No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
How Do We Experience Godliness and Joy in the Midst of Evil
In this episode, Brody provides updates on our team’s response to the recent floods in Western North Carolina, emphasizing the importance of helping our neighbors during times of crisis. Brody shares important lessons learned from disaster relief experiences, along with touching stories that showcase the strength of community in difficult times.
Brody explores how to cultivate godliness and joy amidst overwhelming evil by looking to Christ and eternity. Discover five biblical principles through insights from Psalm 37:1-11 that can guide us:
- Trust in the Lord and do good
- Delight in your relationship with Jesus
- Commit your life to Him
- Be still and patient before the Lord
- Turn away from anger to embrace grace and kindness.
Join us for a message of hope and practical steps to experience joy, even when evil seems to prosper.
Psalms 37:1-11
Snowbird Marriage Conference
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Hey, in this week's episode of no Sanity Required, I want to do a couple of things, really three things. I want to give you an update on what our team's been up to with the recent floods that have just devastated western North Carolina mountain communities, from Bat Cave and Chimney Rock up to Yancey County, spruce Pine, burnsville, down through Weaverville and then into a little bit further west into Haywood County, where my family all is from. And I want to give you an update on what we've been doing to help our neighbors and some thoughts that might help you as you think about disaster relief now or in the future. Some things I've learned, some things I've observed. And then I want to share a story with you. And then, um, I want to share five thoughts from a passage of scripture that has helped helped steady me in my life at difficult seasons. Seasons like I've shared in recent episodes. Difficult things we've gone through, um, big decision moments like, uh, things that we had to go through during COVID-19. And we're trying to figure out if we're going to run camp or not. Things that have helped anchor me.
Speaker 1:Going back to the interview with John Rouleau and a lot of the feedback that I got on that. People were really encouraged. It meant a lot to me, and so I want to give you some follow-up thoughts to how we've navigated some of the more difficult seasons of ministry. Something that has anchored me is a passage of scripture. I want to share five principles from that passage that hopefully will help you and give you a better outlook today and a better outlook on this week and this season. It's crazy election season, and then, with all the storms and everything that's going on, it's craziness right now, yeah, so I hope it'll be an encouragement With that. Welcome to no sanity required.
Speaker 2:Welcome to no sanity required from the ministry of snowbird wilderness outfitters. A podcast about the Bible culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:So the recent floods that hit uh Western North Carolina, I heard I heard one guy call it a thousand year flood. You know, people were saying things like this is a storm of the century and a lot of people were, uh, that that I I'm first off, I don't really I'm not on social media so I have to kind of go online and look up new stories and videos and things like that Um and so, from what I, from what I've seen, there's been a ton of influencers. I want to share some frustration with the way I think a lot of people have handled, um, flood relief. So there's a lot of people that came into Western North Carolina and videoed and interviewed and uh, flew around helicopters and pointed things out. There's this one cat. He's like an Army Ranger or Army Delta Force guy, mma fighter, kind of like a man's man kind of guy. I don't know the guy, I don't want to speak to anything about him other than he came to western North Carolina.
Speaker 1:First off, let me say these are my people. I love the mountain people of western North Carolina. My family goes back in these mountains a long ways. John Jackson Kilby lived in the Yadkin Valley in the Civil War period. He was a Civil War veteran and it was his descendants that migrated just West into Wilkes County. They were in Wilkes County, then out of Wilkes County into Watauga County and in the Northwestern mountains of North Carolina and then it was my, my granddad that then, um, came on down further West into Haywood County and, uh, both my granddads Haywood County. Both my parents raised, my mom and dad were raised in Haywood County, north Carolina, which, if you're unfamiliar, that would be Waynesville and Canton are the two towns that's just West of Asheville, it's a good bit East of where I live. I Andrew's North Carolina, where snowbird is located, is a couple of counties further West. We're as far West as you can go in a state of North Carolina, but we're still in the Western North Carolina mountains.
Speaker 1:So I love these people. I love the culture, the people. It's home to me. And it's not just home to me, it's home to all of my ancestors, um, who were Americans. You know what I mean. You got to go back to across the pond. The first Americans, uh, the first, the first folks from the United kingdom, from Scotland and England, and then some folks from the United Kingdom, from Scotland and England, and then some folks from Germany on my dad's side that came here in the 1700s and early 1800s. That's how far back you got to go before I don't have mountain people in the southern Appalachians.
Speaker 1:And a quick crash course history lesson Prior to the Civil War, there wasn't a lot of white settlement in this part of the state. Um and this always spins people out a lot of people freak out when they find this out but after the civil war, a lot of union officers, particularly commanding officers, generals, high, high-ranking brass, were given land grants in the western part of north carolina, the area I live right here in cherokee county, there was a lot, of a lot of guys. If they trace their, if they really trace their their stuff, they'll find that, um, their, their ancestors from post-civil war came from up North and settled here, which is totally fine. It was, uh, it's just, it's just history, you know. But but regardless, my, my people are mountain people and, and in more recent generations, not so much Like my parents, especially my mom and my cousins and siblings, don't you know?
