Moving Mountains

Ever planned for smooth sailing and got a squall instead? We open with a cruise that starts rough—cold wind, rocking decks, and dashed expectations—before sun finally breaks through in Nassau and Bimini. Back home, the week tightens: a beloved cat’s sudden illness and looming vet bills, a make-or-break home appraisal that lands in our favor, and leadership changes at work that unsettle the routine. It’s the perfect storm for a bigger question: can faith stay steady when life won’t?

We dig into what “faith like a mustard seed” really means, not as a slogan but as a way to stand when the deck tilts. Matthew 17 and Mark 11 become more than verses; they become a map for speaking to real mountains—health worries, financial strain, job uncertainty—without pretending they aren’t there. We talk hope versus faith, why quick wishes often miss the mark, and how God’s timing accounts for more than our wants. If a mountain moves, something else shifts too, and a wise God holds the whole picture.

This conversation gets practical. We unpack the power of witness through behavior: staying kind at a counter when tensions rise, holding a young employee accountable with standards and care, and choosing words and symbols that speak life instead of glamorizing negativity. We confront modern overload—apps we never use, sports we can’t watch without three subscriptions, the fatigue of endless choice—and how it dulls purpose. Faith pushes back by simplifying focus: honor God, serve people, build character, act with integrity.

What emerges is a grounded, human portrait of trust. Not a highlight reel, but a steady drumbeat: count blessings without denying pain, do everything as unto the Lord, and keep your ask aligned with His will. If your week looks like ours—some sun, some chop, a few unexpected invoices—this one will meet you where you stand and give you words for the mountain ahead.

Enjoy the episode, share it with a friend who needs encouragement, and if it helped you, follow, rate, and leave a review so others can find it too. What mountain do you want us to pray about this week?

Transcript

Hiatus And The Cruise Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:39

All right, Dale, we're on the air. We're back. After a little hiatus, a little three-week hiatus. Of course, the listeners didn't know that. You know, we had a plenty of episodes stored up to keep the rest of February going. But yeah, I went on that cruise. I'll tell you, life has just been something else since we went on that cruise.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Is that good or bad?

A Rough Day At Sea

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Well, some good, some bad. So you asked me about the cruise when we walked in. I said, I'm going to save it. We'll save it until we get into the conversation. Now, overall, I'd give the cruise an eight eight point five. But I'm going to tell you that first full day at sea, I was ready to give it a four or five. It was, well, we took off from Virginia, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

And it was, when we got on the boat, I mean it was cold, but I think it was comfortable. Well, we got out onto the water and got into Sunday night going into Monday. And I'll tell you, Dale, I woke up in the middle of the night. And you know that boat ride at the fair that goes, you know, the audience can't see me, but it just swings back and forth. That's what I felt like I was doing. And I'm like, what is going on? Yeah, right. I'm like, what is going on? And woke up Monday and thought, well, hopefully it's maybe just a little rough patch, you know, overnight. All day Monday, that boat was a rocking. I mean, the waters were rough and it was choppy. And I didn't think a big boat would move like that. But man, it was moving. Just I mean, you'd be walking, you know, we'd be walking down into the Lido deck, you know, where you eat and everything. And you had to be careful not to run into everybody because you're zigzagging all over the place. Because those waves were moving. And it was, and of course, I was told, you know, when you wake up on Monday morning, you know, you're gonna love it. It's gonna be warm, it's gonna be sunny. So when I got up in the morning, yeah, it was cloudy, but I thought it's probably still gonna be warm. So I had my t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops on, went down for breakfast, and I hit that area of the Lido deck where you actually go outside. Yeah. And I hit that air, and I'm again, I'm like, what is going on? It was cold, it was windy. And like I said, I'm zigzagging all over the place, and I'm like, this is not what I signed up for at all. And of course, the boat moved like that all day Monday. So a lot of time was spent on Monday just napping, trying to get through it. And I never really got sick, but I didn't feel good.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, it was just I was off balance and just so what brought it up to to 8.5?

Cold Winds And Wobbly Decks

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Well, okay, so Monday is the rough day. So Tuesday, the next day, we went to Celebration Key and still struggling a little bit because it was 76 degrees, but we're at the beach and it's cloudy, it's windy. So it didn't just there was not that vibe, you know, of being on this on this tropical island like we're supposed to be.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

You felt like you were on the Cuyahoga.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah, yeah. So it was comfortable. It was a nice day, but it just wasn't. I put my feet in that water freezing. I'm like, nope, not getting in the water. And we had that cabana we could sit under, so at least it was comfortable. And we had people bringing us drinks, and this nice girl brought us drinks and food, and we were allowed to have a meal on the island. So it was nice, but again, it just wasn't what I had expected. And but finally, come, let's see, finally on Wednesday when we hit Nassau, it was 85, sunny, and yeah, you could feel the sun. It was nice. And so things started to fall into place. And Thursday we went to Bimini and it was even warmer, and we we had a day at the beach, and yeah, you could, it was so warm, and the sun was so hot that day, Dale. You could see people turning color. Getting their yeah, like like not even by the hour. Like, I would keep watching people, and like you just see people just turning color out there. This one lady was turning purple, and I was very smart. Like, I got out in the sun a little bit, got in the water a little bit, and then I went back underneath the umbrella. Like I didn't expose myself too much because my stepdaughter, she wanted to get a tan, so she was just out there the whole time. My stepson Seth, he was in the water the whole time with his friend, and they were hurting the next day. And even when we got back home, they were still hurting. And now, of course, they're peeling, and yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so I was very careful about that. But uh it was a really good time. I don't know if I do it all the time because I I did feel like I start to get bored. Now don't get me wrong, you know, you have all the shows on the boat, you have the comedians, you have all the other activities you can do, but after a while it gets to be all the same. Yeah, it's it's kind of competitive. Yeah, and everybody, you're like, Well, what do you want to do? Like, want to go eat? And that's all you do on that boat, I'm sure you know, is eat. Yeah, and I was so sick of food by the end of that cruise. I think that day we got off the boat and the next day, it's it's uh I pretty much went on a fast. Like, just didn't want to hardly eat anything. You're like, Oh my gosh, yeah, too much, too much. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting pizza every day.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Well, and it's like burgers, and it's your only option. It is. Let's go see a show and eat some food. Yeah, and eat some food. Let's go do this and eat some food.

Islands, Sunburns, And Finding The Vibe

SPEAKER_00 6:32

It's always like and we go to the dining room at 5:36. That was our appointed time. So we go to dinner, you know, have that nice meal, and then we go to a show, and then after that, you'd be like, Well, what we want to do? Oh, let's go up to the Leto deck. So then you're getting ice cream and you're getting a big sandwich, or you know, and and in fact, the last night, Margie, my wife, she we went back up to the Leto deck one last time, and she got this big tall sandwich, and she ate it. And mind you, we'd already went to the dining room, and I I think we did deal or no deal that last night. So, of course, after that, go back up there, and she gets a sandwich from the deli, and she woke up, forget what time, it was it was kind of it wasn't late, but it was late enough. And she woke up just not feeling well, and we did not sleep that last that Friday night, and so we didn't sleep all night, so we had to get up early to get off the boat, and we just felt terrible because she's up, I'm up, right? And there's nowhere to go. Like, I guess I could have went for a walk or something, but at that point, you know, you just you're suffering through it. Yeah, and so yeah, she didn't feel well, and thankfully my stepson agreed to drive all the way home from Virginia because I was in no shape to drive, hadn't slept all night. Oh, jeez, and she was in no shape because she still wasn't feeling well. So it was just yeah, it was an experience. It was the ups, the downs.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Uh yours was totally different than mine. You know, both times I went, mine was like it was, it was so good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Well, she Margie kept apologizing, like, I'm sorry. She goes, like, I've been on all these cruises, and everything you're experiencing right now never happens. I'm like, I get it. Like, I'm, you know, I'm I'm I'm good. Like, so it wasn't a terrible experience. It just wasn't that you know, 10 out of 10, and wow, like I didn't get that wow factor right from the get-go. And by the time I did get the wow factor, it was time to go home. Like we were getting ready to go home.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

