Ep 981 | Jase & Missy Evict 10,000 Unwelcome Guests & Do You Smell Like Jesus?
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Hey, Valley peeps. So I get this question all the time. Pat, what's on your playlist? Well, depends on what I'm driving. If it's the crown, then it's the divas. Prius, smooth jazz. Tacoma, Viking heavy metal. Hey, rugged is rugged. Give your commute and your playlists an upgrade with a new Toyota. Stop by any one of 10 Valley Toyota dealers today or visit valleytoyotadealers.com and make sure you check out the all new, all rugged Tacoma.

I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to Unashamed. If you're watching, you see that dad is still not back. He's still struggling with this back, but he is having a procedure done today, Jace. Yep. Well, they've identified the problem. The same problem he had a couple years ago. And it's interesting. Our producer, which I guess Zach runs roughshod over. Yeah.

They put me in Phil's, well, that was a joke. They put me in Phil's seat. So they're like, every once in a while, you know, you need to represent Phil past the torch because he's been absent for a while. But we were not sure. We knew something was wrong just because he's in a lot of pain. But he's had two back surgeries. When was that, a year ago? Yeah, about a year and a half. And so he's not doing anything strenuous.

So we weren't sure he was just kind of going through the process, but sure enough, it's another back break. Yep.

And so I told Phil, I was like, well, for all those times you said, give me a break. It sure seems to be happening to you a lot. So quit saying that. Well, two, two, right? Two. It's two. Yeah. Two, two vertebrae again, which was two last time. And the doctor said two years ago, this was likely to happen just because obviously dad's having some, as he's getting older.

And those bones are not as strong as they used to be. And so when you fortify a couple of them, then you kind of weaken everything else. Yeah. So they're moving. Keep them in your prayers. He had a rough time. And I told him it was, I said, Dad, I just went and sat down. We had a good conversation, but he wasn't feeling great. But then I said, Dad, you raised us.

to not be very compassionate because you just, that's the way you are. That was a very nice way to say Phil's not compassionate. He's not. He's never been except. So I felt bad for him because he's hurting. But I was like, but really, Dad? I mean, I do feel bad that you're hurting, but I just don't have this weepy-like feeling about it because it's you. It's our family. But in the past couple of years, he's really been compassionate toward our mom. He has. And multiple times.

problems all due to falls pretty much, but he's been really good, but he's, yeah, he's been in pain. It's about the most pain I've seen a human being be in. Well, and, and, and I've said this before, dad has a super high pain tolerance. My grandpa did too. Uh, we have, I guess you have it, Jess. I definitely have it. And so what happens is you can go a while and,

And then when it gets bad, it's bad. I think I'm kind of on the stubborn, you know, cause I heard my back putting my shoe on, but, but once they gave me a shot, which they tried that with Phil, cause I was like, Phil, that work wonders on me. I mean, two days later, I canceled all future. I was like, it's over. I'm, I'm, I'm well, well, the doctor was like, well, let's still take a look at it. You know?

And I was kind of like, you know, these days MRIs, I don't know, $1,500. And I'm like, why have an MRI? So the generational curse lives on. It lives on. I was like, I'm perfectly fine. And if you would have seen what I did in the past three days, you would say, I think your back is fine.

What did you do in the last three days? Well, we went to Nashville, so we did a podcast. Well, I know about that. I was there. Yeah, you were there. Well, you were there, but you were not there. We had something happen that I've dubbed the battle on top of the hill. Because what happened is a tornado hit our property five months ago. Most of my neighbors have already died.

rebuilt the process is going on around us and now we're the neighbors on the top of the hill that everybody's saying why aren't they doing anything because it it just looks like it looks like right now a a bomb went off because they've cleaned up three quarters of the of the trees

But just to say why we haven't done anything is because we had 30 acres of virgin timber that all trees hit the ground, twisted, combined with everyone else's fences. And so it was just a mess. And so the insurance company, they were like, we're not doing anything and don't do anything until you clean that up. Then we'll assess.

the situation. Well, we're five months into it and it's still not been completed. But, you know, and so my house, they put many tarps on the roof through this. And actually my son Reed had to go because all our ceilings fell in on the part that was livable. And so Missy's like, she doesn't like critters already. We all know this. I've told multiple stories. And so I felt like I needed to go. We were going to promote

the greatest Christmas pageant ever, which I'm still promoting. So go see that. It's wonderful. And we never talked about that, Zach, but you know, I think if you could convince Hollywood to go along with a Christmas movie and then five, there's a five minute section where you're, you're basically having an experience with Jesus and get Hollywood to sign off on that. I think that's just God ordained. And so that's why we felt compelled to do that. So I get up there,

And the conditions have worsened because you got to realize there's holes in my roof. And even though my son put a semi-temporary ceiling situation, when we walked in, I would say there were hundreds of stink bugs. It's a stink bug. Plague. Plague. And of course, my son lives there.

