Let's talk this morning in a few minutes about things that impress you. What kind of things impress you? You know, I've been down to the Naval Air Station at the air shows and I see some technology down there and some things. I never forget the first time I saw one of those Harriers, didn't even know one existed. I saw that thing coming in. At the time I owned an airplane and I knew quite a bit about aerodynamics and the science of flight and so forth. And I watched this jet come in there from the east and it kept slowing down and slowing down. And I said, that thing's gonna crash. And it kept slowing down. And I said, man, that thing is way below stall speed. What is going on? And that rascal stopped. I'll never forget that if I live to be a hundred. Things like that impress me. This last week, we watched a program on cryogenics. There's a new one on the History Channel. And I don't know if you know much about cryogenics. It's basically about getting things cold, you know. It's sub-zero temperatures. Like we talked about before, you can't produce cold. All you can do is remove heat. That's what an air conditioner does in your house. It just takes the heat out of your house. And they're saying something like 480 degrees below zero, you know, on the Kelvin scale or whatever. And that's down there at the bottom. And liquid nitrogen is not that cold. It's just a little bit up from there. And they talked about, you know, having a 490-story building, you know. And at this level on, you know, the 160-something floor, there's liquid oxygen. And down about the third floor is liquid nitrogen. Talked about it being cheap to produce, you know, a dollar a gallon or something. And they're using it for all kinds of crazy stuff. One of the things that they were showing us on there was superconductors. And they had this little old circle about this big around, you know, inch and a half in diameter, and it had a little cube sitting on top made out of something. And it was just sitting there. And the guy said, now this is a superconductor. And he said, when you get the temperature down to a certain amount, it automatically just generates power and energy and as long as it's cold, it keeps doing it. They poured some of that liquid nitrogen on it and as that thing cooled off, that little old cube levitated and started spinning. with nothing hooked up to it. Then they talked about a superconductor they got running in New York in some kind of a really tight environment where they had to put huge amounts of current through there to feed the city, and it would take big old wires, monster stuff, and then trying to keep it cool would be a major problem, so they just ran it in a superconductor and pumped liquid nitrogen through the outside of this thing, and there's no resistance, so there's no heat. so you can run maybe a thousand homes on an extension cord, you know, or something. Just produces no heat, just flows through. And they showed all the details behind it. Then it got into dry ice, man, how they make that stuff and what they're using it all for. And most people would just be bored with that, but me, it just fascinates me to no end. You know, dry ice has no liquid state, basically, or it's such a moment that it's liquid, it converts from gas to solid almost immediately in the other way. And they say the funny thing about dry ice is any impact of dry ice and it just instantly converts to gas. He took a handful of dry ice and threw it on the ground. As soon as it hit, it just went. and it was just a couple little old pieces left out of a whole handful. They used it for sandblasting, clean old books and stuff. They showed them cleaning the stuff off, and it's really, really soft, but as soon as it hits, it impacts, turns into instant gas, and it just pops the stuff off and won't damage anything. They're using it to do all kinds of crazy stuff. They make dry ice, they just get the temperature way, way down, and the carbon dioxide condenses out into tiny, tiny little specks of crystals. but it won't fall, it's just kind of vapor in the air, so what they have to do is they have to do that inside of a chamber, and then they crush it down, smash it into blocks, it's like making big snowballs. That's how they do that stuff. Now, to me, that's fascinating. That kind of stuff just absolutely impresses me. You know what impresses most people? You're impressed by people that can do what you can't. You know, if you could play a musical instrument, you're not that impressed by somebody else that can. You might be impressed by them somewhat if they're really, really good at it. But what really impresses you is people that can do what you cannot do. Matter of fact, if you'd like to be able to do it and you can't, then you're really impressed. I mean, it gets to the point where it's like, man, that's like magic. That's the way I feel about people that play pianos and flutes and harmonicas and guitars and everything else. My brain just isn't wired for that stuff somehow. It's just not. I mean, I try and try and try. I told you before, but my son bought me a big old bass harmonica, I think it's about that long, you know, and it's got big old tubes in it. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I can do that with my voice. I don't have to even think about it. But when I start trying to find those notes on that thing, I can't tell if it's up or down from there. I can't tell if this note's higher, this note's lower. I fought that thing and fought it and fought it, trying to play one song, home of the soul. And that thing is so simple on the bass line. It's five or six notes, you know, and it's so easy. And all I could do was get to where I just memorized what hole to blow on when. That was it. I mean, there was no connection between the music I was making and the effort I was putting forth. But when you get somebody that can really play, that stuff's not coming out of their mind, it's coming out of their heart. They're feeling what they're doing. Now, I'm impressed by people that can do what I can't do, and I'm sure you are too. If you got somebody that can really cook good, most anybody would be impressed by them. Not because we can't cook, but because boy, that is something that I wish I could do because it tasted so good and I hate having to pay you 200 bucks to go eat something you made. Say $200, you just haven't been to any restaurants lately, people. My son was telling me they went out to a restaurant out here the other day, you know, or someplace down in Orlando on a business trip. And he said, that bill for three people is $385. That verse is just represented right there. Their God is their belly. Anyway, I'm impressed by people that can organize things. I'm impressed by people that can manage things. I mean, you stop and think about some of these massive things that are organized and managed, and some of them managed well. I mean, you stop and think about some of these airlines. How would you like to be fighting with the thing with the tourists, and the price of fuel, and the complaining customers, and the terrorists trying to get on board, and the airplanes falling out of the sky, and the FFA over here, and then the airports over here, and then the pilot's union over here? You gotta have some real wisdom. You have to have a totally different wiring in your head to be able to organize that stuff and manage it. There's no doubt if Solomon lived today, we'd all be impressed. Some of us wouldn't like him a bit. Why? Because our agenda would be different. Anyway, what about somebody that can invent things? People that can create, paint, draw. You ever see anybody sit down with a pencil and start drawing with a pencil? Man, they can do some stuff with a pencil. I kid you not. You wouldn't believe it. Chalk. What's the medium? Sand castles. Man, I get some of those emails with sandcastles and I look at that stuff, you know, it's wow. That'd be easier for me, you know why? Because I can put stuff on it, that don't look right, take it off, put it back on it. But man, when you're out there carving ice or something or carving trees, you know, or carving granite. said, how'd you make it look like that? I just took away anything that didn't look like that. And that's how they think. I think one of the most impressive things to me I've ever seen is that guy that does those chalk drawings on the streets in a three-dimensional look. And they only look like that from one direction. Everything else is just chaos. But you get that thing down to where it actually looks like there's holes in the road and somebody's in there working and digging and doing stuff. If you start looking at the perspective on that thing, I remember one of them, I looked at it and a foot, one foot on a person pointing up like this, was longer than the entire picture down here because it was squares of concrete. That one foot was, I mean, you know, like from here to the back of the church, long looking thing, and the rest of the drawing was much smaller. But in order to get that perspective of it going way on out there, looking like it's sticking straight up, it had to go way on out there because your angle of view is different. I don't know how you do that. I'm impressed with that stuff. You say, well, are you going to get into Sunday school? Oh yeah, we're going to get here. Let me ask you this. What if you knew somebody personally? And I've known some smart people. I've known some really rich people. I've been in a lot of millionaires homes. I mean, sometimes you're in millionaires' houses, you don't even know you're in them, but there's a bunch of them that I've been in. I knew they were multimillionaires, riding around in cars that were custom made and everything else. You get impressed by some of that. It never really impressed me a whole lot. It wasn't like I sat in awe of money. I've just never been tuned in like that. But I'm impressed by people that are highly talented. I mean, what if you met somebody who could speak 21 languages? Would you be impressed? Man, I have a hard enough time with English. My wife still speaks a little German. She studied German for years and she can still understand it, speak a little bit of it. She wanted to teach it. Got really frustrated when she found out that an A for somebody taking home economics was equal to her A in highly elevated language classes and they treated that one the same for scholarships as they did hers. And she said, nuts, this whole thing's crazy, man. If you can get an A for beauty class, and somebody else over here is studying high-level calculus, and they say, well, you got a three-point grade average, and so did they. Something's busted, people. You better find another way to measure scale in intelligence. Anyway, if somebody could speak 21 languages, it's definitely impressed me. What if you knew somebody that could predict the future on regular basis, they could think, you're gonna have an earthquake over here, well, you're gonna have this many hurricanes over here, or you're gonna have this happen over so-and-so. Would that impress you? First of all, everybody'd be skeptical, but after a few times and they get it right, pretty soon it'd start getting your attention, especially if they said something about you. I mean, you wouldn't have to work again if you could actually do that. What about somebody that understood every single thing they ever heard, read, or saw? Would that impress you? You say, man, that's somebody. You must be talking about the Lord. No, I'm not. I'm talking about people. Would that impress you? It would me. How about somebody that was extremely generous and had all of those other talents too? Man, that'd be tough. I have to get away from them. I feel bad about myself. I feel worthless. That's just about the truth. I'd like