Ep. 97 - The Good News: The New Exodus
Download MP3Hey. Well, we don't have doctor Wiles in the studio with us today. He is and I'm a little jealous.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or a watchdogs. That's cool.
Speaker 1:He is learning about the book of Ephesians from the one and only N. T. Wright. And he's in Houston, which is a really great opportunity, when N. T.
Speaker 1:Wright I'm When he said that he was going, I kinda kissed myself, like, gosh. I should have signed up
Speaker 2:for that. You could have
Speaker 3:been there.
Speaker 2:True thing. You could have been there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, let's just It's not exclusive. Like, it was an invite only.
Speaker 3:But Dennis Laws is living his best life right now.
Speaker 1:Okay. But And so we have Kurt Grimes.
Speaker 2:What voice am I hearing? Oh, my gosh. It's Kurt Grimes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. You know?
Speaker 1:The one and only. Not the only Kurt on our stuff, but the only Kurt Grice.
Speaker 3:The only bald headed ghosting Kurt on our stuff.
Speaker 2:Truly only one Kurt Grice.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you.
Speaker 1:This is this is an aside. A parent told me they overheard a conversation from a child in the balcony. And, the child said, do you have to be bald to go to church here? Do all them are are all the men bald here?
Speaker 3:What does that say about us?
Speaker 2:Was this the first service or the second service?
Speaker 1:This is the second service.
Speaker 3:Which is, our new our new minister of contemporary worship.
Speaker 2:Great head of hair.
Speaker 3:Has a great set of hair. He's he's got strong hair.
Speaker 1:He's married to a hairdresser. We hope
Speaker 3:He's married to a hairdresser. His wife, Blair, came up after the service. We were chatting, and she said, Hudson Great hair. Their their son
Speaker 1:Okay. I wasn't gonna rap about, but it was Hudson.
Speaker 3:Hudson said, and so she asked me, does he want to be bald? Does he choose to be bald? And I said, sort of, but great question, you know? And I hate for a kid at 5 to already be having anxiety about hair issues.
Speaker 2:But if your
Speaker 3:dad has great hair, and you're a hairdresser, you know, it's probably other
Speaker 2:than that. So as an aside to your aside, might I just go way left field? We had friends in town. I've told y'all, we we we love our friends. We don't get to see them much.
Speaker 2:They happen to come in town this weekend because they're Giants fans, and the Giants were playing Rangers.
Speaker 3:Francisco Giants fans.
Speaker 2:And our friend, Cameron, has buzzed his head. It's not isn't shaven. It's probably, I don't know, like a one on the and it looks really good. He's got dark hair and a great hairline. And so Ryan has very shaggy hair right now, and he's getting hair cut today.
Speaker 2:Praise God. But, Cameron was like, we should just shave your head. And I was like, do it. We got clippers in the house. Let's do it.
Speaker 2:And then Ryan's mom was in the house as well with the boys, and she was like, you cannot do this. Your hairline can't float that. You're gonna be very disappointed if your hair is that short. And she basically just started roasting Ryan. Wow.
Speaker 2:And the whole room decided that we probably shouldn't buzz around here.
Speaker 3:Wow. But just just paying
Speaker 2:a hairdresser to cut his hair today.
Speaker 3:You never stop being mom though.
Speaker 2:And she was really like, almost like at a maternal, like,
Speaker 3:yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was like, call your uncle James. He had to go through this too, like, like, finding resources to support him in his receding hairline.
Speaker 3:But I'd like to believe if he had chosen to go through with it, it would have been, teachable. It would have been a teachable moment.
Speaker 2:And to be honest and I know that we're kind of but real life. We talk about real life in here. You all know my uncle has passed away. He's been on a cancer journey, and his funeral's next week. And I kinda stopped the go shave your head momentum when I realized, like, and Ryan's gonna participate in that service.
Speaker 2:And I was like, hey.
Speaker 3:He's gonna be in front of the crowd.
Speaker 2:Let's try to shave your head for the first time ever, not when we're gonna have you participate in something more sacred, you know? And he was like, oh, great. I'll call the hairdresser. So anyway, speaking of hair.
Speaker 1:He does have a great mustache.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If he keeps it, you know, manicured, it's it's lovely.
