March 14, 2025 • 29 mins
On this 4th show, Bill explores spiritual seekers. In John 1:38, when Jesus asks "what are you looking for?, is this a call for all of us to reflect on our deepest desires?
Bill explores how this question applies to modern seekers of success, significance, meaning and happiness.
Of note, today's discussion turns to discernment between worldly ambitions and deeper, God-centered purpose.
And enjoy our Bible Trivia moment on Andrew.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
Bill explores how this question applies to modern seekers of success, significance, meaning and happiness.
Of note, today's discussion turns to discernment between worldly ambitions and deeper, God-centered purpose.
And enjoy our Bible Trivia moment on Andrew.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, welcome back to Success to Significance. I'm Rick to Kenny.
This is our special series with doctor Bill Sappenfield, my
longtime friend and Bill. I was wrapping up acknowledgments in
our latest book, Truly Significant, and listing out all the
long lifelong friends that I've had, and you made it
(00:33):
along with several others from Sherman and We've known each
other such a long time, but I feel like through
this series I've actually gotten to know you much much better.
And looking forward to today's session, it's this third session
and then we're going to go onto the fourth, fifth,
all the way to the seventh. But today's about what
(00:54):
are you looking for in terms of spiritual seeking? So
give us a little backdrop from John, the Book of John,
and then we'll jump right into the questions.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Sure, what we've been trying to do here just set
up a pattern for our conversations are seven questions. Six
questions that have come out in the Bible, and we're
using those as a way to anchor the conversation. We're
(01:26):
marching through them in chronological order as they appear in scripture,
starting from the Garden of Eden when God asked Adam
and Eve, where are you all the way up to
this one? This is our fourth question, which comes very
early in the ministry of Jesus, and it starts off
(01:49):
actually with John the Baptist, and he's standing out of
doing whatever he's doing. He preaches a little sermon just
before what we see here, and then the next day
he's standing with two of his disciples. One of them
turns out to be Andrew, who later became the disciple
(02:10):
of Jesus, and he has said he sees Jesus, and
he says, look, here is the Lamb of God. And
so the two disciples follow along after Jesus, and Jesus
turns and looks at them. They're already following Jesus. They
don't know who he is, and he asks them a
(02:30):
real significant question, what are you looking for? So let's
ask ourselves, what are you looking for? When you're following Jesus.
You don't really know who he is. You're really anxious
to learn more about him. So often we think we
have to make up our minds about Jesus before we
start following, and I don't think that's the case at all.
(02:55):
You were talking earlier about how long we've been friends
and that's great, But really we didn't make friends with
who we are now. We're two real different people now.
And as fifty years go by and you have all
those experiences, we're friends with different folks than we made
(03:18):
friends with fifty years ago. You're married to a different
person than you were when you first got married, and
so who you are? What when Jesus asked what are
you looking for? What we're looking for will change as
our life continues.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Well, that is so profound, and a lot of people
don't realize that they need to be asking that question
throughout their life. And when you read the Bible as
a youngster versus today, it certainly has a whole lot
different meaning. And I'll get down to that first question.
You know, what are you looking for? How do you
(03:59):
think this question applies to modern seekers, maybe postmodern seekers
of significance, success meaning purpose and the H word happiness.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Oh, I don't think there's any doubt that it's truly
a significant question, because as we develop in our faith,
we're looking for different things. And all you have to
do is when it comes to a relationship with a church,
(04:38):
there are those who say, oh, I want a socially
oriented church, and that helps people in society, and so
let's go find poor people and make them more physically secure.
And other people will say, no, I want to find
a church that keeps their from being that keeps me
(05:01):
from being poor, so I won't think that a real
relationship with God will make me wealthy. And someone will say,
I'm anxious to get what I knew. Someone can be
(05:23):
very disappointed that I prayed for healing for a person
in my family and that person died, So God disappointed me,
and I can't believe in God anymore. I'll give an example.
It hit me because of a set of circumstances. I
was we were doing a mission start up until it'sa Oklahoma,
(05:45):
just going to start a whole new church, and all
sorts of things involved in that. But one of the
things you're very interested in at that stage of development
is getting people to attend your church and join your church.