Speaker 1:We still hold to the mountain culture, but there's, you know, the true hillbilly. We're not that. Things are modernizing and I got an iPhone and I drive you, uh, you know a a nice vehicle and um have the internet. I don't. I don't live off of the land per se, but we still hold to some of those practices. You know this, this week, uh, I took, I took a wild game animal with my bow, and I'll do it again this coming week and probably next week, and I'll put a dozen animals in the freezer, um or or on the shelves, canned, you know, for for the next year to eat, and we'll kill a hog, and we'll kill a cow and, uh, a beef and, and so I like there there are principles of the old ways, there's some exercising of the old ways, but man, for the most part, my family's not. Uh, they don't look like a lot of historic, traditional mountain people look, and so, just like any other culture, we're blending with modern times and and it is what it is. But, that being said, it's in our blood, it's in our roots. My neighbors, the people I care about, um in in my community, um have have mountain roots, and so one of the things I've learned you might be going, what's all that matter? Well, here's what I've learned these mountain people are tough and they are resilient, and most of them just figure it out and do for themselves and they work together.
Speaker 1:And so I've spent several days in the last week in Yancey County, north Carolina, which is up in the high mountains. If you're driving from Asheville, north Carolina, to Johnson City, Tennessee, you're going up I-26. You go through at the state line. Around the state line you go through Sam's Gap. If you look back to the east, you're looking back up into those mountains that are the top corner of Yancey County. It's very rural. There's a river that runs up through there called the Cane River. I think it's the Cane River. Then there's a smaller creek called Jack's Creek. My buddy, timmy Burnett, who's a pastor just north of Asheville, he connected me with some guys up there. We were just trying to see how we could help out and a couple of days I ended up way up in the mountains.
Speaker 1:Just just, uh, very rough roads, very hard to get. Everything was washed out. Bridges are washed out, roads washed out. It was crazy, man. It was very apocalyptic. It looked like somebody had had gone down through those mountain canyons with an F-15E Strike Eagle and just blasted away and opened the mountain up into like a gorge, a ravine, and all the water had run down. These rivers swelled 20, 30 feet higher than their normal Imagine a river 25 to 30 feet higher than its normal run and flow, and that's how high they were. So they took trees and they just cut into the sides of the mountain If you can imagine a gorge where there's a mountain going up on either side of the river or the Creek and now that Creek rises up 20 to 30 feet on either side of that gorge and just washed all the trees out. So now you've got this grand Canyon. Looking bottom, the river is now, instead of, say you, 100 feet wide, it's now 200, 300 feet wide, and it's just crazy. And then all the trees washed for miles and just kind of settled in the lower valley. And so there's one area that you can drive past, thousands of massive trees that the root ball, the tree, everything's just laying there. It looks like somebody scraped them off the side of the mountain and just laid them out across these fields. It's the craziest thing.
Speaker 1:And so when that happened, it washed out the road that ran with that river, and so getting up there was a big ordeal. We had to had to leave the road and cross some narrow paths and some, you know, some four-wheeler type trails, logging trails, and need an ATV to get to a lot of it, and so, anyhow, saying all that, say, get up in there and meet people that you realize, man, these people, just they're looking out for each other. I filled my truck up with firewood because I'd heard some folks had lost their wood sheds, all their firewood had washed down the river, and so we've taken a couple loads of firewood and just give folks enough to get them through a week or two, and then we'll bring you some more and stuff like that. Um and just uh, what I'm finding is that they're happy, they're joyful, they're, they're durable. Man, these mountain people are tough, but then, in contrast to that, something that has stood out to me that I want to learn from, um, I want to, I want to give you some some things that I've learned. The first one is that these people are tough and they're resilient and they, they're survivors and they help each other.
Speaker 1:Second thing that I want to point out is that the church of Jesus Christ has been the hands and feet of Jesus and all this I don't know. I mean, there's so many, uh, christians that have rallied, just different ministries, churches, organizations, evangelical organizations, north Carolina Baptist folks that are like disaster relief and their boots on the ground. We've been working with them, not in Yancey County but down in Bat Cave and Chimney Rock. We've been working with them. They're based out of Fruitland Bible College and Fruitland Baptist Church and so we've been getting assignments from them and doing a lot of tree work in that part of the state. We've run man, we've run who knows how many gallons of gas and oil through chainsaws in the last two weeks, and so I know one property gosh I think we took out half a dozen big poplar trees and cut up three or four large white oaks that had fallen, and so just trying to help folks. And what I've learned in that?
Speaker 1:The second thing I've learned is that man, the church, is on mission when it comes to disaster relief, and I love that, because when you look back through history you see that, uh, hospitals and schools and relief efforts in every war man, the church of Jesus Christ is who is spearheaded and led the way in that, and it's still like that today. I'm really thankful for that. It's very encouraging, so much so that man, me and Rob Conti were were riding around one day um day trying to make some connections and we saw a couple of busloads of people and it was like these people don't know where to go or what to do because nobody needs their help. They had truckloads of clothing, but people have just flooded that area. Now I'm not saying that there's no more help needed. I'm just saying it was cool to see people saying, hey, we can't take any more pallets of water, don't send us any more canned goods, don't went.
