ManChurch: Daily Disciplines

All right, fellas. Micah 6:8. Got your Bible? Always good to have a Bible when doing Bible study. Why? Because I could make stuff up. Your preacher, your pastor in your church might make stuff up, or you might have questions about what's in the word. The thing you don't wanna do with the word is keep it dusty, keep it on the shelf. Never be scared of it. If you're ever wondering where the books of the Bible are, they're in the index. If you are sitting in church and someone says, turn to the Book of Enoch, And you can't find it in the index. That's a good start. That's a good question to ask him: why the Book of George isn't in the Bible in the index. So I want to talk about daily disciplines, and I want to talk about it in the context of as men living in two realms. What I am actively guarding against today, and I'm doing my best not to do this, is I don't want to put you in bondage. to a set of formulaic obligations that neither you or I can upkeep. A lot of us have been raised in churches or been in religious environments, and we end up walking away with more guilt than joy. I end up walking away with more shame than understanding and insight. And unfortunately, that's a total misrepresentation of Christ and of his word. So my balance here with that is not giving you too much formula and a weight that you can't carry is the fact that men require goals and we require firm outlines for our life. We love it. We love impossible goals and we love, we love guardrails. We like impossible things to conquer in ourselves, and conquering ourselves is the most audacious one that we have. With that in mind, let me start with 2 thoughts and then a general overview. Number one, what does God require from you as a man? Malachi 6:8 says that. 6:8, I'm gonna read it to you from the ESV. He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? So breaking that down, to do the right thing. And to be in love or passionate about kindness. Now, kindness means mercy and goodness. So do the right thing, to be in love with the concept of mercy towards yourself and towards others, and goodness towards yourself and towards others. And 3, to walk. Now, to walk means side by side as a shared experience, to walk humbly with your God, to walk In a shared experience with your God, walking discreetly, walking in self-control. So when you put it all together, the Hebrew paints this powerful picture for us as men of a quiet, side-by-side journey with God where there's justice and mercy and goodness is a natural outflow of our life because we're simply staying in step with God. I find personally when mercy and goodness are difficult for me, I'm often outside of— out of step with God. So what is required of you as men? So when you ask yourself in the dark of night, what am I supposed to do? What does God really require of me? It's really simple. Do the right thing, love the right thing, and walk with him. That's it. If you're carrying any guilt or thought that it's about anything else other than that, Then my challenge is to you is you're going to have to shed something. You're either going to have to shed the word or religion, because this is the sum total of what's required of us. Now, it's always necessary to interpret things, and so there's another thing that I want to talk about: the purpose of man. So what's God require of you, and how do we as humans interpret that purpose? There's something called the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Sounds complicated. It's really not. So back when England was having a civil war, and they did have one, and it was religious, it was a religious civil war, a group of English and Scottish preachers got together because they were in civil war against the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church had all these rules and requirements for men and women and people to live by, one of them being you couldn't read the word yourself and a whole bunch of other bits and pieces we won't go into. And these guys came together and they created something called a catechism. Now, a catechism is a word that simply means a teaching tool. And the idea of this teaching tool is that if you've learned these things in the catechism, it will give you basic foundational theology for the rest of your life. That if you could just memorize these things, you would have all that you need as a Christian person walking forward. So the very first question that they answer within this Westminster Shorter, because there's a longer one, that's how you get the two names, the longer catechism and the shorter one. You can tell the difference because one's shorter. I know, complicated. So the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the very first question they asked was, what was the purpose of a man's life? So Micah's answered what's required of us by God, and they're answering what's the purpose of a man's life. Here it is. The purpose of a man's life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That's it. To glorify God, to respect and highly value God, and to enjoy him forever. So if you put those 2 things together, Micah's saying, listen, what's required of man? What does God require of you? Do the right thing, love the right thing with kindness, and walk humbly with God. And the catechism saying, just enjoy God and love him forever. That's it. So when you combine this, you're enjoying his presence. You're walking with him through life together in recognition of him. And you're enjoying every moment of him. And you're aware every moment that he's aware of you. So that's a very big thought. That means that it includes fishing, includes hunting, includes going to work. It means that he's in the presence of your road rage while you're watching TV, while you're having arguments, and while you're in the midst of a sexless marriage and you're watching pornography. God is in your midst. Yeah, that one's a bit nasty, isn't it?

