fingers.
SPEAKER_03Stand up, I'm just a man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, they're for strangers, not for my friends.
SPEAKER_03Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. We've heard them many times, Ray.
SPEAKER_00You guys get floaters?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Those things you can get one right now. Have you ever had them yet? I call them wormies. Yeah, they're called floaters.
SPEAKER_00They go back pictures.
SPEAKER_03They're just kind of like right there in your peripheral, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're like a real free computer game. Boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boy, boy, boy, boy bouncing back and forth. I was thinking how frustrating it is when you've got floaters and you're trying to kill a mosquito.
SPEAKER_03Competing objects before your eyes.
SPEAKER_01Highly intelligent people get them. Oh, I can't. One of my floaters turned into a person and started talking to me, but nobody else can see it.
SPEAKER_03What was it? I'm trying to remember your uh didn't you have an imaginary clown friend as a kid? Or what was it? There's something with a clown.
SPEAKER_01No, I had a I had a clown doll that I would set up for. That sounds like a horror movie. Yeah. And my mom would look in the rearview mirror and see it sitting there like. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Boy, Oscar, you're peculiar, man.
SPEAKER_00So some people have a very real fear of clowns, don't they?
SPEAKER_01They do.
SPEAKER_00Did I tell you that?
SPEAKER_01That's gotta be an official phobia, I'm sure. Okay, this is a true story now that we're talking about clowns.
SPEAKER_00Why would you begin with that?
SPEAKER_01Good point. I had a roommate that was a professional clown at this on the side. And I had a cousin named Carlos who was deathly afraid of clowns. So one day, me and Carlos, he doesn't know anything about my roommate. Me and Carlos are sitting on my couch. We're watching a hockey game, and we're just sitting there watching a hockey game. And my roommate's room was like up these stairs that would come down right next to the TV. So I'm just sitting there watching the hockey game, and down comes my roommate dressed full-blown as a clown. So you knew that was gonna happen. Yeah, and I'm just like, hey, bud. And he goes, Hey, heading to work. Bye. And he walks out the door, and like a second later, I look over at Carlos and he is like this, just petrified. He thought it was hallucinating.
SPEAKER_03What is it about clowns though? Because it is a thing. I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I've never felt the slightest fear of clowns, and it was kind of a shock to know that anyone would be afraid of clowns.
SPEAKER_03My name Ellen. That's the kind of clown image I like to remember. Nice, friendly guy. All right, friends, time for a cool, classy comment.
This is from the Brace family that we had the pleasure of meeting. Oh, how Christ loves us. He is so kind. John 15, 13. The ones from Australia? Uh I believe so. George is here for Living? No, no, no, no, not them. Uh, Living Waters team. Uh, we are so thankful to the Lord for your ministry. The Lord has been so kind to use your ministry to greatly bless our lives and our friends, family, church body, and strangers we meet. God has used your efforts to bring him so much glory. We pray this note reminds you and encourages you all to keep going. Give it everything you've got till heaven. Meeting you all feels like getting to you see family. It fills our hearts with so much joy. We'll continue to pray for you and support your ministry as you continue serving our Savior who loves us so much. Loving Christ, Colin Katie and Copeland Brace. Oh. You know, seriously, there's something as I was reading it, and obviously I read it before, but just now as I was reading it, just that that phrase there, you're bringing glory to God. I mean, honestly, like for the believer, is there any greater joy than to do that? You know, whatever. Whether I fail, stumble, uh blow it, you know, whatever, as long as God used me to bring him glory. You know. So thank you guys. Thank you. How does that happen? It's the coffee dumb. The coffee dumb. True. Thank you guys. Hope we get the opportunity to see you again.
You've just entered the quality questions section. This is from Kathleen Smallwood. Hello. Luke 16, 9 and 16 have me stumped. I've read them in context, but it's still a mystery. Will you help?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's understandable. Yeah. Powerful verses.
SPEAKER_03And today, Oscar Navarro is answering this question. Oscar.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I don't know. That's a good question. What is the verse? You better be ready, Oscar. Yeah, I am. I was actually just pulling it up. I can read it. Luke 16, 9. Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of right unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations is one of the ways in which you can describe it. Luke 16, 16. The law and the prophets were until John, since the time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presents into it. So uh here's here's Luke 16. Here's something that's super important. Here, here.
SPEAKER_00Every man walks.
SPEAKER_01I don't know why my phone gave me a weird one, but pres preseth into it.
SPEAKER_00Preset.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna go ahead and move on. Uh listen, um all all by it's super important. I think one of the the challenges of this verse is it when you read scripture as though it's Aesoph's fables, meaning all all scriptures designed to give me a moral output, then these verses become kind of confusing. But when we approach God's word, recognizing that it's not just these one-off moral fables, rather the totality of God's word is the story, the story of God reconciling the world to himself, and we see it within that building framework, things begin to make a little bit more sense to us. And I think this verse is a prime example. Uh essentially what Luke is trying to tell us here in this verse.
SPEAKER_00So one verse or two.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's two verses that she's quoting, but it's in the context of a story about money. And the story about money in Luke is essentially that if we give ourselves money, can either be, uh, another uh section of scripture tells us, the root of all kinds of evil, um, or it could be used for God's goodness and glory. And Luke 16 is essentially shaping our view of money to recognizing that it can either be used for evil or be used for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_02Good.
SPEAKER_03Oscar.
SPEAKER_00Could I mention the second part?
SPEAKER_03Yes, please.
SPEAKER_00Law and prophets until John. Since that time, the kingdom of God has preached, and every man presses into it. I think it perhaps means the law was doing its job in Israel. Its purpose was to bring the knowledge of sin, and the law and the prophets were until John, and as soon as John began to preach repentance, every man pressed into it because the law gave them a knowledge of sin, and that's why they were able to find a place of repentance.
SPEAKER_03Ooh. Ray. That's going deep. Wow. Basically. Thank you guys.
Good stuff. All right, get ready for a shout out from the Sheik of Shawarma. And oh, what a glorious day to give a shout out. Number one Christian podcast on Apple in Lebanon. Woo! Your people's my beebles. Number 12 in religion and spirituality, number 94 out of all podcasts, all categories in the entire country. So havivi! And for that, the Lebanese national anthem. Keluna! That's a banger. Boy, man. Isn't that a cool national anthem?
SPEAKER_00We did have 30,000 subscribers.
