David Bercot's Lessons From Life Series - Part 1

The title of this lesson is "Lessons I've Learned from Life." Not that there's anything particularly special about my life. I think anybody would be able to share similar things. This has been a week of a lot of reminiscing.

Deborah and I had our 50th anniversary on Friday, and so we've been doing a lot of reminiscing, just the wedding and just, you know, a lot of things going through life together. So this is our wedding day, and it changed a lot. The years do go by. But yeah, I thought it was sort of prophetic. Deborah was wearing a head cover and didn't even think about it at the time. And actually, the dress is—it's what we're going to be talking about in the first lesson.

It was actually a cape dress. It was something her great-grandmother had worn in 1901, and she was the fourth or fifth one in her family to get married in that dress. And anyway, that dress is going to be the first lesson I want to talk about that was, well, not so exciting at the time. Well, the first story I want to share deals with procrastination.

Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, "Whoever watches the wind will not plant. Whoever looks at the clouds will not reap." In other words, we can always find an excuse to procrastinate, to put off until tomorrow something we should do today. Going back to that dress, as I said, her great-grandmother had worn it first in 1901, so it was made to fit her great-grandmother. So she needed some alterations done on it for her to be able to wear it. And it's such an old dress, a lot of lace and things. And we still have the dress, but now she pulled it out the other day to show somebody, and it left pieces all over the floor. So she needed a really expert seamstress to be able to alter that where it would fit her.

So after we had gotten engaged, it was in February of 1972. She was down with her aunt in Texas at the time, and so she flew back home to Chicago, and they had a sister in their congregation who was an extremely expert seamstress, did alterations on high-end, expensive garments and all that. So she was the perfect person, and so they hired her to alter the dress. And this was, well, March, April. So she had three months before the wedding. It was something that was going to maybe take six, seven hours to do. And they offered to pay, "No, no, no. I want to do this as a favor. This is going to be my wedding gift."

You know, okay, fine, but whatever. I mean, we're happy to pay you. So it ended up being a really strange gift, and this is why. So she had three months to do it, and instead of getting on it, she procrastinated and procrastinated and procrastinated and procrastinated. And it got closer to the wedding, and they kept asking, "Do you have the dress ready?" "Oh, you know, I'll get it tomorrow. Yeah, I'll get on it." You know, well, this went on right up to the day of the wedding. We still did not have the dress. You know, "Oh, no, I'll have it there in plenty of time." You know, so the wedding was supposed to start at 2:30, and at 2:30, everybody—it was an outdoor wedding in her backyard, and the people were there.

It was actually a chilly day. It was, you know, June 24th, but a cold front had come in. It was a bit chilly outside. You can see some people in overcoats there, and they're just waiting, and I'm waiting. You know, I'm all excited. Deborah's excited, and she's upstairs in her bedroom, no dress. We're sitting around waiting for the—the wedding is supposed to start. There's no dress. So we sit there and we wait, and we wait, and we wait.

Finally, I mean, it was like, "I can't believe this is happening." And finally, at three o'clock, half an hour when the wedding was supposed to have already started, here comes the dress. And her brother, you know, they brought it in a car, and he ran out to the car and was dashing back to the house, going upstairs. Well, then it took her, you know, like 15 minutes to be able to get, you know, into the dress and all of that. So the wedding ends up starting 45 minutes late.

We still got married, and we're still just as married, whether it was on time or not. But I've thought about that lesson. Now, what do you think our feelings are when we think of that sister who altered that dress for her as a favor?

Probably not the happiest. Yeah, probably not the happiest. You're exactly right. I mean, we don't curse her or anything like that, but when we think about that and we think about it, you know, it's one of the funnier things. You remember all the things that went wrong at the wedding. You don't remember everything that went as it was supposed to go.

Yeah, we don't have these real warm, like, "Boy, that was nice of her to alter that dress for you." Yeah, that was really great. She did a wonderful job on it. All we remember is the wedding was supposed to start. We couldn't because we didn't have the dress. She waited until that very day to finally get going on it. And yeah, it was an intricate job, and that was the result. So one of the things I took away from that that I've tried to remember throughout life is it takes no longer to do something on time than it does to do it late. It takes the exact same amount of time, but the result is night and day difference.

