The CHRISTIANing Podcast
The CHRISTIANing Podcast
Ep.64 - When Your Devotions Feel Dry
Have you ever uttered these sentiments to yourself or someone else: I don't get anything out of my time in God's Word, I don't feel like He's speaking to me, or I just don't feel like I am connecting with God? If so, you could be a victim of a common problem in American evangelicalism Kirk calls "Over application" of scripture. In this episode, we explore this common problem that can plague our personal devotional time and cause us to feel unmotivated to consistently engage in the discipline of reading the Bible. Tune in and learn three important strategies to help combat stale and dry quiet times and get on a path to a consistent pattern of personally and powerfully engaging in God's Word. Enjoy!
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SPEAKER_01:All
SPEAKER_00:right, and welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us yet again. Another episode of the Christianing Podcast. As always, appreciate your time. Appreciate you giving a listen, giving a download. If you haven't already, subscribe, rate, review, like. That's how the intro webs work. The algorithms and all those things get these messages, get these discussions out to more people. And that's what we want to do. We want to encourage more people, the Christian well, to understand better how to take the deep things of God, the theology of Sunday, to just the reality, the everyday of Monday. And so today, I think we've got another great discussion on tap, something that just been kind of hit me the last couple weeks, something that I've encountered for many, many years talking with Christians of all ages, all demographics, gender, whatever. This is something that comes up quite a bit. What happens when you feel like your devotions, your quiet times feel dry and you're just not... So you lose that motivation to get up early or to stay up late or to carve out that time to just sit and be with the Lord. Because you do it and you just don't seem like you're getting much out of it. And there's a previous episode... we talked a little bit about this um i think it was titled when you don't want to read your bible we touched on some of this stuff but then you know today we'll go another direction even a little deeper just to help you with that personal devotional life because there's really only one prescription for really walking well with the lord in a way that You know that you're getting the real thing and you're not getting other people's agendas or biases. I think anytime we sit under any sort of human teaching, we always have to have one antenna out for, man, what is this person's kind of, do they have agenda? What's their bias? What part of Jesus am I not getting from this person? I don't care what church, what pastor you listen to. There's always an agenda. There's always a bias. And so that's why the foundation of our walk with Christ just has to be you alone with your Bible, talking to Jesus, interacting with Jesus by yourself. Because the more and more you do that, the more you're able to sit at any church and, as they say, separate the meat from the bones or eat the meat, spit out the bones kind of thing. And that's, that's what you have to do in every ministry setting. There's not a ministry setting where you just carte blanche, you take everything as gospel truth because it's just, that's not the way it, that's not the way it works. So the Christian walk was always meant to be a walk with Christ first amongst community to encourage that. Um, second, secondly, and Both are essential. I'm not saying you do one without the other. Both are essential, but so many people in modern times are just doing the corporate thing and never doing the individual thing. And that's where we're prone to error. That's where tribes are created and all that kind of stuff. So we'll talk a little bit today, just if you're in one of those seasons or you've been in one of those seasons where you've You're losing motivation or you've lost motivation. Just open that book and read it and just sit individually with Jesus through his word because it just feels dry. Just got some words of wisdom for you today. And the main problem that we're going to talk to, I'm sure there's a hundred problems that can occur when we're in a dry place devotionally or we don't have motivation. There can be a lot of things from distractions to all kinds of things. But the one problem that I see modern American Christians encounter a lot is this concept that I called over-applying scripture. Over-applying scripture. And we'll get into that later. today, but really one of the things when, I guess, how do I know that I'm doing that? I guess this is the best way to start. How do I know that I might be susceptible to over-applying scripture? And if you feel yourself or hear yourself saying things like this, either to yourself or to your friends or to your small group or whatever, when you're talking about your quiet time, devotional life, if you're saying stuff, I just don't feel like I connect to God. Or maybe you've said things, I just don't feel like he's speaking to me when I open my Bible. Or I don't get anything out of my time in the Word. If those are some phrases that