Episode 101: (GIVEAWAY!) Biblical Goals and Priorities

Christ the King and the Church as God’s Work

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

I need to ask a question that all of our listeners are wondering right now.

What is that?

Who won the NFL?

Oh, man, I gotta say, my guy lost by less than $700. I was pulling for the Okie Coleman Proctor in the all-around, and he lost by $700 to Shad Mayfield.

Okay, but how much

Shad Money Mayfield.

How much did those guys make?

So, I think Shad and Coleman were at like 330-something thousand on the year.

I was gonna say, if things get tight, you could go into rodeo, but that would actually be a step down from your pay, wouldn't it?

Well, you figure what it cost them to go down the road, though, it's pretty expensive.

Let's say it cost them two-thirds of that.

Yeah, it would still be pretty good.

Pull in 100 ,000, they'd be doing okay.

And they do, you know, they look like NASCAR guys with their shirts with sponsors all over them, so they got that going, too. No, it was fun. It was fun NFR.

Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your co-host, Alan Nelson, one of the pastors of Providence Baptist Church. With me is my partner in crime. If the government's listening to this, it's not actually crime, but Eddie Ragsdale.

Depends on which government.

Well, true, that. Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of First Baptist Church of Marshall. How you doing today?

Man, I'm doing good. Hey, I remember one other thing from, I need to mention from the NFR.

We do not want to keep our fans in suspense.

Well, this one, even if you're not a big rodeo fan, although, Alan, you grew up on the rodeo road.

That's right.

If you guys don't know, Alan's father was a PRCA bullfighter, cowboy protection specialist.

Yeah, actually, here's a little bit of trivia. Actually, very instrumental. The PRCA has a rule, now they have a rule, that you have to have two bullfighters for your rodeo. Used to be, you only had to have one.

Wow.

But my dad was actually, to the chagrin of a lot of stock contractors and stuff, but the whole idea is the safety of the bull riders. And so he and his friend, Jim McClain, were actually very instrumental in, it was them.

I think Jim actually gets credit, but my dad was right there along with him for getting that law, or that rule, I should say, passed. So anyway, no one cares.

Well, the reason I wanted to mention this is you asked about the NFR, and the guy that won the world championship in bull riding this year is Josh Frost.

Oh, wow.

And he is the second cousin of Lane Frost. So even people who aren't big rodeo fans, but if they just have any knowledge of Western culture in the last 30, 40 years in America, they're gonna know who Lane Frost is, just from eight seconds and all that stuff.

And so it's pretty amazing year this year. Josh Frost has been second several times over the years, and this year he won the world championship. So Frost legacy.

Moving along, which I, okay, I'm gonna go back. I don't think eight seconds is a great movie, but I mean

No, but the Lane Frost stories.

The Lane Frost story is a great story.

But a lot of people know it from eight seconds.

Yeah, yeah. I think if you watch eight seconds, you get a kind of a bad view of Lane Frost and his family.

Agreed, agreed.

And I hate that. But anyway, okay. All right, so this is episode 101, and we're gonna do a giveaway. And I don't know how we're gonna do it even now, off the top of my head. I wanna do it where you can't just listen to the beginning or the end.

You're gonna have to listen to the episode. But what are we gonna give away? We're gonna give away, I don't know how long ago it was now, but a few episodes ago, at this point, it'd probably be like two months ago when you listen to this, we interviewed Dr. Sam Waldron.

And Dr. Sam Waldron is coming out with what I think is gonna be, no matter your eschatological position, it's endorsed by Paul Washer, who basically kind of endorses it like this. Like, no matter where your position is, this is gonna be a helpful read.

I think you'll find benefit to it, even if you find disagreement. But his book is The Doctrine of Last Things. And An Optimistic All-Millennial View is the subtitle. And this is coming out with Free Grace Press.

By the time this episode drops, I think it should be really close to shipping, the pre-sales coming out very soon in real time. So what we're gonna do, Eddie, is we're gonna give away to a listener a copy of The Doctrine of Last Things by Sam Waldron.

That's gonna be cool.

And we'll talk about later in the episode what you gotta do to enter.

Right.

So The Doctrine of Last Things, An Optimistic All-Millennial View, Dr. Sam Waldron, Free Grace Press. Keep listening, and you'll learn, when I figure it out, you'll learn how to enter.

You need to write a 20-page paper on

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't wanna read that.

You know?

That's right.

No offense, but. Okay, today's episode, Ephesians 5, verse 15. Look carefully, then, how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

So what we wanna talk about, and I know this is already, I think this is coming out January 15th, so we're already barreling through 2025.