If she had done this and she had three months, you know, if she had done that, got it to us on time, like I say, we'd always be thinking of her, "Oh, that was really nice of her." You know, instead, you know, it's like, "Oh, wow." You know, now it's funny. You know, we don't, like I say, we're not sitting around grumbling about her or anything like that, but we don't have happy memories, you know, of her for doing that. And yet she took the same amount of time. And this is something I put into practice in my law practice that when I started out, and I was mainly doing title work for oil and gas companies and other companies that needed title work done.

Eventually, that's all that I did. When I started off, I mean, all of the big companies, they already had attorneys that they were using. So I didn't get like, "Oh, yeah, there's a whole bunch of work." They already had attorneys, but every now and then, I mean, they did know that I did title work and, you know, it kind of got around. I knew some of the oil companies because I had worked for an oil company for a couple of years. So I had met a lot of these people, and they knew who I was. And I got just like a few, like, oh, a company, well, like what ended up being my absolutely best client was Texas Utilities, which was the largest utility company in Texas.

And, you know, they had lots of attorneys that they were using, including in the town where I lived. But one day, their office caught on fire, and the police called, or maybe the fire department, one of the two called me at my house and said, "Your office building is on fire." And this was like 9 or 10 at night. And wow, it didn't take me long to get dressed and in my car. And, you know, I dashed down there because I thought, "Well, you know, I might be able to, you know, pull out some of the equipment or something." And then when I got down there, it turned out it wasn't my office. It was the one next door.

The fire truck was already there and everything, and they were putting the fire out. It was a difficult fire to put out. It went on, I don't know how many hours. I went ahead and moved stuff out of my office just in case it spread over, you know, to mine, but it didn't. But anyway, the next day, yeah, their office was gutted. I mean, they were there, but, you know, there's water everywhere and all that. So I said, "Hey, man, our office is open to you. You know, you need to use our copier. We got, you know, I've got the coffee going and, you know, just make yourself at home in our office." And they did that, you know, used our copier for a number of days and all that until they had everything, you know, situated.

So just as a favor, they brought me a title opinion to do one day. I think just their way of saying thank you. And because they already had a, like I say, an oil and gas attorney familiar with the oil gas and mineral law. They didn't, they weren't oil and gas. They were buying land to use for mining. But, well, yeah, it was a pretty easy title. I handed it back to them the next day, you know, and they were like, "You're done?" I said, "Wow, usually it's like six months before we get it back."

I said, "No, it wasn't anything complicated. Yeah, it's done." And it was actually a lot longer and more thorough than what they were used to in the title opinion. So it wasn't like it was a sloppy job or anything. So yeah, when they had others then that they needed quick, they would bring it over to me. And well, eventually, yeah, they just dropped their other attorney. I didn't do anything to try to, you know, take his work away. They just dropped him, and I became their attorney. And then they would brag to all the other companies around the state, the other offices, I mean, like, "Hey, we got our title opinions back in a day or two."

And in a day or two, man, we have to wait six months. That was the story everywhere. And so pretty soon, I started getting business from all over different offices of Texas Utilities across the state. In the end, I eventually dropped every client, and they were my only client because they gave me all the work I needed. And but I thought it doesn't take six months to do a title opinion. Most of theirs were pretty easy. One day is all it took. The very hard ones took a week.

So what were the other attorneys doing? Procrastinating. You know, title work isn't fun. Most attorneys don't like doing it. And it's like, and particularly if you see it as a hard one, yeah, those were no fun, you know. But it's going to take a week, the hard ones, whether I do it now or I wait. It's still going to take a week. But if I do it right away, yeah, you have a client who's so happy and so appreciative, like you did some great thing, and it's the same amount of time either way.

And so I learned that in life. It ended up being a blessing, you know, to me that, you know, I ended up with clients who were so pleased with me when, like I say, it was just a matter of not procrastinating, just getting on it and getting it done. And but what a difference. And it applies to things in the kingdom. You know, like I say, with the wedding dress, that was a sister in the congregation doing it as a favor. And, you know, instead of it being remembered as a favor, you know, it's remembered as, wow, you know, we couldn't start our wedding on time because we didn't have the dress and the anxiety that I can imagine Deborah would have been going through during, you know, all of that.

