Bible Class - James

i see some faces going i don't like chatter i see some faces saying i do like chatter i want you to know one of my favorite things that's happened today are freddie and jason here um i want y'all to know i don't see freddy and jason here this morning yet and i love it because it's been replaced kind of by a row of elders and so the elders came in and ran off the the nightmare on elm street guys that that we had that was the row of freddie and jason and i just want you to know when when we were starting the this study the first day and we were kind of waiting to begin i was uh we were ahead of time and so i was kind of getting some names and when freddie and jason went side by side i went oh my goodness thank god we're teaching on james uh remember what james is james chapter one verses two through four and i want you to know this is really important for me in my life right now and i kept telling y'all and i didn't know why okay but i kept telling you hey be praying for your teachers be praying for the president of our country be praying for the leaders of this church be praying for the teachers the preachers pray for those who who choose to serve because that's who the enemy wants to go after and so it's like james is writing this book and this is what he says in james chapter one verse two i might read it every single week because it's just every week it means something my brothers and sisters consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of any kind wow wow because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete lacking in nothing so that you may be mature and complete lacking in nothing i think if you were to sum up what the christian faith is the christian journey i mean we jesus whenever he walked on this earth jesus called people to follow me that's what he said he he didn't talk about all these elaborate just monster things that we oftentimes two thousand years later try to make it so much more difficult than what jesus did jesus said follow me that's it and if we will follow man where the journey will lead it's not always going to be easy and that's what james is talking about and i'm so excited to be talking about james so last the first week we talked about james and i didn't say it quite this simply but be mature and then you start fleshing it out what does it mean to be mature and this week we're going to be talking about a lot of things one of the things we're going to talk about is our tongues one of the things we're going to talk about is what is this to be rich or poor how many how many ears do i have two how many tongues do i have i use my ears way not nearly enough let me say that way i should use my ears way more than what i do because i have two of them and i have one tongue and that's what that's in a nutshell what james says all right use your ears be slow to speak be slow to anger because our our anger our righteousness when people make out to introduce a friend of mine and here's what's fun about this guy i'll go over to my phone and i'm going to see if i can find the screenshot either the head speaker the lead speaker the lead off boom set the tone for the retreat do the first talk for the retreat and grant gets up there and i didn't know grant grant gets up there on this marriage retreat and he's like hey i just want everybody to know my mother-in-law is a professional marriage counselor and i was like ooh i would hate to be that guy doing leading it off and then he was like and she's here today right back there and i was like and when they got up in front of the group were vulnerable and yet at the same time very knowledgeable and so right at 9 30 because on facebook you can get these things i almost missed it yesterday grant my very very favorite son in love turned the big 4-0 so that means he's now in the generation of me 40 i'm 46. tonight was the official celebration caitlyn hit it out of the park for his party picks to come i didn't get to say this at his celebration for some reason they didn't this dear giant of a man is an enigma i can't quite figure him out he's tough as a marine if it's as if it's in his genes but he's the dearest gentle kindest daddy he's on the road a lot with his job traveling to hunt film produce and run a deer hunting company but his heart is always at home with his family and when he's home he's focused on family he can build a house fix what's broke on your truck bake fry grill and smoke anything from bread pudding to pork butt he coaches kids with wisdom and a fun spirit so they love him he's the renaissance man of our family and i wouldn't trade him for anything ever the most outstanding thing i can say about gt aka grant taylor is he loves jesus his wife his family and all people so well that he's called to be a leader in every arena because of his committed faith his caring devotion to his wife and kids and how far he'll go for his friends happy birthday to you grant david taylor she used the middle name happy birthday to you grant david taylor i'm thankful to god that you are ours so that's what his mother-in-law thinks about him who's a professional marriage counselor wow fair wow so having said that grant and look i've been holding off to let you all know come on up here while i'm saying this i know some things because we've been talking about this class and so i know some things that grant's been wanting to share and that's why one of the reasons we've been staying in chapter one as long as we have it's a seven week class and like this is our