Speaker 1:I'd heard that people needed those little green bottles of propane um, that they could cook on little propane stoves and that if we could get some of that. And so we found out, nope, some, there's so much of that that's already been delivered to relief stations. And then people are shuttling in and out of these mountains. So local people that know the mountains are driving in and out of these communities with bottles of propane and blankets and it's getting, it's, it's getting cold this week. I mean, we're going to see, uh, it's, it's going below freezing for the rest of this week.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm filming or not filming? I'm filming or not filming? I'm not filming. I'm recording this on Monday and it'll drop on Tuesday, but on Monday I got up this morning it's like 54 degrees and felt nice like t-shirt weather for this time of year. But then by this afternoon you could tell cold fronts coming through and it's just cooling down and there's people up there that might be a year before they get power, because those rivers are just all the power lines are in the river and so, um, anyway, saying all that to say it's cool to see how many, how many Christ followers flooded to the area.
Speaker 1:If they couldn't come, they sent food and clothing and so much that they've overwhelmed um, like supply station. Somebody called, somebody texted us today and said hey, I know y'all are working in Clyde, north Carolina, every day this week. Can we send clothes as a local church, a good partner church of ours? And, uh, can we send clothing and food? Can y'all take it to distribution center? I'm like sorry, we can't. We like they won't take it where we're working, they won't take it. Now again, I know there's going to be further need, but it's just cool to see people just just pour that kind of support out and then to be able to pray with people and encourage them and and to hear people's faith has been strengthened. The people that that know the Lord, that have been hit by this, uh, their faith is stronger and that just that's a biblical principle, that in our most difficult situations we feel the strength and presence of the Lord more so.
Speaker 1:Um, the next thing is, uh, how proud I am to be part of the family. I'm a part of the, the, the earthly family. My brother, um my brother Duke, who a lot of people know, I think, um him and and, uh, some other family members that are part of Pisgah high school in Canton, north Carolina, I think Duke told me that for nine straight days they went from get up to get down every day, just working their tails off trying to minister and help Not even a lot of people not even ministering, cause there's some non-believers that are working alongside of them but trying to help the families of students in their school. And then several of my cousins, michael and Amanda Ballou. Amanda Ballou was um day to day just organizing um help for people and and really trying to engage her community and doing a dang good job and gave us a couple of leads that turned into more opportunities and just say, anyway, just saying all that, to say I'm proud to be a part of the family I'm a part of. They all just got on mission, and so Michael Ballou, michael and Amanda Ballou, my brother, duke, really cool and others, everybody else. I only named a couple of them, but that's been awesome.
Speaker 1:And then the next thing I learned is that a lot of people and this is a little bit of this, one's a little negative, with a little bit of a bite to it A lot of people and this is a little bit of this, this one's a little negative, with a little bit of a bite to it A lot of people, they want to do what they want to do. They want to come and help, but only certain jobs. You know, like I met several guys that they want to run their quads and run their chainsaws. They, you know, I got a quad, I got a chainsaw, I can go help people.
Speaker 1:Well, within the first 48 hours of the flood, kind of back the water, backing off and subsiding a little bit, all the roads were as far as chainsaw work. 90 of the roads were open. From what I could see, now there's roads that are washed as far as pavement, embankments, mudslides, but chainsaw work and four-wheeler work. There's very little of that needed but that. So I I met several people that that's what they want is riding around with their four-wheelers and taking their chainsaw. Where the flip side of that I have to bring that up to say the Snowbird Leadership Institute, our interns and then the entirety of the Snowbird staff that's jumped in. Man, they have done grunt work with no glamour. We got kids that came in from college just to spend a day working with our team, kids that work here in the summer and help on weekends, and I'll tell you what they did.
Speaker 1:They went into a trailer park in Clyde, north Carolina. I think there was eight trailers and every one of them had been flooded and when I say flooded, they're sitting right on the pigeon river, which was up 26 and a half feet. So these trailers were were pretty much underwater. Um, it was up to the ceilings and they went in there and they gutted every trailer. They put on hazmat suits, masks, hazmat suits, and they crawled under these trailers, ripped all the insulation out, had to get all the insulation out of the trailers, drywall flooring, and they gutted them all so those people could get power restored to get ready to start back building. You know, following up with with cleaning and then getting those trailers put back together so they have a place to live. These are poor people. They don't have a lot and uh, and I didn't see a lot of uh aid coming in there. We were fortunate that we didn't have to deal with, like fema or any government agencies in there, because I think it was just this little trailer park down along the river. No, you know, fema got bigger fish to fry, but those people were so grateful and uh, so that that that's the. That last thing that I learned is what what the SWO staff is made of. And just to encourage y'all as listeners, there are 20 year olds on planet earth right now that call themselves Christ followers, that will do whatever it takes to show the love of Jesus to people, and I'm proud to be associated with them.