Speaker 3:And What an interesting intro. I haven't been here in a while, so I wasn't sure what the throw was. So it's it's
Speaker 2:We could start over We could start over, but we won't. Yeah. It's child of Adam. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:What an interesting character. We have switched
Speaker 1:way, but there it is.
Speaker 3:Years. No. It's it's good. And and, his clothes, his food, his Locust
Speaker 2:and honey.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Just kind of an out there guy. Yeah. You know why? Because he stayed out in the wilderness a little.
Speaker 2:And I wanna talk about the wilderness, but not yet. Is that okay? Because first, I wanna talk about Kurt r Grice. Curtis Ray.
Speaker 3:No. No. It's Dennis Ray. I'm Curtis Darryl. It's
Speaker 2:Dang it.
Speaker 3:Dennis r Wiles. He's Dennis Ray. I'm Curtis d.
Speaker 2:Oh, Curtis It's all good. Daryl
Speaker 3:All good. Yes. Wiles. Yes. Right.
Speaker 3:But I knew
Speaker 2:it when I said it. Dennis good friends and
Speaker 3:we've never been confused for one another. We've never
Speaker 1:been mistaken for another.
Speaker 2:We've never been mistaken for another. We do have, old Kurt Grace here, and we haven't seen him in a while in this setting. And so, Kirk, what's been going on in your life? What's what's the big update?
Speaker 3:You know, after 30 years, well, 30 years on staff here and 66 years on earth, I got a hip replacement, almost 2 months ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That was a big deal.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was
Speaker 2:To us too, to not have you, you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was it was a big deal, but it's amazing modern technology and what they can do. Fortunately, I slept through the procedure, and they were cutting and chipping and digging and cramming. It's a
Speaker 2:pretty big procedure. I mean, large incision. Yeah. Lots of parts in and out.
Speaker 3:But it's remarkable, modern medicine, their ability to do that. And first couple of weeks, you're still kind of getting through over sedation and all that, and it's you're taking heavy drugs, and it's all pretty good. 2nd 2 weeks, you're kinda coming off the drugs. Reality sets in. You're thinking, oh, dear god.
Speaker 3:What have I done? And then you sort of get past that to the point where I am now where, you know what? I should have done this a long time ago.
Speaker 2:It's really good. I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 3:So it's just this It kinda comes much like life. Yeah. There's this sort of ebb and flow, cyclical, good thing, bad thing, but now I'm in that gee, this is a really good thing. So
Speaker 1:Well, if you're out there listening, watching
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:And thinking about new hips.
Speaker 2:If you're putting off any medical anything, let Kurt be your guy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I I suffered need needlessly for probably 3 or 4 years. It just got worse and worse and worse. And so, I was too cheap. Didn't wanna spend the money.
Speaker 3:Too busy. Didn't wanna spend the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And too scared. Didn't wanna endure the pain. But finally, I I My gosh. For it, and I'm glad I did.
Speaker 2:I love that. Well, we'd go home now. This is amazing.
Speaker 1:That's great advice.
Speaker 2:And so, any so other than, I guess, the immediate, don't don't put surgery off if you needed any other big kind of revelations while you because you Kurt doesn't sit and you had to sit at home.
Speaker 3:I did. Just stare
Speaker 2:at the wall or, you
Speaker 3:know The pain, was real. Praise God for, again, pharmaceutical industry. It's great when you can access it when you need it. Don't overdo it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know one sword.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, it helps take the edge off and and sleep at night. But, the the the humbling dimension of it all, you know, all of us would like to think, I think most of us would like to think that we make a contribution to the common good and whatever vocation we're in, it's better when we're doing what we do. And so to be sidelined Mhmm. To be taken out of the action Yeah.
Speaker 3:Several things go through your mind. One of which, in a hopefully not too hubris tic way, is gee, I hope they'll be okay without me as if. And then secondly, gee, I hope they're not too okay without me.
Speaker 2:Always. Right? Always. Yeah. That was what I've already leave had a similar yeah.