third week in chapter one it's because we've been waiting on this cat to get back last week he got hung up and so without further ado my friend appreciate it love you man i love you brother i need to hire joe neal as my ghost writer i think i like myself more after reading that it is a pleasure to get to be here leading this class um to do that with clay i mean i don't know who set this up but feels like a cruel joke somebody setting up clay mcconnell and i together to teach a class in a confined 45 minute block because if you've been around either of us for a few minutes you know there's not a lot of dead air between the two of us because we like to soak it up with words um i'd like to say good morning to the online community sorry that uh i've been absent but i think that when you study a book like james as clay mentioned if you look in the early part of the chapter in the verses trials of many kinds and all kinds in fact there has been times when i've had an argument with people about what actually constitutes a trial what is a trial in your life you know is it is it something minor is it a flat tire if you got up this morning and went out to your car and you had a flat and you had to now figure out is that a trial is that even does that even register on the scale of hey man this is a trial that i have to deal with there are literal trials in court where you have to go sit before a group a panel or a judge and plead your case there are trials and difficulties in life when maybe you experience a death in the family or some catastrophic loss there's a there's a trial like a lot of people down in south louisiana are dealing with with the storm that's a trial but i think a lot about this book and i think about the trials in my life and a lot of people would listen to my testimony maybe even listen to my marriage testimony and say man you really you really haven't been through a lot of trials and and maybe that's true to some people i also think about what clay said about why we're here and and when you agree to teach this class and the things that will then happen to you and and the things that um will play out you know i was planning to be gone for the first week but was planning to be gone last week but we had a hunting trip out in utah and it actually turned into more of just a hiking trip just hiking around and you know going into that i was thinking you know this is probably going to be a hiking trip like this is probably not going to yield the kind of results that you know i would hope it would yield and so i go in there going you know but this would be a great opportunity to for me to work on the things that i need to work on personally right some personal development and growth so that prevented me from being here last week but what i do think is it presented me with a little trial to where i could work on myself where i could be complete not lacking in anything what i also think is that it allowed this sunday for one of the main reasons that i love this book to be present you know when i was growing up i really didn't have a lot of struggles you know one of the things i battled and struggled with was was i going to be able to get the pair of nike shoes that i wanted you know and invariably whichever pair i wanted they were too expensive for my dad he was like can't have those how much do they call i was like how much they cost nope can't help categorically no because we want to go to what's the middle range knock it down a couple notches and get those because that just seems like what we should do so i didn't have a whole lot of trials and then i started getting my upper teens and an early adult to it and i started getting to that phase of life where i was to uh make decisions for myself right you know like oh grant you're making some life choices where you want to go to college what kind of job do you want to have all those life choices and and so many times i can remember being in the passenger seat of my dad's truck coming back from a hunting trip or whatever and just kind of laying it out there like dude hey man come on let me know what you got help me find some answers here and i remember he said to me he said grant i want you to know that sometimes when you struggle it's because that i prayed that you would struggle and it's my fault all right dude what the heck kind of dad is that you're supposed to be giving me some answers like you're supposed to be pouring porn into me and i i literally was indignant i became indignant and i'm almost like pull over let me get out like let me find a different ride what are you doing like i'm coming to you for the answer right like i i i'm coming to you for you to tell me what to do and you're over here talking about how it's your fault because you've been praying that i'd struggle like how do i reconcile that he said look you need to go to the book of james chapter one and you start there and i started reading in that book and you know it clay and i have clay has gone over it i will go over it we'll continue to go over it because it will be a theme that prevails throughout this book consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance man i didn't have a lot of perseverance back back then because i hadn't faced a lot of trials i didn't even know that i needed to persevere and now caitlyn gets frustrated at me because i want to go dump our kids in the nursery down there on that hallway well she says well they're crying they don't want to go and i'm like hey let them kids face some adversity if