"A Thousand Peeps"
EPISODE 201
Realize the Power of Community
We’re back and excited to start a new guided study on friendship called “Two By Two.” This first study comes from the Bible’s encouragement to value and invest in building these bonds. Four Proverbs on Friends remind us to choose our companions carefully and value quality over quantity. We learn from how Jesus sent the disciples out that he wants us to team up, and we ask, “What gets in the way of the kind of close friendships we want?” We pray this series enriches your relationships as you study along with us!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: A strong circle of Christian friends is invaluable on our heavenward journey.
This Week's Challenge: Perform a social audit, rating the interactions you have with others as “+” or “-“ in your journal.
Episode Transcription
All I'm thinking right now is about a thousand peeps in the closet. Like that'd be a great title for this episode. It's like a nightmare. I'm going to dream about that tonight. [MUSIC PLAYING] Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 201. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much, everyone, for tuning in. We are one episode past our 200th extravaganza. And as we talked about on the last episode, we took a couple of weeks off. So thanks, everyone, for sticking with us. We are back for the attack, though, today. As we begin a brand new guided study-- it's going to be a nine-session guided study-- that we are going to be focusing on friendship. I think at one point, we had talked to each other about being shocked that we had not actually done a guided study on friendship before. But it kind of makes sense, right? It does. And we were both preaching whole series of lessons on the subject. And we realized, this is like the central concept of the show. And the Bible has some important things to say about it. So we'll get into that and excited to see where this study leads us. I think it's definitely fitting on the heels of our 200th episode, where we were a little navel-gazy about our own friendship. So let's just talk about here, in our first session of this guided study, about the value of partners. That's actually what we're going to kick this thing off with. And we have a conversation starter. And that one we called, "Two is One." [MUSIC PLAYING] This is "Two By Two." Two is one. As the proud owner of a small electric vehicle, it's been wonderful to breeze by gas stations and oil change stops without a second thought. But a while back, I got in my car to leave for the day, only to find that my battery was almost empty. My car charger had failed overnight. Never fear, I thought, as I reached for my backup charger, only to suddenly realize that it too had failed. And that's when the old military saying reverberated in my brain, "Two is one and one is none." Meaning, when we have a fully functioning backup, we can count on it in a pinch. But what happens when our backup fails? It's like how Jesus sent his disciples to preach in pairs, two by two. Sure, they could have covered more ground apart. But what a lonely job to work without a friend. That's the thought to kick off our next guided study about creating meaningful friendships that we're calling Two By Two. So here's the big idea. A strong circle of Christian friends is invaluable on our heavenward journey. There's great power in community, having a backup and leaning on our friends. Close friends give us energy and help recharge our batteries in our partnerships. With the chaos of life, it seems like friendship is an afterthought. But considering the encouragement of the Proverbs, these connections are integral to a well-rounded believer's life. Wisdom teaches us to bind together for strength in adversity, develop a small family-like circle, and avoid investing in toxic relationships. So in this nine-session guided study, we'll learn about the makings of true friendship, how to build a close inner circle of our own, and we'll zoom out to see the impact these relationships have in life's wonderful journey. We hope you'll be challenged and encouraged as you study on your own or two by two with a friend. So here's the big question. Do you see the value in having a close friend to back you up? So follow along with this guided study at biblegeeks.fm/twobytwo, and may the Lord bless you and keep you to- Shalom. Okay, so the big idea of that one was that a strong circle of Christian friends is invaluable on our heavenward journey. And it's hard not to kick this series off with a sort of theme song that captures this big idea. I love theme songs, you know. And this might shock you, Bryan, knowing my dad, but I didn't grow up in the kind of family that goes to music concerts. But there was this booster band we went to see every year when I was little called the Florida College Friends. And they closed each show with that Michael W. Smith song "Friends." And when you hear something a million times, it starts to feel cheesy, but those lyrics stuck with me as a kind of anthem, and just eight-year-old Ryan, whatever, thinking about these lyrics. It just hits you and really captures, I think, the flavor of this big idea and of this series. It talks about how friends are friends forever if the Lord's the Lord of them. And a friend will not say never 'cause the welcome will not end, though it's hard to let you go in the Father's hands we know that a lifetime's not too long to live as friends. And if you can say that about your life and the people in your life, I think that's a pretty good sign that you've done something well in your life. - Absolutely, having that strong circle of Christian friends is definitely something that I want more of in my life. And this series is really all