April 27, 2026 • 21 mins
When life falls apart, what do you actually do? In this week's episode, Granger, Tyler, and Parker and The AntMan tackle one of the most common questions Granger gets asked on the road: "How do you stay strong in the storms of life?"
The guys break down why the answer is more practical — and more biblical — than most people expect. Just like a real storm, the worst thing you can do is try to fix everything in the middle of it. Instead, they discuss the power of seeking shelter in Christ, leaning on the ordinary means of grace (Scripture, prayer, and local church community), and why true strength is found in weakness, not willpower.
The conversation goes deep into some of the Bible's most raw and honest moments — Job's response to devastating loss, the Psalms' cries of "How long, O Lord?", Paul's thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12, and Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis. Along the way, they explore the difference between shaking your fist at God (which Scripture calls sin) and honestly crying out to Him in grief and fellowship.
They also share a heartbreaking real-life story of a Williamson County deputy who lost his pregnant wife — and connect it to Rachel's death in Genesis — as a powerful reminder that God is never caught off guard by our suffering.
Topics covered in this episode:
* What to actually do when you're in the middle of a life storm.
* The ordinary means of grace: Bible, prayer, and community Is it a sin to be angry with God?
* Paul's thorn in the flesh and Jacob's limp — what special revelation costs.
* How the gospel reframes where our strength really comes from.
Whether you're walking through grief, loss, or an impossible season, this episode will challenge and encourage you to hunker down in Christ — not in your own effort.
The Gospel: Sinful people can be made right with a holy God through Jesus Christ. Christ lived a sinless life, died bearing God's wrath for sinners, and rose bodily from the dead. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. New episodes every Monday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up them, Granger. I'm me here, man, I'm Tyler.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Parker.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the nine nine for one podcast. We got
the whole crew back sitting here. Got the A Team,
the eighteen Nothing against Amber met a guy two days ago,
had lunch with them. It worked all the special effects
for the old A Team. No way, really? Yes, does
he know where that van is? I would like to
(00:23):
know where they are. I should ask him about. Yeah,
he's a friends of he's friends with one of the
members of our church. Like original Van is still around.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I never watched the eight team.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
You never saw the eight team. You need to see that,
the original mister T and all the chains. I pitied
the fool.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
He's a Christian. I never watched you know that?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Is he really? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
You look up mister T on Twitter. It's like every
days the Bible Verse sharing the Gospel and stuff. Yeah
he's again.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Mister T. Yeah that's lazy, praise God.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Okay, but you never watched it either. It was a
little before my time. It was a staple for me.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Half of those got that stage. I was old about eighteen,
big time. Half of thos got that reference you brought
up then Okay, okay, we're gonna We're gonna continue through
these common questions that I get when I travel. I
did get on the last video get a comment that said,
how do I know where Granger travels? I guess sometimes
(01:21):
we post on my website. Sometimes we don't, Right, that's
all up to Tyler. It's up to Tyler's discernment.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
It's different in this world if we're selling tickets or
if we're not. If it's a I don't know it is,
it's weird because yes we but yes they should be
on grangersmith dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I live in a world, right it's not.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
It's probably because I'm messed up.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, I live in a world right now where I'm
just not promoting myself.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And even when I go speak someplace I could, it's
more like a friendly sharing, but it's not like a
come buy tickets or you know, typically it's free anyway,
But I'm not. Really, it's a strange world that I
I can't from the all promotion world to now. I
still occasionally travel and speak, but don't really promote it
(02:07):
and don't really need to most of the things I do.
It's kind of baked in.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Well, it's the same thing in the music world. It's
like we'll give them assets, photos, bios, maybe a script,
a video script, but it's ultimately up to the venue
or the music event, or the festival, or the church now,
the conference, the conference now to do their own internal
marketing to get people there.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, and it's usually, especially if it's a church, it's
always baked in like they would just expect that church
to attend, or that the men of that church to attend.
They're not necessarily always trying to reach for others to come.
And if they are, if it's a church trying to
reach everyone to come, then that's a completely different event altogether.
(02:55):
But we're talking about common questions I get because I
usually will do a Q and A at the end
of these things. And here's another common, very common question.