So yeah, that was my, I guess, a lesson in life that I've learned that, yeah, if I can encourage you in that, if you see you have a problem of procrastination, it takes no longer to get a job done, whether you do it on time or do it late. But the difference in what your brother or sister, your friend, your client, whoever it is, your boss is going to be night and day different. Our second story pertains to tardiness. Matthew 25:8-12 says, "And the foolish virgin said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise answered, saying, 'No, lest there should not be enough for us and you.

But go rather to those who sell and buy for yourselves.' And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding, and the door was shut. Afterward, the other virgins came also saying, 'Lord, open to us.' But he answered and said, 'Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.'" Now, being late doesn't usually have eternal consequences, but it is still a shortcoming we should learn to overcome. The foolish virgins were late because of their lack of preparation. Running late. I mean, all of us have had this happen at times of being late for something.

And some people, it's a way of life. And for most of us, it's at least sometimes that we're late. And I thought back, this is just one of those things that stayed with me through my whole life, like the lesson on procrastination.

This is about the time that I met Deborah, and it's before we were married. The congregation that I was in and that later she was part of, I mean, the whole congregation had a problem of being late on just about everything. A lot of our meetings, not our Sunday morning meeting, but I mean, if it was going to be a more informal thing, you automatically, if you wanted it at, say, 7 o'clock, you said 6:45. If you wanted it at 9:00 in the morning, you said 8:45, just because everyone would come 15 minutes late, you know. And so you just set everything back. Now, this is really dumb that we can't just say what time.

We've got to set an artificial one just because everyone is going to be late. Anyway, we had a visiting minister. This was back when I was at JW, and every congregation would have a circuit minister who would visit you twice a year. So they would go around. They had a number of congregations, usually about 20 or so. And so every week, the circuit minister would be in a different congregation and, you know, travel around. It'd be a new building he would be going to. He'd be staying in a different place. Usually, it wasn't the same place every time that he came back to that congregation.

So, you know, he had noticed right away when he was with us. This was at a midweek meeting that, you know, we had a problem as a congregation with, you know, people being late. And I was really glad today that we had just about 100% of everybody here on time today. I was, I had prayed. I thought, "I don't want to preach this." And, you know, everyone got here late.

But he said, you know, he mentioned, you know, every week, you know, I met a different congregation and a different, you know, time slot often. And so he just turned to his wife, you know, kind of on the spur, and he said, "What question is it that you always ask me each week?" And she said, "What time do we have to leave?"

He said, "Yeah, that's what she asked me every time." Now, when he would get to a congregation, he would meet, first of all, on Tuesday with the presiding elder in that congregation. It would be just the two of them. So he would, and they would meet at the Kingdom Hall. So he would know how long from wherever they were staying, how long it took him to get there and back. So he knew from that first meeting how long it took. And then would always allow himself 10 or 15 minutes just to have a cushion there. So then, yeah, his wife would always say, "What time do we have to leave?" Not what time does it start, but what time do we have to leave?

And I thought, "Okay, that's a great lesson." And I've made that a lesson in my life, you know, that whatever event, it doesn't have to be church, but yeah, what time do I have to leave? Not what time do I have to be there? Because if you're thinking, "What time does it start?" Oh, well, it starts at 10. It's not 10 o'clock yet. I'm okay. Yeah, it's still not 10. Well, yeah, you're going to be late if you're looking at what time it starts. But yeah, you should know how long it takes you from your house, like I say, to get here to our building here. Okay. How long does it take me from my house?

All right. And then always allow a 10 or 15 minute cushion. It's nice to be here early and be able to, you know, visit a little bit with your brother and sister. And I like before communion, you know, I don't like to do it stressed and rattled, you know, rushing to get here and, oh, you know, red light, oh, we're going to be late, you know, and that it's just nice to get here to relax and just be ready, you know, for communion, for fellowship and to talk to people, you know, to visit a little bit. You know, some churches have this rule that we don't talk before the service, you know, and you just come and you just sit, you know.

Well, yeah, you don't want to come early if that's what it's going to be like. And so, yeah, we, and that's how we used to do it here. I mean, how many of you remember those days? I mean, I do. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, you know, I could make an argument for that. It's, you know, you're trying to have a reverential spirit and attitude. But it does mean people tend not to want to come very early because they're just going to sit. You know, I remember coming in those days, I would always bring something to read because I knew I'd just be, you know, sitting. So I might as well bring something and have something to read while I was here.

