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
Everyday Carry, Everyday Faith
In this episode, Brody connects everyday carry with everyday discipleship and talks about what real preparedness looks like. The gear you carry matters, but so do the habits and beliefs you practice every day.
Brody covers what he actually carries, why training and responsibility matter, and how simple spiritual routines build steady faith. He also discusses different Bible translations and explains why he chooses certain ones over others. This episode is about being grounded, consistent, and ready for real life.
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Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
In today's episode of No Sanity Required, we're going to talk about two things that you might think, how in the world do those two things go together? Or you might think they go together because Holloway's a hillbilly good old boy. But I think there's some practical correlations that we can draw between these two thoughts or these these two things. We're going to talk about everyday carry and how to study the Bible. It's going to be awesome. Welcome to No Sanity Required.
SPEAKER_00: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_01:Okay, so here's here's where my mind is right now. And I, in all full disclosure, this is an episode that I've been wanting to do. So this is less based on what people are requesting. And it's not even on the list of episodes we've got for 2025. But one of the things that I think is has been very effective for NSR is that we oftentimes we'll just take something that uh is kind of spur of the moment and we'll record an episode. We've got some episodes planned for two months from now. Sometimes we've got episodes recorded and planned, and we're in editing eight weeks out. Today I'm recording an episode that's going to pretty much drop immediately, and it comes from there's this really popular trend over the last few years. I don't know if it's as popular now, but I know that for a few years, guys were going on YouTube and they were, and I'm sure they were doing it on other social media platforms. I'm just, I'm not on Facebook, I'm not on Instagram. I mean, I have like, you know, Snowbird has accounts for all that stuff, but I don't spend time on those. I would imagine they're on those platforms too, but I know on YouTube guys were doing EDC videos, which stands for everyday carry. And most, like when I think of everyday carry, I'm thinking about uh a self-defense sidearm, firearm. But a lot of guys do these episodes, uh these EDC episodes, and they're not gun guys. Like they don't carry a gun. So like I've even seen guys do these where the main focus is their tech. So it's like I carry this kind of watch and this kind of wallet, and this is the phone I use, and these are the earbuds I use, and they get into stuff like that. And then there's another whole thing where guys talk about everyday carry, and it's more from a uh concealed carry perspective. Some of those guys are like real tactical. You know, they've got guns with lights on them and spare magazines and tactical knives and a backup flashlight and a lot of really a lot of gadgets and gear. And then other guys will do their everyday carry, and it's super basic. There's a there's one guy, I can't remember his name. There's a guy that does that I saw his what he was carrying on his person. It was, and it included a firearm, and it was like the most basic, simple little everyday carry setup. So it's kind of a, it's all over the place what guys do. But what I want to do is I want to talk, I want to make this a spiritual parallel. So I want to talk, I'm gonna walk you through. I thought this part would be just fun and interesting. Talk about what I leave the house with every day, what I carry on my person, kind of my everyday carry and why I carry what I carry. That part will be super brief. That part of the episode's not gonna, it's gonna go quick. Um, because this is not a gun channel or a concealed carry episode, first and foremost. But I think it'll be a fun object, object lesson, like a, you know, a visual. And then I want to talk about preparedness when I leave the house in terms of spiritual preparedness and being prepared to face the day, face the world, guard my thoughts, go to go to battle and war against my flesh and against the world. And some days I lose and some days I'm victorious, and some days I just feel like, man, beat up, you know? And so how do I prepare to go out and and face each day? And within that, what is a practical way that I can approach my daily reading and study of the Bible? Especially if you're not seminary trained or you're not a pastor, a teacher, what is practical for the everyday man or woman? And um I I do want to just preface that part by saying a lot of people, I feel like, are intimidated and overwhelmed by the idea of reading and studying the Bible, and you don't have to be. And so I'm hoping to give you some encouragement. This would be if we were going to subcategorize this here at No Sanity Required, we have several subcategories. Um, one of those subcategories is beyond the flannel graph, where we look at real uh familiar Bible stories and we go sort of beyond the sur below the surface and then uh and look at some practical things and some history. Another category we have is one that we call tailgate theology, and it has to do with the fact that weather permitting, most of my teaching and sermons are written and the research done on a tailgate of my truck. I'm I'm in the woods, I'm there's a couple places up in the mountains I like to go where you you it's kind of hard to get to, don't have a phone signal, and I love to go weather permitting and and and write sermon content there or book content, whatever. And so I call it tailgate theology. It's like, man, you haven't been to seminary, you don't have a chance, you're not gonna have an opportunity to go to Bible college. You're a dad or a granddad that's like, man, I want to get serious about reading the Bible and investing in my kids. I that's what tailgate theology is about. That's what I think this is kind of gonna be a category of. So I want to start by talking about everyday carry. Now, before I get into what mine is, let me let me just go ahead and show you what I carry on my person every day. First, let me show you the firearm I carry. Now, this gun uh is unloaded. I've already unloaded it and uh you can see there's no magazine in it. If you're a gun person, open the slide and it's uh it's completely empty. Um and so what I carry is a Glock. Now, this is a Glock 47, but uh Glock 19, Glock 45, Glock 17, Glock 47, those are the the main nine millimeter Glocks. I carry a nine millimeter. Um it's it's the bigger, I carry the bigger Glock, and some people say, man, that thing's huge, but I mean it's not really once you get used to it. And a lot of it has to do with having a nice holster. And and uh I can recommend stuff