about helping me to remember how to do that. So the big question that we got into in that conversation starter was, do you see the value in having a close friend to back you up? And as I was thinking about that question, it reminded me like how many Home Depot trips does it take to screw in a light bulb? Any project around the house, I don't know what it is, but for some reason, I'm always heading to Home Depot multiple times to get the project done. - Luckily, it's like a block away. - Exactly, it is a block away. And as convenient as it is for me to just pop up to Lowe's or pop up to Home Depot to get some backup equipment for a job I'm doing, it is not that fast to be able to have a friend back you up if you haven't already done the work to cultivate those kinds of close relationships. And for me, having somebody have my back is super important, but am I going to intentionally place value on those kind of relationships and those kinds of connections that I'm investing in them when I need them, that they'll be there to back me up? - Yeah, well, as we kick this thing off, we like to start with something that's kind of random. And so the question for our icebreaker is, are you, Bryan, the kind of person who has a backup and I know the answer? - Well, it's funny because obviously in that conversation starter, I'm the one who wrote that. So I failed to have a backup in that case. My backup was broken. So that's not a good situation to be in, but-- - But you were kicking yourself because you always have a backup. - Exactly, I am always having a backup. That was an anomaly for sure. I'm usually the guy who has the cabinet stock full of things that we use regularly. We've got backups on backups. And it's kind of a weird balance 'cause I'm also a guy who loves minimalism. So I really don't like to have a ton of extra things around, but it is nice in a pinch to have a backup ready to go. I love having a backup all over the place. That's me, how about you? This is actually an interesting question to ask you 'cause I think I know the answer too, but maybe you've gotten better at this. - No, I'm really not that kind of a person. I mean, like you say, yeah, as you grow up, you say, okay, I've got a family to look after. I've got things I need to have emergencies covered. But beyond that, if I can travel light, that's what I wanna do. And I like to just figure things out as they come. Adrian and I have learned, this is actually a thing, these two different strategies of coping with potential problems and she's good at one and I'm good at the other and we both have to lean on each other. And so my strength is adaptation. Like I can just readjust constantly. Oh, that didn't go the way I wanted. - Roll with the punches. - I'm gonna improvise something else and work with it and not get hung up on being frustrated or whatever. But Adrian is so amazing at preparing for every possible need. We have go bags ready for every, with four small kids, we're ready for ski clothes, we're ready for swim clothes, we're ready for diaper emergencies. - I was gonna say. - Bathroom emergencies, I guess I should say now, we're out of diapers finally. - How many backup pairs of underwear do you have in the car? - Oh man, so many and yet never enough. We've got picnic blankets, we've got, and then like there's always of course the real emergency stuff. But anyways, she's great at it, I am not. - Well, it's good to know that nothing has changed from that standpoint. - We are who we are. - As we continue talking about friendship, let's get into our segment here, like the teacher where we're gonna look to Jesus and something that he teaches us in his own life. And I love this story. And we alluded to it there in the conversation starter, but from Mark chapter six, verses seven to 13, we learn how Jesus is sending out his disciples two by two. And here in this verse, he's talking about the 12. But in other places, we know that these might be more than just the 12 disciples. They're getting sent out to go and preach about Jesus, that the Messiah has come. And he gives them all these instructions, right? Which kind of follows suit with the things you were talking about, right? - Yeah, book, chapter and verse. - They were instructed to go out and be adaptive, right? Like they were not gonna be out there with extra money and extra bread and extra bags. And he's giving them all these instructions to basically just trust him. He'll take care of them, but they're supposed to go out. And how they go out is two by two. So what do you learn here from Jesus about the value of friendship? - Yeah, we could camp on this idea of him sending them out with traveling lightly, but you know, that's not the point we wanna take from this. It's that there's value in working side by side with a partner. And one of the main things is that it adds credibility when two of us are saying the same thing, which is why the Torah required the testimony of two or three witnesses to convict in a capital crime. And that idea comes up quite a few times in the New Testament as well. But it also helps you keep going when things are tough. You hold up each other's hands. You think of Aaron and her holding up Moses, lending their strength to him. You can come up with better plans together. The Proverbs often talk about the importance of counselors and listening to advice and thinking together with other people. And it's also just more fun to do good work together. It's better. It's a better way to live, to share our lives with brothers and sisters we love and to partner with them. - Yeah, I was thinking here too, it would have been a probably more effective use of their manpower to go out one by one, to go out by themselves would have been, they would have been