SPEAKER_03Now we have one. Billions. Hey, my brothers and sisters in Lebanon. God bless you guys. Thank you for listening. And I am planning, Lord willing, to come to Lebanon hopefully soon. I was going to try to go to the book. I am. We are going to Egypt. So just jump over. I should go over there. I should meet Rachel. Rachel. I need to think about that. Not without my daughter. That's what I'm here to do. Yeah, thank you. Anyhow, yeah, we are going to Egypt. And uh I do plan to come. So hopefully I'll get to meet some of you. Thank you for listening, making us number one, my Lebanese brothers and sisters. Lalalali lalali lalalal. Mark, you do a good one, do it.
SPEAKER_00No, you don't. Sounds like babe.
SPEAKER_03And now a radically revolutionary resources podcast is brought to you 101 of the dumbest things people have done. By Ray Comfort. And two books today, Idiotic Things. People did in the Bible. Ray, why do you gravitate toward dumb and idiotic things?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm so close to you.
SPEAKER_03They say right what you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Was that uh don't keep banging those on the table. It's that's really dumb. Is it dumb? Dumb, dumb.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Oh, Ray, seriously, these, oh, we're gonna get into these today because that's the topic we're dealing with today. So much good stuff in here. Yeah. Sue helped me write that book. Oh no, that's the uh 101 things husbands do to annoy their wives.
SPEAKER_00No, Sue helped me write it in 10 minutes. 101 things husbands do to annoy their wives.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's right. So check those out, friends. And don't forget uh the uh uh the oh oh oh the living waters mug from which you can chug. Brand new. Okay, look, guys, I have to admit, I love this mug. Seriously, like I I took it home last night with joy and glee. And secondly, I love it because it was my idea and I I designed it.
SPEAKER_05Excuse me. Sketchosaurus, right?
SPEAKER_03Credit is due. Oscar worked very hard on this with our team and uh picked the mug type, picked uh the graphics. Well, someone did this, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Uh Mark just mentioned him.
SPEAKER_05Sebastian Martin. Yes. He's on uh Instagram, and his Instagram handle is Sketchosaurus.rex.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What's great about it, if you don't mind, is that in a world of just tons of AI slop, this is actually drawn by a real human being who has done artist work on children's books, and he's just a fan of the podcast and um just sort of, I guess you call it fan art, like drew us as cartoons. I absolutely love it. Maybe in the show notes we can put a link to it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let's do that.
SPEAKER_00Uh I don't like it. I've just noticed something. Let's delete everything. No, no, no. Look, look how short I am. Uh then look what I'm actually standing on.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's done the word of God. I'm actually shorter than the body.
SPEAKER_03Oh, absolutely. That's almost like accurate to the size of your Bible. That's the my favorite part of the whole thing.
SPEAKER_05My head is the entire shape of Ray's body. Which is accurate. It's pretty accurate. That's true.
SPEAKER_03Ray, why'd they make you so tall in this? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Thank you. And then Oscar is that a comb in your head? Yeah, I'm combing my hair. Oh man. It's so good. Yeah. Really, really good. Love it. Love the mug. The station this is really next level.
SPEAKER_00I find um caricatures fascinating because this looks like us, but it's nothing like us.
SPEAKER_01Well, except for you.
SPEAKER_00It's just it's weird caricatures.
SPEAKER_01Do you remember the caricatures we did in where was that? Greece?
SPEAKER_02Oh, Italy? Italy?
SPEAKER_03That's right. Yeah, we have Italy Caricatures. Oh, that's good. Well, you have them, Mark? Yeah, it's in my office. Oh, you have the one. Yeah, they did all of us. Yeah, anyway, check it out, friends. Uh, and don't forget Evidence Study Bible, Living Waters TV, all that. LivingWaters.com. And don't forget the podcast YouTube channel, tens of thousands of subscribers. 30,000. Let's get us to millions. Yeah, we're at 30,000 now. It's a newer channel. Let's get to millions.
SPEAKER_01We just recently started posting full episodes on the podcast so you can watch us in our entirety and stupidity on that channel. The whole shebang.
SPEAKER_03All right, friends.
Today, uh, the dumbest things we've done. And lo and behold, this was Ray Comfort's idea.
SPEAKER_00I'm starting to feel it was a bit dumb. Yeah, that idea.
SPEAKER_03Why do we do this? Yeah, dumbest things we have done. Look, why are we doing this? Because we want to console many of you. Um, it really is, you know, a good good friend of ours. We've had him on the podcast before, Pat Nem Emmers. And uh he wrote a book called Um It's called Sorry, Pat. No way, uh Retractable, no. Um oh no. I'm gonna look it up, Mark. Oh, Retractions. Yeah, it's called Retractions, uh humility and something humiliation. Like you right now? So dumb. Seriously.
SPEAKER_00What's the name of your book?
SPEAKER_03Uh I can't remember. Um, retractions. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's retractions. Yeah. Humility before um humiliation. Mark's looking it up. Something like that.
SPEAKER_00Mark's looking it up.
SPEAKER_03Anyway, I love it.
SPEAKER_05Retractions. Cultivating humility after humiliation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, see, pretty close. Pretty close. But I love the cover because the cover has something written and this has a it shows a pencil and the eraser, and it shows you know the eraser fluff that comes off. And I love that. Right? You've always said that. The man who put the eraser at the end of the pencil and that's not original. Oh, okay. So you lied. Okay, go ahead. What else? Yeah. That's mine.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00The man who put the eraser on the end of a pencil knew what he was doing. Because we're prone to error.
SPEAKER_03Did I get that right? Yeah. Trying to error. So yeah, but I love that book because um it was consoling to me. Pat shared a bunch of the things that you know he had done that um were were just foibles. And I don't know, there's something about that that gives you consolation.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's something weird about doing dumb things, and I can speak from experience. When I do something dumb, at first I'm absolutely humiliated and embarrassed. I don't want anyone to know next day. It's a great sermon illustration. That's right.
SPEAKER_03You're the most resilient human being on the face of the earth. Because some of the things you share with me, I'm like, I would never tell anyone I did that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But you've got no problem whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00Well, it takes a little while. It's like when you hurt yourself, it's there's some pain, but the next day the pain's gone. And that's what happens when you do something dumb.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It hurts. So let me kick us off because this is fresh. Okay, we're going then. Dumbest things we've done. This is fresh. It happened yesterday, and and I I do attribute it to Ray because there's something about being around him that just makes me do dumb things.
SPEAKER_00Are you gonna begin with what I did dumb just before what you did was dumb?
SPEAKER_03I can't remember what you did. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, there's a saying don't put all your eggs in one basket. We do that every day.
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_00We put all the eggs, we have a dozen eggs. Our chickens lay over 2,000 eggs a year. I figured it out last night. Serious? 2,000.
SPEAKER_05How many of those have you given me to this year, Ray?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, right. We give we give away most.
SPEAKER_01I know exactly how many for me. 12.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. You've only had 12. Oh, we need to get eggs.
