Wisdom Unveiled: Leaving a Legacy That Matters

Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
Foreign

Pastor Joe Liles (00:05):
Welcome to the TNC podcast. We are recorded in
studio in the worship center.
You know, it was interesting.
The other day, people camethrough and they were talking
about our campus, and it's hardfor me to think of this like a
campus, because it's not a largechurch, right? We are, you know,
we have about 200 seats in ourworship area and but we do have
other parts of our campus, butthat's really close together. So

(00:26):
we're not technically, like,walking across, it's two
buildings. It's two buildings,right? Yeah. And so I look at
it, I'm like, Oh, but I lookaround and I'm like, Oh, we do
have the, you know, gatherbuilding, and we do have the
preschool, and we do have thebarn over there, and we do the
basketball courts. And I waslike, in the mission, I was
like, Oh, we got a tiny, we gota tiny, little, cute campus. Is
what we got here. So a campusset. It's a campus set. Yeah,
it's great. So So we're here inthe worship center and and we're

(00:50):
gathering today to talk aboutthe last part of our message in
the series of dear younger metalking about wisdom throughout
all the years. And so we got twohosts joining us on the podcast
today. Myself. I am Joe Liles,pastor of the neighborhood
church and planter of theneighborhood church, and the
youngest one here. Oh, you knowwhat we did? Just talk about
that. Wow. Wow. Not Not by much,though, not by much. Tom, when

(01:12):
do you turn 50? In March? Be 50.
This is amazing. 42 I'm 42 ortwo? Yeah. 42

Tom Helmich (01:21):
Yeah. So you can say you can wave bye to Dear
younger me. So bye, bye, youngerme.

Roseann Bowlin (01:26):
So you'll be 43 your birthday in December,

I will be 43 this is true. Yeah, 42 is 42 I
thought would be a really goodyear, and it's been a really
good year. It's been fantastic.
Bring new people on the team.
It's been incredible. For somereason I wanted to use, like,
dating language when you saidyou're going to be 50 and like,
oh, I always wanted to hirealways wanted to hire pastor
older than me, you know, orsomething like that. I always
want to date someone older me.
This is going to be fun. 50 inMarch. 50 in March. We also have

(01:49):
another decade birthdayhappening in the preschool on
Tuesday. So Andrea is turning adecade. We won't say what
decade. We won't say what decadeshe's turning a decade on
Tuesday, so we'll have tocelebrate her also, which is
great. So we're in a wisdom.
Tom, can you share what yourrole here is at the neighborhood
church, care

and education care in it. What does that mean? And
throw her away of junk.

You know, you love to throw away things. I
think I've been doing reallywell lately. I've unleashed Sean
Bush, who is stepping in forlike, just quarter time or at
the church to help out withprojects, and I've just released
him into

areas, and he asked me once, he's like, so I'm like,
no, no, don't worry about it. Ifyou don't think he's ever gonna
notice, send it.

Yeah, Tom doesn't think I noticed
everything. I just accepted areality that Tom is making good
choices. We're helping, happy.
We're helping, helping. Theseare things I can't do on my own.
These are things I can't do on

my own. The person that has three
refrigerators, one of them,okay, none of which were,

wow, hold on.
No, my garage fridge is fine.
That just tried to but everyonehas that garage fridge. It's not
gonna make it back into thehouse, you know? And, I mean, I
get to the

point where, like, I don't know how much longer
we're gonna really need thegarage fridge. Yeah, you might
not need an need it. We neededit. But the last time I bought a
gal a milk, I didn't buy a galabout a half gallon, yeah, and
we got half of it left. I boughtit just because Connor was

coming home for the milk is a big thing,
dude, you've talked about milkfour times because left. I was
traumatized by milk,

because when I had three small kids, yeah, great,
yeah, we were buying two orthree gallons at a time, that's
crazy. Every week that's crazy,yeah, okay, a lot of milk.
That's what. That's why we gotthe garage fridge. Was the milk
fridge.

This is true.
This is very true, yeah. Okay,so

four years, you might not need the garage fridge
either. We

might not need the garage for this is great.
Okay, so we will definitely notneed that. So with that right
now, all it holds is our all itholds is our drinks. That's all
it holds, right? That's 100% ofthe thing that's going on. So
and then all of our stickers.
It's our sticker fridge. So wejust put a whole bunch of
stickers wherever it traveled.
So it's great. And then to myleft, joining us as the host of

(03:55):
the segment on the podcastRoseanne, notes it is the
wonderful director ofoperations,

Roseanne, bowling the oldest one. Oh, the
hostess with the

most and the hostess with the most. Roseanne,
what is it that you do here atthe neighborhood

church? I'm the director of operations. So if
people want to use the space atthe gather building, I'm the
person they contact. I also helpin the preschool. So pretty much
yesterday was in the classrooms.
It was so much fun. I got to usemy grandma

eyes. Oh, nice. What does that? What does
that mean? Well, this little

girl stole a little truck from a boy, and he
protested, and I gave her thegrandma look, and she pouted,
and I still gave her the grandmalook, and she pushed it back

to me. Oh, that's really nice. You gave
some grandma love, Grandma love.
That is

grandma love.
That's great, because then Ibecame her best friend, and we
played with some

toys.
Absolutely, yeah, ConsciousDiscipline, right? Like the
Conscious Discipline

is just a look.
Oh, it was conscious. It wasThat's great.

