A 16-year-old lifeguard saved the life of a 10-year-old boy in California. It's a beautiful sight. We should honor the lifeguard's bravery and skill. We should also be in awe at the power of God's creation. The bible speaks a lot about the ocean and waves. Why does God use this metaphor?
Welcome to Politics by Faith. This is where we take the news of the day, then we bring it to the Bible so we can walk away with peace and perspective. New headlines every day. Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun. So thanks for being here to get the true story, the story of the day. Can we just do a nice one for once, please?
Do we always have to take a terrible story and then work to make it hopeful? Can we just start with a nice one for once? Sorry, I just prepped like two hours. We just did a whole show on COVID and that got me ticked off. And then we did, uh, I just prepped for tomorrow's show on radio about this straight up crazy invasion of tens of thousands of Africans into Spain. Like what the heck?
Uh, and it's the end of the week. And I just kind of feel like doing a hopeful one. Is that cool? A 16 year old in Santa Cruz, California, Northern California, South of San Francisco, a lifeguard, 16 year old lifeguard saw a 10 year old boy swept out by the waves. 16 years old. I was a lifeguard.
Let me say it like this. I was a lifeguard when I was 16. A lot like this young man, except I did it at a pool. I was at a pool. I can't even believe we let 16 year olds be lifeguards at a beach, at a serious beach, like Northern California. That is tough work.
That is man work. You got to be strong. I swam in college. And when I moved to San Diego, people asked me to go surfing. I was like, no problem. Surfing?
I could definitely surf. I've never surfed in my life. Like, oh, it's so hard about that. Piece of cake. Getting out there? No problem.
I'm an amazing swimmer. I will never forget it. I got smashed nonstop. Couldn't do anything. Couldn't, I couldn't get out there. I'm not even talking about like, Oh, I had trouble getting up.
I couldn't get to where you were. You're supposed to go to sit on the board to wait for the wave to come. I couldn't even, it was awful. It was so incredibly humbling. I was just wrecked. could not get past the waves.
How is this possible? And eventually you figure out, but you figure it out, but you don't get there by fighting it. You can't fight against the waves. You can't, you can't do as possible. You'll never win. You'll never win.
The ocean is so powerful when you're 10. I'm guessing this boy wasn't swimming in the ocean. I'm guessing he was just like playing in the water, like up to his ankles or something. And then a wave comes in and sweeps him out. I'm guessing that's what happened. Cause the ocean is ferocious, but this lifeguard saw it and he ran out to get him two kids, two kids.
10 year old boy and a 16 year old boy. Gosh, my oldest is nine. I think we could be strong enough to be a lifeguard like this one day. My goodness. And there's video of it. Someone took a video of it and the waves, they kept coming from, it seems like every direction.
There's a couple of things that stand out from the video. First, they keep coming. You can't tell us from the video, but it's 58 degrees. Water's 58 degrees out there. So it's cold enough. It's gonna take your breath.
That's hard enough. And then it just smashing you nonstop. But here's what I love about this lifeguard. One wave in particular was coming to get him. He grabs the boy and he leans into the wave. That's a move from someone who knows what he's doing.
That's skill. That's excellent. I love it. seeing people who know what they're doing, who are excellent at what they're doing, who are skilled. I love seeing people who are skilled in their craft. Excellence is a virtue that we need more of.
And the only way to get more of it is to admire it and celebrate it when we see it. It needs to be praised. And people need to have this extra desire. The praise we give on excellence is fuel for everyone to try to be more excellent. So when you see excellence like this and you're like, Oh wow, look what he did there. He, he grabbed the boy and lean into the wave so that he could pop up instead of just getting smashed by it.
It's awesome. Another thing that stands out is at one point in the rescue, um, some guys who were on the beach try to come out and help the lifeguard. They can't swim that well. It looks, they can't beat the waves. They don't know what they're doing. Like the lifeguard does.
So the waves start kind of hitting them about and the lifeguard, I think, I think this is what I'm seeing. The lifeguard sees that these guys could drown him. And it looks like the lifeguard, he like does something like this and it looks like he's calling them off. It looks like he's telling them to back off. You gotta be very careful when you're a lifeguard. That's why they have that buoy.
That's why they have the red flotation buoy thing. When you go out to rescue someone and they're thrashing about, you can't just go grab them because if they're thrashing, they'll drown you. So you keep your distance and you push your buoy to them so they can grab the buoy and then you can pull them in. If I remember my lifeguarding training from 30 years ago. But again, that speaks to the excellence and well -trained skill. Sorry, the story just popped in my head.
This one's sad. I'm supposed to be happy. I forget where this was. I want to say Texas, but that may not be right. A whole family of people drowned. I don't exactly know who the family members was, but it was like a boy and then four adults.
And they drowned trying to rescue the boy. They were all fishing in the river. The river took the boy away. They all tried to rescue the boy. And I think the police knew the situation because there was maybe a little boy who went up to the street. I can't even finish the story.
to see this 16 -year -old risk his life to save this other boy. Spectacular. Pulls the boy ashore with the sounds of terrified and sobbing women on the beach. The guy who recorded the video said, I've never seen a rescue this intense before. So when I saw it unfolding, I just didn't know how it was going to turn out. I mean, people watching, everyone thought the boy was going to drown and maybe even the lifeguard was going to drown.
