If you ever ran into somebody before, and you should know their name, and you recognize their face, and you used to know their name, like you can remember a time where I, I knew this person and we had conversations and we knew each other, but now I’m looking at ’em and I cannot remember their name at all. There’s a reason that we forget people’s names. There’s this scientific reason before behind it. There’s a guy named Robin Dunbar. Robin Dunbar was a professor, and about 30 years ago, he came up with this, this construct. He calls it Dunbar’s Number. And at the high end of the number, he says that your brain can only remember about 1500 names. What that means is that there are names that you know right now that all of a sudden, a few years from now, you, you stop seeing that person.

You haven’t seen them in some time, but you’re simultaneously, you’re meeting new people at the same time. And so your brain will say, I don’t think I need this name anymore. We haven’t talked to that guy in forever. And so it just ditches it, it throws it out. You’re learning the new names until you see that person that you hadn’t seen in a while. But 1500, that’s about the max number of names that you can remember and, and remember regularly. Then five, at the other end of the spectrum, five is about the right number of intimate relationships you can have, and that tends to be the family that you’re living with, like a real intimate relationship. But then everywhere up in the middle is this spectrum. So 15 is the number of close relationships that you can have. He would talk about these as being sympathetic relationships.

That means that these are the people that know the bad things that are happening in your life and also the good things that are happening in your life. Then one step further than that would be that 35 number. These are gonna be your crew, that the people that you tend to spend the most time with. Then in the middle, what we call Dunbar’s number, he would say 150. That’s about the size of your tribe. That, that really, you can’t get to tribe much bigger than that. So 150 people are gonna be about the number of people that you surround yourself with. Do life together with, spend most of your time with today. As we continue to unpack the book of Proverbs and talk about wisdom and the wisdom that Solomon is trying to teach us, we’re gonna talk specifically focus on those, those middle numbers, 15 and 35, that these are those relationships that have heavy influence on who you are, who I am.

When you think about your future 10 years from now, that the biggest influence on your life, what the data would back up the biggest influence on your life are gonna be those 15 to 35 people that you spend most of your time with. So if you’ve got a Bible, turn with me to the book of Proverbs. Proverbs. We’re gonna continue in chapter one. Last week we ended in verse seven. It, it’s the most important verse in all Proverbs. ’cause It says that the beginning of wisdom is this, the fear of the Lord. We’ll pick up in verse eight. It says here, my son, your father’s instruction and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. Now, if you are a child in the room or a student in the room that still lives with mom and dad, I wanna repeat what Solomon just said.

He, he said, I want you to listen to your father’s instruction and your mother’s teaching. And then he says that the, that instruction, that teaching from your parents is like a graceful garland for your head in penance for your neck. Right Now, I, I realize we all have different experiences with your parents, and some, sadly, unfortunately, have had bad experiences with your parents. But the way that God wired it and designed it to be is that your mom, your dad, they’re the closest thing on this earth that you find to unconditional love, but they’re for you just because they’re for you. There’s not some ulterior motive that they have. And so what he’s saying is he’s saying, these two people that unconditionally love you, that want what is best for you, they’re gonna be imparting wisdom, guidance into your life. And if you’ll take hold of that wisdom, it is like this garland for your head, an appendant for your neck.

Then verse 10, he says, my son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. He’s talking about peer pressure. I want you to pause for a moment and think of a moment in your life when you experienced peer pressure, that that moment when there’s a group or a person that is trying to get you to do something that you know that you shouldn’t do. The challenge with peer pressure is when there’s a group of people all doing one thing, our natural desire is to conform to the group. I grew up out in the country of Katy, Texas, and we lived on two acres, and pretty much everybody out there was on a few acres. So there weren’t a whole lot of houses out there. And my parents created these geographical boundaries. So when we were going out and running around outside, there was these geographical boundaries that we had that we weren’t allowed to pass.