Which didn't sit right with his mother, my wife. Who can live with a hundred stink bugs? Let me interject for a second. That's interesting that you're saying this because I stayed at a place in Nashville, actually Franklin, nice place. And they had the stink bugs in the place I stayed at. Yeah, it's a plague. It's a plague. It's the year of the stink bug. It happened a few years ago.

So, and look, if you had to be invaded by an insect, I would say that's more preferable. They don't bite you. They move slow. They're easy to kill, capture. And they really only smell bad if you grab one. Smash them. You don't want to grab one. Well, if you kill, you know, a few thousand...

That are on the floor. When I walked in, the smell. Did it smell like a stink bug? Well, I looked and thought, well, I think I've figured out why it stinks in here. So Cole is living in the stink bug. And he's killing them. But to my wife's point, he's not cleaning them up. I mean, there were literally hundreds. And I looked at Cole and said, look like there's been a battle going on here.

And so, uh, cause you got to remember, I have a tarp for a roof and, uh, most of the seat and, and half of my house is unlivable. Yeah. Missy called it something. I can't even remember what it is, but it was the don't enter. Condemned. Yeah. It's the condemned section of my house. And, uh,

So I woke up after we went to the movie and did that. I woke up the next morning, and I just looked around, and I thought, I think it's time to start cleaning up. Yeah. Even though they got to redo my driveway because, you know, trees fell all over my head, 13 or 15. It was in the teens, trees on my house. Well, all those stumps, when they fell, they literally, the ones beside the driveway, it uprooted the driveway. I just...

The driveway's torn up, all this debris. And what I noticed, if you keep putting tarps on a roof in high wind conditions, after five months, all those tarps turn into confetti. It looks like we had a party and there's hundreds of yards of just confetti of what used to be a whole tarp. But the hangup is the insurance company.

Well, right. Yeah. So we're, I mean, we're in the process and it, it's livable. It's like a, I told Missy, I was like, this is what we do. This is just think of it like a camp. Cause she's really struck. It was a, it was, that's why I'm introducing this because you think, well, that doesn't sound too bad. Well, what happened was the little storage shed, it's like a garage. It has a garage entrance right next to my house. I thought, I wonder if anybody knows.

As inspected that there's a tarp on that too, but nobody's living there. When I opened that door, there was a different smell that hit me. One that just immediately caused a gag response. And I thought, what in the world? And I was scared to turn the light on. Yeah. But I did.

And I put a mask on, like not a, you know, a mask, but like I wrapped a shirt around my nose and I walked in there, turned the light on and I could just sense the presence of a lot of unwanted things. And it just, it smelled like death.

And I thought, where's the source of this? And I looked over in the corner past this broken down lawnmower that was fully functional last year. The tires have rotted. Yeah. And there's a little electric, uh, vehicle that was my wife's grandparents. And, uh,

It, I could tell it's not going anywhere. Yeah. And I look and there's three large canisters. One of them, I would say weighs over a thousand pounds and the other two, probably over 500. And it was the feed that my two sons were going to put out for the deer. And I looked at the tops of them and they had been breached.

And there was just trash and debris everywhere, which I found out later that the goats during the tornado, the goats are smarter than you think. They bum rushed the storage shelter and hung out in there for weeks without anybody even knowing it. So just imagine it's a foot deep in goat poop that has been there for five months. We now have a breach in feed everywhere.

And I thought that, that smell, the main concentration is coming from those three big canisters, like way too big for a human. You had moved these with a tractor. And so, uh, you know, I just walked out and said, I can't deal with that. So I actually went and, uh, my neighbors had wanted me to treasure hunt their, their yards after the tornado, they were thinking, uh,

With all this land being moved and all, everybody thinks that, you know, there's some buried treasure there or whatever. So I went and did that, which was fun. But day two of it, I just said, you know what? I got to go do this. I'm a man. Nobody's – forget blaming. Well, you should have got your son to do it because he's living with stink bugs. I mean, obviously, smells – Well, there was a breakdown. There was a healthy discussion, a heated discussion about –

Because look, in their mind, I didn't, the fault is the tornado. Yeah. And they didn't think that you don't put deer feed out. There's no wood. We don't have any woods anymore. Right. And so it just didn't. Yeah. And no one's been in there. And it's like, why clean up if we got to rebuild it anyway? But I just thought we're too far gone. Someone has to do something. And so like my yard, it's waist high. I mean, there's been nothing happened.