Yeah, if you've not been keeping up with your Bible-reading plan, you're already behind.

That's right.

You gotta get to reading the Bible.

Yeah, get back to it. Get back on the horse. So, but it is still that time of year. We can take a passage like this and think about it. To look how you walk, not unwisely, but wisely, in verse 16, to make the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

And so what we wanna talk about today is maybe not necessarily resolutions per se, although if you haven't read the resolutions of Jonathan Edwards, you should. But sort of the Christian perspective of setting goals and also prioritizing your life, making sure your priorities are where they need to be.

So let's start with that. Let's start with the text for a minute there, Eddie. What does an unwise person, how do they walk?

Yeah, you know, just before that, you know, he's really talking about the life of the believers. And just before that, he said in verse 12, for it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do, talking about the people that are involved in the unfruitful works of darkness.

And then he says, but when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. For anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Then he says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. And so I think he's directly pointing us to wisdom means walking in the light of the revelation that we have. Like what has God shown us to do?

And of course, there at the end of verse 17, he's gonna say, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And so the unwise person, the foolish person, the way that the Proverbs would put it, the foolish person is the person that's not paying attention to what the Lord has revealed.

That's not taking into account, what has God told me?

Mm-hmm.

Amen.

I think oftentimes, people are so concerned about what God hasn't revealed, that they're not careful to look at what God has revealed.

So that leads right into like a great goal. If you wanna call it a resolution, fine, but here's a great goal. It won't surprise you that I would say it, but the one great goal is to read through the whole Bible.

If you don't have that as a goal, that would be a great goal to have, even in, and let me ask you this, Eddie, how would you, let's say you've never read through the whole Bible. I know you have multiple times, but let's say that you've never read the Bible, or let me ask this, when you first, cause I can remember my goal, when you first read through the Bible, how did you come up with that?

How'd you do?

Well, the first time I read through the Bible, I think I was a teenager and I picked up a very horrible, awful, I wouldn't even consider it a Bible today. It was a CEV version, which is not really even a Bible.

It's barely a paraphrase. It was horrible, but I read it. I just read it from cover to cover. I actually wouldn't tell somebody to read the Bible that way. I'll tell you the first, not the first time, I mean, I'd read the Bible a few times between then and when I picked this up, but many years ago, I picked up an ESV daily reading Bible and it had a plan in the back of it.

And I tell you what I liked about it, it was only two readings a day. So it wasn't, I mean, I've done the discipleship Bible reading plan and I think it's four readings a day. I've done McShane and it's four readings a day.

And those are great. But that time that I read that ESV daily reading Bible, it took you through the Bible in a year. And it gave you a New Testament and an Old Testament reading. I think that's really helpful.

I agree.

So I would encourage anybody, like if you're saying, well, four chapters a day is gonna get me through the Bible, two chapters in the Old Testament and two in the New might be a good way to do it, or three in one or whatever the plan might be.

But I think getting a little bit of the New Testament with the Old Testament's helpful. It's also, you're gonna find so many places where just providentially, where you're gonna read in the Old Testament, then you're gonna read and you're gonna see even fulfillments.

Yeah.

I mean, it's great.

I agree.

I would encourage that.

So for me, the first time, and this is, I did kind of the David Miller plan, but the first time I read through the Bible was at the beginning, it wasn't even at the beginning of the year, it was beginning of my seminary journey.

And I had, you know, I had familiar with the Bible, was reading the Bible. At that point, my life was reading the Bible daily, but I had not read through the whole Bible. And Don, I was sitting in Don Whitney's class and he, I think I've told you the story before, but he was just basically saying, look, you guys are supposed to feed the sheep.

And Jesus says, man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, quoting from Deuteronomy 8. How are you gonna give God's people the word of God if you haven't even read every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God?

That convicted me and I was like, that's right. So how I did it was, we were just talking about goals. Goals, I think it was the great theologian Emmett Smith, now Emmett Smith, the running back for the Dallas Cowboys years ago, he said that a dream, a goal is just a dream if you don't have a plan.

And so if you say, well, I'm gonna sit down and read through the Bible, that's a dream, it's not really a goal unless you have a plan. And so my plan was this, this is crazy, but I had a little bitty ESV Bible, I flipped to the back and see how many pages it was, I don't remember, but I divided that, the number of pages in the number of months, I was like eight or 10 months, I don't remember, that I wanted to give myself to read through it.

And I just did that and I came up with like three something. And so I read, basically I just started in Genesis 1 and I read four pages a day until I finished. I'm not necessarily recommending that, but I'm just talking about when we talk about goals and we just let in because we're talking about not living foolishly.