Speaker 1:They're out today as I'm recording. They're out today. Um, tomorrow I've got to take my quad to a player's dealership. It it got, it's been rolled, it's been wrecked, it's been trashed. I got to get some work done on it. Polaris guys said man, you bring it, I'll move you to the front of the line, we'll get it fixed and get you back out there. Um, which I don't think we need it anymore. There was a few places where to get some propane and water to people. My truck wouldn't wouldn't get over a, you know, a mud slide or a water break. I think we're good there, but just cool to see how people have pitched in.
Speaker 1:So I'm out today and tomorrow and or yesterday and today rather and our teams out there, they leave. They leave in slow, at seven in the morning and just grinding all day getting it done. I just I'm so proud of them. I'm proud, proud, proud to be associated with these young men and young women. They are awesome. The Lord is always going to raise up a strong remnant of his people that are going to do the work.
Speaker 1:So I want to turn to uh, uh, something that has given me a lot of encouragement and and hopefully there's some, there's some scriptural truth and thoughts here that will be an encouragement to you this week. So take the rest of our time, second half of our time, and and and share some thoughts. Okay, so I'm going to tell you about, uh, a guy named Morgan. Morgan uh worked here, um, he was on, uh, what's now called our element team. At the time it was called servant team and Morgan Um the the year that we talked about, 2007, where so much death and destruction and devastation happened at SWO. I didn't share Morgan's story, um, and I thought about if I should or shouldn't, but I'm going to share it now. So Morgan was here working that summer and he was one of a couple of brothers that ended up spending time here. He had a brother named Davidson I'm sorry, named Davis that came and served a few summers later, but in that 2007 summer Morgan was, you know, in high school. It was 17 years ago. Morgan's now a grown man with a family and he's doing great and proud of him.
Speaker 1:But Morgan was in an accident at SWO and was burned severely I mean severely burned, uh, and he was. He was at Erlanger children's hospital in Chattanooga. Now this happened on, uh, the Thursday, I think, of week one of camp, so about a week and a little more nine days before the accident that claimed the lives of those folks that we talked about a few episodes back Michael, daniel, suzanne and Ashley and Morgan. Morgan got burned severely and we were back and forth to the hospital visiting Morgan that that week leading up to the accident. And then the accident happened and everybody just kind of forgot about Morgan. And it wasn't it. It people didn't forget about Morgan, but people became so overwhelmed in their own grief and emotion and trying to survive and get through the summer. And Morgan sat over there in that hospital for I don't know how long and, as a 17-year-old dude, fought his way back to functional health.
Speaker 1:And not even years later I want to say it was months later it dawned on me that I felt like I had abandoned Morgan. I felt like I had turned my back on Morgan and I had not. That was not my intention, it was just so overwhelming. And in my life in ministry I've learned that a lot of people hold a lot of expectation over you. There's people that have lived in my home that turned on me because they didn't feel like I was a good enough father figure to them, you know, or uh little, and I've dealt with that. I met expectations to the point that now I'm very careful about how close I will bring people into our sort of our inner family circle because, uh, if, when you open yourself up to that and hear me out, I'm not like pushing people away, I'm just saying we've had to learn healthy parameters and boundaries because we used to just anybody and everybody was family. If you came work at Snowbird, your family, you're part of SWO family, part of Holloway family.
Speaker 1:So we had several people live with us and we had a couple, two different instances where folks went to the mission field and went and did a two-year stint. When they came back, uh, they, they were very disappointed that we didn't stay in more engaged with them, didn't come visit them when they were, uh, overseas and and and I realized they felt like, uh, I owed them some sort of a fatherly investment, maybe something like that, and I didn didn't meet that expectation and I apologize but I think the damage was done. I didn't, it didn't make them feel as cared for as they felt like I should have. And so now, please hear me out, I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I'm not defending this, is all, you know, been dealt with in my own heart and with with people involved.
Speaker 1:But it sort of helped me set a new, a new precedent for my own life, little and I of sort of what safe and healthy parameters look like. And so we've been able to, I think, establish those and as our kids got older, our three older kids, you know, with their friends, obviously there was, there was an insula, insulatory factor, like there was a little bit of an insulator where someone comes into our home and becomes sort of part of our family. But they're an extension of that. You know, like Lely her friend group, we bring you know, we welcome them in, but there's kind of this understanding we're Lely's friend group, so, um, so that's been good. And you know, one of the things I think about is disappointing people, and that came up in the interview with Little and I and I've had some folks press me on that and ask me, you know, how hard is that?
