Obtaining Biblical Wisdom 201

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But what we're going to discuss tonight is biblical wisdom again, and a couple weeks ago

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I had the opportunity to preach on how to obtain wisdom, and that was the title of the sermon,

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How to Obtain Wisdom, and we went from James 1, chapter 1, verse 5.

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If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him.

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And honestly, you know, thinking of my daughters with their college courses and me when

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I was in seminary, you know, they have biblical wisdom 101, right?

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So this would be maybe biblical wisdom 201. We want to go a little bit deeper, you know.

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What was discussed in the sermon was pretty basic, you know. When you only have a certain amount of time, there's only so far you can go.

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And again, we're big on wisdom here. Pastor has before, and is currently teaching through Proverbs for the men, but the mentoring group that we do, the studies that we do, all the things that we do is with the hope that we're providing you with knowledge that will translate into wisdom as you apply it.

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So my sermon the other week was pretty basic, and the purpose was to tell you where to look for wisdom and what common pitfalls to avoid.

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So let me ask you a question. Who are members? I'm looking for three things, but feel free to give me more if you know them.

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What three things could you do to start trying to obtain biblical wisdom?

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Pray. Sorry. I was like, I saw a mic. I'm about to say, and I missed. Praying.

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Okay. Praying and asking for wisdom. That's kind of a giveaway right there, right?

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Yeah, so praying. Praying is one way to seek out wisdom. But if you remember the sermon, what is prayer?

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When he tells us to pray, what is he assuming we've already been doing? What's the assumption?

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Calista? Reading the Bible. Reading the Bible. Reading God's Word. Okay. So that's two.

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I'm looking for one more. What's one more thing that we can do to assist us in gaining wisdom?

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Find wise mentors. Seek counsel. Seek counsel.

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Find wise mentors. What's a way to sum up that? Those answers.

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Being with the brethren. There you go. You're very disappointed. Drill this home.

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Surrounding yourself with the body of Christ. And so when you're surrounding them, you're observing them.

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You're seeking their counsel and you're trying to grow. If you see those who are further down the road from where you are spiritually in immaturity, you want to watch what they do and learn from that.

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And when you have questions, when you have situations come about, you can ask them how they might advise you for that.

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So we have read the Word, surround yourself with the body, and pray. What are the pitfalls?

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Since that's what I spoke about also on that Sunday, what are the pitfalls that might sabotage our efforts to get wisdom?

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Did I see a hand back there? No? No one wants to offer.

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I mean, it was only a couple of weeks ago. Doubting. Doubting. Right there on the board.

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Fantastic. Thank you. It wasn't a trick question. I'm just trying to worry about what you people think about me.

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It's a trap. Doubting. Right? I mean, that's the caveat that he gives.

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Let him ask in faith without doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. That person must not suppose he will receive anything from the

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Lord. He's a double -minded man, unstable in all his ways. And so talking about doubt, I said there was that double -mindedness was kind of like a hardened version of doubt where you're not going to believe

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God even though he's offering you. He's offering you his answers, what he has to say about that particular topic.

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He's offering it to you right there in his Word. He's offering it to you by the body of Christ being able to give you encouragement, give you counsel, give you rebuke and exhortation.

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So there's one where you're just, you don't believe him. And there's a double -mindedness where you really only want confirmation of what you want to do.

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That's the wisdom that you're looking for is that God would say yes and amen to my plans. Right?

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And so that's a pitfall. That's being double -minded. That's not actually wanting God's wisdom. That's wanting your own way.

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And so that will sabotage your efforts there. So one of the things

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I want to talk about tonight, actually I want to, I was going to start talking about reading the

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Word and how to dig into the Word and study the Word. And we've had these things before. I have printouts here that Pastor Anthony gives,

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I think for his own children, for different ways you can use to study the Word and do that. We've had hermeneutics classes here before and how we can interpret

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Scripture and talk about that. So I want to talk a little bit about that, but I wanted to focus for a moment on the principle of the body life, you know, surrounding ourselves with the body.