So it just, yeah, it just took took too long to get like you have with the the rocking boat and all that never had yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

She said that's happened to her maybe one other time, and not anything as bad as what we experienced.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

I couldn't even tell we were on a boat, but the times we went and it was it was it was awesome. But yeah, you got that that rare occasion.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Oh yeah. I mean you couldn't, I mean, you know, whether you were you I'll be blunt, like if you were in the bathroom or you're in the shower, like you're going back and forth, like trying to keep your balance and just like it's like what is going on?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Like, you know, just getting all this imagery, like one margin with that big sandwich, and you in the shower in the bathroom trying to balance your job.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

It was just like, oh my gosh, you know, sometimes it's that stuff you'll see like in a move a movie, a comedy or something, you know. It's just man.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

But uh we definitely missed you here, that's for sure. Yeah, it was it was not the same without the with the without the off holder. Well, good, yeah. Yeah, it was definitely different.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

So this and this is all gonna play into this episode, and I'm trying to hurry along with as much as I can. But to say, you know, the last few weeks have been just up and down. Like so we were all excited for the cruise. We went and it started off in the wrong direction, and then it picked up, and then it got bad again. And then, and the other thing that happened is you know, we have I think it's Margie's cousin who watched all the cats while we were gone. Well, my stepson he had limited internet, so we were able to get a message back that one of the cats was getting sick, right? So we had to deal with that, and the her cousin took the cat to the vet. Turns out the cat is gums is rejecting its teeth. And I don't know what you call that, but I guess this is something that can happen with cats. Like, so he's getting all this abscess in his mouth and stuff like that. So she took him to the vet, and we got him back, and they're like, well, just monitor him. And worst case scenario is we'll pull all his teeth. You want to take a guess how much it costs to pull out all a cat's teeth?

SPEAKER_01 11:04

I'm gonna guess 2,500.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Wow. Well, uh, not no, not that much, but so we thought in the beginning it was gonna be like$1,200. I think it's for us it's gonna be because they can keep their canines, I guess, so maybe he can keep eating. But it's still gonna be like six, seven hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yeah, I I just I I always guess high when it comes to animals because yeah, they it it's the the oddity of it.

Food Overload And Sleepless Night

SPEAKER_00 11:30

So yeah, right. So we got that, and then of today she texts me first thing in the morning. I don't I think the cat's gonna die. He's not moving, he looks really sick. Can you come home and take him to the vet? Because she takes care of the next door neighbor, she can't leave him. Yeah. So she asked me, and I'm like, I can't leave right now. I was like, I just got back, you know, and I'll get to another whole part of this, but I'm like, it's really busy. I I can't leave this morning, so I'll try to leave at lunch, you know, towards the end of the day, which I was able to do. So today I had to go home, get the cat, get it to the vet. And of course, when I take the cat to the vet, he gets right out of the cage and he's walking around like nothing's wrong. One of those deals, you're like making me look like a fool. You know, you guys need a sitcom.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Really, yeah. But they decide to keep the cat hospitalized so they can monitor him because he he did lose another pound since his last visit. So he's you can tell he's not eating, like he doesn't look good.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

So now he's gonna be hospitalized until the procedure, which may be Friday or maybe before, depending on when they can get him in. So there's all that going on. Also, before we left, we were we want to do this remodel of our home. And we had to get the appraisal done. And of course, we got it done the day before we were gonna leave. So, you know, we're trying to cram that in, and so she was all nervous about that. Now, I just had a feeling that it was gonna go okay. And you know, last time we had Margie on, we were talking about how I handle those types of things and how her anxiety will handle a little bit different. I just, I just it was one of those things that I just had total faith all along that it was going to praise high enough to get the loan, and it did. So that was good news, right? Yep. So we got the cruise, we got the cat, which is bad, bad news. Appraisal worked out. Also, there was a big shakeup where I work with management and stuff like that. So we've got new management coming in. So there's a lot of unknowns. So it's just it's a different environment now. So all that's changing for me, which I'm kind of uh, you know, I'm kind of a rock for uh for what I do, and so I'm I mean I'm in a good position. It's not really affecting me too much, other than I just gotta continue to do what I do, you know. But still, it's just it's another it's another big change in my life right now. There's so there's a lot of things going on, and like I said, some of it very good, and some of it not so good. And you find yourself praying about all these different things, and and you can look at your life, and and I'm sure you know, we we say all the time, you know, all the time God is good.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah, yeah. God is good all the time, all the time. All the time, God is good.

Cat Health Scare And Vet Costs

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yep. And if you're not careful, sometimes you can your faith like in the with the appraisal. Very, I was very confident of that, like I never doubted it. And I can be honest, I can't I don't always do that. Like I don't always have that 100% faith that something's going to come to pass. Sometimes I have to pray harder about some things than others. But then I was just like, God's got it. It's it's I just got a feeling we're gonna get it. And we did. And you think, okay, great, you know, God's moving in the right direction. And then, but then we get this cat problem. And it's not just like, like I said, this could be we probably got a thousand over a thousand dollars in this one cat, right? So you're thinking, oh my gosh, you know, we got all this money, we're losing all this money on this cat. And what, you know, you're thinking, like, why what next? What next? So we're getting kind of all these things going on in our life right now. Like I said, some is good, some is bad. But through it all, you've got to have faith in everything. Whether it's going your way, whether it's not going your way, you have to be able to sustain that same amount of faith in all things and believe that God is gonna, with that faith, you you can move them out.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

And don't have to have, and that's the key sometimes. You don't have to have much faith. You just, even if it's a small amount, it's gotta be genuine. You you got that faith has to be genuine, and with just a little bit of faith, everything will come to pass the way it's supposed to. And I just think it was a really interesting dynamic for me because I'm always doing this. I'm always when we're doing these episodes. Some of them come very easy where I think, okay, yeah, this is gonna be a good episode, and I know exactly where we're gonna go with it, what we're gonna talk about. Then there's some episodes where I'm like, okay, we're getting close to the episode, and I really don't have like, yeah, like I'm not feeling it. Like, I don't know exactly what we're gonna talk about or what's gonna be the approach, what we're gonna, you know, what the discussion's gonna be. And of course, when you know today, it's like all the wheels start turning. Like, yeah, okay, look at your life right now. You went you went on the cruise and started out bad. It wasn't it wasn't everything that you expected, but but still God is good. Like you were able to afford to do something like that and to be able to spend time with your family and have that experience. So you have to take the good with the bad and still be thankful and faithful for what God has given you. And then just like I said, then we the appraisal and the cat and all those things, it's like I'm getting it's kind of sometimes you sometimes either you feel like everything's going good or everything's going bad, but sometimes it's rare when you got so much going on and you're getting a little bit of everything. You know, so it kind of gives you this different perspective, and that's what I started thinking about today is it doesn't matter if it's good, it's bad, or if it's in between, you still have to have that same amount of faith, even if it's you know, the size of a mustard seed, as long as it's if you as long as you got it and it's genuine, as long as it's faith, as long as it's the actual, you know, because some people are like, oh, God will take care of it.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yeah, then they don't really commit. So as long as you have that mustard seed that's like you said, genuine faith, and it's like I don't know how, but it's gonna work out. And that's when he can that's when he can do something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Well, and and with the cat today, I'm like, oh, you know, not that I'm I wasn't really stressing about it. Now, if it would have been my main cat shadow, like, because he's like my child. So if it would have been him, I'd have been, yeah, this would have been a little harder for me. But this is one of our newer cats, and the straight, he's only like two or three years old, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

You're gonna get letters from cat lovers.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

What do you mean, main cat? They're all they should have.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Well, my wife, she'll be.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

But yeah, I don't know what you mean.