I got this just a few days ago. How do
you stay strong in the storms of life? That was
a question from a from a Christian in the audience,
(03:17):
A man, how do you stay strong in the storms
of life? Very common question. Get it almost every time,
and I always will. I always want to think about
what they words matter, So I want to think about
that word storm and I and I always tell people like, hey,
(03:39):
I almost just super practical guy. I'm a very practical guy.
And so when you say what do you do how
do you stay strong in a storm of life? I say, well,
how do you stay strong in any storm? Seek shelter
right then? And usually they don't get that off the
right of the bat. They're like prepare or I'm like no, no,
(04:02):
Like what do you do in the storm itself? There's
no there is no prayer, there's no preparing for a storm.
When it hits, you're either already prepared or not, but
you don't do the preparing when the storm its right
so you pretty much take shelter and you hunker down.
And I think that's lost in that. The question answers itself,
what do you do in a storm? You find that
(04:24):
the most secure place, and you huddle, you huddle up
and you wait.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So it means Jesus, it means prayer, it means reading,
diving into your Bible.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Which is all the preparation before should be doing that, right, Yeah,
So at some level the question is what do you
do right now? How do you stay strong now? So
I would divide that into two sections. The strength is
Christ when you can find a multipitituitive of verses of
him being our refuge, him being our rest, but then
(04:57):
in the storm part. I sometimes I just want to
give people a little bit of charity because I remember
one time this lady asked me this in Florida and
she said, how do you stay strong in the storms
of life? And I said, what's going on? I lost
my mom when two weeks ago. Okay, you're in the
(05:19):
epicenter of that storm right now, it's spinning all around you.
And we have to give people charity because you we
have this tendency to think, well, how do I start
fixing things right now? How do I start mending things?
And nobody mends in a storm.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Yeah, kind of what we're talking about a week or
two ago. So the the person asking that is not
a Christian, right, I can't go that far because I
don't know. I'm when it happened to me. The biggest
storm for me, which when we lost riv that that
storm made me recognize I was not a Christian right
(05:57):
when when a storm hit for me, I wasn't a
believer And it was just like, okay, do I'm gonna
check off the box.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Of this, this, this, this, this, this.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And it was Jesus that I needed to run to.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
So my mind like knowing my experience and hearing that
question now, it's like the answer is obvious to me.
But so so so when I hear somebody say that
in their struggle and they're suffering, they're just not a
true born again believer yet because the answer is so
obvious to me. I don't mean for that to sound mean,
(06:30):
but you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
But the answer is separated from the practical though, Like
you could know that answer and then the storm hits.
What do you do? You? Yeah, rest in Jesus? What
does that look like? That's just a sentence. You just said,
rest in Jesus. That's just like a church church phrase.
So are you saying what do I do? I'm really
hurting right now. I'm in the story as a believer.
(06:53):
Yeah yeah, yeah, sure, yeah yeah. You're part of a
local church. My first question. The people around you are
so important to be able to make you a meal,
to be on a prayer list, to worship together on
Sunday morning, to be there for you when you're in
your darkest moment. Who's around you? So what you're saying
(07:15):
are ordinary? What we call ordinary means of grace. Read
your Bible, abide in this word, open your door to
fellow church members that want to serve you. Uh, be
in prayer, eat a meal, take a shower, and just
(07:37):
very if we look for these crazy things to do,
but it's really the ordinary means of grace that we do,
should do before the storm, and then we continue to
do in the storm. And where I said we're not
talking about charity is I want to give people to
always give people charity and just say don't try to
do things. You don't do things in a storm. You
don't tend to garden, you don't paint your fence, you know,
(08:01):
you don't go gas up your truck. You you just
set it out. And the storm, which is great, it's
such a great illustration. Storms are come and go that
and they come in seasons. Every season changes. All seasons change,
good seasons, bad seasons, stormy seasons, calm seasons. They come
(08:24):
and go and for the better or worse because you
don't want the good seasons to go, but they go
and then the bad seasons come. And so when you're
in a storm, part of it is just recognizing hold up.
