[0:00] So this morning, let me jump right into what I want to share with you guys just in the way of encouraging. Now, you know that when we come together in our men's ministry, there are all kinds of things that we can do together.
[0:16] And sometimes we'll organize around a project that maybe a handful of us or even all of us will get together and go off and do that. That's all fine and great. That's all part of, I think, how we grow as a men's ministry, as we focus the efforts of our men on being churchmen.
[0:35] Now, that's what we've been talking about over the last probably few months or so. What does it mean to be a churchman? That expression may not be, that term may not be familiar to you.
[0:46] You may not have heard that used in other churches you've been in or context. But we're churchmen. We're Jesus men. And the thing that we need to be about the most is serving his people.
[0:59] That's what we're still here alive and breathing is to become more like Jesus as we serve his people. That would include your family, your immediate family, as you provide for your wife and your kids.
[1:11] But when we come together in context like this, this is about us talking through and learning and encouraging each other in serving the local church.
[1:23] Serving as people who will safeguard the truth and honor that truth together. But most of all, hear this, guys. Let that truth change us. Let God's truth change us.
[1:36] Into more and more of men who love the Lord Jesus and walk with him. And so one of the baselines that we've used to talk about this over the last few months comes from Matthew.
[1:49] And it's what we call the Great Commission. And the Great Commission tells us to go out into the world and make disciples. And so we have to win them to the Lord. So we want to talk about how we can be evangelistic.
[2:03] How we can share our faith and our sphere of influence. Because Andy, you've got to have guys in your life I'll probably never meet. Other people. So you need to witness to those people.
[2:14] Etc. Each one of us have that in our lives. And then we need to, as we see them one to Christ, as Solomon has just come to the Lord. Then we want to see them grow up into Christ-likeness.
[2:26] How do we help this brother become more and more like Jesus as we put our arms around him, befriend him, and welcome him into who we are and what we're doing? You could do this at other churches in town, if other churches are putting that emphasis.
[2:41] But God's brought you here. So we want to be good stewards of you being here. And work through your life, your gifts. Now, in light of all of that, one of the things that I want to start off sharing with you, might sound a little bit weird, but nevertheless, I want to say to you, there will always be voices.
[3:03] And you don't have to be psychotic to hear voices. You're hearing voices all day, every day. And you're not necessarily crazy.
[3:14] Right? Is that right? Well, depends. Not necessarily. No, I'm talking about all the ways the world tries to speak into our lives, to influence into its ways of thinking and living.
[3:34] So you with me on that? It comes through television. It comes through music. It comes through the people at your job. The people that you're in contact with on a daily basis.
[3:49] It comes through what you read. It comes through something that you might not think of. And that's the lack of. The lack of.
[4:00] The void. And what I mean is, if there's a void in your life where you're feeding your soul on the truth, I promise you that there will be all kinds of ways that there will be other things to fill that void.
[4:14] Amen? So that lack in our lives, that lack of godly discipline around the things, particularly God's truth, that will feed our souls and inform our souls and guide our souls and keep us out of the ditches of self and worldliness, we need to be about disciplining ourselves for that.
[4:37] If we lack that, there's not going to be any shortage of stuff that's going to fill the void, right? That's the issue. So when I talk about these voices, I'm talking about the way that the world tries to influence us into its way of thinking, prioritizing, and living.
[4:56] Now, I want to know, are you tracking with me on what I'm saying here? We can all relate to this at some level or another. Alright, do you have this at your job?
[5:11] Influences that you have to be guarded about? Alright, you might have this in other areas of your life as well. I know I do as well.
[5:23] Worldly wisdom is a dangerous reality. We can't stick our head in the sand about it. We can't allow ourselves to be apathetic about it.
[5:33] Worldly wisdom is a dangerous reality. Now, we've mentioned many times about the deceitful ways that this deceitful wisdom camouflages itself.
[5:46] How it imitates legitimate truth and wisdom. And so, there's a need for vigilance, spiritual vigilance.
[5:56] There's a need for us to do what Proverbs 4.23 says, to guard our hearts. That's our responsibility. We need to guard our hearts against these influences that want to subtly speak into our lives to distract us, to deceive us, to discourage us.
[6:19] This is very real. It's with us every single day. It's unrelenting. It never sleeps. Anywhere you go in your life, you're going to face these kind of challenges.
[6:32] It's very real. But I want to suggest to you, maybe even propose to you, see what you think about this, that there's one voice that we listen to most.
[6:43] There's one voice which is more seductive, more entrancing, more captivating than all of the rest of the voices combined.
[6:54] And because of that, one fact, it makes it the most dangerous voice threatening your spiritual growth and your personal purity.
[7:05] Anybody want to hazard a guess about what that voice is? The spouse? He said it. He went right to it.
[7:16] I didn't say it. Alright, what's another one? Mine. Your own. You got it. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. It's your own voice, yourself.
[7:29] The way the Bible speaks about this, it's your own heart voicing its desires, influencing you to follow the God of me. Me.
[7:39] And so, I told you I would do this and I want to offer you a tragic and very fresh illustration of what I'm talking about.
[7:51] I promised you that I'd talk to you a bit about the situation with the G3 conference and its principal founder, Josh Bice.
[8:03] Pastor Josh Bice. Now, look, guys, I don't want to camp out on this because this isn't the main thing I want to talk to you about today. I want to get into the Scripture in a moment. But I think this is a timely illustration of what can happen when you listen too much and too long to yourself.
[8:23] That is exactly what I think has happened in this. Now, I recognize that not every single person in here might be familiar with the G3 thing at the same level.
[8:34] How many of you know what G3 is? Kevin, no? Heard a little bit. So, it happens down in Atlanta, Georgia. That's where it kicked off. That's where Josh Bice, this pastor, is.
[8:47] So, the G3 conference, we have, how many of you guys have been? Jeff and Clyde have been. Did y'all go last time? Two years? Two years ago?
[8:58] Because I think it's every other year that they do it. All right? So, the G3 conference began in 2013. I was actually at the inaugural conference.
[9:10] You know, I had no idea it would kick off and become what it was, but I lived in Georgia at the time. I was in between ministries, and I had a pastor friend who invited me to come with him.
[9:21] We shared a hotel room together and went to the G3 conference. And it was just getting off the ground as the first one. I think there were probably, there were hundreds of guys there for this first one.
[9:32] It may have been as many as 700, but at least a few hundred. It's grown to over 6,500 men every year, every other year that they have it.
[9:43] And G3's become more than just a conference ministry. They have all kinds of helps and encouragements and materials through their ministry that they use to support the local church.
[9:57] I think it's mainly, is it mainly a Baptist thing? Because Josh is Baptist. That's true.
[10:07] That's true. And then they had MacArthur. Okay, yeah. So they've done a pretty good job. They would have guys at the conference that we would, we would say, oh yeah, absolutely, I'll go to that.
[10:19] And Greg and I had entertained thoughts about trying to get us, as many of us as possible to go to G3 in the near future. And that might still happen if it survives all of this.
