August 28, 2023 • 49 mins
Granger Smith Podcast Episode 203: Join me as we discuss this topic and more on this week's podcast!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What are things that are meaningful to you? And what
are things that you're just trying to make more money? Well,
what's up everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. This is
episode two three, and I am answering your questions. You
(00:22):
email me Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com and we'll
walk through them, like we're sitting around the campfire, Like
we're sitting in the cab of a truck, and you say, man,
can I run something by you? Like something's been kind
of irking me a little bit and I'd love to
just walk through it. Not that I'm an expert, and
not that I have any notes sitting out here or
(00:43):
anything like that. More so, we're just talking as friends,
and it could be about any subject. In fact, I've
got some queued up right here, and these are random.
First question says subject line rest. How to achieve this? Hey, Granger.
First off, it goes without saying I love the podcast,
(01:04):
love you and Amber and the kids and all that
you do, eeyee, liveyee and all the sorts. My question
is how do you achieve rest? I'm not talking about
spiritual rest. I have your verse you wrote for me
last fall tattooed on my arm I'm talking about physical rest.
(01:26):
I'm writing you because I struggle to get adequate rest,
as I know that a lot of people do. I
work for a heavy construction equipment dealer, and that is
number one. That is the number one most mentioned thing
between my clients and co workers. I'm tired. I work
long hours because of the shortage of labor and staffing,
(01:49):
which I know isn't an excuse, but it's just the facts.
I personally work sixty hours a week Monday through Friday,
on top of my other duties as a husband at home,
trying to study for seminary workouts, admittedly not as often
as I should. I run a small business and a
hobby to try and supplement some income for our increasing
(02:11):
economic cost and I try to stay updated on the
Smith's in your podcast to take and read podcast and
playback of after midnight. I've tried, unsuccessfully to get proper
amounts of sleep, and I just can't seem to get
a full rest so much as to the point where
I've had to point people. I've had the point where
(02:32):
people point out my tattoo and ask, how does that
work when you look so tired. I believe he's talking
to be talking about Jesus saying, come to meet all
you are weary and burden and I'll give you rest.
This is incredible, incredibly convicting. Sorry for the link the email,
but you mentioned in Like a River in your podcast
(02:54):
numerous times how busy your life is and how early
you wake up, and I would love your insight on
how you get physical rest. I'm gonna take a nap now. PS.
I hope you enjoyed the Irish soda bread recipe in
God's Hands Michael Kennedy, Hey, Michael, thank you brother very much,
and I appreciate you emailing and talking about a subject
(03:18):
that is that's it's not easy to answer and and
I'll try to walk through it with you. Absolutely. One
thing to say is the easiest thing right off the
bat is you're gonna have to if you want to
get physically, get more rest, more sleep, you're gonna have
(03:41):
to cut some things out. Unfortunately for me, the first
the first thing that's gotta go is your consumption of
dismiss and the take and read podcast and playback of
after Midnight. You're gonna have to at least get rid
of something. And come on, you know, I'm serious. If
I'm asking you to not consume as much of my
(04:01):
media as you are right now. Another thing, another way
to look at this is, well, there's several Another way
is do you really need as much sleep as you
think you need? Because I Amber and I we just
we survive on about six hours, and I know that
(04:24):
the doctor is going to say you need eight, and
you're you're not functioning correctly, You're risking memory loss and
things like that with less than eight. I understand, that's
I get it. I actually function pretty good with seven.
But you know, I monitor everything with my watch. I've
got one of these garment watches, and I monitor my
(04:45):
sleep and I usually get about six six fifteen, six
twenty six thirty. That's pretty average for me. When I'm
on tour, it's more like five. And I just I
have a lot of I have a lot of things
that are meaningful to me. So I would start to
(05:08):
discern in your life what are things that are meaningful
to you and what are things that you're just trying
to make more money, and then ask yourself why, like why,
let me see, let me go back to you what
you said. You work sixty hours a week Monday through Friday,
and then you run a small business hobby to try
to supplement some income in your increasing economy cost. That's
(05:33):
what you said. Why why are your cost are you?
Are you talking about just the national economy is rising,
inflation is rising. Does that require another job? It's a
serious question. You have a family, you have a lot
of things going on here. Seminary, I don't know why
(05:54):
you're doing seminary. That's that's a completely different story. I'm
confused at why you're doing seminary and a sixty hour
heavy machinery job and a small business hobby to make
more money. That's I don't. I don't know that. I don't.
I'd have to sit with you on that. So so
there's a lot of dynamics here. One is you're gonna
(06:16):
have to give up some stuff, probably social media or
podcast that you listen to, or figure out a way
that those fit in your commute times so that you're
not taking extra time to listen or watch. You're actually
adding that to your time to work. Right, listen to
this podcast on the way to work, so you're not
sitting around at home. Minimize your social media time like
(06:42):
that should be the number one thing to go. If
you're on Instagram, if you're on Facebook, TikTok, get rid
of it. That is a time sucker. That's hands down.
I would really think about this hobby small business thing
and ask you why why are you doing that? And
you're doing seminary. What's something's got to give here? If
(07:03):
you're doing seminary to equip yourself, why are you also
in a season of wanting to make more money? And
if you say if your answer is, man, I'm trying
to make more money because we're in debt, then I say, oh,
that's a different conversation. Now we need to talk about
why your family is spending so much money that it's
gotten you into a situation where you're adding to your
(07:26):
sixty hour a week job with another job. I would say,
because I think heavy machinery that usually makes pretty good money.
So I'm gonna say, what's going on? We need to
talk about this right. Another way to look at this
is I live on my reminder list on my phone.
I've got an iPhone and it's got reminders on it,
(07:50):
and I'll go through at least in the mornings. I'll
get up at five five point thirty, and that's the
first thing is going to be my coffee and my
Bible reading, and that's usually gonna take me about an hour.
I'm gonna study the word. I'm going to go through
my mix shamee plan read my four chapters and nothing
is going to compromise that time. But right after that,
(08:12):
I'm gonna do my quick journal entry. I'm gonna do
my social media posts on what I learned, my takeaway
from my Bible reading. And then I'm going to go
into my reminder list and I'm gonna look at my
reminder list what's left, and I'm going to add new ones.
So it's going to say it's going to say record
(08:34):
Monday's podcast, right, and so I'll know that I need
to knock out the podcast. I'm talking about this one.
I need to record the podcast, and I'll do that
if I know I'm leaving out of town and I
need to get it done today. So then it's on
that list, and periodically i'll check that list during the day,
and I'll also put the easy things on there, like
(08:57):
I'll say take the kids to school, it's an easy one.
I'll say, read ten pages for seminary. I'll say make it.
Make social media post, right, So I go into those
easy ones and on Apple, those reminders, it's a little
dot and I hit that dot and as soon as
(09:18):
I hit that dot, it fills in the space and
it disappears, and there's there's there is there is a
dopamine effect of doing that. It's like done, and the
list gets shorter. Right, So my list is going to
say things like Monday after midnight, Tuesdays after midnight. I'm
(09:41):
not talking about that's when I do it. I'm talking
about the actual show itself. It's going to say podcast
eight twenty eight or whatever, and it's going to say
interview with so and so. So when I finish that
after midnight, I record it, finish it, I I pull
out my phone. One of the first things I do
(10:02):
is I hit that button and he goes disappears. My
list gets shorter. Now, when you sit down and you
have the tendency to watch YouTube or check out social media.
Instead of doing that tendency, you pull out your phone
now and you look at your reminder list and you go,
all right, I've got I've got forty five minutes right now.
(10:24):
So this is me. Let me speak for myself. I
would say I've got forty five minutes before the kids
get home. What could I do in forty five minutes? Oh,
I could knock out that social media post that I
needed to do to promote Like a riverbook. Okay, because
the publisher said, Amazon is now offering this week three
(10:46):
dollars off for your book. Will you post about it
sometime this week? Okay, cool, I got forty five minutes.
I'll do that now. So I go in, pick up
my phone, talk about the three dollars discount on Like
a River, and the first thing I do go back
to my reminders, Boom, hit that button. It disappears. Now
there is a dopamine hit that I get when I
do that. I love it. So that's very important to
(11:07):
be able to time manage and then understand your own
body clock, because understand that there's certain things that you
can do on your to do list and certain things
you can't depending on the time of day. For instance,
I'm pretty worthless after about five o'clock five pm. I
need to start doing the more mindless things on my list.
