Episode 101: (GIVEAWAY!) Biblical Goals and Priorities

Welcome 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 the 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 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?

Hmm. 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, Allen 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. 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,

Allen, you grew up on the rodeo road. That's right. If you guys don't know,

Allen'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 instrument 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. 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 ask about the

NFR and the guy that won the world championship in bull riding this year is

Josh Frost. Oh, wow. 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 going to 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 going to 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.

So, and I hate that. But anyway, okay. All right. So, this is episode 101 and we're going to do a giveaway and I don't know how we're going to do it even now off the top of my head.

I want to do it where you can't just listen to the beginning or the end. You're going to have to listen to the episode. But what what are we going to give away?

We're going to give away. I don't know how long ago it was now, but a few episodes ago at this point, it probably 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 going to be no matter your eschatological position. It's endorsed by Paul Washer, who basically kind of endorses like this, like no matter where your position is, this is going to 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 going to do Eddie is we're going to give away to a listener a copy of The Doctrine of Last Things by Sam Waldron.

That's going to be cool. And we'll talk about later in the episode what you got to 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. Oh, no. Yeah, I don't want to 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 want to talk about. 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. You got to get to reading the

Bible. Yeah, get back to it. Get back on the horse. Yeah. 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 want to 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 is 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 going to 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. It's not taking into account what has God told me.

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 a great goal. If you want to 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, because 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, and 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 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 going to 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 is helpful. It's also, you're going to find so many places where just providentially, where you're going to read in the

Old Testament, then you're going to read and you're going to 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 a

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 eight, how are you going to give

God's people the word of God? If you haven't even read every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God and that convicted me and I was like, that's right.

So how I did it was it was just talking about goals, goals. I think it was the great theologian

Emmett Smith, not 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 going to sit down and read through the Bible, that's 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 bag 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 to it and I just did that and I came up with like three something.

And so I read basically I just started in Genesis one 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 going to live foolishly, you need to have 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. But so the whole

Bible reading thing, I know we've already covered that a couple episodes ago, but really, really we're talking about goal setting and prior prioritization of your life and it quite is a very important goal and noble goal to to expose yourself more to the revelation of God.

And the other thing that that Paul points out here in verse 15 when he says look carefully, then how you walk.

So we've got to have we've got to be 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, you know,

I've got to make adjustments. I would venture to say I don't think you're reading it. Well, that's right, because you're not, 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 are approaching the scriptures, these are going to challenge us. They're going to,

I'm not saying every day is like you're getting beat up, but there are times 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, you know, that harsh word with our spouse or, you know, that neglect of our children or, you know, 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, you know, it says walk, but today we drive most places, right?

And, you know, you don't want a distracted driver because the person gets, they get to texting or looking at their phone or messing with some screen in their vehicle and they end up hit hitting an oncoming car driving off the road because they weren't looking carefully at where they were going.

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

Yeah, very good. Okay, going to interject this. If you want to enter into the contest for the

Doctrine of Last Things by Sam Waldron, an optimistic homiletical view, just send an email to quattronelson 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

quattronelson 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 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 don't want to just put some meat on the bones if you will. But let's say I want to be a better husband. I want to be a better employee.

I want to lose weight. I want to be a better pastor. I want to 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,

I'm trying to so I'm reading this text. I want to make the best use of the time.

I want to 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're talking about the

Bible reading is you're going to need a plan. I do think it's going to mean making some actual commitments to I'm going to change some things.

Tangible. Yeah. Tangible. Yeah, that's good. Tangible because if you just say, well,

I want to do better at this, but we just keep doing the same practices, same schedule, same distractions.

So, you know, a person might find, you know, 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, I think that's great. Tangible. And sometime, you know, you 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? Like and I was like, I want to be a better husband. Okay, let's start with this on.

I'm going to schedule a time a date with my wife. The kids are going to be the kids are going to be watch.

I'm going to 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 going to go from there, you know, but yeah, so what we're trying to say is

I'm just off top my head where we're trying to 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, 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 with 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 2929 secret things belong to the

Lord. Eddie Ragsdale only has so many days. Allen 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 these the day that we're in and we need to make the best use of it.

And we should we know that we should plan. I know we joke, but we should plan and live like I don't think it's wrong.

Like I'm not going to live to be a hundred. No way. I could see myself living that long, but I should plan as though, you know, people sometimes make it to age 75 and they're like if I'd have known

I was going to make it 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 in our physical life, the things that are going to be good for you long -term are 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 at 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 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 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 those good practices.

So we want to do practical things like take care of our physical health.

We should do that. 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 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 by the way, you got to stop that.

If there is in your listening this that would be obviously you might even step away from Ministry, but the point is what what would 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, is are we did 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 you he's going to talk about has nothing to do with glaring sin.

I don't want to connect those things Eddie. You sometimes I mean 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 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. Does do people watch TV anymore? I don't know if people dreaming. Yes dreaming. Yeah, it's true.

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 and we don't want to not do the thing.