[10:32] We'll see. Well, here's the deal. Recently, the issue with its founder, Pastor Josh Bice, this became a really, really serious problem that just came to light centered around Josh.
[10:50] Josh. And what I want to do is I want to read from an official statement put out by G3 and Praise Mill, P-R-A-Y-S, Pray, Praise Mill Baptist Church where Josh was senior pastor.
[11:05] Josh was pastoring at Praise Mill when he got the idea to do this G3 conference and it took off from there. So they've put out a statement and I want to share that with you as, again, a way of offering you an illustration of what happens when we get out of our lane, as it were, and listen too much and too long to ourselves.
[11:32] The statement begins, the Lord calls his church to walk in the light, to speak the truth in love and to uphold integrity, especially among those entrusted with leadership.
[11:47] It is in that spirit of sober transparency. I want to hold on to that. Sober transparency and humble accountability that we, the elders of Praise Mill Baptist Church, PMBC, share the following statement regarding Dr. Josh Bice, president of G3 and elder at Praise Mill Baptist Church.
[12:12] In recent weeks, the elders of PMBC uncovered irrefutable evidence that Dr. Bice has for the past three years operated at least four anonymous social media accounts, two anonymous email addresses, and two Substack platforms.
[12:32] I don't know what that is. Some of you guys might know. The point is, he's had all of these media platforms that he's been using. And he's been doing it in an anonymous way. These accounts were used to publicly and anonymously slander numerous Christian leaders, including faithful pastors, some of whom have spoken at G3 conferences, several PMBC elders, and others.
[12:59] These actions were not only sinful in nature, but deeply divisive, causing unnecessary suspicion and strife within the body of Christ, and particularly within the eldership of Praise Mill Baptist Church.
[13:15] He's senior pastor at the church, and he's doing this and undermining his own men, his own leadership. He's doing this with guys that he's invited to come to his conference and be speakers, and he's doing it anonymously.
[13:32] Dr. Bice had been asked on multiple, now here's the rub, Dr. Bice had been asked on multiple occasions over the past two years whether he had any connection to these anonymous accounts.
[13:47] In each case of confrontation, he denied any knowledge of them. On Sunday evening, May 4, 2025, after clear and comprehensive evidence emerged linking the accounts directly to him, the elders of PMBC confronted Josh.
[14:07] for two hours, he continued to deny his involvement. Now, are you hearing this? This is senior pastor of a huge church overseas, a conference with thousands and thousands of church leaders and pastors and others who've come.
[14:29] For two hours, he continued to deny his involvement. only after further evidence was presented and much pleading with him to walk in the light did Josh finally confess to his actions.
[14:44] Since then, Josh has acknowledged his sin, he has expressed sorrow, he's asked for forgiveness. His desire is to personally ask forgiveness of every person he's slandered or lied to.
[14:57] On May 8, after some members of the board encouraged Josh to resign, the board received and unanimously accepted Josh Bice's resignation as president of G3.
[15:11] And on Friday, May 16, Josh submitted his resignation as pastor of PMBC to the elders. The elders are committed to walking alongside Josh in this very long process of biblical counseling and discipline seeking genuine fruit in keeping with repentance.
[15:30] We ask the church to join us in praying for Josh and his family. Can you imagine how his wife feels? This man's lost his livelihood overnight. Pray that Josh's sorrow would continue to lead to full and lasting repentance and that he would walk humbly before the Lord.
[15:49] We grieve for the harm. I could just weep. We grieve for the harm caused to the body of Christ and to those faithful ministers who were targeted.
[16:02] We likewise reaffirm our commitment to walk in the light, to speak the truth in love, and to labor together for the building up of Christ's church in holiness and unity. Sincerely, the elders of Praise Mill Baptist Church.
[16:15] church. Now, one of the tragic aspects of what I just shared with you was here we have a man who's devoted his entire life to serving, to undergirding, and to building up the church of the Lord Jesus Christ while at the same time, secretly, and in a cowardly manner, doing everything he can to undermine that church, including his own.
[16:39] slandering his own elders, and then getting in the pulpit every single Sunday for three years.
[16:51] And then when he was confronted, it took these men, like Greg Garrison, my best friend, in his face for over two hours to get him to even break down and admit it.
[17:02] Now, you struggle with sin. I struggle with sin. Now, you tell me, how do you do that for three years and hide it, and there not be other things in your life that you're hiding as well?
[17:15] You know it as well as I do, and I'm not going to be shocked when it comes out. Not if, when. If he is truly repentant, there will be more that will come out. I'm not going to try to suspicion the man and say what it might be.
[17:30] I have my own thoughts about that, because this is not my first rodeo with this. And I think it's important for us to soberly assess the reality of this right on the heels of the Steve Lawson failure as well.
[17:46] And you have every reason to have a godly and brotherly concern for your pastors. One of the nightmares that I have is that I would have to look at that man in the face back there and face down some sin in my life that has been exposed, not because I was loving enough in the Lord to come and deal with it like I have with him, but I got caught.
[18:21] I got caught. And now I've got to face him first and the disappointment that I would see in his eyes. I have nightmares about that.
[18:33] It helps keep me sober. And then I think about you and what it would do to you and your wives and your kids. What it would do to our church family. Don't you think I should feel that?
[18:48] I do too. And then, you know, I can't even talk about it without emotion, what it would do to my wife. Because she knows me better than anybody.
[19:00] What it would do to her to crush her heart to know that I'd been secretly sneaking around doing something that would disqualify me from ministry. Suzanne knows my weaknesses.
[19:12] Greg and I have taken Herculean efforts to be accountable in our personal lives, to be open in the way that we serve and pastor. Because we don't have other elders right now, we're working on that.
[19:27] We're seeing God work on that. We have four deacons that are our friends, and we involve those men in our lives. And we lean on those men because we don't have other elders right now that will share the way to this.
[19:43] And so we're accountable to these men. We're accountable to them in our financial life, with our church finances. We're accountable to them in other areas of our lives, and we live before them.
[19:56] And so there's a part of this that I want to share with you this morning that speaks to the reality of how Greg and I stay in our lane. And we don't give that to you because we think that you're suspicious or anybody's confronted us or anything like that.
[20:13] We do it to encourage you as our brothers. We do it to ask you to pray for us, to walk with us, to be our friends. Because that's going to make the difference here at this church.
[20:26] This group of men being friends in Christ Jesus, and from the, if you want to say the top down, although Greg and I don't, we don't try to live like that, but from the leadership down, we're trying to live accountable, we're trying to walk the walk, we're not embarrassed about having to admit to you that we struggle with sin, and we're not trying to present ourselves as plastic pastors, like we're above it all.
[20:55] We're not. We're just like you. A beautiful, curvy woman walks across the parking lot, you know, we've got to check our heart right away, or that thing's going to run off on us.
[21:09] And like you, we don't want that. And there are other ways that we need to hold each other accountable. Most of it just has to do with, are we being faithful? No, not as there grievous secret sin in your life, but are you being faithful?
[21:24] Are you being a man? Are you toughing it out in the Lord? Doing what you need to do to stand faithfully with Him. When we think about Josh Bice, I have a friend who's a friend of Josh Bice, and I just talked to him last week, checking up with him, Nathan.