SPEAKER_03In fact, I told Rachel last night, I said, Well, we need to get eggs from your parents until we thought about what you might feed them and thought, no, we thought.
SPEAKER_00Really, really seriously, crazy good film. Anyway, uh, yesterday I wanted to show you how we get our eggs out of the nest. And I've got this sort of grabber. Those grabber things, they're extensions of your arms, probably for elderly people to pick up things. I picked up an egg and I showed you how I put it in the basket and I dropped it from 12 inches. I just I I forgot about gravity. The stupid's invisible. You forget about it. And it cracks. Yeah, just a little.
SPEAKER_03You didn't even see how to tell them, hey, that cracked. But the thing is, is it wasn't like, oh, it split, it slipped, you know. It was like so. I'm leaving, right? Being influenced by that. I'm leaving. I'm um I go to my car and I look across the street and I see, you know, Ray's neighbor. I go, Mundeep. And she ignores me. I'm like, huh? So I get in the car, I pull out, I roll down my window. Hey, Mundeep. His Indian neighbor, and this Hispanic woman looks up and goes, This is my chow chow. It wasn't her. It wasn't Mandeep. It was another lady. Oh, I felt so dumb.
SPEAKER_00Dude, Mandeep actually means in the original, you're a gorgeous woman.
SPEAKER_01You know, you just reminded me of something at my daughter's. Oh man, I don't know if this person listens to the podcast. If so, I apologize. But my at my daughter's winter formal, you know, we're there for pictures and we're taking pictures or whatever. And I know her friends pretty well, but I see one of her friends' mom, and I walk up and I'm like, hey, it's good to see you. How have I been? Give her a hug. And then I walk away from her, and my wife claims that 30 seconds later I turn around and look at the same person and go, Hey, it's so good to see you. How have you been?
SPEAKER_03And she's right. I did exactly that. I'm positive I do that sometimes at conferences.
SPEAKER_00Do you remember I introduced my uh local pastor as my dentist to a group of people at a meeting? Oh, yeah. It's about a year ago or so. They're all standing around, and he comes up and I thought, Oh, this is this is my dentist. This is my dentist, and everyone goes, hi, hi. And it wasn't. He was Asian and he looked like my dentist, because my dentist is always wearing a mask. I never see him without a mask. Ah, good point. So I introduced me. He's not a dentist, he's a pastor. I don't know what he thought when I did that, but I think.
SPEAKER_03If there's anything that Rachel gets on me about, it's getting people wrong. Like, because I remember faces, but names, and so and book book titled, you're you're good at that.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Maybe you thought it was your dentist because his sermons feel like you're no, I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_03Um, so yeah, so that uh that was that was humiliating. So yeah, uh Ray, we have a whole book here on dumb things you've done. Um give us some highlights.
SPEAKER_00Let me let me give you I could give you the worst. I'll save the worst until last. I might have mentioned this before, but when I had a drug prevention center on High Street, which is an unfortunate choice of street names for a drug center, I had a girl at work for me, and I had to go and do a drug talk, and I was gonna walk across the whole city to do the drug talk, and she said, Take my car, it's on the third floor. And she threw her keys across, it went up, it was a V dub, she's a V dub. I got in the V dub, went and did the drug talk, came back, parked the car, threw her keys across the table and said, What are you doing with a radio avon sticker, which was a secular station, on the back of your car? She said, I don't have a radio avon sticker on the back of my car. And sure enough, I'd stolen someone's car for an hour. And the V dub key just fit. I don't know why. How in the world could a key It just did the big V dub? I don't know, just explained. Send it went out and rubbed all my fingerprints off everything and went back down. So anyway, that that was things happen in threes. Had to speak a little time later at a church. And I arrived outside the church, sat there in the car and looked across, made sure I had the right place. Just New Life Center, uh, Hallswell was the name of the church. I went in, they were setting up the overhead projector. Do you remember what they are? Set up from the back. I said, Where's the pre-pre meeting? They said, out the back, went in the pre-meeting, sat down, prayed with these people, and when someone said, Amen, open their eyes, they all stared at me. And I said, New Life Center Hallswell? And they said, No, St. Luke's. I was in the wrong church. I joined their prayer meeting. They said, You're down at uh Hall's Wall New Life tonight. So I think. That was on the Sunday. On the Wednesday, I was in another city 200 miles away, had to go and do a meeting on a Wednesday night, left this apartment, did the meeting, came back, opened the door, opened, went down the hallway, went into the bathroom, and as I stood in the bathroom, I thought, these people are amazing. They've renovated their bathroom in two hours. And I thought, I can hear people that this isn't the right apartment. I could hear people talking, so I crept down the hallway, had to unlock the door because I locked the door so tightly, unlocked the door and left, and and it was the wrong apartment and that I was in. What are you looking at me like that for? This is just a regular week weekend in Ray's life. Yeah. Anyway, the whole thing is you can be sincere but sincerely wrong. And I was with each of those circumstances. Nonstop.
SPEAKER_03I think that's probably the most common phrase I use with you, Ray.
SPEAKER_00The thing that I appreciate about you, Easy, is that you never get sick of me doing stupid things. Like we're at we're at the ARK encounter about what, two weeks ago, ten days ago. And I was Ken was doing an interview. I was outside Ken Ham's office, and there was about what 15 people standing around, some of his staff, and I was talking, and I'm a little animated when I talk, and I lifted my hand up and smacked one of his staff members in the face as she walked past.
SPEAKER_03And what's the joy of it all? It was captured on video. It was captured on video.
SPEAKER_00Oh yes, we've got it on video. It's going to be in the documentary we were doing. Anyway, the interesting thing was Easy's body language. It was his shoulders went up, his hands went onto his head. And what I can't remember what you say. What you say when I do things, I can't believe that.
SPEAKER_03I can't believe it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking of all of all the people that have ever walked down that hallway, of all the people that have ever been there, guest speakers, it's undeniable that you're the only human being who could ever possibly smack a woman in the face. I mean the timing of it. She's just walking in pa right in the face.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Anyway, next day Ken sends me a photo of him with a woman with a little bit of paper saying lawsuit Ray Comfort.
SPEAKER_03Coming right at you. All right, Mark Spence, dumb things you've done.
SPEAKER_05I I was flying one time and I got a nosebleed.
SPEAKER_00I have something on you that will just absolutely humiliate you. You'll go and live on another planet.
SPEAKER_05But you would never say that on air.
SPEAKER_00I might. No, no. No. I'm actually tanking.
SPEAKER_05That would be one of the dumbest things. Oh, never mind. That's curious. Oh, no, that's funny.
SPEAKER_01Um so there you are with the nosebleed. Mark didn't nervous right now.
