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
Unpacking What it Looks Like to Abide in God's Word
In this powerful episode, Brody sits down with Rob Conti to dive deep into the concept of Abiding in God’s Word.
Rob shares insights from his College Retreat Breakout session and reflects on the transformative power of Scripture in our lives. As they unpack the importance of fighting against idols, sin, and ideologies, they discuss how the Word of God equips us for spiritual warfare—helping us take down the strongholds of false beliefs and harmful ideologies in our hearts and minds.
Bullet Points from Rob's notes:
- Pray for Understanding: Ask God for wisdom and obedience.
- Read and Reread: Understand what the Bible says, means, and how it applies.
- Know the Context: Consider the background and literary style of the passage.
- Ask Questions: Who, what, where, why, when? Dig deeper.
- Use Tools: Check study Bibles, commentaries, and different translations.
- Avoid Bias: Don’t let personal views twist the meaning.
- Understand the Genre: Know if it’s a story or teaching.
- Look for Themes: Focus on key ideas like faith, redemption, or God’s character.
- Apply It: See how it speaks to your life—commands, promises, or warnings.
- Focus on Jesus: Every passage points to His redemptive work.
- Seek Help: Ask pastors or trusted believers for clarity.
- Reflect and Apply: Meditate on what you’ve learned and share it.
College Retreat Sessions
Teaching Slides Link
Breakout Notes Link
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Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
Today I had the opportunity to sit down with Rob Conte. Rob is one of the teaching pastors at SWO. He's also so. Rob and I are personal friends, have been for years Gosh, 25 years but then Rob and I co-pastor at Red Oak Church and then we co-pastor at snowbird wilderness outfitters and rob is, uh, he teaches in the snowbird leadership institute. He teaches, uh, bible exposition and he also teaches some books of the bible, does studies on those, and so I just appreciate his understanding of how to study the scripture, how to study it and prepare Rob.
Speaker 1:Part of Rob's story is challenges, even as a young guy with learning disabilities, and then to see just the Lord take who he is as a faithful servant and bless and use him in the ways that he's used him. He's an encouragement to all of the team at SWO. Many of the people that listen to NSR will know Rob and I just love his story because it's super practical to listen to him talk about studying the Bible. But I love it in the context of his story because he didn't come from a traditional evangelical Christian background. Mom is a believer, but kind of a broken family situation.
Speaker 1:Rob came to faith at the end of his teenage years, and so it's good to talk to a real person about real things, but especially as it pertains to studying the scripture. And so once we get into the intro with Rob here, I'll talk about what brought this about. But it was a recent SWO college retreat and some teaching that Rob did that made me think. You know what I think NSR crowd would love to listen to this. So that's where we're going today. Really grateful that you would tune in. 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:This past weekend we had the two weekends ago rather we had the annual conference here that is for college students. We call it College Retreat. There's probably a strong retreat feel, but there's also a conference feel. There's a lot of teaching. So we have main teaching sessions that are centered around a worship service where we sing and worship the Lord. It was an awesome weekend. The weekend was so great because we on Friday night we had so much snow come in on Friday that we didn't feel like it was safe to travel between the two campuses and we had maybe 20% no-show folks that couldn't come. 80% people showed up, which was awesome. They came in the snow, they got here. So it was kind of a cool feel to the retreat. Friday night we met in the coop over on the Snowbird main campus. We did that again on Saturday morning and then we had about 40 to 50 people that showed up on Saturday morning. They weren't here to kick it off on Friday night. They got in by lunch on Saturday. So Saturday night we moved into the Super Coupe, into this location and we did Saturday night worship service and Sunday morning worship service.
Speaker 1:The focus, the teaching focus, of the college retreat was idolatry and you know, when we think of idolatry we tend to either think of the idolatry of the ancients so pagan worship, praying to statues, graven images carved with the hand or we think of a more modern form of idolatry which is either materialistic or hedonistic, meaning modern Western idolatry tends to be the worship of the dollar, or security, or material things or pleasure, just the worship of pleasure. And probably the one area we pushed into that was a little bit different than either of those was the idolatry of ideas or the idolatry of ideology. And before Rob and I get into this conversation, I want to say that what this episode is sort of growing out of is right now there seems to be a turning of the tide in our society where the last five years, especially the cascading effect of everything that went on during COVID but we were kind of primed for this sort of revolutionary season of it was a sexual revolution. There was like the rise of woke ideology. There seems to have been an ideological attack on Christianity over the last five to seven years that looked a little different. There's always going to be an attack, but it just looked a little different and it seems like right now that's sort of backed off. It feels like the tide is turning and you're starting to hear things a little differently.
Speaker 1:Even most recently there seems to be a surge in interest in Christianity, a lot of that coming from leading podcasts, secular, atheistic, agnostic. There's one atheistic podcaster I was listening to a clip from the other day where he's saying he said I don't believe in God, I certainly don't trust the New Testament gospel. He said I don't believe in God, I certainly don't trust the New Testament gospel, but we need Christianity, and Christian I think he used words like principles and convictions was what he was getting at. He was saying Christianity provides sort of this moral anchor for a society, for a society, and there seems to be right now. Things seem to be a little bit easier than they've been over the last five to seven years for Christians. My fear is that Christians will get comfortable and back off the throttle.