Speaker 3:All those thoughts and emotions, but but it's good for us, for whatever reason and certainly injury, infirmity, illness, whatever. Folks that have had COVID or even the flu or or some other injury or surgery or whatever. Yeah. It's it's very much physical, but it's also very psychological and emotional. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But also, you would expect me to say, believe that God can be incredibly present in those times. And, I I wrote a little blog about it, the problem of pain while I was
Speaker 2:For our website? Yeah. It's a small blog. So if you reader wanted to go find it, it'd be on fbc.org under the tab blogs. So blog?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I'm blogs.
Speaker 2:I have blogs. Multiple. Okay.
Speaker 1:Blogs. Multiple.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I just tried to succinctly sort of summarize the experience.
Speaker 2:That's great. Good for you. Good for me.
Speaker 3:Pain is one of those things that we all have in common in some form or fashion. Each of us endures pain at some point. Some people may feel like they're in a perpetual state of of intense pain, but, God is very present in pain. And so, yeah, I read the blog if you're so inclined, and it kinda summarize my thoughts.
Speaker 2:I bet we will. Thank you. Okay. Can I ask Kurt one more question?
Speaker 1:Go for it.
Speaker 2:Kurt, you were the legendary youth minister at First Step of Sure in Arlington for how many years? 15. 15 years. Well, you were legendary for, like, 12 and then, you know Yeah. Those are the 3.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm just
Speaker 3:kidding. Exactly.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:The first three, not the last.
Speaker 2:You kind of Archer. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Just when you're getting your bearings.
Speaker 3:So it's like, are you been married for 40 years. Like, man, those were 12 of the best years. Which 12? Yeah. You know, it was all good.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's kind of one here, one there. But you kind of built we just returned from camp. That's where I'm going with this. But you built kind of the camp that we know and love into what what it well, it's morphed, but it what it is I mean, you kinda burst this, worked hard for it, all of that.
Speaker 2:And and now, you
Speaker 3:know Let me let me just say you
Speaker 2:I sat there
Speaker 3:and and different ones who knew kind of the history and story asked me, gee, you know, what are you thinking?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Well, the overriding emotion for me was just gratitude as I watched what transpired both weeks. One of the things, and nobody really cares about this, but it was a big deal at the time. When I got here, we were doing children's camp and youth camp the same week at the same time, sharing
Speaker 2:some space. Isn't
Speaker 1:that wild? Ideal.
Speaker 3:And and
Speaker 2:Would y'all, like, worship together? No. No.
Speaker 3:They would do their
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's like, how would that even work?
Speaker 3:So the children's minister and I had to organize our schedules so that we shared everything. The meals, dining hall Yeah. Would alternate, worship center, worship times had alternate
Speaker 2:meals. Starting that, it wasn't David Butts?
Speaker 3:No. No. Helen Walters was the yeah. Back then. And, and and it was great.
Speaker 3:And so that had been established before I got there. But during my time there, the first few years, for whatever reason, camp just exploded. And so we were, putting people on mattresses in the mattresses in the middle of the dorms and still having to turn people away. And it was frustrating because I felt like we had the capacity to really expand
Speaker 2:and
Speaker 3:make it bigger and more than it was.
Speaker 2:But not
Speaker 3:But in order to do that, we had to split the 2 camps.
Speaker 2:And how was that received?
Speaker 3:Well, a 150 year old churches have a few sacred cows. Yeah. And sometimes they're obvious. Sometimes they're a little more obscure.
Speaker 2:All going to camp together.
Speaker 3:But that was something that was a source of identity, pride, and it allowed everybody to sort of be there at the same time.
Speaker 2:Be together.
Speaker 3:And so there was certain efficiency or economy of of effort and resource. And so I didn't understand all of what I was asking, but I felt like it was the valid ask. And so had to go before the deacons and other leadership, but ultimately, the church approved, splitting into 2 camps. Mhmm. And so even now, these 15 years later, we're still living in the reality of that, trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3:But as is so often the case, once you get over the shock of it and begin to sort of accept this new paradigm or new reality, you live into that and hopefully discover all new possibilities that didn't exist before. And so I would just say now 15 years later, well, from the last one I did, it's more like 25 years later From the split. When we split the camp. Yeah. We had over 700 at children's camp and over 600 at youth camp.
Speaker 2:Last week?
Speaker 3:The yeah. This I mean, this past past week.
