Episode 82: God's Creation and Arkansas Appreciation

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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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?

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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.

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The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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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

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Did you get any tornadoes last night?

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Well, man, I was here in Marshall, and I think the really bad weather was kind of down around Vanderbilt County.

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What about us? Do you even care about us down here in Perry County? Well, I know that it hit a brother that lives there in Center Ridge.

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I seen that he had like a tree fall on his house. We were playing a baseball game in Marlton, and Caleb was pitching, and the tornado sign was going off.

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And everybody kind of gathered together and looked at the radar, but it was like way north.

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There was no danger in Marlton, but I guess because Marlton's a county seat, if there's a tornado warning anywhere in the county, it goes off.

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So Stephanie has a recording of him pitching during the siren going off.

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Wow. Anyway, brother, that's probably— would you say what is the worst thing about living in Arkansas?

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Arkansas, I would say that we live in Tornado Alley and the humidity. I would say the humidity for sure.

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You know, we do live in Tornado Alley. I don't think that we live in it as bad as Oklahoma.

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No, no, no. I mean, they get it worse than we do. Now, there are certain areas of Arkansas that get it even worse.

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Valonia, you know, our brother Wade Lentz and brothers and sisters at Barrel, they've experienced multiple rounds of tornadoes.

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And then also Beebe over in that area, a good friend of mine, a pastor friend there in Clinton, his parents,

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I think they lost their home twice there in Beebe back in the 90s. And so there are some areas of Arkansas that seem to get— the tornadoes seem to follow certain paths.

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And, of course, Clinton, you know, Clinton gets a lot of tornadoes. Yeah. Always kind of has.

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It's funny, up here in Searcy County, there's never been a death attributed to a tornado.

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Wow. In Searcy County, like ever. What about a hurricane? Yeah, one or two to hurricane.

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So this is coming out. This is a summer episode, and I thought it'd be a fun episode. And maybe we'll have like four people listen to it.

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But I want to talk about—I want to have an Arkansas appreciation episode.

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That's right. I really do want to talk about how—really how beautiful our state is.

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And we tie this back to Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

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And then, of course, places like Psalm 19 .1, which says,

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The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. But not just—it's not just the above.

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You don't just look up and see God's glory. But even as you look around, you see the glory of God in creation.

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It was a few years ago, Eddie, I went to a G3 conference. I say a few. This was like 10 years ago.

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And Tim Challies—it was when they still had it at Praise Meal at the church. And Tim Challies preached a sermon on God's two great books—or

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God's two books, I think. God's two books. Yeah, I listened to that sermon. I wasn't there, but I listened to it later.

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And it was good. You know, God wrote two books. We have special revelation in the

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Scriptures, and then we have general revelation. God wrote a book. And in general revelation, we see the glory of God displayed.

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All creation is pointing to a giant arrow, if you will, pointing to the fact that God is glorious.

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Anything else you want to say about general revelation? Well, you know, it also says in Psalm 24,

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The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.

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And verse 2 says, For He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.

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You know, when we're looking out on the world that God has made, it's His world. Amen. Right?

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And He owns it. And He will be glorified in it because it's

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His. There is something—a number of years ago, we went to the Grand Canyon. Actually, when we went to SBC 22, we went to the

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Grand Canyon. And there is something about so -called natural phenomenon that makes people stop.

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I mean, people travel from overseas to see the

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Grand Canyon, a big hole in the ground. That's actually something, Eddie, that evolution,

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Darwinian evolution, has no answer for. That's right. What is it within people that make them stand in awe of beauty, in awe of creation, in awe of these things?

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It's they—there's something within them that remains that God is glorious.

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Okay. Now, they certainly, Romans 1, suppress that truth in unrighteousness. They're not going to the

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Grand Canyon worshiping God. But there's something in them that understands or at least appreciates or seeks to be reminded, if you will, of the fact that they are small in this world.

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Well, you often hear atheists or secularists or people who more or less their religion is science.

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Their religion is their belief in the pursuit of knowledge, but we would say without wisdom, of course.

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And oftentimes you'll hear people who would espouse those things who will also say, you know, that they're thankful.

