It can get discouraging to see people turn away from the Lord, but we can rest knowing that God will always preserve a remnant of his people. In this episode, Brody walks through stories in the Bible, like Elijah and Noah where God preserved his Church.
Believers, don’t lose hope for this generation. Jesus is advancing his Church. Let’s trust the Lord and be faithful to equip believers around us.
Resources:
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
It can get discouraging to see people turn away from the Lord, but we can rest knowing that God will always preserve a remnant of his people. In this episode, Brody walks through stories in the Bible, like Elijah and Noah where God preserved his Church.
Believers, don’t lose hope for this generation. Jesus is advancing his Church. Let’s trust the Lord and be faithful to equip believers around us.
Resources:
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
Welcome to the first episode of NSR no Sanity Required of 2024. We're coming off of a week off. Sorry, we didn't put any content out last week. Thanks for understanding. We had our crazy winter swows schedule coming in right off of our Christmas vacation and it just didn't. We couldn't get it done.
Speaker 1:Today this episode is coming out following the weekend of our 2024 college conference, our college retreat at SWOW and man. It is a huge event for us because of the implications in this generation, and so, with that in mind, today's content will be, I think, pertinent to relevant to sort of where we are right now as a society, as a generation of young people are coming into adulthood. Some things that I think will be an encouragement. If you feel like there's no hope, you feel like you've given up on this generation, you feel like everything's going to hell in a hand basket, don't lose heart. In fact, take heart. The Lord is always going to be working through his people, and there are many of his people in the 18 to 25 bracket right now, and I couldn't be more excited about what God's doing through him and it's gonna do through him. So hopefully, today, this first episode of 2024 will be an encouragement to you, and so I can't tell you enough how much we appreciate you tuning in. So welcome to no Sanity Required.
Speaker 2:Welcome to no Sanity Required from the ministry of Snowbird Roaderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:All right, before we get into this content that I'm excited to talk about, I wanted to give you, I wanted to give you some stats and thank you, and I know some of you are like, oh man, here we go more stats. You just did that last episode Couple of episodes back. We did some year-end stuff, but this is specifically related to the no Sanity Required podcast. Okay, I want to give you some hard numbers related to the no Sanity Required podcast In 2023, thanks to y'all our faithful listeners, those that share this content and push it around and I don't I lost. There's no way I could count how many conversations I had in 2023 with people that said that they listened to NSR. Last week at Winterswow one and two, I had multiple conversations with student pastors, adult leaders and students that are avid listeners. Y'all don't know how much that means For this platform. It's the motivating factor to keep doing it, because I can tell you I am not, first and foremost, a podcaster. This is not my main thing. Week to week, there's a lot going on at SWOW, so to make sure that we get this content out every week for Maddie to put in the hours that she puts in, and then the content, creativity on my end and the team that joins in and creating content. It's just a lot and we got a lot going on, so for us to keep doing this. It's super motivating to read these numbers. So listen to this.
Speaker 1:Nsr 2023, we formally broke into top 10%. So what that means is, on our platforms Spotify and Apple we are north of 90% now. We're above 90% of all podcasts in terms of volume. That has to do with listens, downloads, reach, for instance. With reach, we put out 41 episodes, by the way, in 2023, and that spanned two seasons about 41 episodes, because we break our season up in the middle of the year. We end one season and start a new season in the middle of the year, but 41 episodes went out and they were listened to and downloaded in 56 countries. Over 25% of the nations in the world. Over 25% of the countries in the world are listening top 10% on those platforms. We went way over 100,000 downloads. We broke over 100,000 downloads well before the end of the year, so we put out 2,000 minutes of content. 2,000 minutes of content. I'm so bad at math, let's see how many. 2,000, to be precise, it was 1,936, so 1,936 divided by 60. 32 hours, so put out 32.2 hours of content. That's pretty cool, that's just awesome. So, anyways, some encouraging numbers, and thank y'all for making all of those a reality.