Speaker 2:Past iteration. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So, you know, the by the
Speaker 2:way, everybody. It's Tuesday morning.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So some overlap, but but it's easy to say well over a 1000 people, which would have been impossible if we had kept doing what we had been doing. And so everything changes, everything evolves. We've got to be open to God doing the new thing. That sense of loss that's painful, is is necessary, but warranted.
Speaker 3:And you got to let go of what you have if you're gonna receive that.
Speaker 2:Receive that thing. That are being spouted in this recording booth.
Speaker 1:Don't put out surgery. Be willing to sacrifice to grow.
Speaker 2:Change is inevitable. Change is inevitable. And so Embrace it. Don't forget. God.
Speaker 1:The caterpillar has to turn to go to become a butterfly.
Speaker 2:Pain and change are universal.
Speaker 3:Yes. And so I'm experiencing it personally. I watched it play out at Riverbend last week. And so, again, my overriding emotion as I sit here with you is just deep gratitude.
Speaker 2:I love it. We love it.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Okay. Any other reflections on this most recent iteration of camp or just gratitude and
Speaker 3:No. Just the great leadership and and the students. We use well, 2 I don't know. There's probably 10 things, but 2 things. It is, for us, a key component to passing on the faith to the next generation.
Speaker 3:In no way, a substitute for parents being the primary shapers of their and informers of their children's day.
Speaker 2:That is
Speaker 3:what we want. Yeah. Absolutely. And what we do here on campus week in week out, our our Sunday morning bible study organization, our all of our programming for children and all. But there's a unique component to camp that's intensive, and it's geared just for them.
Speaker 3:And it is a community devoted to what we are presenting as the way to live life. And so it reinforces and ingrains, I think, experiences, new opportunities, all kinds of things, but it it reinforces and ingrains in children the the reality of this faith that we're we're talking about. And so I think it's a key part for us passing on the faith to the next generation, both for our children and for our youth. Because most people who ever choose to follow Jesus do it by the time they get out of high school. So They do.
Speaker 3:If we miss them before that, we're we may well
Speaker 1:have missed them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're really gonna feel. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Wisdom. I know. Shall we talk about the bible?
Speaker 1:We should probably talk about the gospel to Mark.
Speaker 3:Let's do it.
Speaker 2:Tell us. Let's do it. Tell me everything.
Speaker 1:Tell me more, Kurt.
Speaker 2:We went over mark 19 through 13, which is baptism of Jesus. The mark in baptism of Jesus. Yeah. And it's it's just packed full. It's 44 verses, I guess, 5 verses.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. 9, 101, 12, 13, but so much. And doctor Wells did a good job of kind of parsing it out for us, but I might I might want the Kurt r Greiss and the Luke.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Dean.
Speaker 3:Hey. Dean. You got a.
Speaker 2:Stand up. David. Got
Speaker 1:it. Nailed it.
Speaker 3:Man. Nice.
Speaker 2:I'll get there. I'll get there. So, I want both of y'alls, you know, kinda take on it. There's a lot there. So I can lob some questions or or y'all can just spit from what what stuck out to you.
Speaker 2:But maybe you start to start with
Speaker 3:you wanna start with talking, Luke. You take it and run from me. Alright.
Speaker 2:I start with wilderness.
Speaker 1:You got it, Mary Catherine.
Speaker 2:It's Kathleen.
Speaker 1:Kathleen. I know. I know.
Speaker 2:Mary Catherine is much more common, so it's very fair, but it's it's actually Catherine. Yeah. But I
Speaker 3:got all this when when she interviewed I had her resume, and and we went through this whole bit Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:When she first applied for a job here, which has been a few years ago too now.
Speaker 2:In fact, let's put an aside to the aside. My legal name is still Mary Reid. So anybody looking for Katie Hodges on, like, the interwebs, good luck. Yeah. There's nothing official about it.
Speaker 2:In fact, it gets very confusing even for me on what I should introduce. Like, if I call the car car dealership and they said, what's your name? And I'm like, I don't know what y'all think. I don't know. How how formal is this?
Speaker 2:Anyway Well,
Speaker 3:let let me just say in our database, there is not a Katie Hodges.
Speaker 2:No. No.
Speaker 3:There's a Katie Reed dash Hodges.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I know. It's very confusing. I'm sorry. It was not my intent to be a diva.
