Welcome to the podcast! Come be part of the conversations that happen around my kitchen table. He's John Brandion and he's been a stand up comic for more than 30 years. She's a man to McKinney and she's been my daughter for her whole life. Our family believes laughter is a gift from God. We often discover it while discussing culture, faith and family. So go ahead and pull up a chair neighbor. Can I call you Carl? There's plenty of room here for you. Welcome to the table Carl. Glad that you're here. Welcome Pete and Luke. To my house. Welcome to your house. Thank you. Both of you. Make yourselves at home while you're here. That's what Marla told us the day we were late coming home from church and seeing Uncle David were already here. Welcome to your house. Welcome to your kitchen. So I did a show last night that was very much like the old days. You know, a bunch of church people gathered in an old timey meeting room, low ceiling, low stage. It was like the old days when you could hear your audience. It was back when I could hear the audience or reminded me of when I used to be able to hear the audience. It was like harkening back to the good times when I was not completely in the world of silence. I didn't have to assume nobody was laughing. That's what I've been assuming now for the last four or five years that like I guess I'm not funny anymore because no one ever laughs. You can see their heads bobbing and their smiles. I see a lot of smiles, but I just don't hear much laughter. So I assume that they're tolerating me. I assume they're just being polite. But the ceiling was low enough. Luke was the one who told me whenever we did that show at the camp, like you killed and I'm like, no, I thought you were just trying to make me feel better. I thought you were just trying to keep me from collapsing into despair. Jumping off a bridge. Yeah. But it was it was fun. I had, you know, I think back and you don't have a context for this unless you've done comedy for a while or performed in some, but specifically comedy is a lot of shows that are just little bit of audiences and backwood, you know, church basements and stuff. And it's, I mean, it's fun. It worked. It was a good time. But it's not going to, it's not going to be on the next Netflix special. It was worse. Sometimes it's just for the people who were there. Was it worth being in the car for five hours? It was not quite five. It was like four hours and 45 minutes. Okay, well, in that case, obviously worked it. Yeah, I mean, there's an aspect of driving that is also familiar and takes me back. Because I used to drive. That was the gig when I was working a regular job and doing stand up, I would be in the car for two and a half, three hours, four hours, one way to do a show and then I have to drive home and be at work the next day. Yay. That's the way it works. The good old days. The good old days. I know it took me back. Well, yeah. I mean, so for those listening, it is fun for that one listening car. It's fun for a comedian when they're able to get laughter. It is fun. That's kind of a fun part about the thing. It's fun. And all together unfamiliar experience now. These days. So, I'm just going to be over here. So we threw some diss before Luke falsely. Why are you so tired? Is it because you didn't get to go with? You don't care about this gig because you weren't at this one. No, I care, especially if it reignited the fire and John. You're going to teach some teenagers this week. Ooh. Fire hadn't necessarily gone out. Yeah, I'm going to do a workshop this week. I'm going to go to school and it's more in line with what you kind of thought your career would be before the comedian thing popped up. Because it's going to be middle and high schoolers and a classroom. In a classroom. With an agenda. With an agenda and a goal. You're going to try to teach them stuff. You're going to try to teach them some stuff. We're going to learn them some stuff. And they're goingSn have a showcase. And then they're going to do a showcase. So, how many students are we talking about? We don't know for sure. It should be. It should be between 7 and 1,000. Well, because it's hard to do a showcase if there's 60 kids. No, no. It's capped at 15. OK. Captured at 15, Lemon. There's seven officially signed up. And then there were another few that were potentially. They were going to be coerced or threatened. Right. Yeah, could go either way. It could be really glad for that or they could be really obstinate. Yeah, I don't necessarily want people. People drug into the class, kicking and screaming under arrest. Those drug people. The verb you're looking for is dragged. I don't want people drugged either. I don't want them drugged or dragged. I don't want them dragged or drugged or intoxicated. Or in any way impaired. It's just a different animal. It's more in line with what I do on a weekly basis. Yes. My job. You have unwilling and unenthusiastic and occasionally. Uncooperative. Occasionally. Well, because the goal is to help them make a choice to be cooperative and to take some ownership in their own lives, in their own education, which then leads into ownership for the rest of their lives. Right. And think how unsatisfying it would be for you to teach cooperative children. If they came in cooperative, then there would be nothing for you. No place for you to take them. So this, their uncooperative rebelliousness is actually where you get to shine. You get to work. You get to love the allure. That's the field. You get to be like Moses. Yeah. I do have some safety. But you have a lot fewer Israelites. It's Moses that I feel sympathy for. And then also Elijah, after came off the mountain and was like, there's nobody