It just looks like a waste zone. So Cole felt like a mosquito in the proverbial nudist colony. There's so much to do, but you don't know where to start.

Oh, I guess maybe it's because it's election season. You know, every time a presidential election rolls around, we get a lot of different discussions going on at the national level about things, of course, that matter to us every single day. And one of those is life. Right now, some have called this the abortion election just because it's been talked about so much and it's such a contrast. But I think to us,

I mean, we talk about life all the time and the importance of it. I mean, the election is not going to change our view on how we view life and the importance of it. Well, even in this current election, you know, people who are unashamed to be followers of Jesus and who are unashamed to stand up for life and the innocent are being persecuted. I mean, it's literally being said, we're being made fun of because we believe Jesus is Lord and that all life is sacred. So that's,

That's the hand we've been dealt. His life is our life. And so we join forces with organizations that are doing this day in and day out. One of those is Preborn, which is the largest pro-life organization in the nation.

And they're protecting the greatest victims in our society, and that's babies in their mother's womb. Preborn's network of clinics are positioned in the highest abortion areas in the nation, and they've rescued over 300,000 babies, which is fantastic. When a woman is considering abortion, preborn is there. They use the power of ultrasound combined with God's love, which doubles a baby's chance at life.

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So what happened was, I'll get to the point of this story. You think he's going to get to the point of this story, sir? So I go in there. He will eventually. He'll get there. So I go in there and I just get the trash first, which was three hefty bags of

Slam full. Started with the trash. You're in the shit. I'm in the shit. Are we talking like 30 quarts? What are we talking? As big leaf, but as big as they make. That's a 39-gallon. 39-gallon. Of just the trash from the goats ripping everything off.

So then I'd only eaten the deer feed. Then you'd have been no good to go. Then I addressed the goat poop, got all that out with a bit, but I'm still at the back of my mind and I'm not turning my back on, on, well, I, I had most orifices closed, but I keep looking at those three huge canisters and I thought, Hmm. So the problem is how am I going to get them out?

So I took a two. Cause you got broken down vehicles around them. Oh yeah. Once I got all that out, I took, you know, I learned somewhere in sixth, seventh grade about leverage. I took a two before and I leveraged this huge lawnmower. I moved it with a two before. I mean, I don't know how much this weighs, but, and I moved it over and I moved the truck. Oh, it's a little small thing for leveraging.

all I could do, that's why I said my back's in good shape because I did all that and I feel no problems. And so then I said, well, it's time. So when I just reached out and tried to touch it without getting as close as possible, I tried to, I couldn't even move it. I was like, it's too heavy. So I got that tube before. And when I just moved it one inch with leverage, just an explosion of insects, spiders, insects,

Like, think a movie that they use digitally to try to capture. I just took off running. I was like, I'm outnumbered. I mean, moths, all kind of winged. They just come ball. Winged creatures. Yeah. The creepies along the ground. Just burrowing out of here. And the literal cement just began to move.

And I thought, oh my goodness, this problem is worse. Those feed trials have become a breeding ground because then it hit me. This whole hill,

Has been destroyed. All the woods, all the homes for all these places, and they've all. Ascended on your ship. Exactly. Which reminded me of multiple stories in our past where these kind of perfect storms have happened. You need to bulldoze it down. Well, I went in there and called my right-hand man, my buddy from Kansas, because he's really good at figuring out problems. And he never got off the burn it.

I was like, I can't, it's a hundred thousand dollar building. I'm not bulldozing this over. I'm just not doing it. And so I just had to man up and I just, you know, I started, I leveraged it out. I found a rope. I got my wife's car. I put the rope around it and I surgically pulled it out down the road. Luckily everything's downhill once I got it out.

And I got it away from my driveway. I got the first one. And there's when I...

When I just had to have a high speed curve. Just imagine there's this big crate behind my wife's car with a long rope. You talk about a redneck operation. I turned the curve at such force that that thing just slung off out into the area where they had removed all the trees and fell over. And so then I had to go look and see what was in there. And it was tens of thousands of maggots and larvae.

It was just the whole thing was alive. And it was literally wet. And I thought, well, how did it get wet? It was in a canister. And I've deducted. I didn't know at the time what it calls that. But I deducted by the time I got to canister three. That was the urine of mice. Yes.