like that if you're interested. And uh a lot of the guys here at Snowbird carry different stuff. We you got to kind of trial and error for your body type and what position on your waist you want to carry it. And then some people don't carry it on their person. Um some young dudes will carry uh and and gals will carry it like on a shoulder bag. If you do that, I would just say make sure it's across your shoulder, not just over your arm. So somebody can't, somebody tries to grab your bag to steal it or something, it's gonna be attached to you. But I carry Glock. I carry a Glock with a red dot on it. Um, this is a Glock 47 with a red dot. It's very accurate. I shoot, I shoot the snot out of it, man. I shoot this thing all the time. I shot yesterday, me and my daughter Laylee. She carries, she has a um a Glock 19. Both of ours are Gen 5 Glocks for for you guys that care. Um, and she she carries uh that. And yesterday we we had a training session. I probably put 250, maybe 300 rounds through it, and she did the same. And so that brings me to another thing, which is people are like, man, it's too expensive to shoot. And I would just say you can dry fire train and then also just make sacrifices to train and practice with your firearm. So that's what I carry. I carry Glock. I'm not not trying to debate Glock versus Springfield versus SIG versus Beretta or you know, whatever CZ. Just this is what I carry. It works, it shoots, it's reliable, it's got thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of rounds through it, and it works. Um, so I carry that and I carry it every day when I leave the house. It's on my person. Um, I will mix it up sometimes and carry uh a different Glock, but it's very similar. It's just a little bit smaller. So that's what I carry. I don't carry a backup magazine. I carry, uh I keep a couple of spare magazines in my truck, um, which that's another conversation, I guess. What's in my truck, but in my truck I've got some basic necessities, you know. Um I always keep some food and water. Um, not because I think I'm gonna have an end of the world apocalypse, but um I have just always gonna have snacks and water. Something um that if I had to spend the night in my truck on the side of the road or something, I'd I'd be I could be comfortable. Always have some warm clothes, change of clothes if I get wet, you know, got dry clothes, um, things like that. In the winter, I've always got a box of hand warmers in there. And and so that just that I don't want to get into I'm I'm about to get in the weeds here. When I leave the house every day, carry that pistol, I carry a light. This is a streamlight something, and it's just a it's just a a thumb press. And then if you if you bump it, it comes on. And it has two different settings. If you press and hold, then you let up, it goes off. So I carry that every day. Some people just want to use only the light that's on their phone, but it's very practical to have a super bright handheld light. I carry a knife. Um, no matter what. I don't I'm not I don't care what knife I got, a couple knives I carry. Two uh are like this with a belt clip. Both were gifts. This one was given by uh a really close friend of mine who's a board member at Snowbird. His name's Mike, and Mike is a he he's a combat veteran who had a bronze star awarded to him. And anyway, good friend and brother. This was a gift from him. It means a lot to me. I carry that. It's also a really good knife. It's like really good steel, 154, I think what it's called, CPM or something like that. Um, and it's got really cool grips. Oh, and it's got the cool little flippy thing where it just pops out. Um I carry a lighter. I have a Zippo. Is that what it's called? Zippo, the really nice lighters, but anyway, I have a hard time keeping fuel in it. And then I carry fingernail clippers because a dude shouldn't have long fingernails. You're a weirdo if you got long fingernails. Um that's it. That's what I leave with. And then my wallet typically rides in my truck, and it's just a really cool homemade leather wallet that a close family friend made for me. Um Let's see, is that it? Yeah, that's about it. That's what I carry every day. Um, I will say if you're gonna carry a gun, there's a few things. I we I've I train annually under some guys that actually listen to NSR, a couple guys named Ben and Kyle. Uh it's what they do for a living. And they're they're combat veterans. They're also practical dudes who I just trust. I trust them with my life, and they're also very good personal friends, and they're snowbird guys. They love this ministry. They try they do our training for our security team. So I've got guys like that that if I've got a question, they're they're experts. I'm not. I carry, like I said, I carry a gun. It's a Glock, and it's mainly because that's what those guys told me to carry. I trust them, so I carry what they tell me to carry. Um, find somebody you can trust and then get training. Train with those guys annually. And then in-house, I've got a circle of friends that trains and we train together. And the guys at Snowbird that are on the security security team, they train. And so anyway, bringing all that up to say I don't just carry a gun, I train with the gun. I don't just I didn't just go get a concealed carry permit and then start carrying a gun. I trained and trained and trained and trained and trained and trained. And I'd say in the last 20, let's see, I got my first Glock in 2000. No, in like 1994 or five. It was a early gen Glock. And I don't think I trained much. I would shoot like maybe two or three boxes of shells, maybe, maybe five boxes of shells. That's 250 shots a year on a good year. Most years it was less than that. And then over the last 20 years, uh really the last 15, 16 years, I've probably shot 40,000 rounds through my carry gun. And you're like, man, I can't afford that. Well, it's there's been I've had some opportunities to to to take some classes and ammo have been provided and things like that. The one thing you can do is you can dry fire. That's where you just take your gun, like I said, it's empty, and you just you just practice drawing it and pressing the trigger, and I do that a lot at the house. And uh, and then learn from some guys that know what they're doing. Ben and Kyle love the Lord, love Snowbird, care about me and my family, and they know that I want to protect the students at Snowbird. I want our team to protect them. When I it's just me at the house, I want to protect my family. Part of that is teaching my kids how to protect themselves, and that's all important. And then these things that I carry all have a purpose. You can see I don't have a lot. I don't know, a gadget guy. I don't carry a spare mag, and I can carry everything I carry on my person is in this like right there. So I don't want a bunch of junk in my pockets, man. And I do have like a couple little bags in my truck. Like I've got a really good med kit, and uh, and I'm never far from