[21:45] Greg knows him. And Nathan has been mightily used to God in my life. Well, Nathan knows Josh. They're friends. Josh would come out to Nathan's farm, and they'd fish and do all kinds of stuff together.
[21:59] And I said, brother, what is going on? And it was just crushing to him for all this. And he told me some things that I can't share with you because he asked me not to repeat it.
[22:09] Folks, this is what happens when we try to, hear me carefully, this is what happens when we try to make ourselves necessary.
[22:22] And I want to explain that to you. This is what happens when we come to believe in our own value and merits divorced from the truth that all our merits are in Jesus Christ.
[22:37] This is what we get. Let me see. I don't know if Suzanne... No. So, let me take you there.
[22:49] I had some scripture here. We didn't get a slide made of this. It's just a miscommunication. But let me take you to 1 Corinthians. And just in light of this, let me share some truth with you about this.
[23:05] Because I don't want this to be a downer for you, but I don't mind if it's so sober us. It should sober us. You know, you should be thinking right now, God forbid our pastors go that way. Right?
[23:17] Pray for us. Pray for Greg and Jeff. 1 Corinthians 1. Now again, I'm speaking about this idea of how we can pridefully come to the place where we try to make ourselves necessary.
[23:32] We elevate ourselves in the way of our own value, divorced from the value that we have in Jesus. We're not thinking as much of that as we are ourselves.
[23:43] And in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, beginning in verse 30, but by God's doing, you are in Christ Jesus. See? We can't even boast about our salvation, can we?
[23:58] By God's doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us what? Where do we get our wisdom? From God. Where do we get our righteousness?
[24:08] From God. Where do we get our sanctification, our redemption? So that, just as it's written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. So we don't need to be boasting in ourselves, we need to be boasting in Jesus.
[24:21] As Greg and I shepherd at this church, we need to be boasting in Jesus about being shepherds here. Let me give you another one. It's in 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter 4.
[24:37] And it's just, it's just a jump out verse in the passage, verse 7. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.
[24:54] So what is he talking about in the way of the treasure? Verse 6. For God, who said, light shall shine out of darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
[25:11] It is God who has given you the knowledge that you needed to embrace Jesus in faith. And so he says, we have this treasure of Jesus and the knowledge of him.
[25:25] This relationship with Christ in what? Clay pots. Earthen vessels. That'd be us. Why? Why would God put a treasure like that in a clay pot?
[25:38] Well, what does he say? So that the power will be of God and not from ourselves. So that God will get the glory. Each one of us would stand in front of the mirror and look and say, God, I don't deserve this salvation.
[25:51] One other one I want to share with you or one or two. Proverbs 25, 14. I think about this in light of all of us facing the temptation to make more of ourselves than we should.
[26:09] Proverbs 25, in verse 14. And if someone would read that who has the ESV, somebody who has the English standard.
[26:29] Say it one more time, Ben. You hear that? The way that mine says is a man who boasts of his gifts falsely.
[26:45] I just read you that story. This is a guy who's thinking too much of himself and has made himself necessary in his own mind. And so he's come to the place where he thinks that it's his job to establish these anonymous accounts and slander his brothers in Christ who are trying to lead God's church.
[27:04] That's a man who's made himself too necessary in his own mind. He's just become too big in his own head for himself. One other that I'd like to share with you, it's back to 2 Corinthians chapter 10.
[27:23] 2 Corinthians 10. And it's 17 and 18. Doug, would you read those two verses for us, brother?
[27:34] How about that? You see, we can commend ourselves all day long in our own prideful heart, but that doesn't amount to anything.
[27:53] Any commendation that we have is a commendation from God in Christ Jesus. That he has commended us to his son. And therefore, his son is our worth.
[28:04] His son is our value. His son is our wisdom and redemption and life, right? And so he says, anybody who's going to boast, boast in the Lord. Because it's by the Lord that you have life.
[28:17] And wisdom to live that life in his truth. Isn't that humbling? You see, that's humbling. That puts us in our lane, doesn't it?
[28:28] It helps check that pride. You know, it's, it's, and people get a little discombobulated when I do this with them in counseling. Sometimes when people come in and they're having a pity party, it's hard for them to have me show them in scripture that their problem is pride.
[28:45] pride. When they're so down on themselves, it's a reverse aspect of pride. And it's not immediately intuitive to them to think that way.
[28:56] But that's exactly how the Bible defines that kind of issue. It's a prideful issue. It's, it's just pride turned inward instead of outward. So they're not showcasing their pride in ways that would, would cause us to go, man, that, that guy's, that guy or that girl, that, that's a lot of pride right there.
[29:17] No, they've turned that thing inward on themselves. And so now it's a pity party and it typically comes down to, they think they deserve something different or better. That's pride.
[29:30] Isn't the Bible great? It sniffs this stuff out and shows us what it is. Now, look, I'm sharing all of this with you to encourage you about the focus of our pastoral stewardship here at Grace.
[29:46] I think it's good for us to continue to remind each other about what's most important and how we go about keeping the main thing, the main thing here at Grace. So our pastoral stewardship here at Grace is what I'm talking about.
[29:59] That focus, that pastoral focus, that is what we've been talking about the past few times that we've met, the main thing. We've couched it as keeping the main thing, the main thing.
[30:11] And that main thing is becoming more like Jesus. It's growing in Christ likeness together. It's not me out here as an island to myself doing my thing, growing in the Lord in my way.
[30:26] And, you know, I touch base with you guys when I see you kind of thing. It's how do we grow in Christ likeness together? How do we invest in each other's lives so that we're growing in the Lord and becoming more like the Lord together?
[30:38] together. There are all kinds of ways that we can accomplish that in our daily life and in the kinds of things we're interested in. Not everybody and not every guy who comes to our church is going to be interested in shooting sports.
[30:53] Not everybody's going to be interested in fishing. Not everybody's going to want to golf. That's not the issue, is it? I'm getting some like, do those guys even fit here?
[31:05] I mean, come on, you know, we're all, okay, I get that. All right. That's fair. That's fair. Dude, you're not helping the cause here.
[31:17] Come on. Somebody deal with the problem child in the back row back there. But, you know, that's not the point. What we do in the way of hobbies and all, that's not what we're talking about that draws us together.
[31:31] Those are great shared events and everything. And we can use those to the glory of the Lord. But it's our commonality and our love for Christ and our desire to be more like it. That should be the one thing that glues us together more than any other thing.
[31:45] No matter what we're doing, no matter what we're sharing in, you know, I don't, I don't, your hobby doesn't have to be my hobby for me to go do your hobby with you and use it as an opportunity to encourage you as a brother in the Lord.
[31:59] Just by talking life with you. Just by laughing at whatever, you know, together. The good, clean fun of brotherly love. We cannot afford for that to just be some kind of peripheral thing that comes up every once in a while.
[32:17] Here's one way that Greg and I are nurturing this pastoral focus in our stewardship of shepherding here at Grace. We have a men's conference coming this fall.