You're kind of anxious just to have numbers. And this
example hit me because both things happened within about two
(06:10):
three days. And it's actually kind of funny. It's so
such a satire of what people are looking for. One
fellow was talking to me about the church that we
were starting, and said he really liked it and appreciated
all the goals that we had said, but he wasn't
(06:32):
going to join the church because we were so small
at that time, and he was trying to start his
insurance business and he wanted to make more acquaintances with
more people so we would have more potential customers to
help with his insurance, so he wasn't going to join
(06:52):
the church. Within a couple of days, I was talking
with a lady who said she was going to join
the church where I was, even though she didn't like it,
as well as another that she was visiting because we
were building a new building and she noticed that it
was a really wide center aisle and it would accommodate
(07:14):
a coffin, and she wasn't getting any younger, so she
wanted to make sure that we would be able to
physically handle her funeral when she died. Now, then those
two people both knew what they were looking for, you know,
all right, that's an important question. You need to know
what you're looking for. And those are such well, they're funny,
(07:40):
they're funny examples. When you talked about I would like
to have some profundity in my church well, we're all
looking for different things, and if you know what you're
looking for that's worth something.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
That's right, you'd better define profundity. And I've had to
do this with several people since we talked a year ago.
But give out that definition. So that'll be our word
for the day.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
You know what, you know what it is to be
profound deeper. This means more than just the uh. It's
it's an antonym, the opposite of the word shallow, just
something that I can uh. Shallow would be something that
I can see and know and evaluate very quickly. Profound
(08:33):
means it has many facets, many aspects. It's deep. It
has a lot to do with what our life is
for and what it means.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Thank you, sir for that. I'm going to move on
to the next question is the one that really grab
me this week. So I'm anxious for you to here
to answer for us. In the context of asking that question,
what are you looking for? How can someone any of
us discern between worldly ambitions and deeper God centered purpose?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Gosh, we are all looking for different things. We don't all,
and we're looking for different things at different points in
our lives. I think I know what you mean when
you say worldly purposes, and those would be shallow things,
(09:35):
things that don't last. But to see something deep when
we say I want to have a relationship with God,
I want to have a meaning in my life. What
your overall program is focusing on finding magnificance. Sometimes we
(10:05):
pray and even say we have things that are just
on their surface, fairly shallow. Oh I really had to
get to my appointment and I couldn't find a parking place,
and God saw that, and boom, I saw I had
a parking place. Well that's I'm glad you got the
(10:29):
parking place, and I'm glad you see the hand of
God in that. But I'm not ready to say that's
the reason for my relationship with God. It may be
I'm willing to certainly willing to say God has mysterious
ways that he works in my life, but I don't
(10:52):
always think that that's the reason for having a relationship
with God. So we have so many different reasons that
people want a relationship with God. The prosperity gospel is
actually got a name and is being studied, and that's
(11:18):
the idea that you're going to have a relationship with God.
So you'll get what you want, and usually that means money,
and so you can you can actually go online and
buy a book called God Wants You Rich. And that's
what that's That is the reason for a purpose with God.
(11:42):
One that I hear an awful lot and I think
that we all have, is you want to a relationship
with God so that you will go to heaven and
not hell when you die. And so even though you
have then you take that the next step. And that
means that I'll even put up with the life of
(12:05):
doing what I think God wants me to do. It's
a big pain in the neck, but at least I'll
go to heaven when I die. And that's a difficult
way too. But you know, I see that. I see
that that's what people want and see that as a
reason for having a relationship with God. When you invite
(12:30):
someone to share your values, they will often say, well,
you know, God might heal a sick loved one, or
God might help my kids out, so they'll hang around
with the right kinds of people. Or I think church
ought to be doing things to feed the poor, user
(12:54):
building for good, helpful things like AA meetings and warming
centers and things that I really do think that churches
ought to be doing to serve the community. But is
that the extent of what a relationship with God is
(13:15):
going to give us. There's really no agreement on what
we're looking for in worship. There. You can actually get
a group of people and say, okay, you have to eat,
tell me what do you want out of worship? Do
(13:37):
you want meditation or do you want celebration? And step
back and it'll devolve into a fistfight within five minutes.