And so about 300 yards from our house was a bayou. Now a bayou, it, it’s basically a giant drainage ditch but really deep. So if you go to the bottom of Bayou, it’s, it’s up 15, 20 feet on both sides of it. And then at the bottom of that bayou, when rains would come, it would fill up that bayou and it’d make it look like a river for a short amount of time, and then it would drain out to the gulf, and then it would just turn into a bayou again. Well, that bayou was our boundary. We were not allowed past that bayou, which of course, as a kid meant all you could think about was what was on the other side of the ba the Bayou, like, like the moment that it became off limits is the moment that it became really attractive.

Like you’re just like, man, I wonder what’s over there. It’s like the land flown with milk and honey, that is the promised land. Can you imagine how much fun it would be on the other side of the bayou? And there was nothing over there. It was a bayou and then a plane, and then a bunch of cattle, and that was it. But I remember one day, I, I was somewhere between eight and 10 years old. My older brother, he, he’s two and a half a half years older than me. He had a friend over, his name was Mike Galbrath, and they were playing, of course, as the younger brother. I was just, I was their shadow. I was follow ’em around. And, and I remember they were staying at the edge of our property and they’re, they’re huddled together and they’re having a conversation and eventually they say, Hey, Kurt, come here.

And, and I come running over like, what’s up guys? And my brother says, Hey, we’re gonna go on the other side of the bayou. And at first you’re like, what? You’re not supposed to go on the other side of the bayou? And then he says, I want you to come with us. And I remember my heart’s like, you’re not supposed to do that, but, but this was my brother and his friend and they were cooler than me. So it’s like, well, I mean, okay. And now what I found out later is, do you know why they invited me to go with them across the bayou? Because they knew that I was gonna see them go across the bayou. And if I wasn’t with them, then I would go tattletale on him. So really the reason they invited me was simply because they were like, if he’s with us, then he’s in trouble too.

So this is, this is a way to protect our own skin. And so we go across the bayou. I remember going down into it. I remember going up from the other side and I remember being pretty disappointed ’cause it’s kind of boring. There’s nothing over there. I was expecting like buried treasure or something, and that was not there. And then we’re, we’re starting to make our way back. And some points on the other side of the bayou, as we’re headed back to our house, I stepped on a beehive. Now, when you think of a beehive, you tend to think of beehives like up in a tree and having honey. I stepped on a wood carpenter beehive, and they, they nest on the ground. And I don’t even remember stepping on it, but, but I do remember the results because shortly after I step on it, I look down and I, and there’s this big black bee that is gripped onto my arm, and then all of a sudden there’s another one on my other arm and I start to scream and my brother and his friend look at me, and there’s this swarm of bees that, that are surrounding me.

And then we all take off running. His, his friend is trying to pick him off, and my brother’s running ahead to get help, and I’m just screaming. And I go inside and I’m hysterical. And I remember exactly how many bees I was stung by because they had to take tweezers and pull out every single stinger. 32. That was the number. If you’re curious now, as a side note for my mom and dad, like what a beautiful, like, if they could have chosen what would happen when I went on the other side of the bayou, that’s what they would’ve chosen. <Laugh>. Like they, they didn’t, we didn’t even have the conversation of maybe you shouldn’t have gone over there. Like, life taught me that lesson all by itself.