(11:29):
At five pm, I'm pretty good. At like nine ten am,
I'm pretty sharp. So it's better for me as y'all
might know to record a podcast in the morning than
it is when you've heard me do podcasts at ten
o'clock at night and I'm just kind of like mad
and grumbling through it. So yeah, be aware of where
your brain is on that time of day. These are
(11:50):
really helpful things for me, and I don't know how
helpful it is to you, but this is the income thing.
That's a family conversation. And so email back and see
if this makes sense. And Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a
speech he did one time, he said, I think maybe
you should just sleep less. So maybe just get used
(12:13):
to in this season of your life, Michael, and that
everything in life is a season. It's going to pass,
but in this season you might just be sleeping less.
Let's move on here. Next question, Sebie Cline says divorce
(12:33):
with a narcissist email says, Hey man, I've been battling
my faith when what's going on my divorce in this
is I'm gonna read it exactly like it says it.
Hey man, I've been battling my faith. When what's going
on in my divorce and child custody issues? Do youI
have an episode that deals with any of this. Thanks Chris.
(12:58):
All right, Chris, I appreciate you man. And this is
an interesting, interesting thing one one I think I should
probably be building this podcast more towards episodic themes. I've
actually been talking about talking to ant Man, my friend
(13:18):
and producer of EU Radio and after Midnight and just
talking to him about Man, you want to come in
and produce the podcast and well, and you take over
these questions and kind of lump them into groups so
that when I release an episode, it could be all
one group, Like I could do one podcast that's just
about time management, one that's just about battling with your faith. Right.
(13:45):
So comment below if you're on a platform that can comment,
and let me know or hit me up on social
media and let me know if that's something you'd be
interested in. That's beside the point. The other thing is,
in our culture, this is what we do in twenty
twenty three. We look and this is the same way
we read the Bible. We like to read the Bible
(14:07):
in a way where we want to find what we
need in our situation and move on. Just give me
the answer quick. I'm struggling with my faith right now.
Show me the part in the Bible that says that,
so I could read it and move on, like give
me the cliff notes, I need to move fast, and
(14:29):
it just never really works that way. What's going on
When you are saying I'm battling, I think what you
mean is I'm struggling. I'm feeling like my faith is
failing me because of the season of going through a
(14:50):
divorce and child custody issues. What you're saying is, here's
what you mean by that. What's happening is adversity in life. Struggle.
Suffering in this way is revealing to you that your
(15:12):
faith wasn't worth anything. That's what it is. And that's
so it's so interesting, right because this is what the
apostles talk about. This is what oh I mean? Really,
the Old and New Testament are both going to talk
a lot about the testing of the faith, testing it
(15:37):
as if a precious metal in a fire. So you
can test a precious metal by by heat testing, right,
and it's not a precious metal. It's gonna disintegrate at
a certain level of heat if it's not worthy. We
(16:00):
could say it that way, and this is the same
way with our faith. Your faith is nothing during good times,
during happy you know, nice comfortable times, your faith is
worthless to me, and it's worthless to you. You can't
convince me or yourself more importantly, that your faith matters
(16:21):
at all. When life is good and you're comfortable. You
know what your faith is made of when you put
it in the fire, just like a precious metal. So
you're going to know gold when it goes through a
very heat pressured oven, and you're gonna know what your
(16:42):
faith is. Is it real gold? Is your faith gold?
Is it a precious metal or is it just aluminum
when you put it into a heat pressured oven. So
you're in this oven right now, divorce, child, custody battles,
and you're going, Man, I am melting like foil my faith.
I don't even know if God's up there at all.
(17:04):
In fact, I thought I used to think I was
a Christian. Now you know what, I don't even know
what I am. Why Because you're through the testing of
your faith, you're finding out it's worthless. Look, that's not
all bad news. The testing of the faith, the result
of it, whether it's good or bad, it's all positive
(17:25):
because at least you know you're learning now, so you
can go one of two ways you can go my
faith was worthless, it was tested by this divorce, and
I guess I'm not even a Christian. Or you can
go uh oh. Through the testing of my faith with
this divorce, I'm realizing my faith is not a saving faith.
(17:47):
I better figure this out. And I say that in
a way that you're not going to figure it out
in terms of pleasing God or being worthy of God
or working towards God's favor. You need to figure it
out in terms of your responsibility to respond to the Gospel,
to repent and turn away from your sin and turn
(18:09):
towards God. When you repent and turns towards God, your
faith begins to grow. So you believe, and you repent
and you turn to God. In turn, your faith starts
to grow. And then through more testing of your faith
and it withholds the oven, it doesn't melt like aluminum.
(18:29):
You start to gain more confidence than your faith grows
from there. So right now, Chris, your faith sucks because
it's being tested. Repent, believe, turn to the Gospel, Turn
to God, your creator. You're created in his image. Turn
(18:52):
to him. Whatever this divorce is, whatever's going on with
this child, custody, don't harbor anger, forgive and turn to God.
Watch your faith grow. That's one choice, and it is yours.
Or you could flounder way and melt like a luminum.
We'll take a break and be right back. Do you
(19:17):
have my book like a River yet? I hope you do.
I hope you have a copy of it. Plus have
you heard the audio book? Because there are lots of
extra things, little commentaries here and there. As I read
the book the manuscript, I would add a few commentaries
here and there as I was going down, just to
help give a better perspective. And I just did that
(19:40):
on the fly. And then there was a long interview
It's about an hour long at the end, with just
Amber and I kind of asking each other questions and
reflecting back on the book. So I would encourage you
to listen to all of that and you could knock
that out. I think it's like five hours forty five
minutes is the entire thing, And you could do that
(20:02):
and just like a week of work commutes, so on
your way to work, on your way back from work,
through that three or four days, and I'm assuming you
could knock it out. I would love to hear what
you have to say about that. The book is still
doing really great, like on top of the Amazon charts.
And how you could help me is by reviewing it.
So say you buy it on Amazon or Barnesennoble or
(20:23):
Walmart dot com, wherever you buy it if it's online,
go ahead and leave us a five star review and
tell me what you think about the book. That would
be tremendously helpful. And ultimately the goal is to kick
it up the algorithm so that people who don't know
who I am never listen to country music in their
life and they could come across this book is something
(20:45):
they've never heard of before because of the algorithm you
kicked over to them by leaving the review. That's how
it works, and so I appreciate that so much. And
that also reminds me thank you for all of y'all
that have been posting it on x or instance or
threads or TikTok and Facebook, all the different social media
platforms I've seen y'all posting it, and that means the
(21:08):
world to me because a personal testimony to the book,
if it's mattered to you and you tell your friends, hey,
this book has been really impactful for me. That matters
so much more than anything else. I could tell them,
a personal testimony counts so much more. So thank you
for all that, and thank you for ultimately just consuming
(21:28):
a book that is so personal to me. This is
really up until now you could say this has been
my life passion project. I just didn't always know it.
But it's the most important piece of media I've ever
put out. Hey, if you want to get a hold
of me as always, check out cameo dot com slash
Granger Smith or download the Cameo app and search for
me Granger Smith. I could leave you through that a
(21:50):
personal video message from my phone to yours. You ask
me to say whatever it is, happy birthday, to my son,
to my daughter, to my space whose happy anniversary, Maybe
some words of encouragement, maybe it's just to you. Whatever
it is, you just write in what you want me
to say, and I'll sit here on my phone and
record a video and send it back to you. It
super easy. Once again, Cameo dot com c am eo
(22:14):
slash Granger Smith. Let's get back to the podcast. Well,
back to the podcast. Answering your questions, You could email
me Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com and we'll put
it in a queue. If you have not considered, I'll
(22:35):
put it that way, If you haven't considered my book
like a river, I would ask you to consider this
book because I would hope that if you're interested in
this podcast, then it would matter to you and you
would be interested in the book because I have poured
so much of my life into it. And it's the
(22:57):
story of lose and riv our son in twenty nineteen
and me floundering around, and as the last email said
about faith, I figured out that I had a worthless
faith in twenty nineteen. And through that testing and through
(23:19):
the revealing that my faith was not a saving faith
and that it was worthless, that caused me to dig
in and soak up the Gospel and repent and believe
and everything after that. This is the delight of my
(23:39):
life to sit here in a chair and tell people
about the one that saved me. That it is truly
as busy as I am, as much stuff as I
have going on, I love what I do now of
(24:01):
talking in a microphone about Jesus and about people that
might be stuck, people that might think they're Christians that aren't.
Because I was that, And it's the delight of my life.
