Pastor John MacArthur passed away at the age of 86. There is much to learn from the life of John, but one biblical truth stands out.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here.

We're talking about heaven lately. I've been thinking a lot about heaven lately. It started with the Texas flooding last week. So I've just been thinking about it a lot. Heaven sounds awesome. Going to hell sounds terrible.

But going to heaven sounds amazing. Start off with that because John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, passed away yesterday. He was 86. We, of course, everyone, you listening here, we can all have discrements on theology and a couple of issues here and there, but what I most admire about pastor MacArthur was his and there. But what I most admire about Pastor MacArthur

was his boldness. He never let the world get to him in his life or his preaching. He got up and spoke boldly and presented the gospel and dedicated his life to saving souls and speaking the truth, God's word.

Grace to you, which is like a ministry wrote, our hearts are heavy yet rejoicing as we share the news that our beloved pastor and teacher John MacArthur has entered into the presence of the savior. This evening, his faith became sight. He faithfully endured until his race was run. I mean, like that that's perfect. I love that. I love thinking of it that way, the biblical way. And then they said 2 Timothy 4, 1 through 8. I feel like we should read it. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead,

and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Remember we did a segment once on exhort. It's a funny word. Exhort means to encourage, to embolden, to cheer, to advise, to incite by words or advice, to animate or urge by arguments to a good deed or to a laudable conduct or course of action. Acts 27, 22 says, I exhort you to be of good cheer.

All right, back to second activity. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of the evangelist,

fulfill your ministry. For I am ready, being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. I've kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will award on me reward to me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have loved his

appearing." How great is that paragraph? Also John MacArthur should be remembered as a preacher, a leader of a church who stood up for the church during COVID in Los Angeles of all places and refused to shut down, never shut down. If I remember the story correctly, people stayed away for like a week or two and then he never told anyone to stay away,

and people just kept showing up to the actual church building, and he never turned anyone away because you can't turn people away from church, and they got sued by the county, and then they won the lawsuit that the church did,

or they settled, I think they won, and the county had to pay their legal fees, which is a great example testimony of stand up for the truth. So many people were cowards throughout that time. And oh no, the county is coming.

MacArthur's like, whatever. God told me that we have to have church on Sunday. So we're having church on Sunday. That's the end of that question. Bigger picture outside of COVID too, there's also something about being in LA,

his church, the cultural center of America, usually for worse these days, but to have a church in the belly of the beast is important. It allowed him to go on Larry King Live. He was on a panel with a young Gavin Newsom decades ago, and just to speak the truth on national TV

and still never watered down anything. One sermon that stood out to me that I think is very relevant to today is he gave a sermon on the LA riots, May 3rd, 1992. And the reason I want to share this part of the sermon is because I was thinking of what I learned the most from John MacArthur. I mentioned speaking boldly. He opened my eyes to a lot of the problems with the

mega churches today about how it's all about fun and not the gospel. But if I had to pick one theological concept that I learned most from him, it is sin. So this sermon was about the LA riots in 92. He says, what I want to talk about today. So he talks about about the LA riots in 92. He says what I want to talk about today, so he talks about all these things that he could talk about. So in the midst of these riots in LA he's like oh we could talk about this, we could talk about poverty, we could talk about crime, we could talk about police, we

could talk about all these different things. But he says what I want to talk about today is the root of all these problems. And it's a very simple word with three letters called sin. And that's the perspective that I think is most needed for us. Perhaps the most devastating description of humanity is given in Romans chapter 3. And I want you to open your Bible to Romans 3 and I want to read you God's own description of man. There are people who continue to tell us that man is basically good. This

person who deep down inside is noble and honorable. And that of course is the absolute opposite of the truth. In Romans chapter three, verse 10, we read concerning man, a series of quotes out of the old Testament that Paul puts together here. They run like this, speaking of man and humanity in general, there is none righteous, not even one. I share this because this is the most important theological thing that I learned from John MacArthur.

There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There's not even one.

Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they keep deceiving. Their poison of asps or snakes is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." I wish we could just lay that on the desk of every psychologist. That is the clearest, most

concise, and direct description of man given in the Bible. Man is corrupt. Man is depraved. His heart, said the Prophet Jeremiah, is deceitful and desperately wicked. Isaiah said that the best that he has is filthy rags. There's something deep within man that is so corrupt and so wicked and so wretchful, so evil, so brutal, so devastating that if left unchecked or if given an opportunity to express itself it will bring about devastation.

The problem in our city is not lack of jobs. The problem in our city is not lack of opportunity or lack of education. The problem in our city is not lack of opportunity or lack of education. The problem in our city is not too much possessions, materialism. These are only symptoms of a problem. The problem in our city is the problem of the wretchedness of the human heart. And nobody escapes that. It knows no race, it knows no color, it knows no location.

It is pervasive. Sin is the degenerative and damning power in the human stream that pollutes every man and every woman and every woman in every part of life. This is why it's so important, this is me talking now, this is why it is so important

that we reintroduce the Bible and biblical truth to the world and to our society and culture because things go wrong in our world today and everyone's frantically looking for answers. Why did this school shooting happen? Why did this terrible thing happen?

Why did that bad thing happen? What is this? What is the blah, blah, blah, blah, sin. They have no answers. No one has any answers. And then when they kind of come up with something,

they're like, let's pass a bill. It's like, no, you're missing it entirely. So I Henry David Thoreau said there are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to everyone who strikes the root. The Bible strikes the root. We look today at the problems in the world. Like, oh, it's caused by poverty or the school to prison pipeline,

or, you know, this policy. No, no, it's sin. Now there are two God ordained institutions to deal with the sin of the human heart. You have the family. The family is here to raise children properly. And then the government, which is there to protect people and punish crime.

And then the church exists to work as well on a social level, but the church is here to be a part of changing hearts, like the real problem. If the problem is the human heart, well, how do we fix the human heart? God told the story, you can drive all through LA, all different parts, rich parts,

the poorest parts, doesn't matter. And there's churches all over that have little or no impact in the community. And why do they have little or no impact in the community? Because they're not helping transform people's hearts. He said, my grief is for the lost people

who have no hope of changing their insides any more than the leopard can change its spots. And my grief is for the churches that have prostituted themselves away from a saving message to some other kind of social orientation that can't do anything in the long run. I wanted to share that point here because that for

me and people listen to John MacArthur for a while I went to his church and everyone's was church of course but I'm sure there's other he moved other people in other ways but for me that's the legacy of John MacArthur that early in my Christian walk he made it very clear, the Bible, what the Bible says about sin and depravity, the depth of depravity. How man is like snake venom, sores, oozing, pus and gangrene and dogs vomit and scum and filthiness of a boiling pot and the fallen man is a maggot that feeds

on filth and dead bodies and David said that he was a worm. It's all in there, but no one wants to make it clear because it's not nice. Who wants to hear that? I just said the word pus and vomit and menstrual cloth. I think I even skipped over that one because I didn't even like here I am talking about boldness and I didn't even want to mention Isaiah 322.

Jonathan Edwards says, they are they people are like a filthy worm that never feeds so sweetly as when feeding on a carcass, or never has its nature so suited as when crawling in the most abominable filth. Do you have a pretty clear picture on sin? No, we don't, we're not even close.

We're still not even close. These are just words. These are just words. We need to truly, deeply know how fallen we are. No modern ear wants to hear it. And even if you made it 11 minutes into this podcast,

I'm grateful you have. Even we don't want to fully accept it. And here I've been talking for 11 minutes and I don't even fully believe it to the way that it needs to be believed. But this is all good.

We need to hear this. Because if we don't hear it, I think this is one of the biggest lies of the devil. If we don't need this, if we don't hear it, and if we don't think we need to be saved, then we won't need a savior.

But if you know how deeply depraved you are, then you realize you need a savior. I'm lost. I need saving. I need a savior. I have a savior. Thank you, Jesus. My humble ode to John MacArthur. Be bold in preaching the truth. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com.

It's been one year since the president was shot in the head in Butler, Pennsylvania. What will it take to get people to believe that God is in control of everything?

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Donald Trump getting shot in the head in Butler, Pennsylvania. Incredible moment. I haven't seen this video in a couple months, but it's worth reliving.

A little bit old, that chart. That chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that's said, take a look at what happened. Move, move, move.