But I remember the temptation and the peer pressure, and I remember that moment where you said, oh, okay, if everybody’s doing it, I guess I will do it too. And what Solomon is setting up right here is exactly that. He’s saying, be cautious because there is this peer pressure that is going to happen in life. And if sinners entice you, do not consent. Then in verse 11, he’s going to say, if they say so, he’s talking from the perspective of these evil doers and this peer pressure that’s gonna entice you towards evil. And then for the next few verses, it’s from the perspective of the evil doer. It says, if they say, come with us. Let us lie and wait for blood. Let us ambush the innocent without reason, like shol, let us swallow them alive and whole, like those who go down to the pit and we shall find all precious goods. We shall fill our houses with plunder, throw in your lots among us, we all, we will all have one purse. And now he’s using an extreme example of, of these are bandits that are trying to murder people and rob people. but, but the same is true really from all peer pressure. This is enticing us to do something that is wrong. They make it sound great. Hey, hey, look how, how great and how awesome this is gonna sound. And then ultimately it comes back to, Hey, throw your law in with us. Well, we’re gonna share the pot of gold. We’re gonna share the rewards. It’s gonna be an amazing thing. You’re gonna benefit by coming with us and doing things that we’re not supposed to do. Then Verse 15, Solomon says, my son, do not walk in the way with them. Hold back your foot from their paths for their feet run to evil

And they make haste to shed blood. Verse 17, he, he now uses this interesting word picture. He says, for in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird. But these men lie in, wait for their own blood. They set an ambush for their own lives. So, so he says that if a bird is watching you and you take a net and lay it out trying to capture the bird, when the bird sees it, you’ve got zero chance at capturing the net. But he’s saying, these individuals who are trying to entice you to do evil, He said that net that they’re laying out to try and capture somebody else with, he’s saying they will in fact capture themselves that their path is leading them towards destruction in them. Verse 19, he says, such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain. It takes away the life of its possessors. And now it’s interesting where this falls in the book of Proverbs,

Okay? ‘Cause You’re in the first chapter and he’s saying, Hey, you can almost feel him saying, Hey, lean in my my son. Listen to the wisdom of your dad and your mother. And I want you to lean in and pay really close attention. And the very first piece of Wisdom that Solomon gives is what Be cautious of who you spend your time with. He says, be cautious of those friends. Be cautious of the peers because they will influence your behavior. So he sets it up here, but we see the same theme recur through the entire book of Proverbs. Really quickly look at proverb chapter 12, Verse 26. He says, one who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked Leads them astray. Proverb 13, 20, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,

But the companion of fools will suffer harm you. You’ve heard this same proverb said a whole bunch of different ways in modern, modern kind of verbiage. So, so people will say, show me your 10 closest friends and I’ll show you your future. Or, or people will say, you are the sum total of your five closest relationships. All of those concepts come from this idea that Solomon said a few thousand years ago, that whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, spend time with people who are wiser than you, and they’re gonna sharpen you. They’re gonna encourage you. You’re, you are going to benefit from that. But the companion of fools will suffer harm. Spend time with fools and you will become foolish. Proverb 14 seven says, leave the presence of a fool for there you do not meet words of knowledge. He’s giving us this beginning in chapter one that he then comes back to over and over and over again.

It’s a caution, it’s a warning. Be careful about who you spend your time with. Now, it’s interesting ’cause he said this a few thousand years ago, and yet modern science, all the studies that they’ve done would affirm that what he said is completely true. Solomon Ash was a professor, he developed something called the Ash conformity line experiment in 1951 that basically he was trying to figure out when, when you put individuals into a group and they’re all doing something, even if it seems off, would that individual conform to the group and behave the same way? And so here’s what he did. He, he took 50 college students and one by one, he put them into an environment where everybody else in the room was an actor except the one college student. And so you can imagine you’re the college student and you walk in and he would sit them in 10 different seats and he would always put the, the person that he was doing the experiment on in the second to last seat.

So you could just imagine you’re a college student, you sit in the second to last seat, and he would ask a question, and then he would go down the line one by one, and he would ask for their answer. And typically they were pretty easy questions. So they had very easy answers. And so he, he would do about five questions. They all said the same answer. And so you’re in that, that ninth seat and you’re kind of feeling good. And then after a few questions to kind of warm everybody up, he would ask this question that he would put up these lines and he would say, okay, this is the target line. Is the target line the same length as A, as B or a C? So now take a good look at it. I’ll, and I’ll ask you, which is the correct answer?