That—

but it's the reality. So we often want to compartmentalize our life. and think that God's only going to be in the good bit, not in the bad bit. But God promises that as we walk through life, he's going to be with us in every aspect of that life. And no aspect of our life is hidden. Now, if we think back to what we talked about last month about the concept of adoption, he will never leave us and forsake us, and he promises that. And we talked last month that someone was asking a question about what do you do with the fact that you Have been abandoned all your life, and how do I know God won't do it? This is how we answer that question: because we know we're walking with Him, and we're in the we're in the ongoing practice of being with Him. That's how we can tell. So daily disciplines. Let me give you a random weird thought, and then we'll get into the disciplines and practices. So God is Spirit, made the earth which is physical. Made us who were physical and were in it. However, we are made in his image, which is spiritual. So God is spirit who made the earth, which is physical, who made us who were physical in it, and made us in his image, which is spiritual. So the world and the universe is a spiritual place with a physical manifestation. We are spiritual beings with a physical manifestation. The universe is spiritual and physical. It is multidimensional. It is not one or the other. You can't have one without the other. These things are combined. Now, this isn't science fiction, it's theological fact. So when we talk about physical disciplines or daily disciplines, these are things that we do physically. But we understand that these physical things are not separated from the spiritual dimension. In fact, the practice of the physical is in fact a manifestation of the spiritual. Am I with you?

With me?

Okay, we'll have a chat about it in a minute if we need to. So imagine it this way. There's 2 orbs, 2 orbs rotating, 2 orbs intersecting like a Venn diagram. The spiritual and the physical meeting. And at the intersection of those 2 points are you. You are the connection between the spiritual and the physical. And you, as a creation of God, are designed to live both within the physical and within the spiritual realm. God has given us the tools to effectively cross between those 2 realms. Now, often in our Western society, this is very difficult to understand. We are 98% physical. In indigenous cultures, this is very much the normal. In Hebrew culture and early Christian mysticism, often what happens is that they would spend more time in a sense to the spiritual as opposed to the physical. That's where we get a lot of the Christian mysticism from. There was a very clear understanding that the spiritual is far greater. And in, again, in indigenous cultures, Mm-hmm. The spiritual is far greater than the physical. They put greater port on those things. So what God has given us as men is given us tools where we can effectively cross between those realms. So we are never alone, we are never forsaken. And I, I've, I can just tell you honestly, I've seen some things phys— spiritually in terms of the spiritual realm manifesting in the physical that are absolutely mind-blowing to me.

Hmm.

Mind-blowing. I remember outback, some of the spiritual things that I saw when I was in the bush are incredible, but they're fire pit talking cuz people think you're crazy and they just have to get to know you a little bit to know you are, and that's okay. So there's 3 things that stand out for me in terms of discipline for us as Christian men daily that we should be engaged in. Number one is worship. Number— worship is very easily defined as treating God like God. With your whole life every day. That's the simplest definition of worship. Prayer is the communication that flows. Worship, I believe, opens up the portal between the 2 realms, acknowledging who God is in a physical realm, acknowledging him in the spiritual realm. Prayer is the communication that goes between those 2 realms. Prayer is the language that when we're talking from our physical realm to the spiritual realm, Prayer is that conversation that happens between those 2 places. The portal that worship creates, we now communicate from one realm to another with prayer. And the Bible, the Bible is a physical manifestation of that portal. It's the guide given to us from the spiritual realm into the physical realm. Don't just see the Bible, and we can often be led to, as a physical book. It is human beings' attempt to capture spiritual insight and world. It's our attempt to put between leather spiritual principles. If you see it just as a physical book, then you will respect it and read it like a physical book. If you see it as a spiritual toolkit and master plan, then you'll understand there's a lot more in there that you need to find out about. And you'll understand that God is trying to speak to you about things that That transcends your physical with a sense of the metaphysical. All right, how we go with that? We good? All right, keep going.

Worship.

Now what worship isn't is singing for an hour on Sunday. That's not worship. Why the hell they have to turn the lights off to worship? I don't understand that anymore. That's just a new thing. You got to have a concert to have worship. We don't. I ran a church for a while. We didn't have the band, so we used to play Mr. Bean. Brilliant. Different story. Worship is a lifestyle honoring God above everything else. It's an attitude and action that says, God, you are bigger than anything else, and I value you above everything else. So unmute for a minute, fellas, and we'll have a chat. Talk to me about acts of worship that you engage in. What sort of things have you done in terms of acting of worship? For me, an act of worship is thanking God for business success. For me, that's an act of worship. Anyone got another one?