able to spread more, talk to more people. I'm sure it would have just been a lonely job that they all went out there to go do by themselves. The fact that Jesus sends them out there, not with him, but with each other, I think is setting them up for a really powerful transition later on as Jesus is going to ascend into heaven and leave them to do all this work on their own. They're gonna continue doing this two by two as they go out and they preach to those who are lost out in the world. And having that witness, having the backup, being believable, being credible, but also being able to support each other and to lean on each other like, did you just see what happened? Or be able to talk to each other like, I can't believe what she just said or whatever. Sometimes you need a sounding board, you need somebody to talk to in some of these moments. And it just reminds me so much of inspirational quotes from people like Mother Teresa who said, I can do what you cannot do, you can do what I cannot do, together we can do great things. And I think that's exactly what we see here in this two by two nature of them being sent out. They leaned on each other, which was super powerful. - Yeah, I like that quote. I mean, this podcast is again, an example of that. But so is so many other meaningful things I've done in my life. Things are more meaningful whenever we do them together, whenever the church does the project, whenever I'm co-teaching with someone and the class turns out well, it's just better. And the product is better, but also the process is better. And there's just a lot to it. God has designed us for partnership, going back to the garden, and he's designed the church to be one organism of all these parts. So it's not surprising that it works so well. - For sure. And speaking of pithy proverbial quotes, like from that of Mother Teresa, let's move on to our next segment here on the episode. And that is top four Proverbs. - One, two, three, four. Ah, ah, ah. - So obviously we have four Proverbs that we're gonna get into here in this conversation. We've got them all queued up, and Ryan, you've got the first ones and knock it out of the park. - Proverb numero uno. A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. - I feel like you have to put this one out there first. - You do. - It had to be first. I love this one. Proverbs 18, 24. We built our last two men's weekends on this proverb. And I recently talked in a different sermon about the candy calendar. And this is something that just how we, in our family, me and Adrian especially, think of a calendar as having these three different candy holidays. You go from Christmas to Easter to Halloween. And this is important because you're always trying to get rid of candy, and it just stockpiles. And as soon as you get the house clear of candy, of course we take our parent tax right on top, but it still sticks around forever. You have more coming in. And my kids are still in that phase where they try to stockpile any candy they can get because more candy is obviously better, no matter what kind of candy it is. But as you get older, you realize one high quality chocolate bar is worth a thousand Smarties and Tootsie Rolls, right? Come on, you could have a closet full of Smarties and like a thousand Peeps or whatever. I will take just one or two super good bars or pieces of candy. Quality is better than quantity, and friends are like candy that way. I can have a thousand people tagged as friend on Facebook, but that means nothing compared to the handful that stick closer than a brother. Friends that are closer than family could ever be. The ones you go to battle with through life and they always have your back. And there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, but the many companions, actually the end of that proverb, that part of the proverb is you have a lot of people who are near you, a lot of associates, a lot of so-called friends, one Hebrew scholar translated it, and yet you're going to fall, you're gonna come to ruin because you need those true friends that stick closer than family. - All I'm thinking right now is about a thousand Peeps in the closet. Like that'd be a great title for this episode. - It's like a nightmare. I'm gonna dream about that tonight, not in a good way. - No doubt, but like honestly, a man of many companions may come to ruin. You get this sense, and I think this is somewhat of what you're saying here about the candy calendar. If one is good, then two must be good as well. Two is one, right? Well, what about three? A three-fold cord is not quickly broken. Three must be great. Well, three is great. A thousand must be even better. At some point, there's a diminishing return there and you're really not getting the kind of quality that you actually want. And I really appreciate this proverb. I appreciate the thought of a candy calendar. I do not appreciate a thousand Peeps in the closet though. You can keep those. - Yeah, what's proverb number two? - All right, so proverb number two is Proverbs 17, 17. And it says, "A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity." It's this idea of adversity that really is the genesis of that backup idea in the conversation starter, right? It's like the idea that you're in a pinch. You've got something that you need. You need help with something. And there is somebody there who's gonna back you up. And it really does line up for me in my theme for the year of the year of the shield and how I'm really interlocking my shield, extending my shields around other people. I wanna protect other people. I wanna help and support other people. Like that idea of interlocking those shields together as we've talked about from Ephesians in our study. Just this whole idea of