Home Appraisal Win And Work Shakeups

SPEAKER_00 18:58

But you know what I mean? Like, yeah, so it so I wasn't like really upset, but at the same time, I'm like, well, gee, I hope he's gonna be okay. And and I start thinking, like, well, you know, God has it. Whether it's whether the outcome is good or bad, it's still in God's timing. Whatever's gonna happen, he's gonna be okay. Margie might not be okay, that might be the main worry. But yeah, but the cat's gonna be okay. You know, the situation will be will be all right. And so that's what I was thinking about today. And like I said, all those things started rolling in my head. That you know, faith is just something that again to the non-believer sometimes I people think that Christians are waving a magic wand and they live in a dream world and that we're not based in reality, but that's because they don't understand the relationship. As they they they don't understand that we understand that yes, life is going to be hard, and though God is good all the time, that yes, we there are challenges. There are gonna be, you know, mountains that have to be moved, and sometimes that biggest mountain is within ourselves of just getting out of our own way, letting God do the work and having the faith that we have to have we had got to get out of the way and let God do his work and and trust and have that faith that you know, however, this works out, you know, it's yeah, it's it's gonna be for his good, and it's gonna be for my good. And you got to take stock of all the blessings that you do have because it's just not always gonna be peaches and cream every single day, and you can't always just expect, you know, nothing. It's just like on that cruise before we went, I had this, I had been set up for all this expectation. I had been listening to it for a year, how great it was and the experience you're gonna have. So I expected nothing but good things, and I just had this certain vision in my head of how it was going to be, how it was going to look, how the ship was going to look, how it was going to be taken care of, treated, all these things. And then reality sets in, you get there, and there are things that are not up to this the vision and the standard that you had set for yourself that you'd believed in for over a year. And you think, well, it would have been very easy to just be frustrated and say, Well, I'm never doing this again. Like it's not, you know. But you gotta take stock of the fact that how how blessed I am to be in a situation where I can take a trip to the Bahamas. Because not everybody can do that. So, yeah, if there's a little bad that's gotta go along with it, well, yeah, you're at the mercy of the sea, you're at the mercy of the ocean. I mean, you know, I mean it's a huge boat. I never thought a big boat could move like that. But that just goes to show you how mighty the ocean is.

Faith Through Highs And Lows

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Oh, yeah. And the elements as well. Yeah. Because you're moving from one time zone to the next, and we never know what situation you're moving into. So it's it's always, you know, it's fluid. I should probably shouldn't have said that. But yeah, it's uh it's a different experience once you get out there and then you can see like, you know, bad weather ahead and things like that, and it can affect your you know, yeah, opinion of what your experiences might be. But it's like you said, if you just uh put your face And it doesn't it doesn't really matter if you know rain comes or you know whatever the the difficulty is put it in his hand because I think that's what happens with the the non-believer they have no one or you know nothing to to place their belief in to put their faith and trust in. And so a Christian appears to be, you know, like you said, you're living a fantasy. No, it's that I can go to my father and yes, I have trouble in my spirit, but I can, you know, I can lay it on him, cast all your cares on me, and yeah, I'm gonna hold on to him a little bit, but it's also peace of mind when you j when you genuinely let something go and and turn it over to him. There's there's just a a peace that comes from that that a non-believer or atheist or whatever you want to want to say doesn't get because they don't have that relationship. So that kind of thing is something that it's hard to explain to people because they're like, Well, why do you why do you believe this way or why do you have faith that this is gonna happen or this is gonna occur? I said and I usually use Bible term, I say faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And all that and they're like, Oh, you mean like wishing?

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

No, no, no, no, no. Wishing is you're not really putting your wishes on to anything. Your wishes are all just personal. It's like I wish this rain would stop. As opposed to like, I have faith that God is gonna see me through this. I don't care, I don't care if it stops, because God has me.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

There is a purpose for this rain, even though it doesn't fit me for what I want at this point in time. God has a purpose for this rain and might be serving something greater than myself.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

And so I can, you know, I can if he can if he's with me, I can weather that. And that's a lot of I think what unchurched people don't understand, and they makes it difficult, I think, for them to grasp a relationship with him. It's that, well, what am I putting my faith in? What am I believing? I can't see him. I can't I hear that all the time. You can't see God, you can't, and then you always have to come back with you can't see the air, you can you know, yeah.

Mustard Seed Faith In Real Life

SPEAKER_00 25:08

And well, a perfect example of that was I don't know if you listened to the episode, you know, where I lost all the totes on the highway from Home Depot. Yeah. And I was losing my mind. Uh like I was honest about it then. Like I I had lost control, like I had lost that part of me that's always in control because it was just such an extreme situ, such an improbable situation that happened. I just everywhere. And yeah, and it's just a disaster. But man, I you know, I learned something though, just about you can tell when somebody is close to the Lord and has faith, and then those that don't, because I go into Home Depot and I was just honest and explained to him, like, hey, you know, I picked them up, I straffed them down, I felt confident that you know I was gonna get home with them, and wouldn't you know the strap breaks, the lids go flying? All of a sudden, somehow these two huge totes come flying out of the back, and now I got all these totes with no lids. And I and I is there anything you can do to help me? You know, and and wouldn't you know it? Like they rallied to get me eight more lids, and they're like, okay, well, we don't we don't just have those types of lids laying around because they're special, but tell you what, just bring the other totes back, just everything you got, just bring it back. We'll return that order and we'll order you, you know, nine more, and then you'll have your totes and your lids, and we'll just call it square. And they didn't have to do that. They could have said too bad, but they didn't. And so my approach to that was telling them, like, it wasn't the first I've had issues with products that I've bought there before. And every time that I've had an issue, they take care of it right away. And I made sure that I told them that. Like, look, you your customer service is just top notch. Anytime I've ever had a problem, you take care of me. But when you know it, there's a guy standing next to me at the next register, suit and tie, just looks like he's got it all together, and he's something was wrong with his order, and the contractor was coming that day to put it in, and he was just And he was just heated, just yeah, just giving it to him. And and you you could tell the two girls there were just really upset and distracted, couldn't, you know. And I and so I just looked at him, I said, Don't worry about him. I said, You girls are doing a great job. Just it'll be all right. Just you know, and again, that's just a perspective for somebody who has true faith. It does it doesn't mean that you're never gonna it's quite the opposite, it doesn't have a bad situation or or you know show the wrong emotion at times. But when it counts, it's like you know that as long as you have faith that it it's gonna be taken care of, and then you treat people with with that kind of love and respect, as though you know it's gonna be taken care of, and as as God has instructed you to do, you can tell how much a difference that makes. Yeah, it is. You can tell how you know, and it's just like I don't want to judge that man, whoever he was, I didn't know that man, but he just was not exercising you can judge his actions, yeah. You know, you can say that wasn't the appropriate because when I lost my mind and I lost the totes on the highway, I was mad at myself. Like I was just like, I can't believe this happened. How did I let this happen? You know, and and of course, you know how a close family can be. They're kind of teasing me, and oh yeah, and so I'm just getting more mad. But I'm mad at myself, like I'm not mad at anybody else. I got it helping. No, but I would never like go in somewhere and and talk to somebody that way.

Customer Service, Composure, And Witness

SPEAKER_01 29:03

See, and that's just uh that's a a God thing as well, because when you're in your word and God tells you how we're to treat people, because He gives us He gives us guidelines as to how we're to treat people. And good, bad, or indifferent, we're to treat everyone with love. He's you know, it it's that's the first thing because God is love. So in order to exemplify God, you gotta come in, even no matter what the situation, you lost totes over the highway, you're not feeling very loving, but because of your nature and because of your closeness with God, you're like, I'm just gonna go in there and lay it on the line and tell them what you know, this is what happened. If you can take care of me, great. If not, I'll bite the bullet. You know, and so people respect that, and then it also gives you an opportunity to minister through behavior. You don't actually have to, you don't even have to announce your faith. They can see it because they're like you have you have two examples of this one over here, and then this guy who I can really respect, I can really appreciate what he's saying, and it makes it possible for me to now deal with this other issue over here because I now know I'm doing a good job because that guy who's kindly kindly enough no matter what situation he just went through, and he's letting me know that we've taken care of him before, we've done our job correctly, we've done it before in the past, and and we're getting ready to take care of him now, I don't have to worry about that one. And so, you know, and that's like I said, that's the Christ in you, and because you exemplify that, that is an opportunity to minister through, like I said, through behavior. And then they're like, you know, who knows next time they see you, they're like, Do you do you go to church? And you're like, it's an opportunity to witness, like, yeah. Well, you know, yeah, I I do. I go here and next thing you know, they're showing up. I I want to see what you see what you got or whatever. So those types of things are, like I said, opportunities to witness through spirit. And we that's one one thing that mountains requires us to have mountains and valleys. Yeah. Because without those mountains and valleys in our life, we don't get to witness. We don't get to, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Yeah, and I that's what I was gonna say is that that moment certainly was a mountain. Like I just thought, this how did this happen? Is it possible? And how is this how can I possibly fix this?