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And so my question would be, and I'm going to try to ask a lot of questions tonight and have you interact and see what you know, you know, and help to flesh this out for others.

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So again, some of this might be review for you, some of it might be new, but it's always good to refresh our memories on it.

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What is our obligation to the body, would you say, if anything?

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Maybe I'm just making it up, right? What's our obligation to the body of Christ? Give it to them.

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Let the kids get it. Dan and then

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Ashley. To serve, to use the gifts that God has given us. Okay. To serve the body, to use the gifts that God has given us.

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Ashley? Well, I was going to say service. Okay. Pray, like praying for them and also serving.

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Okay. You could probably be summed up in the second commandment, to love your brother as yourself.

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Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yes. Indeed. All good answers. And you're even starting to touch on one of the ways you can do that.

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So if we say, you got to serve each other, all right, great. What does that look like?

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Because I've had people, we say over and over again, what the Bible says, that each one has a spiritual gift given.

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When you're saved, when the Holy Spirit regenerates you, he gives you at least one spiritual gift that we remind you is not meant for you, but it's actually meant for the body.

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And we tell you to gather with the body because if you're not here with the body, you are depriving them of the gift

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God gave you that you're meant to share with them. And you're depriving yourself of the gifts that God gave them that's meant for you.

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So we try to encourage people to remember everyone here is vital.

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Everyone here is essential. I would have spent like a sermon and a half talking about, pastor said it in one line, he said one

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Sunday, what would happen if I didn't think I need to show up today?

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Because why do you think it's any different for any one of you, right? And it's, each one is essential because each one has been given a gift by God, meant for the body, and we need the body.

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But the question is, people are like, well, I don't even know what my spiritual gift is. And you say serve the body, and I don't know how to serve the body.

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I have no idea what I can do. Me, I'm not a handyman. I can do some manual labor, sort of, you know, like just point me in the right direction, right?

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But, you know, people think of service in the broader evangelical world, sometimes they will sign up for nursery, sign up for the youth ministry, you know, be an usher, drive the bus, do whatever.

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And those are, some of them, are good, good aspects of ways you, we can serve the body, we can help the body.

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I don't know if there's a spiritual gift of some of those things, but they are necessary. We need doorkeepers, right?

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I'd rather spend, you know, be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, right, than to be anywhere else, right?

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How can we serve the body, apart from signing up to be an usher, you know, helping out in nursery, being part of the fellowship committee?

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I mean, these are all necessary and good. Prayer, yeah, that's a great one, that's a vital one, we're going to go in a row.

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Alex, talking to people to get to know them, I'm going to come back to you on that. Discipleship, older is the mentor of the younger, right?

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We talked about Titus 2, and, you know, he used to be an example to them, and, you know, we talk about Titus 2 women, the older women have to teach the younger women, right?

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I saw a hand back here, what's that? What Alex said, you know, getting to know people and then seeking ways to encourage them.

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Seeking ways to encourage them. Do you want to expand on your answer of getting to know people? Well, if you don't know people, you won't know, you know, what to pray for, what their needs are, if they have problems that need, that you can help with, things like that.

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Right, absolutely. Just sharing life together, go ahead. That involved being honest with one another with what's going on in our lives.

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Ah, yes. Tricky details they are. How are you doing? Fine. Great.

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No complaints. See you next Sunday. And away we go, right?

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Casting Crowns had a song called Stained Glass Masquerade, right? Like we go and we just have this facade.

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And I've talked to people who think that everyone else at church is perfect.

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And they're the only deviant in the crowd because they know their struggles, they know their issues, but everyone else seems to be fine and well and good.

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Is that true? Everyone else is here is perfect, right? Everyone else has no problems whatsoever.

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Their lives are perfect. They absolutely have no complaints. Oh, we know we're not supposed to complain or grumble, right?

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But there's nothing we'd want to see better in our life, right? No one?

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Are you just being shy now? Tell them, tell them you have a perfect life. Kids, go ahead. Our parents are wonderful.