C, C is the correct answer, and it’s pretty easy. But here’s what he did. He told all the actors, Hey, instead of saying C, I want you to say B. So imagine you’re, you’re sitting in this ninth chair and you, you look at it like, this is a pretty easy question. I’m looking at the target line, I’m looking at the it c except the first person. They ask the question and they say, be, and probably you’re scratching your hair like, is this person blind? How, how did they miss that? Then the second person says, be third person says be fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. Now it’s about to come to you and, and you start to have a little man mini panic attack. You’re like, every other person, they all said it was B and maybe my eyes are wrong, that maybe I’m just seeing it wrong.

There is some pressure that you have at that point to now choose the wrong answer. And so he did this with all kinds of different groups. And here was the key finding of the study. The key finding was that over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, at least 75%, at least one time, knew the right answer, but chose the wrong answer in order to fit in with everybody else’s answer. Afterwards, of course, they sat down with everybody, they interviewed them. And the main question was, and why? Like, why did you give the wrong answer? And here’s what they found. The majority of participants who yielded to the group admitted that they did not truly believe the group’s answers were correct. Instead, they went along with the wrong answer to avoid standing out, ridicule or disapproval. Here’s what the study found that is true in your life, is true in my life, that the research would support this over and over and over again.

And the Bible is very clear, and that is that behavior is contagious. That our peers will influence our habits. That the norms that you and your group of friends elevate. That this is just normal behavior, that those norms are powerful in how we live. One of the pieces of research that I found this week that just just boggled my mind found that if you have a friend, a close personal friend who becomes obese, the likelihood of you also becoming obese increases by 57%. Like you wouldn’t think that has any influence on you whatsoever. And yet, it’s this hint to us that the habits of your friends, the habits of the people that you are spending the majority of your time with, those habits are going to flow onto your pattern of behavior. And the same way that your habits are gonna flow into their pattern of behavior.

Saint John Christus, he said back in about three 50, in about the year three 50, he said, the soul takes the hue of the company. It keeps Now just pause for a moment and, and think about project ahead 10 years from now, 15 years from now, if you were gonna describe the person that you want to be, how, how would you describe it now? Like if you said, Hey, I, I want, and my relationship with God, I wanna have a more personal, intimate relationship 10, 15 years from now than I do right now. And as a side note, we, we never get there. Even Paul who wrote a whole bunch of the New Testament, Paul and Philippians writes that he has not achieved it yet, but he presses on towards the goal. So he never got there, which means that we never get there. So, so there’s this nonstop pursuit scripture, we call it the process of sanctification that, that we’re pursuing holiness, becoming more and more like Jesus.

And if I’m looking ahead 10 years from now, or 15 years from now, and saying, man, the person that I want to become and being more and more like Jesus, is this, are there relationships in my life empowering me to achieve that? Or are they hindering me to achieve that? If I think about the type of husband that I want to be 10 years from now, 15 years from now, if I wanna continue to be a better and better husband, if I wanna be all that I can as a spiritual leader of my household, do I have relationships that are spurring me towards that? When I think about the type of dad that I wanna be to my kids, is this fear of influence that I’m surrounding myself with, are they other dads who have that same desire? The other dads who have the same values that we as iron sharpens iron, are pushing each other towards becoming better dads in order to pour into our kids more and more and more and more.

Do the relationships in my life, do they help me to accomplish that goals? Or are those relationships tragically hindering me from those goals? So it’s interesting, Solomon does these two things. First, he presents the problem. Hey, you’ve gotta be careful about peer pressure that, that Paul writes in the New Testament, he says, do not conform to the pattern in the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. That there’s a tendency we have to conform to the truths around us. We live in a culture that lifts up certain truths that it says, Hey, these things are right. And then everybody around us, in the world around us is saying, yeah, those things are right. And, and if we live by the word of God, that that, that is contradicting some of those things. It means that we’ve gotta surround ourselves with people that would say, Hey, what the world says is true is not gonna be true for me.