You ready? We're good. Shooters down. Are we good to move? We're clear. Let's move.

Let's move.

We're clear.

Let me get my shoes.

Let me get my shoes. I got you, sir. I got you, sir.

I got you, sir.

I got you, sir. Let me get my shoes.

Let me get my shoes.

Let me get my shoes.

Hold on, your head is in the body.

So we gotta move to the front.

Let me get my shoes.

Okay, my shoes down.

My shoes.

Watch out.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Says, wait, wait, wait. Puts his fist in the air, says, fight, fight, fight. Come on. What is that? I don't have any more insight than what I shared a year ago when this happened that in a moment like that, it's just your instinct, it's who you are.

It reveals who you are in moments like that. You can't rehearse it. It's just remarkable, the whole thing. And incredibly surreal. And you know, it turned his head at just the precise instant at just the precise angle,

otherwise that bullet was going right through his head at just the precise instant at just the precise angle. Otherwise that bullet was going right through his head. So my only conclusion, and I know this not politically, I know this because of the Bible is that God is in control of everything. And Trump has come to that conclusion too. This was him last year.

Honestly, it's a very, it changed. It changed something in me. I feel I feel even stronger. I believed in God, but I feel I feel much more strongly about it. Something happens.

So thank you.

This is him today at a White House prayer event.

Well, I believe that and I do. I believe it, that my life was saved by God to really make America great again. I really believe that. I think I have a son. He's a great shooter, like a championship shooter.

Don and Eric was a great shooter, both of them. But they said that at that distance with that gun, you didn't have a chance. And we turned the head at the right time, didn't we? We turned the head at the right time. So I don't know, some people say it was lucky and some people say something else. I say something else.

I think God helped us.

We told the story on Sirius XM this morning about George Washington. He was fighting in the French and Indian War. He was only 23 years old and he was shot four times. His life could have ended right there. George Washington was 23 and if he died then we wouldn't have known who it was. I say he was shot four times.

Four bullets went through his coat. He had two horses shot out from under him, but he was never hit. If he died there, we never would have known who he was. Maybe we never would have been a country. He wrote back home, and I believe this is true about Trump today. George Washington wrote, by the allful dispensations of providence.'"

I love the word dispensations here. Let's get an original Webster's 1828 definition. One of these moments when I only realize when I'm halfway through this that it's a podcast and I can press pause and just look it up and pretend like I knew it all along.

Webster's dictionary, 1828.com, it's a fantastic website. Here we go, dispensation. A dispensation is the dealing of God to his creatures, the distribution of good and evil, natural and moral in the divine government. So the acts of God.

By the all powerful dispensations of providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation. For I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt. Although death was leveling my companions on every side of me." And they were targeting George Washington as well. One of the, this was the French and Indian War, so one of the Indian chiefs later met George Washington. This was in 1755, so in 1770 George was back near where the battle was and this Indian chief traveled to go see him. And the story

goes, he said, I have traveled a long and weary path that I might see the young warrior of the great battle. I've come to pay homage to the man who is the particular favorite of heaven and who can never die in battle. On Trump's point about God saved us because we have stuff to do, we have a country to save.

It reminded me of this from Horace. Horace wrote in his Odes 3.3, he said, the just man resolute in his purpose is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of citizens demanding wrong, nor by the threatening face of a tyrant or an assassin, nor by the south wind, stormy leader of the restless Adriatic, nor by the mighty hand of thundering Jove. If the shattered world should collapse upon him, its ruins would strike him unafraid. So if you're a just person who's unwavering in their good purpose, firm in their good purpose, nothing will make you cave. Nothing should make you cave. No amount

of people yelling at you, not even the king himself or an assassin, nothing in nature, nothing. Even if the whole world collapses on you, if the whole world is in ruins around you, then the just man, firm in purpose will stand fearless along the ruins. Let's go to the Bible. Elijah. Gosh, I mean, how many stories can we give about God's providence in the Bible? I mean, like, but this one stands out because the kids next week are headed off to vacation Bible school.

It's a couple hours every night. And the study is Elijah. And I love the story of Elijah so much. I thought about, we thought seriously about naming our firstborn Elijah. Fun slight of fact. The name Elijah means Yahweh is my God.