they can't overcome 45 minutes of veggie tales and animal crackers they're going to struggle let's start that now let's let them develop that perseverance i love this book because it's it's very straightforward it um it is not given to a lot of hyperbole you can read this book of james it is directly applicable to your life on a daily basis it really is like it's like right here like it's it's it's the one it's the dad that's helping you have answers about what you need to do it's the one where you can read and go yep direct translation earlier this week i was sitting down with the two older boys of mine at home we're reading matthew started in matthew and we're just reading through the book and we're in we're in chapter five you guys know we're familiar with that so we're sitting down one night and we're reading through matthew chapter five we get to verse 29 if your right eye causes you to sin tear it out and throw it away for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell okay you can see a eight and a seven year old going and if your right hand caused you to sin cut it off and throw it away for is better that you lose one of your members and that's your whole body going to hell okay there's some explanation that has to go on there right with a with a eight and a seven-year-old like hey man because they're over there like you know yeah what next dad like they're all looking down and tucking their hand in their pocket you know right you all know that's hyperbole you all know that that's not actually literally what he meant right because i see a bunch of people holding onto their right hands in here and looking at me with both eyes so you're either a liar or you understand that is not exactly what he meant but if you read on in the book of james it's very straightforward very plain and simple so as much as i could belabor chapter 1 verse 2 through 4 and i love that i want to pick up in chapter 19. not chapter 19 verse 19. thank you clay that's why there's two of us it's going to feel like chapters by the time we get through parsing through all this listening and doing my dear brothers take note of this everyone should be quick to listen slow to speak and slow to become angry for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that god desires therefore get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you what's not plain about that what is not straightforward my dear brothers take note of this everyone should be quick to listen clay made this point and we'll reiterate it two ears one mouth you've probably heard that your whole life why is that why is that because we need to listen at least twice as much as you talk and if you're married you really don't even need your mouth just listen just listen right when have you ever gone like man i said the perfect thing and now now everything's better no should be quick to listen slow to speak and slow to become angry now i think it's important that we dive in just a little bit right here because there's two words relative to our ears one of them is here the definition of the word here is to perceive with the ear the sound made by someone or something right everyone anyone ever been talking to you and me like telling you something like i hear you i hear you i hear you right that usually means there's an audible tone but i don't want to acknowledge whatever those words are right like yes there is noise coming into here i am not processing that in my unit here the word listen i want you to pay attention if you walk out of here today and you go man whatever he was i don't know i want to really kind of like zero in and listen is to give one's attention to a sound give one's attention to a sound now how many of you guys in here are turkey hunters anybody turkey hunters gary glenn do you ever go out to see if you could hear a turkey do you just hear them or what do you do if you've ever watched a turkey hunter they'll drive out to this piece of property and what do they do they stop they get out and they start walking and they kind of get to a high point or an area and they listen i hear guys all the time well i got to go out and listen for turkeys very seldom do i hear them say i gotta go see if i can hear a turkey no because they listen do you know why because they are intent they are intent listening for a sound right and when you go out if you get out in the still in the quiet and you hear a gobbler gobble from three hollers over they're like whoop i got it right do you know why because they are listening with intent you know i hear a lot of things i hear i hear my kids crying i hear lots of ambient noise in fact we hear so many things like in my house and i didn't grow up this way but on my house it sounds like we're having a crawfish boy year round because there's so many ambient noise makers like if you walk in my house after 9 00 pm i was like you know what i'm saying like any all the same way and i'm like you know 10 years ago like what the heck is all this white noise i can't handle it now i try to go to sleep in a quiet room maybe when i'm not home it's all quiet and i'm like i can't sleep it's maddening i need to hear something and it doesn't have to be anything you know good it just needs to be noise i need to have some ambient white noise pouring into my ears so that i can be at ease and i can sleep that's why i like boiled crawfish puts me at peace i could almost take a nap but listening what is the challenge with listening why is it such a challenge to listen is it because sometimes