That's not true, but that you there's no real agreement
on what it means to have a really worshipful time
(13:58):
to be in the presence of God. I've heard recently
of a sermon that called for listeners to care about
the oppressed, and a prominent person in the congregation did
go online and say that was a lousy sermon and
(14:23):
I do not inspire me at all, And the preacher
has gotten death threat since then. So actually, I think
it's possible to say that if you want a relationship
with God, you should make your life more meaningful by
(14:43):
caring for the oppressed and giving hope to folks. We're
all when Jesus asked, what are you looking for? It's
not always going to be the same answer.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
That's right, that's exactly right. Oh that was that was beautiful.
Thank you for saying that. Okay, we're going to take
a quick break for Bible trivia. It's something that the
series started last week and Bill went off and gave
me maybe one of the greatest children's Bible Sunday school
(15:18):
lessons ever, and he said, Okay, I'm making it short
this week. So what's our Bible trivia this week?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Bill, Let's go with Andrew. Andrew, who later became one
of the Twelve Apostles, is actually named here. In this
Bible story, two of John the Baptist's disciples followed Jesus
and he turned around and asked him the question of
the week, what are you looking for? And so let's
(15:46):
let's have a look at Andrew. There's more information about
him than is actually in the Bible, because some of
it is just about later traditions that sprang up about him.
Andrew telling Lee, when he gets to start talking to Jesus,
(16:06):
goes off and finds his brother Simon Peter. So Simon
Peter and Andrew are brothers. And Andrew went off and
found Peter and brought him to Jesus. This is a
recurring theme in Andrew's life. We have a number of stories.
(16:26):
In John's telling the Feeding of the five Thousand, Jesus
is looking around saying, ash, look at all these people.
They're hungry. They want something to eat. And in John
it says and Andrew found this young man with five
loaves and two fish. So again it's Andrew who brings
(16:48):
somebody to Jesus. We have in John twelve Andrew says
there's a Greeks here, uh, and they want to meet Jesus. Okay,
again it's telling it's Andrew who finds these outsiders and
(17:09):
brings them to Jesus. Uh. He's got two different backgrounds.
In uh in John, we have this story and Matthew
and Luke. He's a fisherman, and he and his brother
Peter are up mending their fishing nets, and Jesus is
(17:32):
walking by the Sea of Galilee, and he talks to
both of them and calls them to go fishing, or
to be fishers of men. That is that famous statement.
He calls Uh Andrew and Peter to do that. And
(17:54):
in uh in Luke it goes on and says he
it's on their boat, goes out into the water and
sits in the boat and preaches to the crowd from
the boat for a while, and then has the fishermen
(18:14):
go out and drop their nets down in the water
and they catch a whole bunch of fish. And all right,
that's all that we have about Andrew. That's actually in
the Bible. There are some traditions in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
He has a special name. He's called first Called because
(18:37):
of this story. He first called. He was the one
of the the original or the original, the first one
who's called to be a disciple, and so he has
that thing. Uh, you know, the biggest college in Scotland
is Saint Andrew's. That's Saint Andrews and they have a
(18:59):
golf course that it's famous. And so he is the
patron saint of Scotland and he's also several Orthodox churches.
He's the patron saint of Russia and Romania and Ukraine.
So I guess in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia
(19:19):
there have people on both sides calling out to their
patron saint for protection and help. Oh my god, that's
that's shorter. That's a good job.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Well, that is so interesting. Oh my gosh, well thank
you for that. Okay, now back to the final two
questions today in your experience, what are most people truly
searching for even if they don't even realize it.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I think even though they're not always looking for it,
people are not going to be satisfied until they find it.
And that is you said, a life of significance. I
want to make a difference in the world. I want
a chance to serve. And they don't always start off
(20:12):
with that, but that's when people find that, when people
find their satisfaction, and some people never do. Some people
never make it to that. As they're developing in their faith,
they start off I want to learn enough about the
Bible too, And they won't put it this way, but
(20:33):
they want to learn enough about the Bible to win arguments,
or they want to talk about who they're angry at
or who's you know what bir they have under their
saddle today, and they want to straighten other people out.
(20:55):
And I've seen people live their whole lives just trying
to straighten other people out. And like we talked about
last week, when the question was is it right for
you to be angry? They are people who are angry
and they want to express their anger. But you know,
(21:17):
if let's reduce this, what are you looking for all
the way? And I say you're looking for in a
relationship with God? You just reduce that to church attendance.