So multi.
Roles you take on multiplerealities. Here she answers the
phone. You know what? We got thephones fixed. High five. Boom,
yes, we got the phones fixed.
No. That means every phone nowrings the Roseanne, yeah. And
can I say that I did have it setup correctly, like we were
wondering, why didn't it work?
And I called caught. We had togo all the way drilled down, all
the way down, like Cox supportfor business to figure out why

(05:21):
our phones were notsimultaneously ringing on
things. And he got it on there,and he's like, You know what?
You have everything set upcorrectly. And I was like, it
makes me feel good, because thatmakes it important that we've
called you because I can. AndI'm like, Look, I think I've
never there, so it was a win,but we sat together for, I
think, like, an hour to actually

get these phones fixed, yeah, and it was that the
wrong unit was in my office andit was in your office. Yeah, the
phone, but it had

my name on, because VoIP is yes, and they
are dedicated to the hardware.
Oh, man, that was but we figuredit out. Yeah, got it all
handled, which is amazing. Solet's jump in. We're talking
about wisdom in an incredibleway. And when we're talking
about wisdom. What we reallyneed to understand is that we've
been moving through a wholeseries from the beginning. And
the series from the beginninghas gone from knowledge and
wisdom, right, learning aboutGod, studying God, having a

(06:10):
theology, the study of God,right, moving to understanding,
right, which is moving past thesuperficial knowledge, right,
into an understanding, but theninto wisdom, which is applying
that knowledge and understandingto your life, right? So you're
moving that into action. Andthis whole series about movement
to action. And so we've gonethrough kind of all these years

(06:31):
in this last Sunday was reallyabout leaving a legacy that
matters, right? It was wisdomfrom really those who are older
than 60 and coming through. Andso I'm wondering, um, Tom,
you're not over over 60. Yourwisdom came from last week. So
Roseanne, I'm gonna start withyou. Roseanne, what wisdom do
you have for us, right? As theoldest one in this group, not
over 60, but over oldest one inthis group, what wisdom do you

(06:53):
have for us,

that we blessed?
Be a blessing.

Be blessed, and be Oh, nice. Could you
unpack that for us?

So my sister, my younger sister, and I started
this. Well, she started it as agreeting. When I leave for work,
she would say, be a blessing. Beblessed. Be a blessing. And then
I would respond, always, alwaysnice. So, so when we first, when

(07:23):
she first started doing that, Iwould, I would think about that,
meditate on it, on the way towork about how can I be a
blessing? And I'm alwaysblessed, but sometimes those
blessings are hidden, and I haveto kind of uncover them, unpack
them so and then I want to beblessed always, and I want to be

(07:48):
a blessing in all ways that Ican

that's beautiful. And you and your
sister do that every single

day, every single day, wow, unless she's
sleeping, unless you see,there's no blessing. I usually
walk out going, always, always,

it's beautiful.
That'd be a great poster for ournew dedicated prayer area over
there. I'm just saying, like it

like, big, yeah, yeah. I like that. I like
that a lot. What do you meandedicated

prayer? Oh yeah.
The the area in the back, the sothe the recessed cross area came
from the old building ouroriginal worship not very many
people here probably rememberthat that was just kind of some
chairs kind of shoved into thevery back, kind of awkward. So
we've turned that into theprayer wall that's beautiful, a
place people to go to prayerwith, to meet prayer partners,
to perhaps somebody pray withthem if they want. We're going
to set up some dedicated spacesback there for people to go

(08:36):
there and lift up their prayers.
Certain times of the Churchyear, there may be candles there
for people to light, to lift uptheir prayers, and some we're
working on getting to somelittle nuggets of wisdom and
prayers that people can, youlike from the Psalms and stuff
like that, where people can takea little card as a bookmark, and
when they don't know they can'tbring the words to mind, they
maybe can get inspiration fromone, from script, prayer, from

(08:57):
Scripture. Yeah, it's nice. Ilove that. That would be what
Roseanne just said. It'd begreat, like, on a poster on the
wall, like a reminder of, like,Hey, this is how we need to live
our Christian life.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's
beautiful. That could be a greatposter over there, right? Just
going to continue that build upof the prayer area. So, and
prayer was one of thefoundations I gave towards
wisdom in this last Sunday.
Actually, I was kind of talkingabout household wisdom. And I
said that really, there's fourareas of household wisdom that
bring wisdom into yourhousehold. And this was if
you're thinking generationallyfrom the top down, like we're
creating generations ofhouseholds. And I was talking

(09:27):
about like, Hey, we've broughtwisdom forward from our parents
and their generation from them.
Maybe not all the wisdom, butsome of it is made into our
household, and we're impartingwisdom to our kids, right, and
our families as they go on tomake their own households. And
so hopefully you see thishousehold of wisdom. And there's
really four parts that I talkedabout in wisdom. And it was, the
first part was the word iswisdom. And I was saying, Look,

(09:49):
you get to have the Bibleavailable and ready to read, and
they're in the house for and Icalled it a fixture. I don't
think that was the right word onSunday. And I said it out loud,
and I was like, fixture doesn'tmake sense of. It just seems
like

it can mean by fixture, yeah, right. We're not
thinking of like a lightfixture, but like, it has to be
something that's, that's set,dedicated, permanent, always
there, has a fixed place. Yes,it is not something that's
readily available, readilyavailable, and not something
that's, that's optional, like,it's just an automatic that's
just always there. See, Tom,

that's what I was trying to emote out of
people, right? When I saidfixture, and then I heard
fixture when I said it, and Iwas like, man, it's an inanimate
object in the

house, but it makes sense. But to younger people,
like, word, meaning of wordschange. Yeah, it's true. Like,
that's very true. Like, UrbanDictionary,

it's a little insider pastor, like, like,
turmoil I had on Sunday, and Iwas like, fixture, come on. You
can have such a better word useyour vocabulary. But then that
point, I'd already moved on inmy message. So I was just
struggling in the middle of themessage, which was great with
that word use. So I said, one,have the word available, right?
And when you go throughsituations, open the Word in the
morning, have a devotion, right?
Readily use the word. And Isaid, secondly, introduce your
family to prayer, right? And sothis was really interesting. On