Speaker 1:Is it really tough to meet people's expectations? And it is. It's hard to be what people want you to be. And so I'd be lying if I said I don't have regret over some relationships and where I think we faltered through the years. But I felt like I let Morgan down because two, three months later he was back home and doing well, and I had just thrown myself into the two survivors of that crash, which were Dawson and Kara, and we were doing everything we could in our off time to go see them, minister to them, try to stay connected to them. And years later, well, first off, morgan's little brother came and worked Davis years later. There's a good bit of an age gap there, and so it was very healing for me to know, okay, this family still loves this ministry and doesn't feel neglected. But then I had some interactions with Morgan. It's funny. Morgan called me one time and, uh, he'd gotten into a hunting club like a hunting lease, he said. Hey, I got a hunting question.
Speaker 1:He calls me and they had a bear on their property. He's getting. He's getting pictures. If you put out trail cameras and you put out corn, I know here in West North Carolina if you put out corn like a corn feeder, it ain't long until you're going to have a black bear or a whole family of them. Right now there's I don't freak nobody out, but there's a sow and three, three pretty good sized cubs living on snowbird property on the far corner of the swole property, kind of back on the backside of the mountain, and then they're covering three or four properties.
Speaker 1:Morgan calls me and he sent me a picture. It was a monster boar. I bet it was a 300 pound boar, if I remember correctly. And he said I just want to pick your brain, how would you deal with this? And we just had the coolest conversation and it was like the most refreshing thing to have somebody not stay sore or offended at you and I just appreciated that. And so I bring that story up to say whatever you go through in life, you can choose how you're going to deal with it. You can see it as something the Lord is, is is teaching you through and carrying you through and helping you through, or you can use it to grow bitter towards the Lord or towards other people. And I've learned from these, from the SWO staff this week, this past couple of weeks, and I've learned from the people, the good mountain people of Western North Carolina, and I've learned from Morgan and others in my life that you, you can be positive and you can be quick to forgive, quick to see God's grace, and I want to be like that.
Speaker 1:And so I want to read to you now this Psalm 37, there's a couple of verses in here that are very often quoted and it is uh, um, what delight yourself in the Lord. He'll give you the desires of your heart. I don't know if you ever heard that. A lot of us have used it, you've probably heard it, familiar with it, um, but I want to want to give you some context and then expound on that. I want to give you these five thoughts. I'm going to give you these five thoughts from the first 11 verses of Psalm 37. It goes like this Don't worry about the wicked or envy those who do wrong, for, like grass, they soon fade away, like spring flowers, they soon wither.
Speaker 1:Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord and he'll give you your heart's desires. Commit everything you do to the Lord, trust him and he'll help you. He'll make your innocence radiate like the dawn and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun. Be still in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act. Don't worry about evil. Don't worry about evil people who prosper or fret about their wicked schemes. Stop being angry. Turn from your rage. Don't lose your temper. It only leads to harm, for the wicked will be destroyed, but those who trust in the Lord will possess the land. Soon the wicked will disappear. Though you look for them, they will be gone. The lowly will possess the land and will live in peace and prosperity.
Speaker 1:I love that passage, especially in times like this where, uh, you know, share those stories about, you know, not growing bitter and and and just delighting in the Lord and seeing his hand and even difficult things. But also right now there's a lot of hatred and venom and fire man in our culture and you know, I really want to do an episode in the next couple weeks. We're going to do an episode where we really go a little bit further than what we did a couple weeks ago into, you know, the election and how Christians should really think about being involved in government and the government process, especially in America, where we are a constitutional republic, where we're more than just a simple democracy. There's more complexity to it, and the founders of this country, they were so brilliant in the way they set things up and maybe brilliant, but also, I think, led by God. And so I think and some people get real up in arms when they hear that statement it's like, oh, were they led by God when they endorsed slavery? Well, no, but there there are times where God works, even in the evil of governments, you know. And so we can look back at our country and see the sovereignty of God play out, because that institution did finally come to an end, and it was a violent end and a lot of people died, um, but but the? The reality is that that we can say that God is involved in government and in our country, I think we can say it, we can see it more clearly than in some other countries, you know, a dictatorship or something like that.
Speaker 1:But the verses I just read, let me give you some thoughts on this, because what he's describing in this 11 verse section of scripture is what I would call the quiet spirit. If I was going to entitle this something, I would entitle it the quiet spirit. The Bible will often use a very important principle of interpretation that I think if you're going to really faithfully study the scripture and study it faithfully, then this would be something that'd be helpful to learn, and that principle is called this progressive interpretation. Progressive interpretation. What that means is it's the process of a doctrine being introduced in early sections of Scripture and then unfolding more and more and more as you work through the passage. So if you read all of Psalm 37, you'll see this play out. So another example would be the biblical teaching and the doctrine of the afterlife. Those are rudimentary in the Old Testament but after the resurrection of Jesus they're much more clear. They're much more frequently spoken of and referenced. Like you read through the Old Testament, there's less pointing to the afterlife. It's there, but it progresses as you get into the New Testament, especially after the resurrection of Jesus. And then sometimes this will happen sort of in reverse. Jesus or one of the early apostles in the book of Acts would teach or mention an Old Testament passage and then they would be basically explaining that passage. It would be like an exposition of that passage. And so what we've got here, I think in Psalm 37, is an example of that.