like the Spartan warriors, how they were said to return with their shield or on it. Basically the idea that if they were to lose their shield out in battle, they would actually face getting kicked out of the society because effectively they were no longer able to protect their friends and their neighbors. And just the idea of having a shield and being able to support other people, being able to stand beside my friend in a time of adversity like they can stand next to me is just huge. And there's so many benefits to that, but you're not gonna find it unless you've put in the work ahead of time. So I love this proverb and it's just the thing that's carrying me through a lot of the theme that I'm having this year. - I love that. I love the idea of a band of brothers you go through life with and that you're going to war with. I mean, really it's not, this is the stakes couldn't be higher and the enemy couldn't be any more insidious or dangerous. And so we totally need each other. I love that from the year of your shield. Proverb number three is kind of a proverb. I'm gonna try to skate by on a technicality here and pull a pithy statement from Ecclesiastes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, here is one that we've already noted and just belongs in this collection. Ecclesiastes four versus nine and 10. Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil for if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. And a couple of verses later he adds, and though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. And you just brought that idea up, which sounds like a proverb. We are stronger together. That's the point. So I'm gonna try to make it a little bit more simple. I'm gonna try to make it a little bit more simple. I'm gonna try to make it a little bit more simple. The proverb says in 22 verse 24 through 25, I'm actually going back to the proverbs this time, not a koozie asty. So, "Make no friendship with a man given to anger, "nor go with a wrathful man, "lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare." I think it's important for us to have an idea here that who we choose as friends is important. This idea from this proverb is all about making sure we're friends with the right people. And we could spend an entire conversation just talking about choosing friends, picking the right friends. You can pick your nose, you can pick your friend's nose, but you can't pick your friends, or I don't know, something like that. As we're often reminded in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 33 and other places, that evil friends will corrupt us. And it's such an important reminder for us to make sure we choose our friends wisely. And so, I don't know if you've ever heard the phrase that we become the average of the five people we spend the most time with. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's sort of an interesting thought experiment to imagine who am I listening to, who do I allow to speak into my life, who am I spending my time with, and how much of an influence are these people having on me? And is that a good influence that they're giving to me? So, just being careful, I think, is maybe the last thing to close out this discussion on the proverbs. There are plenty of other proverbs, I think, on friendship, but these four, I think they cover a pretty broad swath of the overall conversation about friendship. - Yeah, and I like where you ended that. I really think that's an important aspect, is choosing the right people. And you get to choose your friends. That was a pretty pithy proverb, probably the title of the episode with your nose-picking comment. But I don't remember Solomon saying that, but it's a good one. - No, I don't think he did. My dad definitely, my mom said it. But the idea of being selective, there's another Hobby Lobby quote that says something about friends are the family you choose. And you get to choose your people that you're gonna be with and who are gonna be your anchors. And it doesn't mean you're not investing in other people as well. It doesn't mean that you don't build friendships with people out in the world. I think it's an important distinction. We can be friends with people in the world without being friends of the world. And we're trying to connect with them and that kind of thing. But it's about where is home base? Where are your main friends? Where are you staying anchored? I always had friends in college or at work at those places that didn't share the same values necessarily. But my real friends, like my close friends that I was really anchoring myself with, that I was part of the culture of, were the people in the church. And that has sustained me. And that gives us an opportunity then to leverage the friendship or to use those investments that we're making in each other to show those friends another group, another way of being in the world and being friends and bring them into the circle. But you have to have the circle of good, righteous people or you don't have anything to bring them into. Yeah. Oh, I love the idea of having that circle. And going back to my weird comment, obviously you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose. But I think... Did you just Google that? Thinking I did, I have to Google that. But as you think about that, maybe your best friend will make their nose available to you. And that leads to our next segment here on the episode. And that is our reach out question. Reach out, reach out and touch someone. All right, so here's the question. What obstacles do you need to overcome to make yourself and maybe your nose more available to others? Ryan, when you think about friendship, what do you need to overcome to make yourself available? It's a good question. And