Can you hear me? Yep. For me, brother, The acts of worship would be— I guess for me it'd be more giving thanks, like you said, and giving praise that way. But for me, and I'm just being honest because that's how I feel I could be in Man Church, is that for most of my life I was just totally disobedient, willfully disobedient, and just rebellious. So now for me, my form of worship Is just being obedient to his word with my diet, with my thoughts, with my deeds.

So I think that's very good, Dave. That's very good.

I think that's my form of worship. It's just being obedient.

I know for myself, I think my form of worship is working out in the morning with my wife. It's going to work. It's blessing the people that work with me. It's being great to all the customers I meet. It's an act of worship. It says everything we do, we should do is unto the Lord.

It's very good.

Very good.

Anybody else?

Any act of kindness towards others and yourself.

Yeah.

Yes. Yes.

Thanking God for a business betrayal because it got you out of a situation that you You don't need to be in. Here's bad. Here's one that ruffles some feathers: thanking God for getting out of a bad marriage and into a good one. Sometimes the greatest prayers that answers the prayers we get are the ones He never answers. Sometimes He's got to lead us out of a difficult thing into a new thing. And for me, an understanding of worship for that is, "Hey God, I'm really thankful for where I'm up to in this." I understand that you are the writer of all things and the maker of the tapestry, and you're in control. Alright, next point, prayer. So worship, daily discipline, prayer, the second discipline. And we're gonna, we're actually gonna pray at the end of this together. So that'll make some of you delightfully uncomfortable, which is great. Prayer is an ongoing conversation that has no limits, no bounds, no subject, no form restrictions. It is a communication that flows through the portal of worship. As I said, it's a communication that starts with an acknowledgment that you're walking with God and you're talking with God. You become intimate with whom you pray, to whom you pray, and for whom you pray. You become intimate to whom you pray, with whom you pray, and for whom you pray, because prayer produces intimacy. It's a conversation. You get intimate with your wife and your kids when you talk with them. We all know this as men. We spend time with our kids, we connect with our kids. We spend time with our wife, we connect with our wife. And that's the conversation. You spend time with God talking to God about what's going on in your life. And you become intimate with him. And praying with your wife and your kids, it's a good thing. I'd encourage you to do it. That being said, some of you have never done that, and you find that a difficult thing to do because it's an intimate and a vulnerable thing to do. And if you've never done it and you're trying a new thing, it becomes difficult to do. You know, it's, man, I don't know how to do this. I've never done this before. Most of us have never prayed in front of other people because it's like, that feels weird. I ain't doing that crap. The reason it feels weird is because you feel vulnerable. Because when you're in a spiritual place and you're actually praying, then that opens up an area of your soul and your heart that you've never maybe exposed to other people before. And at the end, we're going to close out, man church. We're going to turn off all the bits and pieces and and turn off all the bits and pieces. And then what we'll do is we'll have a time of prayer together. So, any thoughts on prayer?

Anyone?

Anyone find it really easy, or—

I know I've never been comfortable praying out loud in groups of people because to me it's just something real personal between me and my Almighty God. And I don't know, Jesus even talks about it, is when you pray, go into your closet, don't be out praying like the heathens. And the other extreme, I've gone to lots of group meetings, and the longer they pray, the more they babble, the more I get What the heck am I doing here? I just assumed go to the bar and have a beer would be more edifying. So I'm always fighting that line.

Good.

Sam? I had an uncle. I had an uncle, and when they would ask him to pray, the whole church would groan because he'd start in Genesis and end up in Revelation, and he'd tell God what's wrong and what to do. And one day my cousin was about half an hour away from his place, and He phoned up my uncle and he says, hey, tell your dad to start praying. We're leaving up here now. They were invited to his place for dinner. He says, we don't want the food getting cold. So there's that type of prayer. And there's the type of prayer from an honest heart. God, I need you because the older you live, the less you have a plan B. God is everything. And a lot of things in life we have, I'll try this and if it don't work, I'll try the next thing.

Wow.

But when God is your only plan, it has to work. I say to a lot of people, I don't have a plan B. This is all I've got. What could a plan B be?

No, there's no— I agree, mate.

There's—

I don't even think there's a plan A. I've lived long enough to know that every plan A I've ever had never worked out. Yeah, so I'm with you, mate. You've got whatever plan you're in the midst of at the moment.