Speaker 1:We were built for warfare. We were built for spiritual warfare. When God gives us his spirit, the scripture says that we're to take up the whole armor of God in Ephesians 6. And so we're made for psychological, emotional, academic, intellectual, most importantly spiritual conflict and combat. And so you'll see scripture that speaks to the idea of fighting back against ideologies.
Speaker 1:Paul writing to the Corinthians, which is an extremely pagan culture and city, and he says the weapons we fight with, or the war that we wage, the weapons in that war, are not of this world. And then he goes on to explain essentially their spiritual weapons and their ideological weapons. He says the weapons of our warfare are not of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power, they're spiritual to demolish strongholds. So if it's a divine power to demolish a stronghold, that's an ideological stronghold and to bring those strongholds down, both in a person's mind and their own personal life, but then I think in a culture or a society. So throughout history the greatest ideological strongholds that have collapsed have collapsed under the weight of gospel movements, things like slavery. What ultimately brought that down was gospel conviction or biblical conviction. The age of the Enlightenment, the rise of new atheism, any secular movement or pagan or worldly movement that falls typically falls under the weight of at least a moral conviction that comes from biblical principles. And in our day we have to understand that, just because the battle scene or dynamic seems to have shifted, we're still in a war and as Christians, if we're going to take second Corinthians, 10, four and say the weapons we're fighting with are not of this, not of this world. They have this divine power to demolish strongholds on societies, on families, on your own personal mind the stronghold of pornography, for instance. To go kind of more into the personal realm, what's going to bring the stronghold of something like pornography down is the power of the word of God at work in your mind. Reshaping the way you think Doesn't mean you're not going to fall, doesn't mean you're.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the guys we've had on the podcast is Gar Bozeman, and Gar Bozeman got shot in combat through the leg and walked off the battlefield but walked off in pain. And when he talks about how painful that was and and what that did to his, he got shot through the lower leg and it just obliterated his leg and he talks about taking his boot off and the blood just pouring out and he's like man. It was, it was crazy, but I was not about to die and for Christians we have this security that in Christ we're not going to die spiritually. We've been given spiritual life and it's an eternal life. But you're going to get shot through the leg. You're going to look at something you shouldn't look at. You're going to listen to something that is going to alter, affect your affection towards Jesus, whatever it is. We are at war. And before I turn sort of to Rob to walk through what he taught on last weekend no-transcript.
Speaker 1:The scripture additionally says that the word of God is like a sword that is living and active. And so there's this visual picture of this combative weapon. And when I was a new Christian I don't know if you remember this I had bought a MacArthur study Bible was hard. It was the first MacArthur study Bible that came out. You remember these they were hard back and I bought one and I wore it out. I just wore the thing out. I was in my late 20s. I wore it out so bad that I duct taped it. I made a binder out of duct tape and I wrote on there Weapon of War. I was that zealous new Christian. I didn't Sharpie.
Speaker 1:But the Scripture is the sword of the Spirit, and so, as Christians, we have the Spirit of God living in us. And so, as Christians, we have the Spirit of God living in us. This is why Paul says in Romans 8 that the Spirit of God is living in us. So if the Spirit of God is living in you, put to death the deeds of the flesh. By the Spirit, by the Word of God, we can wage warfare, and so, for the Christian, the word of God is critical to spiritual formation in terms of how I think and how I develop as a person, how my emotions are kept in check, but it's also critical to my, to my warfare.
Speaker 1:Nobody goes into combat without a weapon right, and so one of the things that we wanted to equip college students with this past or two weekends ago and all of those sessions are available. You can go listen to those on the main Snowbird Teaching Podcast and those are being posted. But Rob did a breakout session that after I sat and listened to it, I realized this needs more than a 40 minute, 35 minute breakout session. This needs a couple, a couple of sessions and at least some NSR episodes, and so I've asked Rob to just come. We're just going to walk through what he taught in that session, and the last thing before we get into this is we'd like to hear back from y'all If this is something I've asked Rob and he's more than willing to do this and excited about doing it that next year at the college retreat, we would do an afternoon seminar style teaching, where he would be here at the North Campus, over in our main teaching classroom area, north Campus, over in our main teaching classroom area, and anybody wants to come.
Speaker 1:It'd be an all-afternoon teaching on this subject matter, which is the efficacy or the effectiveness and potency of the Scripture in a believer's life, and how do we use the Word of God effectively. How do we use the Word of God strategically effectively, faithfully, rightly dividing it. And so next year at the tree, I think that something will make happen. You're down for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah and absolutely. And it'd be cool to you know in it where it wouldn't just be me teaching but like walking through aspects. You know, I imagine we're going to cover here in a minute of bible study and then, okay, here's a passage, even if we like say let's get in groups, talk about this, and then yeah, like group discussion.