It's a joy, you guys, remember Matthew thirteen. The parable
of the Hidden Treasure, says Jesus says, the Kingdom of
(24:22):
God is like a man that finds a treasure hidden
in a field, and he finds it, covers it up,
and then goes in his joy with joy and sells
everything he owns to buy that field. That's me. It
is worth it. It is so meaningful. I sleep so
(24:44):
good at night knowing that I get the honor and
privilege of speaking about my Savior in a way that
I can't possibly do him justice. But the fact that
he had mercy on someone like me, y'all, someone like me,
(25:06):
just a worthless country singer, all wrapped up in himself,
all worried about himself and worried about his image and
his name and his chart position with his latest single
a Wretch. The fact that the Lord had mercy on me,
a wretch stuck in my own ways, turned me around,
(25:28):
grabbed a hold of me, and pulled me in. The
fact that he did that is pretty remarkable, And that
is why I would encourage everyone to check out the book.
Like a River and Suit what you think. Yeah, let's
get to the next question. Subdecline on this says fear,
(25:52):
and the email says, Hey, mister Smith, I'm a big
fan from California emailing to ask you some dating advice.
I am a sophomore in high school and I have
a really big fear of not finding a wife one day.
All of my friends who have girlfriends are making me
very self conscious. I trust that God has a plan
(26:13):
and he knows my future, but that fear of being
a fool is all over my heart. Any thought on
how to get past this? Thanks for your help, Wyatt.
Whyat let me read this again and make sure I
know that you're saying what I think you're saying. You
(26:34):
are a sophomore in high school. That's going to make
you fourteen fifteenth, fifteen, sixteen sixteen. You're about sixteen, and
you have a really big fear of not finding a
wife one day because all of your friends have girlfriends,
and it's making yourself Whyat, stop it, bro, stop it, man?
(26:55):
Would you stop and just be a sophomore? And first
of all, you're better off without a girlfriend Like all
your friends I have, You're better off without a girlfriend
doing the things that a sophomore in high school does
like schoolwork, like a hobby, like hobby, including maybe be
(27:16):
playing on a sports team, doing something that you enjoy,
whether that's a drama team or a chess team, or
choir or a country music dance team. Y'all believe it
or not. This might be crazy to even say it
(27:37):
out loud, but when I was in high school, when
I was a sophomore in junior in high school, I
was on a country music dance team called the Wildcat Wranglers,
and I liked it. I wanted to learn out of
two stuff. And it was like a you know, it
was pretty stupid, but we wore boots and wranglers and
buckles and button up start shirts with cowboy hats, and
(28:00):
we each had a partner and we did all the
spins and the flips and you know, danced around and
went and we traveled to the White House actually one
time and performed. It was it was kind of weird.
But my point is there's something you can get involved
with that's better than having a girlfriend, because you're gonna
sit around and you're gonna just waste your life away.
(28:23):
Your precious high school years could be wasted away by
dealing with the drama of having a girlfriend. Don't get
caught up in that you're better off without it, And
that does not correlate you having a girlfriend right now
your sophomore year in high school does not correlate to
if you're gonna get a wife anytime soon or not.
(28:45):
Some of these guys that are dating right now that
have girlfriends and their sophomore year in high school, some
of these guys are gonna continue dating through their twenties
and thirties and still not be content. That doesn't mean
that they're gonna find wives. And some of the guys
that don't have a girlfriend at all and don't date
at all, suddenly they're twenty four to twenty five and
(29:06):
they go on their first date and they fall in
love and they end up actually marrying that girl. He said,
there's no correlation, rhyme, or reason at all. You're not
needed to date when your sophomore year so that you
could have a wife one day. So your fear, as
you say, you have a really big fear of not
finding a wife one day, needs to stop. If I
(29:29):
was with you in person, I would say, bro, stop,
be sixteen. Do you have a driver's license yet. Have
you saved up to buy an old truck or something yet?
Do that? Take that truck, muddon, and then you're gonna
have to deal with cleaning all the mud off the undercarriage.
(29:51):
Take it from somebody who knows. I love being sixteen, man,
and I don't want you to waste it by worrying
or having a fear of a wife. It's just not valid.
Stop it. Next question, Subsecline says, like a river McShane,
(30:12):
Hey Granger, I am what you call a dog tag Christian.
I finished reading your book Like a River, and it
spoke to me profoundly. Thank you for that. I want
to do the McShane daily Bible readings that you spoke
about in your book. How should I start it, though?
Start the readings now but with January readings or start
(30:35):
on the true date of today in August according to
his calendar. Thanks Ashley from Nebraska. Okay, okay, I like this. Yeah,
there's an easy, super easy answer. The dates associated with that,
like January one. Starting a Genesis one that's merely a suggestion,
(30:58):
and I personally have never done it ever. Lined up
the dates with what I'm going to read I started
when I first learned about the McShane plan. It was
in twenty twenty and it was probably like, I don't know, April,
and I just started on the first the first reading,
which was I don't remember Genesis one, Matthew one. I
(31:26):
don't remember what the other ones are, Acts one, maybe
so Ezra or something I don't remember, but yeah, just start,
just start today and start at the beginning. You're not
you can't jump in in the August reading, whatever that
might be. You need to start at the beginning and
(31:47):
make this your your starting point. And for everybody that
doesn't know what she's talking about, I advocate personally for
the McShane Bible Reading Plan, but there are many, many,
many many others. So this is just an example of
what I love. I think it's put together really well,
and it is. It gets you through the New Testament
(32:09):
twice in a year, the Psalms twice in a year
in the Old Testament. Once it gives you, it sets
up your reading daily and it's usually one chapter, sometimes two,
from four different places in the Bible, so you're going
through at least four, sometimes five or six chapters a day.
And it's about even if it's two chapters in one section.
(32:32):
It's about the same length. So you're doing the same
amount of reading every single day, and before you know it,
a calendar year goes by and you go wow. Half
cruise through the whole Bible once, New Testament twice and
the Psalms twice. It's pretty cool, all right. Next question,
subject line says like a river question. Hey, Grangeer, I've
(32:55):
loved your music for years. I grew up in college station.
I'm an Aggie fan as well. I've been following your
family closely since twenty nineteen, and y'all's story of faith
has inspired me. Especially because your book. I've been more
present and patient with my children, and I've been more
motivated to getting back into the Word of God because
of your words. Thank you so much for what you
(33:17):
have done. My husband got me like a River, and
the day it came in, I could not put it
down until two am when I finished. It was the
perfect message I needed to hear at this point in
my life to make sure I was doing my part
to be a good example to my kids and honoring
God with my time. Because when you don't feel like
you need God because you live a comfortable life. Hey,
(33:39):
we talked about that a few questions ago. Your faith
is not tested when you're living a comfortable life. That's
perfect that. She said that. I struggle with prioritizing studying
the Bible, but I want a firm foundation for my
family and to grow my three kids to serve and
live a purposeful life. There are ways that my husband
(34:01):
and are trying to control our lives instead of following
and surrendering to God, and your book reminded me of that.
So anyways, I have questions, two questions, and I did
just start listening to your podcast, So if you have
any of them already answered, just ignore it. You know
I never do that. I don't mind repeating things. First
question is how did your wife find that she needed God?
(34:25):
Or when did she begin her relationship with him? Was
it before or after you? And did one of you
help or inspire the other? I'll go ahead and read
the second question. A lot of people I care about
aren't saved, and the big reason is they believe the
lies about the Bible. They believe the lies about the
Bible not being trustworthy or being written by imperfect people.
(34:50):
I know the truth about God having his hand in
it and all the miraculous details lining up. And I
even went to the library to I even went to
Liberty University and took an apologetics class, and I can't
figure out a good way to word it to them.
So if you can give me some advice, that would
be great. I appreciate you and all you're doing in
(35:13):
your positive effect you've had in my life. Stevie Dillard.
All right, Stevie, let's dive into your questions here, and
I'm going to start with in order and go to
number one. Let me read back just a few things
I want to know more about you. You are inspired
(35:35):
by the book. Thank you for that. It's the perfect
message you needed to hear. Good, good, good. You went
through a time when you didn't feel like you need
God because you lived the comfortable life, and now you
struggle with prioritizing the Bible. Okay, all right, Stevie. First
(36:03):
of all, I would be m you are. You're searching
right now, and you're asking the right questions. And I
would be if I was your friend and we're, you know,
(36:25):
sitting around the campfire having this conversation, I would be
concerned with you. If you don't have a desire to
prioritize studying the Bible. I do know Christians that struggle
(36:47):
with this. So I'm not saying I'm not saying you're
not a Christian, but I'm saying it's always a little
bit of a red flag to me for someone that says, yeah,
I love God, and I just don't really you know,
like going to church, it's not really a big deal.