[32:30] And I thought it was really interesting that in light of, we were, we were actually a little concerned that G3 this year would take away from our men's conference that we wanted to do. And so we were already gearing up to make a speech about, come on guys, support your local thing, you know, kind of deal.
[32:48] And then all this happened and G3 got canceled. Well, we'd already, we'd already put our thing in the works. So the Lord knew. And I want to introduce you to our speaker, tell you a little bit about him.
[32:58] And again, this is just me and Greg saying, Hey, these are ways that we're trying to stay in our pastoral lane here in our sphere of shepherding and, and keep you guys encouraged about what it is to walk with the Lord.
[33:13] So Greg, can you, I think I went to sleep or something. I'm good now. Nope. It should be, there you go.
[33:24] That's it. Let me, let me see if it'll advance. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'll take it back. So here he is. This is Terry Rag. And, you know, the bio's there.
[33:36] You can see this on the church website where, where he serves. So let me tell you about Terry before you read all that. So I met Terry when I went out to Grace Community Church back in 97, 1997.
[33:50] I went out there to go to church. We didn't go out there to go to seminary. Some of y'all don't know that. We moved out there to go to church. We had visited the church for a conference the year before.
[34:05] And it made such an impact on me. And I'd never been around or heard preaching or teaching like that before. And so I told Suzanne on the plane home, I said, I don't know what these people have, but we need a big dose of it.
[34:19] And I began to pray. And the next thing I know, I'm like, we're going to move out there. We're going to sell everything we have and move out there to figure out what these people have that we don't. And so it took us a year to sell everything and sell our house.
[34:33] And all we had left was a couple mattresses and a little bitty Honda Civic hatchback. And I drove the Honda Civic hatchback up into the moving truck, put the mattresses around it and drove out to California.
[34:44] We didn't know a soul. Drove up into the place and I said, hey, here's who I am. I'm out here to learn. Can you help me find a place to live? And they did.
[34:57] And the next thing I knew, they recruited me for the seminary. And off we went. I met Terry out there. Terry, his brother, Jerry. Jerry, Jerry and Terry Rag.
[35:09] Jerry was Dr. MacArthur's personal assistant at the time. And so Jerry's office was right outside the Holy of Holies. And so by knowing Terry, I got to know Jerry.
[35:24] And these are the men that you've heard me talk about before that I would go over to their house, that guy's house right there. And never done this before in my life.
[35:36] And we'd have a meal together with two or three other families they invited over. And then Terry would take us into the living room or his brother Jerry. And we'd all, he'd sit there cross-legged with a Bible in his lap on the floor.
[35:52] And all these guys would lay down on their stomachs, you know, kind of in a circle around. And they've got their Bibles. And Terry said, I never will forget this.
[36:04] And Terry, he said, hey, I just, I just want to share with you guys something the Lord was showing me today when I was in the word. And he walked us through a passage of how God had just encouraged his soul.
[36:20] And I was dumbfounded. I had never seen anybody do that before in my life. I'd never gone over to somebody's house for fellowship and that happened, ever.
[36:31] I had two seminary degrees by this time. So this guy was one of the instruments God used to start teaching me about shepherding, following the Lord.
[36:42] And you know, they loved us. We had nothing to offer. And they loved us and just invited us to do stuff with them. Got to know his brother Jerry. Jerry began to disciple me and a handful of other guys.
[36:56] We would meet like at some crazy hour in the morning, like five or six in the morning. You know, you get there in the dark like every Tuesday morning. And brother, I was there salivating, Bible open, hanging on every word Jerry said.
[37:13] And then when I found out that we were going to have to move and and leave masters abruptly because of Suzanne's kidney condition, I had to get her to a research hospital.
[37:23] And we went to Emory in Atlanta. I had to pack up everything overnight and just move and leave. And that's why I didn't finish my degree out there. When I found out that was going to happen, I went to Jerry and I said, Jerry, I still don't know how to preach, man.
[37:37] Will you sit down and help me through a passage and just give me some just some pointers? Because I didn't get to take all the preaching classes and everything. And so Jerry spent some weeks with me before we moved, taking me through Colossians chapter three, verses one through four as an example of how to put together a sermon.
[37:56] It was kind of like, you know, crash course 101, how to throw it together without knowing Greek and all that stuff. And so Jerry and Terry have been a part of our lives.
[38:07] We connect, reconnected with him after 18 or more years, 20 years. We went to Vermont last year and we and Jerry was Terry was ministering in New Hampshire and we went and saw him where he'd been up there for like 18 years as a pastor.
[38:24] He recently moved to Florida to minister in his nephew's church. And this is so weird because his nephew Mark was this skinny little kid when we were in seminary.
[38:36] And now Mark's got like two or three doctorates. He's the senior pastor of the church and he invited his uncle, Terry, to come and minister at the church because they're all so young as an eldership and they needed an older guy to come in.
[38:51] And that's good wisdom. And so after after all these years at that church, Terry said, wow, OK, I didn't see that coming. And he and his wife, Rebecca, moved moved to Florida just just last November right after the hurricane was going on.
[39:08] And and he's ministering there and they've got a school, a seminary. And Terry's involved in that. Terry's getting another degree.
[39:19] They talked him into it. They're using him as a guinea pig. They want to they want to build a doctoral program in their in their church seminary. And they told Terry, we're going to guinea pig you as the doctoral candidate and see how it works out.
[39:32] So he's my age, just about just a couple of years younger. So Terry's going to come and he's going to he's going to do our conference for us. And the the theme that we're going to use is the discipline of godliness, the discipline of godliness.
[39:49] We're going to talk to you, have Terry talk to you about discipline, disciplining our lives as men for living godly, godlike. That's going to be the theme.
[40:01] We're going to do a Friday evening, one session. Then Terry's going to come back on Saturday and do two, two sessions on a Saturday. And then he'll preach for us on Sunday morning.
[40:14] Quick, three sessions and we're done. I think I think three is what we decided. We'll probably do a session or two in the morning and then have lunch and then finish with one, something like that.
[40:27] So three or three or four of them. Anyway, and the dates, I forget. Is it up there? November 7 and 8. There you go. So please, guys, mark that.
[40:38] You can bring a friend. It's OK. If you want to bring a now that you know what we're going to be dealing with and talking about, feel free to grab a guy or two and drag him along with you.
[40:49] Let him meet Terry. He and his wife are just awesome folks. You'll you'll you'll enjoy me. He is a no nonsense guy. You'd imagine. But he's also a delight.
[40:59] And he is no stranger to hardship in life as well. So that's the conference. Another way that Greg and I are trying to safeguard our pastoral focus and stay in our lane, our pastoral lane together is we have a rock solid commitment to this church.
[41:19] Now, God may move either one of us or both of us on to other things because God's got somebody else in mind. He does stuff like that. But we're rock solidly committed.
[41:30] We're not trying to make ourselves necessary. We're just simply striving to be faithful in the Lord. That's it. We're just striving to be faithful. It's not that we don't struggle with sin.
[41:41] It's not that we don't understand what it's like to face the challenges in life. Each of our wives have kidney diseases. That's a requirement. If you're going to be an elder here, your wife has to have some kind of kidney disease, apparently.