you have spoken to yourself or to somebody else, you might be a prime candidate for Scripture over application. And so that's what we're going to break down today. What it is, what are some things to kind of think through to help get yourself out of that place. And, you know, hopefully by the end of this episode, you might have maybe some greater motivation to dig back in, dive back in. And then when you're in, you may have a better chance of having some staying power. And this is, you know, this is some of this stuff is tried and true from experience. across Christian experiences, but as also I can say that this is the stuff that has kept me in. And by God's grace, I've been able to keep a consistent devotional life, even though I'm just like everybody else. Man, I'm not some super spiritual guy that just like... You know what I mean? When you see those pastor types, you're like, oh man, they just sit in the word and just everything... like rainbows and sunshine and they never sin, they never think an evil thought. I'm not one of those guys. I'm as regular Joe when it comes to Christianity as it gets. I mean, my, I don't know, lifestyle is just like yours. I spent this past weekend watching a ton of football, just like most other dudes sitting around watching This country, I love hanging out. I love entertainment. I love sports. I love just the regular stuff of this world. And yet even with all those distractions and with those passions, like I spent a lot of time on some of that stuff, I've still been able to have a consistent. I don't mean perfect. I just mean consistent. Month in and month out. good, hearty time in the Word. And I'm not saying it's like I'm perfect at seven days a week. I do have seven-day weeks, but I also have three-day weeks. There are months where I might go two weeks without being in the Word. But what I mean by consistent just means that there's always a return back. There's always a return back to... There's more season in the Word than out of the Word. And so these are some of the things that have encouraged me and helped me as I kind of ridded myself of this over-application of Scripture issue that I found in myself. And once we get in, you'll see why this is so common and this is so prevalent no matter what... type of church you go to or whatever. So I think we'll do Word of the Day first and then we'll dive in, create a little more context and then just kind of three things for you to be thinking about as you approach. Hopefully, maybe tomorrow morning you renew your appointment with Jesus with some of these things in mind and maybe you have a more consistent crack at it because Hopefully your expectations are more balanced and more level. So let's dive in the word of the day. This is a word that if you've been in church for any amount of time, you've come across this word, Psalm 19. It's a great psalm. One of the classic psalms that Sunday school Bible teachers, pastors use a lot because it speaks very clearly about important things, specifically the Word of God. But I want, we're going to look at Psalm 19, verses 7 to 11. And as you're listening to this psalm, I want you to kind of compare it, put it on a devotional level that the psalmist here is, it's kind of, this is kind of a reflection of David's kind of devotional life and his devotional experience. This is kind of what he's describing here are the, I don't know, the substance that holds him together with God in the daily, in and out. And so just kind of as you're hearing these words and we're reading this together, just kind of compare this, what you're hearing here with kind of what are the things that you hold on to that keeps you motivated, that keeps you going in your personal walk, your personal devotional life, and things like that. So starting with verse 7, it says this, Psalm 19, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. In verse 10 to 11, these are kind of the things that just kind of really hopefully will reorient us what you believe is possible in your personal quiet times with Jesus. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, in keeping them there is great reward. Verse 10-11, those verses were penned off a authentically and that's I know that that's sometimes hard for us to really comprehend and understand in a modern American church culture because we're so used to people saying things that really don't we know that they don't mean in the depths of their soul we we hear people you know talk about you know the bible oh so good so good and There can be such an inauthenticity to the corporate American church experience. Your soul knows as you hear that. A person means that, yes, it's good. I believe it's good, but that goodness doesn't drive my life. That's not what's happening here in Psalm 19. When the psalmist says, when he's talking about the law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the precepts of the Lord, The commandment of the Lord. All those things of the Lord are the word of God. It's the same Bible that you and I have. It's just we have the completed set. And this person is saying that all these things are to be desired, more desired than gold. Because this is what this person has actually experienced. Now that's the kicker. That's the most