to learn from somebody like that. Now, when we're real little children, we're shy, we're without understanding, we had faith in our parents. I mean, did you worry about your parents driving when you were eight, nine, 10 years old? How come you're griping about them driving now? You see what I'm saying? What I'm saying is that when you're a little child, you're different than you are now. Substantially different. You had faith in your parents. You never had to worry about, is there enough money? Are we gonna pay the bills? Are they gonna turn the light off? Well, turn the lights off. We don't have enough money, you know? Well, I might lose my job. Little kids never worry about that stuff. Why? because they don't understand hardly anything. They're not bothered by all of that stuff. About the worst thing they have to worry about is, I have to go to bed? Do I have to eat those peas? You know, a few little old things, minor stuff. But little children are real simple. They have very little pride. A little child has almost no pride whatsoever. I mean, especially these little bitty ones. You show them attention and they start hiding. You know what that is? That's real humility, man. That's shyness. Don't notice me. I wanna look at you, but don't bother noticing me. But you know, as we start getting older, things start to change. You get up to where you're a teenager. One of the worst things about a teenager is to go to school and have their teacher tell them something that they think is superior to what their parents think because it's different. You know, people are real gullible. Anybody that teaches you something in an environment that is convincing, especially if you pay somebody to teach you, you automatically believe that's an absolute gospel truth. You think it's absolute fact just because you paid them to teach you. And you won't turn loose of that belief until just the face value of something so blatant comes along that you know it's impossible before you'll even consider anything else. And then some people will close their mind to that and say, don't confuse me with facts, my mind's made up. But as a teenager, you get to where you think you know all the answers, man. You think your parents are stupid. You think, well, you just don't understand. Well, you're just born back there in the olden days. You don't know all the stuff that I know. I know all of this stuff from school that you don't know anything about. And they really do. They get thinking our parents are stupid. And then the older you get, the more you know as an adult, you know what you know. That's how you get. We moved out here in 78. There was a guy making trailers up here, a little bit north of town here. And I stopped in there to get some parts one day. I was fixing somebody else's boat trailer. And I mean, the wheels were falling off the thing. He was still pulling it around, man. Hit a bump and the thing, boom, shifts back. All of the stuff it rotted out was just sitting in holes. If he'd ever hit one bump, the whole thing would have just been pieces coming down the road. I said, man, this guy needs some help. So I started fixing it. I went in there to get some parts. This guy was building trailers and he was doing it with all the cutting torch and a welding machine. I mean, that was about all he had. He was cutting off big old channel, eight inch channel with cutting torches, you know, and little angle iron and everything in the world. I looked at that operation for a minute. I've been doing that stuff for 20 years at least. I've been fooling with stuff since I was a kid. I started welding back when I was in middle school, playing with steel and doing stuff. And I said, hey, have you ever considered getting a chop saw? He said, a what? I said, abrasive cut saw, you know, about a 14 inch wheel on that thing or bigger with a big old motor. I said, you can take that thing and make those cuts to where they're just as smooth as glass. And you can cut them in about one 10th the time. Not only that, you can angle it, miter it, and the stuff fits together, and it's just so much faster and cleaner. Well, I'll tell you, son, I ain't been doing this but for about 30 years. I said, I got the message. That's one of them guys, he knew what he knew. He knew what he knew. You know, there's a danger in that. The Bible says, put no confidence in the flesh. To make matters worse, if that wasn't bad enough, the more we accomplish in life, the more confidence we have, and the more we know we're right. You know what that is? That's when you get to the point, the older you get, you lean to your own understanding, you put confidence in your own abilities, you put confidence in the things you've done in the past. I did that before, I can do this now. And it's just absolutely backwards to the way it should be. Look back over at 1 Corinthians 8, one to three. We were over there last week and a week before that. Unless the Lord does something different, looks like we're gonna be there a while, but. 1 Corinthians 8, one to three. Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. But if any man love God, the same is known to him. Isn't that a funny but? Isn't that strange the way that's put in there? Do you get the connection between that stuff? Do you see how those two pieces fit directly together? I like my car out there, but you know I'm gonna talk about another car or something wrong with that car, right? But this thing here, it just slides from one thought into a totally different environment. Now, as touching things often unto idols, we know that we have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing, yet as he ought to know, but if any man love God, the same is known to him. You know why we don't get that? You know why we don't see that thing as connected together, you know, as warp and woof, as a piece of cloth put together and it fits? That's because we don't know as we ought to know. We don't grasp those things, we don't make that connection, we don't see those things directly connected back to where they should be. And it's because his ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts, right? He tells us that. Now who's right, him or us? So what are you gonna do about it? There's a good question. The things that you already know, you know, but you don't know them as you ought to know them. For example, the knowledge that his ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts, should lead you to do something about what you know and how you think. It should, but does it? Do you actually put any effort into trying to change how you think? Have you ever prayed, God, I want to see myself as you see me. I want to know myself like you know me. I want to know you the way you want me to know you, not the way I perceive you to be, or the way I wish you would be, or the way I hope you'll be. I want to see you as you are. You see, what happens, the older we get, the more we lean to our own understanding, the more we lean to our own ability, the more we have confidence in the flesh, and the older we get, the more difficult it is for us to go back, like Jesus said over there, you gotta become like little children and humble yourself. It gets harder and harder and harder for us to do those things. And it's because the older we get, the more set we get in our own ways. I mean, you get to a point where you can't tell somebody anything. Really, I mean, you get some people, you can't tell them anything. They're just absolutely positively sure that they're right and everybody else in the whole world's wrong. Look over at 1 Corinthians 13 real quick. Knowledge puffeth up, charity edifieth. 1 Corinthians 13, one through eight. Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, though I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long in his kind. Charity envieth not. Charity vondeth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, sinketh no evil, rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in a truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth. You know what that is? That's Paul saying, if I could speak every language and communicate with angels, That's not just 21, that's all of them. He goes beyond that, he says, though I understand all prophecy and know the entire future. We're not talking about God, we're talking about a man saying this. And though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, everything, though I have all faith so that I could move mountains, I mean, you get to that level of faith, you realize that as far as you're concerned, your power would be unlimited. I mean, if you can move mountains, what couldn't you do when it comes right down to it? He said, if I had all that faith. He says, also, if I was generous to a fault, I mean, he gives and gives and gives until it starts hurting himself and everybody else around him. And then he says, if I give my body to be burned, that's like service to others unto death. Now, you never met anybody like that in your life. But if you did, you'd be impressed by him and you'd be wrong. Because without charity, he says, I am nothing. And he says, without charity, it profiteth me nothing. Void, vacuum. Now, we wouldn't think that way. Our perspective would be if we ever met somebody like that, we'd be absolutely impressed without question. But see, that's not God's perspective. Now, how do you understand that? Well, you gotta get back and get a little bit childlike. You gotta back up. You gotta start thinking different than you think. I think one of the problems right now with the little bit that Lord showed me about his glory and how the perspective is so wrong and the priorities are so messed up, even though you understand that the Laodicean church, he says, I know thy works that thou art neither cold nor hot, right? What do you think cold or hot is a direct reference to? You think that's temperature on the stove? No, it's about emotion. It's about from inside. It'd be like a wife serving her husband out of pure duty and didn't love him at all. It has to do with your affections and your emotions and your heart. It goes right back to what he says right there. It's about charity and that's love. That's what it comes down to. It comes down to set your affections on things above, not on this earth. And it gets back to the very first commandment. It says, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind and with all thy strength. If you can get back there and begin there, then you can start over and you can begin to think different and things will begin to change. I don't know if any of you guys think like this, but this last week, you know, I just running around every day, just enjoying myself. doing all kinds of stuff, getting war out every day. But you know what? I absolutely thoroughly enjoy the feeling of being part of God's creation. You know, for thousands of years, before September 1947, I didn't exist. I didn't know anything that happened before that. But God chose and allowed me to be part of this. And I'm an individual, a totally separate entity from all these other things, and I get to be part of it, I get to observe it, I get to understand, I get to learn, I get to move and live and have my being because of Him. That is a real blessing, you know that? I got up this morning, that weather was beautiful out there, and I come over here and I just feel the air and the gentle breeze. Where's it all come from? It comes from God. It's just a pure privilege that He's allowed me to exist because whether I ever existed or not wouldn't have changed anything on this earth hardly. The only one it really makes a difference to is me. And it's just a pure privilege just to exist and to be part of everything else that he's made. Well, we'll look at it a little more next week. Let's close in prayer.