Don't really care about reading the Bible. My prayer life.
I could tell you your prayer life is probably not
(37:09):
great if those other two things aren't lining up. The
fruits of a Christian, of a changed life, of someone
that is reborn and completely reshaped by Jesus in the Gospel.
(37:29):
The fruit of that is you want to seek him more.
You want to know him more. You want to be
around other people that are talking about Him, that know
him more so that you could start to imitate him.
That's the ultimate goal of what you want. And that's
why we read the Bible really is because we're transformed
by the Word and we want to know more about
(37:52):
who God is so that we can imitate him. Not
so that we know exactly what his rules are, but
so that we know exactly what he would do in
a situation because we've learned him so well. Then at
that point you don't need to know all the little
tiny rules. They don't need to exist. You have a
(38:14):
heart like him, You know how he thinks, You know
what he loves, you know what he hates. That's the goal. Now,
that's called sanctification, and it takes our entire life before
we could truly imitate Christ. It will take our entire life.
But at the beginning, you should feel a desire that says,
(38:34):
if anything, if anything, I really want to go plug
into a local body, a local church. I really want
to get to know some members and some other people
in my community that are seeking and through that encourage
each other to what read the Bible, to increase your
(38:56):
prayer life, to deepen your relationship. Would be a little
bit worried before we even get into the questions. And
the reason I even said any of that is because
there's a Here's where I got the indication the way
you worded the first question, how did your wife find
she needed God? Or when did she begin her relationship
(39:18):
with him? Let me just say, by God's grace, we
were on the about the same path. We were about
the same path together. But we all need God. And
(39:41):
it's not because it's going to make us have a
better life, or because it's going to make us more comfortable,
or it's going to make things easier. It's because, as
image bears as his creation, when we go apart from
him and we're separated from him, when that ambilical cord,
as you could say, is cut between us, us and
our creator. When that happens, we lose our identity, We
(40:06):
lose our reality, in fact, so much so we could
lose reality so much that we start saying absurd things,
things that don't even make sense in science itself. Right,
It's very interesting, and you could it doesn't take much
to go down the rabbit hole of what I'm saying
here question number two. A lot of people I care
(40:26):
about aren't saved. And before we get into that, Stevie,
I want to make sure that you are right. A
lot of people I care about aren't saved, and the
big reason is they believe the lies about the Bible
not being trustworthy or being written by imperfect people. I
know the truth about God having his hand in it
(40:49):
and all the miraculous details lining up. I even went
to liberty University and took an apologetic class, and I
can't figure out a good way to word it. That
class was worthless. Then I'm sorry. I'm preaching at Liberty
University in September. But it worries me. I'm kind of
ragging on you a little bit, and I'm sorry, but
that kind of worries me. How did you take a
(41:09):
class on apologetics and you couldn't answer this in the
most basic way. What did they teach? That's interesting to me.
The good thing is your love for the lost and
your concerned for the lost. That is a good thing.
(41:31):
That is a good fruit, a concern for the lost
around you. But if they're saying the Bibles, we'll start
with that the Bible is not trustworthy. Well, it's twenty
twenty three and there have been over twenty five thousand
archaeological digs that we have brought up mountains of ancient
(41:56):
manuscripts from the Old and New Testament. I have been
to the History of the Bible Museum in Washington, d C.
Which is awesome, and they have all kinds of old
Bibles there, including I think it's P. Fifty P fifty
two I think is the name of the manuscript they have.
(42:16):
They're currently on display, but it's a small section from
the Book of John from early second century. And so
we have manuscripts that date back to the Apostleistic Apostolistic age,
and we could then see from the apostles themselves and
(42:40):
the scribes that followed them, and the early church fathers
as they had writings about each other and as they
validated each other in the late first century early second century.
We can look at this and gather this information and go, okay,
we know that these writings are accurate to what we
(43:00):
have today. That's my point. We could look at our
Bibles today and we can go, okay, this is accurate.
We have many different translations, but if you put them
together and you read them together, which you probably should,
you could see through these different writings that, okay, well,
this word, for instance, I'm writing a sermon for Ohio.
(43:21):
The word iniquity in the ESV is translated into guilt
in the CSB. So ESV has iniquity. Guilt is the
word they use in the CSB. But regardless, it's coming
from the same Greek and the same Hebrew. And you
could see that Greek writing from manuscripts that they have
(43:44):
found ancient ones. So you can go, well, there's the
Book of John, and there it is in Greek, and
translate it this Greek however you want, with your Greek
translator app on your phone, and you could It could
say iniquity, or it could say transgression, or it could
say sin, or could say guilt, or it could say shame.
But we get the point. It doesn't change the meaning
(44:05):
of the sentence itself. Does that make sense? So the
trustworthiness of the actual manuscripts are there to deny, that is,
to deny any creditable historian right, And that the scripture
(44:28):
will testify against itself for itself, through itself, by itself,
that it was written by humans inspired by the Holy Spirit.
So the fact that it even exists at all, and
that Jesus said it would exist, and that the gates
of Hell would not prevail against it, and that his
(44:49):
word would prevail and it would last. The fact that
that has happened, and the fact that it exists and
we know humans wrote it and we know they were inspired,
testifies for itself. And so the idea that someone is
going to reject the Bible as not being trustworthy is
(45:12):
not the Bible's problem. That's their problem. If you were
to look at it this way, if you were to say,
let's test the Bible in the same way that we
would test any other ancient document, which is never happens
because there's a bias when it comes to the Bible.
But say you get some ancient writing by Plato or
(45:36):
Aristotle or Homer, and you take the Homer the Iliad
ancient writing. Are we going to look at that and go,
I don't think Homer wrote that. I don't I think
that's impossible that he actually wrote that. No one says that.
Everyone goes, yeah, of course it was Homer. He wrote this.
He wrote this. No one doubts that. But then you
look at the Bible and you go, I don't know.
(45:58):
I don't know if the apostle Peter wrote that letter.
You know, when we can actually trace it all the
way back and find other people that were eyewitnesses to
Peter writing it. As the Church starts to affirm it
early second century, way before Council of nicea way before Constantine.
This is a long, long rabbit hole, and it really
(46:20):
doesn't matter. The apologetics to this don't really matter as
much as the fact that people don't want to give
up their sin. I was like, man, I got a
good life. I'm enjoying my life. I don't want this
Bible thing to ever be true because if it's true,
it's going to convict me of my sin. It's going
(46:41):
to tell me that I've rejected God, I've turned away
from him. So it can't be true. It's just written
by imperfect people. It's not trustworthy. Jesus didn't exist, he's
not a real historical figure. All that stuff has made up.
Constantine put together the Canon of the Bible, the Council
of Nicia, they decided that there was the trend, etc. Etc. Etc.
(47:02):
It's all false because we have archaeological evidence to prove
against that. To go two hundred years before Constantine and
see the Bible can and being put together before, to
see the four Gospels being put together before, we could
go down that rabbit hole. But that's not what this
is about. It's about people going, nah, I really like
(47:22):
my sin, So what do we do? What do you
do with that? You don't worry about that rabbit hole,
You don't worry about the historical documents, you don't worry
about the mile high pile of ancient documents that we
have found. You don't worry about it. Instead, you tell
them the good news. You tell them the gospel. You
say that Jesus came to save sinners. He took on
(47:44):
the wrath of God himself. He was killed, crucified on
the cross for your sin, to give you life, to
give you eternity with him, to forgive you, to have
mercy on you by his grace, a free gift. And
then three days later he rose from the dead, proving
(48:05):
to the world that he was indeed God. And that's
who we worship, the spotless Lamb that took on the
sacrifice for our sin so that we didn't have to
live with that guilt, so we didn't have to live unforgiven.
That's the gospel. So we preached that, and we don't
worry about the apologetics unless we really need to get there.
(48:27):
Does that make sense? H That was a lot And
I'm sorry, Stevie. I love you, and I want you
to continue to seek, and I want you to plug
in a local church, and I want you to cultivate
that desire to read his word. God give me a
desire to read this inspired word. It made it all
the way to my door. It made it all the
(48:48):
way to my table. This Bible, against all odds, it
has made it through centuries to me. God, give me
the insight, give me the wisdom, show me how precious
this is the life on these pages. That's a good
prayer for you. Appreciate you guys. All y'all, and we'll
(49:08):
see you next Monday. I thanks for joining me on
the Granger Smith Podcast. I appreciate all of you guys.
You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes.