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Yeah, it's too high to climb. I did this is this is tremendous. It's just it's the same as like with my you know, my my uh prostate.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Previous prostate, so I don't acknowledge it as having it. So with my uh former prostates uh diagnosis and everything, all my PSAs are undetectable, and I've really done nothing different than I ever ever have. I haven't like changed up my diet. I want to because but because they say sugar, you know, cancer attacks sugar and all that, but I really haven't changed up my diet much, and my wife will tell you I I've really want him to, but God is taking care of that situation, and I I believe that it's gone to as far away from me as it can get. If it rears its head again, then I have total faith that he'll deal with it. And those are the the ups and downs that we face, you know. So a lot of people who don't believe in God, they don't have that. They have so and so is sick and I don't know, I don't know what to do about it. Then they then they come to church. Then they come then they come to God, and I'm not saying that's a a poor time to choose God, but it's never a poor time to choose him, but yeah, I know where you're going. Because it is it's harder to judge your sincerity. Are you are you saying this because this situation is so great and you want him to genie you out of it? Or are you genuinely broken and you're like, I got nowhere else to go, I got no one else to turn to, I'm turning to you. So it could it can be a trap for you to make sure that if you are, you know, leaning on God for the first time, that you check your heart posture that you and you look and say, I am, I I feel like I feel lost, I feel whatever.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Well, you have to ask yourself, am I looking for a lifeguard? Yeah, or am I looking for a captain? Exactly. Somebody to lead my life, you know, and lead the way. And or are you just looking, yeah, you're just wanting to throw that buoy so you can get out of the situation and then get me out of this one and then I'll turn it back and do what I was doing before. Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

That's why I said I was like, are you treating him like a genie? Like he's just get me out of this one and then I'm into the next one.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Yeah. Yep. So it might be a little late to mention the topic, but we discussed this as moving mountains. Welcome to the show, everybody. Talking about moving mountains today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

I think they kind of got that over the course of our discussion. Yeah. We got it quit.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

I like the uh well, I'll tell you another thing. So today, because so much has been going on, and as you know, we've been out of church for three weeks now. We had the cruise, and then when we got back, we had oh yeah, her son decided to throw our two-year-old granddaughter's birthday party at sun early Sunday. So we had that, and then we went to the hockey game uh yesterday. We went to the Pittsburgh game, Pittsburgh Penguins and Las Vegas Knights, and that was awesome. That's the first hockey game I ever went to.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Really?

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Yeah. Gosh, I love hockey. Yeah, it was it was it was amazing. And they won five to nothing. Penguins won five to nothing, so it was just a great game, great one to just enjoy. They just whipped them.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Not not really thrilled about that. I'm not a Penns fan. No, no, no. I I love the blue jacket.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Oh okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Can't do that.

Discipline, Grace, And Leading Young Men

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Yeah, I've liked the penguins since I've been little, so that was before Columbus had a team.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

No, I will say I liked I liked Mario Lemieux. Yeah, but he's the only one. Like, I don't I don't like Sid the kid. I don't like I don't like anything Pittsburgh as far as the Penguins go. But uh I was an Islanders fan before the jackets were so but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

But yeah, we got it all. Like I said, they they scored five goals, they shut him out. There were two fights, so we got to see the fight, you know, so we got to see everything.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Yeah, you gotta have a fight. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

So it was just a really cool experience. And we were way up there, but it didn't matter. I mean, you could still see really well. And yeah, it was cool. Yeah. A lot of people though. I mean, I've been to plenty of like baseball games, and man, there was a lot of people at that game.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

When the blue jackets play, it's the same way. They um their their arena is full, and it's just it's a it's a great experience. I like I like when they play a known team like the penguins or the Bruins or stuff someone because it's it's raucous. Yeah. The Bruins fans are almost like in the city. That's old school, baby. Yeah. So they're all elbows and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

I think we only seen a handful of Las Vegas fans. And of course they're the golden knights, so they're all flashy. Oh, fans are all like the you know, they're you have to go see.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

I haven't seen it, but I watched uh watched them during the Stanley Cup playoffs, and you have to go. I I want to go watch them play Vegas because they put on this great big show. They're the Vegas Knight, and so this knight comes out and challenges uh the visiting team and it goes through all these uh theatrics and everything. It's it's it's an awesome thing to see before the game starts.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

And then I want to see Seattle cracking. Oh, yeah. I I like because that team hasn't been around that long, right? No. Yeah, they haven't been around too long, but I really like their their I like their colors.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

I like the you know my wife was like, oh, their uniforms are Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

I don't do that too often, but when they came out, I was like, wow, that is really sweet. Like they're just they're yeah, they got a lot of different really cool looking uniforms and the Kraken, you know, it's just a really cool uh image they got there.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

One of my favorite blue jacket players played for them for a couple of years, Oliver Bjorkstrand, but they traded him recently, so now I have to root for that team too. But yeah, I I love I love hockey. Yeah, and it's Kraken are a decent team on top of that. So not only do they have the sweet unis, they're yeah, yeah, they're actually pretty good. So I I don't like like we just got Utah, and they went from being the Utah, they came in, they used to be the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, and they went from being the Utah Hockey Club, and then they settled on a name for them, and they are now the Utah Mammoth.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

Yeah, no. There's no quite have a ring to it.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

I like the mammoth idea. Yeah. I do like that.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Yeah, but it's not threatening.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Utah mammoth, it just doesn't quite have a ring to it.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Yeah, and it doesn't scream hockey at all either.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

So it's like I mean, it had to be like the Minneapolis mammoth, or it's gotta have that like zing to it. Yeah, it's got it. Utah mammoth. It's like it's a little flat. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

But yeah, I I I like But I could see the logo could be cool.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

I mean, with a big mammoth. No, that's what I'm saying. It's just not quite yeah, I don't know if no.

unknown 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

I preferred, I'm not really a fan when they were called the hockey club either. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

So the ducks are gone.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Yep. Ducks.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

That's too bad.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

But the mighty were the mighty ducks, were they always in Anaheim?

SPEAKER_01 40:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Okay. I thought they when they first came out, they were somewhere else. Nope. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

They were the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, and then they dropped the Mighty, and now they're just the Anaheim Ducks. That well, not now. They were for a time before they got taken over by uh so there's no team in Anaheim.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

There's no there's no Anaheim. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Nope. But supposedly they are gonna get a another team. But California's not really a good place.

Entertainment Overload And Modern Distractions

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

You have San Jose, the Sharks, right, and LA Kings, and that's pretty much it. So and one's one's really good and the other one is really bad. I'll let you figure out which one's which. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Well, when I was a kid, I mean the the LA was, of course, they had Wayne Gretzky and they were up there. Speaking of but I'm gonna guess San Jose is better now, is that right? Oh, okay. Still the Kings. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

All right. The Kings are better than the Sharks. The Sharks just have not really done anything with their pics and stuff like that. So they just kind of languished.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Well, the NHL is definitely growing. I mean, uh how many teams they got now?