(10:56):
Sunday, I said, How many of youpray in your families, in your
house? And a lot of peopleraised their hands, which I
really appreciated. And then Isaid, Okay, how many people pray
at dinner in their households?
And that's the prayer. Andeveryone I said, How many of you
pray like at breakfast when youwake up and no one raised their
hand? I was like, why would youpray at the end of the day
instead of praying into the day?
And I was like, You need to prayinto that. And you should have

(11:17):
seen people go. I should pray.
And, like, there was acollective like, that's not a
bad idea, like praying into theday, like, and I was like, What
a novel idea. And I was

like, it's, it's hard to build those out, because
I still try. That's, you know, Igot reminders on my bedside
table, and I get up, I still,like, kind of stagger in and my
ankles popping the entire way tothe coffee maker, and I'm like,
Oh, I forgot, yeah.

Like, hard to do, yeah? Like, I woke up this
morning to get Kay up, and thatwas the whole goal. Like, there
was no devotion time. There wasno anything else, right? So I
said, make prayer a household,you know, household wisdom,
right? Always turn to God inprayer. Learn to talk to God in
prayer, right? Ask for prayers.
And I said, so now that we havelooking to wisdom from your
household in the Scripture andthe word, and then prayer. And
then I said, in worship, right?

(12:03):
Teach your family what it meansto worship and see them worship,
right? So let them see youworship and find your personal
form of worship. And thenlastly, I said, serve you. Know
out humble one another inserving, teach everyone around
you that serving is meant to besomething that is done through,
through really your identity ofa deepened relationship with
God, and you should never seeyourself above someone else. So

(12:25):
we've really gone through a lotof great wisdom. I pulled up a
couple great scriptures when wewere starting just in a fun way.
And I don't know if people haveheard these before, but let me
just open them up real quick. Soin this scripture, I was talking
about proverbs again, but thereare some gray hair scripture
which I absolutely loved. And itwas from Proverbs 16. Was the
first one said, gray hair is acrown of glory. And but I said
it emphatically, incident. Isaid gray hair is a crown of

(12:48):
glory, like that is great. Andpeople were hooping intolerant.
They

loved it, especially if you have, like
male pattern baldness, outsidethan it is a crown. You

know what? I did say that I did say, for
those who are bald, we'reimagining you with gray hair,
that you've already had yourrighteousness, and they loved
it. Thank you very much. This isgreat so and then we also went
to Proverbs 20, which said, Theglory of youth is their
strength, but the beauty of theaged, the beauty of the aged is
their gray hair like and I lovethat. And so I decided to look
up all the gray hair texts thatwere happening, and those were

(13:17):
the only two who use gray orplatinum. Ooh, platinum blonde.

That's nice. No, not like, is like, you know the
value is a precious metal. Oh,nice. Okay, I see what you're
saying there, because Amy'saneurysm repair has platinum
coils in it. Oh, so if you startgetting Gray, it's just her
coils coming

out. I say my gray hair is my wisdom
highlights. Oh, lots of themnow.

Well done.
Well done. That's great. Okay,okay, so let's, let's read
through some scripture and kindof open up a little bit on
wisdom and see just truly, kindof where the Scripture is
guiding us to talk a little bitmore about this. So we're going
to be in Proverbs, Chapter 24verses three through seven. And
Roseanne, if you want to startus off, I will

by wisdom a house is built and by
understanding, it is establishedby knowledge. The rooms are
filled with all precious andpleasant riches.

And then continuing in that, in verse,
five wise warriors are mightierthan strong ones and those who
have and those who haveknowledge than those who have
strength.

For by wise guidance, you can wage your war
and an abundance of counselors,there is victory. Wisdom is too
high for fools in the gate, theydo not open their mouths.

So we use this scripture to kind of root us in,
really verse three, and I kindof stayed in verse three, but I
love the wisdom narrative thatwent through all of these
talking about because in theprevious weeks, we've talked
about being established, andwe've talked about strength, and
we've talked about all thesedifferent things that are not
wisdom, and it kind of worksthrough these. But that verse
three by wisdom a house isbuilt, is why I talked about a

(14:58):
household, right? Because.
Because we're not in wisdom, wedon't build our own relationship
with God and wisdom. We sharethat with others in order to
build households. And I think weshould think of our household,
one is our primary household,but two, there are other
households around us that wecontinually build. If you
understand a household as agrouping of people that have a
shared kind of identitytogether, you mean, like the

(15:19):
church, oh, what Tom, look atyou. This is amazing, right?
It's true. Like, we have thehouse of God, right? And if you
start to break down thishousehold, it really exists in a
way where we can see otherhouse. So part of my question to
you all is, what otherhouseholds do you have that you
would look at and say you'rebuilding wisdom from or into?
Right? If you think in yourlife, like, what are the other
areas that you're building thisinto

the women's group for me. Tell me more.
Well, we just met last night.
Great. It was wonderful. We hada fiesta taco bar. That's great,
and just we had new people thatjoined us. And it was just
uplifting. We had foodfellowship fun. We did a bingo

(16:04):
game to get to know each otherbetter. So we were running
around. Did you go to retreatlast year? Yes, I did. Okay, I'm
putting your name down. So thatwas a lot of fun to get to know
the new people, and we had morespots than we had people that
were there. So, you know, youhad to run around and find a

(16:26):
person maybe twice. You know,that's awesome, yeah. And then
they would tell their stories,like, I have a cat. Okay, tell
me about your cat. So it's a lotof fun. And then we had a
devotion that kind of cycledback to Sunday's sermon and
really talking about that wisdomand how we gain wisdom. And it

(16:52):
was just open for talking,questions, discussion. And it
was lovely. That's great. That'sgreat, lovely.