Speaker 3:It's alright. It's You you knew you, dear.
Speaker 2:Okay. No.
Speaker 1:It happens.
Speaker 2:Okay. Back to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The gospel of Mark says a lot going on in a little bit of space and a little bit of time.
Speaker 2:That's a great summary of just Mark in general, like economy. Let's let's do it.
Speaker 1:You are getting the bang for your buck in words here. Every word matters, every word counts, every word is intentional, carefully chosen. I think, you know, when you think about when Doctor Wiles on Sunday said, you know, there's this word for ripped open, that occurs only a handful of times in the New Testament, only occurs twice in Mark. The first,
Speaker 2:Tell me.
Speaker 1:Is when the heavens get ripped open, and the baptism of Jesus Here
Speaker 2:in this Yeah. That we're looking at.
Speaker 1:At the end of mark, when the veil gets torn in the temple, which is really just, again, just punching, driving home the cosmic nature of who Christ is, what's happening in the baptism. I think one of the things that I think about when we read these passages, when we think about the baptism of Jesus, we can get really close to committing a Trinitarian heresy here.
Speaker 2:Oh. Oh, here we go.
Speaker 3:That phrase in
Speaker 2:itself is exciting.
Speaker 3:Here we go.
Speaker 1:So what what how do we make sense, Kurt Grice?
Speaker 2:Woah.
Speaker 1:Of the spirit coming upon Jesus, and what is happening in that moment. Because there's a heresy, if you're not a history of theology buff, that, is called adoptionism, which basically holds that Jesus was born an ordinary human being and became God's son at the baptism when the spirit descends upon him and became divine in that moment. Not that he was always divine, but that he became divine, became God's adopted son. Not begotten son, but adopted son. And so, there are Christians who have read this text this way.
Speaker 1:So what's hap- why is the spirit coming upon Jesus? What's happening in this passage? How do we make sense of the trinity? Because this is one of those very clear trinitarian passages in the gospels. How do we make sense of what's happening here?
Speaker 3:I think for us, it's illustrative. It I don't believe, it is the sole explanation of the Trinity.
Speaker 1:No, no, no.
Speaker 3:It helps to inform our understanding.
Speaker 1:It is a key passage. It's not the only passage.
Speaker 3:And so we need to be careful.
Speaker 2:Good lesson on reading the Bible. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Let scripture interpret scripture. And so don't ever just proof text 1 verse and try to create a whole theology.
Speaker 2:Tell me more, Curt.
Speaker 3:Well, so that's why I think we need all 4 gospels. To me, if all you had to, develop a theology of the trinity was this passage, you could get that gnostic heresy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That Jesus was a human who got adopted
Speaker 3:by God. That we've got God, and then we've got this man, and God chose this man, so he imparted his spirit on him at his baptism. That's all you had. But then the spirit also departed then at his, you know, his crucifixion at his death. And, that's why I like John, who was a close personal friend You know life and death.
Speaker 3:A close personal friend of Jesus who says, okay. Let me tell you about Jesus. He's the word, the logos.
Speaker 1:For more on the gospel of John, listen to any podcast from last year.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Oh, it's incredible. So, you know, in the beginning, Jesus was in the beginning, you know, he he was the word he created everything. And so, I think that picture that we get at the baptism has literally been a picture that's probably in lots of church baptistries, baptist churches or others.
Speaker 2:It makes sense. Right?
Speaker 3:Painted on the wall behind the water, because it does symbolize for us. There is this illustration, that's information that helps us understand this mysterious Trinitarian fellowship. But how do you describe and the pastor references. How do you describe the spirit descending? Well, sort of fluttering like a dove, which is this genteel sort of very natural, winsome kind of a thing other than this violent ripping that you're talking about, you know, before.
Speaker 3:This is just sort of the the relational intimate connection between God the father, God the son, God the spirit. But it was obviously noteworthy for Mark. You know? So whoever was there, whoever saw it, they knew something was going on. And I think there was a significance of this baptism.
Speaker 3:It wasn't just symbolic, although it was very symbolic. I think it was a launching of this ministry that Jesus had come to earth to to undertake. Mhmm. And so the the present and even God to say, this is my son. You know?