SPEAKER_01 41:22

They have 32.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

32. Okay. Yeah, there wasn't nearly that many when I was a kid. And that's the thing. Like hockey, it's like I follow it for a little bit, then I and the the thing that's so difficult about really any sport now is you can't just turn the TV on and watch it. Like you have to have a certain subscription to watch anything, which drives me crazy. Like I'm getting excited for baseball again this year, but every year you either it's it's under a new subscription service and the price changes and it's always a different situation. So it's just like you know, you used to be able to just turn the Indians on and watch it on cable. And now you you can't do that.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Now you have to have all this you know I appreciate progress as much as the next guy, but there are just it should be simple. Turn TV on, watch a hockey game.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Turn TV on, watch a baseball game. Or turn TV on and watch your favorite show. But no, you have to subscribe to this, subscribe to that, and it's and you can't always get can't get everything. Yeah, you can't get everything on one service. It's like you can get some of these shows, but then the other one, just and you're sitting back going, okay, where where is that show?

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Is that Peacock? Is that Hulu? Is that where that where is that? And you get lost. Like I you can't remember which show that was on and how to find it. And especially sports.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

It's just that's why I feel bad. I used to be when I was little, when date myself, um, when I was little, you go, you know, you go to school or whatever, and kid would talk about, you know, watching something on TV. Is that NBC, CBS, or ABC? And that was that was it. That was it. Yeah, you know, three channels. Now it's like, what's it on Hulu? Oh no, no, I think it's on Peacock, but you can get Plex or like and then it's not everything, right? And so I'm like, yeah, well, yeah, it is frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Yeah, that's a mountain in itself. Yes. Okay, so everybody's got their hockey update. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Got your fillier subscription services, your streaming services. Now we can get back to focusing on the mountain.

Scripture: Moving Mountains Explained

SPEAKER_00 43:33

That's right. And I wanted to just so the scripture that inspired it is in Matthew 17. I think it starts 1717. And of course, this is when Jesus heals the demon-possessed boy. And as you're reading along in Matthew, you know, Jesus has started his ministry. He's starting to heal people, all different, you know, the blind, the sick, the paralyzed. And of course, his disciples are witnessing this, certain followers are w witnessing this. So he gets to the demon-possessed boy. Somebody says, I'm sorry, I'm pausing here for a second, but more or less Jesus gets questioned about you know, I brought him to your disciples so that they cannot heal him. Him, Lord, have mercy on my son. He has Caesars and is suffering greatly. And it's one of those moments where we see a little bit of frustration in him. And almost, okay, you here you can really see the human that he's human. You can see that Jesus is human here. Because he says, Oh, unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me. So it almost sounds like he's saying that almost frustrated, like, Oh, yeah, bring him here. You know, you people still, everything I've shown you so far. And you still don't you still don't get it. You're still not getting what I'm trying to tell you, what I'm trying to show you. So Jesus rebukes the demon, it comes out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment. And then the disciples come to Jesus in private and say, Why couldn't we drive it out? And he replies to them, because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth. If you have the faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. So it's in a moment of frustration, I would say, that Jesus comes out with this scripture. Like you're still not getting it. Like, look, you as we talked in the beginning, I'm not asking you to have the all understanding. You don't have to understand everything. I don't have to tell you everything. You just have to have faith and and believe in what I'm showing you and what we're doing here. And as long as it's as long as you got it, you can do anything. You can start to do, you can start to do the things that I'm showing you, but you're still you're still doubting how is this possible? And I love that because doing our Bible studies at home with these young kids, that's what you see, is because they can the questions that they continue to ask are continuously, how is this possible? Not how how can I what do I need to do to have that kind of faith? I see I see who Jesus is, I love what I see, I know that it's that's the path my life should take, but how is it possible? People still have to have this answer. You have to prove to me that this that this man could do this, or I just can't, I can't believe I can't have that faith.

SPEAKER_01 47:29

That's almost like he has to hold our hand, yeah. You know, even now, after after all this time, after all the things he's done and continues to do for us, and it's still like we have to have him hold our hand more or less and just guide us through uh all these things because our faith isn't strong enough. It's the it's the kind of thing that uh leads me to think that when people who don't have strong faith in in Jesus and they you know, what do you look to? What how do you how do you get through your day? Because you and I and everybody else has ups and downs and peaks and valleys and things like that. I automatically turn to God. Whenever I'm in the valley, yeah, it's on default. Yeah, yeah. It's just like it's God, you know. So I'm like, what what do you do when you don't have that? When you when it's just you basically. And I I'm almost like it's almost kind of silly to me that you don't have a go-to.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Yeah, you don't humble yourself before God, and you continue to look to yourself to figure out all these let's face it, you're trying to figure out all these things that no, you don't understand.

Hope Vs Faith And God’s Timing

SPEAKER_01 48:56

My ways are not your ways, and yeah, it's like how how do I get that? I'm like, nobody can give it to you. It says faith cometh by hearing, and hearing from the word of God. So if you want to understand what God has for you, I can I can't give it to you. I can I can point you, you know, like read the read the gospels, read, you know, I can point you, but ultimately it comes from you reading, and God seeps into your heart. You ask for understanding as you're reading something. The best thing anybody ever did for me when I was younger was was gave me a Bible. Because it's not something I would have got for myself. You know, I'm like, even though I, you know, I I love God, I was in church all the time. I was not God wasn't gonna purchase a Bible. They have Bibles at the church, I read them there. But I have a friend and he gave me a Bible. I read the Bible at home, and and it it becomes alive for you because God is just God is so powerful, and we're such small creatures that we think we can have the answers. And we don't. No, we never do, and then either we uh turn to him or we turn from him. And and that's when you have your difficulties, real difficulties is when you turn from him. Because even though I'll I'll have difficulties and you'll have difficulties, as long as we've turned to him and we give him our praise, we give him our love, we give him our faith, whatever we're whatever Rocky sees we're on, they're they're going to be met with sunny days at the end because he's taking care of it. We've put it in his hands, and so we can have that peace that passes all understanding. Whereas somebody that's turned from him, their road may get rockier and rockier, and and they have no answer for why things are going the way they are, but he's always ready to, you know, wait for you to turn back to him.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

And I feel sometimes like people that don't have faith have trouble being proactive in their lives, like taking control of what's happening in their lives. Because I don't think you can truly be a proactive person to be a person that wants to go after life and get the most out of it and challenge yourself and do the do the right things to put you in the right places. I don't think you can do that if you don't have faith. Like I don't think you can quite have that move because I think I think faith can give you a lot of respect for yourself and for how you see yourself and how for how you want other people to see you. Because I find that a lot of times, especially in this younger generation, they're not really concerned about how people see them. And so therefore, they don't really care about how they see themselves. And so they're not driven to be the best they can be, and and they're not going to a higher power to like get get a checkpoint and say, How am I doing?

Identity, Positivity, And What We Wear

SPEAKER_01 52:23

Or like comes with standards, yeah. God comes with standing God comes with obligations and God comes with fatherly demands. And and that's the best way to explain it is when you accept Jesus and you accept God, God is your father, and He treats you as His child. And so that's not always gonna be good. It's gonna be like, okay, you're doing something you ain't supposed to be doing. When I did something my dad didn't want me doing, I got a spanking. Yeah. So you're doing something, you're living outside the will of God. Expect a spanking. I mean, it might not come right away, but at some point you're gonna get a spanking because he has to bring you back into line. And so you're like he's always against me, he's always No. You have to turn it inward. What are you doing? Because he doesn't he doesn't spank you for no reason. If you're getting a spanking, that's and you're doing well. I've told my boys before.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

I'm sorry, I think you had the line from the hangover. You need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

I tell my boys all the time, or I used to anyway, that it's easy to tell when when you're being disciplined from God or tortured by the devil. I said, if you are doing well, you're doing you're on fire for God, and you're doing you're living inside his will and everything, and travails come and problems come, and it's like I've been living, I've been doing all the things God asked me to do. I'm I'm in the choir, I I I'm ministering, I'm doing all I'm supposed to do. And you get tested, that's Satan either trying to break your will, or that is Satan with God's permission bringing you through the fi bringing you to a fire to raise you to the next thing you're supposed to be doing. God doesn't God need to be a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 54:33

Oh it's a job type thing, huh? Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:37

So I mean for me, I I I struggle a lot with self-confidence.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

Is that your mountain?