It feels like this is eternity, but it will pass,
and at some level just wait it out. Board up
(08:45):
the windows, you know, lock the doors and wait it
out and it will pass.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
And when you're in a good season to have this
self awareness to stalk up and have the perspective of
not living in fear of a bad season, but my
thanking God for this good season. And am I using
this to prepare myself for storms that could come? Am
I building up relationships with other believers so that I
(09:13):
can have that there when I need that lifeline?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Do I have that relationship with my church? Do I have.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
A communion with God built into my day now so
that when I do go in that trial, I'll be ready.
I just think of the guy around here this week
who just lost his wife and he has three kids.
His wife was pregnant and he found her unconscious, she
heard blood pressure, just spited. She was pregnant with their
(09:40):
fourth little girl, and they took her to the hospital
and they were able to save the baby, but his
wife died, and so this guy is now left with
three three little girls and then a fourth baby, little newborn.
You just think of like those those types of trials
that just like completely umble you.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
We should put that gofund me in the description.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
By the way, I didn't know that story.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
I saw Amber shared it on her page.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah he's a Williamson County deputy, I believe.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
You know what's so interesting that what you said about that.
Why that's interesting is because I'm reading through Genesis right
now in my reading plan, and that happens to Jacob Israel,
his wife Rachel, that he loves. You know, he loved Rachel.
And the the promise that God gave Jacob was that
(10:40):
through you all the nations would be blessed. It's the
same same promise he gave to Isaac's dad and his
grandpa Abraham. But you, it will be through you that
the that that the promise of my people will go
out to reach the world. And through that promise, simultaneou
God uses the offspring and one of them Benjamin kills,
(11:04):
his wife, kills Rachel through childbirth. Rachel dies giving birth
to Benjamin. And you just look at that, and you know, God,
you could have you could have through the offspring, wouldn't
you have prepared that? Also the wife would obviously live,
but through the through the offspring that you would say,
would one day be the twelve tribes of Israel, and
(11:28):
and eventually the Christ would come through. And and actually
Paul the apostle, Paul comes through the tribe of Benjamin,
and you're gonna you're gonna take the mother's life with this.
That doesn't sound good. And and God, that's how God works.
And so this this story, it's the it's no different
in the way that God was not was not caught
(11:51):
off guard by this. God. God wasn't trying to play
catch up with this. It was all it always was.
Just like with the twelve twelve tribes. God didn't go
all right, here's the twelve the twelve sons. Oh no,
the last one I lost the mother died. Oh I
lost control of that one. That's that doesn't describe how
(12:14):
God is fascinating stuff.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Did you ever think that with the loss of where
where are you God? We talked about this last the
last time we talked about questions, we talked about being
angry with God? Right, I don't remember thinking, because let
me say this, saying.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Where are you God? Is biblical? Yeah, being angry with
God is a sin. Actually a lot of people that's
a very very common question. How do you not be
angry with God. The end of the first chapter of Job.
This occurred to me the other day that it's very
clear here Job loses all his family, and he's Satan
(13:07):
gets permission, God allows it, and then God brings all
this on Job. And this is what Job said. One twenty.
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head,
and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said,
naked I have come from my mother's womb, and naked
I shall return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And
(13:32):
all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
Meaning when I read that the other day, it was clear,
it's like, oh, charging God with wrong is a sin,
and all this Job did not sin or charge God
with wrong. It is a sin to shake your fist
at God and say, how could you? You messed up?
(13:56):
I charge you with wrong. And we see, we see
from this example that Job did not. But we see
from the Psalmist we see that continually this idea of
where are you? How long, oh Lord, how long will
(14:16):
you hide your face from me? So there's this difference. Right,
one's a sin and one is seeking, is a seeking
a fellow, a communication in fellowship.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
You know, Gradue, you said that you were One of
the things that you struggled with was how quiet God appeared,
and you were like, do something, show me something which
was interesting. And then that night I heard a sermon
by surprisified John Piper. If you listen to this podcast,
you're like, Parker talk about John Piper too much. But
it was on Tewod Corinthians twelve, which is a fascinating
(14:49):
not to go on tangent, but it's a fascinating chapter
where Paul is talking about the thorn in his flesh,
which is some type of trial we don't know exactly
what was that God allows Paul to endure and he
asks three times for him to remove it, and God says, no,
my grace is sufficient for you. He's like, oh, it's
(15:10):
so good, and he's like, it hurts God, you know
Piper preaching it hurts, Please take it away. And three
times he says no, I'm going to keep it there.