If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel. Hit that
little like button and the notification spell so that you
never miss anytime I upload a video. If you have
a question for me that you would like me to answer,
(49:29):
email Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com. Yi
What are things that are meaningful to you? And what
are things that you're just trying to make more money? Well,
what's up everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. This is
episode two three, and I am answering your questions. You
(00:22):
email me Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com and we'll
walk through them, like we're sitting around the campfire, Like
we're sitting in the cab of a truck, and you say, man,
can I run something by you? Like something's been kind
of irking me a little bit and I'd love to
just walk through it. Not that I'm an expert, and
not that I have any notes sitting out here or
(00:43):
anything like that. More so, we're just talking as friends,
and it could be about any subject. In fact, I've
got some queued up right here, and these are random.
First question says subject line rest. How to achieve this? Hey, Granger.
First off, it goes without saying I love the podcast,
(01:04):
love you and Amber and the kids and all that
you do, eeyee, liveyee and all the sorts. My question
is how do you achieve rest? I'm not talking about
spiritual rest. I have your verse you wrote for me
last fall tattooed on my arm I'm talking about physical rest.
(01:26):
I'm writing you because I struggle to get adequate rest,
as I know that a lot of people do. I
work for a heavy construction equipment dealer, and that is
number one. That is the number one most mentioned thing
between my clients and co workers. I'm tired. I work
long hours because of the shortage of labor and staffing,
(01:49):
which I know isn't an excuse, but it's just the facts.
I personally work sixty hours a week Monday through Friday,
on top of my other duties as a husband at home,
trying to study for seminary workouts, admittedly not as often
as I should. I run a small business and a
hobby to try and supplement some income for our increasing
(02:11):
economic cost and I try to stay updated on the
Smith's in your podcast to take and read podcast and
playback of after midnight. I've tried, unsuccessfully to get proper
amounts of sleep, and I just can't seem to get
a full rest so much as to the point where
I've had to point people. I've had the point where
(02:32):
people point out my tattoo and ask, how does that
work when you look so tired. I believe he's talking
to be talking about Jesus saying, come to meet all
you are weary and burden and I'll give you rest.
This is incredible, incredibly convicting. Sorry for the link the email,
but you mentioned in Like a River in your podcast
(02:54):
numerous times how busy your life is and how early
you wake up, and I would love your insight on
how you get physical rest. I'm gonna take a nap now. PS.
I hope you enjoyed the Irish soda bread recipe in
God's Hands Michael Kennedy, Hey, Michael, thank you brother very much,
and I appreciate you emailing and talking about a subject
(03:18):
that is that's it's not easy to answer and and
I'll try to walk through it with you. Absolutely. One
thing to say is the easiest thing right off the
bat is you're gonna have to if you want to
get physically, get more rest, more sleep, you're gonna have
(03:41):
to cut some things out. Unfortunately for me, the first
the first thing that's gotta go is your consumption of
dismiss and the take and read podcast and playback of
after Midnight. You're gonna have to at least get rid
of something. And come on, you know, I'm serious. If
I'm asking you to not consume as much of my
(04:01):
media as you are right now. Another thing, another way
to look at this is, well, there's several Another way
is do you really need as much sleep as you
think you need? Because I Amber and I we just
we survive on about six hours, and I know that
(04:24):
the doctor is going to say you need eight, and
you're you're not functioning correctly, You're risking memory loss and
things like that with less than eight. I understand, that's
I get it. I actually function pretty good with seven.
But you know, I monitor everything with my watch. I've
got one of these garment watches, and I monitor my
(04:45):
sleep and I usually get about six six fifteen, six
twenty six thirty. That's pretty average for me. When I'm
on tour, it's more like five. And I just I
have a lot of I have a lot of things
that are meaningful to me. So I would start to
(05:08):
discern in your life what are things that are meaningful
to you and what are things that you're just trying
to make more money, and then ask yourself why, like why,
let me see, let me go back to you what
you said. You work sixty hours a week Monday through Friday,
and then you run a small business hobby to try
to supplement some income in your increasing economy cost. That's
(05:33):
what you said. Why why are your cost are you?
Are you talking about just the national economy is rising,
inflation is rising. Does that require another job? It's a
serious question. You have a family, you have a lot
of things going on here. Seminary, I don't know why
(05:54):
you're doing seminary. That's that's a completely different story. I'm
confused at why you're doing seminary and a sixty hour
heavy machinery job and a small business hobby to make
more money. That's I don't. I don't know that. I don't.
I'd have to sit with you on that. So so
there's a lot of dynamics here. One is you're gonna
(06:16):
have to give up some stuff, probably social media or
podcast that you listen to, or figure out a way
that those fit in your commute times so that you're
not taking extra time to listen or watch. You're actually
adding that to your time to work. Right, listen to
this podcast on the way to work, so you're not
sitting around at home. Minimize your social media time like
(06:42):
that should be the number one thing to go. If
you're on Instagram, if you're on Facebook, TikTok, get rid
of it. That is a time sucker. That's hands down.
I would really think about this hobby small business thing
and ask you why why are you doing that? And
you're doing seminary. What's something's got to give here? If
(07:03):
you're doing seminary to equip yourself, why are you also
in a season of wanting to make more money? And
if you say if your answer is, man, I'm trying
to make more money because we're in debt, then I say, oh,
that's a different conversation. Now we need to talk about
why your family is spending so much money that it's
gotten you into a situation where you're adding to your
(07:26):
sixty hour a week job with another job. I would say,
because I think heavy machinery that usually makes pretty good money.
So I'm gonna say, what's going on? We need to
talk about this right. Another way to look at this
is I live on my reminder list on my phone.
I've got an iPhone and it's got reminders on it,
(07:50):
and I'll go through at least in the mornings. I'll
get up at five five point thirty, and that's the
first thing is going to be my coffee and my
Bible reading, and that's usually gonna take me about an hour.
I'm gonna study the word. I'm going to go through
my mix shamee plan read my four chapters and nothing
is going to compromise that time. But right after that,
(08:12):
I'm gonna do my quick journal entry. I'm gonna do
my social media posts on what I learned, my takeaway
from my Bible reading. And then I'm going to go
into my reminder list and I'm gonna look at my
reminder list what's left, and I'm going to add new ones.
So it's going to say it's going to say record
(08:34):
Monday's podcast, right, and so I'll know that I need
to knock out the podcast. I'm talking about this one.
I need to record the podcast, and I'll do that
if I know I'm leaving out of town and I
need to get it done today. So then it's on
that list, and periodically i'll check that list during the day,
and I'll also put the easy things on there, like
(08:57):
I'll say take the kids to school, it's an easy one.
I'll say, read ten pages for seminary. I'll say make it.
Make social media post, right, So I go into those
easy ones and on Apple, those reminders, it's a little
dot and I hit that dot and as soon as
(09:18):
I hit that dot, it fills in the space and
it disappears, and there's there's there is there is a
dopamine effect of doing that. It's like done, and the
list gets shorter. Right, So my list is going to
say things like Monday after midnight, Tuesdays after midnight. I'm
(09:41):
not talking about that's when I do it. I'm talking
about the actual show itself. It's going to say podcast
eight twenty eight or whatever, and it's going to say
interview with so and so. So when I finish that
after midnight, I record it, finish it, I I pull
out my phone. One of the first things I do
(10:02):
is I hit that button and he goes disappears. My
list gets shorter. Now, when you sit down and you
have the tendency to watch YouTube or check out social media.
Instead of doing that tendency, you pull out your phone
now and you look at your reminder list and you go,
all right, I've got I've got forty five minutes right now.
(10:24):
So this is me. Let me speak for myself. I
would say I've got forty five minutes before the kids
get home. What could I do in forty five minutes? Oh,
I could knock out that social media post that I
needed to do to promote Like a riverbook. Okay, because
the publisher said, Amazon is now offering this week three
(10:46):
dollars off for your book. Will you post about it
sometime this week? Okay, cool, I got forty five minutes.
I'll do that now. So I go in, pick up
my phone, talk about the three dollars discount on Like
a River, and the first thing I do go back
to my reminders, Boom, hit that button. It disappears. Now
there is a dopamine hit that I get when I
do that. I love it. So that's very important to
(11:07):
be able to time manage and then understand your own
body clock, because understand that there's certain things that you
can do on your to do list and certain things
you can't depending on the time of day. For instance,
I'm pretty worthless after about five o'clock five pm. I
need to start doing the more mindless things on my list.
(11:29):
At five pm, I'm pretty good. At like nine ten am,
I'm pretty sharp. So it's better for me as y'all
might know to record a podcast in the morning than
it is when you've heard me do podcasts at ten
o'clock at night and I'm just kind of like mad
and grumbling through it. So yeah, be aware of where
your brain is on that time of day. These are
(11:50):
really helpful things for me, and I don't know how
helpful it is to you, but this is the income thing.