If I said, you know, Rick, I'm looking for a
church to go to. Do you go to church? Where
(21:39):
do you go? Tell me about it? And you want
to have another visitor to church, So you'd probably say
something about how nice the people are, or how convenient
the parking lot, or you know, something to make the
church attractive. And it's important for us to do those
sorts of things. But probably wouldn't occur to you to
(22:03):
say you will have a chance to serve God. Uh.
And that's I think. If it's not what people are
initially looking for, it's what they will find comfort in doing.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I'll tell you my brother went to a he moved.
He moved a lot during his career, and he moved
to a different town and he went to a very
nice church, and the people were nice and he was
enjoying himself there. For some reason, he visited a different
church which was not nice. It was in a poor
(22:48):
part of town and he went to the bathroom and
he looked up and saw some roaches up on the
ceiling and the ceiling tile was falling in. And when
he went back out, he told his wife, Okay, are
you ready for this? We need to start going to
(23:08):
church here. They could use our offering, They could use
our help this place. This place has a lot of it.
We can make a difference in this church. Now. Yeah,
that's that's why I love my brother. Uh. That's probably
(23:30):
not the first thing that people would think about. Uh
you're a father, think about when you were growing up
or when your kids were growing up. I'm sorry and
you say, oh gosh, I don't want my kids to
hang around with those kids because there'll be a bad influence.
(23:52):
Have you ever thought, Wow, I wish my daughters would
hang around with those two foul mouths jerks who are
causing all the trouble. I bet my daughters could be
a real good influence on them. That's that's not the
first thing that parents think about. How can we make
(24:15):
things better? And God gives us a chance to make
our world better. And so when Jesus turns, you know,
we're following Jesus and thinking of all the things that
we want. Jesus will turn around and say what are
you looking for and make that part of the conversation.
(24:35):
How can you serve? How can you make this world
a better place?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
That's right exactly. Oh man, that's Bucky. You're talking about
the Bucks Sappenfield.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Brother of God.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, I'm gonna write him and send him this conversation
in case he hasn't heard this series, I'm gonna say
you are ment and in that that's a great story. Okay.
Last question of today for you, doctor is how can
people seeking success avoid the trap of looking in the
wrong places for fulfillments?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Who are you serving? Are you really trying to serve
the world around you? Serving God? Are you looking to
make yourself more comfortable? Or are you looking for celebrating
how precious your life is by trying to, as you say,
(25:38):
go along with the meaning of your life of how
you can Because and the reason it's so important to
focus on that question what are you looking for? Then
you know when you found it? What am I looking for?
Am I looking for to make sure that I go
(26:00):
to heaven instead of hell? That I'm looking for a
way to make myself more prosperous? Am I looking for
a way to not ever worry again? Well, instead, maybe
you should think about God is using Can God use
(26:21):
me as he wants to use all of the resources
in his creation? Can I fit in with the creation
that I see around me? How can I make my
fellow creatures feel better and more meaningful in their own lives?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
M excellent, excellent, excellent. I really am personally growing from
these particular programs episodes with you, and we're looking forward
to the next one. And what will be our fifth question?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Oh, that's probably the deepest water that we will be
fishing in. That's the one where also from the Gospel
of John only this is at the very tail end
of Jesus's career. He's been arrested, stayed up all Monday Thursday,
(27:25):
and finally the Governor's palace in Jerusalem is open for
business on the morning of Good Friday, and he goes
and has a conversation with Pontius Pilot, and they're talking
back and forth, and Jesus is saying, you know, it's
(27:47):
kind of the same conversation, what are you looking for?
And so Pilot's saying, well, so you say you're a
keen great, how come you're here all chained up and
about to be crucified if you're a king. And Jesus says,
my kingdom's not of this world. My kingdom is for
people who listen to the truth and still confused. A
(28:12):
pilot says, what is truth? Well, that has come up
more than once in our lifetimes and is still with
us today. We're arguing with what is true and what
isn't true all the time, and so we'll we'll talk
about that next week. But the question is from Pontia's pilot,
(28:34):
what is truth? And anybody want to read ahead on that.