SPEAKER_01 54:49

That's that's one of them. I have I have a ton.

SPEAKER_00 54:52

I you have a whole Rocky Mountain range, huh?

SPEAKER_01 54:54

I I have I have ski slopes and all this. But yeah, but my uh main thing is is self-confidence. A lot of that comes from the fact that I'm short. And so most most guys that I come in contact with are taller than me. Yeah. And much taller than me. And so you always feel like you're looking up. And it's always fed into my I'm not, but somehow I'm not good enough.

SPEAKER_00 55:21

You're not masculine enough because you're not as exactly.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

I'm not, you know, they're you know, average height, I'm not average height and soft spoken.

SPEAKER_00 55:32

I it's but it probably had to be more of a challenge when you were younger.

SPEAKER_01 55:37

Oh, it did.

SPEAKER_00 55:38

I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

And then my name being Dale, I I was talking, I was talking about this to uh nothing wrong with Dale. No, there isn't. But I was talking to a friend of mine at work today and I said because Walker is a sweet last name, I think.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

Oh, yeah. So yeah, I love the last name more than makes up for it. Luke Skywalker.

Mountains, Purpose, And The Bigger Picture

SPEAKER_01 55:55

Dean David Thompson, they used to call him Skywalker, and I'd say, but Dale, every kid that was in school with me used to rhyme my name. It's like, here comes Dale with his pail, and yeah, yeah, on and on. Like Muhammad Ali who goes, yeah, just too much, just stop. So it all of that kind of fed into my uh self-confidence problem. But I've I've learned that I'm strong through God. And you know, I might I might not, probably not have all the answers, but I don't have to. Because I I have I have him, he has all the answers, and whatever I need to know, he'll give to me.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Yeah, well, you know, and that's a very male thing, is males can spend a lot of time either in the gym building themselves up or creating this persona that builds themselves up to where through a lot of trash talk and you know that they become very skilled at that, to that's almost that's their barrier, that's their cover for everything. So as men, we can spend a lot of time on these superficial things building ourselves up because we think we need physical strength, we think we need you know, that mental toughness, yeah, so that nobody can get in, so we can always be on the attack, and you know, just so we can spend a men can spend a lot of time on that, and we don't think like, well, all that doesn't do you any good if the heart's not right, right? You know, uh just that's the way it is. You can build yourself up and be as you can lift three hundred, you can bench 350 pounds, but if your heart's not right, what good is it doing you? You're just preparing yourself for a heart attack, I guess. I mean, I don't know. You're just wearing your knees and your elbows out and all your joints. I mean, yeah, you look good now, but eventually that's the thing. Yeah, and I want to go back into the wrestling things, I know we've been hitting that hard lately, but you see a lot of these ex-wrestlers like at one time, like they were so physically fit and just an absolute physical specimen, yeah, and then you see them now at like these conventions, and they can barely get around. I mean, a lot of them are using a walker, a cane, you know, you can tell they're hurting. And so if they're not right spiritually in their life now, what good did all that do them? You know, because eventually all that's gonna go away. You know, you can only you can only keep that up for so long.

SPEAKER_01 58:30

Yeah, time takes all of that away.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

Yeah. But your faith in God, I mean, it lasts you a lifetime, no matter who you are, where you come from, big, tall, small.

SPEAKER_01 58:41

I think a lot of men don't understand that humility is not weakness. You can you can be humble and be a tough person. You can be to me, to be humble is to be tough because people people look at that as weakness, and you have to stand your ground when other people are are are not your position may not be popular.

SPEAKER_00 59:07

You're uh well, and it's possible to have both, and I think that's a reflection of God Himself. Absolutely. And and you know, I got this employee at work, he just has this pattern where he he he would just start missing days. And he started to show that pattern again. And I don't like to I don't want to I don't like to discipline people. I don't relish in it. But I understood understand that it's important because if you don't hold people accountable, you know, they just especially the younger generation, they'll run wild on you.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

Yep.

Closing, Season Plans, And Prayer

SPEAKER_00 59:46

But I'm smart enough to know, like, okay, like I'm gonna be very, you're gonna understand me quite clearly that we're being firm here, that there is consequences to your behavior, you know, that's it. So there is gonna be a reprimand for that. But I don't just I never end it there. I always make sure the person understands that. Understand, I'm doing this, I don't want to see you lose your job, I don't want to see you fail. I'm doing this in the hope that you will start to see how important it is that you have these qualities and that you live up to a certain standard because you're a young man and people are going to rely on you. You know, you're gonna have a family that's going to rely on you. And if you don't start building this care these characteristics now, it it's very tough to form them later, for one thing. And two, I mean, you're you're gonna you're gonna find yourself in a position where you're always struggling to support your family or to or to you know form relationships or you know, just it's hard to get through life.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:50

You'll have a reputation that feeds you as your your resume and you'll put your name on there and where you're from, and and it just won't be Yeah, because all you know, if I look at a resume and a guy's had like six jobs in the last two years, I just throw it away.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

Yeah. Because I know where that's going.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:09

Yeah, you're like, that's not even, you know, you haven't even kept a job for a year. Why am I even cons considering this file 13, that one? And so you're building your reputation based on your on your behavior. And so you need to discipline yourself, yeah. And and make sure that you're serving not just yourself, but that you're serving your job properly, that you're uh shining a shining light, yeah. If you're if you're a janitor, it's like, oh he has those, he has those trash cans like cleaned and ready to go, and you can't even tell that trash goes in there. Whatever. Yeah. As uh Pastor Michael would say, that spirit of excellence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

And I always tell him, I'm like, understand, don't do this for me. You're doing this for you, your family, and do it for God. Don't do it for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

I'm just I'm just another guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

I'm just your supervisor, I'm just your manager. I said, but I don't have you can you're gonna because I always tell them, if you have any love, I'm just gonna guess you're young. This is not gonna be the last place you work. You know, you're gonna you're gonna have other things that come up in your life. And you're gonna want to carry, like you said, a good reputation with you. So don't do it for me. I mean, I'm really, when you think about it, insignificant in your life, other than trying to lead you properly and get you to see that this is how you have to live your life. But yeah, don't do it, you know, do it for your family, do it for you, do it for every all the good things you have coming, and do it because you have good faith in God. Don't don't, you know, do it because you think I'm mad at you. You know, because you because I want to m try to make you think I'm a tough guy and I'm trying to hold your, you know, yeah, you do it's your nose to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:08

I I you do it for any other reason than to prove that you're you're dependable and you can be relied on, yeah, then it's it kinda is empty anyway. Yeah. So there's that. But I don't know. I I kinda I don't understand how people can't pride themselves on what they do. Yeah. Because my dad was very get it get it done to the best of your ability. You could come home with a C if that was the best you could do.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

If that was your very best effort was a C, he was happy for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:54

Was never happy with a D because he was he was this person that was like, somehow, some way you should be able to eke out a C. Yeah. Just because of who you are and you're just because you put the effort in, you should be able to get average. Well, not accept D's or Fs.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

Yeah. But if you And I think God's the same way with offerings. I mean, he just Absolutely. You know, He knows if what you put in there is as much as much as you heart wanted you to give, or as much as you could give, or and then He knows it like, oh, you're showing off. He knows when you're showing off, and it's like, nope, that's not what it's about. And we know you you did on paper, you did more than anybody, but did it for all the wrong reasons. Whereas somebody who maybe couldn't have given that much but did it for all the right reasons, that's that's you know, there's gonna be ones that are exalted for that. Absolutely. So yeah, but yeah, faith is just it's gotta be that that faith in God and and having that belief that whatever it is that you're gonna do in life, that you know God is your wing man, and no matter what you're doing, you you're gonna be able to move that mountain. You're gonna be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish, but he's gotta be a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:19