That's a family conversation. And so email back and see
if this makes sense. And Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a
speech he did one time, he said, I think maybe
you should just sleep less. So maybe just get used
(12:13):
to in this season of your life, Michael, and that
everything in life is a season. It's going to pass,
but in this season you might just be sleeping less.
Let's move on here. Next question, Sebie Cline says divorce
(12:33):
with a narcissist email says, Hey man, I've been battling
my faith when what's going on my divorce in this
is I'm gonna read it exactly like it says it.
Hey man, I've been battling my faith. When what's going
on in my divorce and child custody issues? Do youI
have an episode that deals with any of this. Thanks Chris.
(12:58):
All right, Chris, I appreciate you man. And this is
an interesting, interesting thing one one I think I should
probably be building this podcast more towards episodic themes. I've
actually been talking about talking to ant Man, my friend
(13:18):
and producer of EU Radio and after Midnight and just
talking to him about Man, you want to come in
and produce the podcast and well, and you take over
these questions and kind of lump them into groups so
that when I release an episode, it could be all
one group, Like I could do one podcast that's just
about time management, one that's just about battling with your faith. Right.
(13:45):
So comment below if you're on a platform that can comment,
and let me know or hit me up on social
media and let me know if that's something you'd be
interested in. That's beside the point. The other thing is,
in our culture, this is what we do in twenty
twenty three. We look and this is the same way
we read the Bible. We like to read the Bible
(14:07):
in a way where we want to find what we
need in our situation and move on. Just give me
the answer quick. I'm struggling with my faith right now.
Show me the part in the Bible that says that,
so I could read it and move on, like give
me the cliff notes, I need to move fast, and
(14:29):
it just never really works that way. What's going on
When you are saying I'm battling, I think what you
mean is I'm struggling. I'm feeling like my faith is
failing me because of the season of going through a
(14:50):
divorce and child custody issues. What you're saying is, here's
what you mean by that. What's happening is adversity in life. Struggle.
Suffering in this way is revealing to you that your
(15:12):
faith wasn't worth anything. That's what it is. And that's
so it's so interesting, right because this is what the
apostles talk about. This is what oh I mean? Really,
the Old and New Testament are both going to talk
a lot about the testing of the faith, testing it
(15:37):
as if a precious metal in a fire. So you
can test a precious metal by by heat testing, right,
and it's not a precious metal. It's gonna disintegrate at
a certain level of heat if it's not worthy. We
(16:00):
could say it that way, and this is the same
way with our faith. Your faith is nothing during good times,
during happy you know, nice comfortable times, your faith is
worthless to me, and it's worthless to you. You can't
convince me or yourself more importantly, that your faith matters
(16:21):
at all. When life is good and you're comfortable. You
know what your faith is made of when you put
it in the fire, just like a precious metal. So
you're going to know gold when it goes through a
very heat pressured oven, and you're gonna know what your
(16:42):
faith is. Is it real gold? Is your faith gold?
Is it a precious metal or is it just aluminum
when you put it into a heat pressured oven. So
you're in this oven right now, divorce, child, custody battles,
and you're going, Man, I am melting like foil my faith.
I don't even know if God's up there at all.
(17:04):
In fact, I thought I used to think I was
a Christian. Now you know what, I don't even know
what I am. Why Because you're through the testing of
your faith, you're finding out it's worthless. Look, that's not
all bad news. The testing of the faith, the result
of it, whether it's good or bad, it's all positive
(17:25):
because at least you know you're learning now, so you
can go one of two ways you can go my
faith was worthless, it was tested by this divorce, and
I guess I'm not even a Christian. Or you can
go uh oh. Through the testing of my faith with
this divorce, I'm realizing my faith is not a saving faith.
(17:47):
I better figure this out. And I say that in
a way that you're not going to figure it out
in terms of pleasing God or being worthy of God
or working towards God's favor. You need to figure it
out in terms of your responsibility to respond to the Gospel,
to repent and turn away from your sin and turn
(18:09):
towards God. When you repent and turns towards God, your
faith begins to grow. So you believe, and you repent
and you turn to God. In turn, your faith starts
to grow. And then through more testing of your faith
and it withholds the oven, it doesn't melt like aluminum.
(18:29):
You start to gain more confidence than your faith grows
from there. So right now, Chris, your faith sucks because
it's being tested. Repent, believe, turn to the Gospel, Turn
to God, your creator. You're created in his image. Turn
(18:52):
to him. Whatever this divorce is, whatever's going on with
this child, custody, don't harbor anger, forgive and turn to God.
Watch your faith grow. That's one choice, and it is yours.
Or you could flounder way and melt like a luminum.
We'll take a break and be right back. Do you
(19:17):
have my book like a River yet? I hope you do.
I hope you have a copy of it. Plus have
you heard the audio book? Because there are lots of
extra things, little commentaries here and there. As I read
the book the manuscript, I would add a few commentaries
here and there as I was going down, just to
help give a better perspective. And I just did that
(19:40):
on the fly. And then there was a long interview
It's about an hour long at the end, with just
Amber and I kind of asking each other questions and
reflecting back on the book. So I would encourage you
to listen to all of that and you could knock
that out. I think it's like five hours forty five
minutes is the entire thing, And you could do that
(20:02):
and just like a week of work commutes, so on
your way to work, on your way back from work,
through that three or four days, and I'm assuming you
could knock it out. I would love to hear what
you have to say about that. The book is still
doing really great, like on top of the Amazon charts.
And how you could help me is by reviewing it.
So say you buy it on Amazon or Barnesennoble or
(20:23):
Walmart dot com, wherever you buy it if it's online,
go ahead and leave us a five star review and
tell me what you think about the book. That would
be tremendously helpful. And ultimately the goal is to kick
it up the algorithm so that people who don't know
who I am never listen to country music in their
life and they could come across this book is something
(20:45):
they've never heard of before because of the algorithm you
kicked over to them by leaving the review. That's how
it works, and so I appreciate that so much. And
that also reminds me thank you for all of y'all
that have been posting it on x or instance or
threads or TikTok and Facebook, all the different social media
platforms I've seen y'all posting it, and that means the
(21:08):
world to me because a personal testimony to the book,
if it's mattered to you and you tell your friends, hey,
this book has been really impactful for me. That matters
so much more than anything else. I could tell them,
a personal testimony counts so much more. So thank you
for all that, and thank you for ultimately just consuming
(21:28):
a book that is so personal to me. This is
really up until now you could say this has been
my life passion project. I just didn't always know it.
But it's the most important piece of media I've ever
put out. Hey, if you want to get a hold
of me as always, check out cameo dot com slash
Granger Smith or download the Cameo app and search for
me Granger Smith. I could leave you through that a
(21:50):
personal video message from my phone to yours. You ask
me to say whatever it is, happy birthday, to my son,
to my daughter, to my space whose happy anniversary, Maybe
some words of encouragement, maybe it's just to you. Whatever
it is, you just write in what you want me
to say, and I'll sit here on my phone and
record a video and send it back to you. It
super easy. Once again, Cameo dot com c am eo
(22:14):
slash Granger Smith. Let's get back to the podcast. Well,
back to the podcast. Answering your questions, You could email
me Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com and we'll put
it in a queue. If you have not considered, I'll
(22:35):
put it that way, If you haven't considered my book
like a river, I would ask you to consider this
book because I would hope that if you're interested in
this podcast, then it would matter to you and you
would be interested in the book because I have poured
so much of my life into it. And it's the
(22:57):
story of lose and riv our son in twenty nineteen
and me floundering around, and as the last email said
about faith, I figured out that I had a worthless
faith in twenty nineteen. And through that testing and through
(23:19):
the revealing that my faith was not a saving faith
and that it was worthless, that caused me to dig
in and soak up the Gospel and repent and believe
and everything after that. This is the delight of my
(23:39):
life to sit here in a chair and tell people
about the one that saved me. That it is truly
as busy as I am, as much stuff as I
have going on, I love what I do now of
(24:01):
talking in a microphone about Jesus and about people that
might be stuck, people that might think they're Christians that aren't.
Because I was that, And it's the delight of my life.