I'm going to take us back on the rails here. Thank you. Yes. Our next episode, we're going to get into this topic more, but I just want to highlight two obstacles that I was thinking about as I pondered this question. I think it takes a real effort to make the time to invest in meaningful friendships. Beyond just talking to folks after services or at a potluck or a study or something, to really say, "Okay, we're going to make an appointment," which is sad that you even need an appointment to hang out with people, but that's just how life is these days. I think we're trying actually to get beyond that, our family, to where there's space to have those sitcom friends, as you and I used to call them, where people can just knock on the door and walk in, you know, like Kramer scooting into Jerry's house or whatever. But I remember when we were young and our friendships in the church were always like that. We were spending all of our free time with each other. That was just what you did on an evening. Whenever you didn't have work or school or homework or whatever, there was a lot more time to spend and to spread around. And these days, you got to do a lot of work, it feels like. You know, you line up a babysitter to go out with a couple friends or you coordinate the family calendar to free yourself up to hang out, or even when like you and me and some friends do a video conference or something. Long distance friends, close friends, it's all challenging. It takes effort. And I think that starts to make it more important to just overlap our worlds. And we've tried to start figuring that out, to invite our friends into the chaotic world we have, maybe to occasionally step into their world, whether that means opening our home or doing other work together. But an obstacle to that, this is a second obstacle, is with small kids and busy lives and everything, our house isn't always as tidy and beautiful as we would want to present. We don't always have a fancy meal to share. But if someone wants to come and have a space at our table, they're welcome to our grilled cheese sandwiches and soup, you know? It's like no biggie. That's the life we want to share is just easier shared living. We're house to house. We're making space. We have enough. We accept that we don't want to have things gross, but there might be some toys scattered in a corner that we didn't really want you to see or whatever it is. But it's easy to get stuck between those things. You want to honor people by hosting them in that kind of traditional way or by scheduling a fun thing to do. There's a brother here that we try to every once in a while do something. We'll go axe throwing or we'll go just try something new, do something cool. But it's hard. And so on the other hand, with those opportunities few and far between, just finding a way to let people into shared activities and into our space. I think it's so important to just get real. And sometimes our schedules are hard to work around, and we just have to get real about how much time we have available. And obviously if we value friendships, we're going to make that time. We'll talk about that in the next conversation. But just approaching things like we are actual real human beings with real limitations, I think is a really powerful realization for us to have. But then also like you were talking about, sometimes, yeah, it's about cabin life, right? It's about this is just how we're living. This is how we exist. Come, we welcome you into our home, but we're not going to make a show out of this. And I feel like sometimes we can pull the Martha and forget to be the Mary. We can just really get overwhelmed by all the details and all the just the extravagant show of things, where really it should just be simple like a grilled cheese sandwich and soup sounds wonderful, right? I love that. And it is powerful, though, to have the Kramer who can just bust through the door. We have really close friends of ours, and you know them very well, who they will call or text five minutes ahead of time to give me a pants warning so I can put on my pants. And they just pop right over and it's no big deal. And I love that. I think those are wonderful relationships to have. But just getting real, I think, is super helpful with that. My answer to this question, though, what obstacles do you need to overcome to make yourself available to others is really similar to yours, I think. It's about time. It's about energy. I think one of the things that I've struggled with over the years is just the digital versus the physical world regarding my friendships. Sometimes it's easy to slip into like superficial surface scratching relationships with folks online or social media. I mean, like it is amazing that I'm able to like double tap a heart button and tell somebody I like what they said in two seconds while I'm sitting on the toilet or something like that. But like, you know, am I willing to actually do the more meaningful, deep, face to face, in person, even conversation that really invests in a relationship? And I'm learning a lot this year, especially about analog over digital in many areas of my life. Just having something real, having something tangible where I'm sitting across the table or even having a video call. Yeah, I know that's still digital, too. But like, you know, having a substantive discussion, sharing a meal together, those things have been huge for me. And just getting past those sort of like digital interactions that I can squeeze into any tiny passing moment throughout my day. Analog interactions, real face to face interactions take time and they take energy. And I'm just leave that there because I know we're going to talk about that a lot on the next conversation. But that's a super