the truck. If I'm gonna be far from the truck, I grab the bag, bring it in, you know, something like that. But day to day on my person, that's what I carry. Um so what's what's all that got to do with what we're talking about here today? Well, there's some principles that as we s shift over to um studying the Bible, reading the Bible, I leave the house with all of these things every day, and that's important to me. I don't leave the house without like I just don't leave the house without these few items. And so because of that, um I want to take the mindset that goes behind always having certain things on me and then apply that to consistency in in my spiritual life. So if I'm prepared for physical fitness and defense, I need to prepare be prepared for spiritual fitness and defense. Let's look at it that way. I may have just uh completely messed up the I forgot to put my I'm filming this on my iPhone, which is pretty funny, and I don't know what model it is, but the media guys said it would be fine to do this, so we're trying it, and I forgot to put it in airplane mode and it was just buzzing. And I hope I'm centered up because I'm looking into the camera. I don't have it facing me, you know. If not, it don't matter. This we're putting our we're redoing our set here, and so we still got a lot of work to do to get the set done. I mean, this is super spartan right now. It's not like it's just hodgepodge. There's a few books up here where we had that old set set up with like it's it's way sparse, so ignore the set. This is about the content. And so I wanted I want to switch, shift over to everyday preparedness spiritually. Now, I want to start by saying I'm a pastor and a preacher and a teacher, and I mess up really bad every day, and I fall short really bad every day in my thought life. I I would confess to you and and my church and ministry that I'm that there's every not a day goes by that I don't have to confess and repent before the Lord for thoughts or attitudes, words I might say. My kids will tell you and my wife that I've often had to ask for their forgiveness because I'm not a godly man. I'm not the godly man I I want to be, and I make a lot of mistakes. And I think that's important because when you're in, when you're in ministry and and you and God's giving you favor and influence, I think there's a principle that the devil really wants to come after you, but also there's a principle that uh you gotta battle your own pride and not just pride, but like you gotta be realistic. It's easy to to believe your own hype. And I get, I'll just be honest, I get uh I get a little bit, I don't know the word, I don't want to say like agitated or annoyed or something like that, but there's so many dudes that are influential and they're influential in ministry that seem to be obsessed with how they look, their appearance, their you know, apparel, their jewelry, their ink, their I like I just wanna I want to be as discreet and in the shadows as possible. And so the reason I bring that up is to say I don't I don't want people to know that I'm carrying my pistol. So here's the first principle When I carry a pistol, I want it out of sight completely. I don't want nobody knowing that I've got that pistol. This is a full-size Glock. This is a this is like the the full size, this is not like a little micro compact pistol. This is a big carry gun. And uh, a lot of dudes will say, man, I can't carry something that big. And I'm like, well, I'm committed to it. I'm a grown man, I can I can work it out. If you're a grown man, you can figure it out. I got man hands, I'm gonna carry a man gun, and um, I'm not being derogatory. It's just I'm not gonna carry a little teeny pocket pistol or like a little SIG 365. I ain't carrying some mess like that. I'm carrying something I can fight with. Um, but that's that's a little rant right there, but I'm not, I don't want people to know I've got it. So I'm carrying it in a way that that big old pistol gets hidden, like concealed. That's the idea behind concealed carry. So you see somebody carrying a gun. I saw a video where this guy walks up in the gas station, he's got the pistol on a, it's called open carry, you know, he's got it in a holster. He's just a random, just a dude like me or like you, and the bad guy walks up behind him and grabs his pistol and then holds the store up by with by this guy's gun. I don't want people to know I've got it. It's the whole idea. And so you'll hear guys in that, in that world talk about the gray man. It's the idea of just blending into people, the crowd. You don't want to stand out. And I feel like a lot of pastors, preachers, teachers, music people, like worship leaders, man, they it's like they stand out because of the way they dress and they're there's they sort of draw attention to themselves. And spiritually speaking, I don't I want to be a spiritual gray man. I'm just I just want to be a dude that's among dudes and and ladies, and and I don't want there to be a misconception that because a guy's been called to ministry or a woman's working full time at Snowbird or some other ministry, that she's like a super Christian or he's like not struggling with the same stuff you are. He is. I read Psalm 51, I don't know how many times every week, the Psalm of Repentance and Confession, because I got to confess my junk to the Lord every day. I get sick of it sometimes. But I find that it is life for me to spend time in God's Word. And I also find that I'm confessing things to the Lord every day that I wouldn't have confessed to him before I was walking with but before like when I was a young Christian or the first few years of my Christian journey, I might not have thought a thing about it. You become, I think, more in tune and sensitive to the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. And so all I want to do in the rest of our time is talk to you about when you leave the house in the morning. You're leaving, you're caffeinated, you've had your coffee or your whatever your morning beverage is, or if you're a breakfast eater, you've had your breakfast routine, or you hit the drive-thru of the coffee shop that you like to go to, or whatever. You go through your routine to prepare to go into your day, and whatever you carry, some people their everyday carry has nothing to do with a firearm or the stuff I just showed you. You're an electrician, and so your everyday carry is very strategic to the tools you're going to need. Um you work in the in the medical profession, you've got everyday carry tools. You, you know, what you're a you're in law enforcement, you've got a loadout, an everyday carry that's like really prepare to go to battle. You know, you're in the military, you're a um you're a paramedic or an EMT, you've got Got gadgets and stuff on your person. Like what you leave the house, you go to work, you don't go, you don't get up in the morning, put on your pants and just walk out the door. Or put on your pants and your shirt and just