Speaker 3:I'm I'm I'm pleased. I affirm. He represents me. Listen to him. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:You know, there's just it's a richness, as you said, in just a few words. And it he doesn't offer a commentary on it. He just sets it out there and tells you, here's what happened.
Speaker 1:No. It's it's brief, and then it's end the spirit immediately, which is again that keyword in Mark, youthus immediately. And then
Speaker 2:onto the next thing.
Speaker 3:Out into the wilderness. Yeah. So is it time to talk about wilderness?
Speaker 2:Hit us with it.
Speaker 3:Go. Well, again, well, what the
Speaker 2:If you're holding back, here we go. Without I
Speaker 3:don't have anything profound to say other than, the pastor on on Sunday in this sermon, the new Exodus, tied together this whole sense of self that the Jewish people had that he thought the creation, the Exodus, and the exile are those defining experiences that help to, create an understanding of who God's old covenant people are. And most of the initial readers of Mark's gospel certainly would understand the imagery, the reference, the history, the old testament, the the law, and the prophets, and all that went into that. And so God, first establishing his people and then delivering his people. And and that 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, so much happened. But it was time of shaping and learning, of refining, of giving the law, of just understanding who God is, his provision for them.
Speaker 3:It wasn't a wake up weekend. It was 40 years of birth and death and struggle in life and and just significant experiences, the the giving of the law. Who is this guy, Moses? He's gone. Well, let's just revert back to the old ways and and, you know, just all the mess that went with it.
Speaker 3:Unless we criticize them, thereby, by the grace of God, go any one of us. So let's not let's not be too hard on God's old covenant people because his new covenant people don't get it right.
Speaker 1:And the Holy Spirit lives in us. It did not live in them.
Speaker 3:Exactly. So but that that wilderness wandering is a time of shaping and refining. It certainly was for for God's old covenant people. It was for the Lord Jesus himself, and I think it can be for us. I certainly appreciate those times when I've been able to get alone by myself.
Speaker 3:I've been able, by the, grace of God and the blessing of this church, to take a a couple of sabbaticals. Mhmm. And always when I get a sabbatical, I wanna take 1 week to go up to the Steiger's place in Colorado by myself and literally spend a week in the mountains alone.
Speaker 2:Which is
Speaker 3:I'll call my wife maybe once a day, but never turn on a TV. Just read, reflect, walk, wander through the woods. And it's such an intimate, deep, profound, shaping experience. And so I don't know what all Jesus experienced. He confronted Satan.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. He sort of reinforced his whole, ministry of messiahship, what what was gonna be a part of that. He got attended to by angels. Again, what what was that all about? It was a real wilderness.
Speaker 3:There were wild animals. You know, I don't know which ones, not a zoologist, but, you know, it was it was a real wilderness. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This was It wasn't
Speaker 3:an Airbnb. He was out in in the desert where John the Baptist apparently hung out a lot. So it's all very interesting. But to me, wilderness is much like the other things we've talked about, is is both real and symbolic. There is a reality to it that I think we can experience and gain from.
Speaker 3:Again, we can use it euphemistically about, well, I'm going through a wilderness wandering. Yeah. You can also actually be in the wilderness alone with God. Yeah. And I think that communing with God in nature is still such a profound and shaping thing for us.
Speaker 2:And we that may be why camp is so important too. We we are drifting culturally further and further away from that. You know, when you talk about a week by yourself in the woods, in a cabin. I mean, I don't wanna misrepresent that.
Speaker 3:It's a nice place. I'm not tent camping.
Speaker 2:No. And I you didn't say that. I just wanna make sure. The aloneness of But when I mean, listener, what viewer, when's the last time you spent even a full day without technology, without conversation to distract you, without whatever Yeah. To be present, particularly to be present to God.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I think we would all have to really think about when the last time that was.
Speaker 3:We have to be intent most of us, just because the nature of our lives, have to be incredibly intentional about it. And we're so entertainment oriented. Mhmm. With all due respect, and I'm not sitting in judgment here, But if you live on your phone and I watch people, they're they're not typically reading articles. They're thumbing as fast as they can, just getting a quick fix of something.