left. There's a whole nation that's worth saving. I'm the only Christian. That's right. Because Mandy hadn't been born yet. So it was just Elijah by himself. And now it's Amanda. Oh, I know how you feel. I'm surrounded by all of these people who just are rebellious. And everybody except me, right? Hates God. Everybody except me. I'm able to call down fire from heaven. But everyone else is a lost cause. Everybody else is. Everybody else should be consumed by that fire. So anyway, well, we had a, we started to have a conversation about the topic in Sunday school today. Right. That was supposed to be a segue. I was talking about my weekly, my weekly job. Oh, I need to pause because tabby calling. Go ahead. You answer that. So how, how was that a segue? Well, because I said I was talking about my job that I do throughout the week. Oh, I see. And I was supposed to pick up on that. Not necessarily. I was going to tell you that it was a segue. Okay. Go ahead. Tell me. Oh, no. You said that you wanted to talk about what was the topic in Sunday school. So now that's just as good of a segue as mine was. So go ahead. Well, one of the things that has, that's been on the, our conversation, let's go on the topic of conversations is the concept of ministry and how the church has a tendency to think very linearly and very narrowly and biopically in. You're pinching your fingers together in the, in the universal sign for smaller narrow small. And then you said linearly. Yeah. Very, very, very, very pinchly, very, very squeezy pinchyly. And in terms of what a ministry is and it almost always revolves around something to do with a worship service related activity or teaching a class or leading a Bible study. And I had a conversation with a guy just this week who is a musician, a professional bass player, like a studio quality musician. So he's a really good bass player. And he said, well, I played in the worship band at church like last week. I said, really, I thought you always played in the worship band. He goes, nope, I haven't been playing in the worship band on purpose. And I said, well, why would you not? And he said, well, because I never, I never thought that the, that the quality of the music was up to standard. So he's basically admitting that he doesn't want to play with those ribs. As ribs? Yeah, those ribs. And so I'm just listening to him talk. And he goes, but I went in and I said that I would play and I started, I started paying attention to and some of the guys in this band are actually pretty good. And he goes, and the production quality is, is, you know, so he's going on and on about how great the production is and how the sound is exquisite. And so basically he's, he's agreeing to play in the worship band because the quality of music that they're outputting is up to his standard. And then he goes, so what are you, you know, what are your thoughts about that? And I said, I said, man, I've got a lot of thoughts about worship music, but I usually upset worship members when I start talking about that. He goes, well, I want to know what you think. And I said, well, I think that worship is, is not about the musicians. And that part of the problem is what you're describing is that the worship team is having such an exquisite, you know, experience and good for them, but it doesn't hit the rest of the congregation that way. I'm coming at this from a guy who's not, I can sing and I have some musical, you know, sense, but I'm not a music guy. And so a lot of it is, I can't participate in it. I can't participate in the singing because the songs are pitched too high for men most of the time and their performances. They're not, they're not rhythmically, you can't sing along with them because it's all, it's syncopated rhythms and weird starting and stops and they've got a, there's vocal fills that you never know what the, what the leader is going to do. And I said, all of these things make it really hard to participate. And he goes, well, that's an interesting angle, you know, and just the way he said it, it's like I can tell that he had never had anybody say anything like that before. And so I'm like, and I'm going, well, this is pretty typical for the way a music person responds to that criticism because they just can't, it's just such a foreign thing to them. The idea of not being able to participate musically in what's going on that they just can't sympathize. It's not that they don't care. I don't think it's just they're like, it's like I was speaking a different language. He doesn't understand. And they're going to do this music thing. Why wouldn't you do it at the absolute highest level possible? Right. Like why wouldn't we try to make it ready to tour? Right. I will tour. And then he said, I want to use my gifts to serve the Lord, which is always the justification that they give for doing whatever the heck they want to do, you know, whatever they want to do in to whatever level of quality, whatever that they want to do. That's the justification for it because we're using our talents to serve the Lord. And that's great. But what are, what am I supposed to do? You know, or what are, what are my talents? How did they come into play? The answer is they don't, you know, my particular talents, whatever they are aren't needed and aren't utilized on Sunday morning. And so what should I do with that? Should I, should I continue to go to church? Well, I've got enough theology. There were, I know, yes, I'm supposed to go to church, but using their line of thinking, you know, I wouldn't show up on Sunday morning. I wouldn't. It's fine to be a hundred percent. Because you don't think for me to do. I've had with my brother in law, Corey, who is a worship leader and he'll describe a Sunday morning one in which he's led and he'll be like, well, this went wrong and this went wrong and this almost went wrong, but we saved it. And I'm like, all of this stress over it going according to plan. And every time I hear it speak like that, I'm just like, I feel like that's not the right way to be going about it. Well, and this was, this is all leading up to what the conversation was about on Sunday school. It's like a segue. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. Now you see why I was disappointed that you thought you'd segue when I have such an excellent segue prepared. Hey, Hey, kids in the land, we're podcasting. What are you doing? I'm telling them to be quiet. You can't hear them but they're loud. I can hear you. I'm just a cat or a wallet. So the conversation in the Sunday school class that I deliberately did not participate in because I'm rattling through this stuff in my head. It's like, I don't want to work all this out verbally in front of these people because we just started going to this church. I don't want to get myself kicked out already. But it's the idea of getting a loan time with God, asking God to work in me rather than asking God to work through me. The distinction is that when you ask God, God can't work through you until he's worked in you to prepare you to make you ready to do some sort of work. Now I don't necessarily disagree with that. I don't want to quibble about that. But where the conversation inevitably ended up was on the subject of for lack of a better term quiet time. So what they used to call quiet times. Do they still call them that? I don't know. We went to a Baptist high school. So we're going to call it quiet time until I die. All right. So it's quiet time. And what is a quiet time? Just devotional time. It's intentional prayer and Bible reading in a set apart situation where you reserve a certain section of the day in advance. You plan it without distraction, with no distractions. Yes. You're alone with God. Right. And that is when he works in you. Yes. That's when you ask him to work in you. You have to get in touch with God. Cross your figures that he will do so. Well, I think they would say that he answers your prayers. But yeah, the idea of prayer is definitely very, very intimately related to quietness. Right. And alone. Right. And isolation. And as Luke said, you removed the distractions, such as they are. And the week before this was they talked about distractions and not being sidetracked by different things. All right. So this is all building. And that's what a quiet time was when I was a kid as well. And I heard sermons and youth group meetings were all many of them went back to the idea of a devotional quiet time. That's when maturity happens. That's when you get with God. That's when God speaks to you. That's when you grow. And you can't really grow unless you're spending time reading the Bible and praying. And you have to do that in some sort of a quiet time or devotional. And there was a lot of guilt laid on people. Even back when I was a kid in youth group, there was guilt. If you're not in quiet time, God still loves you. I mean, it doesn't. We still had that language. But really what, I mean, you can't expect to be, can't expect to grow in mature if you know how to quiet time. And so that's that's the gist of where this went. And and Mandy's perspective was a little more hostile than mine. I didn't. I didn't say anything in Sunday school either intentionally because every single thing that we talk about, I'm going to be viewing through the lens of still having young children at home. And that's a very different phase of life than the other women in the room. Most most of our fellow Sunday school attendees are older. I wouldn't say all of them are retirement age, but most of them have, if they have kids at home at all, they're in high school, or about ready to graduate. And so, so yeah, they don't, they're not change in diapers. This like I did this morning, you know, wiping noses and right, right. And they don't have to worry about their kids waking up in the middle of the night multiple times like mine still does, which is what always strikes me whenever the practical step or the takeaway from the sermon or the, you know, the talk is set your alarm 15 minutes earlier in order to devote some time to God. That always strikes me differently than it's going to restrict to strike a retiree. And I recognize that. And it's and because I don't like you in the face like a slab. Well, I, no, I'm not offended by it. I just, I didn't think that that was the proper context for me to share the perspective of a mom with young kids because there weren't other moms with young kids there. If there had been though, I probably would have spoken up and just translated it for the younger crowd. Well, and that's right. You said that after Sunday school. And I don't disagree with that. But part of the reason that I wanted to bring it up on the podcast was twofold one. I wanted to finish the conversation that we'd started. And secondarily, I do think there's value in people who are leading Sunday school, people, specifically the men, the leadership in church needs to hear that perspective. They need to hear. They need to hear that there are members of the congregation who cannot set aside 15 minutes of quiet time in order to get away with God. And when you, when you communicate that the most important, crucial, faith building thing that a person can do is have a devotional and a quiet time. It, it causes all kinds of feelings. Some of the more resentment, some of the some anxiety, some guilt, you know, we've talked about tally's tendency to feel like