walk out the door. You you prepare yourself for the day. And so I'm gonna take that and apply it spiritually. Um so let's talk about what what I think is a practical sort of morning routine. Now you can change this up, whatever variation. Um, and this is not a hundred percent just what I do. This is a lot of what I do, but then also people I've talked to and then people I've observed. Um, like like my wife, who many of our listeners know, little she gets up in the morning just in time to sort of get the kids stirring out the door into school. We do a family devotion. Um we sit and it's a it's a five to ten minute devotion, which it's it's uh I use that our daily bread, which is a super simple little devotion. It's not very complicated, but it's always very practical. And then there's always like extended reading, like there's some extended passages you can read, um scripture reading. I really like that. Um so yeah, I we do that, and then little takes kids to school, and then I usually peel out and head to work at Snowbird, and then she'll come in, and then her morning typically looks like get back from dropping the kids off around 7:45, and she'll spend the next hour and a half or so reading, listening to scripture, listening to music. This time of year it's awesome because you're sitting by the wood fire because we heat our house with wood and um cup of coffee and just time in the word. For me, it's a little more uh I got to get started early because I got to be done by the time I leave the door, go walk out the door. So um let's talk about what a good morning routine is. Just this is FYI, and people find this interesting. I get out of bed, I take a cold shower, which is um invigorating, a little dopamine hit. I love it. This time of year, my water's cold because it's coming off the side of the mountain, and I bet that water is 45 degrees and it hits you just wow, you know, like here I am. I'm ready to roll. Um down the steps, drink a couple glasses of water. Um I I do I have the coffee pot set, so it's drip coffee. I'm not I'm not a uh I don't nerd out on my morning coffee. It's Dunkin' Donuts is my favorite that I buy at the Ingalls. Um I like that Dunkin' Donuts coffee that you buy at Ingalls. If you by the way, if I go to Dunkin' Donuts, it's a little too weak the way they make it. So I have them, I get a cup of coffee, I have them put a shot of espresso in it. That's that's what you need. Um but anyway, at the house, it's uh Dunkin' um is what I usually use. Um I have been drinking this one coffee. This is side, I'm getting derailed here. I drink this one coffee. It's expensive, so I don't do it a lot, but it's called Alma, A-L-M-A. I think they pronounce it Alma maybe, but my granddaughter's name's Alma. I call her Punky, but her name's Alma. And so I'll that coffee's like, you know, it's like, gosh, 20 bucks for a little bitty bag, but I'll do it about once a month, and then that bag will last me a week, and I'll drink that. Uh just kind of cool. It's my granddaughter who lives in Africa. But um, yeah, I drink Dunkin' Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Um, so I give that cup of coffee after I've guzzled some water, just let my head clear a little bit, and then I read the scripture. Now, here's the way I approach reading the Bible every day. And I'm gonna talk about Bibles and Bible translations briefly. I find that a Bible that I enjoy holding and touching and handling is important to me. I'm not a complete gearhead, but I like quality things. And if you think about how much you'll spend on your phone, how much your phone costs, or how much you'll spend on a watch, or your favorite pair of shoes. And I know some of you are more like cheapskates, and you're like, I buy cheap shoes at Walmart, but you think about the things you'll spend money on. So I don't want to buy a$50 um imitation leather or leather bonded Bible. I want to get uh I use premium Bibles, and the one I was going to show you, this is my typical preaching Bible. This is a Skylar Quintale personal size Bible. And it is uh it is goat skin leather, and it is a$200 Bible. And people are like, that's crazy. Why would you spend$200 on a Bible? Man, there's a lot of things I spend$200 on in my life. I'm a like, I mean, bills. Think of the bills you'll there's things you spend$200 on.$200 for a Bible that'll last you literally most of your adult life and that you can hand down to your heirs, it's worth it. If you, if, if you read this Bible for 20 years, it's$10 a year, less than a dollar a month. If you read it for five years, that I usually use one for about five years, and and these premium Bibles hold up for five years, ain't nothing. But I want to also be able to pass it down to my kids. I've passed a few of them to snubbard people. Um, but investing in a Bible, this might just be me, but it's uh the principle of having spent good money on it, I'm gonna use it. And then the quality of that Bible, it holds up. I went, I don't know, I used to go through like if you get a like I remember buying a uh a new King James Bible from Thomas Nelson Publishers, and it was like genuine leather, but it was like a pressed bonded cover. And just the way I use my Bible, that Bible lasted me about two years, and it was just kind of falling apart. And then I had one of the soft touch ESV crossway Bibles, and it lasted me about three years. I would try to take a little bit better care of it. I kept it in the box, but it also didn't hold. These Bibles just hold up. If you have a Bible that feels good to touch, you'll use it. So ESV, speaking of translations, that's a word-for-word translation that's really good for study. I love the ESV in studying the law and the the epistles. So, like Romans and all of the epistles of the New Testament, I love the ESV. Um I think there's some other good word-for-word translations, New American Standard, a little bit choppier to understand for most people. New King James is good. Uh ESV is great. Um, King James Version is uh probably one that I need to address. I'll say something about that um at the end of this part because a lot of people in this area, if you don't use a King James, they don't consider the real Bible, which is really, really dumb. Um, especially considering, well, we'll get into that. Um it's just not it's not biblically accurate, doesn't honor the Lord, it's silly. Um, it's not like doesn't make you a better Christian or more God-honoring. Modern translations, uh we can trust that the Lord has preserved the scripture for us. Um, so this is my main preaching Bible when I'm using the ESV. I like this size because you see, a lot of preachers like a really big Bible. It's just a personal preference. So I don't like a huge one. I like that size. That's the ESV. Um, this is the same Bible, the the Skylar Quintale personal size. Um, you get these at a website called evangelicalbible.com. That's who makes them. Um, this one is a different leather. Forget which leather this is. I think this