And the reason is so that, it says because Paul
is somehow taken up to this third Heaven that he
talks about fourteen years ago and has shown some revelation.
(15:31):
We don't know exactly what it was, but Paul sees
something crazy fourteen years ago, was caught up to the
Third Heaven. Whether in body or out of the body,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
God knows.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And I know that this man was caught up into paradise.
He's talking about himself, and he heard things that cannot
be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of
this man, I will boast. But on my own behalf
I will not boast. And so it says, so to
keep me from being conceited because of the surpassing greatness
of the revelations that he had seen, a thorn was
(16:05):
given to me in the flesh. So the reason for
this thorn was to prevent Paul from becoming conceited because
of this particular revelation that he got. I never knew
that that was the reason for the thorn. And so
John Piper says, this is implying that there's a particular
amount of conceit or arrogance or pride that could come
(16:26):
from a special, extraordinary revelation from God. And I thought
about you, and I just thought, how many people want
a particular sign that's a special revelation, not to say
that God doesn't give those, but there's a specific danger
to that. If God had revealed himself to you in
a particular way, the danger could have been that you
(16:50):
would become conceited, because you obviously got this special revelation
that not very meaning people get. And so I was like,
maybe it was a it was a means of grace
for God to reveal himself through his word to you,
rather than some special revelation that you may become conceited in.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Man, that's good. And for the record, I wasn't a
Christian when I said that. When I wanted God to
reveal a sign to me, which I think is is
it should be an indication of a weaker faith or
a no belief at all. But you know what else
I thought of you as you said that tie back
to Jacob again in the book of Genesis, when we
(17:30):
see Jacob and we see the twelve sons will come
from him, twelve tribes of Israel will come from him
and his wife, and he wanted that blessing from God.
You remember this, So he wrestles with God, which is
literally you know, the word, we get the word Israel
from this He wrestles with God and prevailed, But it
(17:55):
wasn't that he This is a strange story, and but
you can't skip over it because it wasn't a prevailing
inso much as he beat God in a wrestling match,
that wasn't what it was. He got his blessing, he
prevailed in the way that he got his blessing, but
God touched his hip and permanently gave him that limp.
(18:18):
So with the blessing came the thorn. I will give
you this, but it will come for pain, and you'll
limp the rest of your life. This will be your thorn, Jacob.
And I will not call you Jacob anymore from now
when I will call you Israel. And so I didn't
ever might really think about that connection until you were talking,
(18:39):
and I was like, oh, yeah, Paul's thorn and Jacob's
hip socket. You know, both received something a supernatural revelation
which we don't get today. That We'll just be clear
about that we're different. We're not a patriarch or an apostle.
So now I'm not saying that, but in those instances,
(19:00):
God said, I'm going to give you a special revelation
that no one else has but you're going to pay
for it with something to keep you from being conceited
a thorn and a limp the rest of your life.
That's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Wonder if there's others that we could think about, Yeah,
we could trace it more. Probably wonder about like Moses
or Abraham. I don't know my old Testament as well
as I should.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Something we want to do in this podcast is as
we talk about storms of life and and and we
often want to hear how do you stay strong in
a storm of life? Like the question? And we always
want to turn inward with that question, don't we. We
always want to say, well, you know, I've got to
(19:42):
fortify myself, get you know, work out in the gym,
make sure I'm eating clean, And we always think inward,
that's how I get strength. I get strength from my
own effort. But that's not what the gospel says, Tyler,
Can you share the gospel? We always wanted to be
able to share when we talk about strength, We always
want to qualify that what that what we mean by
(20:07):
being strong because in Parker's example and Second Corinthians, God's
powers made perfect in our weakness, and so our strength
comes from God through our weakness, and that's where the
gospel comes in.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
Yeah, actually wrote down a lot of variations of the
Gospel just trying to I don't know, it's it's like
one of those things that like I used to put
quotes on my on my walls from you know, coaches
like Lou Holtz and stuff, or like stoic philosophers and
that sort of thing. Fortunately, I don't think I can
(20:47):
erase them. It's like a chalkboard things I need. Yeah, yeah,
I need to put the Gospel front and center and
like the Ten Commandments or like God's promises and stuff
like that. But so I'm actually going through like variations
of what I want to kind of put up so
this can be just kind of seen daily by me
(21:07):
and just etched into my heart. But I think I
like this one. The gospel is the good news that