Very good.

Yep.

To me, prayer is, I believe that to get God involved in your life and what's going on, you've got to ask him. It's like asking your mate to come help you do something at your house. You're not going to get the help unless you ask him to come in and help you. And it's not like you're pleading for help, but you're just simply saying, dog, come on, get involved. I've got this project that I'm thinking about. I'm working on. I need to I need your help in this process. And it's just, it's asking him to involve himself in it. I think it's really technically required, just asking your friend to come help you with something. You're not going to get that help unless you ask.

So Bible intake. So worship, prayer, Bible intake. It doesn't matter how you get it. You just got to get it. So if guys, if you could just hit mute again, we've got a bit of an echo going on. Appreciate it. Thank you. So Melissa and I listen to our Bible first thing in the morning, and we just pull the Bible app up. We've got a program. We sit there in bed. I go get first cup of coffee, put it on, and we sit there and listen for 15 or 20 minutes. And we're listening to the word. We'll discuss it. We'll talk about it. Sometimes I'll nap through it, whatever it is, but it's this thing that we do every morning. And it's that consistent daily thing that I think is really important to understand with the Bible is you don't sprint the Bible. You don't try and consume it. Proverbs is great if you don't know where to start in the Bible. Proverbs has got 31 chapters. So we're on April 11th today. So the first thing you can do if you don't know where to start is just open the book of Proverbs to chapter 11 and read it. And there you go. And you can do that any day of the month. If you find yourself going a week or two weeks, a month, and you feel convicted, you want to get back in the word. But where do I start? Okay, just pick up Proverbs.

Start there.

The Gospels are a great place to start with the Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Start them and read them. Just pick them up and read them. Understand who Christ is. There's a lot of Bible programs. That you start in Genesis and you read through. The one that I enjoy doing the most, and I find myself doing every year, is the Chronological Bible. And what the Chronological Bible is, it's taken all the stories of the Bible and it's put them in there chronological, not according to the canon of the books, but according to the time date through the entire thing. And I find that fascinating, particularly when reading the Gospels. You get a little bit of Matthew, you get a little bit of Luke, you get a little bit of John. Then you get up into Acts, you get a little bit of Acts, then you get a little bit of Ephesians, then a little bit of Corinthians, a little bit of Acts, and so it goes on. So you're actually able to see the Bible as it was written in terms of as it was a lived experience. And you go through the Book of Judges and you're reading a little bit about Samson, then you're reading a little bit about Samuel, and so it goes on like that. So it becomes a very dynamic thing. So. If I'm doing yard work, I might listen to the Bible. I know Melissa, if she's painting or doing housework, she'll listen to an old Welsh preacher that we both love. So whatever you do and however you can combine these things, get the word into you. Make it a way and a role and a part of your life. What about you guys? Are there any things that you do? What do you do in order to get the book? Maybe you don't read the Bible regularly. Maybe you don't know where to start with the. Reading your Bible—that's valid, and that's something we're more than open to having a conversation about. So open it up to you guys: What do you do, and how do you do your daily Bible reading? What's worked for you? What hasn't?

Personally, I believe in the concept of first fruits. I want to give God the first of my day. So I don't let myself go online. I don't let myself read anything else or have breakfast or anything until I've at least had some of the word to nourish me spiritually. And I may—I got an app with TikTok. Used to be TikTok. I think it's called Life Bible now. Sometimes they'll pop up like a scripture of the day, and I'll read that. And sometimes I'll look at that in context, and that'll take me down a whole road. And other times, I'm—I got something on my heart, and I'm studying it. For Easter, I was. studying through that whole account of the cross and resurrection. So it varies, but it's always first thing of the day for me.

Okay. Very good. Anybody else? Bible for breakfast. That's a good one.

I know I've always loved the chronological as well, and I try to do that. Yep. And then I've also had a gentleman that he said, man, he's never read the Bible. He didn't know where to start. And so we get together once a week and we started in Samuel. I wanted him to hear about David. Now we're in Matthew and I'm just trying to give him a concept of what the Bible is. So it's been a little bit interesting for a guy that's never read it to just to see how he takes it in. But that's been fun too, jumping back and forth.