SPEAKER_00It wasn't me, it wasn't. And I got a tiny little bit of blood on his Bible, and he makes out it was like 15 gallons.
SPEAKER_05No, it's it's my Bible. I could bring it in.
SPEAKER_00It's evangelistic. That's blood DNA is all over my Bible.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, but that's a Ray Comfort thing, not a Mark Mark Smiths thing.
SPEAKER_05No. Dumb things that I've done. You can't think of anything, can you? a list of anecdotes and stories. Let's get Laura on the phone. She'll have some things for us. Yeah. No, I think honestly, I think one of the most embarrassing things that I've ever done was I was uh and I think I shared this story with you guys. Well, I waited in line to meet uh Philip Keller because I wanted to tell him what an impact his book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, had on me. That's a good book. And uh and and it wasn't Philip Keller after I told him thank you so much for your book, it was Philip Yancey who ended up telling him that. And he was just looking at me kind of dumbfounded.
SPEAKER_00So did you name the book?
SPEAKER_05I named the book.
SPEAKER_00Did he did he deny that he wrote it? No, he was just like he was just like looking at me like that.
SPEAKER_05He didn't want to embarrass me, I think.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. You wonder how many things like that have happened, and the person never, though, yeah, never said anything. So you realized after that after you finished? Yeah.
SPEAKER_05It's that hot flesh feeling you get. Because you you get a free book, you know, when you're waiting one. Do you remember that? CVAs? So I got his book and I'm looking at it.
SPEAKER_03We'd come back with free book other books that he's done. Not the one I thought. I did that once uh with a guy named uh I think it was at Roby Duke. Do you remember Roby Duke, Mark, back in the day? Uh yeah, I thought it was I thought he was someone else, but anyway. Um Oscar.
SPEAKER_01Uh the first thing that comes to mind is almost dying in Hawaii. We were we were there to film. Recently. Oh, our Hawaii, another Hawaii trip. Uh Mark and I went for the North Shore. We were filming for North Shore competition. Remember that? And for those who don't know, uh on this particular island, you know, once a year for a couple of weeks, I think it was Oahu, that sounds about right. For a couple of weeks, the entire North Shore is shut down to regular swimmers. And I my numbers. The surf's so big, the current is so bad that it's dangerous for the bigger.
SPEAKER_00Swimea Bay Sunset Beach.
SPEAKER_01Have you surfed it, Ray?
SPEAKER_00Uh I I went
out of the pipeline once, about 20 years ago. You know, the pipeline's one of the biggest and most dangerous waves in the world. I went out there just up to my knees and came in, so I could say one day. I'm seriously. I don't think. Yeah, that's what I said. I could say I went out of the pipeline once. Didn't have a board.
SPEAKER_01So so the entire like everything on the North Shore shut down. We're done. No, no, this is actually for um the other trip when we were all there.
SPEAKER_00So you got completely wrong.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. It's the other trip they were out there for. Um listen, we suffer a lot going to Hawaii and preaching the gospel quite September. Yeah. Um, so we're out there with this film crew, we're we're kind of done filming for the day. And the only place where you can snorkel on the entire North Shore, I think it's called Sharks Cove. It's like covered by rocks, right? And so because it's the only place, there's just hundreds of people everywhere. You're bumping into people shoulder to shoulder, and it's like boring, like waist deep water. You guys remember you were there. It was, it was like whatever. Uh, and so we were kind of snorkeling around. I look over and I see this open bay. And mind you, the waves are like 35 feet. And so I see this open bay, and I'm like, you know, it doesn't look that bad over there. Let's go check it out. So me and uh Eddie's son and one other guy go over there with our snorkel gear, and the way it's set up is basically you've got like these tunnels through a reef that pull you out into the bay, and so the waves are crashing, and I say to the guys, all right, let's let's wait. We're gonna time this, right? And as the water's pulling out, we'll swim the tunnels and get to get to the outside raised space right now. Yeah, I said dumbest thing. So I get my snokel gear on, I get my fins on, the waves are crashing, the waves are crashing, the water starts pulling out, I jump through the tunnels and I jam out there. And I think everyone's following me. So I get to the outer shore and I turn around and no one's with me. I'm like, where did they go? What happened to them? What I don't realize is in this cove, there's basically, imagine a maybe a little bit larger than a regular pool. Um, it's just reef all around, except for this circle, this hole that's a pool size. If I go up high, I'm getting hit by 35 foot waves. If I swim down low to protect myself from the waves, the current's trying to slam me into the reef. So I'm like taking a breath, diving down, like basically just using all my energy to stop myself from hitting the reefs. And in my head, I'm like, this is not fun. This is not safe. This is bad.
SPEAKER_05Would I have died with my life?
SPEAKER_01You wouldn't have made it out there. I'll get to that. So I, you know, I'm I love a good adrenaline rush. I don't usually get afraid, but there is a moment there where I'm like, this is dangerous, and I felt my heart rate start to increase. And I remember thinking to myself, okay, I need to slow my heart down and make a plan. So like I calm my body down, I I assess the situation. I'm thinking if I swim out to shore, out into the ocean, sometimes that's a good idea, but I don't know this beach line. Like, I don't know where I can come back in. I've never been here before. If it was a local beach with a local current, I know how to do something like that. I have no idea what's out there. Uh, and so then I think to myself, I'm gonna have to time it to swim through those tunnels. And the worst case scenario, I'll just get jammed up by reef, which is not fun, but it's better than drowning, right? So I'm like timing it, timing it. I jam through the tunnels. By God's grace, I make it back, no damage. But when I get back to shore, I meet up with the guys and I'm like, where were you? And they could, they never even made it out. They got jammed into the reefs. Uh, Eddie's son had uh a reef stuck in it, like a piece of reef stuck in his hand. So they were not good swimmers. It was actually a good thing that they never made it out of the tunnels because I don't know what I would have done with them. It was a dumb situation. I felt terrible because I put them in danger. I'm a pretty decent swimmer. I put them in danger, but by God's grace, we all got out of there alive.
SPEAKER_00That sounds like one of the stories that'll be told. How did you get to heaven?
SPEAKER_03I woke up and my snorkel.
SPEAKER_00That'd be a great name for a book.
SPEAKER_03No, I just heard a Christian comedian giving scenarios of like, you know, what people like end up in heaven for, but like they didn't know. They just died. And he talked about, I mean, it's a sad story we talked about, one guy who got baptized and he died as like he got baptized. He came out of the water and he was dead, yeah. And so he was just giving scenarios of like he wakes up in heaven, like you got people there, yeah, you know, I was tortured, I was tortured. What'd you do? I got baptized. Here I am.