Speaker 1:If I sound like I got a frog in my throat, it's because I'm sneezing so bad. It's like I'm having an allergic reaction. It's because, right before I started recording, I swept the little studio space here at the SuperCoop at North Campus. If you've ever been to the campus of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, you know that our North Campus is very rustic and dusty. We've got a gravel floor here and so I've got this little space for him recording, and it was so dirty and filthy and I swept it out right before I started. And, y'all, I'm sitting in a cloud of dust. I look like that little dude Pig Pen from Charlie Brown that walks around with a cloud of dirt around him. So we're going to try to get through it. I got a bottle of water, so hopefully I can choke through it.
Speaker 1:So what I want to talk to you about today is something that we addressed with college students this past weekend and that we addressed.
Speaker 1:This actually came out of a conversation I had with our staff our institute staff, our interns a couple weeks ago, and that was we were going into Winter Swo one and actually I think we're going into Winter Swo two.
Speaker 1:We did back to back Winter Swo around the New Year, between Christmas and New Year, and just trying to encourage our folks to know that the Lord is going to preserve a remnant of his people in every generation.
Speaker 1:I really believe that. I think right now, if you look at the data, the numbers, if you just get a feel for or a sense of where our society is, it's easy to lose hope and lose heart and to think, man, people are walking away from the faith and there's no doubt that they are. There's no doubt that they are. So if you go back and you can look at Pew Research, barner Research, look at different data collecting platforms and mediums, and what you'll find is that if you trace, you know, post World War II generation by generation, so the baby boomers, followed by Gen X, and then right on up through the current generation, the millennial generation, and then Gen Z, gen Y however they're all labeled because some of them kind of overlap what you will find is that there is a progressive turning away or like fewer people are identifying as Christian and then fewer people are identifying or are saying that they have a belief in God.
Speaker 1:So if you look at the numbers and I don't have any in front of me, I didn't like go pull up. You know the research, the numbers, but people are turning away from any sort of affiliation with faith or denominations or like, if you just look at the stats, a lot, there's a lot out there. But what I want to point out today, in this episode, in this conversation, is something that I think is has always been true and that was definitely true in the days of Old Testament Israel, at different times and periods we're going to look at, and then that Jesus addressed as well. Jesus said hey, like the world is going to persecute you and, and one of the things that you're going to find to be true is that the path to eternal life is going to be very narrow, with very few people on it. So Jesus didn't never, he never said that. You know, history was going to be marked by great majorities of people following the Lord. Jesus literally said there's this wide path that leads to destruction. Many, many, many people are going to get on that path. There's this narrow path that leads through a narrow gate into eternal life and very few people are going to find that. And so the numbers it makes sense that the numbers would would be, would support that. And I wanted to go back to a few times in history where the Lord literally saved the world through a handful of lives or one particular person, just just. You know Like it seemed like all of the world had turned or all of society had turned, but the Lord was preserving a person or a group of people and then he used those people to bring about his greater purposes.
Speaker 1:I want to start with Noah, we'll start with Noah, and if you are, you know, a few weeks ago I did, we did an episode on reading the Bible and I said, hey, don't feel, you know, don't feel overwhelmed if you don't read through the Bible every year, and I don't want you to feel that there's a, there's a contradiction here. But I'm trying to read through the Bible this year, all the way through, and some years I do that, some years I don't, and this year I am, this year I'm just, I'm just trying to read for a certain amount of time each day, in addition to personal study. So what I'm doing is take that episode a few weeks back where I said hey, get something out of your, your study in the scripture. I'm trying to do that, but then I'm also just trying to read for half hour a day, 20 to 30 minutes, 20 minutes minimum, and, and but to shoot for 30 minutes and and then you do that, you get through the whole scripture and before you know it, and, but for me, I just can't help but slow down and pay attention and stuff jumps out at me.