For me, it’s going to be falling after the truth that I see in God’s word. And so he says, be cautious of bad influences, but then he gives this solution. He talks about good influences. He talks about surrounding ourself with people who are wise, and specifically he talks about the wisdom that comes from mentors. Our elders who have experienced it, who know more than we do now look really quickly at a handful of different proverbs. Proverb 11, verse 14. It says, where there is no guidance, a people falls. But in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. 1522. Without counsel, plans fail. But with many advisors, they succeed. 1920, listen to advice and accept instruction that you may gain wisdom in the future. 2018 plans are established by counsel, by wise guidance, wage war 24 6, for by wise guidance you can wage your war in, in an abundance of counselors,

There is victory. The this encouragement that Solomon gives us is it gives a warning and watch out for people that will take you off the right path. But then it gives an encouragement, surround yourself by those

People that will push you along the path and be an encouragement to be all that God has created you to be.

That when I look at my own life, that mentorship is a big part of where I ended up. Mentorship is a big part of, of helping keep me away from things that could have been destructive.

Without, without exception, my mom and my dad are biggest influences of my life. Blessed by having a godly mom and a godly Dad. But in addition to that, I, I can look back at my history and see these spiritual milestones of people that poured into my life. Josh Ellis when I was in, was on a, in youth group in sixth grade, Josh Ellis was an intern, and he started discipling me and he started encouraging me to seek. After my relationship with Jesus, it became much more personal in my relationship with

Jesus. I still meet with Josh Ellis today that when I was 15, I started working for my very first boss. Her name was Nancy Paul. And Pastor Nancy saw things inside of me that I didn’t see inside of myself, and she encouraged me to, to do more and to expand. She was the first person that ever put me on a stage to teach, and I was terrible. Like I was so bad. But she encouraged me down that path in that direction. I, I saw how she lived and how she ministered. Jim DeLoach. I was in my twenties and he was in his nineties, and he was this voice of wisdom in my life when, when I was impatient and I wanted to do more things or different things, he was just this patient voice telling me to chill out and relax. And so Solomon would say, we all need these mentors, this older generation pouring into a younger generation.

But, but I would say in our culture today, there’s this challenge that exists now. Now I’m gonna put up a quote that is not, it’s not from a scientist. It’s not from, and this is a quote from Kurt Taylor, but I wrote it down so that I would say it right. And this is a feeling that I have. I feel that our culture increasingly values youth over Wisdom.

It feels like I’m 41 years old. It feels like if I compare my 20 years ago to now, it feels like there’s become this obsession with looking young and being young and holding onto youth and not letting it go. And now I do think there’s some data to support my quote. Here’s some of that data that a Vox report, this is July of this month, 2025 shows that us households with kids aged six to 12 increased skincare spending by 27% in 2023, while teen beauty spending rose by 23% year over year. Retailers like Sephora are marketing anti-aging products to tweens. A tween is between the ages of nine and 12. They’re marketing Anti-Aging products to tweens and even younger children. Like, can you, can you grasp the absurdity of that? We’re convincing nine year olds that they need anti-aging lotion. Like they’ve never aged to begin with. You can’t anti-age someone that doesn’t have any age. Like, like, it’s just completely nonsensical. And yet we live in this culture and this world where it feels like there’s this push towards looking old young and, and being young and acting young. And I think the challenge with that, and it just as a pause side note, now, I I’m not, I’m not anti cosmetic procedures, but I am anti taking the value of age and wisdom and thrown it out the door. I I, I read this week that that experts, when they were talking about Botox, they encourage that, that you should begin mini Botox, small amounts of Botox in your mid twenties for optimum results.