That's awesome. So that you would call
that a house that's a largehousehold, right? Yeah, is
there? Is there a, oh, mysisters, all your sisters, is
great. Is there a part of thathousehold that you relate to
more like it? Do you seeyourself as a whole household
that's imparting wisdom oneveryone, or do you feel like
you're getting more wisdom froma few of those people that are
pouring into you specifically.
How does that work?

I it's that road goes both ways that's great,
because sometimes the youngerpeople can say something that
it's an aha moment for me, andthen there aren't many people
older than me, but there, therewas one or two and, you know,
and then they, they saysomething that's an aha moment

(17:45):
for all of us. And so, you know,it was just a two way street.
Yeah, that's great conversation,and that's the way family should
be. I like that. I like that alot.

What about you?
Tom, you know, Friday morninglift comes to mind. Yeah, it's
guys just looking for that kindof mutual accountability and
uplifting, and people they can,you know, get other perspectives
from and more information from,and lean on in times of need and
stuff like that. And it'sobviously working, because
otherwise that, I mean, we getanywhere from eight to 12. Yeah,
it's people at six in themorning on a Friday right show

(18:14):
up for coffee and and the otherones, like the Tuesday night,
these kids that I teach to playthe pipes, because so much of
it, I mean, they're, they'regoing through this lanky phase
of, you know, beginning be ateenager, and, yeah, growing
faster than they can, theirbrain can keep up with, and just
trying to learn how to, how tostudy, how to lean into

(18:35):
something, and, you know,something that applies a little
bit of discipline, one of them'shomeschooled, and his, that's
his music credit for hishomeschooling stuff. So probably
unique in Arkansas, and sogetting to see that mentor the
the youth of just trying toapply themselves to something,
yeah, that's great. How thatworks in their in their life,
there's a little bit of anaspect of that,

yeah, I like that you named wisdom as
mentorship, right? Because I dobelieve, like mentorship is
specifically that we'reimparting knowledge that we have
onto others, and wisdom andwisdom, it really is right,
because we want to help themgain in something that they
don't not have yet, or don'teven know to gain yet, right?
And I think that's a beautifulspace to be. Yeah, it's
interesting as I think about thegroups that I run, there's a

(19:18):
there's new groups that I'membracing right now Brian
Fenton, who's in our church, he,he's a creator, right? I would
call him a creator. He's increative space, and so I relate
to that really well. Like, like,we immediately saw that we're,
like, two peas in a pod, right?
This is great, I believe, forthe same Enneagram, like, like,
we just, we hit it off, and so,but he has this really cool
space that I'm not necessarilyin in our community, right?

(19:39):
That's this creative kind ofleadership space, networking
space that's out there, right?
And so he throws me theseincredible invites that are just
like, hey, this is happening inBentonville. And I'm like, one,
how do I not know about thelike, like, these things are
happening every single day inBentonville, in this incredible
community. And I'm like, I and Irealize I crave wisdom. Them.

(20:00):
That's that networking aspect.
It's a networking Absolutely,and I crave wisdom. I mean, it's
one of those realities where Ijust want to sit in the space of
others who are leading and haveled, and just want to impart
that and share their gifts. Andit's a desire of my own to share
that too with how we planted theneighborhood church and gone
through that. And so when I sitin these spaces, I'm just, I
think Roseanne, you used theword yesterday in our staff

(20:21):
meeting. I'm just grateful. Likeyou're just sitting this base
and you're just hearing thesethings. And it's not that every
piece is mind shattering, and Irealize that I've missed out my
entire life on this nugget ofwisdom, right? But I realize
it's reinforcing a lot of thethings I have learned, and it's
imparting wisdom to places I cango. I think the wisdom comes
from knowing if those are placesthat I should go right like,

(20:42):
should I embrace this route?
Should I take this on? Should Ibegin here? Yeah,

because it's like, if, if you don't see anybody
ahead of you in something, thenyou don't ever know if you're
going in the right direction,correct. So you don't, you don't
really know where you're goingif you don't have a forward
point of reference. Yep,absolutely. And so being able to
be around people that you see asbeing ahead of you in something
lets you know, okay, that's thedirection I need, I need to be
going. So we can, we can see. Itmakes it a little little easier
to, you know, feel a little bitassured that we're doing what we

(21:09):
need to be doing.

You know, that's one of my biggest fears.
On my ultra marathons. My ultramarathon in October is an
overnight ultra marathon. So Irun, I run 10 hours through the
darkness. I literally pitchblack that sounds in the mouth.
Incredibly safe. It's notbecause there's bears. Like, I'm
in California with bears.

I'm not as worried about bears as I am, like
stepping on a rock and rolling.
So there's an issue too.