SPEAKER_00When you're talking about snorkeling in Hawaii, I was going to share a story, but what you said made me stop and not want to share the story because you said how dumb it was to snorkel in waist deep water. I spent two hours in water that was probably 14 inches deep in Hawaii, snorkeling. It was so fascinating. The water was so clear, and I'd just zoom in around seeing all these little fish and all these, it's just beautiful. I mean, you said waist deep. I thought, well, 14 inches is you guys ever done. That is waist deep for you. It was over my neck. That was when I just about drowned.
SPEAKER_03It was a puddle in a in a driveway. We've all snorkeled. Any of you guys ever done like deep-sea like diving, like actual scuba diving? No, not scuba diving. I've done deep-sea diving.
SPEAKER_00And I put my hand on the top of a snorkel, and he came up and said, And I said, I knew you would come up.
SPEAKER_01Unbelievable. I've done um spear fishing, which is about 35, 40 feet, but snorkel, no. Yeah. So you've got to hold your breath for that. You have to hold your breath for that, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I'd love to do it. I mean, the concept of it must be extremely weird breathing underwater. You know, I I would love to do it. It seems amazing. But you have to, you gotta get certified and yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, Catalina is like a world-renowned uh scuba diving place. Really? Right off our shores. We should go over there and do an episode. I snorkeled there underwater.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'd love it.
SPEAKER_03All right. This is from 101 of the dumbest things people have. What about you? Oh, me, I don't know. I already shared. I talked about uh what did I talk about? I did, I talked about somebody did. I don't think you did. Yeah, I kicked us off. You did.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Usually you don't need you don't need to say anything. Yeah. Okay, this is right. Perfection. I was in Southern California waiting to speak at a Sunday night meeting when I decided to go to the restroom to make sure I looked presentable. I checked in the mirror to see if my tie was straight. It was perfect. I also had a matching handkerchief in the top pocket of my jacket and a gold pin holding down the knot part of the tie. It was hard to leave the mirror, but I pulled myself away. As I was about to leave the room, I saw a piece of paper on the floor and thought, if I don't pick that up, someone else will have to. What a servant, right? So I bent down to pick it up and dunked my tie three inches into the toilet bowl. How did you recover from that?
SPEAKER_00I couldn't because it was obviously wet. I couldn't. The tie was darker.
SPEAKER_03And you kept the tie on, right? Of course. Of course.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I preached on Noah. I love this.
SPEAKER_03Unbelievable, Ray. Yeah. Um Yeah, I talked about uh people that I did I say someone's name. Yeah, Ray's neighbor, Mandeep.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Um I was going to Hawaii on a plane. I went back to see my parents 13 times, so I was very familiar with the flight. Someone on the flight said, Does this flight stop in Hawaii? And I said, No, and you go straight through to Auckland. It's a great flight. And to prove that I believe what I said, I took two sleeping pills. And then as we pulled into Hawaii and deboarded the plane for two hours, I couldn't remember what I was doing for that two hours, and I I felt as if I'd gone back into the wrong flight. It was just weird. I was out of it. So I made them that was kind of dumb.
SPEAKER_03You guys take uh you guys take a sleeping pill ever on planes?
SPEAKER_00Ambient. I down to I used to take it going down to New Zealand, and what it would do is make the 13-hour flight seem like about four hours. It was weird. And I I like that.
SPEAKER_05I I took a sleeping pill one time on a flight when we were coming from uh Israel back to New York, and uh Chad gave it to me. And I got on the plane and we're sitting there for just a little bit, and uh next thing you know, the pilot comes over and says, I'm sorry, we're gonna all have to deboard the plane. Do you guys remember that?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I remember.
SPEAKER_05And you've got you've already said I just took my sleeping pill.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then you're lying down on the ear pillow. Yeah, I'm lying down. And Chad was like lying.
SPEAKER_05That's awesome. It's the only time I last time I'll ever take it. I don't like taking Tylenol.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I just I'm with you in the I try to avoid it. Uh, but I have the gift of sleeping anywhere. It's sure I have evidence of it.
SPEAKER_00So anyway, one of my worst, no, it's the worst ever.
Dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. Santa Monica, 1990s, late 1990s. Um, I was standing there giving out gospel tracts, people taking them. It was kind of dark. A lady comes along with a wheelchair. A lady in the wheelchair had a some sort of nervous disease where she was all twisted up, her hands were twisted, and she was flailing back and forth, and my heart went out too. I was just felt like weeping, and as they went past, they went past too quickly for me to get a track into her hands. And I thought, well, never mind, praise the Lord. And ten minutes later, and I thank God for it, she comes back. The lady's pushing her in the other direction from the right to the left. So this time I thought, I'm going to get a track into this poor lady's hand. And I reached out to give it to her, and she flailed to try and grab it with her hand because she was all twisted up. And then I try to put it into her hand again, and the same thing happened where she was just so caught up with a nervous disease. So I started walking alongside the wheelchair as the lady's pushing it along, and I'm trying to get it into a hand a number of times, get a hand. And then the lady pushing it says, Can't you see she doesn't want it? She was going, Get out of here, get out. She wasn't flattened to get it, she was trying to get rid of me. And I had I just went oh hot. I thought this is the most worse thing I've ever done in my life.
SPEAKER_03Textbook Inspector Clusot.
SPEAKER_00It really is. I've heard you mumble Inspector Clusseau a number of times when I've done something, Tom. That that those Pink Panther movies, there's some dirty stuff in them, but I've found isolated portions uh on YouTube, you know, two or three minutes long, that made me choke. I so identified with them. The one with the shoe you sent me recently. Yeah, he he gets mud on a shoe, and so he washes it in the fountain, which I think is a good idea. And he slips off his foot into the fountain. There's a little river running along through this hotel, and it grabs a shoe. And he's so what he does is he gets a big piece of bamboo which is inside the the hotel and he bends it down to grab the shoe, which I think is a really good idea. I would have done that with you. Suddenly someone comes and touches it from the back, it goes like that. The shoe goes up and lands on the waiter's tray as he's bringing it out, and he doesn't notice it's there, and he's offering people uh some sort of hors d'oeuvres, and that shoe is there. It just goes on and on.
SPEAKER_03It's the it's the going on and on thing that brings it funny.
SPEAKER_00And he's dead serious, and that's exactly how I feel. Things are going wrong, but I'm gonna beat this thing and it just doesn't. Oh, it does your dirk bite as the funniest little I never get tired of that. You familiar with that? Oh, Inspector Clousseau walks into a um and there's another sequence too, I'll share both of them. He says to someone, because he's got this rich French accent, may I use your phone? And the guy says, Fen? He says, Fan. Fen? And he's trying to say phone. And then he says to the guy behind a counter in a hotel, he says, he sees a little dog, he says, Does your dog bite? And the guy says, No. So he bends down to pat the dog and he bites him. He says, I thought you said your dog didn't bite. And the guy says, It's not my dog.