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:20

He he's he's gotta be there. And again, you can't just do it. And it's a very human thing to want to do stuff for your own personal satisfaction because it's what you want to do. But you really do have to take account of is this what God wants me to do? Is this the purpose he has for my life? If I do this, is it gonna have any adverse effect on the purpose he has for my life? Even though on paper it may look like I'm successful, you know, and I'm doing all the right things, but is this really where he wants me to be? You know, you got to ask yourself those questions. Absolutely. Because you without that, without that faith, it's it's a tough road. It's a tough road, and I just don't think you'll get quite that satisfaction out of it, even if you because you hear that a lot, people who make it to the top. It's like, yeah, when you get there, it's empty. You know, he's all the money and the fame and the notoriety.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:15

You look at people like Robin Williams and brought laughter to everyone. Which is a great thing. Yeah. And and and everyone loved him. You know, love to see him on talk shows, loved to see him on his movies, loved to see him, wherever he was, loved it. But he always had to be on. And so it it it wore on him. And so you have to, like you say, you have to make sure that this is where I want to be. This is what I want to do. Because regardless, if you're doing what you want to do, you won't mind being on all the time because that will be who I am. You know what I mean? So it's like it's like someone who loves to sing and you're always hearing them like you're always single. I'm always happy, you know. It's it's fulfilling to them. And at some point I don't think it was fulfilling to him anymore. He was like, Yeah, it this feels like a job. And he, you know, uh it's just some people are like that, that they're doing something they're naturally talented at, but it's not what they're called to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:30

It's not filling them up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just emptying them out. Yeah, you see that way too often. I did have a couple. I was trying to get through a couple little You're not like me, are you? Well, there's well, because I you know, I always like to try to find a couple things that really inspire me. And it was one thing in Galatians 323. You know, it says, well, I'll go back to 21. For if a law had been given that could impart life and righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But the scripture declares that the whole world is is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised be given through faith in Jesus Christ must be given to those who believe. Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that the faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:50

That's that's basically the the mountaintop principle right there. Because that is let basically letting us know that because of what's what's gone in our on in our lives, we uh we have faith to lean on. Faith that God is going to do what he says he'll do. He is who he says he is. Things you hear all the time in songs or whatever, you know. I just I just think that we need to rely on who he is more than we do. Because we have a huge tendency, especially nowadays, not to accept that God is God. And we want to put so many other things in place of him and think that that's going to take care of what it is that we need when he brought you those things to begin with. And nothing nothing satisfies like God. So you're going you're going to get riches for a little while, and you know, it's it's great, but then you have kids wanting all your riches, or you have uncles and nephews that you never had before. So it all those things can become uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:26

But if you have if you have God, he never rusts, he never, you know, it's well, and as we were talking about with social media and just media in general, every all the options that we have now in life, it's just almost too much. It's just got to the point where there's so there's like we think we need all these things. Like when I got this new phone dale, like they just downloaded like all of these apps. And I'll bet you there's 40, 50 apps on this. I bet you I use three or four of them on a regular basis. And I think, but they they must have thought that I needed all of these.

unknown 1:11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:07

And when we're talking about TV, now it's like you got so many options and it's everything's so complicated. It's like, how many of them do you really need? And it's all just one big disc distraction most of the time. Excuse me. And it gets to the point where I'll do this all the time. I'll turn the TV on thinking I want to watch TV. So then I'll start looking at all these options. And all I do is go around to each one and surf through it trying to find something to watch. And I don't end up watching anything. Yeah. Because it's just, it's just too much.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:37

Well, you spend all your time trying to find something. Yeah. The time you do all the surfing, you've lost your desire to watch anything. You're like, it's too much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:48

Nothing's nothing's there's so much that nothing is really appealing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:52

There's so much that it's too much. And you're like, I I can't, I can't special. I I can't decide, or it's just like that one, that one's like that one, that one's like that, and you just kind of drift into this, like, okay, I'm not gonna watch anything, and you turn it off. Yeah. So that's where that's kind of where I am.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:15

Yeah. God's never gonna take this book though and break it into different parts and distribute it and say, okay, now in order to read the book of Matthew, you gotta go over here and pay$8.50 a month, or, you know, and this book's he over here, this book's over there, you gotta get all these different apps and put it all together and try to. No, you know, it's never gonna be that way. It's never gonna be that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:36

And that's the great that's one of the greatest things about his word. His entire word. It's complete. It's accessible to us. Yeah, and it's accessible. And there's no problem with him. He gives it freely. It's not like these streaming services and$49.99 a month, and it's not it's yeah, it's not going up in price every year. No. And it's available to any and everyone. So it's it's just you just have to you just have to take a chance.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:21

And God is for one thing, He's invisible. You know, He's a spirit. And so it's like That's not a pretty shiny app. Yeah, and it's it's not well, it's not like I can't I can't come before him and He's like right there in my face. And so people have a hard time separating the the disbelief from that, suspending their disbelief because he can do so much if you just believe, if you're just willing to believe that he can move your mountain. And and sometimes it's just so hard to turn over because it's like I can't move it. What makes you think that this this being, this uh all-knowing Lord can can move it? And it's just suspend your disbelief and just like go for it because what you got to lose? What what Sarah? And it's I mean, I know that's a odd thing to say what do you got to lose, but it's the truth. I mean, examine your life, examine the the things that you've uh gone through because he's been there regardless, whether you, you know, whether you lean on him or not, he's been there through your whole entire life, whether you believe in him or not, he's been the one. Look back at whatever it bit was you were going through. It's like, I was going through drug addiction, where was he then? Are you going through it now? You didn't get there on your own. He brought you through. Just because you couldn't see him, you couldn't feel his hand on you, you went down paths that he guided you down to get you through where you were. Now all you have to do is rest in him, believe in him, and and he can he can handle your mountains. You can't. It's for sure. You cannot handle your mountains. But that's that's what he does. He's he's in the he's in the mountain moving business.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:34

Yeah. Yeah. And we have a tendency as human beings to advertise negative and negative attitude as opposed to instead of it's sometimes it's just cool to be like, yeah, I am sorry, I can't be specific, but you know, somebody can walk around with a t-shirt that has a lot of negative connotation because it says something that kind of makes you feel tough or kind of makes you feel like an outcast, which you think is being tough. So it'll say something real negative. Oh, yeah. But then you read, you look at yourself in the mirror every day and you read that t-shirt and whatever it says, you start to believe it. So then that that's who you start to believe who you are. Instead of having something positive and being able to look in the mirror every day and say, Yeah, that's what I truly need to be doing. Like God is in control of my destiny, God is in control of what I do. I'm in, and therefore I'm in control of what I'm doing. You know, leave all that negative stuff that I keep putting in my own head and all the things that I advertise to the world as this is who I am. You know, you like I'm trying to think there's one. Oh, I didn't know what it was. Back in the 80s, George Michael, when he was in Wayham, he had a white t-shirt and it said choose life. Okay, I don't know if you remember that. Oh, yeah, yeah. But but I know this kid, he wears a t-shirt and it's black with white letters and it says choose death. Wears it all the time. And I'm like, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Like we'll we'll advertise these things that we think are exalting us up and in our image of ourselves or who we want to be for whatever reason, whether it's to repel people from you know conversation, or you want people to think you're tough, choose death. Now, what is that if you re if you read that back to yourself every single day, what do you think that's doing to your brain?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:45

Yeah, it's just it's not for one thing, it's leading you into depression. Yeah. Sooner or later, you're gonna give in to some depression because you're gonna be like, why shouldn't I? You know, I wear this all the time. Why shouldn't I? Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:59

But if you wore a shirt that said choose faith, choose God every day.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:03

Yeah, or choose God is the way or whatever. And and as long as what you're saying, you are what you eat.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:13