Speaker 3:And it's all about distraction and entertainment. And so, yeah, to set all of that aside, and it's it's the listening prayer we do.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:You know, when we meet on Thursday mornings, first thing we do is we just sit still and quiet
Speaker 2:for 15 minutes. With Ashley Berryhill as part of the engagement team. We are the engagement team of First Baptist, and we sit and listen. Try. We try our best to sit and listen.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That listening prayer is a wonderful start with that. You don't have to go away for a week. You don't have to go away for a day. Get alone in silence for 15 minutes and just still your heart and mind.
Speaker 3:And you can do it alone, or you can do it with other people. And when we do it together, I think it's it's enriched by the shared experience of that. And then if there's a word, from God that we wanna share, we certainly can do that. But that practicing the presence of of God, that discipline of silence and solitude is something. It's not gonna happen unless we force it and discipline ourselves.
Speaker 2:That's good. Yeah. You don't just wander into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You And I think It's a discipline. What all of these points to and the reality that the gospels point to is the reality we actually try really hard to ignore or even just aren't aware of. And I think most of us go about life living as functional secularists, meaning that there is actually or materialists would be a more accurate way to describe it, that there's really no deeper spiritual reality to anything. And almost all of us live this way.
Speaker 1:It's really hard not to. Our culture pulls us towards this. So even if you're a person who believes in spiritual things, most of us just don't live in recognition of spiritual reality. So living in a world where we can say, and the spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness, or and the heavens ripped open like a bag of potato chips.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's the image, but that's what comes to my mind.
Speaker 3:But commute. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That sounds good. Most of us don't live thinking, and I'm just as guilty, so I'm not counting myself among the few who don't live this way. But most of us don't live in recognition that deeper spiritual things are happening. That if you are a follower of Jesus, the Spirit of God lives inside of you to direct you, to guide you, to speak with you, and we ignore it. And so our phones, I think, are a big thing that distract us.
Speaker 1:So if you read together, indeed, and you're a practitioner, you've probably noticed by now, there's a lot about just reining in your media consumption for, I think, our older folks, that's more turn off your cable news. For our younger folks, that's put your phone away. But rein in your media consumption, because it's ultimately designed whether it's your TV or your phone to distract you. It's
Speaker 2:like the parable of the seed, the good seed. Yeah. It's choking it's choking out the gospel.
Speaker 3:Right? We're all different, and and obviously, God meets us in our differences. I I'm not a TV person. My wife went up to Oklahoma to play in a pickleball tournament this weekend. And that is
Speaker 1:a very Kim Greif thing to do.
Speaker 3:And, and took silver. So she, she
Speaker 2:did a nice, but I bet she was frustrated by that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because she It's not gold. Yeah. She always thinks she's supposed to win gold. And so silver's 1st loser.
Speaker 3:But, but when she goes away for a few days at a time, I literally never turn on the TV. You just
Speaker 2:don't think about it.
Speaker 3:It's not very random. Think about it. It never occurs to me. What would I watch? And, really, we just watch sports Twitter.
Speaker 3:But, it it's all what you're used to. It's all what you're wired. It's habitual. We default into things that we don't even necessarily consciously choose, but it's a habit that we've developed. But for me, it's also a stage of life.
Speaker 3:I don't have 3 little humans that I'm trying to keep alive and orient my whole world around. Right now, it's just Kim and I. We're we're empty nesters, and so I have a tremendous freedom to sort of organize my day. And, I'm in a stage of life where I would love to sleep sleep past 6 o'clock. It just doesn't
Speaker 2:It just doesn't happen. It
Speaker 3:just doesn't happen. So I'll get up around 6 if I lay in bed that long, and I love to go on the back porch by myself. And boy, I watched the doves descend on the feeder in the in the bird bath this morning, bunches of them. And so that imagery is just real and fresh in my mind and the cardinals and everybody else. But, to start my day just alone with God in my little wilderness of my backyard and before I look at anything on my phone or whatever, just to be still and know God.
Speaker 3:And it's not always this rending of the heavens and profound, but it's the quietness and the stillness that helps to lay the foundation for the day, but to remind me who I am and my place in the universe and my dependence on God. And then I open up, usually first thing, try to, is this daily bible app that leads me in, a morning prayer, a waking prayer, prayer that prayer of confession, historic prayer of confession, couple of old testament, new testament readings, and all. And it just Great. Again, I have the luxury of doing that because I don't have pets or kids or anybody else that I'm responsible for. So whatever the corresponding reality is for any crazy busy season of life you're in, the value of that just cannot be overstated.