That's John chapter ten thirty three through thirty eight.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Excellent, very good, Thank you, doctor Bill. We will look
forward to our next Tuesday with Bill. And I was
thinking last night, Bill, I went out. You see all
the credits rolled for a show who did what? And
I think about, wouldn't it be interesting if God, God's
name was after every different role this show? So I
(29:12):
would say, this show is brought to you by God,
it was written.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
By it was written by God.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Inspired by God, and we and and that's what we're
trying to do is glorify God through this and help
hopefully this is inspired and will help everyone grow, especially
on your own road to significance. Thank you, folks, We'll
talk to you next week.
Hey, welcome back to Success to Significance. I'm Rick to Kenny.
This is our special series with doctor Bill Sappenfield, my
longtime friend and Bill. I was wrapping up acknowledgments in
our latest book, Truly Significant, and listing out all the
long lifelong friends that I've had, and you made it
(00:33):
along with several others from Sherman and We've known each
other such a long time, but I feel like through
this series I've actually gotten to know you much much better.
And looking forward to today's session, it's this third session
and then we're going to go onto the fourth, fifth,
all the way to the seventh. But today's about what
(00:54):
are you looking for in terms of spiritual seeking? So
give us a little backdrop from John, the Book of John,
and then we'll jump right into the questions.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Sure, what we've been trying to do here just set
up a pattern for our conversations are seven questions. Six
questions that have come out in the Bible, and we're
using those as a way to anchor the conversation. We're
(01:26):
marching through them in chronological order as they appear in scripture,
starting from the Garden of Eden when God asked Adam
and Eve, where are you all the way up to
this one? This is our fourth question, which comes very
early in the ministry of Jesus, and it starts off
(01:49):
actually with John the Baptist, and he's standing out of
doing whatever he's doing. He preaches a little sermon just
before what we see here, and then the next day
he's standing with two of his disciples. One of them
turns out to be Andrew, who later became the disciple
(02:10):
of Jesus, and he has said he sees Jesus, and
he says, look, here is the Lamb of God. And
so the two disciples follow along after Jesus, and Jesus
turns and looks at them. They're already following Jesus. They
don't know who he is, and he asks them a
(02:30):
real significant question, what are you looking for? So let's
ask ourselves, what are you looking for? When you're following Jesus.
You don't really know who he is. You're really anxious
to learn more about him. So often we think we
have to make up our minds about Jesus before we
start following, and I don't think that's the case at all.
(02:55):
You were talking earlier about how long we've been friends
and that's great, But really we didn't make friends with
who we are now. We're two real different people now.
And as fifty years go by and you have all
those experiences, we're friends with different folks than we made
(03:18):
friends with fifty years ago. You're married to a different
person than you were when you first got married, and
so who you are? What when Jesus asked what are
you looking for? What we're looking for will change as
our life continues.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Well, that is so profound, and a lot of people
don't realize that they need to be asking that question
throughout their life. And when you read the Bible as
a youngster versus today, it certainly has a whole lot
different meaning. And I'll get down to that first question.
You know, what are you looking for? How do you
(03:59):
think this question applies to modern seekers, maybe postmodern seekers
of significance, success meaning purpose and the H word happiness.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Oh, I don't think there's any doubt that it's truly
a significant question, because as we develop in our faith,
we're looking for different things. And all you have to
do is when it comes to a relationship with a church,
(04:38):
there are those who say, oh, I want a socially
oriented church, and that helps people in society, and so
let's go find poor people and make them more physically secure.
And other people will say, no, I want to find
a church that keeps their from being that keeps me
(05:01):
from being poor, so I won't think that a real
relationship with God will make me wealthy. And someone will say,
I'm anxious to get what I knew. Someone can be
(05:23):
very disappointed that I prayed for healing for a person
in my family and that person died, So God disappointed me,
and I can't believe in God anymore. I'll give an example.
It hit me because of a set of circumstances. I
was we were doing a mission start up until it'sa Oklahoma,
(05:45):
just going to start a whole new church, and all
sorts of things involved in that. But one of the
things you're very interested in at that stage of development
is getting people to attend your church and join your church.