the things that we need to listen to are things that we don't want to be told is it because sometimes and i'll just say this about this class with me and clay the good news for you even folks online is that you're going to learn new things in here like clay and i are going to teach you things that that you may not have already known okay and one of those things is that when you are listening particularly in a marriage relationship or any kind of relationship where you're closely involved you know i think a lot of especially especially guys we're under this misconception that we need to hear all the information so that we can generate and formulate a response right you don't have to do that that's not what they want they don't want you to respond necessarily that's a joke they don't come on clay but you know what so many times we're hearing what you're saying and while we're we're hearing what are we doing formulating the plan right we're putting out like i need all the parameters here i got a little i got a little formula i got a little spreadsheet you know and like and as soon as you finish giving me information i go coaching solution you know will it work we're not sure hopefully it's absolutely the best thing we could come up with right now in that moment given the parameters that we have that's what we do justin for real i'm creeping all up on your street aren't i y'all ever talk yeah yeah you do that you do that we do that same with me because i'm not listening because if you were allowed to respond you wouldn't be thinking about your response rather than listening to the person right they can't hear you so you have to repeat what she said okay what tara said is at crs when you're listening to a group you can't even talk like the the the permission to talk has been removed because of the very fact that when you're listening to people so often you're thinking about generating a response that you're actually not listening to the sound with intent how many times have we had the opportunity to have someone actually listen to us when you can just talk it out and like man i don't even need i just needed to talk it out like part of the process of talking it out is me just working through my own feelings a lot of times it's not because i want to generate a response or because you know i'm inferior you're an expert you know and and i i need your opinion no i just want i just want to work through it listening with intent you know i often think that when we teach classes like this probably clay and i will be the greatest beneficiaries of talking or teaching just because of the real life application in our own life and the way we're thinking about this daily then as events happen we go man how does this gosh how does this play in and i know prayerful for clay and his family for sure and we know that's not going to end with this week and the events of of the week i know i'm going to yes sir i have to be prepared when i have a response you know because once i've analyzed it and everything and i speak [Music] well what catfish is saying here is he often says some unruly things which tells me which tells me two things one he's not being very quick to listen and oh also right here catfish heads up slow to speak catfish we're moving on i appreciate the segway from my friend from my friend keith catfish pal slow to speak slow to speak and slow to become angry i'm gonna be honest with you got a handful of family you know what i got my middle brother over here he can tell you my wife my mom my dad man they can all tell you about grant's struggle so for whatever paragraph or whatever that was a joe neal wrote whatever you want to classify that is they could probably write another like counter like yeah well watch this you know they could write all that for you one of those would be slow to speak and you know what's kind of sad for me is that i have in my life become so bad at being slow to speak sometimes when i leave the air in the room without words people will come up to me and go dude what why why what is wrong with you like why are you why are you having such a bad attitude like well i don't have a bad attitude i'm really honestly truthfully just trying to be slow to speak you know and people around are like well that's weird so even when we don't like what you say at least you know where we have come to expect that slow to speak slow to become angry sometimes the more i speak the more angry i become you ever notice that you talk yourself into a frenzy you're speaking and you man maybe you start feeling like justified in your anger and so it grows and sometimes when you don't speak you become less angry you gain some perspective i need to do a better job of that with my kids you know i think kids are just a lifelong experiment you know it's like trying to bake a cake with different ingredients every day the other night i was frustrated with judson my oldest about something and you know i i just told him i said get in the truck of course you know he in my tone he detected some less than stellar uh feelings and i know he's sitting over there just hunkered up just waiting for dad just the barrage from dad and it was before wednesday night church when we rode to church and you know what i thought you know i'm gonna really freak him out not gonna say a word and he did not know how to handle that because his dad is not often slow to speak for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that god desires therefore get rid of all moral filth and evil that it