she's always failing. Right. And there is a certain aspect of that. It certainly applies to women at home raising young children and trying to make a household, which is a 24 hour day, seven day a week occupation. It's not a thing that you can schedule. It's a thing that that you just have to do your own call all the time. Right. It's really, really hard just emotionally for a woman, especially with her first, you know, first child or first couple of children. If there's nobody there, like a tightest two woman to kind of take her under a wing and say, Oh, actually, that's part of it. You're not doing anything wrong. This is actually like the main issue of trying to learn motherhood is learning how to be on call all the time. And the exhaustion and the frustration and the endless one task after another. I'm sorry. You put yourself to bed at a reasonable hour because rest is important and you want to take care of your body and everybody online is telling you you have to take care of yourself first so that you can take care of others much like in an airplane when they always tell you if there's an emergency, the oxygen masks are going to fall from the top and you need to secure your oxygen mask before you secure the young children you're traveling with because that's just basic common sense. Make sure you're taking care of yourself first. And so these new mothers will go to bed. Like, you know, 738 PM because they're absolutely exhausted, but they know full well. And then at nine o'clock, they will be woken up. Yeah, it could be anywhere from two, three hours to like 20 minutes. And I never know for sure when the alarm is going to go off that sounds like their new beautiful baby. And so that's like, I've described it before as like a form of torture. Like it's if I don't know if anybody in any nations or kingdoms in history have come up with that form of torture. I know sleep deprivation is. But like the kind where they make them think they're about to get a little bit of rest and then immediately wake them back up again. As soon as they fall asleep, it's stressful. You just like to motherhood to being a POW. It's seriously. And I have likened it to other mothers in that way too to help them understand that I understand. And that it really has. You have been captured by the enemy sweetheart and you are now going to be tortured for the next 10 years. There's there are PTSD symptoms that come along with postpartum depression and anxiety. I mean, there's a lot of overlap there with a jumpiness and, you know, a sense, a loss of control. This identity crisis. That's very common with with women. All stemming back to the idea that they want to do what's right and they want to be good soil and they want to glorify God. But the practicality of that, what does it actually look like when you're not getting enough sleep as it is? And the only thing you've ever been told really from the pastors and the elders in your life is get alone with God. Get alone with God. You are never alone. You're never alone when you've got young kids. Right. But and that's the aspect that I wanted to dig into and and articulate talk about because while I 100% agree that that when you're talking about mothers at home raising children and running households, this is absolutely the most crystal clear thing that we can point to and go, yeah, this is this does not work. Yeah. For these. So and so I'm not I'm not trying to argue that point. I'm also not going to say that quiet time and devotional and alone time with God is a thing that you shouldn't do. That's not that's not the point that I'm trying to make either. What I am saying though is I think that there is value in in thinking about what we are what we're actually teaching Christian people and that is that alone time with God is necessary because because otherwise God is not going to be able to interact with you. You know, if you don't have a devotional, if you if you don't set aside a time where you can be alone with God, then God's influence is going to be absent from your life as if as if God doesn't bring us along, you know, every second of every I don't think that I don't think they believe that. I know they don't believe it. I think there's an aspect of this kind of weirdness with no matter what your area of expertise is because I use the gym example earlier today too. There are a lot of influencers, coaches, you know, health coaches who would say the exact same thing about getting up early if your goal is to start lifting weights or start training for a 5K, you know, or start whatever you're going to take control of your physical health, right, much like taking control of your spiritual health, they're going to advise, oh, just give it 15 minutes, start small, you know, wake up a little bit earlier and then you can start this program to build muscle, you know, or build endurance. And the problem is again, with with people who are already in the trenches of caregiving 24 seven, that 15 minutes doesn't exist for that purpose either and healthy living or healthy eating same thing. People are like, all it takes is just 15 minutes and you can, you know, get up a little earlier and you can make bacon and eggs instead of eating, you know, a bunch of sugary cereal, so just 15 minutes, set your alarm a little earlier. And so yeah, what happens is the practical advice isn't practical for certain people. Unless we know who those people are and what they're practically, what the challenges are they're practically dealing with, we can't really give them practical advice for how to meet goals like like interacting with interacting with God. And tabby was another example of somebody who had always been very faithful about working