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Well, what are they thankful to? Right. Well, they know they ought to be thankful. That's right. Very good. But they don't know how to direct it because they're suppressing the truth of the one who has made all these things.

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And ultimately, general revelation, we know, it only serves to condemn.

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There's enough in general revelation to tell us that God is glorious, but not enough to show us the path to redemption.

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Right, right. You mentioned that we were kind of doing Arkansas appreciation and the listeners won't know this, but you and I, this last weekend, got the opportunity to float a portion of the

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Buffalo River. Yeah, so that's what I want to get to. Let's talk about how Arkansas condemns the world.

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Let's do that. Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk for a minute. You know, general revelation in Arkansas. I'll say this,

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Eddie. I feel like we're biased. Okay, first of all, you were born in Arkansas. Where were you born?

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I was born in Heber Springs. Heber Springs. I was born in Texas. I was born in Killeen, Texas.

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My mother was born in Texas. Well, I'm not your mother. So, fact check true.

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The reality is, though, you only have to be around a Texan for about five seconds before you realize they're from Texas and that Texas is better than everything.

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Right? Have you? Yeah, at least everything's bigger. So, what

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I want to say about Arkansas is it's a very underappreciated state. We moved here,

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I was probably like four. So, I basically, you know, only, now we lived in Kentucky for a year, but the rest of that, so about five years of my life have been outside of Arkansas.

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The rest, I've lived in Arkansas. It's really an underappreciated state. When people come and visit, they're really surprised because I think they think of,

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I don't know what they have in their mind of Arkansas, probably banjos and hillbillies and all that kind of stuff.

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But it really is underappreciated. So, let's talk first. So, I'll talk a little bit around here, but let's talk first.

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We went and what did we do last weekend? We went on a float trip on kind of further down the

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Buffalo River than where I floated in the past. And it was beautiful. The Buffalo River is in Northern Arkansas.

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It flows into the White River, right? Mm -hmm. And the White River. At a place called

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Buffalo City. Okay. And the White River flows into the Arkansas. It does.

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And the Arkansas, of course, flows into the Mississippi. But the Buffalo River, I would call it,

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I don't know what the, I don't know all the classifications of rivers, but I would call it a novice level floating.

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Oh, yeah. It's an easy river to float. Really easy. I can't imagine there being an easier one.

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Right. It's so easy to float. In fact, it's almost too easy because you have, in several places, you feel like you have to paddle.

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Yeah. I guess you could technically just float, but in some places it would be really.

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Yeah, you've got to paddle. It's a fairly shallow and wide river, so it's a good river for floating.

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That's not a way that you want your church to be theologically. You don't want it to be wide and shallow. But for floating, that's great.

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Yeah. You know, as we were floating on Saturday, that's one of the things. I've not traveled a lot in my life, but I've been a few places, been to Utah a few times, and I love

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Utah. I think it's beautiful. I had the opportunity once to go to Alaska, and Alaska is amazing.

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I would tell anybody, if you get the chance to travel to Alaska, you should go. But at one point during the float, some of the guys from our church,

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I think we were a ways away from you guys at this point. But I just told them, I said, you know,

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I've seen Alaska. It's amazing. Love Utah. Seen the Rocky Mountains.

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But this is as beautiful as anything I've ever seen. What we were seeing, I was like, this is as beautiful as anywhere else.

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You know, it's different. It's different going down the Buffalo than it is the really high mountains of the

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Rockies or the snow -capped mountains in Alaska. It's a different kind of beauty.

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And I'm not saying one is better than the other, but I'm just saying it was gorgeous.

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It was amazing the way it reflected. What an awesome God for both this formation, this world that we were in, and even the very day that we had.

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You know, the Scripture says, this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

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And, you know, the thing that I think I heard as much as anything else on Saturday, over and over, everybody was just saying, this was the perfect day.

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That's something else. Every now and then, the Lord gives a perfect day in Arkansas. Yeah, it was not too hot.

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And I was thinking the river would be cold, but it was just wonderful. It was so good.

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You know, and on this trip, and I really appreciate it, there was a brother from my church that organized it. And he connected with some international students.

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And it's great. I mean, there's more implications. We can talk about this with, you know, church life and those sorts of things, because it's great to just, a lot of times in rural churches, it's like, if you want to do anything, the pastor has to do it.