Very good. Any of you guys use devotional books at all? Here's one that's very famous and I find fantastic. It's called My Utmost for His Highest. It's an old school classic. And it starts with, it starts with a scripture and then a contemplation and a thought. And so it's stood the test of time. I like reading books by dead people because any preacher who's dead and his book's still around is a good fella. Most of these preachers that are out there selling books, you know, anyway, we won't get into that. That's a good one. I like that one. That's probably my go-to recommendation if you're looking for a So here's another couple of little ones. These, I did a sermon on the assurance of your salvation of stop asking Jesus into your heart. And I went to these little devotional books and they're theology books and I treated them as a devotion. So I would get up in the morning and I would read a chapter in this. It's got a, it's got a scripture in there and a chapter. So it's whatever that habit is that's going to get you to get up and do an activity focused on the word before you start your day.

Yeah.

So if you think about it, worship is acknowledging who God is. Prayer is talking to him, and that happens all the time as you're going through your day. And then you add the word into that. Yep.

I had a question for you. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry. Go on. I had a question. For me, when I've read books, and I don't know if I'm the only one, so if I messed up, then sorry, that's me. But when I would read books and like devotional type books, I always felt like it was like the Scofield. Like, I was always getting someone else's interpretation of scripture. And so it was just— and a lot of times it would contradict what I felt the Holy Spirit was trying to make me understand. I don't know if I'm the only one that was like that, but that's just how I felt about it.

Anyone got thoughts or comments on that?

Okay, I messed up. I feel similar.

Yeah.

Okay. I've definitely had some that I feel that way, but I've had others that don't. I think it takes a little discernment. It's no different than listening to a preacher and listen to brothers.

There's a lot of commentary I disagree with. And you're right, this listen to the spirit. And I, I try to look at it.

We got a little bit of a lag there, Angus. Go ahead, Angus, and I'll go back to Al. Go on, mate.

Oh, let me know if you can hear me now. I'll turn my video off. I'm out of bandwidth. Yeah, so I just, I don't agree with every commentary and they're not perfect. So go with what the Spirit tells you. And I think there's so many layers in scripture too. Like they may see it at one plane and you're seeing it a different thing and a whole different lesson. Does that come through okay audibly?

Yeah, no, that's great. Al, back to you, mate. What were you saying?

No, I was just saying, yeah, as far as commentary, I love it. There's some you agree with, there's some you don't, but it's just listening to preachers preach. There's some things you agree with, there's some things you don't. I'm sure there's people on here when we're talking, there's some things we agree with, there's some things we don't. That's how I look at devotionals. I think it's always a way to expand my horizons. And if you pray and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, then it's a good thing and it gives you discernment. So I think there's a pro and a con there. I wouldn't just read every devotional as the word of God, and I would just test it. Just like you said today, read your Bibles, make sure I'm not making things up. I think it's the same concept.

Yeah. So I like your point, Dave, and I understand it. There are some people that just bent on putting across a philosophy as opposed to trying to understand theology. That's why I always like to go back into these tried and true guys, the old dead guys. And sometimes you've gotta battle through a little bit of language. And again, that's why I like Utmost for Your Highest. I like that book because I like the guy's life. And when I read about the guy's life and what he went through as a Christian, And how he arrived at that series of devotions. It's absolutely fascinating for me. Again, to everybody's point, yours as well, Dave, Angus, ours, is there are some things in there I'd go, man, I don't know that. But it's a little bit like a smorgasbord. You've got a range of things. No one in their right mind likes Brussels sprouts. So the best thing you can do to avoid Brussels sprouts, because they are a result of the fall, is just not to eat the things. We don't have to throw the Brussels sprouts around the room. We just go, yeah, I'm gonna stick to this fried chicken fried steak and the potatoes because that's healthy for me, apparently. So what I do is I literally find through and dig through and find what I would call the meat of the work in someone else's buffet. I'm gonna take this from you. I'm gonna leave that one go. And, and I think that's just, and that you can, and you do that with exposure. And the other thing is if you come across something that Tickles you, you're not sure about, is talk to a mate about it. Have a conversation with someone in Signal. Have a conversation with one of the fellas in Man Church. Hey, listen, I found this thing. What do you think? The other thing is that the Bible is silent on it. It doesn't really matter. Now, knowing my audience a little bit, I'll just put this out there. Aliens aren't in the Bible. Do aliens exist? Yeah, I don't know.

What does the Bible say?

Yeah, it doesn't.