You're kind of anxious just to have numbers. And this
example hit me because both things happened within about two
(06:10):
three days. And it's actually kind of funny. It's so
such a satire of what people are looking for. One
fellow was talking to me about the church that we
were starting, and said he really liked it and appreciated
all the goals that we had said, but he wasn't
(06:32):
going to join the church because we were so small
at that time, and he was trying to start his
insurance business and he wanted to make more acquaintances with
more people so we would have more potential customers to
help with his insurance, so he wasn't going to join
(06:52):
the church. Within a couple of days, I was talking
with a lady who said she was going to join
the church where I was, even though she didn't like it,
as well as another that she was visiting because we
were building a new building and she noticed that it
was a really wide center aisle and it would accommodate
(07:14):
a coffin, and she wasn't getting any younger, so she
wanted to make sure that we would be able to
physically handle her funeral when she died. Now, then those
two people both knew what they were looking for, you know,
all right, that's an important question. You need to know
what you're looking for. And those are such well, they're funny,
(07:40):
they're funny examples. When you talked about I would like
to have some profundity in my church well, we're all
looking for different things, and if you know what you're
looking for that's worth something.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
That's right, you'd better define profundity. And I've had to
do this with several people since we talked a year ago.
But give out that definition. So that'll be our word
for the day.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
You know what, you know what it is to be
profound deeper. This means more than just the uh. It's
it's an antonym, the opposite of the word shallow, just
something that I can uh. Shallow would be something that
I can see and know and evaluate very quickly. Profound
(08:33):
means it has many facets, many aspects. It's deep. It
has a lot to do with what our life is
for and what it means.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Thank you, sir for that. I'm going to move on
to the next question is the one that really grab
me this week. So I'm anxious for you to here
to answer for us. In the context of asking that question,
what are you looking for? How can someone any of
us discern between worldly ambitions and deeper God centered purpose?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Gosh, we are all looking for different things. We don't all,
and we're looking for different things at different points in
our lives. I think I know what you mean when
you say worldly purposes, and those would be shallow things,
(09:35):
things that don't last. But to see something deep when
we say I want to have a relationship with God,
I want to have a meaning in my life. What
your overall program is focusing on finding magnificance. Sometimes we
(10:05):
pray and even say we have things that are just
on their surface, fairly shallow. Oh I really had to
get to my appointment and I couldn't find a parking place,
and God saw that, and boom, I saw I had
a parking place. Well that's I'm glad you got the
(10:29):
parking place, and I'm glad you see the hand of
God in that. But I'm not ready to say that's
the reason for my relationship with God. It may be
I'm willing to certainly willing to say God has mysterious
ways that he works in my life, but I don't
(10:52):
always think that that's the reason for having a relationship
with God. So we have so many different reasons that
people want a relationship with God. The prosperity gospel is
actually got a name and is being studied, and that's
(11:18):
the idea that you're going to have a relationship with God.
So you'll get what you want, and usually that means money,
and so you can you can actually go online and
buy a book called God Wants You Rich. And that's
what that's That is the reason for a purpose with God.
(11:42):
One that I hear an awful lot and I think
that we all have, is you want to a relationship
with God so that you will go to heaven and
not hell when you die. And so even though you
have then you take that the next step. And that
means that I'll even put up with the life of
(12:05):
doing what I think God wants me to do. It's
a big pain in the neck, but at least I'll
go to heaven when I die. And that's a difficult
way too. But you know, I see that. I see
that that's what people want and see that as a
reason for having a relationship with God. When you invite
(12:30):
someone to share your values, they will often say, well,
you know, God might heal a sick loved one, or
God might help my kids out, so they'll hang around
with the right kinds of people. Or I think church
ought to be doing things to feed the poor, user
(12:54):
building for good, helpful things like AA meetings and warming
centers and things that I really do think that churches
ought to be doing to serve the community. But is
that the extent of what a relationship with God is
(13:15):
going to give us. There's really no agreement on what
we're looking for in worship. There. You can actually get
a group of people and say, okay, you have to eat,
tell me what do you want out of worship? Do
(13:37):
you want meditation or do you want celebration? And step
back and it'll devolve into a fistfight within five minutes.
That's not true, but that you there's no real agreement
on what it means to have a really worshipful time
(13:58):
to be in the presence of God. I've heard recently
of a sermon that called for listeners to care about
the oppressed, and a prominent person in the congregation did
go online and say that was a lousy sermon and
(14:23):
I do not inspire me at all, And the preacher
has gotten death threat since then. So actually, I think
it's possible to say that if you want a relationship
with God, you should make your life more meaningful by
(14:43):
caring for the oppressed and giving hope to folks. We're
all when Jesus asked, what are you looking for? It's
not always going to be the same answer.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
That's right, that's exactly right. Oh that was that was beautiful.