is just like a calf skin, maybe. Um, but I love that brown color, that saddle, saddle brown. So I typically use black for my ESV and brown for my NLT for my other translations. And that's part of that's just uh the way my brain works, it's it's helpful to do that. Um so that's that's that's what I'll do uh as far as color and and material. But that I really like this this thing feels really good. I've only had it about I've had this one about two years. Um I read and preach out of this. Um if I'm in like the wisdom literature, I like the NLT. That's new living translation. Wisdom literature, narrative. So if it's storytelling, like Life of David or um the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I love the NLT. So I kind of that's my two main preach and teaching Bibles. Um at Snowbird, I'll often use the NLT if I'm preaching a narrative. If it's letters and epistles and law, I use ESV at Red Oak Church. We use ESV. Um and people have different translations of the Bible at Red Oak Church. We're not like a it's not a rule, but that's what the teaching team uses. Um, so anyway, that's what we got. Um there's this is a cool translation of the Bible, the Christian Standard Bible. This is put out by the the Southern Baptists. This Bible's got a cool layout. If you look, it's uh what's called single column. I don't know if you can see that. And I like that it kind of reads easier, where I would typically use the traditional double column. Um I don't know if you could see that or not. But anyway, single column is just all one column. Christian Standard Bible to me is a really cool bridge, sort of between these two. It's probably closer to the ESV, but um that that translation is good to go. Again, a really nice. This is not as nice as these Bibles, the Quintel, but this is a really good Bible. This is a really nice, like saddle leather type Bible. I like that one a lot. Um so well, that's that's that's three translations. Other translations that we mentioned, New American Standard, good to go, New King James, good to go. Those are word-for-word translations. The new the New Living is what we would call a thought-for-thought. It's not a paraphrase, it's just a thought-for-thought translation rather than a word-for-word, so it enables it to flow a little better. Um, by the way, the translation teams for all three of those, ESV, CSB, NLT, very faithful men and women at the time. I know I'm sure some of them have fallen away at this point, but faithful. Um the a lot of people ask about the NIV. That one's good to go. I one of the things I appreciate about the NIV, it was the first Bible that really got a lot of heat and hate by not being a KJV. And the NIV reads really, it's a it's a thought-for-thought, like the NLT, so it reads really good. But like in my in my sermon preparation this week for a sermon I'm doing at Red Oak on Sunday, the NIV ended up having the best phrase to convey a point. It's in Philippi. I'm I'm teaching in 2 John, but the phrase that I was trying to translate is from Philippians 2. It's that it's that uh passage that says that Jesus considered equality with God not something to be grasped. The NIV says, but he made himself nothing and took on the form of a man. And that phrase made himself nothing. Uh some some say emptied himself. I just love the way the NIV NIV did that. So if you want to read the NIV, go for it. It's good to go. Um, yeah, I'll put that in the in the good to go list. Um now, some practical thoughts and considerations on Bible. This uh on Bibles, this is a study Bible. This one is the student study Bible. There's so many different study Bibles. This is the ESV student study Bible that we kind of recommend at camp. The way a study Bible works is the top, like the top half is the scripture, and then the bottom is notes, verse-by-verse notes. And then you'll have a lot of times thoughts and graphs and charts and historical facts. A study Bible is really cool if you're gonna pause and consider what you're reading. Not just reading through the text, but you want to study it, take some notes. A study Bible is good to go. Study Bibles I would recommend. ESV study Bible. Um, New King James does a life application. There's the Life Application Study Bible is a good one, and you can get it in a bunch of different translations. You can get it in the NLT, you can get it in NIV, several other translations. Um, then there's one Bible that's just called the NIV study Bible. That I it was one of my first study Bibles, and that was awesome. Um I'm gonna get to the King James in a minute, which is uh sometimes controversial to talk about. This is what's called a keyword study Bible. The reason I brought it out, it's a little different. Um the the the keyword study bible, what it does is it takes what's known as Strong's Concordance, and so the back, that much of the Bible is Strong's Concordance. And what Strong's Concordance is, it's a Greek lexicon or catag catalog of words in the Greek language and the Hebrew language, and it gives you sometimes some insight into because the Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek for the most part. There's a few other little things in there that but but Hebrew in the Old Testament, Greek in the New Testament. And so the strong concordance gives you some insight into some of those words. Um so I like that keyword study Bible. That one's in ESV, but you can get it in King James, you can get it New American Standard, I think you can get it New King James, you can get it ESV. I like that. Um, real quick, commentaries are helpful. This is the commentary uh on the letters of John by John Stott. It's part of the Tyndale commentary series of the New Testament. What a commentary does is it just takes a verse or two or three and gives you comments, explanation, and describes what those verses are saying. And if you if you find a commentary that's real readable, man, they're so enjoyable and helpful. I don't read a lot of books. People are like, what book are you reading? Or what do you have a book list this year? I read the Bible a lot, and then I like to read commentaries that help me understand the Bible. And then last, I think good Bible study. Don't get overwhelmed by the size of this book. A lot of you will know this book. This is Wayne Grudham's Systematic Theology. This is a reference book. And so this is not like you pick it up and read it cover to cover. Although as a new Christian, I did. I was probably a five-year-old Christian and I read this cover to cover. It came out in '94. This there's there's a lot of uh systematic theology is not a title that he made up. It's a it's a um it's a discipline of learning the scripture, uh, and it's just a process of seeing what the Bible says about a particular subject. So if you take a subject like angels, what does the Bible say from Genesis to Revelation, Genesis to Revelation, all the way through, what does it say about angels? That's what systematic theology is. And it's broken down