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We could ask for nothing less. Nothing more. Right. So we all have things that we struggle with, right?

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We all have things that we're praying about, things that are difficult.

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And, you know, I was thinking, you know, we take the Lord's Supper, you know, and there's, you know, the issue of just coming to it, you know, on the one hand joyfully because look what

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Christ has provided for us, right? He's done everything. He set the table with his own body and blood.

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And at the time we want to also be sober and reflect, you know, we have to judge the body and evaluate.

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And if we have sin that we haven't dealt with, we want to get right with God and deal with that. If we have someone who has an offense against us or we have an offense against them and we haven't dealt with that, you know, and we're holding on to it.

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It's not even like, oh, that happened yesterday. I haven't had a chance to talk to him. I'm like, I will never forgive them. I'm so angry with them.

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I'm going to try to avoid them for the rest of my life. We have an obligation and a duty to one another to be reconciled to one another.

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Right? Jesus says, if you come to the altar and you have your gift and you remember your brother has something against you, leave it at the altar, go and be reconciled to your brother and then come back.

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Right? And so we see God's priority is not in that gift that you want to offer to God.

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He wants you to have the right heart attitude that he's been telling you to have to love your neighbor, love your brother.

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I was also thinking about when we think about specifically what happened in Corinth, what happens?

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There's people there who are getting drunk, right? They have more than enough to eat and drink and they're going to excess.

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And he goes, and then there's others who are hungry and going hungry. And it's like, what a mess. So he's telling them, don't you have homes to eat at?

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You should have a love and concern for your brother and you shouldn't be going to this excess that's sinful and bringing reproach on the name of Christ.

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And so that's one of our primary applications in terms of how that goes. But what

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I was thinking about today was how many of us have things that are going on and we have our little lives.

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And listen, like I just said, we all have our issues. We all have our problems. And so we might come here on a

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Sunday afternoon and we sit at the same table with our same people because that's what we do, right?

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I didn't get to see them all week. I want to hang out and talk and fellowship and get to know each other or get caught up with each other,

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I should say. Are there people here, are there people who are on the fringe, people we don't know what's going on with them?

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And they're hungry, so to speak, right? They're feeling left out. They're feeling on the fringe.

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They're struggling with stuff. And no one knows because we don't ask. We don't extend past our little border, our little comfort zone.

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I've been at churches that were cliquey before. And when I came to Hope, I'm like, it's such a small church.

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I mean, how could you be cliquey? It's like the three of us here. It's like, that guy over there, we'll talk.

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But as we get bigger, I know most of the people here, right?

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I'd venture to say I know everyone here, greater and lesser degrees. But are there people who we still don't know that well and we haven't made much of an effort to get to know them?

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Just because, well, we only see each other once a week so you want to spend time, you know, catching up. And so I wouldn't say there's a desire.

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You know, this is not like a mean girl high school table. You know, they're just insulting everyone else and ha -ha -ha, we're the cool kids.

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I don't think anyone's thinking that. But are we extending ourselves to find out who are our people?

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Because when we take our, when we go through the membership class, we go through their confession because that's where our core doctrines are.

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And then we go through the Constitution. And then we talk about the Church Covenant. And when we vote new members in, what happens almost the very next

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Sunday, we all stand up and we read that covenant together. And we say we are covenanting ourselves to one another.

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And that's a good thing. It's a beautiful thing. I love those Sundays. But, the question is, how much are we extending ourselves to know the people?

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I'm not saying you have to be best friends with everyone in the church. That's just logistically impossible. Even Jesus had an inner circle, right?

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But are we making something of an effort? For the people who are availing themselves to come on Sunday afternoon and come for the fellowship time, are we trying to get to know new people?

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Or are we trying to mix it up to get to know people? Because how can we know people? We have the prayer list and it's it's fairly thorough.

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If we look at the prayer list, we have people, you know, job situations, salvation for family members, we have shut -ins.

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Do we know who our shut -ins are? All the health concerns. Are we making sure they're up to date?