If you're not gonna live foolishly, you need to be exposed to the revelation of God and not only exposed to it, but what Eddie, like.

Obeying it.

Obeying it, arranging your life. So the whole Bible reading thing, I know we've already covered that a couple episodes ago, but really we're talking about goal setting and prioritization of your life.

And it is a very important goal, a noble goal to expose yourself more to the revelation of God.

And the other thing that Paul points out here in verse 15, when he says, look carefully then how you walk. So we've gotta have the revelation of God driving our understanding of what the will of the Lord is.

But when he says, look carefully how you walk, then I also do have to then make application to my life. It's a tragedy when Christians don't read the Bible. It's a tragedy when Christians do read the Bible and then don't obey it.

Yeah, verse 17 says, understand what the will of the Lord is.

Right.

So read the Bible, understand the will of the Lord and put it to your life. And I just say this, I know we've said this before, but if you're reading the Bible and you're never challenged, you're never convicted, you're never, hey, I've gotta make adjustments.

I would venture to say, I don't think you're reading it well.

That's right.

Because you've not reached glorification yet. You need to grow as a wife, as a mother, as a husband, as a father, there are areas that you need to grow. And so as we're approaching the scriptures, these are gonna challenge us.

They're going to, I'm not saying every day is like you're getting beat up, but there are times that you'd be convicted.

And you need to grow. Yeah, and it can also be true that we're not being honest with ourselves about our own lives. We may be reading the Bible and taking into account what it says, but we're actually not honestly evaluating ourselves.

We're giving ourselves a pass for that harsh word with our spouse or that neglect of our children or not being diligent at work or whatever way that we might be doing that, we're overlooking the things in our own life.

We're not looking carefully at how we're walking. And that's the unwise person. The unwise person is the person that they don't pay attention and they just stumble and fall and they find themselves in a ditch because they weren't looking carefully.

Or we can think of it today, it says walk, but today we drive most places, right? And you don't want a distracted driver because a person gets, they get to texting or looking at their phone or messing with some screen in their vehicle and they end up hitting an oncoming car or driving off the road because they weren't looking carefully at where they were going.

We wanna look carefully at our lives. That way we can apply the things that we're seeing in the revelation of God.

Yeah, very good.

Making the Best Use of Time

Okay, gonna interject this. If you wanna enter into the contest for the Doctrine of Last Things by Sam Waldron, an optimistic homiletical view, just send an email to QuatroNelson at gmail .com, C-U-A-T-R-O-N-E-L-S-O-N at gmail .com.

And all I want you to say in the email is I want to walk wisely. So that means you've listened to the podcast carefully. I want to walk wisely. Send that to C-U-A-T-R-O-N-E-L-S-O-N at gmail .com, QuatroNelson at gmail .com.

If you send that, I will enter you in the contest and we'll have this drawing. We'll run this for like a week. So we'll run it for like a week. So we'll have this drawing maybe like January 22nd-ish, somewhere around there.

So let me move on a little bit, Eddie, and let me ask you this. So you said, let's talk about goal setting. And I wanna just put some meat on the bones, if you will. But let's say I wanna be a better husband.

I wanna be a better employee. I wanna lose weight. I wanna be a better pastor. I wanna be more evangelistic. Wouldn't you say all those are good goals, right? Like those are all good goals. But how do you move from, okay, so I'm trying, so I'm reading this text.

I wanna make the best use of the time. I wanna be a better husband, better employee, better wife, more evangelistic. Help me to move from the big picture to let's get there.

Yeah, and I think you said something important even when we were talking about the Bible reading is you're gonna need a plan. I do think it's gonna mean making some actual commitments to, I'm gonna change some things.

Tangible, yeah.

Tangible, yeah, that's good, tangible. Because if you just say, well, I wanna do better at this, but we just keep doing the same practices, same schedule, same distractions. So a person might find, I'm spending too much time on X or Facebook or whatever your social media that you love is, and you're not spending enough time with your kids.

Well, then maybe you need to delete that app or something like that. I mean, you need to take it. That's great.

Take it as tangible.

And sometime, you need to chop off the arm of the flesh. You can also do this. On Tuesdays, I'm not getting on social media.

Yeah, yeah, make it, yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Or it's like, I wanna be a better husband, okay? Let's start with this. On, I'm gonna schedule a time, a date with my wife. The kids are gonna be watching. I'm gonna set all this up.

And I'm going to ask my wife to give me three areas in my life that I can improve as a husband. And I'm gonna go from there. So what we're trying to say is, I'm just off the top of my head.

Well, we're trying,.