Speaker 3:Like a lab, yeah, like a lab. We do that in the Institute for the exposition class and it's always everyone's favorite part of that class, because there you're getting that principle and then you're able to apply it and work through it together and you know, it's, I think, really productive.
Speaker 1:Man, I'm excited about it. It's one of those things when we get an idea to do something. I hate it that it's a year away, right yeah like man, we should do this right now. Yeah, but they all went home yep um, okay, so let's just get into it. Let's walk kind of, let's start off by just talking about what your, what your um breakout session was, sort of what it was about, how you approached it, and kind of a synopsis, and then we can just work through it yeah.
Speaker 3:so you know what I think we, we all have a conviction, you know, we don't ever want to go too long really, in almost any of the the retreats or conferences or camps where we do breakouts to, we don't want to get too far away from what we've done, some sort of spiritual discipline, especially on studying scripture, because it's so foundational and like you elaborated on, like how vital it is to our spiritual health and that we get to walk in victory, not just for ourselves but for our family and community and for the lost. And so, yeah, I knew I wanted to do it and I was thinking, you know, spencer typically does the how to Study the Bible breakouts and he's done different versions of them over the years and they're always my favorite, like because he does such a good job, you know, of walking through it. And the last few times that he's done it, uh, he's used this really good analogy of uh, you know the difference between raking leaves and you know, like, digging for a gem, you know, and how they're both. You know necessary things to do, but when you're raking it's not nearly the effort and you're able to rake a lot in a little bit of time. Um, and there's value in that and and so that has been probably more of like the.
Speaker 3:The thrust of those breakouts has been in some why would you study, you know, and how to set yourself up for success? Really practical things like where are you going to do it, what time are you going to do it, what, what, what are you going to do it? What time are you going to do it, what are you going to have with you? And so I thought, well, I might want to go a little bit more on the digging aspect of.
Speaker 3:You know there's value in reading just large quantities of scripture and working through you know, if you do a year plan or whatever it is, and that's primarily the raking idea where you're not really slowing down to ask the same kind of in-depth questions or dealing with difficult passages. But I do think it is vital to study Scripture the way that it was written and the way that I believe that Paul instructs us to study it in 1 Timothy, where you do go into like, okay, not just the reading of Scripture but the interpreting and then the intentional applying of Scripture. And so that was the premise for this breakout.
Speaker 1:It was good. I sat through all of the breakouts. They were all good, but this is one that I think needs to be constantly revisited. But this is one that I think needs to be constantly revisited. So let's just walk through. Maybe the way you approached it and the content you took folks through and then I might stop and ask questions get you to elaborate. That's great, because we're not so bound by time. The nice thing about this is we can always stretch things out, slow things down. We don't have a live audience in front of us that we've got to get them to the next thing.
Speaker 3:Right, that's great. So, yeah, I guess my starting point I just alluded to is so, in you know, 1 and 2, timothy and Titus are. We call them the pastoral epistles, and they really are, because it's Paul instructing these younger believers, but leaders in the church, on how to lead the church, and so I think it's gold for a pastor to go to student pastor, children's pastor, you know, whatever you call it, senior pastor, you know to never get too far away from those letters, and in there he really does tell Timothy how to preach. But why that's so significant for a breakout like this that's primarily for folks that aren't going to preach and maybe not even leave the Sunday school or a small group is what he keeps emphasizing to Timothy and to Titus is that the instruction that he's giving them to follow isn't just for them. They're ultimately to be an example of these principles for the rest of the church to follow.
Speaker 3:So he puts heavy emphasis on correct doctrine, right, the understanding what the Bible teaches on any given subject. That that's vital. And just as vital, then, is that your life matches what you believe, so that people are then following your example in both your teaching and your life, your example in both your teaching and your life, which a whole other session. But you know, that's why it's so important that pastors are known by their people. Um, you can't just show up and teach or you're only fulfilling half of your role, um so, uh, pause, Yep, um, I'd like to talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:Just, it can be brief. Because, uh, I'd like to talk about that a little bit. It can be brief because I'd like to know your thoughts on our listeners know my thoughts on this, if they're consistent listeners, I've addressed this at different times your thoughts on the role of the pastor in the local church and how that applies to multi-site churches where the pastor's on the video screen, right. Could you articulate your thoughts? I mean, you just did, but this is why it's important. It's not just whoa. This works because when everyone comes and sits in the church building and they're at a satellite campus and we've got pastor so-and-so on the screen, it's fine.
Speaker 3:Here's why it's not fine and here's why what you just said yeah, I think when I read these letters, what becomes clear is your job isn't only to exposit the text in your sermon, but it's to exposit marriage to your family, to how you respond to difficult circumstances, to suffering, to good stuff like abundance and whatever. How do you handle all that? People need to see it and so I think the benefit of the doubt side would be okay if they're watching somebody on the screen, but then they do have shepherds, other pastors that maybe don't preach, but they're there and they're discipling. I think that's a good thing, but I still think you're missing that ingredient where the person that they're trusting to tell them and interpret for them the word of God they're not seeing that that's good.