[41:55] No, look, we're seeking to be faithful to what the Lord has brought our way and to what God's opened to us. So I wanted to let you know any outside ministry that I do is about shepherding the local church.
[42:11] I'm not out here trying to be a celebrity pastor. That's not even something on my radar or anything like that. This is all about ways that I want to try to support other shepherds and their flocks as they invite me to teach.
[42:26] These are like-minded churches and ministries that we know personally. We have some type of personal connection. So I have two trips this year coming up really fast.
[42:38] And so I'm working great guns to get ready for both of them. One of those trips is to Poland again. I went two years ago. They've asked us to come back and do the same thing that we did before, only a different topic.
[42:50] So I have nine one-hour sessions that I'm currently trying to develop based on the outline they sent me of what they want. So from scratch. Pray for me in that, or I mean it.
[43:02] As you pray for me, pray that I'll have wisdom, that I'll use my time wisely, and that this stuff will come quickly. I've got to get it to them this month so that they can translate it all. PowerPoint.
[43:13] They have to put all that together in Polish because I use a translator when I go. The other trip is to Vermont. We went last year. They've invited us to come back.
[43:24] I just got the itinerary. They're wanting us to do more this time. And they're wanting us to deal with some issues head on. I'll be talking to Greg about this because I need his wisdom.
[43:35] They are having some issues in unity. And so they want me to speak to those issues. They want me to talk to their leadership and their deacons and their elders. On one night, there's another thing I'm doing.
[43:46] Then I'm doing a men's breakfast on Saturday with them. And they've given me the topic about leadership in the home. And then I'm preaching on Sunday. All of this is connected to people we know.
[43:59] These are not just ministries I blow in. I don't know anybody. I've never met them before. We have personal connection. That's how we're doing it. We're supporting ministries that we have friends ministering in and serving in.
[44:13] And we're just trying to come alongside of them. Okay? So I wanted to share those couple things with you to let you know these are the ways your pastors are trying to stay in our lane and not make ourselves necessary.
[44:25] We're just trying to be faithful with what God put in front of us. Any questions about any of that? The conference? Anything going on? Anything you're wondering about? Open.
[44:36] Ben? More of a comment. So when we brought up that dude's name, Steve. Steve Lawson? Yeah. We brought that up. Still new to the faith and trying to understand not being someone that has judgment or what have you.
[44:53] But I felt a little bit concerned. And then when this was brought up, this second person who brought up a spirit church a couple weeks ago, after Sunday, I just was reflecting and thinking, man, I hope people are not bringing up the pitchforks.
[45:07] Like, yeah, that dude is terrible. And just totally write them off. Because in self-reflection, I was like, well, I've sinned. And the Bible tells us that there's no higher sin, really. Yeah.
[45:19] Culturally, it might be like a murderer is definitely way worse than someone in the fields. You know, something like that. That doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter according to the Bible. Yeah. So I was just hoping that there was a pitchfork.
[45:30] So when you read that letter from the church, I was glad you heard that the elders are embracing him. Yeah. Like, let's bring him back to the light. So for me, that was really powerful. Because I could see how it could turn into, like, people are pulling it off.
[45:45] Yeah. That would be really good to do. It would. And what a terrible testimony. That if you've got a man who's repentant, you don't throw him to the wolves. Right. That's a good point, brother.
[45:56] And I appreciate your heart in that, Ben. Thank you. You know, God forbid if one of us ever has something like that, that if we were repentant, y'all would at least say, well, there's that.
[46:09] You know. But we're all mistumbled. Yeah. Yeah. And I do. And Greg does. We do. We do. And we hold each other accountable and we walk together. I think what we want to try to make sure of is that we're not living in this secrecy that sees us doing this for months and years without dealing with it, without trying to face off with it.
[46:33] You know. Well, when you got a Steve Lawson and a Josh Vice for years doing everything they can to build a world, a hidden world to hide in.
[46:45] That's something different. And getting in the pulpit. I don't know how. Look, I don't know how you do that. Right. I pray in tears that God will cleanse my soul and ready my tongue to get up in this pulpit every Sunday.
[47:00] It keeps me sober. I think about that. Sometimes I'm able to say no to sin because I know Sunday's coming. That's a grace in my life. Right.
[47:11] Greg. Yeah.
[47:25] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Greg is speaking to the issue of there being consequences in the way of disqualification for leadership.
[47:41] There are lines you can cross where you suffer one of the consequences being you can no longer continue in ministry as as a leader, as a pastor.
[47:53] You you've disqualified yourself from that. You minister to the brother. You restore the brother. You minister to his wife, his family. You don't just discard them and turn them out.
[48:05] As Ben was saying, Ben's comments where I'm glad that the pitchforks didn't come out. You know, this isn't Frankenstein here. We don't need the villagers with torches and pitchforks coming and burning the place down and crucifying the guy.
[48:18] So, yeah, there's some kind of a balance in that. First time I ever encountered this outside of Grace Community Church, my first pastorate. I wasn't even at the church for a month.
[48:29] And there was a pastor's fellowship of all the local guys in the SBC Association, Southern Baptist Convention Association I was part of. So I went to hang out with all the good old boys.
[48:42] That's what you do there. And I remember one of the things, one of the items was discussion about a pastor who had just been caught in an adulterous relationship for five years running in his church.
[48:59] Senior pastor with another woman in the church. A woman, a wife of a man he was ministering to and that God had charged him with protecting.
[49:12] And here is the senior pastor secretly taking that man's wife, all right, for five years. She had like six kids.
[49:23] He had like six kids. And then he got caught. And here was the discussion. Can he continue in ministry? And I was like you.
[49:34] I was, I just, I'm the new kid. I just sat there. And listened to this conversation back and forth with guys arguing that he could be restored. And I'm like, not if my wife's in that church.
[49:48] I don't want him within ten miles of my wife. I don't trust him. Kind of thing. And so I didn't say anything, but I remember later, I came home and I was so burdened.
[50:01] I wrote him a letter. Of course, I never got a response. I never heard a word from anybody, nobody. And four months later, I was gone. I was, they kicked me out. So anyway, this stuff happens.
[50:16] It's a good point. But there are disqualifications, as Greg said. We got to face. And again, that's one of the graces that God uses in our lives to help keep us sober about the consequences of secret sin in our lives.
[50:29] It's not that we, that we don't sin. We do. But the matter is bringing it forward to say, let's face it. Let's repent of it. Clyde?
[50:40] All right. Clyde's talking about the theme of being proactive instead of reactive.
[50:50] We're talking about the concept of a good point of a godly life. We're talking about accountability. The thing is to be talking about themselves. Okay. Instead of not speaking to them, not talking to them, we're actually, we're always talking about them.
[51:07] Yeah. We're always using a dead horse. We're not. We're proactively putting those guardrails in place. We're accountable. We're in place. And then when it occurred, we had measures to deal with.
[51:19] So we're reacting. Oh, I got caught. Mm-hmm. First of all, yes. Yes. Yes. And steps that you're taking to be proactive in being open and, as you say, accountable in the moment.