SPEAKER_03Oh, seriously, it's those tickle you inside, you know, kinds of things. Mr. Bean. Mark, you were uh you were a witness for this one. This this has to go back about 25 years ago. I was speaking at a chapel for a Christian school at a mega, mega church, one of the largest churches in the country, about a thousand students. And I'm up there and I'm I'm preaching my heart out. And I'd done a lot of school chapels, and I had learned if you don't nip things in the bud quickly, it's gonna get out of control. Because you know, you're thinking, oh, Christian school, but these kids are they're rascals and they'll try to distract into different things. So anyway, I'm preaching. And then some kids start making noises to distract. Kids are snickering, laughing. Happens again, and I go, hey, I just like I just broke right in the middle of my summer. I said, I said, someone here have a problem? And and you know, I've done that kind of thing before, and it just usually shuts me on. So it kept going. And so I I start, I like weaved it into my sermon. I'm like, can you imagine standing there on the day of judgment, giving account to God as his word is being preached, the word of the living God, and you're making noises and you're mocking. And anyway, I finish, I get down, the principal runs up to me, like his face looked as white as a sheet. He goes, I'm so sorry. We have a student here that has Tourette's. And we forgot. And we forgot to tell you. I know.
SPEAKER_00So Tourette's is where someone calls out, makes disturbance.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, involuntary noises, you know. And literally the next week, that this is when Mark and I were pastoring, I get a call at the church, and someone goes, Yeah, hi. Um I wanted to come to one of your services, but I have Tourette's. I didn't know what it was until that happened, you know, with that. But oh, seriously.
SPEAKER_00Why don't you share how we were preaching somewhere in Europe and you pointed to something in the sky?
SPEAKER_03Oh no. That's gotta be the worst. Yeah, I was in Germany. I was in Austria, uh, and it was all as a castle, beautiful castle, and I was doing a retreat there for a church from Germany. And uh, and so I'm preaching uh in my sermon, and I I alluded to Hitler and was talking about, I don't know, his atrocities. And I go, you know, like you know, Heil Hitler, and I did the salute to the Heil Hitler salute. Which is illegal in Germany, which is illegal in Germany. You're not allowed to do that. They come up to me afterwards, man, you could go to prison for that, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. What about you uh forgetting someone's name?
SPEAKER_05Oh, why does a wedding come to mind? I actually we just had dinner with them.
SPEAKER_03They forgave you, Mark?
SPEAKER_05Uh kind of. I officiated a wedding. And I'm like you all, like everybody, right? Not good with names. So when I'm officiating a wedding, I don't know how many weddings I've done, 20, 30 weddings, and I'll put the the name of the bride and the groom on at the top of my notes and at the bottom of my notes. And I had every there's their names are everywhere. And I went to my wife and I said, Babe, I I don't know if I'm gonna be able to remember the name because the last or her her first name, and she's similar looking to a friend of mine who was married to a woman and they got divorced, and and it was just really bad. And so as I'm officiating the wedding, I called her by the name I didn't want to call her, which was my a different friend of mine, and um it was it was really, really bad. And to make things worse, the name that I called her was the ex-wife of the guy. Oh, no way. No, I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna put a dunce cap on your head right now. Uh one time uh my old car, the Prius, it would, you know, Toyotas are notorious for running low on oil. And so between oil changes, you gotta put oil in it like two or three times between oil changes. And so uh one day I'm like getting ready to go to work. I'm like, oh, I need to add some oil to my car. And so I open up the hood and I'm filling oil up, gloop, gloop, gloop. And I look down and it's the coolant. No, I put coolant in my engine. Oh, so what do you do? You just have to drain it. I said uh I looked it up and you could drain it, but there's a way for them to like thoroughly drain it. So I had it toy toyed, toyed, towed, and they they drained it in a particular kind of way to make sure it wouldn't do any.
SPEAKER_03I wonder how many stories there have been of people putting diesel like in gas.
SPEAKER_00So let's just move a little on.
SPEAKER_03Have you done it?
SPEAKER_00It's on a phone, it's on a video. You've put diesel No, I couldn't. What happened is I was I I went Rachel Rachel was speaking somewhere and I want to go and hear her speak. This is about four or five years ago. Forty five years ago? Four or five years ago. And I uh yeah, and I was aware that she had the laughing disorder, and you know what that is. Yes, of course. That is a nervous thing, and if she saw me, she'd start laughing at the pulpit. I I had to send her out of a church in Scotland once because our eyes caught each other. I thought I'm just gonna go into a giggling fit in the pulpit. Uh and so um I thought I'll just sneak in the back. So she actually saw me and got all anyway. I started running out of gas before I could find a gas station. Three gas stations were closed in your area, and I don't know why they were closed. And then I finally found one. They saw you coming. And I yeah, and I pulled in and I thought I finally got it, and the nozzle would not fit into my car, it just wouldn't fit. I was going, this is weird. I had to ask a lady, and she says, That diesel.
SPEAKER_03Oh thank God it didn't fit, Ray.
SPEAKER_01You would have destroyed your car.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever driven away with the nozzle in your car?
SPEAKER_00Uh 10.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I did it. You've done it? I've done it.
SPEAKER_00You could start a fire. I couldn't move.
SPEAKER_01Well, they're designed now to just break apart.
SPEAKER_03They didn't used to, but now they break off. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's good to know.
SPEAKER_01Didn't you have to pay anything for that? Uh-uh.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, either did I.
SPEAKER_01Because it's designed.
SPEAKER_05It happens a lot, apparently.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I'm sure there's a way where you can damage it, but thankfully mine didn't damage it.
SPEAKER_03All right.
So, Ray, idiotic things people did in the Bible with lovely.
SPEAKER_00And you see who was dedicated to.
SPEAKER_03Who is it dedicated to?
SPEAKER_00Look, read the dedications on about the page.
SPEAKER_03That's that's there. To my good friend Ken Ham, whose life helped inspire the title of this book. His life inspired inspired the title of the book. Okay, so let's get into this a little bit. So, Ray, you go through a list of different people in the Bible. And it's true, you know, we overlook that. I think we glamorize the heroes of the Bible, but they did some stupid things.
SPEAKER_00Oh, dumb.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, dumb. Okay, let's start with uh how about we jump in here? So I mean you got what do you got? Adam and Eve, Cain, Lot's wife, Israelites and the Gold Calf, Samson, uh, the prodigal son, King Saul. Um Ray, let's jump in with Lot's wife. What did she do that was so stupid? I can't remember. Who's Lot?