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And it's not wrong for a pastor to organize an event. That's great. But sometimes, honestly, it's just outside his wheelhouse, and it distracts from so much that he needs to be doing.

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And so I was really blessed by Brother Steve Turnage, just taking the, as they say, the bull by the horns and just saying, hey, this is what we're going to do.

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And all I had to do was show up, you know, and then in the middle, so we stopped for lunch.

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And I don't know, there's, I don't know how many people, there's probably like 35 people, you know, including your church and everything.

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And we just got to share the gospel. We sang doxology. We prayed. And it was really, it was just, it was—

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Heard the testimony. Yeah. Caleb shared his testimony. It was great. So I think, so I'll say this about the, you know, out

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West Colorado. Like, I grew up going to rodeos and stuff out there. Like, I love that. It's beautiful.

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It's wonderful. I would just say that sometimes people spend a lot of money and time to travel out there.

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And man, they miss, like, you ought to look up some places in Arkansas. So the

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Buffalo River, sorry, the Buffalo River is, the

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Buffalo River is obviously one place to check. And I'd say another place down here around where I'm at,

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Pettigene. You've been on Pettigene? Only a couple of times, but, you know, that was something

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I was going to mention too. And I'm going to say something that I've never personally done, but I've got some people in my church that have done this.

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And I would say to any of our listeners, if you're on a budget and you're going,

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I don't know if our family can afford, you know, to go on a big vacation. Yeah.

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I'll tell you what you probably could afford to do. Get yourself a pass to go to all the

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Arkansas State Parks. I think you can buy, you know, a pass for a year that gets you into all the

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Arkansas State Parks. And then travel around to those. Use what would be your vacation time to hit up some of the, and maybe you can't make all of them, but state parks like Pettigene, there are amazing things to see and opportunities to avail yourself of the natural state.

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I'll say it's underappreciated, but I will say something about that. It's like, don't try to do it the week ahead, the week before, because these places are full.

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It's like you go up to Pettigene and you see people all over the

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United States that are there, you know? And usually like this time of year, because we're recording this right before Memorial Day weekend.

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So this time of year, we have to deal with, you know, all the Memorial Day traffic, if you will, up there.

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So you're not going to just call up. I think you have to do like a year, a year in advance or something like that.

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But it's really an amazing opportunity. You know, our friend Randall Easter comes in once a year and usually stays up around the

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Buffalo area. And then, you know, he stayed on Pettigene before. It's really beautiful.

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And of course, I'm I will say this. You guys often hear Eddie say beautiful Searcy County and Eddie's right.

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But I would also say I like I like to hear that. Eddie's right. Put that on a T -shirt. But I also would say really an underappreciated place is

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Perry County, because at least like Searcy County, like people go there for stuff.

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You know, nobody comes to Perry County. There's there's no I mean, there are a couple of campgrounds, but there's not they're not like any kind of destination spots or, you know, so.

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But we have some amazing things here. We have some great fishing, great hunting. We have a couple of kind of off the trail places, flat side pinnacle.

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You climb up, you look. And that's one of the higher points in Arkansas. Actually, I don't know. It's certainly not the highest point.

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But anyway, the point being, it's really great. I try to tell my boys all the time and the girls, too, that we really are blessed to live in the place that we live and all the things we have to see and do.

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It's it really is a blessing of of the Lord, you know.

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And and the thing is, we shouldn't just use these like there's a lot of is it implied to say left wingers or a lot of like left wingers or whatever out there.

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They're like into bicycling and that and that actually comes in to our state and stuff.

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They're into these things, but they're doing these things just really out of self serving.

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But we're saying we should appreciate these created things unto the glory of God.

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And when we think about things like whatever, global warming, all that kind of junk, we're like like we're not we're not worried about planet

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Earth so much as we're worried about the we're concerned about the glory of God. And we just want to be good stewards of what

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God has given us. And we don't so we don't have to buy into the the left wing propaganda on that, that kind of stuff.

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And like you were saying, there's a variety, you know, here in Arkansas of ways to experience this.

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Now, some of some of the folks listening to the podcast probably aren't in Arkansas. So but wherever you're at,

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I'm sure that there are a variety of different things that you can experience in nature of the things that that God has made.