So you have lamps, you have everything else
like that. But there's twothings happen at that point in
the race. One, I've probablybeen running for 10 hours
already, so this will be hours10 to 20 that I'll be running in
the dark. Well, at that level,by probably like 16 to 20 hours
in the dark, you start tohallucinate. And then I realized
that the other day, when I wasrunning, I was doing some night
runs, these last couple nights,that the light on the top of my

(21:53):
head creates this really kind ofmysterious glow in front of my
face that my mind is not usedto. So the light being on, all
of a sudden you start to getthem, like, this haze, because,
like, you have this beacon,like, that's on top of your
mind. Don't go to the light. Oh,my God. So the fear for me is
that, like, out there, like atthat part of the race, you're

(22:13):
not necessarily near otherpeople, right? Because
everyone's

so if you do break an ankle, you're gonna be there
by yourself. You gotta have

a whistle.
Like, you gotta blow yourwhistle. You gotta whistle. You
gotta have a whistle cell phoneon your outside. But the other
part is getting lost. Likepeople get lost often in these
races, because they have no onein front of them. They don't and
they don't know default. And nowthere's markers on the way, but
you can easily get turned downanother trail, turned out

another place, for that long of a race, like you
can't have every marker was insight. You'd, I mean, that'd be
a ton of markers.

Look, I've been in day races, where I look
around and no one's around me.
I'm like, I think I'm offcourse. It's like, I don't
think. And then someone popsover the home, like, Oh, praise
God, I'm still the guards. Okay,here we go. And but it's a real
fear, and I think you sharedthis in the right way with
wisdom. Is that in wisdom,right? We do need someone in
front of us. And I continuallyremind myself I love the
neighborhood church. I think theneighborhood church is

(23:00):
incredible. I think where we'vegrown to is incredible. I think
we've taken steps forward infaith throughout all the years.
I think we continue to see Godworking here. I also very much
realize that we are not uniquein the kingdom of building
churches like this is notsomething that's innovatively a
crazy idea. Churches have donethis before. Us. Schools have
happened with churches before.

(23:22):
Preschools have happened withchurches before. Right? It's not
this thing that hasn't beendone, but I think as part of our
feelings that we have to go atit alone. And I think what we
read in building wisdom in ahousehold is there are
households around us. If you'rein a space, find the household
that's around you to buildwisdom in. And so we had this
wisdom by by wisdom, a house isbuilt, and by understanding, it

(23:44):
is established. So we've talkedabout established in week two,
right? It means to raise up thisbeing established. So it means
to have a strong foundation andraise up from that foundation to
be established. So we think ofestablished as rooting and in
Scripture, established as beingraised up. But understanding was
interesting, because that's kindof a new phrase that came
through in Scripture andunderstanding was saying you're

(24:04):
taking knowledge, and byunderstanding, it meant you're
taking it deeper than surfacelevel. So it's almost this path
that you see is like, Hey, youstart with knowledge, right by
wisdom, a house is built. Youstart with knowledge, then you
get to understanding. So notjust knowledge, you're starting
to go, hold on a second, I thinkI understand what I'm learning
like I can regurgitate it, butnow I'm actually understanding

(24:26):
it, right? And then from there,you get to establishing it,
which is now that I've had theknowledge and I've understood
it, I can raise it up, right?
And I can actually raise up thethings that I'm talking about
with authority, right? With anunderstanding, with a
confidence, right? You start toget to these levels. And so
there's this really neat kind ofmovement that we do. And then it
says, by knowledge, the roomsare filled with precious and
pleasant riches. That'sbeautiful, that's not material

(24:48):
things. That's the people,that's the people, right? It's
the people in our life that arefeeling that, that continue to
impart that so really kind of anincredible part of what we are
moving. Through in the text. ButRoseanne, someone who's sitting
in listening to the message,seeing what's going on. You had
some notes, which we call in asegment. You ready? Tom, we're
gonna do this with me. Right,right? 123, Roseanne notes.

Roseanne's notes.
Ah, man. Tom,

this is not new information. Joe, not new
information. Joe's not newinformation. He just stared at
me the whole time. Ah, but Iappreciate you saying Roseanne
notes at the end. That was verynice. Okay, that's great. That's
all I got. That's all you got.
Yeah, okay,

so you asked a couple questions in the Bible
app for the event. So what doesleaving a legacy mean to you?
Leaving a legacy means livingnow so that people talk of you
in high regard after you're gonefrom the earth, always reflect
God. Then your legacy becomesGod's reflection. That's

beautiful. And

then I would tell my younger self to be
strong and courageous. Do notgrow weary, for God is with you
always and always

1l or 2l yeah, this is great, okay.

And then I just took this quote from you. God
loves you because of who God is,not because of what you have or
haven't done, or who you are,yeah, that

was a piece of wisdom that we pulled right and,
and I think that was a greatfoundational part of the message
is to say, if we're thinkingabout a relationship with God,
it's because of of who God is,right? Like we can think of all
the things that we can do inthis relationship, but because
of who God is in our life, weare loved, right? And that's

a great contemporary worship song also,
oh, yeah, it is. That's

great. I was gonna ask you to sing that, and
I realized that's not gonna

go wisdom is knowing not to ask that.

Yeah, exactly that dude. See, I didn't do
that. I was like, no, stop thatone right there. Like, I have
this knowledge in my head. Let'sapply it right now. What other
notes did you have Roseanne

from? Well, just that. What's the last thing I
want people to know about me,that I truly, deeply loved God
and that I loved my family and Iserved the Lord through it all.