sinful people can be made right with a holy God
through Jesus Christ. Christ lived a sinless life, died on
the cross, bearing God's wrath for sinners, and rose bodily
from the dead. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone,
(21:28):
in Christ alone, resulting in repentance and a transformed life.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Amen. Amen, That's the gospel, and that's the reason we
seek the one from the ninety nine, not because it's
our own power or not because it's our one, but
because flowing out from that kind of transformation, from that gospel,
we want to tell others about this and we want
them to be brought into the fold as well. That's
what we stand for here. We'll see you next Monday,
(21:54):
Yege
What's up them, Granger. I'm me here, man, I'm Tyler.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Parker.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the nine nine for one podcast. We got
the whole crew back sitting here. Got the A Team,
the eighteen Nothing against Amber met a guy two days ago,
had lunch with them. It worked all the special effects
for the old A Team. No way, really? Yes, does
he know where that van is? I would like to
(00:23):
know where they are. I should ask him about. Yeah,
he's a friends of he's friends with one of the
members of our church. Like original Van is still around.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I never watched the eight team.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
You never saw the eight team. You need to see that,
the original mister T and all the chains. I pitied
the fool.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
He's a Christian. I never watched you know that?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Is he really? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
You look up mister T on Twitter. It's like every
days the Bible Verse sharing the Gospel and stuff. Yeah
he's again.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Mister T. Yeah that's lazy, praise God.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Okay, but you never watched it either. It was a
little before my time. It was a staple for me.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Half of those got that stage. I was old about eighteen,
big time. Half of thos got that reference you brought
up then Okay, okay, we're gonna We're gonna continue through
these common questions that I get when I travel. I
did get on the last video get a comment that said,
how do I know where Granger travels? I guess sometimes
(01:21):
we post on my website. Sometimes we don't, Right, that's
all up to Tyler. It's up to Tyler's discernment.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
It's different in this world if we're selling tickets or
if we're not. If it's a I don't know it is,
it's weird because yes we but yes they should be
on grangersmith dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I live in a world, right it's not.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
It's probably because I'm messed up.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, I live in a world right now where I'm
just not promoting myself.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And even when I go speak someplace I could, it's
more like a friendly sharing, but it's not like a
come buy tickets or you know, typically it's free anyway,
But I'm not. Really, it's a strange world that I
I can't from the all promotion world to now. I
still occasionally travel and speak, but don't really promote it
(02:07):
and don't really need to most of the things I do.
It's kind of baked in.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Well, it's the same thing in the music world. It's
like we'll give them assets, photos, bios, maybe a script,
a video script, but it's ultimately up to the venue
or the music event, or the festival, or the church now,
the conference, the conference now to do their own internal
marketing to get people there.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, and it's usually, especially if it's a church, it's
always baked in like they would just expect that church
to attend, or that the men of that church to attend.
They're not necessarily always trying to reach for others to come.
And if they are, if it's a church trying to
reach everyone to come, then that's a completely different event altogether.
(02:55):
But we're talking about common questions I get because I
usually will do a Q and A at the end
of these things. And here's another common, very common question.
I got this just a few days ago. How do
you stay strong in the storms of life? That was
a question from a from a Christian in the audience,
(03:17):
A man, how do you stay strong in the storms
of life? Very common question. Get it almost every time,
and I always will. I always want to think about
what they words matter, So I want to think about
that word storm and I and I always tell people like, hey,
(03:39):
I almost just super practical guy. I'm a very practical guy.
And so when you say what do you do how
do you stay strong in a storm of life? I say, well,
how do you stay strong in any storm? Seek shelter
right then? And usually they don't get that off the
right of the bat. They're like prepare or I'm like no, no,
(04:02):
Like what do you do in the storm itself? There's
no there is no prayer, there's no preparing for a storm.
When it hits, you're either already prepared or not, but
you don't do the preparing when the storm its right
so you pretty much take shelter and you hunker down.