[51:38] Right? You're willing to humbly be exposed because you don't have anything to hide. And when your sin is seen for what it is, it's seen within the context of a repentant heart, a humble, broken heart.
[51:57] I don't want to live in this. This isn't what I want to be, but I struggle. Struggle with me. Come alongside me. Help me. That's a whole different heart than let me hide for years and build a network that helps me hide.
[52:15] That's something totally different, guys. I'm telling you, there's more to that story. That's not a man walking with Jesus. Something's happened to his conscience that he can live like that and do that and get up in the pulpit every Sunday and keep going like that.
[52:33] You with me on that? Yeah. Yeah.
[52:49] Yes, your wife, your kids. Yes. That accountability to them can come alongside other men. My wife would never understand that sort of a man.
[53:01] Nope. She would want it. Nope. Nor will I understand her soul. Right. That's how God is wired up. That's why I think these discussions are important. And then outside of these discussions that we can trust, it's smart for a young church to say, hey, we've got to find an old man.
[53:18] Yeah. We've walked some of this and felt some of it and understand some of this. But not necessarily there's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, guys, look, not every man struggles with pornography.
[53:31] Many do. But men in our congregation who struggle with pornography, I want to help them. I understand that struggle. I'm not so plastic or whatever that I can't stand before you and say, I understand that.
[53:45] I understand lust. I understand the draw that we have as men to stray in our minds. And I want our men to know that we are here to come alongside a man who wants to struggle out of that being something that dominates his life.
[54:02] I don't want them to come here and hide thinking that this place is too theological, too holy. If I said that to all these guys, these are holy men here.
[54:14] Yeah, these are men striving in holiness. But none of us have arrived to include the pastors, and so we're all striving together.
[54:26] So your issue may not be pornography. Your issue may be some aspect of pride being manifest in your life. An anti-authority mindset, a loner mindset, gossip.
[54:40] You know, women aren't the only ones that struggle with gossip. It could be a number of things. Building yourself up in ways that flatter yourself in other people's eyes because you have a fear of man issue.
[54:53] There are all kinds of ways we fight sin, and we want to be able to say, hey, let's make this a place where we can do that together and come alongside brothers and walk with each other, but not create an atmosphere where we all know the Greek and the Hebrew for this, and we're growing in that.
[55:13] We can talk our theology around circles and give everybody the impression that we're impenetrable if it comes to a guy coming in here and thinking, man, I don't know how to do any of that.
[55:26] I was that guy. And the man up on the screen was one of the men God used to bring me into that circle and patiently love me and teach me and help me grow.
[55:38] They didn't make me feel like I was some lesser being because I could not keep up with them theologically. I couldn't. But they brought me along.
[55:51] And I remember when we left Grace, in the car, I said to Suzanne, I said, if God allows me to pastor in my future, I just want to do it like these guys did it with me.
[56:05] I want to give to other people what they gave to me. An opportunity to come alongside and grow, deal with my stuff, talk about my stuff, but grow.
[56:18] They never told me it was okay for me to sin. They just helped me deal with it. That's what we want. And I say these things to you, beat the dead horse, I say these things to you and repeat them because this is what we want to be the atmosphere that we cultivate in what we understand to be shepherding.
[56:38] I don't know that we're shepherding if we're giving this false atmosphere of you can get to a place where you live above this. You know, we know the Greek.
[56:53] So what? Are you living for the Lord or is your heart being made more tender? Are you dealing with your pride when you deal with your wife?
[57:04] Have you asked for forgiveness of your wife lately? If you haven't, something's wrong. Right? Be honest about that.
[57:15] You weren't impatient with her. You didn't speak with her in a little snippet. So you go to her and go, you know what? I'm working on that. Please forgive me. I'm working on that.
[57:28] Got some guys praying for me. In fact, next time I see Ben, he's going to ask me about that. So I'm going to have to tell him. Okay? These are good.
[57:39] This is good, guys. Well, shall we do with what we have left? Can we do a few minutes in the Word then? I got three more pages of Word here and I'm not going to get to it. So that's okay.
[57:50] You know, I draw a line and we just come back. Let's go to Colossians 1. This will be a good place for us to camp out a few minutes and then finish. Because this, Colossians 1, the verses we'll deal with, these are the verses that we have.
[58:06] Greg, what do we call it? Like a tagline for our church? Byline, tagline for our, so when you talk about Grace Church Williamsburg, this is the passage that we put, you know, on our website and under our name to kind of summarize how we think of ourselves being on mission.
[58:27] So here's our mission. It's verses 28 and 29 of chapter 1. Could somebody read that? Y'all been listening to me here for a while. We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man that is all with us, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.
[58:47] For this purpose also I labor, thriving, employing His power, this minding work within me. Thank you, Jeremy. Now that's a power-packed passage, isn't it?
[58:58] We proclaim Him, that is Jesus, admonishing every man, teaching every man with all wisdom, so that, the purpose, we may present every man complete in Christ.
[59:13] Notice in verse 28, how many times does He use the phrase every man? Every man, every man, every man. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.
[59:29] So, guys, well, I have slides for this, don't I? Yeah, I do. So, teaching, notice, teaching and admonishing for Christ-likeness.
[59:43] There is a goal, there is a purpose. Greg and I don't have to be cute or clever, we just need to be faithful. This has already been spelled out for us.
[59:55] Teaching and admonishing for Christ-likeness are our priorities in ministry to men and as men. as we lead the way in setting the tone and tempo for our discipling efforts across the spectrum of our fellowship for our women, for our kids' ministry, for everything that we do.
[60:14] So, remember, discipleship is followership. It's faithfulness to Jesus. It isn't discipleship if we're not following close in the Lord to become more like Him.
[60:25] All right? So, we are humbly and willingly bowing to the work of the Holy Spirit to do what? To refine our hearts.
[60:37] So, God's truth purges the poison of self-deception to renew our minds in what? God's view of what we should value and live for.
[60:49] You and I need this every day. Every day, we need the truth to purge the world and self out and renew our mind in thinking about life the way God wants us to from God's perspective.
[61:02] So, as long as we're on this earth and walking with the Lord Jesus, we are in the process of overcoming sin and self in the Lord Jesus.
[61:14] We walk with the Lord because the only way that we can overcome sin in our life is to be in the Lord. That is, to be close to Him.
[61:25] To draw near to Jesus and grow in who He is. Our walking with the Lord toward our own spiritual maturity is the baseline.
[61:40] It's the foundation for how we live in each area of life. So, as a husband, as a dad, a friend, a brother in Christ, an employee, as churchmen, as churchmen, serving here among the body at Grace Church.
[61:55] Walking with the Lord is the foundation or the baseline for all of those roles that we then take on as gifts from God. It's a gift for me to be Suzanne's husband.
[62:07] Do I always live like that's a gift? Do I always think of it in the way of a stewardship? No. And that's when I get in trouble. I constantly need God renewing my mind in the perspective of the Lord about these different roles that I hold.