The lifeguard's mom told the media, I'm blown away by the love kindness, gratitude, and respect you're sending his way. A few people have asked about a GoFundMe, but honestly, he was just doing the job. He was just doing the job that he absolutely loves. He could start a GoFundMe and probably make 50K, maybe more. But the parents are like, nope, doing his job, doing what he loves. This is the point of the podcast when we usually talk about something that's broken or like what the broken aspect of the story is, what the sin is in the story.
It's called the fallen conditioned focus. Like what's the broken here? Broken part? Nothing. There's nothing broken about the story. It's wonderful all around.
Maybe we'll find out his family are Christians or Trump supporters and the media will destroy them. I hope not. But I will say he was invited to the White House for a proper honoring. I look forward to that. They also talked about maybe the boy coming along as well. That would be a really nice thing.
And I'm very much in favor of heroes being honored. I think it should be a regular occurrence and the White House should lead the way. It should almost be like a TV show. It should be like an expected TV show, like this month's heroes or this week's heroes. Just show Americans doing great things. That's how important it is that we lift up these virtues and that we can be reminded of who we are, and we lift these people up.
This is who we aspire to be, all of us, each in our own way. Let's go to the Bible. First point of the Bible, the power of God, and we see it through nature. God, the creator of the universe, the precision of nature from the tiniest nanoparticles to the massive scope of the universe, all of it speaks to God's power. Last week in church, in the class before church, the preacher asked for adjectives to describe God. And everyone shouted out really wonderful adjectives.
How would you do it? How would you, what word would you use to describe God? I was thinking, and the one that stood out to me was powerful. I think of God as powerful. We don't enough. I don't know.
Do you think of God as powerful? We don't, we don't think about that enough on a regular basis. Heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his glory. Psalm 19 .1. And it's also looking forward to Jesus. Hebrews 1 .3 says he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.
And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. As amazing as God's creation is, God is more amazing. He obviously created. Jesus is more amazing. And there's so much in the Psalms about nature.
The heavens declare the glory of God. Active, tense. These heavens, they continue to proclaim every day how incredible God is. We should be in awe constantly of the stars, the sun, clouds, moon. We should be all of creation every day, constantly in awe. It's a great thing to do with your kids is to teach them to be in awe.
And the way to teach them to be in awe is to be in awe. And not just have a nice sunset, although it's a great thing, but everything, flower, look at that cloud, wow, thunderstorms, whatever, any nature thing you're a part of, speak to the aweness of it. Like, whoa, this is huge, this is amazing, this is powerful, God is powerful. Someone gave me that advice when Jack was born. So I wanna pass it on to you. your kids or your grandkids.
Psalm 104 31. May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works. Who looks on the earth and it trembles. Who touches the mountains and they smoke. Earthquakes and volcanoes.
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. Isn't that great? But God's more powerful. He just has to look or touch. That's That's it.
Boom. Check out this conclusion from David, Psalm 83. When I consider your heaven, heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind? That you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them. Oh my gosh, this powerful, all powerful creator. And he cares about us?
You have made them man a little lower than the angels and crown them with glory and honor. God is powerful and he loves us. A lot of these verses I just shared have to do with like the cosmos and that's great too, but the oceans, he talks about the oceans. Psalm 89 .9, you rule the raging sea. When its waves rise, you still them. God's in charge of all of it.
Job 38 .8, oh my goodness, all the Job quotes about creation. God sets boundaries for the sea and says, When the waves must start and stop, he's in control of all of it. Psalm 146 .6, God is the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. Amos 9 .6, the Lord summons the waters of the sea and pours them out on the earth. God is in control of all of it. So when we see the ocean, we hear the ocean, we feel it.
We should be in awe at the power of God. I was humbled. Sorry, just even just saying the word feel the ocean. I can't remember my first surfing expedition. And I guess, boy, was I humbled. I didn't know at the time to think, man, God is great.
I should have. This is the God that we love and that we serve. I prefer to be on his team. But I also want to comment the final point here on the metaphor. of a common Christian metaphor of when we're in trouble. Well, there's two, actually.
There's difficult and deceit. Let's do the deceit. We don't want to be deceived, right? And the Bible says we don't want to be deceived. We can no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. Rather, speak in the truth in love.
We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head into Christ. I can't be deceived, tossed to and fro. I don't even know what I think, what's going on, where am I? Let's read the Bible. That's your rock. How many people in life feel like that?
Every day they live like that, just tossed around by deceit and the devil schemes. We are, I don't want to say we're a lifeguard. Jesus is the ultimate lifeguard, if you will, but you know what I mean, right? We can help rescue people from the chaos, just like that lifeguard in California. And the ocean metaphor that's often made too is when life is difficult, right? Psalm 46 one says, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Jesus calmed the storm. Of course, the sea became still. Peter sank in the waves, but Jesus reached out and saved him. Psalm 93 ,4, mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty. Isn't it incredible how much, how much is in the Bible about waves and water?
This isn't everything, of course, just shared a couple here. And of course I'll end here. We are called to build our house on the rock. Matthew 7, 24, Jesus says, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them, or if I may add, hears these scriptures The psalm about God and the ocean and his power and doesn't care or isn't in awe.
Foolish man who builds his house, who builds his life on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. So three points on today's episode. First, let's celebrate heroism and virtue and excellence. Let's be in awe of the waves and let's build our house on the rock. youtube .
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