So I get canister two, do the same trick. How did you, how did you deter? Because when I got to canister three, which is now a thousand pounds and is as big as half this room, when I leveraged that board,

hundreds of mice came toward me. I literally just heard Matty make a sound. Even though, look, you're not scared of a mouse, but hundreds of them coming at you? I was like, oh my goodness. A canister full of mice urine. I mean, that's...

And so, you know what's crazy? Is I took the two before. This story is what's crazy. Trying to defend myself against the mice because I thought, this is hand to mice combat. Oh, they made movies about this in the 70s. There were hundreds of mice coming at me and I swung that two before a hundred times and I never hit one. I thought, these things have the agility of some kind of supernatural force. I just kept banging the concrete. It was just...

And look, none of this have I told my wife because every time I've tried to, she's like, don't stop talking. Stop talking. Wow. She couldn't even hear the story. That was the most difficult removal. And so the problem was this thing. Just real quick. So you're saying because they saw the mice and there was something wet in the barrel.

I don't know what else the moisture could be because it's in a sealed container under a roof that that part of the roof was functional. There was no water that got in there. Like it wasn't, it was perfectly dry. It just, it was just the urine. I mean, you get a few hundred mice and what I found fascinating, what I found fascinating. So I get the biggest container down here.

So, so it came out at an angle. Just think you go up into the driveway. Well, that thing was so heavy that when it came down, it wouldn't just bounce off and hit the road. So I had to go get Missy. There's no other person there. This is cold as it works. I'll go in there and I said, babe, do whatever you got to do, but I need you. I'm going to get this leveraged up and I need to get a piece of plywood under this so I can, I can get it.

And she said, I'm not able to do that. I gave her the, oh, this is where we're at sometimes in life. You know, I felt like a football coach.

And to her credit, she turned her head. Went newt right there. I got a shovel, leveraged it up, said, hold the shovel. Look away. Look away. Don't look in the box. Because it was beginning to bust. And it was just hundreds of larvae and maggots just streaming out. That thing had just exploded right there. Oh, it would have been terrible. And I had the rope. So she did it. We get it. I sling it out. But it was so heavy.

I just got it down there. And then I spent the next half a day piling up all the debris around it and I built fires. And I guarantee you, so in real time, that's probably five days ago, my son this morning said, it's still burning. Mm-hmm.

This may have come up with a new fuel, Zach, something we need to look into, the combination. What I found fascinating was as it burned down in the biggest canister, the mice had built a nest inside the canister. The bottle men were just eating their way out through the food.

So that's why I said it was the war on the hill. And what was funny is that last night when I felt proud, I thought, what a, what a, this is redneck ingenuity.

i got it done my son's scratching their head like how because they're all like well what could we do what could we here's old dad without any equipment i took a two before and battled tens of thousands of creatures the ten plagues on that hill and one and so that night we we went out to eat that night the last night with all our kids everybody was happy you know we get home i'm talking with cole and

All of a sudden, I hear this blood-curdling scream from the veteran. It's missing. I mean, just like top of the lungs. Oh, well, more stink bugs, you know.

I go up there and there's a spider. Big around as a half dollar just climbing up the wall. She's like, I'm ready to go home. So finally it all came down to one spider. We got out of there, you know.

But I'm saying that this is what happened. I mean, we've been talking about the hurricane and what happened was a very bad tornado. But this cleanup, it's not over. This is the part of life that is a struggle.

to navigate right but uh so that's basically what i did for three days now i've been at war wasn't zach there and with you in tennessee why didn't you call on good old cousin zach man it's hard to get a man to go along with that you could have could have tricked me into it i mean plus i was i was kind of embarrassed that you know my two sons they're the ones that got the fee i had nothing to do with that and missy's like are you gonna get on to them i was like you know at

35, I probably would have. I said at 55. And now they're grown men too. I mean, I just thought, you know, what are you going to do? I said, I'm trying to lead by example. And my son did send me a text and he's like, dad, I got to admit, that was pretty impressive. And that's all you needed. Well, there you go. All a redneck needs is to say that's impressive, Zach. That's the lesson we learned from it.

So I guess, Jase, it's safe to say that when we spend our money on different things, different businesses, we try to spend it where people kind of have the same mindset as us, if we can. Oh, exactly. I mean, that's why, you know, with my dad, he's the kind of guy that's like, if I ever did get a cell phone...