Like if someone decides to do that, that’s up to them. But I don’t think as a culture, we, we should create this illusion that, hey, if you’re, if you don’t look young, you don’t have value. Because I think that’s completely utterly nonsense. The scripture would say there’s a lot of wisdom and value that comes with age. And we as a culture that should say, I want that wisdom. You’ve walked through life experiences that I have not faced yet. Help me walk through those experiences now in my life in the best way possible. One of the, the, the core principles that we want to be as a church is this word intergenerational, which is different than multi-generational. Actually, the definitions are the exact same, but we chose the word intergenerational. And it’s because a multi-generational church would be like, well, we got some old people over here, and some young people over there.

But intergenerational is the idea that we’re all together all in the same mix now. Now here’s the challenge. It is hard to be an intergenerational church. And here’s why. Most churches, either they grow old together and then they’re an old church, or it’s a new church that is just a young church. It’s harder to be intergenerational. Why? Because most of the time, the music, the style that someone who is 25 likes is different than the music and the style that is somebody that is 75. Like, that’s just, that’s just the way that it works. And so being intergenerational is really challenging. Here’s what it takes to be intergenerational. It takes both sides of the equation saying, Hey, I sometimes there are gonna be some things that I realize they’re not for me. Like, like sometimes you’re gonna be in here, you’re gonna be like, man, this is louder than I like, but you know what, I’m not the only audience they’re going for. There are some other people that they’re trying to reach. So being intergenerational causes challenges. It means that there are times where my comfort zone is gonna be a, a little bit, eh, it’s not exactly what I like, that’s not my favorite style, that’s not my favorite thing. But the benefit that we all get if we’re willing to make that small sacrifice

Is exceedingly greater than the discomfort that being intergenerational causes. The science would back that up. That if you look at research into mentorship, it’s off the charts. The benefits that we get, that when a Xhild has a mentor in their life, a kind adult that’s not mom or dad, here’s what they found, that that child is 46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs. They’re 27% less likely to begin using alcohol. They’re 52% less likely to skip school. So the data would say over and over again that when we have mentors in our lives, there’s a tangible direct benefit to us. But the data would also say that when you, if, if you’re somebody that you’re like, well, good for you talking about mentorship, I’m 75, I’m probably not gonna find a mentor for me, that the data would say that you in your stage of life drastically benefit from mentoring somebody else. That the Harvard Study of adult development reveals that elderly people who invest in younger generations were three times more likely to experience joy in their seventies than despair. In addition to that, another study points out this they find out that older adults engaged with youth experience less loneliness, stronger sense of purpose and improved wellbeing. Could it be that God just wired us in such a way that the younger generation needs the older generation, but instead of just wiring it one direction, he also wired it the other way they said, but an older generation is gonna benefit greatly from a younger generation. And so, so two practical questions that each of us should wrestle with. The first is this. If I look at the five closest relationships in my life, if, if I am the sum total of those five relationships.

If my future, ohe best predictor of where I’m going to end up is based off of who I am surrounding myself with, are you surrounding yourself with people that are going to get you to the future that you desire for yourself? And then secondly, Do you have mentors in your life that are going to help

Correct

Course when you get off those mentors that are gonna lovingly say, Hey, I love you too much, not to tell you that you’re really messing up in this area. Hey, I love you too much not to call you out when uou, You’re doing something that I see to be destructive behavior in your life. I think one of the things that we desire as a church is, is yes, we wanna be intergenerational and worship, but we also wanna be intergenerational one step further than that with how we do community groups, how we do men’s bible study and women’s bible study, how we do connect groups and, and our, our church history’s kind of weird because five years ago we had a church split and we had COVID and, and we had zero programs, and then we’ve slowly been building back programs over the last four years. So they’re not all, I, I don’t wanna say, man, all of our community groups are perfect. We got a long way to go. But guess how we get there through you saying, hey, I, I’m going to purposefully engage in connecting with other relationships and other people that are choosing the same future that I want for myself. And that is a future that is wholeheartedly sold out to Jesus. If you look at North America, the cattle that we have, the cows that we have where we get steak and beef they’re not native to North America that most of them are, some descendants go back to Spain, and then they brought them over to the caribbean islands, and then eventually they, they made their way up to the Great Plains. Now, when cattle cows first got to the Great Plains, they found this interesting thing that these are cows that were coming for the Caribbeans and they were not used to snow. And so they get to the Great Plains and, and they would have snowstorms that would come. And, and cattle, these big herds of cattle would do two things, both bad. First is they would just scatter, but second is that the cows would run away from the storm. And running away from the storm, it turns out, was actually the worst thing that they could do because you’d have this big snow storm that was coming through and the cow would start running this way. And by running with the storm away from the storm, the storm would hit, they would continue to run away from the storm, and it would mean that they prolonged their exposure to the storm. And so they had whole herds of cattle when they first brought ‘Em over that until they figured this out, that they all just died. Now, that’s different than the type of cow that was native to North America. Anybody know what type of cow that was? It’s not a cow.