SPEAKER_00Who's his wife? But seriously, she obviously, I mean, Jesus just said, remember Lot's wife. Three words. Not in a good way. And yeah, and they were they were so powerful those words. It's just saying, do not look back to this evil world with that longing for the pleasures of sin. And that's what she did. And she insulted her husband.
SPEAKER_04Ah insulted.
SPEAKER_03That's good. That's good. Yeah, I I think about that. Um yeah, remember Lot's wife. It just it's those short phrases that bring back to mind a whole host of things, you know. And the Lord delivers them. It's evident that God is raining down judgment uh on Sodom and Gomorrah, but she looked back with longing for the world, you know. And and I thought about that uh often in terms of like what people will give in exchange for their souls. I mean, Jesus said that, what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Um and I think of the people that I've heard say, I know that this is what I should do, but I'm having too much fun in my sin. We've all heard someone say something to that effect.
SPEAKER_00Well, we've got such a propensity to sin, and that's what remember Lot's wife, she she longed for the pleasures of sin. And I remember Sue and I were in Hawaii, we used to go there and minister way back in the early 80s, mid-80s. We went back, I think, seven times with a missionary organization. And one time we went and it was on the big island of Hawaii, went into where we're staying, and Sue said there's a spider on the back wall. And I'm not exaggerating, the spider was the size of my iPhone. Two-thirds the size of the iPhone was just a big black, it's called a banana spider. It wasn't made of banana, they just lived in the banana type trees. So, anyway, sorry, spider, we did it, made a little noise then. No.
SPEAKER_05You hit the button to record what you're saying, so as you're talking, it was saying everything that you were That was actually an accident. Damn thing.
SPEAKER_00So anyway, uh being the man of the house and the priest and the strong one of Sue and I, I went up to to deal with a spider that was on the wall of our bedroom, and I could hear it walking on the um on the wall. On the yeah, I was gonna- I could hear its feet.
SPEAKER_03So was that big?
SPEAKER_00It made sound as a it made sound. So anyway, I got the insect repellent, sprayed it, and it went sprung back into our bed. And I thought, where's it gone? I couldn't find it. So I leaned over the bed and it had gone under the bed, it came out, and I'm serious, I drowned that thing in insect repellent. It was just this white foam drowned it. So my point being is imagine if we hadn't seen that on the wall and we'd gone to bed that night, and in the dark I feel something on my chest, something furry, and I lean over and say, Teddy bear. Turn the light on, and what we're embracing, we embrace the pleasures of sin, we're embracing death. Beastly creature. And so we've always got to remember that when we long for the world, the wages of sin is death. The most ghastly, evil creature there could be, death itself. So once you get when you get that revelation, the spider that you're embracing, it's got a deadly sting to it. It helps you pull back.
SPEAKER_05So boy, I I remember I was uh really tired going to bed. As I was falling asleep, my cheek was itching. So I itched it, and I woke up, and there was a dead spider that was on my cheek. I looked inside the mirror and I go, Oh, that's what the itch was from.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's nothing. I woke up and there's a crocodile, right?
SPEAKER_03I walked on the moon. Easy sheer, the hell we blew. I know. This is another dumb thing. This is probably one of the dumbest things I've ever done. So we were just at uh, you guys all know.
SPEAKER_00We were we were just at uh Oh, yes, don't forget that one wasn't about it's about you.
SPEAKER_03Okay, thank you for joining us, friends. Um so we were at the Ark, and uh we all of us were just at the Ark, 10th, 10th anniversary celebration. Ray was speaking, we were doing different things there. And they there was an astronaut conference, and Ray was gonna speak there. And who was there but Charlie Duke, one of the one of the 100, I think it's 100 people who have ever walked on the moon. And I never met him, never took a picture with him. And of course, they blamed it on you. Okay, and stupid Ray wanted the leaf.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I never said to him, because we've got that joke from Brian Regan, Rogan, Regan, Regan, uh Regan, uh where he's that that story, I walked on the moon instead of things.
SPEAKER_03And looking back, I would have like we would have re-en I would have reenacted that with him, and it could have been the real thing.
SPEAKER_00That that whole thing that he tells the joke, he tells us if you've got a story that upbeats the person next to you. I, you know, I had six wisdom teeth taken out. When an astronaut says I walked on the moon, you've got you can't up that.
SPEAKER_03It tops it all. Yeah. I love how Brian Regan do it, how he played it out too. Like he's like, he's like dipping a shrimp, you know, in the shrimp cocktail. He's like, I walked on the moon. Silences every do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh sweet lady came in with her family. They're listening to the podcast, uh, and they're here to meet us. And Easy walks up and goes, Hey, thanks for being here. Where are you guys from? And she says something like, Oh, we're from Kent, Oregon. And Easy goes, Oh, Kentucky, I've been to Kentucky, arc in Kentucky. Kentucky French chicken had Kentucky French chicken last week. Oh, Kentucky this, Kentucky that. And the lady's just standing there like, I am not from Kentucky.
SPEAKER_03You know, I totally probably intentionally forgot block that at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_01So it was Kent Oregon? She said, I don't know. I don't know what my brain did. Really not where. But Easy went on for like five minutes, and Mark and I are behind him going, What is he talking about?
SPEAKER_03Oh, that was yeah, that was one of the worst.
SPEAKER_00Um what's humiliating is when I hear you guys say I had a ray come ray comfort moment. Oh, yeah. It's idiot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we say we come, oh man, you comforted it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, yeah. So uh here, one of the ones in here, too, is is Samson. In fact, I'm I'm getting ready to do a sermon. No, not Samson. Um sounds like a great sermon. Delilah, King Solomon.
SPEAKER_00Um King Solomon was tremendously strong.
SPEAKER_03And he had long hair. I like the I like uh your title for that chapter, Ray, Wisest Man, Dumbest Husband. Yeah. Um, I think I did something on Solomon years ago, and it was like the the you know, the most foolish, the the most foolish wise man ever. Because you know, Solomon was, you know, he was given wisdom beyond anyone. But you you see what happens with him, right? He starts off on the right foot. God tells him whatever you want, like carte blanche, you know, you just say it, it's yours. And of anything you could have asked for, he asked for wisdom to be able to rule God's people, you know, and so God gives him what he didn't ask for and blesses them abundantly, but then he gives them wisdom beyond measure. And it starts off on the right foot. I mean, when you see Solomon's prayer, the dedication of the temple, yeah, right, God appears to him twice, and and yet it says two things, and and the point of it all is they seem so small. It says, except he loved many foreign women. So they were small? Very little women, yeah, they're they're dwarf women. And it said, but he continued to sacrifice on the high places. Right. So it's small things, it seems.