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So this is going to be airing out a little ways, but I did want to mention Jays last night because you probably didn't know what was going on. But I'm still a huge baseball fan. And so the Dodgers are playing the Yankees in the World Series, which I think when this airs, it will have already started. But last night is when they clinched. And it was really interesting because they haven't played each other for the World Series in 43 years. But when I was a kid...

and first started watching baseball. I was 12 years old in 1977 when the Dodgers and Yankees played the first time, though. You and Willie...

Before you can't became big shots and now you don't follow baseball teams. But when y'all were young, because I was a Dodger fan, y'all were Dodger fans. Do you remember that? Yes. Yeah. Kirk Gibson. I hit my head on the ceiling. Yeah, exactly. The 88 home run. So, uh, so I'm still, I never left it. I'm still a huge fan and watch them every year, but it was a big deal because they played each other in 77, 78, 81. Uh,

So it was like when I was a kid, they were, it was the Dodgers and Yankees, every, you know, they were going to play all the time. Well, now 43 years have gone by before they play again. So it's really interesting. I mean, I was excited about it, obviously, but now my grandkids,

Or watching it. So I just thought about this, how time and passage go along. Cause now they're becoming fans because I'm into it. So they sit and watch the games with me. So it was just one of those moments that you have. It's, you know, sports can do that where it's bigger than sports, you know, like it's, it's a family thing. So I was, you know, last night it hit me. I was like, that's the way people are. Not just, you know, about any sport. When you have a love for something, you know,

That just a long time. Other people get involved in that too. So that was pretty good. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, you know, what were the spiritual applications of this? I mean, here's here we are. We're all alive and we had this happen.

But it brought back to memory multiple things that had happened. You know, Phil and I had a similar situation when we leased a duck camp in Tensol. This is in the earlier, this is pre even videos. Oh man, that place. And same thing happened. You had a, you had a,

A real wet winter. I mean, it was just rain, rain, and the river started, everything started flooding. And so Phil had gotten an old beat up trailer and that was going to be our camp. Yeah. But unfortunately, all the mice escaping the water fled to that trailer.

And, uh, you know, we stopped at a little. Cause it was the only structure out there for miles. For miles. And, uh, we stopped at a, cause we had got, uh, Phil had a guest who, who was there three or four days before us. And he told him where to hunt and all. Well, it about drove that guy crazy. I mean, when, when Phil called him, he was like, you don't understand how many mice are here. And Phil was like, what are you talking about? And, uh, he's all, we'll pick up some mousetraps. And he's like, you don't understand. Yeah.

We came armed with 12 mousetraps. And a few of those sticky papers where they stick on there. Yeah, and I remember when I walked in, like 30.

just ran in every direction in the trailer. And I thought, boy, we might should have got a few more mouse traps or a cat. And I remember I put the first one out and then I went to put the second one out and the first one went off. I looked over, there was a little mouse laying in. I thought, good grief, what's going on here? And that led to about the kind of story that I just said that ended in our Uncle Tommy, who's gone on to be with the Lord

Because we eventually just put a bomb out in there and decon and then left. That's a bad move. And then when we come back, the smell was so bad. That's a bad. You don't poison them. Don't do that because they get in the walls. That's what happened. So, look, they all ran toward the hot water heater. But we didn't know that because you could just smell, but you didn't see any death. And we remember hearing boards breaking and all. And it was Tommy just...

He was just tearing the walls up. Phil's like, hey, what are you doing? And when he did and the wall came down, there were so many dead mice in the wall that it looked like mouse insulation. They were just stacked on top of each other perfectly like somebody had put them all there. Yeah. And then I remember Phil's famous word, because Tommy's like, what are we going to do to get these out? Phil said, we're going to burn it.

I mean, we never went back. I mean, I think he paid like $500 for it, you know? But it was like, did we really win? But it made me think about this verse because I think you had brought up in the last podcast a little place called Mark 11, the triumphal entry of Jesus, which is not what people would have thought. Here's God in human form.

And he's announcing him being king riding on a donkey. And they call it the triumphal entry. Yeah, it's almost like it's in air quotes, isn't it? So it made me think about this verse in 2 Corinthians 2.14. It says, but thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal possession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.

But we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death, to the other the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? And so it just made me think, you know, how am I, what am I presenting myself into the world? Because I spent three days of the smell of death. I mean, it was just...

terrible, your worst nightmares have come true, especially for somebody like Missy who is squeamish about insects. And with that, Al, maybe we can

transition to colossus one that's very strange uh well one that the the segue was really strange but but it's even stranger zach this is how i think no i was saying i don't want my life yeah to smell like this because because all this started off with smells state bugs i walk in i'm like well no it's just funny that i preached on mark this little thing called mark 11 and

And guess what verse I ended with? 2 Corinthians 2.14. How many verses? Oh, really? How weird is that? See, I missed it. I was like, how many verses are in the Bible? You want me to guess the one? I knew where he was going. Well, you connected that. That's so weird that you connected that. That's actually where I ended up. A lot of it was just, well, I won't get it in my sermon because I do want to say this, though.