Speaker 1:In Matthew 5, where Jesus is doing the Beatitudes, the third Beatitude. Jesus says blessed are the meek, the Beatitudes, jesus, the third Beatitude. Jesus says blessed are the meek, the meek. And so he speaks about meekness. You know, another word for that would be gentleness. There's a strength in gentleness. It's not gentleness that's weak, it's gentleness that's strong.
Speaker 1:You know, I like to think of a powerful, you know, like, think of Sully in Monsters Inc. This big, powerful creature that that is, you know, so tender and compassionate and gentle with, with that little, with the little girl boo, you know. And then, um, or I think of, uh, the guy, and I don't know if you've ever seen this, uh, rise of the guardians. It's like, you know, st Nick and the Easter bunny and Jack Frost and the sand man, it's all these fairytale creatures, uh, and but the guy, the, the, the character that is St Nick, he's got, you know, big old forearms and and he's just big, thick, burly guy, but then he's just got this, really, this strength, but this gentleness, and I love that. It's a picture of who we are in Christ, and then I think Jesus is the ultimate example of it. So so he's unpacking that for us in these verses, and so this idea of progressive interpretation is that as we read, the idea that we're learning builds and becomes more and more clear. So hopefully that that makes sense clear, so hopefully that that makes sense. Okay, so let me give you, I just let me, let me give you, let me do it this way.
Speaker 1:The way that I kind of work through this is I break this into. There's five imperatives or commands. An imperative is a command five things we need to do If we're going to experience godliness and joy, even in the midst of a, of a world where evil seems to prosper. So, overarching lesson, the title of this lesson would be joy when evil seems to prosper. So how do we experience godliness and joy even when evil seems to prosper? Well, in the verses that I just read three different times verses one, seven and eight this phrase is used Don't fret, don't fret, don't fret. And how do we not fret when evil seems to prosper around us? Well, there's two things we learned to do and these five imperatives will drive at these two things. The first one is we look to Christ. The second one is we look to eternity. If we get our eyes off of the wickedness around us, off of the brokenness and the insanity around us, and we look to Christ, we experience joy. And if we think about eternity, we experience joy. So let me give you these five imperatives real quick.
Speaker 1:Okay, the first one is this he says trust in the Lord and do good. So this is trust, is is another word for faith. So he would say have faith in the Lord and do good. And that sounds like two commands, but I'm putting it in as one, because this is a faith or a trust that is active. It's faith that leads to action. You do something. This generation of American Christians has shown me in the last week what it is to work. The last two weeks, rather, since these floods, I mean, people are putting their faith into action. So trust in the Lord and have faith, but then act on that faith. And I think that's important, because if you just sit still and try to have a quiet faith and just believe it in your heart and your mind, but you don't act on it, I think you can get swallowed up in despair and so trust in the Lord, but but have active faith that works.
Speaker 1:Number two, second imperative, second command delight yourself in the Lord. That's in verse four. Take delight in the Lord, delight yourself in the Lord. We need to find more than our hope and peace just in Christ. We need to find joy in Christ. So should we find our hope in Jesus? Yes. Should we find peace in Jesus? Yes, but we need to find joy in Jesus. And he says delight yourself in the Lord. And I would add we bring him honor when we delight in him. A child who longs to spend time with their daddy is honoring him the most. And when we delight ourselves in the Lord, he gives us himself in a fuller way. We get more and more of him. That's why he says he'll give you the desires of your heart. The things of earth grow dim when we delight ourselves in the Lord.
Speaker 1:So the first two instructions and commands when you're going through hard times, difficult season, um, trust in the Lord and act out on that faith, that trust. Trust the Lord and do good. Delight yourself in the Lord, find joy in the Lord. Should you find joy in your work? Sure, should you find joy in your exercise regimen? Sure. Should you find joy in your hobby or your relationships or your finances? Sure, those can all be things that add to your joy. But we find the source of our joy is in our relationship with Jesus, and so we press into time in the scripture time and meditation on the scripture time and talking to him and listening to him and singing songs of praise and listening to. Look, I got nothing against listening to Luke Bryan, nothing against it. It's uh, it's okay, drive down the road and listen to your you know your favorite artists. But I would just say, make sure that there are times where you're feeding your mind, uh, a diethonoring, christ-exalting music that feeds your soul, that balances that out.
Speaker 1:Number three the third imperative or command is in verse five commit your way to the Lord. Commit your way to the Lord. First, peter 5, 7 says to cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. So to commit my every way to the Lord is to lay all of me, all of my life, over onto Christ and simply follow him. He's the bearer of my burdens and my decisions. Commit your way to the Lord. There may be other relationships in your life that feel out of reach or broken or you can't do anything about them. Commit your way to the Lord. Cast all your anxiety on him. Just cast it on him, comm, commit it to him. Let him carry the weight of that. And then, in verse seven, the fourth imperative be still before the Lord. Be still before the Lord, be still in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act.