important thing that... This person really believes that, man, if you can just spend enough time with the word of the Lord, there is great reward and it's more valuable than even financial riches. Now, I know that's hard for you and I to kind of ascend to in our materialistic modern day society. But I just said that not to make you feel bad. that, oh man, if I don't, if I'm not there, I'm not really a Christian. No, that's not the point, but just to kind of reorient, reorient our whole approach to spending time to our devotional life. Because I think sometimes we just get, we get very jaded and conditioned by kind of the, the inauthenticity of what, of everything and the, the artificialness of, modern faith. And you know me, I don't beat up the church. I'm not one of those people. It's like, man, the church needs to really change and get better. No, I get it. I get it. The church is existing in a context of extreme materialism. It's existing in a context when there's really no threat to our survival as American Christians. And so the church is having to to appeal to people on a level that the people of biblical times were never at or could never get to, aside from the wealthiest classes. And most of those people didn't really have a relationship with God, a real relationship with God. And that's just, we are now the wealthiest people, all of us, even the lower classes. We are... a million times more wealthy than the regular Joe of the biblical time. So the church is having to exist in that context. So I don't beat it up for what it's having to do to appeal to the masses. Now, yes, we don't want to compromise truth as we appeal to the masses, but it still has to find a relevancy in the fact that we don't, need Jesus to survive. You know, I'm putting that in air quotes, you know, understanding that I understand theologically every single person needs Jesus to survive because he's the one in him we live and we have our being. Like I get that from a theological, but I'm just saying atheist person today just is going to open their fridge and there's going to be food in it. It's just, you know, it's, It's just a different time. So I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole. But just kind of say that I don't want to shoot. I didn't read Psalm 19 so that we'd sit there and feel guilty and be like, oh, man, geez, I don't. view my time in the word as as more valuable than money you know i just say that to say it's it's so like god gets it god understands the the context in which we're trying to to walk out the faith today that's not what i so all that to say if you're if you listen that word and you're just like guilt and shame no get get out of that we're just kind of recalibrating What's possible? That's why I read this. What's possible? What was this person's experience versus my experience? This person is experiencing something in their individual walk with the Lord that is driving them to just crazy good spiritual outcomes. That's what we want. That's what we want. That's all. And I think we've been jaded a little bit to not really trust that those spiritual outcomes can happen from just me with my Bible. And we've kind of been duped into the, you know, to really have those spiritual outcomes. I need all these other people to do these things. I need this dynamic corporate experience and, you know, lasers lights and and emotions and things of that nature and so we leave behind where this person found these incredible spiritual outcomes so that's with that word of the day i want to dive into a couple things so what do we mean when i say over applying scripture there's this uh There's this kind of tendency that we've been led to as American Christians. Or there's this hope, there's this expectation that when I open my Bible, it's like opening the heavens. And all of a sudden, the sun's going to pour out. A dove's going to land on my head. And these very relevant, practical... hard-hitting, inspirational truths are just going to,
SPEAKER_01:boom,
SPEAKER_00:knock me upside the head, perfectly scripted to me and my current life circumstances. Now, tell me if that's not some level of your hope. I won't say expectation, but maybe your hope. Because we hear of these isolated incidents everywhere. of pastors and different teachers and stuff speaking about these deep times in the Word and these real practical impacts that it had on their lives. And we never hear about the other 364 days that year in their walk with the Lord. And so it can set up kind of this, and none of those things that those people are saying aren't true, It just needs to be put in a correct context for us to really, I think, get the most out of our individual walk in the Bible. And so over applying scripture, what I mean by that is every time you open the word, it's just like, Lord, what are you telling me today? God, what are you speaking to me today? If that's the posture of your heart today, And it was the posture of my heart when, you know, kind of early years of my faith where it's like, okay, Lord, here I am. I carved out this time. I woke up early. Boom, come on, hit me. And you flip through the Bible and you do the thing where you just lay the Bible down. And the first page that opens to you, you're like, okay, this