Yeah, that was the end of the message, right?
And I posed a question at theend of the message, and it was
this. I said, if you were to getto the end, so let's imagine
generational wisdom, right?
You've started off as a child.
You've gotten wisdom from yourparents. They've gotten wisdom
from their generations beforethem. You've imparted wisdom to
your family, right, whateverthat family structure looks

(27:29):
like. You've imparted wisdom tofriends, family, families, to
the house, right, multiplesystems, whatever that may be.
And then now let's imagine thatyou are at this end, right?
You're you're kind of in thisgenerational wisdom now that at
the end of the series, at theend of your life, and you are
now coming to the space whereyou can look upon all of your
life, what do you want people tosay about the wisdom that you

(27:49):
imparted? What do you wantpeople to say about you? And I
let people kind of dwell on thatfor a minute, just kind of let
them sit there. And I'm going tohave us answer this question
too, and I'll just kind of sharewhere you guys are thinking of
this, but what would you wantpeople to say about you at the
end of life? Like, if youimparted your wisdom and you did
that throughout all of yourlife, like at the end of your
life, what would you want peopleto say? And I kind of shared

(28:11):
that, you know, I've workedreally hard to be and just be
honest, right? And there's somehypocrisy in this, and I just
own that at the start, I'veworked really hard to be a
perfect husband, and I continueto work hard at it, and I can
tell you that I will continue towork harder for the rest of my
marriage, like it's there's andnever get that journey. Realize
this,

especially the husband part, because most women
are gonna say, bless your heart,you're only a man. Yeah, that's
right. I get that

a lot, yeah, right. And I was like, I get
this, like, I'm not gonna be aperfect husband, right? I will
try every day. I will work hardon my marriage every day, right?
And this is what I promiseright? It's gonna be. I have
tried to be a perfect father inso many ways, and I recognize
often, the ways that I fail atthat, often the ways that I can
grow in that. And there are somedays when I feel like a man I

(28:56):
won today, like it does matterany other day, but today I won.
And there's, there's there'shard choices, like last night
landing 930 is like, I got to domath homework. And I'm like, out
of all the years, I keep ontelling you don't come to me at
930 telling me you have to domath homework, and then we have
to learn advanced algebratogether, right? You know? And
I'm like, Okay, let's get afterthis, right? But he loves that
time. It's very important tohim. So I can. I've told myself,

(29:18):
do not be frustrated. You are amath major. You've been gifted
with this, sit with your son,enjoy to do math. I just get
frustrated at 930 at night onthe day before it's due, and so,
so I'm like, don't do it. Which

reminds me of my, my piece of wisdom. Well, what?
And I just forgot that, yeah,yeah. What's your piece of
wisdom? If you don't, if youfail to prepare, you prepare to
fail. Oh yeah, absolutely, 1000times over, and I've done that
before, like, night before,Saturday night, 10 o'clock. Oh,
I'm so guilty. Do the next dothe next day? And I'm like, and
my dad just looked at me like,really?

Yeah, I will.
I will add to that piece ofwisdom that your your crisis
because of failing preferreddoes not indicate my crisis.

Yeah, your failure to prepare does not come.
Student emergency. Yeah,

Unknown (30:01):
exactly. So, so I just sit

in presence, right? And everything else. So
Lane and I were having fun lastnight, doing math until late,
and then he finished thatproject, and then opened up his
second project that he had do.
And I was like, boy, you and Iare going to be talking, and
that's what's going to happen.
So, so we had this moment, and Ijust said, you know, I'm not a
perfect father, right? I evenwent as far as to say, I'm not a
perfect pastor, like I lovepeople fiercely, I love this

(30:23):
church loyally, and I willcontinue to work on that every
single day that I serve here andbut it's not perfect, and I
recognize that, and no one is.
And I was just kind of sharingwith people that you don't have
to strive for perfection. Noone's perfect in that way,
right? I've come to thatconclusion. I've tried to lead a
perfect church. It's just, it'snot that. It's not possible. I
believe with Christ as the head,that could be possible, it's

(30:44):
just not here, and we're goingto be beautifully and is it
possible with people in it? No,no, the church is people. We
deal with people every day.
We're in the people business whoget it. So I went through all
this and I said, you know, so Idon't see anyone at the end of
my life going, man, he was aperfect father, he was perfect
cousin, he was a perfect pastor.
Like, I just don't see thatbeing a reality, right? No
matter how hard I try, and I'llcontinue to try. And so I said

(31:04):
at the end, I said, what I wouldlove for people to look at my
life and say, is that, Oh, hedid love God, though. Like he
loved God, like, had a joy forGod in his life. And I think the
reason as I was discerning thewisdom in that statement myself,
as I was preparing for thismessage, the wisdom in that is

(31:25):
that if they can say that at theend of my life, that I loved
God, then it had to permeate inother areas. It had to show
through as a husband, it had toshow through as a pastor, as a
friend, in my households, as allthese different areas, as a
father like that, had to betrue. And if it's true, then it
means, at some levels, like Iwas doing the things that God

(31:47):
asked me to do, and I wasshowing through to be faithful
in my call, and I was beingloyal husband, you know, like in
all these areas, if I left Goddeeply at the end, right? And
they saw that. So it was kind ofa neat moment. So yeah, just
kind of open it up to you too.
What do you it up to you too.
What? What do you hope at theend is the wisdom that you

have that people would say about you when, after
that, you kind of set us up forfailure. That message, it's
close, right? So I'm like, I wasthinking when you first posed
the question of, you know, howwould I want to be remembered by
like, my family and my kids islike, I would hope that their
remembrance would be that Ialways put the people first,
yeah? Because I think that'spart of the message. You know,

(32:28):
when Jesus asked Peter said, Doyou love me, as you know, Tend
my flock, Feed my sheep, right?
You know, if, if we really loveGod, it will be visible in our
love to those around us. Yeah?
And if we're not loving thosearound us, then that's the
litmus test. We're obviously notloving God, because if we love
God, we'll be obedient to, youknow, through loving the people
around us, not necessarilyliking them, because they're

(32:49):
gonna be plenty of people we'renot gonna like. Yeah, right, we
just have to love them, whichisn't necessarily the same
thing.