Speaker 3:I think it's a hole in the game.
Speaker 1:I appreciate having you comment on that, because I'm pretty passionate about this topic and I know that when you're passionate about something you can become it becomes sort of abrasive or combative or critical, overly critical, and I know God's blessing some churches that are doing it that way. I just don't think it's just because God's blessing something. I mean, it's the best way to do something and there's something powerful about the fact that anybody that you know I'll use Snowbird rather than Red Oak church I'm the lead pastor at. Snowbird is one of the titles that's associated with my name. There's not a human being that comes to Snowbird that doesn't have access to me or you or anybody any of our pastors. At any time during the retreat. They have total accessibility and Snowbird will never hear me. They say never, say never. Snowbird will never operate different than that.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:We're not going to have celebrity status for anybody that speaks. We're not going to use a screen and and that's why it's because a shepherd has got to smell like sheep he's got to live among the people, Right, and I'm very passionate about that, and so I appreciate that you say it's not that it's just only bad, it's. It's just it's not the best way to do something.
Speaker 3:And you know, and I think another you know, for guys that are committed, you know, using that word expositions the idea of you know you're getting in your study, you're getting the main point of the text that you're preaching out of and making that the main point of the sermon, for a simple way to say it.
Speaker 3:But part of that process is you're taking that biblical, eternal truth and you're fashioning a sermon, you're developing a sermon for your listeners, and so another thing that you're missing out on is like, if you don't know your people, you can still preach a good sermon. And I think maybe we see this. You know, like we try to stay in step with what's going on in culture, what's facing, you know, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, fathers and mothers like we want to stay tapped into that. You know, in our church, as pastors of our church it's even we can be way more intentional in knowing our people, because you're not only expositing the text, you should be expositing your audience. And then how does this? Because when you get to the point of application, you can do just a general application, but if you you know your people, you can apply it right down to where they live. You know, and that that's again it's a whole another level that you're able to really shepherd effectively, and again I think that's that's absent in that model yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I appreciate you shedding some more thought and light on that, but anyway, go ahead, okay.
Speaker 3:So the passage I'm specifically talking about is 1 Timothy 4.13. So I'll read it, because I think this is foundational to the whole I guess method, where Paul tells Timothy, the whole I guess method, where Paul tells Timothy until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. And he goes on to say practice these things, immerse yourself in them, persist in this. And he puts so much weight on it he says for by doing this you'll save both yourself and your hearers. I think it's the bigger umbrella term of salvation, not just initial salvation but sanctification all the way up to the point of glorification. So he says, essentially, says you got three things that you have to do and I'm telling you to focus your attention on is read the word give the teaching, or some translations will say doctrine, which is really what it means and the exhortation. And so, essentially, read the passage, tell them what it says give the doctrine, tell them what it means by what it says. And then the exhortation, like okay, how do you obey this, how do you follow this? Or we would say more typically, what's the application for me? And so if that's how a pastor is supposed to handle the word in the pulpit, it then by what Paul's teaching in these letters is how the members themselves, the church, any Christian, is themselves supposed to handle Scripture. We should have that same pattern of approaching the Word of God. I'm going to read it and I'm going to study it to know what God says, not what I think about what this says, not what I think it means primarily. It's primarily what did God intend for me to get from this passage? And then what do I do with that? How do I obey it, how do I follow it, how do I submit to it? And so there's just good, helpful perspective on how to accomplish that.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, reading more for comprehension than just volume, which again, again, is super beneficial, and I try to do both. You know, sometimes I cheat, and when I'm driving around I'll listen through Old Testament books. When, especially when my study that's more in depth is in the New Testament, which both it's not only study the New Testament, but that's typically where I find myself, but that's typically where I find myself. So yeah, it's choosing, which I think oftentimes, especially if you go to a church where your pastor preaches your books of the Bible, then it's an alley-oop of okay, well, I'm going to study wherever our church is, but it doesn't have to be that.
Speaker 3:I think your interest is not like you're going to go wrong With younger Christians, somebody new to studying the Bible. We typically say it can be helpful to start with a shorter book that's more direct, like a Philippians or James. But you can't go wrong. But, yeah, start to just reading it. And what I advocate for and this is just a method there's some things in here that you know we covered, that I think are principle, like okay, well then, how do you best interpret scripture? And we've got 2000 years of church history that you know really good patterns.
Speaker 3:What I advocate for, what helps me, is when I first start a study, so you know Philippians or the book of Hebrews or wherever, like I really start by just reading it before I start diving in, you know, to become more and more familiar with that book of the Bible, not just so I know where things are, but what the benefit of doing that versus. It's not how you would read you know your favorite fiction book or a history book or whatever, but you know this is the Word of God that has transforming power and doesn't return void. It's going to have God's effect in your life when you're submitting to it. But what starts to happen? One of the huge benefits is you begin to see, like, okay, the books of the Bible aren't just individual verses strung together randomly.