is going to be it. And you read it and it's just like, yeah, I didn't. Hmm. Okay. And then you read it again. You're like, okay, Lord, you're really going to speak to me this time. And you read it and you just say, huh, I got nothing. Like nothing individually. Like I hear that word. I understand like the overall point of that word. But what, like that's nothing like new and amazing and relevant to me. It seems to be pretty traditional, old-fashioned, standard things that I've been... hearing about some Sunday school, you know, when I was eight years old. And that's what I mean by over-applying scripture, where every time you open the book, it has to be this personal relevance, practical application to you and whatever you're dealing with in that moment, that day. That's what I mean by over-applying scripture. So Three things. If any of this is resonating with you or there's somebody you know that's kind of shared this burden of their heart, pass this along because we're going to real quick walk through three things to help get you out of this over-application issue so that you can maybe set yourself up to be in the same place as the psalmist in Psalm 19. And have these incredible deep spiritual outcomes and that come from this just consistency this kind of this kind of uh drum beating consistency over months and years and you get 10 years down the road and you're just like whoa i look at where i'm at today versus where i was at 10 years ago i look at what i'm experiencing in the word today versus what i was 10 years ago, and I'm just, I'm in a, I'm just in a different place. And you can see it was your time in the word that got you there. So let's spend a few minutes getting ourselves out of this over application process and hopefully into a better spot. So first thing I want you to think about, replace you with him. Okay. This is I learned this and I'll share kind of how I learned this personally. But here's what you want to do. You want to replace you with Him. When you have that mindset of, okay, Lord, I'm opening my word and speak to me, give me something. You are now the centerpiece of your devotional experience. It's primarily centered on you. And so what we want to do, what we see clearly in Psalm 19, is we want to make the Lord the subject of your reading, not yourself. We get in the Bible, not that there's not wisdom to be gleaned about us as humans and our condition. There's tons to be gleaned in there. I'm not saying we don't learn about ourselves in the Word. But our primary... is to build our understanding of God. So every time you open that book and you can pull out something that either you learn or is reinforced about the character, nature, person of God, you just did a very important step in your personal walk.
UNKNOWN:Okay?
SPEAKER_00:So how did I learn this? I learned this a few years back. I don't know if you have one of those Bible in a year kind of things, but somebody gave me one. I wanted to read through the word chronologically. And so someone gave me one of these chronological Bibles where it's very similar to just... you know, a regular Bible, but a lot of the Old Testament and especially the Gospels are all sorted in a place to where you're reading all the events kind of as they occurred in timeline order. And I tell you, you probably heard me say it took me three years to read the one-year Bible because number one, those chunks are just too big. They're just too big. I went over that in the, when you don't want to read your Bible, like Read smaller. Read smaller. And so at first I was stressing out trying to keep up with the daily readings. And I was like, I don't have to finish this in a year. I can take as long as I want. And so it took me three years to get through the one-year Bible. But as I was moving through the Old Testament in particular, and I'm like most Christians, like, man... I cannot wait to get to the Gospels. I can't wait to get to the real Jesus stuff, the stuff that I understand. I'm like anybody else. Old Testament, I was not super pumped to get through, but it was a discipline. It's the first three quarters of this chronological Bible, so I can't skip that. I started diving in, and I'm telling you, for the first month... nothing amazing. Even the first six months, nothing incredible, nothing amazing. But once I got past six months towards a year, my faith was just, I could just, it was increasing so, so much on such a real level. And I couldn't attribute it to any specific individual word that that I was getting from my Bible reading. What it was was just the Old Testament is this repetitive, it's this just repetitive story after story after story over the nature, the character of who God is and his power, his glory, his majesty, his judgment, how he deals with evil, how he repays good. And there's But it's kind of this consistent drumbeat of, here's God, here's God, here's God, here's God, here's God. And I started to notice after a year that my faith was being built so much, not by some individual amazing word, but just over time, dragging my eyes and thinking, Constantly the character and the nature of God and a clear biblical understanding of who God is. Not some bumper sticker, but just even the tough stuff where God orders