So imagine living in a land where Baal is worshiped and your name is Yahweh is my God. So God says to Elijah, it's not gonna rain for a long time, do exactly what I say, go to this brook and a raven, an unclean animal will feed you.

And he did. And then years went by. It's one of my favorite insights about the Bible is that it takes years. This story is only a few paragraphs, but it's over years, years ago by three and a half, three and a half years. And the brook finally dried up. So don't overlook the fact that for three and a half years, Elijah stayed in this place and a

bird came and fed him, kept him alive. Then verse eight, then the word of the Lord came to him saying, arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon and dwell there. He said, well, what? This is the land where Jezebel, most wicked woman ever was from. This is the land where Baal was deeply embedded in the culture. This was enemy

territory to the core. And God says, Hey, Elijah, go there. Why in the world? I've commanded a widow there to provide for you." So he goes and he sees this poor widow right where she was gonna be and then he makes his big ask and God provided with the flour and the oil just as he said he would. And it's a credible story, but what stands out here among other things is the timing of it all. And God was orchestrating everything

always. Never didn't have it under control. It's always under his control. He knew exactly where the widow would be and where Elijah would be and when they would meet up and all the miracles he would do he knew it all Elijah didn't know the widow the widow didn't know Elijah but God knows everything God was not surprised when Donald Trump got shot in the head God is all-seeing all-knowing nothing is, nothing is out of control. Matthew 10 29 says,

not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from your father's will. Isn't that amazing? That's true. It's in the Bible. Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from your father's will. Yet it has been become popular, and I believe a majority of people in our country believe, that God has no control. If he exists at all, there is no God. And if there is, he doesn't care, doesn't know, and things are crazy. And it's like, forget God's sovereignty entirely. Romans 8, 28, we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. God works all things for his glory, for the good of those involved, even when we don't understand what's

happening, even when things are shocking to us. How comforting is that? That was the point of this podcast originally, was to decrease anxiety, a lot of anxiety when you watch the news. So I said, let's go to the Bible so we can lower it. And I just wanna make that point again, in the midst of all the chaos of the news

and everything that's going on, how comforting is it to know and to know deeply that God is in control of everything. Take that comfort and that truth with you in whatever you take in with you. Mike Slater dot locals dot com.

Transcript, commercial free on the website. Transcript, commercial free on the website. Mike Slater dot locals dot com.

So, I guess cloud seeding is a thing. It's a thing that happens in America, and we had zero conversation about it. Is this a step too far in "playing God"?

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks so much for being here. So give me a little heads up on something that's going to happen here that you're going to hear. We recorded yesterday a TV special on the flooding in Texas. We had two spectacular guests. Tom Askell wrote a book about his sister who was dying.

She had six months to live. And throughout that process, he wrote letters on grieving and suffering, and he put it together in a book, and it's called Suffering with Joy. And he had some perfect insight into why bad things happen and how we should work through it and trust God, love God throughout it. Then we talked to the professor of Wittenberg University

whose son, nine-year-old son, died suddenly. He was perfectly healthy, came down with some weird disease and within 36 hours he died. And he wrote a book about that too. And we talked to these two men who've lived it and they were just perfect. But we had three guests on the show that we recorded that we will release here. Our first guest was there. He was, he was at the, or he saw the flooding was how I understood the guest.

So I was like, Oh, that'd be interesting. We'll talk to this guy about what he saw and all that. And he had some interesting points. He was a former boxer, so he had some good stuff to say about life and being tested and all that. But really early in the interview, as you'll hear soon when we release it,

he said, yeah, I was there Slater, and I saw the clouds and they were dark, and I've never seen a light these clouds. And I saw with my own eyes, I saw lasers in the clouds. And he went on and he said, I believe that this was cloud seeding. And I said, oh, gee, okay.

Now you'll see in the interview, I think I pivoted out pretty good. They get it pretty good. Pretty good. Let's I did pretty good. Pretty good. Let's move away from that point and focus on something else. He brought it up three more times.

Cloud seeding. Now a little background. When I had my three hour San Diego show and it was me, Eric, and Miles. We had a ton of fun. It was a couple years back.