It was the, here’s the picture of it. What is this right here?

I know a lot of you just said American buffalo. That’s, that’s not a thing. Actually, just as a complete side note, there’s no such thing as an American buffalo. Sorry. CU buffs. It’s just not a thing. We falsely thought when, when people came to the United States, they saw this and falsely thought that it was a buffalo. There’s an Asian buffalo, there’s an African buffalo, neither of which is remotely related to that guy right there. So if, if, if like me, you’d say, well, that’s a buffalo. We’re all wrong. It’s technically a bison. That’s what that is. So a bison, it’s interesting the way that God wired a bison and the way that they learned over, over Centuries and, and millennia, bison learned that when a blizzard would come, you, you just had millions of bison that were on the great plains. So when a a, a cold front, a storm, a blizzard would come. Here’s what bison did different than cows at first, that they would head into the storm instead of heading away from the storm. That seems counterintuitive. But by heading into the storm, with the storm going this way, it means that they minimize the duration of the storm. Bison instinctively head towards the blizzard. Secondly, Bison will automatically huddle together with a blizzard as opposed to spread apart

By huddling together. What does that do? It it means that they’re sharing body heat. If there would be times in a blizzard where it’s complete white out conditions, they can’t see where they’re going. But by being huddled together, it means that they didn’t lose anybody. They felt each other. They were right up next to each other. The third thing that they did, and this is just instinctual, that they had this herd mentality where the strongest bison would get to the edge of the group and they would put the weakest bison in the very center. It means that it gave the weakest bison the greatest chance for survival. Here’s the point in that when you think of your life, who are your bison? You’re gonna have some moments in life where you hit some storms, and our natural instinct is just to turn and run away from that storm.

But instead, if you have gotta herd some bison, they, they, you say, Hey, we are in this together and we are gonna huddle up and we’re gonna turn and face the storm and we’re gonna march towards it. And you’ve got support so that even in moments when you feel your weakest, you’ve got strong mentors and advisors and and friends and relationships that are gonna hold one another up. It means that you get through that storm. And two things. One, you make the duration of the storm lower, but two, your survival rate is greater. That is what the church has the possibility to be, that if we take the wisdom of Solomon and apply it to our life and live it out, and man relationships are messy and intergenerational is messy, and getting mentors sometimes can be messy. But man, when we are willing to put in the effort, there’s something beautiful that comes as a result of it.

That only happens when we’re locked arm and arm saying, I’m gonna chase after Jesus together. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, we thank you so much for the wisdom that comes from Solomon. And I pray for anyone in this room right now that is in the middle of peer pressure. God, there are so many stages in life that if we are surrounded by the wrong friends, that they will take us to the wrong destination, a destination of destruction and pain and loss. And so, God, I pray just through the power of your Holy Spirit for a wake up, for anyone in this room that knows that that’s where they are right now. God and I pray that we could be a community that values the wisdom of our elders, and that we have an experienced generation that is pouring godly wisdom into younger generations. We pray all this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.