And I think that's lost in that. The question answers itself,
what do you do in a storm? You find that
(04:24):
the most secure place, and you huddle, you huddle up
and you wait.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So it means Jesus, it means prayer, it means reading,
diving into your Bible.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Which is all the preparation before should be doing that, right, Yeah,
So at some level the question is what do you
do right now? How do you stay strong now? So
I would divide that into two sections. The strength is
Christ when you can find a multipitituitive of verses of
him being our refuge, him being our rest, but then
(04:57):
in the storm part. I sometimes I just want to
give people a little bit of charity because I remember
one time this lady asked me this in Florida and
she said, how do you stay strong in the storms
of life? And I said, what's going on? I lost
my mom when two weeks ago. Okay, you're in the
(05:19):
epicenter of that storm right now, it's spinning all around you.
And we have to give people charity because you we
have this tendency to think, well, how do I start
fixing things right now? How do I start mending things?
And nobody mends in a storm.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Yeah, kind of what we're talking about a week or
two ago. So the the person asking that is not
a Christian, right, I can't go that far because I
don't know. I'm when it happened to me. The biggest
storm for me, which when we lost riv that that
storm made me recognize I was not a Christian right
(05:57):
when when a storm hit for me, I wasn't a
believer And it was just like, okay, do I'm gonna
check off the box.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Of this, this, this, this, this, this.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And it was Jesus that I needed to run to.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
So my mind like knowing my experience and hearing that
question now, it's like the answer is obvious to me.
But so so so when I hear somebody say that
in their struggle and they're suffering, they're just not a
true born again believer yet because the answer is so
obvious to me. I don't mean for that to sound mean,
(06:30):
but you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
But the answer is separated from the practical though, Like
you could know that answer and then the storm hits.
What do you do? You? Yeah, rest in Jesus? What
does that look like? That's just a sentence. You just said,
rest in Jesus. That's just like a church church phrase.
So are you saying what do I do? I'm really
hurting right now. I'm in the story as a believer.
(06:53):
Yeah yeah, yeah, sure, yeah yeah. You're part of a
local church. My first question. The people around you are
so important to be able to make you a meal,
to be on a prayer list, to worship together on
Sunday morning, to be there for you when you're in
your darkest moment. Who's around you? So what you're saying
(07:15):
are ordinary? What we call ordinary means of grace. Read
your Bible, abide in this word, open your door to
fellow church members that want to serve you. Uh, be
in prayer, eat a meal, take a shower, and just
(07:37):
very if we look for these crazy things to do,
but it's really the ordinary means of grace that we do,
should do before the storm, and then we continue to
do in the storm. And where I said we're not
talking about charity is I want to give people to
always give people charity and just say don't try to
do things. You don't do things in a storm. You
don't tend to garden, you don't paint your fence, you know,
(08:01):
you don't go gas up your truck. You you just
set it out. And the storm, which is great, it's
such a great illustration. Storms are come and go that
and they come in seasons. Every season changes. All seasons change,
good seasons, bad seasons, stormy seasons, calm seasons. They come
(08:24):
and go and for the better or worse because you
don't want the good seasons to go, but they go
and then the bad seasons come. And so when you're
in a storm, part of it is just recognizing hold up.
It feels like this is eternity, but it will pass,
and at some level just wait it out. Board up
(08:45):
the windows, you know, lock the doors and wait it
out and it will pass.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
And when you're in a good season to have this
self awareness to stalk up and have the perspective of
not living in fear of a bad season, but my
thanking God for this good season. And am I using
this to prepare myself for storms that could come? Am
I building up relationships with other believers so that I
(09:13):
can have that there when I need that lifeline?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Do I have that relationship with my church? Do I have.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
A communion with God built into my day now so
that when I do go in that trial, I'll be ready.
I just think of the guy around here this week
who just lost his wife and he has three kids.
His wife was pregnant and he found her unconscious, she
heard blood pressure, just spited. She was pregnant with their
(09:40):
fourth little girl, and they took her to the hospital
and they were able to save the baby, but his
wife died, and so this guy is now left with
three three little girls and then a fourth baby, little newborn.
You just think of like those those types of trials
that just like completely umble you.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
We should put that gofund me in the description.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
By the way, I didn't know that story.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
I saw Amber shared it on her page.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah he's a Williamson County deputy, I believe.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
You know what's so interesting that what you said about that.