like a reference book, and it's super helpful. In my study in 2 John this morning, I ended up pulling out Grudem and looking at uh his section on the person of Jesus Christ. And so we looked at Christology, and that was part of my personal study this morning. So this is something, you know, this would be like on your on your reading shelf beside your reading chair, which by the way, I read in the same spot every morning. That's where being a creature of habit can be helpful. Um I've got systematic theology, a good study Bible. This one's the Strong's Bible, maybe a commentary for whatever book I'm reading, and then a couple translations of scripture, and you're like, that's a lot of stuff. It is. That's my that's what I do. Um if I was only gonna have one of these things, I would have a couple translations of the Bible, and then one of them that, you know, maybe is that's what I'm reading. One one thing for the day that day. But I like having multiple Bible translations and I like having those other tools. Now, what does it look like to study the Bible using these tools? Oh, this is cool. Side note here. Let me show you something. A lot of my cousins and family listen to NSR and uh we're we're tight-knit bunch and love those dudes and thankful for them, and they'll appreciate this. If you're watching this episode, this is a postcard dated 1909 from my great grandfather to my grandmother. No, not to my grandmother. I think it's to it's to his soon-to-be wife, who would be my great grandmother. Um, and it says, Hello, Dearie, how are you? Um there's a point I'm gonna make. There's a reason this is in my Bible. It's a hundred hundred and um hundred and eighteen, hundred and sixteen-year-old postcard. Why do I keep that in my Bible? I'm gonna get to it. Hello, Dearie, how are you? When things perm when when time permits, they wrote funny back then, kindly comply with my last, which I guess is last correspondence, with love, Bob. Um, and this is to Miss Mary Brown. So uh, and she is in Gross Hill, South Carolina. So my grandmother, um, her parents were from South Carolina. Mary Brown married Bob Epting, and they had my grandmother, a little girl, who y'all have heard me talk about. We called her Dinky. Everybody called her Dinky. Um, her grandma name was Mama 2, TWO. And uh, and I found this postcard when my aunts and everybody's going through some things after she had passed, and um I found it in a little stack of things that she had given me um that I think she thought would be would be thoughtful, that would mean something to me. It's a crazy picture. I don't know if you can see it. It's him on the back of like an old horseless carriage type car. Can you see that? He's a young man. That dude committed suicide. That dude killed himself. He took his own life during the Great Depression. My grandmother was 16 years old when he did that. And the lady he's writing this to, my great-grandmother, she died when my grandmother was four. We don't know how. Nobody really knows. I've heard my aunts and my mom say, well, they think it was an aneurysm or something like that. She'd have been young. Should have been like that'd have been in like the late 20s, maybe 20, 1926, mid-20s. So about 17 years later. So let's say she was 35, something like that. Maybe she's younger than that.
unknown:Maybe. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:It's weird because he's young looking here. Anyway, she died, let's say 15 years later. Say she was sixteen here. I mean, they did things earlier back then, maybe she was thirty-one and just died. Anyway, I don't know exactly how old she was. I guess I could look it up. Why do I keep that in my Bible? The the frailty of life and the deceptions of the world. That dude killed himself because the Great Depression took his wealth. He could not bear the thought of living in this world, a broken and uh impoverished man. And it's pretty, pretty sobering. I'm not hating on him, dude. That's my ancestor. I mean that that guy's my great granddad. But uh, I keep it in my Bible, it's a good reminder. So, so the reason I share that with you, see what our time is. We've been going a while. I'll st I'll I'll start our rest of our time. I'll try to get the plane landed here. It's I like to have things that are reminders that are sober, and there's things on the wall and in the living room there, pictures and reminders that keep everything in context. And so for me, I typically don't follow a read the Bible through in a year plan. I will, like, I'm trying to do it this year because our church is trying to do it together. Years ago, I heard John MacArthur, you might know MacArthur. I heard him say, like, when he was a new Christian, he read 1 John 30 times. That was the first thing he did. It meant so much to him, and he learned so much that he read it 30 more times and then 30 more times. So he ended up reading it 90 times. Altogether. So when he got done doing that, he read the Gospel of John. And he broke it into what is the Gospel of John? Twenty-one chapters? Twenty, twenty-one chapters? Twenty, maybe. Twenty-one. Anyway, he broke it into seven. And he read the first seven chapters thirty times. The next seven chapters thirty times. The next seven chapters, thirty times. Then I think he did it again. Like, I think he said the first few months that he was reading the Bible, he just read the letters of John and the Gospel of John. But by the end, he could tell you the page something was on, like where on the page a verse would be. Got so familiar with it. And the word of God is so living and active and deep, and it's always going to give us new, fresh perspective on life, and it's always going to bring conviction. Paul writes to Timothy and says, Um, all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for reproof, rebuke, and correction and instruction and righteousness. Reproof, rebuke, correction, and instruction and righteousness. So if I'm reading the Bible, I'm gonna have conviction over sin, I'm gonna have a desire for holiness, I'm gonna have a deeper love for the Lord, it's gonna affect the way I treat and love others. And if I saturate my mind and heart with one particular part of the scripture for a period of time, then maybe it really takes root. Whereas if you just read through the Bible in a year, say you're on a one-year reading plan, that's very, it's very powerful and beautiful and healthy. Um, but you might not remember and retain as much. So different ways to do this. So for me, my favorite way, like I said, right now I'm reading through the Bible with my church, but I also, like I've been in first and second and third John every morning for, I don't know, a couple months, I guess. And just getting more and more and more familiar with that book. So um, this is where the New Living Translation, by the way, if you struggle reading and understanding the word-for-word translations, this is really easy to understand. It's real I read it to my kids, I encourage them to read