Thank you for saying that. Okay, we're going to take
a quick break for Bible trivia. It's something that the
series started last week and Bill went off and gave
me maybe one of the greatest children's Bible Sunday school
(15:18):
lessons ever, and he said, Okay, I'm making it short
this week. So what's our Bible trivia this week?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Bill, Let's go with Andrew. Andrew, who later became one
of the Twelve Apostles, is actually named here. In this
Bible story, two of John the Baptist's disciples followed Jesus
and he turned around and asked him the question of
the week, what are you looking for? And so let's
(15:46):
let's have a look at Andrew. There's more information about
him than is actually in the Bible, because some of
it is just about later traditions that sprang up about him.
Andrew telling Lee, when he gets to start talking to Jesus,
(16:06):
goes off and finds his brother Simon Peter. So Simon
Peter and Andrew are brothers. And Andrew went off and
found Peter and brought him to Jesus. This is a
recurring theme in Andrew's life. We have a number of stories.
(16:26):
In John's telling the Feeding of the five Thousand, Jesus
is looking around saying, ash, look at all these people.
They're hungry. They want something to eat. And in John
it says and Andrew found this young man with five
loaves and two fish. So again it's Andrew who brings
(16:48):
somebody to Jesus. We have in John twelve Andrew says
there's a Greeks here, uh, and they want to meet Jesus. Okay,
again it's telling it's Andrew who finds these outsiders and
(17:09):
brings them to Jesus. Uh. He's got two different backgrounds.
In uh in John, we have this story and Matthew
and Luke. He's a fisherman, and he and his brother
Peter are up mending their fishing nets, and Jesus is
(17:32):
walking by the Sea of Galilee, and he talks to
both of them and calls them to go fishing, or
to be fishers of men. That is that famous statement.
He calls Uh Andrew and Peter to do that. And
(17:54):
in uh in Luke it goes on and says he
it's on their boat, goes out into the water and
sits in the boat and preaches to the crowd from
the boat for a while, and then has the fishermen
(18:14):
go out and drop their nets down in the water
and they catch a whole bunch of fish. And all right,
that's all that we have about Andrew. That's actually in
the Bible. There are some traditions in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
He has a special name. He's called first Called because
(18:37):
of this story. He first called. He was the one
of the the original or the original, the first one
who's called to be a disciple, and so he has
that thing. Uh, you know, the biggest college in Scotland
is Saint Andrew's. That's Saint Andrews and they have a
(18:59):
golf course that it's famous. And so he is the
patron saint of Scotland and he's also several Orthodox churches.
He's the patron saint of Russia and Romania and Ukraine.
So I guess in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia
(19:19):
there have people on both sides calling out to their
patron saint for protection and help. Oh my god, that's
that's shorter. That's a good job.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Well, that is so interesting. Oh my gosh, well thank
you for that. Okay, now back to the final two
questions today in your experience, what are most people truly
searching for even if they don't even realize it.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I think even though they're not always looking for it,
people are not going to be satisfied until they find it.
And that is you said, a life of significance. I
want to make a difference in the world. I want
a chance to serve. And they don't always start off
(20:12):
with that, but that's when people find that, when people
find their satisfaction, and some people never do. Some people
never make it to that. As they're developing in their faith,
they start off I want to learn enough about the
Bible too, And they won't put it this way, but
(20:33):
they want to learn enough about the Bible to win arguments,
or they want to talk about who they're angry at
or who's you know what bir they have under their
saddle today, and they want to straighten other people out.
(20:55):
And I've seen people live their whole lives just trying
to straighten other people out. And like we talked about
last week, when the question was is it right for
you to be angry? They are people who are angry
and they want to express their anger. But you know,
(21:17):
if let's reduce this, what are you looking for all
the way? And I say you're looking for in a
relationship with God? You just reduce that to church attendance.
If I said, you know, Rick, I'm looking for a
church to go to. Do you go to church? Where
(21:39):
do you go? Tell me about it? And you want
to have another visitor to church, So you'd probably say
something about how nice the people are, or how convenient
the parking lot, or you know, something to make the
church attractive. And it's important for us to do those
sorts of things. But probably wouldn't occur to you to
(22:03):
say you will have a chance to serve God. Uh.