Speaker 3:The author has an intended purpose for what he's saying and typically, like you know, when you're in the Old Testament with a narrative, the stories put together, or the Gospels, you know, they're put together in such a way to reveal theological truth that, out of that fall, you know, is often examples to follow or things to avoid. But there's truth being told in story and so, okay, how is he telling the story to reveal that truth? And the more that you read that story, you begin to see the bigger picture and that main point of like, okay, why is he telling this story, why is he telling it this way? That main point of the story starts to rise to the surface. Same way with when we get into the epistles, all the epistles.
Speaker 3:There's an argument that flows through that whole epistle. There's themes that run through the epistle and the more that you read it, those really do rise to the surface. And that safeguards you when you see those things. It safeguards you from reading into the text and just reading it and highlighting one verse and being like, oh, that's going to be my life verse and take it out of its context. You know, even for our winter retreats we're doing Philippians and you know you got a sign that we just called it the Tebow passage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can run touchdowns. I can make all things through Christ, who?
Speaker 1:strengthens me. I can run touchdowns, I can make it into law school. It's not untrue, but it's not the main point of that verse.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so making sure that you're not reading into it, taking it out of its context. If you take it out of its context, you know one you come up with weird beliefs. That's what false teachers have to do. A false teacher has to take Scripture. He's going to use the Bible, but he's going to take it out of its context, maybe just even a little bit, but he's going to pervert it. He's going to twist it, because then your wrong beliefs are going to have an impact on your whole life, how you apply it.
Speaker 1:Is this where you used the illustration? Somebody said could you give an example and use David and Goliath?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I was talking about spirit.
Speaker 1:you know, beware of spiritualizing the text or out of the horizon that was a little bit later, I think, and it was maybe in the Q&A, but this would be a good spot. I think that's a good example for people. So how somebody might take the story of David and Goliath out of context was I was raised to believe that that was a story about overcoming, you know, just giants in your life or things that seem to be more than you can handle. You can overcome those things. Or when my oldest was a little girl 25, you know, quarter century ago, the VeggieTales were rocking and they did the David and Goliath story where it was. The whole tagline was with God's help, little people can do big things. That's not the point of the story. Of course, I think Matt Chandler is the guy that became famous for ranting about it.
Speaker 3:You're not David. You're not David.
Speaker 1:You're not David, but that's a good one, I think. The Tebow verse, but then that's a narrative. That what's the point of the David and Goliath story. Rob, following this, that you're explaining what's the point of that story.
Speaker 3:The battle belongs to the Lord, to Yahweh. And you see that in David's speech to Saul, right, he, you know, when Saul's dismissing him, it's not because he, you know, for whatever, like superficial reasons, he's dismissing David. David doesn't say hey, you know, with God's help, you know, I can defeat anything that comes against me. You know, he says no, the Lord's going to do it, he's going to protect his name, he's going to make his glory known, you know, and he walks through that and that's why Saul's like yeah, go, and he gives examples of how the Lord had used him. And I think and then there's another principle that you know we'll come back to, or however this weaves together there's another principle that we'll come back to, or however this weaves together, where it's a principle that is biblical.
Speaker 3:It's biblical to look for the redemptive focus of the passage, and we take that from Jesus himself saying that all of Scripture is about me, even as we said that there's no verses that just stand alone.
Speaker 3:It's not a bunch of random verses strung together. Well, it's also not a bunch of stories told in isolation and you know, or doctrines taught in isolation. Everything is woven together, like the books of the Bible make up the bigger story of redemption and that everything is pointing to Christ, where because you also don't want to be a danger of just reading David Goliath the way that a good Jew would you know, the Jewish people could read the story of David and Goliath and get similar points on the front end. But what a Christian needs to read David and Goliath and get similar points on the front end? But a Christian needs to read David and Goliath as a Christian and ask the question where does this story stand in relationship to the ultimate redemption that was displayed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus? And that's where you begin to see, oh, there is more at play here. David's not representing us so much as he's representing Christ. You know, and I think a couple summers ago, when you preached through it, you did an awesome job of laying that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even the point where, when you said the main point is, the battle belongs to the Lord, and that's what David. David convinces King Saul. This battle belongs to Yahweh. Um, and, and I think it's important for people reading that story to recognize, in that moment Saul is so convinced that Yahweh is going to deliver them that he lets this young man go out and fight against this seasoned warrior. So I would not have let david go. No, because if david loses, saul becomes a slave, which means he's going to have his eyes gouged out and his you know potentially terrible things done to his body right, and then ultimately executed. And but so he lets this kid go. It's not like, okay, you convinced me, you killed some lines. Yeah, you're, I think you're the man for the job. It's. He convinces saul that the battle belongs to yahweh. That's good and I think that is the. That is the. That is this monumental moment in the story that later I would I would even say serves to condemn saul.