Or you can do the same with the spouse, wife. What we're trying to say is like, these are good goals, but they're not really goals. They're not really actual goals until you put some steps in place.

That's right, that's right.

And the whole deal is you want to make the best use of your time. Because we only have so much time. In fact, and this is a little bit morbid of a thought, but like, I'm not ever guaranteed. When this episode comes out, I'm not guaranteed to still be around.

Our days are numbered. We're recording this on one day. This is coming out nearly a month later. I don't know the days that I have, but the Lord knows. So the secret things, right, Deuteronomy 29, 29, secret things belong to the Lord.

Eddie Ragsdale only has so many days. Alan Nelson only has so many days. I don't know how many days I have. Eddie doesn't know how many. We don't know. The Lord knows. But what do we know, Eddie?

What we do know is that we have right now, we have the day that we're in and we need to make the best use of it.

And we should live.

We should plan. I know we joke, but we should plan and live. I don't think it's wrong. I'm not going to live to be 100. No way I could see myself living that long. But I should plan as though, people sometimes make it to age 75 and they're like, if I'd have known I was going to live this long, I would have lived differently.

So what we're trying to say is, hey, okay, you're going to live that long. So live differently. And if the Lord calls you home before that, so be it.

Yeah.

And here's the amazing thing about what the Lord has done for us. I think when it comes to like, even like health and our physical life, the things that are going to be good for you long-term are what's good for you short-term.

Like the kind of habits that are going to make you feel better. So, you know, like you said, New Year's resolutions, everybody wants to lose weight and all those kinds of things. But, you know, exercise and eating better and those kinds of things, those are going to help you live longer, hopefully, but they're going to help you feel better today.

So you should do those things because whether or not you have many years left, or you don't know that, but it's going to help you to feel better in the here and now you're going to be a better servant of the Lord with the time you have now.

And if the Lord graciously gives you decades more of life, you're going to be healthier in those decades because of those good practices. So we want to do practical things like take care of our physical health.

We should do that.

Priorities for Pastors, Families, and Church Members

Well, what are some tangible ways that you would say to anybody listening to this that wants to be a better pastor? What are some, you know, I'm assuming, and I know some of the brothers that listen to this, godly brothers, friends.

So it's not like a glaring, there's not like this glaring sin that you're like, well, you got to stop that. If there is, and you're listening to this, that would be obvious. So you might even step away from ministry.

But the point is, what would some encourage me? So, okay, what if I'm saying that, Eddie, I want to be a better pastor. What are some tangible things that you would encourage me with?

Yeah.

Well, are we to the point in the podcast where I need to kind of talk about?

Yeah, yeah, we can. I will say, I will say when it comes to goals, so Eddie does have some things he's going to talk about. It has nothing to do with glaring sin. I don't want to connect those two things, Eddie.

You sometimes just come in at an awkward point. But I will say this, when it comes to goals, you're going to have to think through priorities.

Yeah, yeah.

Because you just don't have time in your day to do everything that you possibly might want to do.

Right, right. And what that's going to mean sometimes is, you know, I mentioned earlier, you might find that you need to cut down on your social media. Or if you're watching TV, do people watch TV anymore?

I don't know if people do that.

Streaming, yeah, streaming.

Yeah, streaming, okay, or whatever. Maybe you need to cut down on that. You know, we mentioned that. But sometimes there are even things that can be really good. And we don't want to not do the thing that's really, man, we're really loving it, but you just can't do everything.

Can I share a text for that?

Yeah.

So in Hebrews 12, it says, therefore, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin, which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

And I think, not to get in an extended exegesis of that passage, but I think it's interesting, don't you, Eddie? It says weight and sin.

Right.

So I think that we could probably, as an application, say there are weights that are not necessarily sins that keep us back from running the race like we should. Anyway, go ahead.

Well, and another thing that the Hebrew writer says there, he says the race that is set before you. Sometimes we can get into thinking, well, this is the race that's set before everybody. Well, no, everybody's is a little bit distinct because even as pastors, we would say, well, there are expectations that are on all of us as pastors from the scripture.

Absolutely, that's true. But every pastor is pastoring a different church. And what's necessary at Providence, maybe there may be some different things happening at Marshall First Baptist, for example, just because we have different people and there are different circumstances.

You know, I was listening this morning to our brother Harold Smith on his podcast, and he mentioned a brother in Georgia, I think, who this last year, this year 2024, has done, I wanna, I think he said that he has done 26 funerals.

Wow.

26 funerals. That's a funeral basically every other week.

Man, that's a lot.

I couldn't imagine.

I know.