Speaker 1:I've told the story a thousand times, I've told it multiple times here on NSR. But I remember my granddad, my mom's dad, who I had a much deeper relationship with All the grandkids probably did. He's just a very present granddad and I remember and my dad's dad. I didn't have much of a relationship with him, I didn't even really know him very well. I mean, I knew him, but I just he. We weren't around each other a lot, um. But. But my mom's dad, um, I prayed for him from the time I really surrendered my life to Jesus, when I was about 19. And even before that, as a kid, when we would do like you know, my mom would pray with us at nighttime, before bed, or, or, you know, we'd have family prayer. We would always pray for for Papa, because we weren't sure about his soul. We weren't sure about his salvation.
Speaker 1:He drunk heavy. He was a real heavy drinker, um, and a lot of that, I think, was directly connected to his experiences um, during world war two is combat experiences and so he was a heavy drinker and then he just was. He could be a harsh man. So we prayed for him and um, and when I was in my thirties I watched the Lord change his heart. I don't, I think that's when he surrendered his life to the Lord. I think that's when he got saved. I think that's when he became a Christ follower.
Speaker 1:What had happened is, uh, some family members um, biggin we call him Biggin Jody Mathis and then my brother, duke, and I don't remember who all else maybe Cobb is several of my family members had to go and get him loaded onto an ambulance Cause he had, he had just drunken himself into. He couldn't get out of the floor. He was, by this point he was in his late seventies, pushing 80 years old. My grandmother couldn't get him up and got him into a treatment center, rehab, and she was going to have him put into a long term extended. You know like she's going to have him put into a long-term extended, you know, like she was going to put him in a home. And I went and talked to her I don't know if even my cousins and everybody knows this, they probably do but I went and talked to my grandmother and I said he could come live with us and let's see if we can get him on his feet. You know, until you figure out a long, because she felt really she was very afflicted and conflicted about sending him, you know, right into a like a nursing home. She don't send him to a nursing home cause he's still pretty good health.
Speaker 1:And so we ended up I'll never forget it we set up a camper in my backyard, like that was almost connected to my house, like you walked right out my back door and you, you were at the steps to this little, this travel trailer. But we ended up putting him in the house and he took he took my son's room. We lived in a 750 square foot house and he stayed in that house with us for for that most of that winter and my, my son, just we moved him in. I just had a couple of small kids at the time and and I think we moved him in with his sister and they were like you know, they were maybe like I think. We moved him into our room because I think tuck was like one, and so, um, and my granddad stayed with us and I watched the lord change his heart, sit in family devotions and he and I would sit up late at night and talk and I journaled through and wrote down the experiences that he shared from his time in France, in Europe, in the European theater, and it was a powerful season of life for me.
Speaker 1:And I watched him begin to call on the name of the Lord and I had heard him pray. He would pray a lot of times over a meal because I think, because I think it was kind of cultural thing to do. But so it wasn't like he was an atheist, he just was cold to the church he had. He was very frustrated and disenchanted with organized religion and the church and anyway I watched the Lord turn his heart.
Speaker 1:And so I believe, when I, when I see, commit your way to the Lord, cast your anxiety on him. Let him carry the burden, even if that's a burden for, for someone you care about, give it to the Lord and trust him with it. Um, but then, and and that that fourth um imperative be still in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act. That's where I think it really comes into play is like and sometimes it's hard to wait on the Lord to act. You know, I remember my grandmother telling me he said he's a different man. She'd say Brody, he's a different man. I've been married to this man. She would say I've been married to this man for 60 years and he's different. The Lord changed him. So we waited for the Lord to act. Blaise Pascal said this man does not know how to stay quietly in his own room. So we've got to learn to be content. Philippians 4.11,. I've learned, whatever state I'm in, to be content, I need to be still before the Lord, be content before the Lord.
Speaker 1:So this election season, you're freaking out. Look if you're freaking out. If Kamala Harris, carmelo Harris wins, a lot of Christians are freaking out. A lot of non-Christians are freaking out if Trump wins. But most Christians that I know at least in my circle, because I'm in more conservative circles they freak out. I heard someone the other day I think I mentioned this on a previous episode.
Speaker 1:I had a family member say man, if she wins, it's kind of like like what, what? Nothing's, it's fine. The lord is still in control. I don't want her to win, um. I don't want x, y or z to win. I don't, I'm not. I don't want anybody to win because I think they're gonna save us. You know what I mean, um, but I do want to vote for the person that's going to uphold righteousness. And so is it concerning when we have candidates and elected leaders that don't uphold righteousness, that promote and push the things that anger God. Yeah, we don't want that. But you know what the Lord's in control and I can be content. I can be content, I can trust in the Lord.
Speaker 1:Man does not know how to stay quietly in his own room. Like Pascal said, you got to meddle, got to try to get into business and make something happen. Learn to be still before the Lord. Learn to sit quietly before the Lord and say I trust you, jesus, I trust you, heavenly Father, I'm giving you my relationships. I trust you with the government, I trust you with the economy, I trust you with my health, I trust you with my future. I trust you with my wayward son or daughter. I trust you.