Speaker 1:Saul acknowledged who Yahweh is and still rebelled against it. He rebelled against his recognition of Yahweh's sovereignty. In that moment, that's good. I love the way you walk through that. So one other thing you said that redemptive focus. I think that's important because a lot of people, I want to say, the older I get, the less critical I am of the way people do their devotions, and so we had a conversation about this yesterday Some of the young teaching team it was, I think it was me, dawson and Zay at lunch yesterday.
Speaker 1:It was, I think it was me, dawson and Zay at lunch yesterday and we're talking about how there seems to be a tendency to be critical. Oh, alex, your nephew was there, alex Connors, so it was Alex, zay, dawson and me and we're sitting there and we're talking about how my devotions in the morning probably look more simple. They probably look more like they looked when I was a one-year-old Christian now Right Than when I was 15 years into my faith journey and was learning how to preach and prepare sermons, because I've kind of walked it back to and you talk about this in the morning.
Speaker 1:I get up. The first thing I do is I hydrate my brain. It's proven that cold water rehydrates not just your body but your soul and your brain. Your brain is dehydrated, so drink in that water, get myself and I get in front of the uh, I take a cold shower and I turn all the lights on in the bathroom and I kind of get woke up, good, and then I go and 20 minutes after I'm out of bed I've got that cup of coffee and I sit down and I listen to the scripture.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:The last three mornings I have listened to the book of Philippians and I've listened to Romans, chapter eight.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:Romans eight is what we're preaching next summer. Philippians is what we're doing for winter, and I listen to them and then I'll go back through and make notes or write my own devotion and and I want people to feel free to, to not have to follow someone else's schedule, right, as long as these principles are in place and the conversation yesterday turned to the our daily bread devotional, because I use that with my kids and so there's nothing I want to say. I use our daily bread devotional. There's nothing wrong with doing those things.
Speaker 1:However, you got to work at it a little bit and engage your brain, your mind, your imagination to say what is the main point of this passage? What's this teaching me about Jesus? What's it teaching me about sin and redemption, rather than, is this giving me an anecdotal life lesson for today? Right, so there's a fine line. There's a tension that we need to walk, walk around with. Where it's like I can, I can drink in a devotional thought and it can sort of nourish and hydrate my early morning soul, but I also need to press into, okay, what's this mean for me?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and yeah, I do the same thing. I said it in the breakout the mornings I really listen to somebody else read and I read along. It keeps me more engaged at that hour while I'm sipping coffee, um, and then really I listen and I and I pray, and that, uh, I journal my prayers, um, which is a huge part of approaching scripture. Um, I just journal my prayers out, I type them because it helps, again, it helps keep my brain engaged and it really is that simple. And then for me, I love my job here because it affords me time to study whatever is coming up next, or going over a sermon prep. But yeah, they're tools and they're just ways.
Speaker 3:The ultimate goal of studying the Bible ultimate, there's more, but ultimate is you are spending time with Jesus. You know it's his word, his spirit lives in you and you're spending time with him. When you're just listening, large volume, if you're diving deep, you're spending time with Christ and we're trusting that his word is true and it renews our mind. We submit to having a mind of Christ, that we begin to see the world the way he sees it. We begin to see God the way he really is, ourselves, the world around us. Why we're here? It's a guard against idolatry. We're doing what Colossians 3 says, which is to set our mind on the things above, where Christ is.
Speaker 3:That's the goal is becoming more like Christ by spending time with him, and so, yeah, at the end of the day, what works for you is awesome, you know. I think this deeper dive is, you know, I think it is important in where you know. The Bible says you know to test things and to not get swept. James says you know, not getting sucked into different winds of doctrine. You know the way you protect yourself against that is, you're not being at the mercy of somebody else just telling you what it means, and that's by learning how to discern Scripture and have Scripture in your mind as a filter that everything else has to pass through, Whether it's awesome resources like Our Daily Bread or Morning and Evening with Spurgeon, or listening to a podcast or a sermon series by somebody you don't even know, just online, the more that scripture is in your mind.
Speaker 3:You can listen without being like a critical punk. But you'll catch things that are like, oh, what did he mean by that? Or oh man, that really doesn't seem to be what that passage is saying. It doesn't mean you disregard everything going on, but you're just not going to get sucked in to something. That's maybe a bad understanding of scripture.
Speaker 1:Um, and so that's where this is, I think, very valuable we'll also include uh jb, let's make sure we've got Rob's outlines and notes linked up so if you're watching this especially, you can just pull those notes up and as Rob's walking through this, you can be following that and then also we can. We always want, we welcome questions you're hearing. You need clarifying thought or question, then please ask us those because we can address them.
Speaker 3:No, I think somewhere in here I had analogy. I don't know if it's a good one, but it worked for me. You know, to that point of like, you know, it's a process and something to grow in, where, like, yeah, you know, I would never want somebody to feel discouraged of, like, oh, that's overwhelming, or man, I really don't know how to actually do that myself where it's like to take time to grow in it. And you know, I I just love football and it's, you know, a lot of times I have to delete those. I always want to use those illustrations because it's the first one that pops in my head and I'm like, okay, I don't want to be just a football guy, especially since I, you know, never played.