And so you would say, you know, he had to adjust some things to do 26 funerals. And you and I didn't have to do 26 funerals. It wasn't on our plate to do. That race wasn't set before us. It was set before that brother.

And so just taking into account, practically you've got to look at what things do you have to do? And sometimes that's gonna mean saying, you know what? I see all these things that people are doing, and some of those aren't for me to do.

Like it's good that that person can do that, but that's not for me to do. You know, a few weeks ago we had, it was so good to have Keith Foskey on. Man, I love that guy's content. I watch a lot of the things that he puts out, a lot of the funny stuff, but also a lot of the things that he puts out, just theological and interviews.

You know, he done a great interview with Brian Borgman. We mentioned that when he was on. But that's his race. I mean, I couldn't do that. It's not for me to do, not for you to do. That's what the Lord's given him to do.

So I do think one practical thing as pastors are setting priorities is they need to say, what are the things that the Lord has given that I can do where I'm at?

Yeah.

This is gonna actually be helpful with my church.

In our culture, this is a terrible thing to say, but I would say in one sense, go be you. And what I mean by that is don't be Eddie, don't be Alan, don't be John MacArthur, don't be whoever, be who God has called you to be.

You've been gifted in certain ways. You're not gifted in other ways. Don't worry about being who you're not called to be. Be the pastor that you're called to be in your local church. One thing, one practical way is stop thinking about what's next and focus.

I'm talking about like in my next ministry or whatever, give yourself completely to your local church.

That's right. That's good.

Another tangible thing I say is one tangible, this is an easy win if you're not already doing this. And this will open up opportunity for more things, but get the people on your role, or at least just start with this.

Let's say your role's not, that's another goal you have. Okay, get the people that actually are attending the functional members, write them down and commit to at some point during the week that you're gonna pray over all those names by name.

Yeah.

That's just an easy, tangible goal. And you can help you grow as a pastor. And you can might have some sort of reading goals. I mean, other tangible things that may maybe be humble and maybe be willing to listen more to other people preach or there's great books out there about preaching and all sorts of things.

But that would just be one tangible piece of advice. And I would say an easy, something you can do this week, not even take you six months to do that. Stop the podcast and write those names now. And I'll say this, how you wanna be a better church member?

How can I be a better church member? Man, I'd give you the same advice. Ask your pastors. And if you don't have, if your church is not there yet, then do the same. Just next Sunday, start writing people's names down.

So you look around. But you might be able to ask your pastor, hey, get a list of names and just say, you know what? I'm gonna begin praying for these people by names. And if you're a pastor, I'd say do it weekly.

If you're a church member, if you can't do it weekly, divide them out and just know that every month you're going over every family at some point. That's just a tangible thought. But we do wanna get into priorities.

So for example, I'll give you a silly thing, but I've thought there's some, I have a couple book ideas, some things I'd love to do. But honestly, if you're gonna add something like that, you almost always have to give up something.

You don't add something. For example, if you're gonna pray, if you're gonna be more serious about praying for your church members, that's less time on another task. So you can't add something to your life without taking away from another area.

So then you've got to go, then you've got to walk through your priorities. As a Christian, let me walk through these, Eddie, and see what you think. But as a Christian, your priority number one above all, what did the text say in Ephesians?

Understand what the will of the Lord is. Priority number one is God above all else, above my nation, above my marriage, above my children, above my church, it's God. Priority number two is gonna be your spouse and then your family, your children, then the church.

I know your job fits in there, when you talk about providing for your family and all that, but you have to have an order and a priority in your, and then it's almost everything else. So sometimes, honestly, we get too focused on things that are meaningless, like let's say sports or sometimes hunting, or I don't wanna say meaningless, but they can

Not the NFR though.

Not the NFR. Well, they can take up too much of our middle focus. But with all that being said, Eddie, you wanna talk about some of your priorities and some things that you need to say in regards to this podcast.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so I called Quatro last week, I guess it was, Friday, I guess it was Friday. And this is something I've been thinking about for a few weeks and I wanna let him know, and I wanna let you guys know that I'm gonna step away from the podcast for a while.

Don't really know even how long, we've just, we've got some things, it's not necessarily, it's not rampant, not as, what did you say earlier about sin?

Glaring sin issues.

Not glaring sin issues or anything like that, but just in the life of our church, we're at a place where, priorities have to take

You're saying the Rural Church Podcast is not like up there near the top?

Well, I was thinking about this this morning when we first started the original, the old, the OG Rural Church Podcast, if anybody ever listened to that when we did that. I remember all the way at the beginning, we said, well, if nobody listens, at least it's a good opportunity for you and I to have a conversation.