It's a joy, you guys, remember Matthew thirteen. The parable
of the Hidden Treasure, says Jesus says, the Kingdom of
(24:22):
God is like a man that finds a treasure hidden
in a field, and he finds it, covers it up,
and then goes in his joy with joy and sells
everything he owns to buy that field. That's me. It
is worth it. It is so meaningful. I sleep so
(24:44):
good at night knowing that I get the honor and
privilege of speaking about my Savior in a way that
I can't possibly do him justice. But the fact that
he had mercy on someone like me, y'all, someone like me,
(25:06):
just a worthless country singer, all wrapped up in himself,
all worried about himself and worried about his image and
his name and his chart position with his latest single
a Wretch. The fact that the Lord had mercy on me,
a wretch stuck in my own ways, turned me around,
(25:28):
grabbed a hold of me, and pulled me in. The
fact that he did that is pretty remarkable, And that
is why I would encourage everyone to check out the book.
Like a River and Suit what you think. Yeah, let's
get to the next question. Subdecline on this says fear,
(25:52):
and the email says, Hey, mister Smith, I'm a big
fan from California emailing to ask you some dating advice.
I am a sophomore in high school and I have
a really big fear of not finding a wife one day.
All of my friends who have girlfriends are making me
very self conscious. I trust that God has a plan
(26:13):
and he knows my future, but that fear of being
a fool is all over my heart. Any thought on
how to get past this? Thanks for your help, Wyatt.
Whyat let me read this again and make sure I
know that you're saying what I think you're saying. You
(26:34):
are a sophomore in high school. That's going to make
you fourteen fifteenth, fifteen, sixteen sixteen. You're about sixteen, and
you have a really big fear of not finding a
wife one day because all of your friends have girlfriends,
and it's making yourself Whyat, stop it, bro, stop it, man?
(26:55):
Would you stop and just be a sophomore? And first
of all, you're better off without a girlfriend Like all
your friends I have, You're better off without a girlfriend
doing the things that a sophomore in high school does
like schoolwork, like a hobby, like hobby, including maybe be
(27:16):
playing on a sports team, doing something that you enjoy,
whether that's a drama team or a chess team, or
choir or a country music dance team. Y'all believe it
or not. This might be crazy to even say it
(27:37):
out loud, but when I was in high school, when
I was a sophomore in junior in high school, I
was on a country music dance team called the Wildcat Wranglers,
and I liked it. I wanted to learn out of
two stuff. And it was like a you know, it
was pretty stupid, but we wore boots and wranglers and
buckles and button up start shirts with cowboy hats, and
(28:00):
we each had a partner and we did all the
spins and the flips and you know, danced around and
went and we traveled to the White House actually one
time and performed. It was it was kind of weird.
But my point is there's something you can get involved
with that's better than having a girlfriend, because you're gonna
sit around and you're gonna just waste your life away.
(28:23):
Your precious high school years could be wasted away by
dealing with the drama of having a girlfriend. Don't get
caught up in that you're better off without it, And
that does not correlate you having a girlfriend right now
your sophomore year in high school does not correlate to
if you're gonna get a wife anytime soon or not.
(28:45):
Some of these guys that are dating right now that
have girlfriends and their sophomore year in high school, some
of these guys are gonna continue dating through their twenties
and thirties and still not be content. That doesn't mean
that they're gonna find wives. And some of the guys
that don't have a girlfriend at all and don't date
at all, suddenly they're twenty four to twenty five and
(29:06):
they go on their first date and they fall in
love and they end up actually marrying that girl. He said,
there's no correlation, rhyme, or reason at all. You're not
needed to date when your sophomore year so that you
could have a wife one day. So your fear, as
you say, you have a really big fear of not
finding a wife one day, needs to stop. If I
(29:29):
was with you in person, I would say, bro, stop,
be sixteen. Do you have a driver's license yet. Have
you saved up to buy an old truck or something yet?
Do that? Take that truck, muddon, and then you're gonna
have to deal with cleaning all the mud off the undercarriage.
(29:51):
Take it from somebody who knows. I love being sixteen, man,
and I don't want you to waste it by worrying
or having a fear of a wife. It's just not valid.
Stop it. Next question, Subsecline says, like a river McShane,
(30:12):
Hey Granger, I am what you call a dog tag Christian.
I finished reading your book Like a River, and it
spoke to me profoundly. Thank you for that. I want
to do the McShane daily Bible readings that you spoke
about in your book. How should I start it, though?
Start the readings now but with January readings or start
(30:35):
on the true date of today in August according to
his calendar. Thanks Ashley from Nebraska. Okay, okay, I like this. Yeah,
there's an easy, super easy answer. The dates associated with that,
like January one. Starting a Genesis one that's merely a suggestion,
(30:58):
and I personally have never done it ever. Lined up
the dates with what I'm going to read I started
when I first learned about the McShane plan. It was
in twenty twenty and it was probably like, I don't know, April,
and I just started on the first the first reading,
which was I don't remember Genesis one, Matthew one. I
(31:26):
don't remember what the other ones are, Acts one, maybe
so Ezra or something I don't remember, but yeah, just start,
just start today and start at the beginning. You're not
you can't jump in in the August reading, whatever that
might be. You need to start at the beginning and
(31:47):
make this your your starting point. And for everybody that
doesn't know what she's talking about, I advocate personally for
the McShane Bible Reading Plan, but there are many, many,
many many others. So this is just an example of
what I love. I think it's put together really well,
and it is. It gets you through the New Testament
(32:09):
twice in a year, the Psalms twice in a year
in the Old Testament. Once it gives you, it sets
up your reading daily and it's usually one chapter, sometimes two,
from four different places in the Bible, so you're going
through at least four, sometimes five or six chapters a day.
And it's about even if it's two chapters in one section.
(32:32):
It's about the same length. So you're doing the same
amount of reading every single day, and before you know it,
a calendar year goes by and you go wow. Half
cruise through the whole Bible once, New Testament twice and
the Psalms twice. It's pretty cool, all right. Next question,
subject line says like a river question. Hey, Grangeer, I've
(32:55):
loved your music for years. I grew up in college station.
I'm an Aggie fan as well. I've been following your
family closely since twenty nineteen, and y'all's story of faith
has inspired me. Especially because your book. I've been more
present and patient with my children, and I've been more
motivated to getting back into the Word of God because
of your words. Thank you so much for what you
(33:17):
have done. My husband got me like a River, and
the day it came in, I could not put it
down until two am when I finished. It was the
perfect message I needed to hear at this point in
my life to make sure I was doing my part
to be a good example to my kids and honoring
God with my time. Because when you don't feel like
you need God because you live a comfortable life. Hey,
(33:39):
we talked about that a few questions ago. Your faith
is not tested when you're living a comfortable life. That's
perfect that. She said that. I struggle with prioritizing studying
the Bible, but I want a firm foundation for my
family and to grow my three kids to serve and
live a purposeful life. There are ways that my husband
(34:01):
and are trying to control our lives instead of following
and surrendering to God, and your book reminded me of that.
So anyways, I have questions, two questions, and I did
just start listening to your podcast, So if you have
any of them already answered, just ignore it. You know
I never do that. I don't mind repeating things. First
question is how did your wife find that she needed God?
(34:25):
Or when did she begin her relationship with him? Was
it before or after you? And did one of you
help or inspire the other? I'll go ahead and read
the second question. A lot of people I care about
aren't saved, and the big reason is they believe the
lies about the Bible. They believe the lies about the
Bible not being trustworthy or being written by imperfect people.
(34:50):
I know the truth about God having his hand in
it and all the miraculous details lining up. And I
even went to the library to I even went to
Liberty University and took an apologetics class, and I can't
figure out a good way to word it to them.
So if you can give me some advice, that would
be great. I appreciate you and all you're doing in
(35:13):
your positive effect you've had in my life. Stevie Dillard.
All right, Stevie, let's dive into your questions here, and
I'm going to start with in order and go to
number one. Let me read back just a few things
I want to know more about you. You are inspired
(35:35):
by the book. Thank you for that. It's the perfect
message you needed to hear. Good, good, good. You went
through a time when you didn't feel like you need
God because you lived the comfortable life, and now you
struggle with prioritizing the Bible. Okay, all right, Stevie. First
(36:03):
of all, I would be m you are. You're searching
right now, and you're asking the right questions. And I
would be if I was your friend and we're, you know,
(36:25):
sitting around the campfire having this conversation, I would be
concerned with you. If you don't have a desire to
prioritize studying the Bible. I do know Christians that struggle
(36:47):
with this. So I'm not saying I'm not saying you're
not a Christian, but I'm saying it's always a little
bit of a red flag to me for someone that says, yeah,
I love God, and I just don't really you know,
like going to church, it's not really a big deal.
Don't really care about reading the Bible. My prayer life.