For those of you who are listening. We still had 22 minutes left in your sermon. You never got to that. That is true. That is true. And it comes right after that. That's that second Corinthians passage. But what you got to do and what you got to remember is when you have any type of mice or rat infestation, you get it. You get a five gallon bucket.

That's what you do. I'm telling you. Not a big enough bucket. You can get multiple buckets. But here's the setup. And then you get like a little ramp, like a little piece of board that goes up to the – you lean it on the bucket. You take the bucket. You put it – you fill it about –

about eight inches of water in the bucket. Then you drill two holes at the top of the bucket. You put a metal coat hanger through it, and then you put a can in

like a, like an empty Coke can and put peanut butter on it. Yeah. And what, and what they'll do is they'll climb up that, they'll climb up that ramp and they'll jump over to the, the tin can to eat the peanut butter and they fall in the water and you'll come back and every bucket you put out will have hundreds of, of mice in there. You know what I call that? What'd you call it? Embarrassing.

I'm just saying that's what you... That's embarrassing. If I was nine, I would probably do that, but build bucket houses. Well, you poison them, and then you're going to end up with what you guys did with the stench. Well, maybe I'll look in. It'd make a great TV episode to get the buckets. But back to the text that you mentioned, because I... You talk about a rambling race.

Hey, Valley peeps. So I get this question all the time. Pat, what's on your playlist? Well, depends on what I'm driving. If it's the crown, then it's the divas. Prius, smooth jazz. Tacoma, Viking heavy metal. Hey, rugged is rugged. Give your commute and your playlists an upgrade with a new Toyota. Stop by any one of 10 Valley Toyota dealers today or visit valleytoyotadealers.com and make sure you check out the all new, all rugged Tacoma.

I don't even know how to take it back in. I do. I have a way to do it. Because I said all that, told this whole long story. It came from Mark 11 to get to this 2 Corinthians 2. He leads us in triumph and possession. Because I was just saying, when you look at something...

Uh, you remember another famous story, Al, we had the crawfish bait in a refrigerator and Phil did a sermon on it. Yeah. Someone had unplugged it, tripped over the cord, but he said, when you walk by it, you would have thought, well, here's a shiny new refrigerator. Yeah. Freezer. But when you opened it and saw what was inside, it was the smell of death. Yeah.

And so he did a sermon on that. I mean, I thought it was fantastic. And I'm saying how we are to the world, not when you're at church, how you are to the world is giving off a smell. And Paul made that analogy in 2 Corinthians 2, and it's a triumphal procession that we as the kingdom of heaven on earth are conveying to the world.

And so I thought, well, here we are in a little, you know, it made me think of this

How'd you word that? There's a little place called Mark 11. Well, there's a little place called Colossians 2.15. Because we're studying Colossians, that speaking of Jesus and what he did on the cross and God's working in our participation in that in baptism, that's 2.11 and 12, he makes this statement. Jesus, in verse 2.15,

15 of chapter 2, having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them. Well, here's our common word, triumphing over them by the cross. And so we're in Colossians 1, 15 through 21, which I would say is at least top five

paragraphs in the Bible about who Jesus is? It is interesting that to take the analogy you both were using, that so a person is perishing, and we're talking about spiritually, we're all dying physically. So there's a spiritual death that has happened

But they look at what should be the fragrance of life, and to them that smells like death. It's almost like a projection. And it makes me think about Jesus saying the moment of the cross, to your point about the triumphal entry,

As people looked at that, who he had been teaching and leading and some of the ones he had fed on the mountainside and all that. And they looked at that with disdain. Remember, they were making fun of him and throwing insults. And they were like, who is this guy? He looks like you're going to save the world now. You can't even come off that cross. So when they were looking at Jesus in this moment.

It was with disdain. It was death. It was execution. It was like, well, that's what happens when you claim you're something you're not. So it's that same concept. You can't see past your own failure to see a way out. And so that happened. And of course, some of those same people in Acts 2, when Peter finally said, oh, he's back. And it's like, oh, yeah.

weight you know and then it didn't change our lives well that's what i'm saying when i was standing on the top of the hill as those fires were burning with my hands outreached i was thinking like a cr poster i won here yeah this was a battle that i won but i was thinking spiritually the whole time and i mean even when i was first a christian i went to one party one and it

It just didn't smell right. And whether it was the alcohol, the marijuana or the the sexual activities and is a toxic smell. And I just thought, you know what? I'm not going to be a be able to follow Jesus and come to these functions unarmed. You know, and it was just I was overwhelmed.

