Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And I think we're going to make progress on the book of Galatians today, probably, maybe. I think so. I want to catch up with you a little bit. For you, it's been a day. For me, it's been a month. I haven't been in front of this microphone for an age because I'm working on this book. And the book is about the Bible. It covers all of it. And so I'm kind of back in that work hole that I was in a couple years ago when I did season two of this podcast when I was trying to crank out a podcast covering an entire book of the Bible every weekday until we were done. Did I tell you that was taxing? Not in a bad way. It was great. I learned stuff about the Bible I'd never seen. I genuinely came into that season that you and I did a couple years ago where we went through the whole Bible thinking I knew the material pretty well. I don't know. You don't want to admit that into a microphone, but I I thought I had it down pretty neatly. And then I tried to do that, and woo, that was humbling. It turns out the Bible is a very big book and it's hard to remember all the things that were in there. And it was a great experience, just a phenomenal experience for me to go through that and to do it so quickly that I could see the way more the fibers connect throughout the Bible. And I'm going through that experience again right now because I'm consuming unbelievable amounts of the Bible. I've just 10, 12 hours sitting at my computer with a bajillion resources spread out around me, really trying to power through it and make it make sense. And it's weird, I feel a bunch of pressure over it, to be totally honest, because I've got a really good publisher, and I think the book is going to get in front of some people. And I think there are going to be people, because of the nature of what the book is, who are going to pick it up and read it instead of the Bible. I don't want that. I want it to make people want to read the Bible. I also think there are going to be people who pick it up and read it, and then that sort of becomes the interpretive lenses they have when they go and actually read the Bible carefully for themselves. So I don't want to screw it up because I think the Bible is actually from God. I think it's reliable and true. And I think that if you spend much time with it, you pretty quickly encounter God. I think God works through the Bible. And that's kind of why we can get away with the way we do it on this podcast. I don't need to be in charge of where things end up for you. I just think that if we think about the Bible together, you will encounter God, not through me, but through this document. So that's gonna, I hope, happen with this book that I've been working so hard on, but I can't rush. If I screw things up, what if people read that and internalize it and forever that's just what people assume about the Bible? I don't want my mistakes to get repeated and then repeated and then repeated and then repeated until the point where it's just part of the parlance or the assumptions about the Bible. And then I'm the genesis of one of those weird little Bible quirks where everybody's like, oh yeah, that's totally in there, except it's totally not. Somebody just said it one time and then everybody plagiarized it forever. I don't, I don't want to be that guy. So I'm trying really hard to get it right, and as a result, I recorded ahead on the podcast so I could kind of clear the decks and just really put my brain into finish lining that book. I was talking with my buddy Aaron Utecht. Some of you know who that is. He's worked with me for a long time on different stuff. We're just old-time friends, and you know, you went to school for the same stuff. He's fascinated by the Bible and great dude. I had him read through my manuscript, right? So I went over last night to pick it up from him. He said a lot of nice things, and it was very nice to hear. He had a lot of helpful negative feedback as well. But one thing that he said that stood out to me is that for some people, they point to their their faith in God and they would say, you know, I had this experience this time where God showed up miraculously. And I've heard a lot of stories like that too. I used to even kind of squint at that. Now I'm like, yeah, the proof's in the pudding. If somebody's following the God of the Bible, uh I I don't know what happened. God broke the laws of time and space in the Bible. Maybe he does that in people's lives in ways that are transformative. I mean, we're reading a letter here from Paul. God did that back then. Why couldn't he do that for somebody now? I haven't experienced a bunch of stuff like that. I've seen a few things that flirt with the supernatural that were pretty wild that I still can't explain, per se. Ironwood rhinos, if you will. So Aaron said, you know, there's some people who have that kind of story, seeing miraculous stuff. Other people, it's a question of probabilities. I've got a few friends who were highly rational. And for them, a couple of things converged with meaning that just could not possibly converge in that way. The odds against are too great. And they looked at that and were like, okay, cool. I was trying to figure this thing out. I had asked God for help figuring it out, and there is that thing. Okay, I know a sign when I see it, and that's from God. And that was sort of the starting place of their faith. That's not the case for me, and I don't think that's the case for Aaron as well. There are other people who believe because of a recurring emotional connectedness with God, or they hear from God in almost like a literal way, they tell me, these aren't silly people, these aren't trite people, these are complex, well-read people who I know, who, for whatever reason, I don't know, God's a little closer to them than to me. I I don't like the way that sounded, but I said what I said. Yeah, they have an attentiveness, if you will, to the Holy Spirit, to God in their life. And that ebbs and flows. No, for me, that's not why I'm a Christian. I I think Aaron was saying the same thing when we were talking last night. So I'm with Aaron. I mean, none of those are like my foundational reason for why I'm a Christian, why I just can't shake this thing. But I I know so many people for whom you know those are a part of the foundational reasons. But Aaron went on to say, for me it was the Bible, I just can't shake the Bible. When I first started taking it seriously, and