I could tell you your prayer life is probably not
(37:09):
great if those other two things aren't lining up. The
fruits of a Christian, of a changed life, of someone
that is reborn and completely reshaped by Jesus in the Gospel.
(37:29):
The fruit of that is you want to seek him more.
You want to know him more. You want to be
around other people that are talking about Him, that know
him more so that you could start to imitate him.
That's the ultimate goal of what you want. And that's
why we read the Bible really is because we're transformed
by the Word and we want to know more about
(37:52):
who God is so that we can imitate him. Not
so that we know exactly what his rules are, but
so that we know exactly what he would do in
a situation because we've learned him so well. Then at
that point you don't need to know all the little
tiny rules. They don't need to exist. You have a
(38:14):
heart like him, You know how he thinks, You know
what he loves, you know what he hates. That's the goal. Now,
that's called sanctification, and it takes our entire life before
we could truly imitate Christ. It will take our entire life.
But at the beginning, you should feel a desire that says,
(38:34):
if anything, if anything, I really want to go plug
into a local body, a local church. I really want
to get to know some members and some other people
in my community that are seeking and through that encourage
each other to what read the Bible, to increase your
(38:56):
prayer life, to deepen your relationship. Would be a little
bit worried before we even get into the questions. And
the reason I even said any of that is because
there's a Here's where I got the indication the way
you worded the first question, how did your wife find
she needed God? Or when did she begin her relationship
(39:18):
with him? Let me just say, by God's grace, we
were on the about the same path. We were about
the same path together. But we all need God. And
(39:41):
it's not because it's going to make us have a
better life, or because it's going to make us more comfortable,
or it's going to make things easier. It's because, as
image bears as his creation, when we go apart from
him and we're separated from him, when that ambilical cord,
as you could say, is cut between us, us and
our creator. When that happens, we lose our identity, We
(40:06):
lose our reality, in fact, so much so we could
lose reality so much that we start saying absurd things,
things that don't even make sense in science itself. Right,
It's very interesting, and you could it doesn't take much
to go down the rabbit hole of what I'm saying
here question number two. A lot of people I care
(40:26):
about aren't saved. And before we get into that, Stevie,
I want to make sure that you are right. A
lot of people I care about aren't saved, and the
big reason is they believe the lies about the Bible
not being trustworthy or being written by imperfect people. I
know the truth about God having his hand in it
(40:49):
and all the miraculous details lining up. I even went
to liberty University and took an apologetic class, and I
can't figure out a good way to word it. That
class was worthless. Then I'm sorry. I'm preaching at Liberty
University in September. But it worries me. I'm kind of
ragging on you a little bit, and I'm sorry, but
that kind of worries me. How did you take a
(41:09):
class on apologetics and you couldn't answer this in the
most basic way. What did they teach? That's interesting to me.
The good thing is your love for the lost and
your concerned for the lost. That is a good thing.
(41:31):
That is a good fruit, a concern for the lost
around you. But if they're saying the Bibles, we'll start
with that the Bible is not trustworthy. Well, it's twenty
twenty three and there have been over twenty five thousand
archaeological digs that we have brought up mountains of ancient
(41:56):
manuscripts from the Old and New Testament. I have been
to the History of the Bible Museum in Washington, d C.
Which is awesome, and they have all kinds of old
Bibles there, including I think it's P. Fifty P fifty
two I think is the name of the manuscript they have.
(42:16):
They're currently on display, but it's a small section from
the Book of John from early second century. And so
we have manuscripts that date back to the Apostleistic Apostolistic age,
and we could then see from the apostles themselves and
(42:40):
the scribes that followed them, and the early church fathers
as they had writings about each other and as they
validated each other in the late first century early second century.
We can look at this and gather this information and go, okay,
we know that these writings are accurate to what we
(43:00):
have today. That's my point. We could look at our
Bibles today and we can go, okay, this is accurate.
We have many different translations, but if you put them
together and you read them together, which you probably should,
you could see through these different writings that, okay, well,
this word, for instance, I'm writing a sermon for Ohio.
(43:21):
The word iniquity in the ESV is translated into guilt
in the CSB. So ESV has iniquity. Guilt is the
word they use in the CSB. But regardless, it's coming
from the same Greek and the same Hebrew. And you
could see that Greek writing from manuscripts that they have
(43:44):
found ancient ones. So you can go, well, there's the
Book of John, and there it is in Greek, and
translate it this Greek however you want, with your Greek
translator app on your phone, and you could It could
say iniquity, or it could say transgression, or it could
say sin, or could say guilt, or it could say shame.
But we get the point. It doesn't change the meaning
(44:05):
of the sentence itself. Does that make sense? So the
trustworthiness of the actual manuscripts are there to deny, that is,
to deny any creditable historian right, And that the scripture
(44:28):
will testify against itself for itself, through itself, by itself,
that it was written by humans inspired by the Holy Spirit.
So the fact that it even exists at all, and
that Jesus said it would exist, and that the gates
of Hell would not prevail against it, and that his
(44:49):
word would prevail and it would last. The fact that
that has happened, and the fact that it exists and
we know humans wrote it and we know they were inspired,
testifies for itself. And so the idea that someone is
going to reject the Bible as not being trustworthy is
(45:12):
not the Bible's problem. That's their problem. If you were
to look at it this way, if you were to say,
let's test the Bible in the same way that we
would test any other ancient document, which is never happens
because there's a bias when it comes to the Bible.
But say you get some ancient writing by Plato or
(45:36):
Aristotle or Homer, and you take the Homer the Iliad
ancient writing. Are we going to look at that and go,
I don't think Homer wrote that. I don't I think
that's impossible that he actually wrote that. No one says that.
Everyone goes, yeah, of course it was Homer. He wrote this.
He wrote this. No one doubts that. But then you
look at the Bible and you go, I don't know.
(45:58):
I don't know if the apostle Peter wrote that letter.
You know, when we can actually trace it all the
way back and find other people that were eyewitnesses to
Peter writing it. As the Church starts to affirm it
early second century, way before Council of nicea way before Constantine.
This is a long, long rabbit hole, and it really
(46:20):
doesn't matter. The apologetics to this don't really matter as
much as the fact that people don't want to give
up their sin. I was like, man, I got a
good life. I'm enjoying my life. I don't want this
Bible thing to ever be true because if it's true,
it's going to convict me of my sin. It's going
(46:41):
to tell me that I've rejected God, I've turned away
from him. So it can't be true. It's just written
by imperfect people. It's not trustworthy. Jesus didn't exist, he's
not a real historical figure. All that stuff has made up.
Constantine put together the Canon of the Bible, the Council
of Nicia, they decided that there was the trend, etc. Etc. Etc.
(47:02):
It's all false because we have archaeological evidence to prove
against that. To go two hundred years before Constantine and
see the Bible can and being put together before, to
see the four Gospels being put together before, we could
go down that rabbit hole. But that's not what this
is about. It's about people going, nah, I really like
(47:22):
my sin, So what do we do? What do you
do with that? You don't worry about that rabbit hole,
You don't worry about the historical documents, you don't worry
about the mile high pile of ancient documents that we
have found. You don't worry about it. Instead, you tell
them the good news. You tell them the gospel. You
say that Jesus came to save sinners. He took on
(47:44):
the wrath of God himself. He was killed, crucified on
the cross for your sin, to give you life, to
give you eternity with him, to forgive you, to have
mercy on you by his grace, a free gift. And
then three days later he rose from the dead, proving
(48:05):
to the world that he was indeed God. And that's
who we worship, the spotless Lamb that took on the
sacrifice for our sin so that we didn't have to
live with that guilt, so we didn't have to live unforgiven.
That's the gospel. So we preached that, and we don't
worry about the apologetics unless we really need to get there.
(48:27):
Does that make sense? H That was a lot And
I'm sorry, Stevie. I love you, and I want you
to continue to seek, and I want you to plug
in a local church, and I want you to cultivate
that desire to read his word. God give me a
desire to read this inspired word. It made it all
the way to my door. It made it all the
(48:48):
way to my table. This Bible, against all odds, it
has made it through centuries to me. God, give me
the insight, give me the wisdom, show me how precious
this is the life on these pages. That's a good
prayer for you. Appreciate you guys. All y'all, and we'll
(49:08):
see you next Monday. I thanks for joining me on
the Granger Smith Podcast. I appreciate all of you guys.
You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes.
If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel. Hit that
little like button and the notification spell so that you
never miss anytime I upload a video. If you have
a question for me that you would like me to answer,
(49:29):
email Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com. Yi
Host
Granger Smith
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