Every April 1st we would have conspiracy theory day. And we'd open up the phones for three hours and anyone could call in with a conspiracy theory, but you had to really believe it. So you couldn't call in and say, Oh, I heard that some people believe in that the earth's flat. No, no. You had to call in if you believe the earth was flat. And we had people call in and it was awesome every single year we did it.

Tons of fun.

And there was always a cloud seeding guy in there with the chemtrails, right? Tucked in kind of in the same thing, but there's always a cloud seeding guy. So every year the three of us would each pick one, two, and we would do a presentation on a conspiracy theory as if we believed it. And director Eric one year picked cloud seeding. Since then, he has been actually convinced

and telling me all the time that we are cloud seeding. And I always laughed at him and it became this big joke and that was the end of it. Well, it wasn't the end of it. Color me surprised when I came across this clip on the Will Cain show when he was talking to the CEO of Rainmaker Tech Corporation.

People can listen to longer form interviews that you have done about some of the safety and research you've done on what you use to cloud seed. Now, I want you to please address a larger question, which is one that is somewhat broad and perhaps even religious. But are you playing God?

Are you messing with things that you shouldn't be messing with when it comes to the weather?

I get this question all the time, and I totally think it makes sense to ask it. My intention is to serve God. I think that in Genesis 1, 26 through 28, and then throughout the Psalms and the rest of the Bible, God tells us to take dominion over and steward creation

both for our sake, creation's itself, and then to honor him. And so if there are droughts, and we have the tools to mitigate the damage done by them for our sake and for nature itself, then we should deploy those for the sake of tending to and stewarding the world. And if we weren't to do that, if we were to ban cloud seeding wholesale, despite knowing that it's safe, despite knowing it could help alleviate these problems, we'd be abdicating

our God-given responsibility to be stewards of the world.

Okay, let's address what...

Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. So we're actually cloud seeding? We just brushed, we just blu-ray past this? It went from crazy conspiracy theory to we're doing this? And we never had a conversation? Now surely this guy and his company that did cloud seeding in southern Texas just two days before this horrible flood, surely they had nothing to do with each other, right?

Right?

The question is whether or not Rainmaker cloud seeding on July 2nd contributed to storms that occurred on July 4th. Did it enhance? Did it intensify what we saw some 36 to 48 hours later?

Unequivocally, our cloud seeding operations on July 2nd did not impact the flooding that occurred later. And that said, my heart and prayers are still with all the people of Texas and all the families that have been affected. It was a tragedy.

But in cloud seeding on the 2nd, one, we are regulated by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. And we have what are called suspension criteria, where if there are National Weather Service flash flood warnings or severe storm warnings, then we cannot operate in those areas per the restrictions and regulations we have.

Our meteorologists actually proactively suspended operations a day before the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning. So we were ahead of the curve.

Huh.

Now, I am not suggesting that this guy did have anything to do, that these guys' cloud efforts had anything to do with it. I don't know. I don't think so. But I can't get past the fact yet

that we're actually doing this and never talked about it. Now we're gonna spend more time on this on my series 6 AM show tomorrow. Let me, let's get to the biblical part here. This brings up a very important question about playing God. It's an interesting expression, isn't it? Play God. It's always don't play God. No one's ever like, we should go play God. Even though people may be doing it, no one's like happy to do it. Why don't know, maybe he is.

Maybe people do, why say that? Of course, maybe people do love to play God. They think they are God. The idea of playing God means to take control over something that you shouldn't be taking control over. Or thinking you have control over something

that you actually don't have control over. And it gets out of control, at least out of your control. Frankenstein was written in 1931. All right. So Frankenstein makes this monster of all these dead body parts and brings it to life. And he's so horrified by what he created that he abandons it into the world and it goes on and creates havoc.

Of course, it's kind of where this idea came from of playing God. But I thought about it for a while. Have we played God before? Like, so we're talking about weather, you know, making it rain for drought to stop the droughts. Well, is building a canal playing God?

Is building a dam playing God? You're creating a river where there wasn't a river or you're creating a river where there wasn't a river or you're creating a lake where there wasn't a lake. How about in medicine? Is medical treatment playing God? James was in the NICU for a couple weeks when he was born. Were we playing God? Goodness, what's the line? Now Christian ethicists have thought about this.