Why that's interesting is because I'm reading through Genesis right
now in my reading plan, and that happens to Jacob Israel,
his wife Rachel, that he loves. You know, he loved Rachel.
And the the promise that God gave Jacob was that
(10:40):
through you all the nations would be blessed. It's the
same same promise he gave to Isaac's dad and his
grandpa Abraham. But you, it will be through you that
the that that the promise of my people will go
out to reach the world. And through that promise, simultaneou
God uses the offspring and one of them Benjamin kills,
(11:04):
his wife, kills Rachel through childbirth. Rachel dies giving birth
to Benjamin. And you just look at that, and you know, God,
you could have you could have through the offspring, wouldn't
you have prepared that? Also the wife would obviously live,
but through the through the offspring that you would say,
would one day be the twelve tribes of Israel, and
(11:28):
and eventually the Christ would come through. And and actually
Paul the apostle, Paul comes through the tribe of Benjamin,
and you're gonna you're gonna take the mother's life with this.
That doesn't sound good. And and God, that's how God works.
And so this this story, it's the it's no different
in the way that God was not was not caught
(11:51):
off guard by this. God. God wasn't trying to play
catch up with this. It was all it always was.
Just like with the twelve twelve tribes. God didn't go
all right, here's the twelve the twelve sons. Oh no,
the last one I lost the mother died. Oh I
lost control of that one. That's that doesn't describe how
(12:14):
God is fascinating stuff.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Did you ever think that with the loss of where
where are you God? We talked about this last the
last time we talked about questions, we talked about being
angry with God? Right, I don't remember thinking, because let
me say this, saying.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Where are you God? Is biblical? Yeah, being angry with
God is a sin. Actually a lot of people that's
a very very common question. How do you not be
angry with God. The end of the first chapter of Job.
This occurred to me the other day that it's very
clear here Job loses all his family, and he's Satan
(13:07):
gets permission, God allows it, and then God brings all
this on Job. And this is what Job said. One twenty.
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head,
and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said,
naked I have come from my mother's womb, and naked
I shall return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And
(13:32):
all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
Meaning when I read that the other day, it was clear,
it's like, oh, charging God with wrong is a sin,
and all this Job did not sin or charge God
with wrong. It is a sin to shake your fist
at God and say, how could you? You messed up?
(13:56):
I charge you with wrong. And we see, we see
from this example that Job did not. But we see
from the Psalmist we see that continually this idea of
where are you? How long, oh Lord, how long will
(14:16):
you hide your face from me? So there's this difference. Right,
one's a sin and one is seeking, is a seeking
a fellow, a communication in fellowship.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
You know, Gradue, you said that you were One of
the things that you struggled with was how quiet God appeared,
and you were like, do something, show me something which
was interesting. And then that night I heard a sermon
by surprisified John Piper. If you listen to this podcast,
you're like, Parker talk about John Piper too much. But
it was on Tewod Corinthians twelve, which is a fascinating
(14:49):
not to go on tangent, but it's a fascinating chapter
where Paul is talking about the thorn in his flesh,
which is some type of trial we don't know exactly
what was that God allows Paul to endure and he
asks three times for him to remove it, and God says, no,
my grace is sufficient for you. He's like, oh, it's
(15:10):
so good, and he's like, it hurts God, you know
Piper preaching it hurts, Please take it away. And three
times he says no, I'm going to keep it there.
And the reason is so that, it says because Paul
is somehow taken up to this third Heaven that he
talks about fourteen years ago and has shown some revelation.
(15:31):
We don't know exactly what it was, but Paul sees
something crazy fourteen years ago, was caught up to the
Third Heaven. Whether in body or out of the body,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
God knows.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
And I know that this man was caught up into paradise.