SPEAKER_00Do you think they were combined?
SPEAKER_03But maybe. Well, I I mean I would think so because obviously the foreign women he loved were idolaters. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And even though I mean out of guilt, he was sacrificing out of guilt.
SPEAKER_03Oh.
SPEAKER_00He was doing something wrong. I see what you mean. And often we'll we'll do that, saying, Lord, I'll do this for you and you should be happy. Yeah, could be like uh King King Saul.
SPEAKER_03Right. Could be. But but the foolishness in that, you know, of like it's not again, it's not a a faith disconnected from like objective things that happened and God blessed them and all that, but then he's he steers toward foolishness, worshiping idols and giving himself over to painting things.
This whole episode is reminding me of a book I read a number of years ago by Eddie Amy Edmondson called Right Kind of Wrong. And she's not a Christian, but there's a lot of practical wisdom in there. I think it falls under the category of common grace. I'll start, I'll open with a story that she tells in that book, and then I'll tell you the three kinds of failures she describes. One of them is a good kind of failure, the other two are wrong. So she tells a story. I don't remember the name of the guy, but he's essentially the person who first did open heart surgery. And so she describes a story as like they discover this teenager, I want to say 12, 13, 14 years old, and the person who's trying to develop open heart surgery, it's like this is the right candidate. They determine this is the right candidate because they they were gonna pass away no matter what. And the first open heart surgery machine was like the size of a living room. And so they go in there to perform open heart surgery, and it goes horribly wrong. As she describes it in the book, if I recall correctly, blood squirts everywhere, and this poor young child dies. Uh, and so it's back to the drawing board. This person decided I'm not gonna allow this to deter me. I know we can fix this. So they do it again and again and again. I don't remember the number of people that passed away, but a number of people passed away. And then finally, the first successful open heart surgery happens. Fast forward a number of years, and now open heart surgery is almost not even that extreme. So many people, hundreds of thousands of people are alive today because this man was not afraid of the right kind of failure and knew that that his failure was going to lead to something good. And so uh Amy goes through three different kinds of failures in life. And I I'm bringing this up because this applies to evangelism, in my opinion. She talks about basic failure. It's single, it's an obvious cause in familiar territory, a typo, a skipped checklist step, the wrong file being attached. Basically, she calls this preventable and the least kind of valuable. It's just us not paying attention. There's no value in it. Then complex failures. This is like multiple small factors lining up. Um, she uses 9-11 as an example where there was all these red flags, um, but none of them attached to one another, and so a preventable thing, something that could have been caught, wasn't caught. It slipped through a complex uh framework, a complex system of events failed. Um this is a costly one, and it's usually multiple errors leading up to a grand error. Then she talks about intelligent failures. This is the right kind of wrong. These meet four criteria. They happen in new territory in pursuit of a credible goal and are informed by a hypothesis and are as small as possible while still yielding positive results. This is the right kind of wrong. And I actually, to to Ray's credit, who's given us a lot of examples of ways he's failed in dumb ways, I would also say one of the things that inspire me most about Ray is his quick action towards new ideas. He is you, Ray, you are not afraid of ideas failing. I've been here 12, 13 years now, and we've had a lot of ideas, and some of them die in the vine, but then you know, we we experience the London outreach. Um, some of them go not as big as we expected, but then we're headed towards Goldcoin. Uh, some documentaries we make no one watches, but then we get EVG or um 180, you know, and on and on it goes. And so the right kind of failure is trying for a pursuit or a goal. And and I I it's an inspiration. And so to anybody out there that like has not yet walked up to a stranger on a street, the right kind of failure is recognizing it's not gonna go perfect every time. But the more you do it, the more you fail, the more you're able to learn, and the closer you're going to get to that home run, to that amazing moment. Um, and so I apply this to everything. Like you and I have talked about this conversation when it comes to writing, right? The wrong kind of failure is never writing because we think we're not good enough or we're afraid of making a mistake. The right kind of failure is writing 150 books because one of them might become a New York Times bestseller. And so I just as an encouragement to everyone out there, the right kind of failure is pursuing a good endeavor relentlessly and learning and growing along the way.
SPEAKER_03Amen. That reminded me of Edison. You know, he he had failed like a thousand times in the process of getting to the to the light bulb. But he said, no, it wasn't a thousand failures, it was a thousand steps towards success. Yeah. And it's important to remember that, you know, and those that are afraid to fail will never try, you know. And again, the question is is what is the motive? And uh, and when your motive is to honor and glorify the Lord, then you just do it. You know, you step out and you do it, and you just trust the Lord with it, you know. And I think of again, some of the things that that we've done, you know, we were recently at Huntington for our academy, and we were setting up a table, and on a whim, Mark said, Hey, easy, why don't you jump in? I wasn't even planning to do it. I was there open air preaching. Mark says, just jump in, you know, and I go, okay, you know, wasn't ready, sat down, Muslim guy walks up, we start talking. And, you know, I'm thinking, I don't know if we'll ever use that or whatever. Next thing I know, Tanny, your son, says, Hey, this video's doing well. I look at it, I'm like, what? Thousands of views. We wake up the next morning, one million views on Instagram. The next day, within I think 48 hours or so, it had to hit two million, so almost at 2.2 million views, you know? And it's like there was a part of me that I'm like, man, I didn't, I'm not even the right time, right mind frame, but okay, let's just do it, you know. And it's just amazing what the Lord does when we step out, you know, and and I think a key in all this is hey, don't don't be afraid to fail because your aim is to honor and glorify the Lord. And so step out and let amuse you.
SPEAKER_00There's only one man that walked on water besides Jesus. Yeah, and you've got a you've got a photograph in your office of Winnah. Who took that photo?
SPEAKER_03Looks almost like a photo.
SPEAKER_00It's wonderful.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's right. And you know what? And if you start to sink like Peter, remember his words, Lord save me. Yeah. And he was right there, and his grace is sufficient and abundant. So there you have it. Free this is a dumb episode. What? Dumb as episode. Definitely redeemed it. Ever. Um, yeah, thank you so much for joining
us. And don't forget uh all the good stuff. Uh, what are they called? What am I? Well, I'm in the wrong place. Oh, here I am. 101. I know. I had to get there. And idiotic things people did in the Bible. Don't forget to check them out. And don't forget the new Living Waters mug from which you can chug and then give it a hug. And don't forget, friends, like, subscribe, share all at podcastlivingwaters.com. Again, remember we want your thoughts, but your questions, as you've noticed, we've been answering them here. Thank you for joining us, friends. We'll see you here next time on the Living Waters podcast, where we have lots more dumb things to talk about because we have no idea what we're doing.