Speaker 1:And something that jumped out at me in Genesis six, in my, in my reading this week, this last week, was it says this is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God. Now, that is an enormous statement. I mean that I don't know why that's never jumped out at me quite the way it did this past week, but it did it. Just it really jumped out at me. So at a time where, if you back up, the beginning of Genesis six says people began to multiply on the earth and the daughters were born to them, and it talks about the Nephilim and you know there are these, you know these sons of God saw the beautiful women and took whoever the sons of God are in those days and for some time after giant Nephilim lived on the earth. So we've talked about this. There's an early episode on NSR about that.
Speaker 1:But in Genesis six five it says the Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So you got like just rampant evil and sin and wickedness throughout the earth. And then here's this guy, the only blameless person living on the earth. Now does that mean he was perfect? No, of course not. Doesn't mean he's perfect. He was sinful, he was a descendant of Adam. But it means he was. He was living faithfully, he was living righteously, he was worshiping the one true God, he was serving the Lord. He was honoring the Lord as best he could he was, it says at the end of Genesis four.
Speaker 1:At that time people began, first began to worship the Lord by name. So he was worshiping the Lord by name, the one true God he was worshiping and Noah was faithful in that way. He wasn't perfect but he was blameless in that he gave his heart and his affections to the Lord. He gave his work to the Lord, he gave his finances to the Lord, he gave his parenting to the Lord. He tried to be a friend who honored the Lord. He tried to be faithful in every way. Bottom line it says he walked in close fellowship with God.
Speaker 1:So the correlation is to know his faithfulness and blamelessness, or his righteousness and blamelessness is that he had close fellowship with God, and it says he walked in close fellowship. What that means is he lived his life in a manner that was defined by fellowship with the Lord. He loved the Lord with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. He worshiped the Lord. He was, he was thankful for his relationship with the Lord. He was faithful to the Lord. He was faithful to others because of the Lord, like he was faithful to other people because of his faithfulness to the Lord. He was faithful to his wife and boys because of his faithfulness to the Lord. He was faithful to the mission of of building the ark, eventually, because of his faithfulness and obedience to the Lord. So here, in a generation and in a time on the earth where people were completely, completely out of control, the Lord was preserving His name, his name. In those days, people began to call Him the name of the Lord. Within a few generations, everybody had turned away.
Speaker 1:And here is this man that is living in faithfulness and fellowship. And what does God do with Noah? He preserves humanity through this man, he brings judgment on the world and this man becomes a picture of God's favor and grace. I think we can be confident that the Lord is going to judge the world. The Scripture is very clear. He is going to judge the thoughts and intentions of people. He is going to judge societies, and he has done that. You can trace that through history.
Speaker 1:But through Noah, there is a man who. God pours out grace and favor on this man, and what has this man done to deserve that? Well, he has not done anything to deserve it. But the Lord does, throughout Scripture, respond to people's faithfulness and to their blamelessness and their obedience. So Noah is obedient to the Lord. He calls on the Lord by name. He walks in close fellowship with God.
Speaker 1:What does close fellowship with God look like? Well, that is not rocket science. I think we all could agree that close fellowship with God is spending time with the Lord every day, focusing on the Lord every day, turning our affections towards the Lord. What does it look like to turn our affections? To lift our hands, our hearts, our minds and worship towards the Lord, to bow our hearts, our minds, our heads and worship before the Lord, to act out in our own faith, the way that we care about other people, the way that we display the gospel, the way that we live out the gospel. I think there is so much that we can do to be faithful to the Lord, but that idea of fellowship, I think, is so beautiful and powerful and strong and wonderful and so many awesome things. He walked in fellowship with the Lord, walked in fellowship.