That's really man. We're really loving it, but 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, but it's 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? This is weight and sin, right? So I think that we could probably as an application say there are weights that are not necessarily sense that keep us back from running the race.

Like we should anyway, go ahead. Well in another thing that the Hebrew writer says there, he says the race that is set before you, you know, 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 they're 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 want to, I think he said that he has done 26 funerals.

26, you know, 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 got to look at what things do you have to do and sometimes that's going to mean saying, you know what

I see all I see all these things that people are doing and some of those aren't for me to do.

Like it's good that they're 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 Vosky 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 but that's his race.

I mean that I mean I couldn't do that. It's not it's not for me to do not for you to do that's that's what the

Lord's given him to do. So I do think one practical thing as as a 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 actually be helpful with my church in our culture.

This is a terrible thing to say, but but I would say in one go be you and 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 one practical way is stop thinking about what's next and focus.

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

That's right. That's good. What one practice 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 but get the people on your role or at least just start with this.

Let's say your role is not a 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 going to pray over all those names by now.

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 and or there's great books out there about preaching and all sorts of things.

But you know, that would just be one tangible piece of advice and eat. 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 want to be a better church member. How can I be a better church member man?

I'd give you same advice. Ask your pastors and if you don't have if you're just church is not there yet then do the same just next

Sunday start writing people's names down. So you look around but that's right. You might be able to ask your pastor.

Hey get a list of names and just say, you know what I'm going to begin praying for these people by names and if you're a pastor,

I'd say do it weekly. If you're a 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 want to get into priorities. So for example, I'll give you a silly thing, but I thought there's some

I have a couple of book ideas some things I'd love to do, but honestly, if you're going to add something like that, you almost always have to give up something.

You don't add something. For example, if you're going to pray if you're going to be more serious about praying for your church members, that's less time on another task.

So you can't you can't add something to your life without taking away from another area.

So then you've got to go or then you've got to walk through your priorities as a Christian. Let me walk through these

Eddie and see what you think 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 going to be your spouse and then your then your family your children then the church.

I know your job fits in there, you know 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 and then it's almost everything else.

So sometimes honestly we get too focused on things that are. Meaningless, you know, like let's say sports or sometimes hunting or I don't want to say meaningless, but they cannot be in there for though, not the

NFL, but they can take up too much of our middle focus. But with all that being said,

Eddie, you want to talk about some of your priorities and some things that you need to say on in regards to this podcast.

Yeah, so yeah, so I called Quatro last week.

I guess it was Friday. I guess it's Friday. Yeah, and this is something

I've been thinking about for a few weeks and I want to let him know and we'll let you guys know that I'm going to 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 seeing glaring sin issues are glaring sin issues or anything like that.

But just in the life of our church, we're at a place where it's, you know, priorities, you know, have to have to take you saying the rural church podcast is not like up there near the top.

Well, you know, 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.

And I know we've said that several times. And honestly for me, I want to say this to everybody that listens because they may not know this.

Alan does all of the work. He does all of the, you know, getting it posted and any editing that has to be done.

Alan does all of that. I mean, I don't do anything. I click on the link and we have the conversation.

And then when I click off, I'm done with it. And so he does, he spends more time on the podcast, you know, getting it out and all those things than I do.

Even with that being the case, we're just at a season in the life of our church and I'm at a season in my family, in my home, in my own life where I've just got to pull back from a couple of things.

So I'm pulling back from a couple of other things that I'm doing here locally also, and I'm going to step back from the podcast.

So I think Alan, you've got some other brothers that are going to come on at different times.

So each week it might be something different. You're working that out right now. And I'm going to be excited.

I was telling you before we started recording, I'm really excited because I'm gaining a new podcast to listen to because I don't ever listen because I'm on here.

But I'm pretty excited about the episodes you're going to have. I don't plan on this being forever.

You know, we're still, I want everybody to know you and I are good. This isn't like,

I'm done with Alan. You know, it's not that at all.

It's just a matter of, you know, in this season in our church and in my own life, kind of, you know, just have to set that priority.

It's kind of interesting that it is happening at this time of year. You know, we're finishing.

We're technically recording this. It's still December 2024. I know you folks are hearing this in January of 2025.

But you know, at this, this is a time of year where we're thinking about change or thinking about things in the future.

And I would ask all of you listening. I know that you don't know particular things, but the

Lord does. And so I would ask you be praying for what the Lord, what new things even we may be able to start and what may happen in the future for us as a church.

And, and hopefully, you know, I'll be back. I'll be back on the podcast some and maybe even regularly in the future.

I mean, we'll, we'll see what the Lord's will is in those things in the future. But, but that's kind of where things are.

And, and it really is a matter of just trying to make the best use of the time.

Yeah, I love you, brother. And I am humbled, you know, just Lord put our lives together.

And just to see you, your consistent faithfulness, and even, even in this modeling that there are some things that are fun that you enjoy doing that are even profitable to do that.

Just at the end of the day, when you begin to evaluate priorities, they just, they're, they become a weight and, and yeah, you have to lay them aside so you can do,

I think this is exemplary of your brother and I'm grateful. For you modeling this,

I'm, I'm calling it not a resignation, but a leave of absence, temporary.