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You know, you mentioned the highest point. I believe that's Mount Magazine, isn't it? Yeah. So Mount Magazine, you know, that's a beautiful place to obviously we you know, you got the lakes, you know, so we were on the river

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Buffalo River this last weekend. But you've also got Bull Shoals Lake. You've got

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Gris Ferry Lake, places like that, where you can enjoy just seeing, you know, amazing things that that God has made or that man has manipulated.

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You know, it's very late, for example, would be a man made lake.

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But man has to use the raw materials that the Lord has given us. Yeah. But even that you go back to creation and and God's command to Adam, you know, to be fruitful and multiply and cover the earth and have dominion.

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And part of building, you know, man made lakes and all that kind of stuff. It's it's dominion over over the earth.

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And it's beautiful. You know, Gris Ferry. That's a that's a Gris Ferry Lake. That's a beautiful and there's a little bit of history there.

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That was actually the last place that JFK stopped and dedicated there.

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Where's that at up at Gris Ferry? At Heber. At Heber. Yeah. That was like his last public stop before Dallas.

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You know, because that the the dam it over there at Heber is named for John F.

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Kennedy. OK, a fun fact that probably a lot of people don't know.

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The Buffalo River is a national river. It's actually the first national river. Really?

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The first designated national river was the Buffalo River. And the reason why it was designated as national river.

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At least this is the story I've heard. If if anybody knows better, you know, you you can correct me.

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But actually, they were before they built the Gris Ferry Lake, they were going to build the lake up here north of Marshall, like in the

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St. Joe area was where they were going to build a lake. But a bunch of people didn't want them to build a lake up here.

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So they they scrambled around to get the national river designation so that you couldn't dam up the

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Buffalo River. Wow. And so they ended up building the the lake at Gris Ferry and damming up the

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Little Red River. Wow. That lake. But but there was a time when they were they were going to they were going to build a lake north of Marshall and they wouldn't have built the

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Gris Ferry Lake if they built the lake up here. That's that's yeah, that's wild. I would have been a completely different Arkansas.

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Yeah, I say, you know, I'm glad they didn't do that. But who knows what it looked like? Yeah. Who knows what that would have been?

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I will say this. I am not vouching for eastern and southeastern

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Arkansas. No kidding. It's really no offense to the guys out there.

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But like once you pass, like when I'm traveling in Memphis, once you really get past Little Rock, I guess it's pretty much just flat the whole way out there, you know,

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I can speak with. Some I can I can speak with with some experience when it comes to this, because I went to college in northeast

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Arkansas. And when you cross the Black River, you go from hills and beauty to flat and not not beauty.

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And we lived we lived in DeWitt for two and a half years. Yeah, well, I lived I lived in Walnut Ridge for four years.

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So, well, it was and I always thought that growing up here in, you know,

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I grew up in Van Buren County and I always thought that I wanted to live where it was flat, where the roads were straight until I lived in northeast

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Arkansas for four years. And I couldn't wait to get back to the hills and away from the mosquitoes.

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I'm going to tell you, they have mosquitoes in eastern Arkansas. Oh, absolutely. I think lots of them.

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When I first realized this, when I when I slapped a hummingbird and I realized it's actually a mosquito.

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That's right. And then it looked up at me and shook it off and flew off. I was like, oh, and I was like running out.

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One of them carried away one of my kids. No, just joking. That's how that's how big the mosquitoes are.

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But even that testifying to the glory of God and reminding us,

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I'd say eastern Arkansas reminds us we live in a fallen. So you have everything together. So you have this part of the state where you're like, oh, you know, it's beautiful.

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And then you have eastern Arkansas reminds us we live in a fallen world. Yeah, that's right. And then

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I remember I think I'd been in college for a week and I was riding with a friend who was also a student there at Williams.

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So my alma mater is Williams Baptist University. And we were we were riding along in his truck.

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And all of a sudden I thought we hit like a puddle and like it splashed up on the truck.

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I was like, what was that? And we had hit a swarm of mosquitoes. And I'd never experienced that before.

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But that's just something that you experience regularly in northeast Arkansas. Well, all the whole eastern half, it's it's in the

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Mississippi Mississippi delta. And I'm sure there's great things people tell us. But I do know duck hunting is big over there.