the murder of nations and things like that. I was able to put those... those caveats into this overarching, clear understanding of who God is. I'm telling you, I just noticed my personal walk and my ability to handle hardships and my ability to stick with the Lord even in difficult times. It just started increasing like crazy. These real kind of outcomes that you read about in the book of Psalms were incredible. How David's able to remain faithful in the hardest of circumstances. My circumstances, nothing compared to David. But I was starting to experience that. I was starting to feel that. And the Lord was showing me. It was this connection as I was replacing myself as the most important figure in my devotional life with God as the most important figure in my life. by discipline, I was forcing myself to recite the character and nature of God every day. And I can't tell you of an individual moment in that three year process, especially the first two years I was spent in the Old Testament where I was like, oh, that was awesome. And I felt like the heavens opened up and just had this life transforming moment. But it was just the totality of that entire experience where I walked out of that with such a clear understanding of who God was and how he interacted with his people that I was rock solid. I was rock solid. There was no doubt in my mind how this works. So, just naturally, I started living in the light of that. my walk, my actual practical walk with the Lord became easier, not because he was giving me these individual nuggets of goodness, but because I was, I was living in this just clear, crystal clear understanding of the greatness and the majesty of God. And that was, that was huge for me. I encourage everybody like, If you're having a tough time, like, well, I want to read my Bible, but where do I go? Just start in Genesis. Or if you have a Bible in a year, you want to do a cross? It doesn't matter. Start at the beginning and just start reading. But read it with, I just want to understand more about this story of God. Not the story of you, but I just want to understand deeper the story of God and how it all works or how it all has worked out throughout ancient history. And I'm telling you, there's going to be outcomes to that. So first thing, make sure you replace yourself with him. Replace you with him. Make the Lord the subject of your reading, not you. Second thing, we touched on this a little bit. The big idea is the best idea. The big idea is the best idea. And I've been teaching Bible for a lot of years now to a lot of age groups, especially youth. And there's one conversation I had with a high school senior girl that she'd been in Christian school, church her whole life. And she just came to me and was like, Mr. Scott, I've heard it all before. I was her Bible teacher. It was just like this moment of like, is there anything else that you have for me? She was in my Bible class. I was all pumped up, like, this is going to be awesome, and I can't wait for you guys to engage with Jesus and the Word. And she just had a moment. It wasn't like she was rebellious or anything, but just kind of this moment of honesty where I opened it up to the class, like, hey, where are you guys at? What are you guys thinking? What are you feeling? And she was honest. She's like, Mr. Scott, we've heard this all before. So it's hard for me to get really pumped like you think I should be. I remember at that moment, this was years ago, I was kind of stumped by that. And now I see it so much clearly, so much more clearly because she was hearing the big ideas and waiting for a smaller idea to come in. and kind of transform her life. She'd been in the church and came from a great faithful Christian family. And so she had been immersed in the big ideas, the constant drum beats since she was a little kid of God, his character, salvation, Christ, his love, dying on the cross for our sins. And her problem wasn't that she was hearing the wrong stuff. It was just that her heart was... incorrectly crying for something smaller. Crying for what we often do when we open our Bible. Okay, Lord, give me a specific word today. She was like, when does that happen? And she didn't realize that she was missing the biggest, most important stuff. Because the big idea is the best idea. And these big ideas, as you read Scripture, you're going to see they're repeated constantly. over and over and over and over and over again because the big idea is the best idea so the bible spends a lot of time revisiting the most important themes because this is this is how it works okay and i'm going to go to second samuel 22 1 through 3 real quick just to back back to david and this is a a song of david after he was delivered um from his enemies. And this is why this is so important, because he articulates it well. Verse 1, it says, And David spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, from the hand of Saul, he said. When that whole issue between him and Saul, and he was running, hiding in caves and all this stuff, Saul trying to kill him, and that all gets handled, all gets finally done with, and he doesn't have to do that anymore. This is his song to God. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my Savior, you save me from violence. Those verses are so essential for us to really understand what the purpose of an individual devotional life is. The purpose of an individual devotional life is to build your rock as big and as strong as you possibly can. And then what we do, what our hearts will naturally do, is they'll find a cleft. And that's another, the cleft of the rock. God told Moses, I'll pass by, you hide in this cleft of the rock and your life will be spared. That's what produces good, faithful Christian living. In our devotional life, when we read the Word and we come across these big ideas, the first time you read it, it'll be a pebble. And then you read it again, and that pebble turns into a small rock. And then you read it again, that small rock turns into a larger rock. You read it again, that larger rock starts to turn into a boulder. The goal by the end of our lives is that we have this mountain face, like half dome. And there's just this, we've built this rock of the character and nature of God, this just like abiding eternal truth. And it's become so clear and you become so convinced because you've read it over and over and over again. Now, What do you do? What does David do? My deliverer in whom I take refuge. He built this rock concept, this mountain, and he found a cleft in it that's perfect David-sized cleft that he could just fit in. And he just stayed in there. Even in the worst of circumstances, he just stayed because he knew he was going to be okay. He knew he was going to get out of it. He knew... He knew ultimately he was safe, secure. So he was able to respond appropriately to the moment because of his devotional life, because of his personal walk with Christ. So that's what I feel like, that's what I'm afraid that we're missing today in modern Christian society is we become so individualistic, we become so We've been trained to just believe that, oh man, when I open this word, I need to get something for me right now, something that's like life-changing, earth-shattering, that's like, man, how did God know that I was struggling with that today? And you're going to find there are other moments. Those moments are definitely there, but that's more the 365th day, not the previous 364. When those things happen, they've happened to me. I hold on to those things. They're amazing moments. But what's really formed my faith is constantly just being reminded of these big, big concepts, these big ideas and letting them wash back over me. Because I've probably said on this podcast before, Christians... need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed. We need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed. Evangelism, we get instructed into the basic truths and we accept them and we repent and we move forward with Christ. And then from that point on, it's a lot of reminders. It's a lot of just going back. Remember, this is Jesus. This is what he did. This is who he is. This is God. This is why Jesus had to come. And these things just keep washing you, washing you, washing you. And And this huge mountain of faith just gets of impenetrable fortress gets built around you and you find your safety in it. So then you're able to respond to even the worst of times with the most faith filled lifestyle. And that's what we're after. That's what we want to do. Christian living is simple, but it's not easy. So we don't want to make it complicated. We don't want to make it seem like it's hard to attain to mentally. It's not complicated. It's simple. There's some core truths that have to be held onto and stood on. But it's not easy. And that's why we need a rock to hide in. Because living this stuff, walking this stuff out is crazy. It's difficult. It's hard. And we need faith to match the difficulty of it and That's where our devotional life comes in. All right. So first thing, replace you with him. Make sure the Lord is the subject of your reading, not yourself. Next, the big idea is the best idea. So as you come across something, well, I already knew that. Good. Read it again. Read it again. Wash it over. I want you to realize that, oh, I just did the right thing. That what... What should have happened in my devotional life just happened. I read something that I already had understood, previously understood before. And now I'm reminded again of how important, how essential that it is. And that's brought back to the forefront of my mind because I'm going to encounter a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, a lot of tough things today. And a rock-solid, everlasting truth of God just was brought was put at the forefront of the mind. So that's fresher on my mind as I approach these, you know, the difficulties of life. Okay. So third thing, practice preferred pronouns in worship. Sorry, I had to be a little cute with it, but we want to practice preferred pronouns in worship. And this is something that the Lord kind of directed me to a few years ago that we need to make sure that When I say worship, our singing, our corporate singing. Singing is such a large part of our corporate experience in church and our individual experience in church because how many of us have our worship playlist on our phones and stuff that we go to when we need some Jesus pickup, and that's