is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you you know i used to think that there was a time in my life where i thought you know well if i just speak my mind at least everyone will know where i stand and they'll know where they stand with me there will never be any question you know hey if i'm just tell you what i think here's how i feel about it you know there's no there is no doubt like whether you like it or not whether you're with me or against me at least you know slow to speak gramp slow to speak for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that god desires therefore get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly ain't nothing in here about gouging your eyes out right cutting your hand off that's pretty plain and simple so look if we just stopped right here and said hey this week understand what the difference between hearing and listening is hey this week be slow to speak in fact do kind of what tara said maybe remove the opportunity to speak don't speak gosh there's so many different ways i could go here maybe in your marriage caleb may we'll try this this week well let's try 20 minutes where you just talk and i won't say a word then we'll get up and go do so that probably may not work i don't know we'll see man that's powerful to me because that is words that are right here in front of my face that are hard to argue and hard to die i mean i can put that in practice today today i can read this to a seven or eight year old and they can understand that they can get that not chapter 22 but verse 22 do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves do what it says anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like i know for me and probably some of us we wish we could forget what we look like a lot of days i look rough but the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this not forgetting what he has heard but doing it he will be blessed in what he does hmm so we can read this scripture this morning we can understand it we can understand okay grant yeah i hear you i do well okay i understand we're all gonna be thinking about turkey hunters this afternoon and be like listening don't merely listen to the word do what it says do what it says do what i say you ever tell your kids that you ever remember being told that as a kid just do what i say right parenting would be easy if kids just do what you say hey brush teeth cool man got it i'll put your clothes on yes sir yep i'm on it don't hit your brother never again sorry i won't ever do that again be nice you know i'm saying like do what i say we are we struggle with that as humans which is why we have to continue to come back to this you know it's not like i read the book of james as a 19 20 year old because my dad said like cool great information ingest and now forevermore right no i continue to battle these things what's even more unsettling is that as much as i respect keith powell he still struggles with those things come on keith i was hoping when i get to your age i know we're getting closer because i'm getting older and you just look the same i get to be more like you and life would be just a lot easier but we battle with that do what he says can you imagine forgetting what you look like if anyone considers himself religious and does not keep a tight ring on his tongue he deceives himself and his religion is worthless religion that god our father accepts as pure and faultless is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world i'm going to say this and i want to turn this back over to clay in just a minute but i'm glad my dad's here that i don't even know if i've ever ever ever i've told this story but i don't know if i've ever told you this maybe i have but i don't think so when i was in high school i played football and played on the offensive line okay nobody cares about what the offensive line is doing right they just don't like if you're doing good nobody cares they only care when you don't do good right it's like oh you guys are terrible they're terrible well mike you know you're one of the rare played offensive line you know and so my dad was the guy that would and i love this about him would take the radio the headphones and so he was listening to the radio broadcast and tuning out all the other stuff and and hearing what they say and binoculars you know i had the binoculars and i i remember after a game of course i'm down there in the trenches right and you know if you've ever you ever heard like the hot mic on the nfl when they catch the on-field noise you're like oh you know you got covered in kids ears and everything because things said down there unruly well i remember after a game one time my dad said man he said i i just love watching the game with my headphones with their and my binoculars i said really okay he said yeah i'm be honest with you when i'm watching with a binoculars he goes i feel like i'm sitting right on your shoulder the whole game and i thought oh no because i've said and do things down there i don't really realize that you can comprehend and i don't want you to so i'm like mental note when you say some of those things make sure you have your back to the home stand so like i put my back like okay you know i'm like you you know so that my dad couldn't see that ain't it that ain't it he said if you consider your dad diver tell you that did you know that so if you ever notice me with my back to you all i'm like why is he keep putting his back and he's like because i don't want you to know what i'm