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You know, Stuttgart is, they say, the duck hunting capital of the world. And so there's some good things about that.

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But hey, I'm like you get me over here to the to the to the hills.

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So I think that it's an amazing thing to just consider sometimes about where you live and the things around you do you live that testify and point us to the greatness of God's creation.

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I also think we want to recognize that we shouldn't always be looking for something else or somewhere else.

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You know, that's good. One of the things that you and I are doing today, like you said, Arkansas Appreciation, you know,

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I've I've maybe even felt this way myself in the past. And I know I've I've talked to a lot of people that they're always looking for somewhere else.

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They're thinking if I just lived in this other place, I'd be happy. Or if I just if my circumstances were just this, then

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I'd be happy. If the weather was just like this, then I'd be happy. But the reality is if we cannot be happy in the

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Lord where we're at. So if you live in Arkansas, you ought to be able to be happy in the

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Lord and what the Lord has given us in Arkansas. And that ought to be true no matter where you're at in the world.

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You ought to be able to be happy in the Lord with where the Lord has planted you, with the people with whom the

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Lord has planted you, with the church where the Lord has planted you, and with the people around you that you can reach with the gospel where the

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Lord has planted you. You know, we won't want to foster discontent in our lives.

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And I think a lot of times that can happen when we kind of become numb to the beauty of where God has put us.

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And that was kind of the thing that I was saying to these brothers as we were floating the river the other day. There are a lot of places here in Arkansas, you know, even my drive just from my home up here to Marshall every day.

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Some amazing things that I drive right past every day. Every day

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I drive past them. Numb to those things. Yeah, because we see them every day. Well, there's lots of practical applications, you know, from our discussions.

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One, that we should appreciate creation. And by the way, God gave us creation to enjoy.

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It's like, we're out there on the buffalo as a Christian, and we're worshiping God and celebrating. That's one of the reasons we're made.

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That's one of the reasons creation exists. Mankind was made on the sixth day because we are the kings, if you will, of creation.

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Creation exists for us, in a sense, as we enjoy it and steward it and give

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God the glory for it. We've talked about, you know, just minorly there, but the idea of coordinating events, you know, and not being afraid as a pastor,

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I'd say, to let someone else just handle it. And like with this situation, it didn't happen.

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But sometimes, if you let someone else handle it, they're not going to do it, maybe even as good as you do it. That's okay.

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Like, again, Steve did it better than I would do it. But sometimes, I've been in situations where it hasn't been like that.

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But you're like, you know what? Just let it go. Let them do it. And let them run with it. It helps them. It helps you.

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It glorifies the Lord, and it edifies the body. Then, of course, we've also learned that if you live in Texas, no one cares.

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No one cares about Texas except you. No, I'm grateful for Texas. It's like, wow, where'd that come from?

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That's what Haddon says, isn't it? No one cares. You can only hear so much about Bluebell, Dr.

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Pepper. I will tell you this. If Texas one day, if things have to come to it, and Texas says, look, we out.

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We're creating our own republic. I want Arkansas to go with them. I want Arkansas to be called

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Northeast Texas. That's right. Well, I hope this is a good summer episode for you.

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I hope you found it encouraging. I'd say come visit Arkansas, but not right now because it's really hot and it's really humid.

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But if you'll just wait a couple more months until maybe like October, you'll find one of the most beautiful areas in the whole planet, the whole universe.

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Yeah, that's another thing we can think about is I love the changing of the seasons.

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I wouldn't want to live in a place where it was summer all the time.

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Well, I don't know. I really do like cold weather, so maybe I would like winter all the time.

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I love the changing of the seasons. Right now, we're moving into summer, but really we're in spring.

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Then, like you said, October. I love October. October, November, we move into fall.

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You've got hunting season and those things. That's just another thing that displays just the wonder of what

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God has made in the changing of the seasons. That's right. That's right. We get all four seasons in Arkansas sometimes in the same day.

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That's right. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Ruled Church Podcast. Do you have anything else,

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Eddie? No, man. I think this was great, and I do hope everybody has a wonderful summer, and we'll see you guys next week.

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If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

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