Speaker 1:I think about those two guys walking on the road to Emmaus with Jesus and you're just walking along having a conversation with the Messiah. You know you're driving to work having a conversation with the Messiah. You're getting up in the morning and you're spending time in prayer. For sure, you're spending time and study fellowship that way, but throughout the day you walk in fellowship with the Lord. You know the Lord says this about Job too. He's like, if you consider Job, he says to Satan if you consider Job, he's faithful. He's faithful to me, he cares about me and my relationship to him and with him. He's faithful to me in every way and I think there's a lot that we can learn from that what it looks like to walk in fellowship with the Lord. So Noah does that and, as a result, noah becomes a picture of God's grace because God, ultimately and eventually, in verse 18 of Genesis 6, says I will confirm my covenant with you. Noah becomes a picture of God's covenant.
Speaker 1:Another time in history where there seems to be very little faithfulness is the time when Israel is about to enter into the promised land, the land of promise, the land God has promised to give them. And God says to Noah I'm looking at my notes. God didn't say anything to Noah at that point in history. He said something to Moses my bad, literally. I've got my notes laid out. I looked over there and I saw the word Noah, because I just come off that page. God says to Moses here's this land I'm going to give you. You're going to go in and take this land, like, I'm going to give it to you but you're going to work for it, which I think that's another principle. That's really cool. That's another principle that's really cool this idea that, yeah, god's going to give this land to Israel, but they're going to go in and go to battle, go to war. They got to fight for it. They got to bleed, they got to sweat, they got to labor, they got to pray. They got to trust and rely on the Lord. They got to face overwhelming fear at times, and so, at the first wave of that, the people falter and only Joshua and Caleb are ready to go in and take that land.
Speaker 1:You've got a nation of people who have watched the Lord provide for them over and, over and, over and over in the wilderness, and you can go back and study that story if you're new to Christianity or you don't know the Bible. It's a story where this entire nation of people were slaves and God led them out of slavery. Literally, he delivered them from slavery, he freed them from slavery and they came up out of the nation. The land of Egypt, which was a global dynasty, is basically a world power, a world empire and he led them out of there and he faithfully provided for them. He gave them food, he took care of them, he looked after them and then, when it came time for them to put their faith into action, they faltered. But there's a couple guys, joshua and Caleb that stayed faithful, and the reason I use this as one of the examples is that nation would have still identified as a Christian nation or as a following nation, a nation of Yahweh followers, but they weren't being faithful and obedient and they weren't living by faith. So God used Joshua and Caleb. And then years later, four and a half decades later, 40, some years later, this guy, caleb, is 85 years old and he goes in and fights for that land. God lets him live to see that land. It's a really powerful story, the story of Caleb. And then Joshua becomes the leader, the successor to Moses, who leads the people, 40 years later, into that land.
Speaker 1:So there's always a remnant. There's always a remnant. God is always going to preserve and raise up people who will lead and influence and impact and be pictures of his grace. Very, two very starkly different stories Noah and Joshua and Caleb. Noah a symbol and a picture of God's covenant promises in a world that has fallen apart and comes under judgment. God raises up this one guy and then his family, this other story of a single nation who is still trying to serve the Lord and following, but they're just faltering. God raises up these two guys. There's always going to be a remnant.
Speaker 1:But then, listen, here's, I think, the big takeaway at this point there will be a remnant within a remnant. God's going to always preserve his church. The church of Jesus Christ will not go anywhere in time. We're going to be here till the end, like Jesus is going to have his people in place till the end. The church is going to be triumphant. The church is triumphant. The capital C is triumphant.
Speaker 1:We've read the end of the book. You read the end of the book. You read the end of the story. We're going to be here, standing strong, but maybe battered and beaten and worn, and within that remnant of the Christian church there's going to be a remnant of faithful leaders who are going to lead no matter what, who are going to be faithful in their leadership, like Joshua and Caleb. How about leadership in the face of persecution? So, noah you've got. So let me break it down this way In Noah, you've got a remnant of people A small remnant who are just faithful to the Lord and in a generation of unfaithfulness. In Joshua and Caleb, you've got a remnant of people who are faithful to the Lord in a season of doubting by God's people. So a remnant within a remnant, because God, eventually, he did preserve all of Israel and he brought him into the Promised Land. Joshua and Caleb were the ones that lived most by faith.