With me being there, I just thought this is not going to be something I'm going to be able to tiptoe through. And so I decided to, and it took me a couple of years to kind of get lined out and have the confidence to do it. But I thought, no, we're going to have a battle here. I'm going to make them feel uncomfortable, but it's going to be more the smell of victory and confidence in Jesus. And that's where I was going with that. And I mean, here he is.

He writes, he brags on them, the Colossians, for what he's like, I heard of your faith and your love that sprang from the hope. And he makes this analogy of the new creation. It's like fruit that is growing, which is the opposite of what I was doing. I mean, what we do there, what I did with removing all the unwelcome guests and the death and all that, it became fertilizer for my life.

Rebuilding. Yeah. I'm rebuilding my house. It's so funny that I mentioned the same, a lot of the same things you're saying in my sermon yesterday. And the point that I was trying to make is that, because I've heard a lot of this lately about this is the end times and everyone's always trying to predict that. Right. And it's like everything, anything, something bad happens. Everybody's like, it's the end times. And it's almost like this mentality of,

that the world's going to hell in a handbasket and we just got to grind it out and heaven is somewhere out there but the language that you mentioned in second corinthians and the fruit by the way that's growing and the temple that's also growing

I mean, it's a it's a triumphal procession, not regression. We don't regress from the world. We don't pull back like that's what makes the kingdom so powerful is that it is this fragrance. It's it's a fragrance of victory. It's a fragrance of of life. And I mentioned a quote from Nancy Piercy.

And one of her books that she wrote, which I thought was so key to understanding really a lot of what we're trying to teach on this podcast. And I'm going to read it here. She says, Christianity holds that the material world was created by God and is therefore intrinsically good. It's not we're not buying into is going to hell in a handbasket and we're grinding it out to the end. The ultimate vision, she writes, of salvation, it's not to escape death.

from the material world, but to be transformed with God restoring and renewing the material world. Human life in all of its aspects, including our biological dimensions, is the good creation of a good God. That's why I think this matters. Why does it matter even what we're even talking about here? It matters because the message of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom, is not come to Jesus,

Grind out your 80 years and live in misery. And then one day you get to go to heaven. It'll all be worse. Yeah. The message of the gospel, the kingdom is that is that heaven has actually invaded earth. And that's what you're seeing with the triumphal entry of Mark 11 when Jesus comes in and he cleanses that temple.

There's this, something's unfolding here, and Jesus is actually accomplishing what he always wanted to accomplish in the temple. He's destroying, he's predicting that one system is going down, their temple system, and then it's the inauguration or the coronation of a new temple structure and a new kingdom that Jesus is bringing that we get to be a part of. But it is, I just want to emphasize, it is...

A triumphal procession. It is forward. It's growing. It's optimistic. It's good. And that's why we're not peddlers, as Paul says. We're not peddling the Word of God. We don't have to peddle it.

I don't have to peddle anything. I don't have to sell you on anything. We're not peddling the gospel, but we are bringing it forth with sincerity, meaning that we're just being real. And why is that powerful? Because God's powerful and He's good, and what He offers us is good. We just got to be sincere about it.

Zach, while you were in Mark 11, I was in a little thing we call Matthew 5, which is... Are we going to do this from now on? I really like it. Which, of course, is the Sermon on the Mount. And so we've been doing some discipleship sermons. And so yesterday was our One Kingdom Sunday, and we chose the passage about salt and light.

Which is exactly what you're saying. It's just, it's funny how we all see this now. You know, we kind of all have the same message going because the idea is he lays out this great little, you know, some things were supposed to be blessed as this and meek. And then he comes back and says, here's what you do. You take that and you go out.

And that's who you are, your salt and your light. So just like you're describing, we were hitting on the same theme yesterday and the idea about light and darkness. And that's so that people can find their way out. So whether it's the smells that Jason was talking about or what you were talking about or the idea that you light up and you provide salt and preserve, it's the same thing. Yeah, I had a point why I told that long story, and it was that. It was the cleanup. I mean, look, the difficulty happened.

The cleanup ensued, but it is going to be a new creation. I mean, we're planting trees, we're fertilizing. And, you know, it was just at some point you got to clean the house here and let's start over. But it was all a spiritual application in my mind. But Zach, I really liked that point you made because I didn't read that 2 Corinthians 2 when you said we don't try to peddle it.