Speaker 1:And so then, the last thing is in verse eight that we read and it says this stop being angry, turn from your rage. Esv says refrain from anger, forsake wrath. I think there's three categories of anger that Christians tend to, or that humans rather tend to deal with anger against God, anger against others and anger against circumstances. And I've watched people be such an encouragement in this last week because they're not angry at God, they're not angry at others, they ain't mad at their circumstances, they're living out Psalm 37, eight refrain from anger, forsake wrath, stop being angry, turn from your rage, don't lose your temper. It only leads to harm.
Speaker 1:Now he follows that um, that, that fifth one. He follows it, uh with, because the second thing we saw that we were to do and not fretting when the evil world around us seems to be prospering is to look toward eternity. Right, so we look to Jesus, we look to eternity. Listen to how those last three verses go that we read for the wicked will be destroyed. So he says stop being angry, turn from your rage, don't lose your temper. It leads to harm.
Speaker 1:Then he says for the wicked, for means, because the wicked are going to be destroyed, but those who trust in the Lord will possess the land. We may not possess the freedoms that we've held so dear to our lives, and there may be a day in this life where we lose them, but we will possess the land that God has promised us. Soon the wicked will disappear. You look for them, they'll be gone. The lowly will possess the land and will live in peace and prosperity.
Speaker 1:So the second thing we look toward eternity. The world around us is temporal. We need to always have eternity inside. It's the I like to call eternity and that eternal perspective, the overarching contextualizer, no matter what you're going through. Uh, we have a dear friend to this ministry and to my, my family, little, and I love Shelly so much, shelly Burns, who is in a battle with cancer and, as hard as it is to imagine what that's like to go through, and many of you have dealt with it her positive outlook is constantly challenging and overwhelming and I'm just grateful for people that have that kind of faith. We look to eternity. So you look to Jesus, you look to eternity and, uh, and you don't live with bitterness or resentment, you live out the kind of grace and kindness that Morgan Meager showed me. Uh, you, you, you live out the the kind of I don't know the kind of perspective that these flood victims have showed us, um, perspective that these flood victims have showed us, um. Anyway, I hope that Psalm 37 will be an encouragement for you.
Speaker 1:Five things what's your takeaway? What's your homework this week? Five commands or imperatives Trust the Lord and act on it. Trust the Lord and do good. Number two delight yourself in the Lord. Number three commit your way to the Lord. Your thoughts, your, your, your, your past, your steps, your thoughts, your past, your steps, your work, your money, your relationships. Commit it all to the Lord. Number four be still before the Lord. Be still before the Lord, sit with contentment before the Lord and trust him to act. And number five refrain from anger. Don't let your anger consume you. Don't be eaten up with anger and wrath. Don't lose your temper. It doesn't accomplish anything. Anger towards God, anger towards other, anger towards the circumstances you're dealing with. Refrain from that, turn from that and in all of that, two things Keep your eyes on Jesus and keep your eyes on eternity, and it'll stabilize you and it'll steady you. So that's what I've got for this week.
Speaker 1:Um, I did want to, as, as we transition, and kind of get ready to, to jump off of here and and, uh, you get ready to go about your day. Uh, this weekend is, uh, swo marriage conference Number one. The next two weekends we will have our fall, our annual fall marriage conferences. And uh, there's still I think there's still some space. I know this, this will be a very spontaneous thing, but, um, come, come, come, be with us If you don't have anything planned for one of the next two weekends. Um, it's an awesome time. Pray for these couples that are going to be coming as we look into God's word and talk about marriage and family and what it is to to strive and seek to honor the Lord in the way that we love and honor our spouses. It's going to be an awesome time.
Speaker 1:Then, another shout-out to my man, andy Miller, who is the food service director at SWO. He's only been with us since the end of summer, but he's doing a phenomenal job. He's coming up to speed quick. It's a tough transition to step into such a big job and he's doing a great job. But everybody's excited about the marriage, the marriage, the men's conference, women's conferences and marriage conferences. People get real excited about them because the food goes up a notch, you know, and so I'm excited to see what we're going to eat this weekend. I can't wait. This is going to be awesome. I'm sure it's always a treat and uh, so it's going to be good, going to be a good weekend. Y'all pray for us.
Speaker 1:Fall is here. I'm going to be doing some hunting the next month, next next two months, really, the next three rest of this year and into January I'm going to be doing some hunting. But I love to hunt in November. Y'all pray for me. I can't decide where I want to go hunt the rut. Do I want to go up North? Do I want to bow hunt in Ohio or Illinois, something like that? Do I want a rifle hunt in Georgia, georgia or some some, you know, somewhere further South where it'd be warmer and I can use my rifle? Do I want to go up into colder weather and use my I don't know man decisions, decisions, so, um, anyhow, that's where we're at. That's what we're dealing with. What a good problem to have. That's a good struggle to be in the middle of. So I'm happy to be here. I'll let you know what ends up coming out of it. Y'all have an awesome week.
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 all of our programming and resources and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