it. Uh, I just gave my oldest son Tucker my my full size. I have I had this uh goat skin one like this in the NLT before I started getting them in brown. Um it's a black. It was the first one that Quintel came out with. I just gave that to Tuck. I was like, read this, man, you'll love it. It's awesome. I love it. Um just so this morning, let's see. No, this morning I did like Isaiah 1 through 6 because that's what was prescribed by our church's reading plan this year. But most mornings this week, I read 2 John, which is 11 verses, I think, and I read it multiple times. And then I I wrote notes on it and thoughts about it and spent time in it. And it's really, really powerful for and renewing for my life and and for my mind. So I just read the scripture every day. Just read it every day. Trust that it's gonna do its work in you. It's very powerful. Scripture says of itself that it's living and active sharper than a double-edged sword. And so what I have found is if I will read and read and read and read the Bible, it will interpret itself. In other words, if I think it's too hard to understand, the more I saturate my mind with it, the more I'll understand it. And then the more I'll realize there's more yet to understand. And so each morning, I don't know, 30 minutes, something like that, of just slowly reading and saturating my mind with a scripture. So there's that. And then if you're wanting something extra, some commentaries, a study Bible, it can be very helpful. Um now, let me give you some thoughts on um the King James Version and the debate about translations. The King James Bible is wonderful, it is a gift to humanity. God gave it to us, and I'm thankful for it. But if you study Bible translation history um seriously, you realize it's pretty silly the argument that people make about that you've got to use a King James Bible. It's just silly. And so um I don't usually I don't bog myself down in that argument or debate. I don't pay no mind to it. But I know that a lot of people do, especially in like in the Bible belt and super religious cultures, um, like religious culture, subculture. I don't know if that's the right way to say that, but it's a common argument. Um I think I told y'all a story one time about a local pastor telling me that if kids got saved at Snowbird, gave their lives to Christ, and we weren't using the King James Bible, that their their salvation wasn't authentic. It's crazy to me. That's crazy because we're saying what you're saying is God could not preserve his word until a homosexual British king came along and did it for him. That's what you're saying. It's pretty common knowledge that King James was gay. Um so from the time of Christ until the the councils in the fourth century, council of Nicaea, Council of Trent, several councils that established doctrine and um orthodoxy, established uh what books of the Bible would be canonized, what we would accept as scripture, and then that from that time until 1611, we can't trust what people had. Um you know, it was Tyndale that said a hundred years before the King James came out, he was working on translation. He was translating the Bible from Latin. Uh I believe from I think he was translating it from Latin. It might have been Tyndale might have Tyndale might have been translating it from Greek. Wycliffe had translated from Latin a couple hundred years before. I think that's right. If my memory is not betraying me here. And so Wycliffe said, I want the scripture to be accessible so that every plowman, plowboy can read it and understand it. He was saying, the average blue-collar dude in England doesn't understand Latin. I want to write the Bible and I want to translate the Bible in his language using the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. He can't read Latin. So the church in England at the time, all their services were in Latin. And that goes back to a translation of scripture by a man named Jerome, who early in church history translated the Greek into Latin, and it's called the Latin Vulgate, that copy of the Bible, that translation of scripture. And that's because Rome ruled the world and everybody was speaking Latin. And so then the Roman Catholic Church grows up, and so all the worship services around the world are being run in Latin, and people couldn't understand Latin. So you just trust what the priest is saying. And uh and so Tyndale, Wycliffe, and Tyndale were like, we need to get the scripture into people's hands that they can read and understand. So Tyndale, man, he had to fight for his life, and he was on the run. He was a fugitive to try to get the scripture into English, and he got it into, you know, Middle English, whatever that would have been in the 1500s, middle Elizabethan, I don't know. I'm not a linguist. Um, but it was like, you know, that middle dark ages kind of English that sounds weird. They use some funny words, and then a hundred years later, uh King James had commissioned the final translation of scripture. But King James was gay, man. That dude was like, what, like, are we saying that it took 1,600 years for God to get the Bible into our hands in a way we could trust? I've heard, I've heard King James only proponents say you don't need the Greek and the Hebrew. I heard one preacher say when he got done with seminary, he burned all of his Greek and Hebrew stuff because the King James is all you need. Well, you're saying that for 1,600 years, those people didn't like that's crazy. It took a gay king with an agenda to translate the Bible. It's dumb. Now, I'm not hating on the KJV. It's awesome. I love reading it. I I didn't bring a copy out, but I love reading it. Um, it's really cool to read it, partly because it was my childhood. Like going to church as a kid, that's what everybody in the mountains here uses. Um it's what my my you know, my dad and my papa and my mama, and that's what everybody read out of. And so it's, you know, a lot of the scripture that I knew as a child or memorized as a child was in the King James Version. The 23rd Psalm, I say I um memorize it and still say it in the um King James. But like the King James will use words like I heard Wes Huff saying, uh, it uses the word halt for limp. It's like Jesus, it says something uh you can go look this up. It's easy to find. I should have made a note here. Where Jesus is healing someone of their limp or that is lame, it uses the word halt, and in the sentence structure, if you don't know what that word means, it looks like it's saying Jesus was halted from healing them, something like that. Like it's just words that are obscure. The the goal of Bible translation is that every person can understand it. And I don't speak Elizabethan English, and it's not the these and the thou's that bothers me. It's words I don't understand. I don't know exactly what they mean. It sounds funny, I don't say it that way. There's uh also more modern, more recent translations that had more resources and tools to use when they put the