And that's I think. If it's not what people are
initially looking for, it's what they will find comfort in doing.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I'll tell you my brother went to a he moved.
He moved a lot during his career, and he moved
to a different town and he went to a very
nice church, and the people were nice and he was
enjoying himself there. For some reason, he visited a different
church which was not nice. It was in a poor
(22:48):
part of town and he went to the bathroom and
he looked up and saw some roaches up on the
ceiling and the ceiling tile was falling in. And when
he went back out, he told his wife, Okay, are
you ready for this? We need to start going to
(23:08):
church here. They could use our offering, They could use
our help this place. This place has a lot of it.
We can make a difference in this church. Now. Yeah,
that's that's why I love my brother. Uh. That's probably
(23:30):
not the first thing that people would think about. Uh
you're a father, think about when you were growing up
or when your kids were growing up. I'm sorry and
you say, oh gosh, I don't want my kids to
hang around with those kids because there'll be a bad influence.
(23:52):
Have you ever thought, Wow, I wish my daughters would
hang around with those two foul mouths jerks who are
causing all the trouble. I bet my daughters could be
a real good influence on them. That's that's not the
first thing that parents think about. How can we make
(24:15):
things better? And God gives us a chance to make
our world better. And so when Jesus turns, you know,
we're following Jesus and thinking of all the things that
we want. Jesus will turn around and say what are
you looking for and make that part of the conversation.
(24:35):
How can you serve? How can you make this world
a better place?
Speaker 1 (24:41):
That's right exactly. Oh man, that's Bucky. You're talking about
the Bucks Sappenfield.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Brother of God.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, I'm gonna write him and send him this conversation
in case he hasn't heard this series, I'm gonna say
you are ment and in that that's a great story. Okay.
Last question of today for you, doctor is how can
people seeking success avoid the trap of looking in the
wrong places for fulfillments?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Who are you serving? Are you really trying to serve
the world around you? Serving God? Are you looking to
make yourself more comfortable? Or are you looking for celebrating
how precious your life is by trying to, as you say,
(25:38):
go along with the meaning of your life of how
you can Because and the reason it's so important to
focus on that question what are you looking for? Then
you know when you found it? What am I looking for?
Am I looking for to make sure that I go
(26:00):
to heaven instead of hell? That I'm looking for a
way to make myself more prosperous? Am I looking for
a way to not ever worry again? Well, instead, maybe
you should think about God is using Can God use
(26:21):
me as he wants to use all of the resources
in his creation? Can I fit in with the creation
that I see around me? How can I make my
fellow creatures feel better and more meaningful in their own lives?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
M excellent, excellent, excellent. I really am personally growing from
these particular programs episodes with you, and we're looking forward
to the next one. And what will be our fifth question?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Oh, that's probably the deepest water that we will be
fishing in. That's the one where also from the Gospel
of John only this is at the very tail end
of Jesus's career. He's been arrested, stayed up all Monday Thursday,
(27:25):
and finally the Governor's palace in Jerusalem is open for
business on the morning of Good Friday, and he goes
and has a conversation with Pontius Pilot, and they're talking
back and forth, and Jesus is saying, you know, it's
(27:47):
kind of the same conversation, what are you looking for?
And so Pilot's saying, well, so you say you're a
keen great, how come you're here all chained up and
about to be crucified if you're a king. And Jesus says,
my kingdom's not of this world. My kingdom is for
people who listen to the truth and still confused. A
(28:12):
pilot says, what is truth? Well, that has come up
more than once in our lifetimes and is still with
us today. We're arguing with what is true and what
isn't true all the time, and so we'll we'll talk
about that next week. But the question is from Pontia's pilot,
(28:34):
what is truth? And anybody want to read ahead on that.
That's John chapter ten thirty three through thirty eight.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Excellent, very good, Thank you, doctor Bill. We will look
forward to our next Tuesday with Bill. And I was
thinking last night, Bill, I went out. You see all
the credits rolled for a show who did what? And
I think about, wouldn't it be interesting if God, God's
name was after every different role this show? So I
(29:12):
would say, this show is brought to you by God,
it was written.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
By it was written by God.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Inspired by God, and we and and that's what we're
trying to do is glorify God through this and help
hopefully this is inspired and will help everyone grow, especially
on your own road to significance. Thank you, folks, We'll
talk to you next week.
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