Yeah, that's very true. It's very true. What
about you? Roseanne, well, I

picture picture this. I picture my grandson
saying, move over. Rosie andRoseanne. She was the funniest
lady on Earth. But also becauseI don't always try, but
sometimes I'm funny. Okay,

I love your weekly email, like, just the intro to
it. Like, I look forward to thatevery week.

So good, Rosanne,

you're funny.
I mean, I told you this rightaway, because you're sneaky
funny, like in the hiringprocess, like Roseanne was very
professional, right there. Wehad some fun in the hiring
process. We talked througheverything. You had great
interviews, different thingslike that. And then as soon as
you start on staff, you werelike, sneakily funny. And I was
like, Oh, I dig your humor. Andthen it got kind of like, snarky
funny. And I was like, Oh, I digyour packets of aggressive humor

(33:45):
too. And then I was like, Oh, Idig all parts of this joint.
Those

Rosies need to move over. But truly, what I
want people to say about me isthat she served the Lord with
all her heart.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's
what sustains us like, if we canget to the end and realize that
we serve the Lord right? And Ithink too, you have to. And this
is something I do often. And Itell people this often too, and
often people who are strugglingwith identity, I share this with
right in pastoral caresituations, you have to check
your faithfulness and you reallydo, right? Because the world

(34:25):
will constantly pull againstyou, right? There are things
that will draw you away fromGod. There are people that will
challenge you with God. You haveto check your faithfulness
often. And what I mean by thatis you have to check your heart,
like, Are you serving in afaithful capacity first here,
because you will know honestlyif you've denied that, if you
haven't served faithfully, ifyou're denying your call, right,

(34:46):
if you're walking away from Godand you're trying to profess
that you're stronger than youare, and you've done things
right, and you're trying to getyou can check yourself first,
right? And if you learn to checkyourself and be honest with
yourself that, no, I did thisfaithfully. I stepped into this
and, you know, I 100% was herefaith. Really, and I believe
this, then, then great rest onthat, right? I find peace

in that, even if you make mistakes in that human
capacity, you're stillfaithfully serving. Oh yeah,
yeah. I mean, I could befaithfully 110%

one direction, and it doesn't go perfect,
that's all right, but I enteredinto that 100% faithful,

and I think that's the difference of the goal.
Like, if your goal is to beperfect, you'll you'll always
fail, yeah, right. Whereas, ifyour goal is to be faithful,
yeah, then you can alwayssucceed, yep, you know. And just
the goal should be to be just tobe faithful,

yeah, you know, part of the reason so I'm
running my longest race thisweekend, right? It's 50 miles,
and in been training for it, Ifeel great for like, I'm not
nervous for

the race, and I'm proud of you for training,
because I remember the Joe Lilesshow up with no training and
then not be able to walk to thefront. Yeah, yeah. Weeks

like last night, I ran seven miles. Yeah,
it's so much growth. Those arelast night around seven miles,
and just went out and seven milerun, you know, it was fine. You
know, that's great. I've run 12miles last week, like, it's
fine. I'm in great training,right? And that's great. But
part of the reason I've donethis is because there is a point
when you need faithfulness here,like you just need to faithfully

(36:15):
endure, right? The race is notgoing to go perfect, right? It's
not going to be exactly what Ihope it to be, and I know that,
and it's been a really neatjourney over the last three
years to start to understandthese things about it. Like, the
beginning, you think, Oh, I canbeat all these times, and I can
do all this, and you had thiskind of competition, right? And
then you settle into, like, thisbeautiful space of like, Hey,
I'm gonna expect some unexpectedthings. I don't know what those

(36:36):
are yet, but I'm gonna expectthem. I'm gonna learn some tools
and some things that'll help methat I didn't know at the
beginning, because I've beentraining, and as I get into it,
I'm going to surround myselfwith some people that I need to
see some support in. I'm goingto refresh myself halfway
through the race, right, becauseI want to feel refreshed on the
journey, right? And I know thatat some point also my body will

(36:57):
fail me, like at some point mymind will fail me, and it's
going to be a deep conversationwith God going, Whoo, I still
got 18 miles left. Where are wegoing from here? Like, what are
we doing? And it's going to be afaithful endurance and it's not
going to be perfect, right? Anda part of it that I love about
these long endurance events,which I treat the church as,
it's just a faithfulness towardsnot a goal, but a faithfulness

(37:20):
towards my relationship withGod. I am uniquely called in my
relationship with God. I get thejoy of serving that with others
around me. That's beautiful. Ifwe can raise that up in others,
and I can teach that faithfulendurance beautiful, right? That
is 100% the reality that we needto serve in. So there's, I think
there's been a really incredibleseries just for breaking down
wisdom of the church andunderstanding more about the

(37:42):
wisdom of God. I would love todo a part two of this series
where it was talking aboutwisdom is like a spirit
narrative, right, that also hasright named, right? That wisdom
is spirit. And so I would loveto kind of break into that, but
we're switching in this nextseries, and Tom, you're leading
starting off the series becauseit's related to life groups, and
it's really left group kickoff.
Yes, it's life group kickoff.