[62:24] Otherwise, it's really easy to get selfish. What will we drift to when the void comes? We will drift into self every time. It won't be about serving grace.
[62:35] It'll be about something else. But the priorities of God will change that. We need His perspective. So our growth in Christ-likeness is what most defines us as men.
[62:48] That's an amen statement. Absolutely. So what we're teaching and encouraging here at Grace Church as the main thing is for our men to take the stewardship.
[62:59] It is a stewardship of your maleness seriously. To step up to the spiritual plate to serve Jesus in His mandate of manliness.
[63:10] See, we won't have to worry Greg and I will not have to worry concern or, you know, any of that about our men leading the way in serving in our church family if we will help you follow Jesus.
[63:26] It'll take care of itself. If you draw near to Jesus and follow the Lord you will come under the love of Jesus and the conviction of serving Him faithfully and you will have the desire.
[63:37] He'll put that in your heart. Why? Because He loves His people. Jesus loves the people who are here who are His people and He wants them served and He wants you to do it.
[63:49] And so Greg and I are about equipping the saints for the work of service, the work of ministry. You're the servants. You're the ministers. Greg and I are the equippers of the ministers.
[64:02] So you minister to each other. We're doing that right now. We're equipping. We're giving you the mindset, the philosophy, the baseline for how this works. If we neglect this we're going to find ourselves drifting and we'll drift toward things that will be about us, about self.
[64:21] And that's when churches get in trouble. You know, Josh Bice and Steve Lawson as useful as they had become to the Lord, these men drifted from the reality of the merits of Jesus and why they were in this thing in the first place.
[64:35] And that can happen. Your head just gets big. You get full of yourself and you think you're more necessary than you are. Jeff Jackson constantly gets reminded God could replace me in a heartbeat.
[64:47] In a heartbeat. Then there's another guy driving that car, living in that house, preaching to these people. Well, I need to remember that.
[64:59] Alright? So this mandate of manliness is what we're dealing with. It's a stewardship. This mandate of manliness. I wanted to share this with you in the way of just another illustration.
[65:11] This will be a final one. Another illustration. So, this was from Politico news agency. The Democrats, now get this, now please don't get upset with me if you're a Democrat, okay?
[65:26] Just listen. Democrats, they recently commissioned a series of focus groups. And here's what they asked the focus groups to do.
[65:38] They wanted the focus, this just happened, this just came in the news a couple days ago. They wanted the focus groups to survey young American men. And the Democrats wanted this question to be at the forefront in their survey.
[65:54] do Democrats know what a man is? That was the question that Dems used all these focus groups to go out and survey all these American males, different ages, different walks of life.
[66:08] And here's how they summed up what they found. By the way, before I put this up here and share the quotes with you, this was the summation that they came to after all of this time spent on the question do Democrats know what a man is?
[66:23] They spent $20 million on this project to do this. And here's what they came up with. The focus groups found that young men feel they are in crisis.
[66:37] They are stressed, ashamed, and confused over what it means to be a man in 2025. They vented about conflicting cultural messages of masculinity that put them in a no-win situation around the meaning of a man according to this Sam Project memo.
[66:57] Sam Project Speaking with American Men Project down there at the bottom. $20 million to come to that. The precious babies are confused.
[67:12] They're in a no-win situation about the meaning of a man. I don't like the whining, but I totally get the reality. If you follow the Democratic Party, it won't be any confusion or shock to us to find out they're confused when they're saying that men can become women and women can become men and there's no such thing as male or female.
[67:37] It's whatever you want to be. That's up to you. Et cetera, et cetera, when the Dems sponsor Pride Month. We won't even go there.
[67:48] That's so ridiculous it's hard to even fathom. The world has no idea. They have no idea. So we're not tapping the world about how to be churchmen.
[68:01] Not interested. Not even in the slightest. You, you are answering this particular stewardship. You are answering the stewardship, which is the mandate of manliness, with a robust call to follow Jesus.
[68:18] Follow Him through your uncompromising commitment to personal holiness in your walk with Him. And we need each other in that effort. We need to invest in each other as followers of Jesus who live by His Word as His churchmen.
[68:35] Now that begins in our family, as Clyde was pointing out, that was his point. And then extending to our church family. If you notice in verse 29, for this purpose, Paul says, also I labor striving according to His power.
[68:53] I labor striving for this purpose. I want to put this up here on the screen so you can follow it with me. Paul's motivation for all that he does is this, for this purpose also I labor striving.
[69:10] Well, what purpose? What purpose is he talking about in that verse? Dr. MacArthur pointedly sums up the purpose of all pastoral ministry. Here it is. The goal of ministry is the maturity of the saints.
[69:23] That is, that you become more like Christ. You grow up in the Lord. If you're not growing up in the Lord, the shepherds are missing it somewhere. Something's misfiring somewhere in the process.
[69:34] Something's off. We need to make some major tune-up adjustments here if you're not becoming more like the Lord. Now there's only so much Greg and I can do or your pastors can do, but we need to be doing it.
[69:49] The goal of the ministry is the maturity of the saints. That's just not hard to get your mind around to be the main thing. So doctrinal integrity, sound doctrine, guys, our commitment to the truth, to teaching and preaching the truth, sound doctrine, doctrinal integrity is followed by practical obedience to that truth in godly living.
[70:16] Or why do we do it? Just to do it? Just to study? Just to know? No. Practical obedience. All for the purpose of becoming more like Jesus.
[70:26] The truth sets us free. The truth helps us become more like the Lord. Neglect the truth. Neglect putting a priority on the truth and we're going to start drifting.
[70:40] Now what I want to do, I've got more from Colossians here that I wanted to walk you through, but we took a little longer on the other and that's fine with me. No worries. But I'm going to honor this.
[70:51] I'm going to stop here. The next place that I wanted to take you following right on this is how Paul then builds on this baseline. This baseline of striving to help every man become complete in Jesus.
[71:05] Grow up in Jesus. Be more like him. He does this in a progressive way. He talks about it in a way that will show you and mark out for you, well Jeff, how do I do this?
[71:18] How do I become personally invested in this process of my spiritual growth and in the growth of my brothers here? How can I be helpful and useful in that way?
[71:30] That's next. Alright, but I'm going to hold off on that and that's Colossians 2, 6, and 7. I'm going to hold off on that for next time, okay? We're giving you enough to think about.
[71:42] So, before we close out, questions, comments, input, discussion, it's all on the table. We got guys that we got a brand new saved brother in Christ.
[71:54] We got guys that have been walking with the Lord for 20 years plus. So, what are we looking at here? What do you think? Comments, questions, insights, encouragements, thoughts?
[72:11] You're still with me, aren't you? Alright. Alright. I think of, you know, being just praying for a humble heart every day. Yeah.
[72:23] And, if we can kind of, if that can be our hand, then we can lose that at some level and that will help with all these other things. So, Doug is mentioning having a humble heart.
[72:38] That if we can walk in humility, it takes care of so many of the other issues. Is that fair enough said, Doug? Yeah. I like the part where you said that it's so easy to follow the gospel.