out at least three days a week and she would run a mile. She would do when she started having kids, then she started going and doing videos on YouTube in her living room instead of going to the gym. So that was her first big sacrifice. I get felt like she was compromising. It felt like she was reducing the amount of effort that she was requiring of herself, which seemed like it was a little bit lazy or a little bit, you know, a little bit of a compromise. And so that was hard for her. But then it got to the point when she added the fourth baby that she wasn't even able to finish a five minute workout video in front of her YouTube screen before something came crashing down and she or she had to go get the baby out of the toilet because he splashed in a way. And she was like, she was asking me, you know, what do you do? How do you squeeze in a 15 minute workout when we all know that doing some kind of formal workout like this is what is required for basic healthy, not lazy individuals. And I said to her, I said, I don't, I don't do a regular workout. And I know that that's absolutely blasphemous when you're talking to or in the presence of TikTok influencers. But I did give her the example of a mom of 10 who I know of and follow who was asked the same question because she's actually very lean. She looks healthy. She leads an active life in the sense that she's up and down the stairs and making beds and carrying laundry baskets and she goes out and digs in her garden and walks with the kids in the neighborhood and so she's moving. But when somebody asks her, how do you stay so trim? What's your workout routine? They're asking which exercise routines are you doing on online? And she doesn't have one of those and that's just mind blowing for so many people. Right. You're actually making the point I was going to make that there's this assumption when you're talking about spiritual maturity because I've heard it from the time I was a kid, you've heard it, the quiet time thing has been passed off as the thing that you must do. It's not even, it's not an negotiable aspect of it. It's not if you are a growing mature Christian, you are doing a quiet time or you're not healthy. You're an unhealthy Christian. You're an absolutely. You've got things to do. And then what happens is in a lot of cases, it doesn't matter how much, if you're doing a 15 minute quiet time, it's like, yeah, that's just a bare minimum. It really should be 30 minutes. And then other people will, they've got an hour they get up and two. But like we've said, there's no way that a woman with children is going to be able to pull that off. But I'm saying that there is, I have to be careful, that just because you're not having a devotional doesn't mean that God is far from you. Because even in the Sunday school lesson, they brought up the parable of the soil, the parable of the sower is what they call it. But it's actually, it's the soil. The farmer goes out and scatters the seed. And this is the point that they brought up in the Sunday school class. You're not, you're not the farmer. And a lot of people think that they are. A lot of people think that that's some sort of an evangelical parable that he was saying. And the farmer goes out and scatters seed and the seed falls on some of its good soil. And so when you go out to preach the gospel, that's not actually what the parable is about. What the parable is about is the soil. Some of the soil is good and some of the soil is not good. And the farmer scatters the seed on all of those different soils. And the soil is good as where it grows. But the soil itself did not, it didn't cultivate itself. The soil did not prepare itself. The soil is also prepared by, by God. Right. But again, if you're somebody who thinks that God prepares the soil in the context of a dark quiet room with maybe a single candle and a cup of coffee and a journal and a highlighter, if you think that's the mechanism through which God does prepare soil, you're in trouble. Well, if you think that soil gets up 15 minutes early and makes itself coffee and reads the Bible, there is, there is an element of willingness. A bag of dirt reads the Bible. There's an, there's an element of willingness and cooperation. There is an element of human intentionality in offering your bodies as living sacrifices. So there's an action there that we do have to take. We don't just go about our lives and never give any thought to prayer or to devotional or to. I, I think it's a lot of times we'll get home with our van full of kids. And before we let them go in the house, we talk to them, we try to change their mentality to, to what we want it to be when, because they're about to brush into the house and do all of the things that they want to do. And we want them to be focused on getting to whatever the goal is for that night and to not be crazy. And I think that there's something to that. I think the soil itself can try to bring about a certain mentality. We're not actually dirt. We're not literally dirt. We do have consciousness and free will. And that matters in the context of the relationship between God and His children. Right. And remember, I was careful to say, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a quiet time. I'm not, I'm not putting down any particular mode of getting into where it ever, you think God. Well, and so what that looks like practically for somebody who does not have as much control over external factors as maybe a retired person does. What it looks like is starting from a posture of this too is worshiped. Right. And then, then God is able to speak probably louder than he did, at least in my case, louder than in college when I had my own dorm room