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We have all these things that we can be praying for. And those are good and valid, necessary things.

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But in talking of getting to know people and being honest with one another, and I'll have to make a caveat about that in a second, how does the apostle pray for the churches?

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Like, I'm sure if there's temporal needs, you know, there's a famine going on, people are going hungry. We're praying that God will provide and we're doing our due diligence to try to take up a collection and meet the needs of the saints, right?

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And, you know, people are sick, we're praying for people who are sick. People have job situations, we're praying for that.

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But what sort of things do the apostles pray for in the epistles? You think of Colossians.

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What sort of thing do they pray for? Very smooth, very smooth.

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And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the

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Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for what?

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Endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father. These are the things that the apostles are praying for that we would grow, that we would grow in our spiritual maturity.

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And do we pray for each other for that? And if there's specific situations, you know, there's family situations where we need wisdom, you know, and we should do that.

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Now the caveat. On the one hand, there's things where you should share, and then there's other things where you have to be careful not to overshare and run into gossip.

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And so it's something of a fine line at times, and, you know, are certain things necessary to share, or should it be, is it appropriate or would it be wise to share it with everyone?

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Because sometimes people knowing too much about things that don't concern them can actually cause more problems rather than make things better.

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So if it's a case of, you know, you're asking for help with a situation or you have a, you have something, if it's between members of the body, well,

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I mean, we have a, we have a, what's the word I'm looking for?

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We have a procedure for that, right? You go to someone and you speak with them, and then, you know, if you have to take two or three other than, you know, and then, as I said before, looking for godly counsel.

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You know, you have elders here who care about you and who can give you direction. You may know other mature believers who can give you direction.

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And so we have to figure out that, that sort of fine line there. But I'm bringing this up for our purposes, just for, just for the idea of to perhaps get out of our comfort zone.

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Right? And so what's, what's an easy way, well, I guess, getting out of your comfort zone is not easy.

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Right? That's sort of a, sort of a, anyway. Actually, don't call me a moron.

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That's, that's rude. So what, what can we do to get to know the body better?

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There's coffee in the back, guys.

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John. We can ask

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Alexa. She can help us out. I'll tell you.

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Alexa knows. Preaching Alexa. Oh, sorry. There's my ruler. The bottom line is you really do have to care about people.

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You know, like you said, it's, it's not that you're going to necessarily become best friends with someone.

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But like, take, for example, people we've been praying for. To just approach them to say, hey, I'm praying for you.

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If there's anything I can do, you know, I'm here for you. You know, I mean, like I said, you're not best friends, but they know, wow, this person reached out to me.

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You know, they, they genuinely care. I mean, it has to be genuine. It's not genuine. Don't do it, you know. Yeah.

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Yeah. I mean, and think about the questions we can ask. Obviously, if they're on the prayer list or, you know, they went out on the prayer chain, we can ask, hey, you know, how's that going?

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You know, and find out and get an update and so you can continue to pray for them, you know, and maybe there's something specific you can do that you can help in some tangible way.

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Not that prayer is not tangible, but you know what I mean. You know, one of the greatest things is, is asking someone, you know, if they're here and they're a believer, you know, whether they're new or they've been here for 10 years or maybe you've never heard it.

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Ask them how they came to know the Lord, you know, and find out about their life that way.

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You can ask couples, well, how'd you get together? And, you know, you can ask all sorts of things, you know, family life, work.

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You know, the key word there is to ask. Mm -hmm. Not that you're going to tell them about yourself.

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Right. That's right. Let me tell you about me. I'm great. You should know. Right. Right.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. come over here to introduce myself and tell you all about myself.

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I mean, there is that interpersonal. You have to go back and forth, but yeah, it's about agenda, right? What's the plan in doing that?

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But getting to know people and, you know, I talk to people who think like, I don't know how to serve the body.

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I don't know how to help the body. Just be there, you know. You never know, like, you know, conversations that happen.

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First of all, there's something there's something very special about table fellowship. Just sitting down and talking to one another and getting to know one another.