Speaker 1:What about the story of Elijah. You remember that story? There's a story where this prophet named Elijah this is now. We're jumping through time here. So Noah was before Israel was even a nation, and then Joshua and Caleb were the first leaders of Israel going into their Promised Land of Canaan, the land that God had given them. That is modern-day Israel.
Speaker 1:Then Elijah was a guy that came along several centuries later, at a time where Israel was under the governance of an unfaithful king, a king that had turned his back on Yahweh, a king and a queen that were leading the people in the direction opposite, what God would have them to go. Elijah was a prophet who stood opposed to those people. He was in. Our generation would have been like a Billy Graham who stood and preached, but it wasn't just that. He preached the gospel. He had a platform to speak out against the king, and he did that. The Lord was faithful to him and good things happened because of that.
Speaker 1:But there was a point where this guy loses heart. Elijah loses heart. You need to go study his story if you don't know. It's crazy scene where it's him against all the false prophets of the gods that the pagans worshipped at that time. It's a crazy showdown at this place called Mount Carmel. But after God uses Elijah in a powerful way, elijah gets real discouraged and depressed. Literally he's dealing with depression and he's like I'm the only one left, there's nobody else. I think he's feeling like Noah.
Speaker 1:But Elijah is reminded by God that there are actually a few thousand faithful priests or, I'm sorry, prophets, preachers, those that would proclaim and declare the goodness and the mercy and the message of Yahweh. So God reminds Elijah hey, there's a whole remnant of y'all, there's a few thousand. So Elijah shows us what it looks like to be part of a remnant that's raised up in a time of great apostasy. Apostasy, so Noah, at a time of pagan, secular, demonic, sinful control of the world by just evil forces Joshua and Caleb. A remnant preserved at a time of great doubt within the church. Elijah and those faithful prophets raised up at a time of great persecution that stems from apostasy, a turning away. So an entire people have turned away from God and the promises of God, and Elijah and these prophets are preserved in a time of apostasy. I think that was very similar to where we're at today. God's going to preserve a remnant of people, even when there's a turning away from the proclaiming, the proclaiming Christian church.
Speaker 1:Because what's happening right now? Y'all see this there's so many people saying it's like a new brand of Christianity, where it's like let's redefine sexuality, let's redefine who God is, and people want to say no, I'm a Christian but I'm gay. I'm a Christian but I'm trans, I'm a Christian but I'm this or that, or I'm polytheistic and Jesus and Christianity is one of the gods I worship. But I also see a compliance and a fellowship between Christianity and Islam or whatever Like. You see that right now, where there's a mingling of the blood of God Jesus with with pagan ideology. So in Elijah's day you see a remnant of God's faithful people stand firm, and then you could go, we could, we could go through. There's more of these.
Speaker 1:You know Daniel, think about the story of Daniel, which we've covered in some episodes here in the past. In fact, we we a few years ago, at the college conference here, college retreat, at SWO. We walked through Daniel and his life and influence. But here's a guy that was carried away into captivity as a, as a political prisoner, and he stayed faithful to the Lord. He was castrated, turned into a eunuch, taken, taken into a really effective brain washing program where he was immersed and and submitted like like immersed and submerged into a brainwashing of pagan ideology, like secular ideology, philosophy, religion and secular ideology. And he stood. He stood fast and held fast and stood firm and God used him to influence not just his generation but, I believe, generations to come through, the Babylonian and Persian descendants, like the eventually day Daniel's, carried away by the Babylonians but eventually is under the control and rule of the Persians, who overthrew and conquered the Babylonians. We're just coming out of Christmas.