that I could retreat to and I could close the door and I could take a nap whenever I wanted the years since I have been unable to take a nap have been more formative to me in certain areas than the years when I had hours and hours theoretically to to do quote devotional and to go to the gym and to prepare a healthy meal. And you know, the time when I was able to check those boxes and do everything that experts and the influencers recommend for a well-rounded and satisfied human being. You know, it's been the years when I was unable to do all of those things that have been more formative for me in understanding certain parts of scripture that I was reading before and I am living now. Right. Right. Like I can't help but notice how many times the Bible, the authors of the Bible compare suffering and struggling to childbirth, isn't that interesting? Right. But you can't say something like this too is worship without bringing yourself to that level of understanding, without preparing your mind to endure it in that way. Right. So it may not have been 15 minutes of focused quiet time, but you were preparing your mind. Well, I don't know who prepared my mind, but I do know other women, there have been certain other women who had before me who have been instrumental in it. Again, Titus 2, I brought up before, but but it was another woman or a several other women who planted a seed of an idea in my mind that, hey, you don't have to disappear up in the mountain the way that the prophets and the Old Testament did. You can't. You're you're needed at home. Right. But you can wash the dishes in a worshipful way and you can get up in the middle of the night and when you notice your flesh saying, oh, not again, you can remember that this is actually what the Psalms describes. This is your actual story. Well, how many times does David talk about being restless on his bed or unable to sleep or, you know, struggling with night time, you know, the terrors of the night or different struggles. Yeah. All of that makes far more sense to me now having lived through the anxiety and the PTSD of, you know, motherhood and uncertainty in motherhood. Then it did when I was a 19 year old who had this perfect devotional life. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, again, the child birth thing, like I don't think that humans even have other than war for men going to battle and having the potential to lose your actual life in war. I don't think we have another analogy that is more encompassing of doing something, volunteering to do something incredibly painful, simply for the sake of another human soul. I don't think there's another. Then if you directly. Yeah, I don't think there's another story or another example that that we can pull from in literature and in rhetoric that helps people understand sacrifice, like pure and and worshipful sacrifice and love for another person in pain despite great physical cost to yourself. And I would not have understood that as well had I not five times gone through that. And so. So yes, the application of what you're learning in your quote quiet time or in your devotions matters just as much if not even more than 15 extra minutes of Bible reading and, you know, intentional prayer at the beginning of the day. And once you realize that you can and should be communing with God all day, that's that's what changes things. That's what I think is is overlooked. I don't think anybody I agree with what you said earlier. I don't think anybody would I don't think anybody thinks that that Bible study quiet time is essential for your walk and that Jesus thinks less of you if you don't do. I know they don't believe that. They just don't think about and I'm not trying to misrepresent what anybody thinks. I'm saying that the emphasis that they're unaware of the the impact or the yeah, that's not the right word. Well, they're unaware of the fact that they're that they've elevated quiet time as the quintessential experience with God and nothing else, nothing else is a way to interact with God. And sometimes they'll say things like you need to get into nature. You know, you can't you can't be indoors. You got to get out to where nature is and I'm not disagreeing with that either. But you you can be in an apartment in New York City and also encounter God. He's there too. And and I don't think anybody would argue with me about that. I don't think the quiet time people would go. In fact, they'd probably be offended. They're like, well, we're not saying you can't meet God in New York. And I'm but what's happened is that there's a very very narrow understanding of how you encounter God. Well, they don't know it. They don't understand what's happened until they see a young girl like me grew up in church was always very beautiful about taking those practical steps as recommended by the youth minister. You know, I had a prayer journal in high school. I I journaled every single day in college. I would if I didn't do it in the morning, it was at night before I went to bed. It would I would always select a verse that jumped out at me from whatever chapter I had read. And I would write it into my journal and pray about it. And and so it was all very, you know, I even understood that just because it didn't feel like I was connecting with God every single time I went through devotion. That didn't necessarily mean that he wasn't present with me. And so I was doing all of that. And then along comes a baby, you know, and then several of them. And how devastating it is when you try and try and try and try to get back to what you have always understood. It means to be a Christian and you cannot you cannot live the way that you think a Christian is supposed to