saying absolutely had that thought good thing i'm over all that and that never happens anymore i don't consider himself religious and does not keep a tight ring on his tongue he deceives himself and his religion is worthless you see because at that time my religion was more about what i felt like others perceived in me it was very juvenile it was very rules-based it was very just you know don't say bad words because somebody told me i shouldn't say bad words and see now i realize because of my faith in jesus because jesus hey i need to share and share the light that he shines on me not turn my back so that you can't see me and then do whatever i think i want to do let my anger overcome me let my tongue just lash out keep a tight rein on your tongue let him have the binoculars on you and face the home crowd and see and understand every single thing that you say religion that god our father accepts as pure and faultless as this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world there's a lot right there i'll turn that back over to clay go ahead clay y'all see why his mama says or his mother-in-law says those things about him ah unbelievable and i had no idea your dad was here is that oh my goodness could you imagine being the dad of that man right now uh and realizing that he was turning away from me during some of those things and saying those things i um you know what's true about that and what makes it so true when we hear it we know we've all done that it wasn't just grant on a football field turning his back and saying oh they can't hear because they can't read my mouth we've all turned our back we've all done that and the struggle is for us not to continue to do that right and so i um i just and love how you shared those things that are that are so plain and simple and so the way grant was saying it is hey these are plain and simple things there's not a lot of hyperbole that's like the book of proverbs the kind of the wisdom literature in the old testament so james would have been steeped in the wisdom literature in the old testament he probably would have memorized a ton of it and so one of the things he said and grant was closing and he said it this way he said in it's the last verse in the chapter he said religion that is pure and undefiled before god the father is this to care for the orphans and the widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world so why do you need to care for the orphans and widows so in our world and age especially here in the united states i know we have online viewers from all over the world but in the united states ironically women can own property women aren't considered property i want you to hear that women can own property they're not considered property in the day of jesus women were very much considered property of the men women ironically were not allowed to own property and so if a woman is widowed if she's married and then she's widowed whether through divorce or through death then her son gets the inheritance her son then gets the money and maybe she didn't have a son if she doesn't have a son you have to go through this process and so if you're widowed you're not supposed to own money you're not supposed to have property and so you need to know that the church if the church is really being the church in the day of jesus if people are really being people of god then they're taking care of widows because you would have no needy among you and so orphans now if we have orphanages and i know there's a ton of people in this church there's a ton of people in this room who have adopted children and they do it because they read things like this and they're thinking take care of the orphans i was i was on an adventure yesterday i'll tell you um about two little adventures um i'm going to tell you the bad one first just so i can kind of have a moment of confession and then i'll tell you the great one from yesterday so i yes grant to answer your question i have been turkey hunting i've killed this many turkeys and after i killed that one turkey i vowed i would never turkey hunt again and the reason i killed this many turkeys is i too have a younger brother and my younger brother is a sportsman he's a sportsman's of sportsman he's like you know how grant was described as a renaissance man my younger brother he he is a deer hunter he's a duck hunter he's a turkey hunter he's a hog hunter keep naming something he killed an alligator yesterday he's an alligator hunter legally by the way um keep naming other things i mean dove my younger brother is an all-around sportsman and he's great at everything he does and so he was like let's go turkey hunting and so finally i go turkey hunting out in texas and i do not listen like you were talking about listening he was saying hey the difference between hearing and listening and he told me he was going to share this ahead of time he was like look let me tell you what turkey hunters do and i was like well he doesn't know me as a turkey hunter he was like turkey hunters go out and they listen and i have been on turkey hunts with these people like i have actually a long time ago in another life i produced this this video called turkey psychology for the hadels which is a a professional game call and so i've watched turkey videos i've produced turkey videos all right and i'm like these guys are all crazy in how they listen they like i hear the wind and they're like there's a gobbler it just gobbled four hills over and if we go this way but we can't cross the water this