translations together, larger teams of known conservative biblical theologians that I trust. So there's the thought on the King James argument. But anyway, um, I preach and read out of these two English Standard Version, New Living Translation, and then the wild card for me is the Christian Standard Bible. Not wild card, but it's the the extra one that I'll use sometimes. I really like the way this says some things. Really cool. So those are the three Bibles that uh and translations that I use. Um so get up every day and read the Bible. This is not, I know this wasn't an in-depth how to study the Bible. This is more about I leave the house with this every day, with you know, pocket knife, keys, with reading glasses. There's things I'm gonna be prepared to go face the day with. I need to prepare my heart and mind. I really do. And and and I would also add, I need so what we're talking about is spiritual fitness or spiritual strength and defense. Also need physical. So that's where, you know, I love the that morning cup of coffee, but I'm also there's a saying uh in the I think this is probably like in the tactical world or maybe it's in the fighting world. I don't know, but it's strong people are harder to kill. I don't know if you've ever heard that. So if if I can maintain some degree of physical fitness and strength as long as I'm able, my joints and body will allow me to, if I can be phys have some level of physical fitness and strength, I'm gonna be harder to kill. Not just, you know, we think in in the combat world, it means in battle or whatever, but I mean like from illness, sickness, disease, the common cold, you know, the flu. Um one day we're all gonna die. I'm gonna die. I don't know how I'm gonna die, but we're all gonna die one day. But I'm gonna be physically as fit as I can now, and because that makes me healthier and harder to kill, harder for anything in this world to take my life. Spiritually, we're talking about spiritual fitness that makes it impossible to kill me spiritually, because once I've been born again, I've been raised to walk in newness of resurrection life. And so why not grow in the strength that the Lord provides so that I can, you know, Paul tells the Corinthians, um, therefore, my brothers, be strong, be steadfast, be immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for you know, for you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. So he calls us to be steadfast in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 58. A few verses later, in 1 Corinthians 16, he says, Be firm. Let's see, let's see, be strong, stand firm, act like men, and let everything that you do be done in love. So there's a need for spiritual strength and readiness. Um, Peter says, Be ready. The devil is like a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour. Paul writes to the Corinthians and says, Be aware of the devil's schemes, be aware of his fiery darts, the missiles he's gonna shoot at you. So there's this mindset of preparedness. There's that wonderful great Ephesians passage on the armor of God. Take up the whole armor of God, the sword of the spirit, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, having your feet shod with the gospel. It's a it's a warrior mindset. And so I've got to leave the house every day. My everyday carry spiritually is the word of God, the spirit of God, prayer on my lips and in my mind. And then throughout the day, what I do is I keep the Bible in, I usually bring my NLT, keep that in my truck. And I mean, that Bible, I know again, I keep harping on buy$200 Bible. This Bible's been bouncing around in my truck for two years now and getting handled every day. And that thing don't even, it doesn't even look broke in. It's just so thing's so nice. Love it. Um, I tell you this, I love this a whole lot more than I love this. You know, like I'm I I love I enjoy guns and I enjoy shooting. I shoot a lot, but man, I I don't get super excited about this, but this is just something about having a really cool premium copy of the scripture. Leave the house ready. Preparedness. It's important. I don't know. I have fun doing this episode. If, if you were, if you stayed with me this long, thanks for humoring, humoring me, and maybe it's helpful to you. A few other things I guess I could have added or elaborated on is like scripture memorization, um, memorizing passages of scripture helps your, you know, helps your mind just sort of be under surrender and submission to the authority of God's word. That's super helpful. And the way I do that is just repetition of the same verses. That's super helpful. Um yeah. Let me know what you think of this. I'd love to hear some feedback and let me know if there's something I didn't talk about that you'd like for me to talk about, and we'll do a follow-up episode. It'd be fun. If we, man, it'd be cool if we get flooded with comments and uh questions. You can go on our social media stuff. You can you can ask questions in the YouTube comments, Instagram comments, where we, you know, where we post clips or whole episodes, uh, Spotify, all the all the podcast platforms. We'll answer those questions. We've got a team that we're really kind of coming up to speed where we're gonna start really looking at those, reading those, and responding to those. We haven't done a great job. We've done it at times, it's been hit and miss. You can also email us. Um all that stuff's linked in the in the podcast. So um, yeah, that's what I got for today. Go get you some Dunkin' Donuts coffee, set you a piggy bank aside, start saving your pocket change and get you a good eye of all the one one last thing, of all the premium Bibles, I've owned R. L. Allen. I have one now. I've owned uh I have a uh my big Bible that I really love is a Cambridge Topaz. That's the model name, Topaz. It's in black leather goats, uh black goat skin. Um, a full size quintale, but of all the Bibles that I I I like the Skylar Quintel Bibles the best. This is the personal size, and then they make the full size. Um that's my personal preference. It the reason I say that is it's hard to handle them because you can't handle them because you have to just order them online. There's not like a store where you can go look at them. So um I've talked about those in the past. That's not new. Um when you're at Snowbird, when you come to an event this year, holler at me or any of the guys, and we'll be glad to show you our copy of Scripture. Ask Rob Conti or Matt Jones to see theirs. They got, I forget what leather is called, camel skin, camel hide, something like that. Um anyway, it's it's a really cool brown leather. I love, I love the one that they went with. Um, yeah. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and uh, we'll see you next time.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to No Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at swoutfitters.com to see all of our programming and resources. And we'll see you next week on No Sanity Required.