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:16

That explains a lot why I look egg. Oh my. But if you if you put positive in, you get positive out. Because you can't put put out what's not in the barrel. So if your barrel is full of positive, when you dump it out, it's full of positive and it's going to it's going to pour onto other people. If your barrel is full of negative and you pour it out, it's going to be negative. And and worse than that, what you pour out is received by another barrel. So that barrel is being filled with whatever it was, whatever was in yours, is now partially in theirs. And now they have to work to get that out. That's like I always try to smile at people. And they're like, you're always smiling. I see, yeah, because usually if I smile at someone, I get a smile back because that's what I've poured out. I've poured out a good a good image of smiling. So whatever you whatever you pour out, you are pouring into someone else. Toby Mack once said that there's no negative interaction, no uh neutral interaction. It's either positive or negative. It's never it's never neutral. It's like if I run into you on the street and I'm like, hi Nick, how you doing? Positive interaction. Whether anything comes from it or not, it's a positive interaction. And it's like, I see you again, I'm like, hey Nick. It's negative interaction. You carry that with you from whatever I've whatever I've done. So he's he said that. He said that's why he has a song called Speak Life, which is basically about that. It's like, you know, choose to have positive interaction and positive affirmation when you're engaging with other people, and it it will uplift you and it will uplift them. And I know sometimes people are like, I'm just not a huggy-feely person. And you don't have to be huggy-feely. But it's a smile costs nothing. Right. So you don't have to hug me, but you also don't have to growl at me. So so p pick a demeanor that's pleasing to the Lord. Do everything as unto the Lord. And just keep that in your head. Do everything as unto the Lord.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:57

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:58

You got one in there that you were particularly wanting to Well, I was looking, I think I kinda lost it, but it was way it was way back. And I think it was Mark I was looking at. And I think it's just a second now, I will find it. There it is. It's Mark 1123. And it says, For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. And that's that is reminding us that it's not physical mountains. It is the mountains of our life. And I'm pr I'm pretty sure everybody knows that when they say mountains, they're talking about the difficulties you go through. Because I know when I was a little kid and I I heard that verse, there was times I would go out in my backyard and go, move I put in this mountain range, and I expect yeah, but that is not it. It's the difficulties, the the triumphs and trials that you have in your life. If you'll say to them, Be thou removed, they'll go. Because not because we say so, but because we stand on the word of God.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:44

We have faces.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:45

Yes, absolutely. In the name of Jesus, this there's no more addiction in my family. In the name of Jesus, there's no more anxiety in my family. In the name, you know, just be thou removed and and stand on it. And that's that's what we have to understand is that when we stand on it, he cannot lie. So if he says it'll be, it'll be, it will be.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:17

Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people have trouble with the idea that whatever I ask for will be given.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:31

Because I think a lot of people can pray for I think a lot of people can pray for things very quickly with a rash sense of hope. And hope is not the same thing as faith. No. Which we're not going to get into all that, but it's hope is not the same thing as faith. And just praying on something very quickly, just in you know, like like you're hoping what you get for Christmas or what you get for your birthday, or you know, you just have kind of a quick impulse that hopefully you'll get this, you'll get that. That that's not faith. That that's not praying and believing that God is going to move in your life. That's that's just having a you know a quick impulse to gee, I hope I get this, or I hope this happens, or you know, well, the Bible says so you know, sometimes you think, well, I asked for it and I didn't get it.

unknown 1:24:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:19

Well, okay. So, in other words, it ain't that, you know, one-time wish for something kind of thing. If it's the desire of your heart and it's something that aligns with the will of God, then you can ask for it and he'll give it to you. Now, if it doesn't align with his will or his plan for your life, you may get it, but it'll be a roundabout way before you get that thing because he's not going to give you anything you're not ready for.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:59

Exactly. And we are talking about mountains. We're not when you're asking for a major move, sometimes the way I think about it is, okay, God has whatever you want, God wants to give it to you. But you do have to consider the fact that what what whatever pieces God moves in our lives and in the and in our world, it affects something else. Absolutely. So sometimes you can't always get what you want because God is always going to do what is best for the overall condition of man and for those around you. So if you're asking for something that may negatively affect somebody else, that may shift somebody else to a point they're maybe they're not ready for yet, God's going to do it in his timing when he sees everything is fit to move. He's not just going to move that mountain and put it in front of somebody else. You know, it doesn't work that way. So you really do have to think about what you're praying for and what that condition of faith is is based on to say, okay, is this really something, yes, that God that I should be asking for right now, that God should move in my life right now? Because God is going to consider the whole situation. And sometimes we feel very insignificant in the world, being who we are, but we are very significant. And who's to say, you know, he gives if he just gives you what you want when you want it, what's going to be it's kind of like back to the future. You know, when Marty McFly goes back and he's trying to, you know, save his parents and save their marriage and save the family. And and but there's always that thing, like, okay, you got to be very careful because if you move this one small piece, you could destroy the complete time continuum. Like you just can't move all these pieces around for your own benefit because it might affect you know the whole world. It might, and you think, well, how could that be? I'm just who I am. But you'd be so I bet you'd be surprised if you found out how significant you really are in the grand scheme of what God has in place. Oh you know, it'd be yeah, I would love to see. I guess maybe that'd be one thing I'd really love to see. Like, how significant really am I to this overall?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:20

What did my existence do for this for this timeline? What how did that how did I affect it? Yeah. That would be that would be cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:30

Because you know, if I had a time machine, I'd be so tempted to go back and save Lincoln from getting assassinated. You know, I'd want to be like, hey buddy, don't go to the theater tonight. You know? So that'd be like, but you could, but it was like, I'd be like, nah, I can't, you know, can't do that because who's to say? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:46

What does what does that do if you know, you know? Like even just just the failed attempt. You know, what does it does that do? He's like, Oh, I'm not running again, or I was wrong. Let's you know, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:00

Just you never know. And you can say that with anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:02

So it's just I'd be interested in just to see how Yeah, I'd I'd love to have like a a mirror of some type, yeah, where it doesn't actually change anything, but you can like look at it and say, that's what would have happened. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:20

Okay, never mind. Like, okay. I had good intentions, but never mind. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:26

And and it's those things that let you know that there's a reason God is in control. Because can you imagine us trying to control all of that?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:35

That's what I'm saying. It just And we do. And that's the thing though. We do. We do try to control everything and look where we are a lot of the time. Look at the condition of the world because we try to control everything. Absolutely. Well, we're about an hour and a half. So we cruised right through that one. Yeah, we did. Yeah. That's a good one. Like I said, sometimes I get nervous about these things. Like, how are we going to cover this episode? I don't have anything to say.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:03

And then all of a sudden I'll just Yeah, it it'll fall into place for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:08

Yeah. Yep. So it's one of the most that's one of the funnest things about this. I know it's going to be good. I know it's it's a where is it? Where is it going to go? It's always interesting to see what we talk about. And it's just having that faith. Like I said, just always fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:24

Yeah, it's always fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:26

Yeah. So it's been good. It's been good. All right, sir. Well, if you ain't got nothing else, I ain't got nothing else. So yeah, just thanks everybody for if anybody is out there consistently listening, tuning in, we really appreciate it. Uh we love having you along. We're in March now. So next week is the time change, springing forward. Spring will be here soon. So everybody's gonna be happier, feeling better. We're gonna be mowing the lawn before you know it, Dale. Oh see, I just ruined it. Yeah, you did. I I always look forward to it in the beginning. And then once I start doing, I'm like, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:02

Yeah, once I do it regularly, it starts to grow. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:06

Yeah. But hey, it's all good though. It's all, you know, we got means. We got good things coming. We're in especially in the Easter season, I would say. I think we are. So I think we're gonna plan on having this month a little bit into April, we're just gonna really focus on Jesus and his walk and his ministry. Since we are in that season, just to really try to focus on those things and see if we can come up with some good episodes here for March and April. All right. Well, Dale, you want to praise out tonight? Absolutely. All right, very good.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:49

Father God, we thank you for uh allowing us to get together and discuss mountains and the heart of you. Um thank you for delivering Nick and his family safely from their from their vacation, their their cruise. Pray that he gets to go again and enjoy it a little more than he did this time. Um we pray traveling mercy as we leave here from this place but not from your presence. Father God, just keep us ever mindful that no matter what's going on in our life, that you are capable of delivering us from the mountaintop, from the valley, wherever we and placing us wherever we need to be. And we just need to be grateful for that. And in the name of your son Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:49

Amen.