And I prefer that. That's, that's, that's what I hope will be the case. So, so the plan going forward, are we got some things scheduled?

I have, I don't want to say their names, just in case things fall through, but you've seen some of them maybe, and we've talked about them, but we've got,

I think we've got some great brothers scheduled. Uh, and so the, the, the goal will be,

I don't want to just turn this into a, um, we're putting up a sermon all the time, although sometimes we do that because you can go to other places and listen to sermons, but, but that will be the goal.

I think every now and then I have some ideas. You certainly don't want to just listen to me just talk the whole time, but I think that there will be some episodes.

I have some ideas, some things I want to say, but for the most part, we'll be interviewing guys or getting together with other guys until, until maybe later in the year, uh, 80 is able to come back or maybe

I can schedule 80 once a month or once a quarter or something like that. And we can figure it out, but we definitely want to respect your time and, and the, and the things that you've gotten, we'll be praying for you.

And so this is, uh, for 80 on the podcast, it's not goodbye. It's just, uh, see you later.

We'll be checking back in. Periodically, I'll sign off that way. I'll, I'll, I'll say, see you guys in the future.

Yeah, that, that, that would be great. Well, it is sad. We've, we've dealt through this prayed about it.

We've, um, you know, we've had our conversations off. Now you're telling everybody, uh, publicly and, um, it's still a little sad to walk through and to think through, but I'm also encouraged by your faithfulness brother.

And you can't just be someone who tells other people make priorities, but you got to show, you know, that, and I want to,

I want to keep the podcast going. I've had enough feedback and encouragement that, and I want to say that too, that was,

I think that was one of the first things I said to you on the phone call the other day is that I want you to keep the podcast going.

I don't want you to, I didn't want it to be like, uh, I can't do the podcast.

You stopped doing the podcast. No, I want, I want you to do it. I want the rural church podcast to keep encouraging, you know, um,

I mentioned a while ago that we kind of had said at the beginning, we get to have a conversation, but the real goal we had was, you know, we both have a love for the local church and you brother have really been an encouragement to me.

You know, we've known each other a little over a decade now. And, um, uh, you've really been an encouragement to me in strengthening my devotion and my love for the local church.

And so that that's really been the heart of this podcast is we just want to see

God glorified Christ honored in healthy local churches.

And I think the podcast has hopefully been useful to the Lord in encouraging that.

And I think it still will be. And so I'm, I'm, I'm excited about what, what the

Lord is going to do with you and the different guests, um, and continuing that in the future.

Yeah. Amen. If you're listening to this and you have an idea for an episode or you know what you need to do, uh, uh, you want to invite yourself,

I can't tell you for sure that we'd be able to work it out, but you want to invite yourself, shoot me an email.

Quatro Nelson at gmail .com. Would love to hear your ideas or get on the podcast if, if that's possible.

But one of the things that we have, the reason we call it the rural church podcast is we feel like in, in, in the big picture, sometimes the rural church is overlooked.

We love the church of all places, but sometimes the rural church is kind of overlooked.

And you're kind of thinking like the big, big churches and big things and big budgets. And we don't have all that stuff.

You know, that's something else, you know, like our church, we don't have a secretary thing. That would be a huge help.

So all this stuff. And like Eddie said, it is a lot of work, you know, we do the podcast. So if you're appreciative, you could reach out or text or whatever, but, um, you know, it does take some time to run it all.

We're in a pretty good system right now. I'm eating on Wednesday mornings and, and recording, but, uh, but there is, there is some work to it, but we want to do it as a benefit to the church.

That's what we're after. We're not a benefit to the church. Then we're just wasting our time because we could just sit here and talk about sports, but Arkansas is always losing.

So, yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So I'm not going to rehash the contest details.

I mean, I'll tell you what we're doing. We're giving away the doctrine of last things by Sam Waldron.

And if you fast forwarded to this part of the episode, go back and go back and listen carefully.

You're going to have to go back and listen to the whole thing. So I will tell you it does involve an email, but I'm not going to tell you the details or specific instructions earlier in the podcast.

I can't even tell you a timestamp. So you have to listen to the whole thing and, but we will select one winner in the next week or so.

So give us maybe give us till January 25th. That's 10 days. I think, uh, since the episode will have dropped.

So doctrine of last things by Sam Waldron, we'll give away that to one listener and I think it'll be worth your time and investment.

Even if you disagree with his eschatological position, hope you found this episode helpful.

Make the best use of your time. You only have so many hours in your day and you only have so many days that God has ordained for you to live.

Let us live them for his glory. Eddie, you got anything else you want to add?

No, man. I'm just excited to hear what the Lord does with the podcast in the future. Thankful for your friendship, brother.

And, uh, just, um, seeking to glorify and honor the Lord. Amen, brother.

Why don't you sign us off? Well, we'll see you guys in the future. If you really believe the church is the building of churches, the house, the church is what

God's doing. This, this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poimos, the masterpiece of God.