They've come up with many different parameters. There's such thing as, when it comes to medicine, ordinary treatment versus extraordinary treatment. But even that's a blurry line. If you saw my James sitting there for weeks, you would think that's pretty extraordinary treatment to keep him alive. Let's go back to what I know, because there's so many, I don't know the answer to that.

So I got to go back to what I do know. He brought up Genesis 1, Genesis 1 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Here's my first point, and maybe my only point for now. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. I've heard this argument about marijuana. I remember back in the day, we were talking about legalizing marijuana, which we shouldn't have. And I argument about marijuana. I went back in the day of time I legalized marijuana, which we shouldn't have. I think I know I know I made the argument that we should sure it'll eliminate the cartels. Man, was I wrong. But the argument, some people

potheads made the argument, uh, Hey, it, God made it. God made it. So it must be good. It's natural. Okay. But I mean, there's a lot of things that are natural, doesn't mean you shouldn't. Lust may be natural in our fallen state, doesn't mean it's good. Hedonists would say it is.

If it's natural, it's good. Just because we can seed clouds or clone humans, doesn't mean we should. I don't think it means we should any more than we have nuclear weapons, so we should use them. The word dominion, rule, to have reign over.

That's great, but God is still in control. And we have to act, just like we do with our money, like stewards over the earth. You have the money, you did things that earned the money, sure, but really it's God who's in control. And we have to have dominion over the earth, sure, but really God is in control. We're stewards of it, which doesn't mean we do what we want. We're the caretakers. We manage the earth responsibly in a way that reflects God's character.

And one aspect of God's character is wisdom. Is it wise to do this? My instinct says, no, probably not. But then I'm sure back in the day, some people said, Hey, we can move water from over there to here. If we just build a canal and some people said, oh, we can move water from over there to here if we just build a canal.

And some people said, oh, you're playing God, you can't do that, you're affecting the earth. Probably people do that. Is this just the next iteration of that? Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. We can now put computer chips in people's brains.

Elon Musk can do that now. See the other day, Grok, the AI, Twitter's AI or X's AI. It went a bit haywire. And I got all anti-Semitic. And now they're rewriting the code, so it doesn't do that anymore. I don't know, maybe we shouldn't put computer chips

in people's brains controlled by Twitter. Like we can, we can do that. We can do it right now. It's being done, it's in people's brains. We have Elon Musk's computers are in people's brains right now.

As we speak, I don't know if you know that. They start off with people who are paralyzed and people can just think things with their brain and move the things on the computer and stuff like that and now they're gonna move on to people who are blind and they're gonna add this computer chip and people can see okay so they're doing it you can should you that's my first point just

because you can doesn't mean you should. I guess the second point is we're stewards of everything and we have to show God's character in everything we do and one of God's characteristics is wisdom. Third point, this is the comforting fact as we move into the unknown, is God is in control over everything. I told a story on the radio today, we're talking about heroes and told some stories of some men, young boys,

young men who did incredibly heroic things in water. And I just told a quick little aside. I was swimming my whole life, swimming in college and swim with the kids the other day in the deep end. And I was like,

I wonder how long I can tread water these days. And I'm out there treading. I could do this all day. I could literally tread water for 24 hours. No problem. Zero energy exertion. I could tread water all day. And then I said, I wonder if I could tread water with one of my kids. So Johnny jumps in and he's five and he grabs onto me and I was like, Oh, this is tough. This is harder. I wonder if I could do this for an hour. Could I tread water and keep both of us alive? Let's say we were in the middle of the ocean. Could we both stay alive? If a boat was coming in an hour to rescue us, could we float in the water for an hour?

That's tough. Then Jack jumped in, he's eight, and I was like, ah, nope. I had two kids. I don't think I could do it. And then of course, waves, aside, is water is powerful.

Water is a powerful force. Kathleen wrote me a note. She said, you know, God can tread water forever and walk on it too. I apply that here because God can do anything and God can protect us from it.

God can fix our mistakes and protect us from ourselves. And in all the cases that I've brought up in this episode, I pray you guys. MikeSlater.Locals.com. MikeSlater.Locals.com. Transcript, commercial free on the website. MikeSlater.Locals.com.