Speaker 1:You know those, those mad job, the wise men that came from the east. If you look at a map, the east, you trace the east, and that goes across through, like Iraq and Iran, and like over into what was the Persian Empire. And I believe the prophecies that those magi had could be traced back to Daniel. You know what? 600, and some I'll see 700 years. I get confused. No, so seven, 722 was the Assyrian invasion. The Babylonian invasion was like 586, I think so. So five to six hundred years before the magi followed the star. I believe Daniel is the one that put that in motion.
Speaker 1:So you got this guy who's faithful in the Persian Empire, faithful in the Babylonian Empire. God preserves him. And then that's even connected to the gospel in the coming of Jesus and in Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the wall, young Samuel in the house of Eli. You go into the New Testament and look at the faithfulness of the apostles to take the gospel. Go, go read Fox's book of martyrs and look at the faithfulness of these men who who hunkered and cowered in fear on the night of Jesus's execution, that they all are then willing to give their lives and lay them down for the gospel, taking the gospel into places like India, north Africa, europe, spain, and the gospel flourished because of it.
Speaker 1:And then, three centuries later, a man named Athanasius, who was exiled by the Catholic Church, who was, who was, like, really the last thread of Orthodox Christianity, that that literally, literally, we owe our modern understanding of the gospel to Athanasius. Like God used him to preserve Orthodox, historic Christian teaching and the canon of scripture that we have, that we have and know today, like God is always raising up a remnant. So the encouragement is this here's what I want to encourage you with through these different stories that, as much as it looks like everyone's turning away, the world is falling away. We I heard, I heard a preacher say one time we act like there's never been evil in the world until today. There's always been evil in the world and God has always preserved and advanced and raised up a remnant and sometimes it's a remnant within a remnant. He's gonna preserve the church and he's gonna raise up influencers and leaders within the church who are gonna stay faithful, because they're always gonna be within the church false teachers and false leaders, and so there's always gonna be a remnant of God's faithful followers and proclaimers and and people and we can take hope and take heart in that. Don't lose hope in this generation. Don't lose heart for this generation. There will be a remnant preserved. The Lord is gonna preserve a remnant. He always will, until he returns. Until he returns or calls us home, the gospel is gonna continue to advance. The gospel is gonna continue to be triumphant. People are gonna come to faith in Jesus day in and day out, in every generation.
Speaker 1:The ship of Zion is a battleship, but it's also a mercy ship. It's a ship that assaults and attacks the enemy but provides care for those who are wounded. The ship, the church, the mountain that we stand on. Jesus said on this rock I'll build my church. The foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ is Jesus himself. He's the one that has created and is advancing his kingdom in his church.
Speaker 1:So if Jesus is the one doing that work, then no, no weapon formed against it is gonna overthrow it and conquer it, doesn't matter what ideological weapon, what historic weapon, what governmental weapon. Governments can rise and will rise and fall. Movements will rise and fall, but the Church of Jesus Christ will always remain. Y'all need to know this. No, no, no. This that we still gonna be standing here, we being the Church of Jesus Christ, at the end of the age. It's not. We're not going anywhere. You and I are gonna die. We're gonna live out our lives and, and, and, and, and, come and go and pass into eternity. But there's a point where time and history will stop and we will enter into that eternal kingdom with the Lord, and at that time we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna step off of that narrow path, through that narrow gate, into an everlasting and eternal kingdom of light. Nothing's gonna stop that from happening.