He's talking about himself, and he heard things that cannot
be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of
this man, I will boast. But on my own behalf
I will not boast. And so it says, so to
keep me from being conceited because of the surpassing greatness
of the revelations that he had seen, a thorn was
(16:05):
given to me in the flesh. So the reason for
this thorn was to prevent Paul from becoming conceited because
of this particular revelation that he got. I never knew
that that was the reason for the thorn. And so
John Piper says, this is implying that there's a particular
amount of conceit or arrogance or pride that could come
(16:26):
from a special, extraordinary revelation from God. And I thought
about you, and I just thought, how many people want
a particular sign that's a special revelation, not to say
that God doesn't give those, but there's a specific danger
to that. If God had revealed himself to you in
a particular way, the danger could have been that you
(16:50):
would become conceited, because you obviously got this special revelation
that not very meaning people get. And so I was like,
maybe it was a it was a means of grace
for God to reveal himself through his word to you,
rather than some special revelation that you may become conceited in.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Man, that's good. And for the record, I wasn't a
Christian when I said that. When I wanted God to
reveal a sign to me, which I think is is
it should be an indication of a weaker faith or
a no belief at all. But you know what else
I thought of you as you said that tie back
to Jacob again in the book of Genesis, when we
(17:30):
see Jacob and we see the twelve sons will come
from him, twelve tribes of Israel will come from him
and his wife, and he wanted that blessing from God.
You remember this, So he wrestles with God, which is
literally you know, the word, we get the word Israel
from this He wrestles with God and prevailed, But it
(17:55):
wasn't that he This is a strange story, and but
you can't skip over it because it wasn't a prevailing
inso much as he beat God in a wrestling match,
that wasn't what it was. He got his blessing, he
prevailed in the way that he got his blessing, but
God touched his hip and permanently gave him that limp.
(18:18):
So with the blessing came the thorn. I will give
you this, but it will come for pain, and you'll
limp the rest of your life. This will be your thorn, Jacob.
And I will not call you Jacob anymore from now
when I will call you Israel. And so I didn't
ever might really think about that connection until you were talking,
(18:39):
and I was like, oh, yeah, Paul's thorn and Jacob's
hip socket. You know, both received something a supernatural revelation
which we don't get today. That We'll just be clear
about that we're different. We're not a patriarch or an apostle.
So now I'm not saying that, but in those instances,
(19:00):
God said, I'm going to give you a special revelation
that no one else has but you're going to pay
for it with something to keep you from being conceited
a thorn and a limp the rest of your life.
That's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Wonder if there's others that we could think about, Yeah,
we could trace it more. Probably wonder about like Moses
or Abraham. I don't know my old Testament as well
as I should.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Something we want to do in this podcast is as
we talk about storms of life and and and we
often want to hear how do you stay strong in
a storm of life? Like the question? And we always
want to turn inward with that question, don't we. We
always want to say, well, you know, I've got to
(19:42):
fortify myself, get you know, work out in the gym,
make sure I'm eating clean, And we always think inward,
that's how I get strength. I get strength from my
own effort. But that's not what the gospel says, Tyler,
Can you share the gospel? We always wanted to be
able to share when we talk about strength, We always
want to qualify that what that what we mean by
(20:07):
being strong because in Parker's example and Second Corinthians, God's
powers made perfect in our weakness, and so our strength
comes from God through our weakness, and that's where the
gospel comes in.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
Yeah, actually wrote down a lot of variations of the
Gospel just trying to I don't know, it's it's like
one of those things that like I used to put
quotes on my on my walls from you know, coaches
like Lou Holtz and stuff, or like stoic philosophers and
that sort of thing. Fortunately, I don't think I can
(20:47):
erase them. It's like a chalkboard things I need. Yeah, yeah,
I need to put the Gospel front and center and
like the Ten Commandments or like God's promises and stuff
like that. But so I'm actually going through like variations
of what I want to kind of put up so
this can be just kind of seen daily by me
(21:07):
and just etched into my heart. But I think I
like this one. The gospel is the good news that
sinful people can be made right with a holy God
through Jesus Christ. Christ lived a sinless life, died on
the cross, bearing God's wrath for sinners, and rose bodily
from the dead. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone,
(21:28):
in Christ alone, resulting in repentance and a transformed life.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Amen. Amen, That's the gospel, and that's the reason we
seek the one from the ninety nine, not because it's
our own power or not because it's our one, but
because flowing out from that kind of transformation, from that gospel,
we want to tell others about this and we want
them to be brought into the fold as well. That's
what we stand for here. We'll see you next Monday,
(21:54):
Yege
Host
Granger Smith
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