Speaker 3:But you know, I was thinking you can enjoy a football game without knowing any of the rules, you know without knowing any of the rules. Or you can enjoy a football game knowing schemes and being able to. Most people know my father-in-law. His whole career has been coaching at the collegiate level and the NFL level and, honestly, there's times where if he's over and there's a game on or we're at third place, the normal comments I would make. I'm like, you know, but I'm trying to ask questions of like what is he seeing you?
Speaker 3:know, like because he's seeing things that I'm not seeing and so he's taking in that game on another level, I think. But there's also, you know, one of my daughters watching and they, they, they'll be in and out and they enjoy a good play, you know, like a long bomb or a good hit or a sack or whatever. Like they can enjoy the game without knowing all the all that stuff going on. But the, you know, but it doesn't. But, yeah, but you can grow the more you watch it, right, like you're going to pick up rules and like you know, sarah, she'll always be like, oh, how did you know? That was what the penalty was. And it's not necessarily I saw it because of the way that the cameras are. It's more of just how everyone reacted after the play and I'm like, oh, that was holding. She's like, oh, who was?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I didn't see it, I just I know it's holding yeah, and so I think the flag was thrown where. What the timing in the play? Yeah?
Speaker 3:um. And so I think, then, to enjoy where you're at and not to feel like, oh, I'm behind, or like a pressure, like don't put a pressure on yourself where you're, like I'm not doing this well enough, like spend time with Jesus. You know, being in the word is its own reward, you know, while like, yeah, I want to grow in this, and the more time that I do this and the more I practice it, I'll be better at interpreting the Bible and I'll be better at applying the Bible and submitting to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. I appreciate that a lot I think about. So Josh Dunn, who a lot of our listeners will know Josh, many probably will not, but a lot will. Josh runs the registration department at SWO. He runs the front office and he's a really good outdoorsman. Josh is a phenomenal outdoorsman. He fly fishes, he bait, cast fishes, he has bird dogs, he upland bird hunts. He'll go to Nebraska kansas and go out there pheasant hunt. He's, you know, he's been out west and killed elk. He's uh, he's an accomplished hunter locally. Well, he's a good hunter but he's not a ballistics guy and I, I, I kind of geek out over that stuff.
Speaker 1:And so I had developed a hand load. I've talked about this on an episode one time. Basically, you develop. Oh, when John Rouleau interviewed me he asked me what does that mean? Basically you build your own hunting ammunition. But I developed a load where, when I would shoot that in my rifle at 200 yards, you could cover five shots with a quarter. So if people don't have a concept, just that's very accurate very good, yeah, it's very accurate to do that.
Speaker 1:You're measuring to the, to the tenth of a grain, the amount of powder that's going into a shell. You're you're making your. I'm weight checking every projectile to make sure they all came from the same factory batch of bullets. Do they all weigh exactly in that load 160 grains, not 160.1, whatever? By the time I put that ammunition together and go shoot, I have a high expectation.
Speaker 1:Well, josh was ready to throw his rifle away because he was shooting at 100 yards. His groups were an inch and a half around. Well, that's perfect. You can hunt all over North America with a gun that shoots that accurate. He's buying his ammunition from the store so it's not going to be as precise. And then he's going out and he's shooting. You can hit an animal out to 400's shooting. You can hit an animal out to 400 yards if you know how to shoot with ammunition like that. And so I remember he had, he had, he was burning through money buying different ammo. I gotta get it to shoot. And finally I remember just saying oh, you know what, I don't think you're gonna get it to shoot the same way that hand load shoots. Just enjoy this man. Just enjoy hunting and shooting, and you're a really good hunter. You're not a ballistics guy, but you're a really good hunter. You're not a ballistics guy, but you're a really good hunter.
Speaker 3:Just keep killing stuff and feeding your family and having fun.
Speaker 1:You know, like if you have the spirit of Jesus in you, you're a really good Christian, right, because Jesus is the one that's in you that brings the goodness. You're not good because you're moral. You're not good because your quiet time is two hours long and you parse Greek verbs and you break down sentences in the original grammar, and you're a good Christian because of Christ in you. What scripture enables me to do is be in tune with Christ in me and to submit to Christ in me. It helps me to understand how to engage my mind. Don't overthink it, don't overdo it. Just love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and know that some people like a Rob Conte Rob teaches a biblical exposition class. We learn from people like this, but enjoy it for what it is and just be faithful to the scripture.