Aaron didn't grow up in you know like a deeply Christian context, it wasn't something that he really understood or took seriously until college. But he was saying, you know, I actually read the thing, it was all the threads, it's the way all the ideas hang together, all the payoffs. But for a book to be written over such a huge amount of time and to have such internal cohesiveness and connectivity, even though it was written in two different main languages, three if you count Aramaic and you know, a lot of the things that are written in the two main languages, Hebrew and Greek, were actually originally spoken in a different language. There's just all kinds of barriers that should set the Bible up to not make sense. Cultural barriers, linguistic barriers, historical barriers, barriers to collaboration. These people didn't know each other. It wasn't like they could just swap notes and make sure everything checked out just the right way. But yet somehow when you go and really carefully look through the thing, or you're forced to because of obligations that you have. I mean, I I wish I would study the Bible as you know all the time, as hard as I have for the last few months, but I don't know, it takes a special kind of uh carrot and stick situation, I guess, to get me to go as hard as I've gone of late. But in these rare instances when I've really gone at it, I see the same thing Aaron does. And even, you know, that's not true. I see it all the time. When I'm reading the Bible and doing this with you, it's amazing the way this thing hangs together. And I have to admit, that's one of the places where I really see God. That's one of my foundational reasons. Maybe we'll talk about some of my other foundational reasons for faith that at the most honest level really undergird the whole thing. Maybe we'll talk about that some other time. But I thought it was cool that Aaron made the point about the beautiful connectivity of the whole Bible. And I'm way underselling it as I describe it when you go and read through the thing in huge chunks at once. My goodness, there's just language and rhythms and motifs, and I read so many books and stories and history books and original documents and philosophy books. I love reading. I love books. There's nothing like the Bible. It it really smacks of the divine in every way. And so maybe that's something that Aaron and I have in common. Maybe that's not your foundational reason for faith. Maybe you've never thought about your foundational reason for faith. Maybe you don't have faith yet. Maybe you're still working on that. Polling for you. Stay with it. There's life in this thing. It's it's for real. Yeah, obviously we're not going to get to anything in Galatians today. Ah, it's good to catch up. I've missed you. I know it seems like I've been around, but I haven't been. I've had things going on. I want to tell you about things I have going on. So there's most of what's going on. Here's one other thing that's going on. My YouTube channel that still exists. I haven't published many videos over there. I think I've only published one this year total. Is that true? I think that might be right. YouTube has done a marvelous job of deincentivizing me investing energy there. Because they just kill my videos within eight to ten minutes of me publishing them. YouTube, you know, in less time than it would take to actually watch the video. The YouTube algorithm has already decided that it's not going to work out. I'm so sorry. And it's funny because I go and you get all the data from your video, and I can see what videos they're taking my videos and recommending them with. And it's not even close. It's not Bible stuff, it's not Christian stuff, it's not even often in the same language. It's laughably far afield from what I do. So it looks like YouTube doesn't understand what my videos are. Maybe I've just been on for too long. I've made too much weird stuff. So they don't know how to recommend it. But then they go and recommend it kind of somewhere, and then they come back and they're like, yeah, we put it in front of 20 people, and uh none of them liked it. So uh sorry, this video's also not going to work out. So that's kind of, I mean, it's frustrating on some level. I mean, it's possible they're just not good. I do acknowledge that possibility, but the math suggests that I might have something still really fouled up with the uh relationship between my YouTube channel and that algorithm. That said, I think I'm still gonna make some videos. I really like doing it. I've got some church visit videos that I've recorded that I haven't edited up yet, and I want to get to it. But also, I've taken on these other projects and the editing is becoming challenging. So a while back, I put out a call here and asked if any of you would want to help me with editing. And I ended up with a guy I've been working with on those through the Bible videos. You know, we're still getting those dialed. We're about ready to publish our third one. He's great. That's been awesome. But, you know, I uh his name's Hunter. I can't give Hunter anything else to do. It's so hard to make each one of those videos. So I'd like to put out the call again. I could use a hand specifically with editing up videos where I go to churches. If you've never seen those, they're on my YouTube channel. You can go and check them out and see if it's the kind of thing that you'd know how to do or you would be into. So if you're interested and you want to make a few bucks and help a guy out with a project like that, uh shoot me an email. The tmbh at gmail.com will get me. And um, yeah, I don't know. Maybe we'll uh maybe we'll make a video or two together or or more. Whatever the case, thanks for hanging out with me uh today on kind of a weird day, kind of a catch-up day. I know I say it all the time, but I really value what we get to do together here, and I really miss it when I have to, you know, work ahead or take time away from it. So it's very nice to be back, even though I can't hear you or see you right now. I can tell you're there. And I missed you. And thank you for enduring uh a strange day of the podcast. And tomorrow we'll keep going with Galatians 4, with the part that says, I plead with you brothers, become like me, for I became like you. You have done me no wrong. Do you hear all the riddles and questions there are in there to solve? Oh, we're gonna have a good time. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.