If I can read into this particular verse, you can read into any verse anything you particularly want. Do dogs go to heaven? Yeah, I don't know, but I really like my dog. I don't know, the Bible doesn't talk about dogs going to heaven. I want my dog to go to heaven. Your dog's in heaven with the aliens. And Bigfoot. It's okay, but the Bible's silent on it. The Bible's silent on it. Does that mean we're not supposed to think about those things? You can think about them all you want. So at some point, you stick to what the Bible's talking to, and you don't worry about the rest. Do you believe in creation? Is it 6 million years, 6 billion years, or 6 days? I don't know, man. It's a miracle. I'm going with 6 days because, like, it just says that. Yeah, but if you really look at the gap theology and the time of the tectonic plates— yeah, but like, I couldn't be bothered. I believe in aliens, Bigfoots, my dog's in heaven, and the earth was made in 6 days with the same level of faith. It doesn't matter. These are— we get tied up on the small things as opposed to looking at the big things. The big things are people's revelation that God loves them. That Jesus Christ died for them, shed his blood for them. His spirit came to seal those things. And if we would spend more time talking about and focusing on those things in our conversations with people, then I think they're essential things. I want to give you two more things, and I'll wrap it up. We got on a little bit of a tangent there. So three things in our daily disciplines: prayer, the word, and worship. Two things. That are symbolic in terms of how we connect with God. The first is baptism. There are 2 basic types of baptism. Baptism as a child, if you're Catholic, it's baptism. And, and then if you're a Protestant, it's child baptism or sprinkling or whatever. There's these both in Protestant and Catholic faith, there's infant baptism. There's also adult baptism. So baptism is a symbolic death and resurrection. That's about publicly identifying with Jesus Christ. The old you goes into the water, and the new you comes up out of the water without your past. So do I believe in infant baptism? Yeah, if you do, awesome. There's nothing anti-biblical about it. I think the biblical interpretation that I hold to Is it baptism because it is a sign of my death and resurrection with Jesus Christ? Is something I come to as a conscious decision as an adult. So that being said, can you be baptized as a baby and as an adult? Yes, you can. Does one negate the other? No, I don't. And again, can we spend hours negotiating theologically? Yeah, but I'd rather spend it on Bigfoot and coffee. So that's just the 2 premises that I have. None— none are invalid. All are valid. Do I personally believe in one from the Scripture more than the other? Yes, I do. But I believe in it because of the personal identification with baptism. My encouragement to you is baptism was given to us as a gift from God in identification. As an adult, as a man, I'm identifying with Christ through and up out of the water of baptisms. So if you come back to Christ, maybe you've got baptized as a child, maybe you got baptized as a young adult, and here you are, you've had a new collision and re-encounter with Christ, and you want to draw a new line in the sand. Can baptism be that line in the sand for you? Yes, it can. Can you be baptized more than once as an adult? Yes, you can. Do you need to? No, you don't. Is it wrong if you feel you should because you know you came to Christ, you went away from Christ, and you think, man, I just want to get this right. I need something for me. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. There's no rules. There's spirit, heart, and intent. There's why are you motivated that way? Out of guilt or out of grace? Do you feel I don't like that? Just tell me what to do. No, many rules make small men. That's why we only started with two.

One.