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This is great. But I mean, if you are able to have people over to your home, your apartment, outside at a bench or something.

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If anybody says they don't know how to serve the body, just tell them to stop by my study. That's how I keep them busy. Pastor has a list.

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They're mostly chores for his house, but there's he's like Mr. Miyagi. There's there's valuable spiritual lessons in all of it.

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Also, no one will ever be bored around our homes.

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Amen. You made me lose my train of thought.

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Table fellowship. There's something special about, you know, getting to know people over dinner.

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You know, and it doesn't have to be a meal. It doesn't have to be something extravagant. You know, something

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I'd want to get more into. We we try very hard to practice hospitality and that's been a blessing for us and our family.

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And it's opened up so many opportunities. I remember reading Rosaria Butterfield.

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Butterfield. Am I saying it right? I read a couple of her books, but I keep pronouncing her name over and over again.

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But she's got a book called The Gospel Comes with a House Key. And just talking about how ministry happens just by inviting people into your home.

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You know, and being willing to like, oh, we're going to sing some psalms. You know, we're not going to be ashamed to praise

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God here. You know, we'll sing a doxology, do something, you know, heartfelt prayer, those kind of things.

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But get to know one another and help and just share in the body. You know, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep, providing a casserole, providing this, providing that.

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There's so much of a personal connection there. And there's so many ways that we can really help each other, you know, to grow and grow in our relationships just by getting together, you know, if it's a cup of coffee, you know, or we're reformed, have a beer, have a glass of wine, you know, just in moderation, right?

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So you can do those things and you can get to know people. But I mean, so, you know, if you already have people who you're close with here, praise

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God, look to get together during the week, you know, once a month or more, you know, however as much as you can.

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But if you're here on a Sunday and you're pretty well established, you've been here for some time or maybe you haven't, go introduce yourself to someone new.

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Is anyone sitting here? You know, and there it begins. Just ask them common, you know, easy starting off questions to get to know people.

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But then you'll get to know them and be able to pray for them. And perhaps you'll learn something from them.

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You know, people are surprised, like, I don't know how I could ever help anyone. And then they share their life story. Like you're blown away by things they've done and it inspires you, like, oh, you know,

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I could say something like that to my co -worker or my neighbor. You know, people sharing how they're living their lives and how they're serving

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God or, you know, what have you seen God, what are you studying this week?

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What are you reading this week? You know, what has God shown you this week? You know, did you have a chance to witness to someone?

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What? You know, asking that question might say, I should start witnessing to people so I'll have something to say next week.

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And you're helping evangelism just by asking a question, right? So, I mean, there's all these easy ways to just get out of your comfort zone and go sit with someone else who's here.

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You know, God and his providence has brought them here. But do you know them? You know? And so, you can share your life with them and they can share their life with you and you can find, there might be ways that you would be able to serve them or things that you're good at, that you're doing naturally, that you're just sharing, oh,

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I did this, that, and the other thing this week. I'm like, I never even thought about that. Like, we can actually grow each other.

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You know, the idea of, like, gifts of giving, teaching, mercy.

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The way we look at life, you know, we have certain passions. Everyone's got a passion for something usually, or maybe several things.

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But, part of that is God has put some of those things on our heart, if they're good godly things, right?

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And we can bring that to mind to other people. You know, not everyone's going to have the gift of teaching, but everyone's called to teach someone, you know?

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If you're a parent and you have children, you're called to teach them, you know? But you can also disciple a friend, a spouse, a neighbor, you know?

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And the idea of prayer. A simple question, can I pray for you? You know, do you have anything

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I could pray for you this week? And all of a sudden, you're finding out stuff that you had no idea what was going on in their life.

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And yet, those acts of mercy, those acts of kindness, are not only growing you, but you could be helping someone come to the

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Lord in the first place or grow in the Lord. I've seen people get serious about church because they finally met someone who was serious about church, you know?

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When we are the aroma of Christ, you know, it's going to be life for some.

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It will be death for others, but it will be life for some. You don't know the impact you're going to have just by showing concern, showing interest.