way i mean they are crazy and so i'm in texas with this crazy person on a turkey hunt and y'all we have struggled we have been the wind's been howling and apparently if it's windy it's hard to hear the turkeys and this and that because you can only hear them if you're down upwind i mean there's just all this stuff and so finally man after two or three days of struggling and let me tell you what i mean by struggle sitting on a tree and having like some little ant or something bites you on the back of the neck and so you're like i'm never going to lean against a tree again you know and rattlesnakes everywhere or because it's in the spring so there's there's snakes turkey hunting it's not what i call fun lots of people love it and then i learned the simple thing you can do in texas and y'all this was years ago so i hope that the statues of limitations if it is not legal has run out but in texas you can walk over to the deer feeder you can punch a button and then turkeys come running so i've killed one turkey and i'll just leave it at that so there is a difference between listening and hearing be the right doer right be the right doer yesterday i was on an alligator adventure and i was on an alligator adventure and it was with um it was with a family from this church and this man that i was with he had two of his sons with him and i know the story of his sons because i remember hearing about their um they had an opportunity to adopt one of their children and they had already had one of the siblings of the person who was pregnant and so the agency comes and says hey is there any way you would be willing to take another child into your family but regardless even if you want that to happen it cost a lot of money this adoption process and so i remember this church rallying around this family and helping raise money to adopt this child okay that's you want to know what this is don't just be merely hearers be doers i remember this and yesterday i'm in a boat and i'm in a boat on an alligator adventure and god's it was unbelievable god provided alligator after alligator we were able to harvest four alligators yesterday and we sent two of these alligators home with this family and i know this because he he texted me last night pictures of fried alligator meat you know hear that noise he's texting me pictures of fried alligator meat and he's just so grateful he's like thanks for taking me on this adventure so on and so forth but while we were in the boat um y'all this guy's he's he's a giant of a man and so you know we had two boats out there and we had a lot of kids because you know it's what we do we're trying to get kids to love the outdoors and so you have one gun lots of kids you have to be really careful because an alligator when it's so careful and the other thing is you don't even know if there's an alligator on the line because sometimes you come up to a line and the hook's already gone in the water and you don't know if something like a came the night before and knocked the line over to eat the little chicken off of it so it's the very last line we've already caught four alligators and we're going to check the last line and so we've already been through lots of dangerous experiences lots of dangerous experiences and we're going to check this final line and um dad goes to grab the line and when he does y'all he's he's huge he's holding all these branches and he goes to grab the line and he doesn't know if there's an alligator on it or not and this branch you know kind of releases and hits this kid in the eye and he goes and he immediately drops the hook and he's like son come here daddy oh and i'm going to get emotional daddy loves you let daddy look at it and this kid's got his head down he doesn't want to look up because he's hurting and this branch just hit him and he's scared that this branch hit him in the eye because man and i heard him say daddy loves you dad loves you let me look it didn't hit you now it hit you right below the eye you're gonna be fine you're gonna be fine and it was incredible it was very emotional for me because i know the back story of these children in this boat i know the biblical names that they name their children and what those names mean y'all that's what we are in this church that's what we are called to be we are called to take care of the orphans and the widows and we're called not to show favoritism guess what chapter 2 is about showing favoritism guess what we're going to talk about next week how to be a church that treats everybody equal and so if y'all would let's close in prayer today god thank you for this moment thank you that we are called to be doers of your word not just hearers of the word thank you that that this church god from what i've been able to see is surrounded by doers open our ears lord so that we can hear them let us be slow to speak so that when we hear them we can digest what they are teaching us through these words of yours and through the actions of their lives thank you thank you thank you for today because i got to sit and listen to grant teach and speak to me god continue to speak your words of wisdom we pray all this in christ's name amen if you're online and you've been waiting for some mugs we just brought the rest of the mugs and so they should be shipping out this week talk to y'all later

Channel: Whites Ferry Road Church

Views: 715

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: AspvikgCZdM

Length: 45min 26sec (2726 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021