Speaker 1:I think that's what I'm hearing you say and describe, and I also love CS Lewis's illustration of the scripture. I think that's what I'm hearing you say and describe, and and I also love CS Lewis's illustration of the ocean. A child can enjoy that. I use this all the time with students. A child can play in the ocean and this much water and love it. And the greatest explorers of our day have gone to the depths of the ocean and there's still mystery.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:The word of God is like that that's good, yeah, the word of God is like that. That's good, yeah, you know. And Peter says you know, desire, like a baby desires milk, right, desire, the pure word of God. And what he's focusing on is the desire. You know, he's not saying just drink milk, or when you're a new Christian, just you know. Keep it simple. But the point is like is to desire it? Like that, with Scripture it works. Like the more that we are in it and spending time in our new environment, that's what builds the desire. Our stomachs desire food. They desire food when they're hungry, and the more hungry you get, you know, the more you want the food. Well, what scripture almost works the opposite way. Like, the more that you have it, the the greater your hunger is for it.
Speaker 1:and so it's like metabolism, where the harder you're training and working, the more food you want right and it seems. Seems counterproductive. Because a marathon runner you think that guy, I going to start running and I need to lose some weight. So I'm going to diet and exercise. But the exercise makes you want to eat more Right, but the exercise also makes you burn the food up faster, so you need more food to be able to exercise. But it's not counterproductive if you're eating the right thing, that's good.
Speaker 1:It generates greater appetite, but then the food you take in goes to work.
Speaker 3:That's good um oh, one story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're dowd. Go, one of our one of our guys on the team that's behind the camera when this before he was born, probably he might have been an infant little baby. I was little and I went to his church do a d now no, he wasn't born yet. I know he wasn't and, uh, his pastor. He grew up with a really good friend of mine, john G Tate, and I've talked about John John here before, but he was doing a D now, which is, if you don't want to D now as a discipleship weekend for students and you.
Speaker 1:It's a small group structure and I was leading the high school junior and senior boys. I was leading the high school junior and senior boys and for Saturday night of the day now, everybody had to do a skit, and so what I did for our skit is we went in the backyard of the people that hosted whose home we stayed in. So I had 12 high school senior boys and we did the gallon challenge in their backyard, which is where you try to the original gallon challenge. You try to chug a gallon of whole milk in an hour and not vomit. But we changed the rules. So this is when the rules changed.
Speaker 1:Was at this D now I said, guys, I don't have an hour to watch you drink milk and be sick. Let's see how fast you can drink a gallon of milk and how far you can projectile vomit, and we'll video you doing this. So we did it, we videoed the whole thing and then we time-lapsed it. I think all 12 guys had drunk their milk within 15 minutes and there was so much vomit in that backyard and we videoed the whole thing and showed it in church. They're going to do the skits.
Speaker 1:So the different people coming up and doing their skits. I'm yeah, this is the late nineties, I'm pretty new in student ministry and I remember I had one of the this one guy they called him a pork chop this one kid that just ate all the time and he comes out and his job was to read that verse you should crave the meat of the word, not pure spiritual milk. And then boom, hit, play, and it's guys drinking milk and puking in a time lapse, two minute video. And when it got, when we got done, there were there were a few people in the church that had a sense of humor right and they were.
Speaker 1:They were quietly enjoying themselves yes, but they weren't going to get your back though no, they were not gonna get my back, and john g was a youth pastor at that time and he was forbid from asking me to come back and help out. So anyway to say that's not what it means. When Peter's saying crave the milk, he's not saying get off the milk and get to the meat. And if you're drinking the milk and you're being, I still love the simple things of Scripture you don't quit loving that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you don't quit loving that. Yeah, and the, the in Hebrews at the end of chapter five, beginning of chapter six, when he says, uh, he's rebuking them. And he says you know you become dull hearing. You need me to go over the basic stuff again. He says you need milk, not solid food.
Speaker 3:For everyone who lives on, milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child, but solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice, distinguish good from evil. What's interesting there is he's saying he's not disparaging the basic truth of the gospel. What he's calling them out on is you're not applying it. And he's like him out on is you're not applying it and he's like it's not that if I go on to deeper truths about jesus being, you know, like melchizedek, that oh, you just won't understand it because you're childlike. He's calling my eyes like I want to go on to deeper things, but you're not obeying the simple truth. And so it's interesting, even in that passage he's saying yeah, like it's not that there's things that we just leave behind, like we don't need them anymore like we still all need, yeah, the abcs of the gospel.
Speaker 3:You know like we don't move on from it, just like you don't move on from the abcs. As a adult, you don't recite the abcs all the time, but you use them in every word and sentence and paragraph and you speak and understand. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's good, all right. Well, let's stop there. We're going to have a followup episode. We're not done, we're just getting going.
Speaker 3:We didn't even get as far as I got in the breakout. It was awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the beauty of this is we're doing as many episodes as we want to do, so we'll try to keep these under an hour so folks can listen, think about it, take some notes, go back, re, re, listen. So we'll stop there and we've got a lot of cool content coming through NSR over the next few weeks. I've got a lot of cool stuff outlined, but we're also going to just bring you more of this. We'll stop here and come back with the next episode.
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 sw outfitters dot com to see all of our programming and resources, and we'll see you next week on no sanity required.