[72:49] Yeah. And, the concept of calling the Lord is just driving me in my direction throughout the day. I just find that even as it's been 30 minutes of time because I'm calling the Lord, I can see myself starting to hold myself into something about myself more than my hand and then over the ground.
[73:09] in that moment, I have to clarify the calling that I can feel that relief of not being so interested and concerned about myself and it makes it so much easier to be concerned about other things.
[73:29] Good. Good. Don't think more highly of yourself than you should. Romans 12, 1 and 2, Solomon, came to mind.
[73:42] So hold that. Romans 12, 1 and 2 would be a good place for you to... I just read that last night. Did you? Yeah. I'm reading through Romans with my wife and tonight will be our last night when we finish through Romans.
[73:54] But I think that's one of the texts you too. Oh, did you? Okay. Maybe that's why it's coming into my mind. Praise the Lord, bro. It's crazy how easy it is to see when you see it.
[74:07] Yeah. Yes. How easy it is to see when God opens your eyes to see. Amen. Well said, brother. Isn't that exciting? Good. Michael?
[74:17] I look at with God's life or voices and he's lost and he's over his life for your adversary to the devil as a roaring line walketh about seeking and devour it.
[74:37] Yeah. Yeah. Acknowledge what you're going through and what's happening where your mind is. Yeah. And then like Satan has control and divided this and stopped the program and what started out to be God on him and it's not.
[75:04] Right. That's right, Michael. And that warfare is ongoing, isn't it? He never rests. He just waits. He doesn't rest.
[75:16] He waits. He's constantly scheming. One day God will open our eyes to that warfare. We will see it the way God does as we're in heaven living in that timelessness, that timeless realm.
[75:34] God will open our eyes to what we can't see with our eyes here. The spiritual warfare and realm that is very active, kind of behind the scenes as it were.
[75:45] But that whole veil will be lifted one day and we'll see it for what it is. That's what you're describing. That constant series of attacks. Was there another? Teachable, Clyde?
[75:58] So humble, teachable? Humble, teachable. God uses other men as best but to lean from the word.
[76:12] It's one thing to take the knowledge and understand and do it. So applying the word to your own life, heart, situation, moment, you mentioned how God bring you clarity, Solomon, in that moment.
[76:29] Good. And we'll do it out there. Yeah. That's cool. Right. Checking out and getting all of those things.
[76:45] Yes. And you know guys, being proactive, if you have a certain propensity in weakness toward an area, you need to go ahead and build some safeguards.
[77:03] Matt, you and I were talking about this and you mentioned YouTube and some things you do in your home life to safeguard. Will you speak to that real quick? Technology is great and horrible all at the same time.
[77:19] My kids, in this state, they have a lot of work. It is hard to be a parent. It is easy to be a way to parent. I have a ton of safeguards on their computers.
[77:30] We don't do a ton of play with phones and do that thing. I would encourage those young kids to start now. It is hard to do and it takes work, but start now. You can search things on YouTube even with innocuous search results to remember what advertising comes up.
[77:46] What are the flashes of images they see? First, I'll give an example. My mother was in town and was doing some knitting with my daughter. There was a particular kid called, a lady who wanted to call good knit kisses.
[77:59] If you search good night kisses on YouTube, it comes up with other things other than yarn and knitting and images that I don't want my living children to see.
[78:11] So I would get on it. If anyone has any or wants a recommendation on what software to use and things like that, please get them. I mentioned before, other mentors, these are awful, but there's ways to use them, there's ways to allow your kids to call you and still keep them off.
[78:30] If you get a hold of me, lock those suckers down, lock them down, lock down surfers, lock down videos, stuff, you can even lie by line tell them what they can do, but be very careful of that stuff.
[78:44] And people have the floor, the gentleman has the floor, for you as well. I have ad walkers on my phone. I keep them running all the time, because I don't want that crap in my head.
[78:55] Images every time you go to something, they're just trash. Yeah. I'm going at you all the time. It's a matter of what you put it, garbage in, garbage out.
[79:08] You're seeing this trash all the time, just a flash of an image. The news broadcasters nowadays are wearing less clothes than clothes.
[79:20] be careful. Same for you as well. Put your wife the password. How humbling is that? Let her be the one to control what goes on your phone.
[79:30] If that's something you struggle with, it's not. Yeah, we have that in my house. That's Suzanne. Your wife can't access your phone. Soul searching.
[79:44] That's a good word, guys. Ignore that to your detriment. Greg and I share this together. Our wives have total access to all our electronic stuff. There's no deleting histories.
[79:55] I can't even do that on my computer. I can't delete history. It's set up where I cannot do that. See, don't hide. Suzanne has my phone. Jeff, can I use your phone?
[80:06] Sure, here you go. She knows how to go places on that phone. I don't. I'm telling you. That's fine. That's fine. I want to be ignorant in some of these areas.
[80:19] I don't want the temptation to hide. And so Suzanne grabbed my computer, my phone, whatever. She goes anywhere she wants. That's why I tell people if we're emailing and stuff, just know this is not a secure system.
[80:32] My wife has access to all of this at any time. Dave? I think we worry a lot about what gets exposed to other people.
[80:42] Yeah. But nothing is hidden from the adjust. Everything is in his sight. There is no secret. God is in his way.
[80:53] I don't want to breathe the spirit. Yeah. Once we're saying God is enough. And I just don't want to be disrespectful in any way to that grace that was shown to me.
[81:07] Amen. Yeah, that's humility, brother, and that's a teachable spirit. That's putting the priority, the premium, on walking with Jesus. I don't want to hurt the Lord.
[81:18] That's good, Dave. This is good, guys. It's healthy. It's helpful. And so whether it's you or whether it's another guy who will come into you, become us, struggling with whatever, whatever, we want to be able to put our arms around each other and be listening ears.
[81:40] And we may not have any. A guy sits down with you and tells you something and for you it's like, whoa, that's like nuclear problem, man. What do I even say?
[81:51] If you don't know, you have brothers. You can, hey, I don't, listen, I'm listening. I hear you. My heart goes out for you, but I'm not sure about this one, but I have a couple brothers.
[82:05] Can I bring them in on this with you? Trust me, brother, you can trust these guys. And then next thing you know, you're getting a phone call. Will you walk with us? You know, Solomon, I'm opening it up right now to our brothers say, you just got saved.
[82:20] You need brothers to walk with you. You need these brothers to come alongside of you and begin to help you learn how to be in the Lord. How do you walk with Jesus? What does that look like?
[82:31] What kind of disciplines do I need to, what kind of things do I need to get rid of, put off? You may not even know. Some of them may not be obvious. I never would have thought of that kind of thing. These brothers can help with that.
[82:44] So there you go. Ben, you've been saved a year and a half, two years? A year and a half. Brand new. Still another brother brand new in the Lord. See?
[82:55] Walking with Jesus. This is what God's bringing. So we just want to be good stewards. Be good stewards of it. Any other final words, encouragements, we good? Thank you guys for being here and for being so attentive and being willing to minister.
[83:11] If you didn't have this kind of heart, you wouldn't come and do this and listen to it. So Greg and I are so grateful that you're doing this.