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So I wanted to encourage that, and as I had mentioned last time, a couple times now, just when you're looking for specific advice, if you have a problem with someone, you know, it might not be appropriate to share it with everyone.

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So everyone is talking about the town is concerned about this whole thing, and that might not be an appropriate situation, so look for people you can trust.

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A general point, I'm passionate about trying to share things with young people because as someone who got married young, but didn't have much guidance, and made a lot of mistakes,

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God was very gracious. And there were some things I did know, and just by his grace

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I knew to hold on to, and God blessed that. And then when we started homeschooling, does everyone know what homeschool is?

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A homeschool evangelist when I first started. But I started reading all this stuff and being very intentional about how

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I'm going to raise my girls. You're going to have another week and I'm just going to be doing this.

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There were things I was able to impart to them that I was reading and gleaning, teachers, God gives us teachers, so there's books and materials and podcasts and sermons and all this that I was impart to I was about how we're going to raise our girls.

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I wasn't homeschooled myself, so you'll have to excuse my grammar and vocabulary. Very intentional about how we raised them.

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And I've seen it bear fruit. They're not perfect. They'll tell you that.

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But it has borne fruit. And so when I see young people today with the kind of same knowledge

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I had when I was their age, and I see them giving advice to each other, I'm like, stop doing that. Stop giving advice to each other because unfortunately you don't have the experience in that.

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Ask around. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

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I'm not trying to because what I have seen, even better than I was at that age,

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I see people who are godly, who are serious about the words, serious about the faith. They are invested, but they don't have certain experience and certain wisdom and they don't know how to apply some of those things.

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So there's information on that. So I'm not trying to cast dispersion on our young people in that way.

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Do you know what I mean? Yes? Is anyone offended? You can yell at me now. You can raise your hand and say you're wrong.

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I'll wait. No? All right. I'll talk to you after. All right.

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Any questions so far? No? Any comments?

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Any ideas? We're talking about getting out of the box and getting to know more about the body.

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Anyone else have anything they want to comment on that? I noticed obviously that everybody's walk with the

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Lord is different. So any time I'm talking with somebody and they start talking about their walk with the

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Lord, I'm always learning something. It's so important that we do express how we relate with the

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Lord and our walk with God with other people because we're both going to glean. It's a beautiful thing because you start hearing how someone else is interacting with the

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Word of God and interacting with God and it fuels your faith. You hear how

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God answered a prayer or so and so was healed or something happened and you see

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God is at work because sometimes you're in your own little bubble and maybe

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God, the answer to your prayer the past month, two months, two years is not now.

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But then you talk to other people and it's like they got an answer to prayer. They got an answer to prayer and it took them

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X amount of months or however long for God to answer that prayer and they tell you how they grew in that time and it's like, you know what?

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God does have a purpose for this. So each one of us, our relationship with God as we're covenanted together is really important that we learn that and they learn from us.

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We each have something to add. So don't ever think that you don't have something to add to a conversation.

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We have excellent talks after the study on Monday night and it turns into how

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God is relating to each person and it's beautiful. You know, adding to what

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Anthony said, when Tricia and I have had five different families stay with us that have come to the church and the funny thing is that we always felt that we were blessed more than what we were doing because you get to meet people and know them.

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You know, even having hot meal, it was just he and I, it was really a very blessed time. It really was.

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So you're not really giving of anything, you're receiving. It is a blessing, sharing life and sharing the resources that we have.

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Sometimes we don't have money, but we have time or we have a car, we can give you a ride.

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I mean, but just doing that, meeting the needs of the brethren, you know, is an encouragement and it's an opportunity to just share and how we serve each other.

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As I mentioned, you know, talking about good works from Titus 2, you know, people think about, all right, you know, giving to charities is a good work and, you know, going out and doing evangelism is a good work, you know, helping out at a soup kitchen, something like that.

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Those are good works, but your good works are also in how you treat your family, how you treat your neighbor, how you treat your boss, your co -worker, your fellow students, your siblings, everyone.