important aspect of my life that I'm trying to overcome and move beyond. It's a barrier, definitely to brotherhood. Yeah, I love a lot of what you said there. It's that slowing down, doing less to do more. This is something that we're really talking about a lot because this cabin life theme that we're trying to invest in and make space for real connection with people. And with just a different kind of energy to what we're doing. And so I think that is a really good preview of something we're going to get into a lot more in the next episode. I think that'll be a beneficial conversation. But for this one, we want to wrap it up with a challenge. I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. And our challenge this week is to perform a social audit. This is a very Bryan kind of a challenge, rating the interactions you have with others as a plus or minus in your journal. I really like this idea of just stepping back to think about where you are and to evaluate. You know, it's hard to make a plan forward without knowing where you are. I'm reminded of Elijah as he stood in the cave thinking he was all alone and God having to come to him and tell him, no, no, there's seven thousand people just like you who haven't bowed their knees to Baal. And sometimes in our loneliness, maybe sometimes in our just busyness of life, we forget that people are there and they're available and they would do great to invest in a relationship with if we just realized it. And so I think this challenge is a fun one. And I've done this in the past where you basically just go through your day, you list out all the people you talk to. And if it was a positive interaction, you put a plus by their name. If it was a negative interaction, you put a minus by their name. So, you know, at the end of this conversation, I'll probably have a Ryan plus. Sharilyn is definitely a Sharilyn plus plus plus for me. Sometimes you're going to run into the Steve minus minuses. Steve is always the problem and imaginary Steve, by the way. It's so important, though, to understand that there will be those minus minus relationships and there will be plus plus plus relationships in your life. And who are you going to invest time to have a relationship with, to have a friendship with? Some people are maybe the people who those Proverbs would encourage us to stay away from. And others are people that we could invest more time and energy with. I think this is a helpful challenge, at least for nothing else, maybe not given the Steve's of our life a hard time, but maybe identifying those plus plus plus relationships in a way that we can invest a little bit more with them. Yeah, I think that's really cool. Starting any kind of a study, I've always found that doing a little audit can really help. We just started a class on how to study the Bible, and we started by checking, hey, where am I in my Bible study so that you can see the progress and see where you want to go. So I like that we're going to close with a closing prayer. And the one we suggested in our study guide comes from that passage, Mark six, seven to thirteen. And we said, as we go out into the world with a mission to share the good news of Jesus, give us partners in that work to keep us strong and focused in our work for you. So drawing from that idea, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, thank you for not leaving us alone in this world. Thank you for your friendship, for the way you come alongside us, bless us and support us and save us. Thank you for the special people you've created in Christ, a people different than we were different than what we see in the world, a people of love and loyalty and character that we get to enjoy and learn from. We pray that you'd help us to be good friends to the people that you bring into our lives. We ask you for more of these rich, godly friendships. And we also pray that you would help us to be true friends to those around us who are still in the world and use our friendship to help lead them to you. And finally, our deep longing is to prove ourselves faithful friends to Jesus, to be true to our Lord. And we ask for strength and help in walking and obedience and love with him as he has shown himself to be our greatest friend, laying down his life for us, his friends. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. On the next episode, we are going to talk about the second session in this Guided Studies series, Two By Two. And on that conversation, we're going to talk about creating space for friendships. And that, I think, conversation was laced all throughout these other ones. You can kind of extrapolate where we're going to go with all that. Just making the space, making ourselves available to these kinds of relationships. And that'll be what we'll talk about on the next episode. And to prepare for that conversation, we encourage you to read John 11, 1 to 11, John 15 versus 13 to 14, and Ephesians 3 versus 18 to 19. And that'll hopefully set you up for that next conversation. Yeah, I think this is as we were starting to get into really the meat of it, because this is what holds us back. And it's going to be a basis for everything that comes after. So that'll be great. Absolutely. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast Player of Choice or at biblegeeks.fm/201. You can also follow along with the series at biblegeeks.fm/twobytwo. We have a course on our website. We're changing things up. We're doing some things differently. And hopefully, if you go check out our website there, you'll find some pretty cool resources that you can draw from in this guided study as we go along. So thanks so much, everyone, for tuning in. And until next episode, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom!```