But we speak with sincerity because I had a occurrence that happened during the battle on top of the hill. There's a new brother who I'm I guess I'm trying to mentor without mentor. I baptize this guy and and I'm not going to give his name or anything because it was a difficult moment. He was asked to speak and what he does.

Because they found out he's now a person of faith, you know? And so he did a little 10-minute speech, and he sent it to me. And I dropped the ball because I was in battle here, you know? And about three different times I went to listen to it and got a minute in it, somebody hollered or, you know, there's some critter or missy, whatever. And so when I— A new pestilence. Yeah, when we were on the way home, I listened to it, and I was like, oh, no. You know, it's been a few days.

I hope he hasn't given this speech. And look, it's not that it was bad. He's a new Christian. And there was just a lot of things. And I really have a good point here because when he brought that up about sincerity, the problem was all of a sudden he was trying to convince people why what he did was right.

And so he just took little nuggets from politics and the world and his life experience. And he was just trying to prove that Jesus was who he said he was. Unfortunately, he's had no training. Like most of his points, I'm not even sure they could be validated. And so I just couldn't text him back. I was like, call me when you get a chance. And he did. And I thought, well, this is going to be an awkward conversation because I'm like,

is a good effort. I want to be encouraging. Yeah. Um, it's awesome that you're contemplating, you know, sharing your faith, but this, you know, I was wanting to say, why that up? And let's forget that happened. It was all over the place, you know,

but so i basically said it the best way i could spirit spirit lit but it was a relief to him he's like well i could have told you it wasn't very good he's like that that's why he's i don't want to do this and that's why i'm reaching out that's why i wanted you to look at you to help me but uh you know missy was driving and she heard this conversation she was like babe i think you did really good on that i was like let let's let's just talk from here but

But then she shared another story with one of her friends who's been in the church for years. And she said, you're not going to believe this. She said, I just had this same conversation. She said one of her good friends who has grown up in the church or whatever, but she's living with a guy. And so Missy's friend came to her and was like,

I feel like I should say something, you know, I mean, cause they're, they were going out to eat or something. And, and Missy's like, well, maybe you should just share Jesus with her, you know? But, and, uh, she said, well, I've never done that. How would I go about doing that? And it just made me think these are two, two things that happen in the same week. And I thought, you know, I think a lot of people really struggle with,

With how to do that. Yeah. Because they think, oh, we got to be a teacher because I saw it with the new guy I was working with. And so when I to get back to our conversation, me and him, I said, look, you know what it lacked? I said it lacked sincerity.

And he said, well, he said, and then he gave about a three, three minute speech. He said, well, I just don't feel qualified because the people I've been around, they've seen me and I've done so many bad things. And, and so when he got finished, I said, that's where you start. There you go. I said, there's your speech. Yeah, that's it. You were, you know, you have been a hypocrite, a terrible example. I say, and he told personal stories in there.

And I was like, then you realize this is about Jesus. I said, if I asked you to introduce your wife, you wouldn't have a problem doing that. I was like, all the good stuff. What led you to drive hundreds of miles to, you know, because he had driven hundreds of miles and I baptized him. But it was after multiple Bible studies through the church.

You know, through texting and things. I was like, that is the story. It's God's story through your life. Which is Colossians. That's why you hear that phrase in him so much. But I think what makes us more susceptible to peddling God's word is when we miss one of two things.

Either we don't understand that God is powerful enough, so we feel like we got to somehow get in there and make sure this gets done. Yeah. So we start peddling it. Or...

Our theology or eschatology, whatever other ology you got, it doesn't lead us to the conclusion that God is good and that he has our best interest at heart. So then we got to do the whole bait and switch thing. We can't really tell them how limiting this whole thing is until they get in. And then we can tell them how all the rules and all the limitations of what a life in Christ looks like. But that's not it. True sincerity matters.

that's born out of out of out of the spirit of god it's going to be born out of a revelation us receiving a revelation from him that one he's powerful enough to accomplish his will and that his will is good and then like your friend he can come into that situation he don't have to he don't have to package anything yeah he can tell his story yeah you know that's what i told him i was like this is thrilling i was

I was like, what happened to you is thrilling. You think, oh, I don't even know what to say. Just tell them what happened. Yeah. That's how you got to do it. That's what does it. All right. We're out of time. We'll try to do better next time. Don't understand. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed Podcast. Help us out by rating us on iTunes.

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