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And how do you treat the body, you know? These good works glorify

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God, you know? And so it's not like, yes, there's certain things where we need to get out there and do things and God may put something on your heart that he wants you to do.

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And he'll bring a missionary or something or you'll hear an evangelist or you'll hear stories about what happened on Sunday at Port Jeff, you know, or Friday at Planned Parenthood.

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It's like, I've got to get out there and do something and God may put that on your heart and that's a way for you to serve.

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But every day you're living before the face of God. Every day people are watching you and knowing you're an ambassador of that kingdom of God, you know, of King Jesus.

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And so how are we living that out as we're going forward? I wanted to say that the one thing

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I find so nice about the body of Christ is that usually the more charismatic churches there separate where you have people the youth service, the single service, we never get to see, you know, all of us together as it should be where you can see sitting next to someone who's more mature than you.

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You see the brown hair, the silver hair, and you can get wisdom and grow that way and there's so much there that, you know, people have put away.

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Thank you, Pierre. Let me give you the microphone. I hope that thing caught all that. Thank you,

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Pierre. That's, yeah, that's a great I don't think we do that here, but sometimes it just happens.

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Like, I don't have a problem with young people hanging out and, you know, like, you hang out with peers, you have opportunities to do things together.

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Praise God, that's all well and good. But let us never, ever, ever, ever think, oh, they're in a different season of life than me.

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We have nothing in common. We have nothing to talk about. There's no way, you know, they could benefit from me or anything like that.

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Well, I'm younger than them. You know, again, I, when I'm talking one on one with, like, guys and girls,

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I'm like, don't ask each other for advice. And now I feel bad saying it, like, out loud. Here's the thing, you know,

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David says, I'm wiser than all my teachers because I meditate on your law. And so we are all, should be, as we're studying the word, and that'll be the next time we'll talk about it, where young people can, just like everyone else, have absolute truth and wisdom in a thing.

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They could have read it. They could have figured it out, you know, and they can give good advice to each other.

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It's just been my experience that it's usually the exception within the rule. But prayerfully, as we continue to actually do life together, we'll learn those things.

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We'll learn, we'll learn from our mistakes. We'll learn from the things that other people have done right, other things people have done wrong.

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But, yeah, there's that thing where we think they're in a different season of life, you know. Well, if they have kids,

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I don't have kids, so we wouldn't have anything in common. We can't sit together. They're a senior citizen.

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I'm a teenager, right? Or vice versa. What are we going to have in common? Be amazed.

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Be shocked, you know. The Bible knows nothing of separating people by age and, you know, just like be with your own demographic.

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We are a body. We all need each other. We can all learn from each other. We can all appreciate each other.

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You know, watch someone new come in, someone young, zeal. I remember when

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I was like that. I've got to be more like that. Well, praise God, right? But to be able to encourage one another.

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Be able to, I mean, we have shut -ins. We have people who could help, need help with different things.

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You can go and help them, spend time with them, learn about them, their story, you know.

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Again, sharing life and doing these things and having conversations, you'd be amazed at just how much we can use that to grow you, grow them, and grow the body.

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So, a hand? Yeah, I just want to say, like, in God's providence, in times when you don't even ask for wisdom, he blesses you with it, with your interactions with others.

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Yeah. People who have never experienced. In my life, like, I've had that, you know, like, you know,

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I don't even know this person's season of life. You're in a different season, but you're able to take what they're saying into account and think about how you can plan ahead for the future.

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So, it's definitely a blessing to know that, you know, even in our shyness or just not seeking wisdom, like,

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God is sovereign and he wants to bless us with that. We just need to be open to that. Yeah.

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Amen. Yeah. Yeah. Body life is so important and I'm going to stop here because I'll go for another hour.

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I know myself. And there's more to say on this topic and there's more to say about actually studying the word and things that we can look at, but availing ourselves of that, being in the body, thinking about our obligations.

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I'm going to pick that up next time because I really am going to stop right here. Let's pray. Let's pray.