(38:03):
This Friday. You got a studygoing on that we're gonna kick
off into Sunday. So Tom talk tous more about what's happening
Sunday. How is it related toyour life

group study? Yeah.
So the kickoff Friday is for thebook that the life groups are
reading the a week in the

life of Rome.
Nice,

which is very interesting, by the way. I think

it's pretty I like the I like the author. It's
historical fiction, so it's allplausible stuff, just to help us
understand what life was like inthe first century Rome for
Christian, not unlike, notunlike, like the chosen now, or
something, yeah, and it's notthere,

you know, just some of the side bars. It's
like, this is not unique, yeah,our world right now

different with different words, different
topics, but same kind ofsituations, but it gives us
context to understand when weget into Romans, yeah. And so
the preaching series for Octoberis kind of hitting a highlight
main themes of the book ofRomans, and between the context
and the main themes to prepareus for after we come back from
Christmas and we come back intothe new year in 2026 and life

(39:06):
groups reconvene to get into adeep dive study of the book of
Romans, which is a letterwritten by the Apostle Paul to
the churches in Rome. Yeah,around 5556 ad, and so my hope
is that that between the thebook to understand the social
and cultural realities in Romethat Christians are dealing

(39:28):
with, and hitting, kind of thosehigh themes that will come into
that study in the spring, with adeeper understanding, to be able
to to read the letter of Romansin the way that the Christians
of The first century in Romewould have read it when they
received it, yeah, and tounderstand what Paul was talking
about. Because right now for us,if we don't have that context,

(39:49):
we're trying to read that basedon our experiences in Northwest
Arkansas in 2025 which is notthe audience Paul wrote it to.
So we have to be able to getinto into that frame of mind.
Understand

it. I think it's going to be very interesting
that we're going to see thecontext of society there, and
then I'm looking forward toreading Romans through that
lens,

because there's some stuff there that will I
think most people will probablyencounter something where
they're like, oh, that'sdifferent than what I thought
that was talking about, andchallenge some assumptions. And
there's some stuff in there.
There'll be a little, a little,you know, unsettling of like,
because we think of like Romanculture, we have a tendency in
like history to kind of build itup as this, this, you know,
great thing. And there wereparts of it that were good, and

(40:33):
there are other parts of it thatwe would find just completely
abominable. You know, thatthat's the reality of what what
the Christians were dealingwith. I think we romanticize it.
Yes, we romanticize

because, yeah, we, we do. We do tend to make it
glossy, and it's not, it'sgritty

very much. So, I mean, the gospel is, I mean,
like we take these stories andwe make them childhood versions
of stories that we can tell. Butthe gospel is a narrative that
is one that is twisted, and itis betrayal, and it's there's a
lot in there that we tend tolike, try to take out into
culture in a way that'suplifting and life giving,
right? And it can be, but at thesame time, we have to, we have

(41:19):
to struggle through some things.
I think there's

uncomfortableness.
Yeah, it's like, if you readlike a letter that somebody
writes to somebody else, but youdon't know the context, you're
not you're gonna understand it.
And I think there's applicationsfor that in, you know, in
society now, but we have tounderstand what was actually
being being said. So I thinkthat'd be good. And for the
folks listen to this, they'regoing to come to the launch on
Friday, wear a toga, or it's aRoman party. It's a Roman party.

(41:43):
Yeah, we're gonna leave out allthe grittiness of Roman culture,
and Chef Troy is gonna have somegreat food, beautiful. I've
heard rumor there's sometiramisu stuff like that. So,
yeah, a church appropriate toga.
Yeah, yeah, with undergarments,because it's because it's just
kind of like a half kind ofthing party. But very well, I've
started researching online,like, how to turn make a toga,

(42:06):
like a bed sheet, yeah? And I'mlike, oh, some of this is not
appropriate. Oh, yeah, yeah, bewarned when you search how to do
that. It's great, but, yeah,it'll be, it'll be a good time.
Food fellowship will be funseries.

Yeah, that's great. So we're kicking off with
the Romans for the study forlife groups. We're kicking off
with Romans in a series, right?
We're going to go through itlike a Bible study. So you're
opening up really Sunday on thiskind of understanding of the
book of Romans?

Yeah, we'll get into the context of what's going
on, what was happening inhistory that led up to Paul
writing this great kind of theoverview what's going on and
why, and a big part of why it'simportant, because Romans, you
know, Luther said that Romanswas of the greatest of the New
Testament writings. It was not agospel, yeah? Because it's kind
of like the first century,systematic theology, dogmatics,

(42:50):
like an understanding ofChristian theology of Christian

in the first century. Yeah, that's beautiful,
because we had the the Judeans,who were Christ followers. But
then we have these Gentiles,Romans, who weren't. They didn't
grow up in the traditions of theJudean culture. And so it's a
it's a revolution,

oh yeah. And it's a clash between cultures, even
within the church, Ohabsolutely,

yeah. And they have to resolve that, because
they are way followers,

yeah, etc, separating the civil right from
the faithful right, and thecivil from the

follower and so and societal expectations from what
God requires of us. We

I mean, we could do Romans for a year. Oh,
yeah, it's great in that way.

And there's some challenging stuff, of like, even
this is what the Christians werecalling for. And do we really
think that's what God'srequiring of us? There's some
sort of challenges on our own ofwhat would you do for your
family situation? Yeah, thatsome of them will. I think we
will be no way for everybody tobe on the line with the same
answer, yeah. But I think itmight prompt. I think you could
ask a question at the beginningand they would answer one way,

(43:58):
and at the end of it, they mightchange your answer. Oh, which is
always cool. It's great.

That's great. So politicians never do that. So

as you see, Friday's gonna be a great
launch, if you're thinking aboutlife groups, and then also from
there, Sunday is gonna be greatleading into Romans, which will
be an awesome start. Sign up inthe church center. Sign up in
the church center app, right?
And we'll go forward. And allGod's people said, Amen. You
you.

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