live. Well, because it's connected to communing with God, that's that's I think that's my problem with it is it's it's lifted up as this way as the way that God gets in touch with us. And it's just not I'm not again, I'm not saying that he can't and that he doesn't. But it's not the only way God is God. And he has access to us all he's he's with us all the time because we're alive. If he if he wasn't connected to us, we would cease to exist. And the I brought up to you guys earlier that there was a movie that Robert Duval was in a few years ago. It's actually been a number of years ago now. It was an Oscar nominee. The Apostle that you look at up. I did. Yeah. And it wasn't a particularly I didn't really like it that much. It's a it's a it's actually a movie about a guy who's a preacher a pastor and a church and his wife has an affair with the youth minister. And so he kills him. That's what the story is and then he goes on the run because he kills this kid. But the Tommy Oaks was having coffee with us one night and he said that the Apostle changed the way he thinks about prayer. And so I'm like, well, I gotta see this movie now. And if you haven't seen the movie, basically Robert Duval's character is constantly talking to God like in the in the moment. So whatever's happening, you know, like he he gets a call that his wife is you know, his wife is with the youth minister. I don't remember exactly how it all came about. But basically he becomes aware of the fact that his wife is cheating on him. And so he jumps out of bed. It's like in the middle of the night or something. And he goes, thank you Lord. Thank you. And as he's getting dressed to go and confront this, he's thanking the Lord for revealing this thing to him. And so and that's what Tommy's point was that that he's he's thank you for this phone call. Thank you for this 12 gauge. Well, he's engaging with God in every moment all of the moments that are having an impact on his life are he he recognizes that God is involved. Right. It's an awareness of God's so far. This is sounding. I mean, apart from the killing the dude, this is sounding healthy. Well, it's a it's a very strange film. But but that aspect of you know, you take you take the parts that you like. Whatever. But I but that after Tommy said that and after I saw the film and I thought about I thought about the apostle a lot. And I I've thought about I've thought about how it has changed my my tendency now is when I'm driving or when I'm working in the yard or when I'm on the way out of the growth. Everyone I'm putting the cart back into you know, to get my quarter back at all these. It's like, you know, thank you Lord that I've got a quarter for this cart, you know, and the fact that I have money in the bank to pay for these groceries and even though they're outrageously expensive and I want to grumble about that, you know, you're providing. But but and even though you shop at all the and so when you when you find something you really like there and it's delicious, it's a seasonal item and it will never be back again. You can crave it for the rest of your life. Thank you Lord that now I have a just extreme desire for this thing that will never be made available. Thank you Lord that I can temporarily enjoy this very delicious snack food. Thank you now that I have any turtle craving that will never be satisfied. But yeah, and actually those kind of thoughts also invade and and that's not that's not the way I was taught to pray. You know, I wasn't taught. My prayers are full of sarcasm and satire because that's the way my mind works and I talk that way to God now in my prayers and sometimes it slips out, you know, in public prayers and I forget how weird it is but I was doing a prayer for a I was at a restaurant in a Mexican restaurant and somebody asked me if it was I was with some other guys and asked me to pray and I said, okay, and it's like close my eyes and we bowed our head and I said, Lord, thank you for this food. Thank you for inventing Mexicans who came up with this idea for this food because it's awesome. And I literally thank God for inventing Mexicans was how I said it. And everybody around the table snickered and I was like, oh yeah, I do I talk different. But I said it that way because it's funny, but God made me funny. This is the way I talk. And so if that is the result of the movie, the apostle and Tommy Oak's specific insight into that movie. And so when people talk about quiet times now, again, I am not saying don't have a quiet time. I'm not saying quiet time is of no value. That is not the point I'm making. What I'm trying to say is that there are many ways that God interacts with us. And there are many opportunities for us to interact with God. Even if you don't have 15 minutes, you can interact with God in two seconds. If you just say, hey, Lord, I've noticed this or that or hey, Lord, I need your help with something else or give me the strength to whatever and then move on. A prayer doesn't have to be 15 minutes of isolation. It doesn't have to be 15 minutes, but also I don't think rather than saying it doesn't need to be this, it doesn't have to be this. It's not that. It's not that. I think people just really struggle with practical things. You can tell somebody who who genuinely wants to commune with God. So what do you tell them to do in the positive sense? And more specifically, if somebody who's a young mother who's drowning, you know, or anybody who's got sort of an identity crisis, how does God is right here while you're changing this diaper and while you feel like it. And so when you're used to living in a society like the American society where you identify a problem and then you immediately there's a product for it, you know, or there's some answer. There's either there's an answer to the math question or there's a pill for the symptom or doing here on this podcast as we're giving a quick, contract easy answer. Right. Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm sorry. It's not contract. When people are looking at a woman who is in tears and exhausted and is feeling like she's failing in absolutely every category and needs some advice. And I do mean practical advice. Well, then what do you tell her? If all you've ever heard in your own life is pray and read your Bible, pray and read your Bible, pray and read your Bible. Right. What do you tell her when she says but guys, I can't remember the last time that I read more than a single sentence of anything without being interrupted. I can't even go to the bathroom without tiny little feet following behind me. Is there anything that anybody can say that's going to be particularly helpful? Um, I do think that women are uniquely equipped for this. I think this is why women are told to instruct the older women are informed to instruct the younger women. And I think that's why I decided again, not to speak up today in particular because the group wasn't the group that needed to hear this. But if it was a group of young mothers or or mothers with children still at home, that would have been a different audience and one that does need to hear the practicalities. I don't know to what extent a man in his 50s or 60s ever can fully sympathize with, let alone offer suggestions and encouragement for a situation like that. No, obviously, I'm man's not going to be able to sympathize with what it's like to be a mother. Right. But I do think I do think as somebody who has never been a mother that I understand what you're describing. Um, and I do think that God is is there, you know, in the suffering. And even though it doesn't feel like it, that doesn't change anything. The reality is that like you said before, there's a certain beauty even in the suffering that the scripture describes multiple times that you're you're going through something because God is is literally doing something. Well, it's suffering. And it may not help in the moment, but it's ironic because it was really literally just this morning before the Sunday school class, when I said to Luke, having already gotten up and went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, started working on getting the makeup off my face that was dripping off from yesterday and making myself ready. And the baby started crying and he had already been awake like 20 minutes right before that. And I nursed him hoping he would go back to sleep and he did not. And so nobody else in the house is even awake except me. And I'm trying to, again, self care, trying to put my own oxygen mask on before it's time to get everybody else's on. And I just said to Luke, the baby is not asleep. He's waking up again. He has been getting up earlier and earlier. I have been making the conscious decision. We know he's awake. We know he's awake because he just starts going, mama, mama. But I was making the conscious decision to be disciplined. I'm like, I'm going to get up early. I'm not going to sleep in. I'm going to make sure it's before the sun is up. Nobody else in the house is awake. I'm going to take care of business and no matter how early I get up, I think it's biological. I think that babies are designed to want to be with their mothers all the time. And so that's what happens. That's there's an element of that. I mean, I can explain it to men. But I just think that I just think that I don't, I would be asking too much to expect him as a Sunday school teacher to think of my reality as an example, you know, when he's out, when he's going to teach the rest of the class. But there's no way there's no way that he's going to know it if you don't articulate it. That was my point earlier that I think that it's, I think it's correct. At some point, to say this because the only reason I am familiar with it is because of the conversations that we've had. You know, the reason I, I can't empathize or sympathize 100% because I'm not, I've never worn your shoes. But I do think I've got a better grasp on the dynamic because of the conversations that I've had with my adult daughters. Yeah. Right? I mean, I would be, I would be better able to speak to what's going on because I, well, I have some insight. And maybe if, again, if it's ever brought up that, you know, somebody in the class has a daughter who's struggling with post-parting depression or if somebody else in the class shows up and starts, and they're our age, you know, and they start talking about it. Well, then I would, I would say something, but I think, I don't know, I just don't want to make it all about myself because other people have other specifics to their own life that are a different set of circumstances. I think, you know, tangentially, too, that yes, the situation with the mothers is also applicable to, to non-mothers and even to men boys and so on because there is an aspect of godliness and being connected with God that transcends the gender roles, you know, there is every single one of us, whether we're a mother or we're not a mother, is sustained by God every second. All right. Well, fine. You've convinced me. We will get ourselves kicked out of church next week. If you have time to listen to our podcast, you have time for quiet time, Carl. Thanks for visiting the comedian's house. If you want to spend more time with our family, you can follow John Branion on YouTube and Facebook. Also, email next door at johnbranion.com with your comments and questions. We'll see you next time.