Speaker 2:But even those I would say even those that have the time don't always use it. So it's a good challenge for us, the listener, to you know, you make time for what you prioritize.
Speaker 3:Right? You always have time for the things you put first.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It is what it is. So let's make time for it.
Speaker 3:Well But that's not necessarily Mark. That's more Jesus going into the wilderness. And if heavenly days, if Jesus needed to go into the wilderness, you know, to be alone with the father and just to collect himself and to orient himself for the craziness.
Speaker 2:But it's back to Mark and what we what doctor Wallace talked about Sunday, it's that we're all part of this cosmic story. This is certain I mean, the story as is written in Mark or read in Mark, whatever, is certainly you look out and you think, oh my gosh. This amazing cosmic event is happening, and doctor Wahl's point is we're still part of Yeah. Absolutely. Cosmic story today.
Speaker 3:That's so exciting.
Speaker 2:It is, but if you just, if you just numb yourself with distraction because you're too tired to face real life, and that, with all respect, I do that too. You miss it, you know? Mhmm. And we can really live a whole life like you were saying, Lucas, just a functional atheist or functional secularists where we just live like everybody else, and we forget to tap into this great cosmic story that we're part of and that we have submitted ourselves to at some point in our life. And then we just get busy and distracted or things happen.
Speaker 2:And so it's a good invitation for for us and for those listening, to just remember your baptism and get back to it. You know? It's good work. So
Speaker 3:It's a good word. And and God
Speaker 2:has something for you today if if you kind of awake
Speaker 3:to it. And and we're responsible. We're supposed to spur one another onto love and good deeds. And this, this whole year is based on Ephesians 4, that that what we're supposed to be doing as we exercise our giftedness and live out our calling is to to encourage one another until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. That's what we're trying to do together as the body of Christ, the new covenant people of God, First Baptist Church, Arlington.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. We're supposed to be helping one another following the Jesus way, recognizing that we all get it wrong. We we all mess up. We we all fall short, and yet, we have this wonderful capacity to influence in a in a very positive way, to model, for each other, to apologize, to offer forgiveness, but to to help shape one another's faith journey. And, certainly, we in leadership have the responsibility to do that.
Speaker 3:But all of our listeners, if every member is a is a minister, we all have this priestly function to intercede between God and and our fellow man. And so, we we need to acknowledge when we don't do it right and yet pursue what we know is excellent and best. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Kirk Grice, everybody.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know that this is at all what you guys were hoping to talk about.
Speaker 2:I like it a lot. I like it a lot.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great place to end.
Speaker 2:How about that? Let me do a little plug. June 23rd is coming. It's a
Speaker 3:10 to
Speaker 1:10 days later.
Speaker 2:Live. Tell me more.
Speaker 3:Wish if
Speaker 1:I use the button or something.
Speaker 2:Hit a
Speaker 3:button. Anyone. Just pick 1.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know if the volume's even
Speaker 1:I hit the button that's labeled big cheer. We'll find out if you can hear
Speaker 2:it or not. It's Tell Me More live in the sanctuary, 6 PM. There's a business meeting before if you wanna come for that, and we're excited.
Speaker 3:That's how we roll. That's how we roll.
Speaker 1:Church member, you should go to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're we're We
Speaker 3:are congregationally governed. We are. Rehudges.
Speaker 2:We are. And I I I won't I won't, tease it here because I'm not sure it's official, but there's several things that I think we should throw out to the congregation to talk about at that meeting, but we'll announce that when that's official. So
Speaker 1:I mean, we're live.
Speaker 2:I mean, we're live, June 23rd in the sanctuary. Ice cream after. Wow. What? What an evening.
Speaker 2:Mad Mike's ice cream.
Speaker 3:Woah. Now okay. You just dreamed it up a notch.
Speaker 2:It's true. Very good. So okay. Well, we look forward to it. We're grateful for you all, and thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the Tell Me More podcast today. You can subscribe to this podcast on your app of choice, or you can visit us at fbca.org to find out more information about the podcast and our church. Thanks for listening. Have a good day.