awesome. Please keep doing that. But I want you to pay attention to the pronouns used in the songs, okay? First thing I want to say, this is not a modern Christian worship songwriter bash session. It's not what this is about. It's not what this is about. Pretty much every song that I come across in kind of modern Christian worship genre is incredibly... has incredible intentions with it. I can just see, I can just sense the songwriter and the place that they're in and what they want to describe to the people of God and the experience they want the people of God to have. I'm one of those that give people the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure there's some nasty, evil songwriters out there that are sinful and using their platform for evil gain. I don't try to predict that. I take everybody as they present themselves to me in the church until they prove opposite. So I'm not a Christian worship basher kind of person. But we do need to be discerning. We do need to understand. And so we need to understand that we need to have preferred pronouns in our worship. And we want to make sure the songs that we're singing trend more the majority of them were singing songs with the pronouns he and him and less of the I, me. Okay? Now, those I, me songs, I'm not saying they're evil. I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm not saying you have to never sing them. No. I'm just saying be mindful because I've sat through a lot of worship sets in my time in the church. I've organized worship sets. I've put on Christian events where worship, you know, I've Trust me, I've even led worship myself, if you can believe that or not. It's really bad when I did it, but I tried. So I've done just about everything there is in worship, from leading it, organizing it, planning it, everything. So I've noticed that there have been worship sets where All the pronouns are I, me. I, I, I, God, I want to this. I want to know you more. I want to experience you more. Come down to me. Send me. I've debated sharing some specific songs, but again, that would get me kind of in the bashing mood. And I don't want to do that. I want you to be able to do this for yourself. Remember that phrase. That worship singing is another drumbeat that is going in our hearts and our minds. And so the pronouns that we're constantly singing out and these songs are so catchy and that we sing them. That's why God wants his word put to music so that we can just be always singing, always reciting these truths. And there is a personal experience. There is an I and a me when it comes to the experience of God. But when that is dominant, I'm noticing that the I, me pronouns are kind of dominating the Christian church worship airwaves right now. And again, I'm nothing against, but we have to make sure that what we're reciting more are declarative statements about, God, this is you. He has done this. He is this person. These are the things that God is, and put those to some amazing, catchy choruses and things of that nature. And there's plenty of those songs as well. But it's really, if you want to kind of watch it for yourself, it's really as easy as just watching the pronouns. Seriously. And if... If all your kind of playlist is me-centered, there's just a lot of I, I, I, God, I. I'm singing I, me, me, me, me, me, me, and even we's in there. Because those are all songs about me, my experience with the Lord. And those he, him are these kind of, God, this is you. This is you. I want to hide in the cleft of God. clear understanding of who you are. So make sure in your worship time and your personal playlists and things of that nature, make sure you have a majority dose of preferred pronouns in your worship. Because that's big. That's going to do a lot of conditioning for when you do open your Bible. That'll condition what your hopes are, what your expectations are, what you think... You know, when you sing one of those songs of, meet with me, God, I want to know you. I want to be with you. I want, you know, you're going to take that with you to your personal time. And when that hope isn't met, you close your Bible and say that was a failure. When, no, you just, you probably, if you opened your Bible and you drug your eyes across those words, something faith building did happen. So have some joy and give yourself some credit for it. So that's it for today. I hope that helps. Know somebody who's a chronic over-applier of scripture. Please share this with them. If you think this has been helpful, useful to you, remember the experience of Psalm 19. And that can be our experience if, again, we replace you with him. We make sure the big idea is the best idea and we practice preferred pronouns in worship. Man, you're going to be patient with it. Give it time. Like I said before in a previous episode, measure your devotional health in terms of years, not days. Just stick with it. I'm telling you, you'll get consistent because every time you do it, you'll walk away being like, that was great. That was everything it was supposed to be. And so it becomes motivating as opposed to defeating. So that's it. I've taken enough of your time. Thanks, as always, for joining us. We love you. Have a great week. Until next time, Christian Well, my friends.