Speaker 1:So don't freak out over political movements, candidacies, persecution, people turning away apostasy, people diluting the pure gospel with their social movements. Jesus is always gonna raise up a remnant within the darkness of the world and he's always gonna raise up a remnant within the remnant to lead in an orthodox and faithful manner and to expose false teaching, false ideology and and we can take confidence in that, we can rest in that, assuredly, knowing that Jesus is gonna always prevail. It's gonna always prevail. There's a remnant in every generation. Let's be part of that remnant. Let's be part of the faithful remnant that Jesus calls to shine the light and the darkness in our generation and let's raise up the next generation to do and be that. If you're in a position to influence young people, invest in them, show them the way, instruct and teach and encourage, let's do our part in our generation. Thank y'all for starting 2024 off with us Excited for the lineup we've got over the next few months, really excited.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I want to tackle in this first quarter that'll be coming up in a few weeks is we're gonna we're gonna do a series on pornography, the dangers of it, strategies for tackling and attacking the allurements of it, how to stay faithful in an age where it's so accessible. We're going to talk about pornography. I'm going to have Lord Willen. We will have episode coming up, a couple episodes maybe, but we'll have some content coming up. I'm going to have a conversation I've got it on the schedule to sit down with with two of my children my 18 year old daughter and my 21 year old son. Both of them recently had birthdays and so Lately just turned 18, just turned 21.
Speaker 1:Sit down and just talk about Stay in Christian through high school and college. What's that look like? What's it look like to be faithful to the Lord throughout your high school years? I think it'll be an encouragement to students, but it'll also hopefully be encouraging to parents. And then the same with, with with college. Tucker's got a. He's in a major that is very his major is super secular and it's an ideological hotbed. I mean it's like that sort of transgender world. I mean that's where he's at, so that movement of LGBTQIA plus or whatever kind of. He's kind of like immersed in that, the pressure of that movement, because his major is human development and so he's surrounded by that influence. And why would a Christian choose that major? It'll be a fun conversation, so looking forward to that, that content coming up, and then we're just going to try to put out some more content here at the first of the year to help you as parents, student pastors, ministry leaders, to help navigate, help students navigate these crazy waters that we're in right now, culturally so excited to bring you this first quarter of the year content and what the Lord might do through it as this goes out.
Speaker 1:Thank you all who contributed to our year-end campaign, the Lord. I'm not going to throw numbers out today at some point to give you an update on what the Lord did, but it's not in the thousands. It's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars that God brought in and we're going to be able to start immediately a rapid expansion of the physical property at Snowbird. Try to get these 2,000 kids off the waiting list that we're dealing with every year. It's driving me crazy. I don't like people not being able to come here. Who want to be here. Yeah, so close with one cool story from Winter Swoe 2 that we had a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 1:A week ago now, sit down at lunch with this new church from Henderson ville, north Carolina, carolina. Shout out to you guys, you know who you are. And we were talking and the guy said, yeah, I got exposed to the podcast, was listening to the podcast for a year, loving it, and then decided, hey, I want to. I want to take our students to something here in Western North Carolina. This guy's part of a denomination that does you know. They have their own camps and conferences and he'd been kind of stayed in that lane and he's like I'm gonna try something different. So, just as a Google search find Swoe does not connect the podcast and that's our podcast too, that this is where he's booking his kids to go starts listening to more podcast content from the SWO podcast. Anyway, eventually connects the dots, gets here and is like man, this is crazy. I was listening to the podcast. Then I booked to go to this place. Didn't know they were the same. So we got new friends and partners from Hendersonville, north Carolina that are that are that I was excited to meet and spend some time with cool group, cool leaders, awesome group of students.
Speaker 1:Winners Swoe one and two were a hit, including a massive fireworks show. It was so fun. I'm sure some of you followed that on social media. But and we're often running 2024, often running. And yeah, thanks to everybody who contributed. Can't thank you enough for your contribution to to the work here. So we're so excited about what God's going to do in 2024. This coming weekend is Winners Swoe three. It's MLK weekend. That's always a big one. We're expecting a huge crowd. We're sold out. We got a bunch of folks coming and excited, very excited, for what God's going to do here this weekend. So I would ask you to please pray with us and for us as we go into this weekend Winners, swoe three and trust the Lord to do awesome things. We're teaching through the miracles of Jesus. We're covering about six different miracle stories from the life and ministry of Jesus and the gospel. So pray for that this weekend and we'll let you know how it goes. We will give you an update next Monday and until then, you'll have an awesome week and be blessed.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources. We'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.