don't eat the tree. Then we graduated to 10. Jesus reduced it back to 2 again. So you'll never find me encouraging to have lots of rules. What I would encourage you to have is lots of relationship with Christ, his word, and that activity. But then that means you've got to make the decision about it. Yeah, that means you've got to make the decision about it, because there's nothing wrong in this area. There is your personal consecration. If one of you said— if Brendan said, man, I don't believe in adult baptism, Awesome. Rob believes in child baptism. He's Catholic. He has to. So he's going to do it. I'm going to support both of you guys. If Brandon all of a sudden says, man, I was baptized 6 years ago, but I want to go again, we need to all support him because there's nothing wrong in there. What there is, a man's passion to collide with Christ in the best way. And then the final thing symbolically is communion. So worship opens the portal. Prayer communicates between it. The Word is the Spirit of God, his Spirit manifest to us that we can engage in daily. 2 signs that we've got: baptism is identification with Christ. Communion is an example that we can use every day. In the Bible, in the New Testament, Jesus talks about taking wine and broken bread. Wine as the symbol of blood that Christ shed for us. The broken bread is the broken body of Christ that he did for our healing. And our wholeness, and that's what that is. It's symbolic. Now, the Catholic tradition teaches you something called transubstantiation—that is literally and physically the bread and the body and the flesh of Jesus Christ. I'll just leave it alone because personally, yeah, I don't see that personally. If you do, I'm 100% for you. Why? It's one of those things I'm not going to spend time on or lose friends over. What's important is the act of communion itself, engaging and having these symbols for us. What's important is what 1 Corinthians tells us, is that whenever you eat or drink of the Lord's cup, don't do it in an unworthy manner. That when you come to communion, you come having examined yourself, which brings it in another thing that we should have as men. We should have a sense of self-examination. I'm examining my heart. I'm worshiping, I'm praying, I'm reading. I'm coming to a place of wanting to celebrate today this thing with Christ, and that comes with self-examination. So bread loaf, the strangest communion I ever took in my life. They're symbolic. The strangest communion I ever took in my life was with a pastor. He'd been overseas. He was in the middle of a terrible marriage situation, hadn't had sex for probably 3 or 4 years. And he went on a mission trip to Thailand, which brought with danger, and he finds himself in a massage parlor. I'm not sure you accidentally end up in a massage parlor. And this thing did not go as he planned. Which I also wondered about at the time. It's like, how do you accidentally fall into a rub and tug? It's like a little bit of an obvious choice here. I'm going to end up. She's got a hand on my doodle. Something's going on. So there's one point you go go full Joseph mode and you leave, and there's the other one you lie in there and you come back to Australia and the guy who's preaching in church weekend you feel very guilty about and you need to have a chat. So here we are sitting in the midst of this city center in this middle of this massive plaza and this guy's pulling. Pouring his light out, and we got snot and tears everywhere. Everything's going on, and he's telling me about all this stuff. And he said he's always had a body; he's been bodied with pornography since he was a child. He was exposed to it at the age of four. So we get all this backstory, and he's never ever told anyone about this problem that he's ever had. So here we are, and I'm thinking I need to connect this guy with Christ. We need to draw a line in the sand. I want to do communion with him. The only thing we had was a hot dog stand. And they sold Snickers bars and Coke. So here we are sitting in this crowded center, breaking a Snickers bar and having a Coke, because symbolically these symbols were the body that Christ broke, broken for our sin, the blood that was shed for it. Now, was that a Coke? Yeah, it was. Now, it's— does it count because it's not juice and crackers? Yeah, it really counts more if you look at the spirit of grace in the word. It was the intent of sitting with a man and praying and getting him to connect with God around spiritual things. So I want to encourage you, you can do communion over anything. If you've got a business decision coming up, if you've got a challenge in your family, if you're wanting to just get up one morning and you're feeling far from God, man, pull out some sourdough and a coffee, break some toast and have a coffee and commit your day to God. Look at these things as being powerful things and symbols that as men that we can connect with. Worship, prayer, Bible reading, baptism, and communion. So I'm going to turn off all the bits and pieces, and then we can have us a chat. Yeah. I'll do this and— all right. Over to you, fellas. Thoughts?

Yeah, I do. Something you just said resonated with me and it's, and correct me if I'm wrong, Doc, still a student. The act Is far more important than the symbology. So sitting with somebody or having that communion with yourself is far more important than anything you've been told. It's gotta be, like you said, grape juice and a wafer. So thank you for that. That was enlightening, at least from my interpretation.

Oh, good. Thank you. So the symbols hold true. But the symbol is the acknowledgement of the shed blood and the broken body, and whatever form that takes—a Snickers bar and a Coke, a wafer and a great Syrah in a Catholic church, or a really bad bit of gluten-free bread and grape juice in a Protestant church—it really doesn't matter. What matters is that every time we hold that. We do that. And I encourage you to try one thing, fellas, if you're in church now. It'll upset every— upset all the preachers that maybe want to control the power of the thing. Is that if I do communion in church, I do communion in church with my family. And when I had a church, I taught in that church that the men would gather with their families, and they were responsible distributing the elements to their family. And they as head and priests of their home would do communion with their family. And in the little church that we are going to at the moment, I sometimes sit in the foyer and doing security stuff, and Melissa will get communion, bring it out, and we have communion as a family. Now people wonder what's going on and why can't the pastor do that? The pastor can, everyone else can. But for me, it's about doing that with my wife and my kids. And I would encourage you, even sitting next to your wife in church, When communion comes around, even though regardless of what's happening in the building, you're there with her and you're praying for her with her having communion with your kids.