But yeah, so we actually made a conscious decision, okay, let's open it up that people can visit before church and nothing in the Bible that says you can only talk after church. But now I'm going to tell you a secret, okay?

This is why this lesson has stayed with me. I run late every single Sunday. Today I didn't because I thought, man, I'm preaching this. If we get here late, this is, I'm going to have to just change this part of my sermon.

But so other than today, every single Sunday I'm running late. But every single Sunday, for those of you who get here early, would say, well, Dave, you're always here 10 minutes or so before the service. And I am.

But I'm also running late. Okay. So what we do is it takes us 45 minutes to get here from our house. Okay. So to get here at 9:30 for communion, we would need to leave at a quarter to 9. Okay. But so I go back and give myself 15 minutes, okay, cushion.

And then because I'm at, it just wouldn't work unless you're absent-minded. Okay. I'm absent-minded. So our kitchen clock, I've set it five minutes ahead. So when it says 8:30, it's really 8:25. But I'm dumb enough every week I forget that I've done that. I remember it most of the week, but on Sunday I forget that thing's five minutes fast. So I'm running late and all that. Sometimes, you know, 10 minutes late, I get out in the car. I mean, oh, we're on time. Oh, I forgot my thermos. I got to run back in the house and get it. Whatever. It's always running late. But because I've built that cushion in, yeah, I always get here with, you know, time to spare.

And it takes us 45 minutes if we get behind a slow car. If everything goes right this morning, everything went right. I mean, every light it seemed like was green. No slow traffic out there. So then that gets me here about 20 minutes early. And I had to make some changes once I got here on my PowerPoint. So I was real glad I was here early. But so the starting point on Sunday morning is what time do I have to get up? You know, what time do I need to leave? Okay. If our family's going to be ready to leave at whatever time, then what time do I have to get up if we're going to be ready?

And again, allowing yourself some cushions because things are going to go wrong on Sunday morning. And just following that formula. I mean, that was just, you know, something that it impressed on me when he said that. It wasn't like it was anything profound. But yeah, what time do I have to leave? And the irony, and I've seen this through the years I've been in, it doesn't matter what kind of, whether JW, Evangelical, you know, whatever kind of church I've been in, Mennonite, you know, you know, there's always people who they're always on time a lot early, and there's always some people who are running right at the last moment. And yeah, it's an easy way to change that.

Just what time do I have to leave? But what I've seen in all of these different settings, it's not a universal rule by any means, but it's a general rule that the people who are closest tend to be the ones who are late. And the people who have the furthest to come are the ones who tend to be early. And it's not an accident. I mean, like every Sunday, I know that Linford and Anna, they're going to be, when we come up from downstairs, I know they're going to be here. I don't think they've ever been late because they have the farthest to come. When you have a long distance, then you got to know what time do we need to leave home.

You can't just say, "Oh, well, it's not 10 yet. We're okay." But when you're close, well, yeah, okay. Yeah. It's not 9:30 yet, you know, if you're coming for communion. That's still not 9:30. We're still okay. Yeah. Because you're close, you don't think in terms of what time do I have to leave my house. But you should. You know, it's great. Yeah. You can leave your house at, you know, 9:10 and be here at 9:15, you know. You know, wonderful. Enjoy that. Just be thinking, yeah, David's driving during all of this time. And that's fine, you know.

But yeah, if you think in those terms, and there's a time in my life, and we do that like airport. Boy, we are really religious about, okay, what time do we need to leave our house and allowing enough time. And the only time I've missed a plane because of my own negligence was I was flying when I lived in Tyler, Texas, and there's a small airport there, and it was out of town. It was at the end of town where we were, you know. And so it's like, I didn't measure how long it takes me to get there because, hey, we're flying out of Tyler. So I was flying up to Faith Builders to speak there.

And yeah, I could fly right out of Tyler, go to Dallas, and then up to Pittsburgh. And they were, one of the students was taking somebody home or taking them to Pittsburgh to fly home, something like that. And so they said, well, yeah, they can then, when you come in, yeah, they'll be able to take you, you know, back home. So it's like, hey, great. I've got everything worked out.

But yeah, whatever, let's say the flight left at 10:30 that morning is like, that's not 10:30 left yet. I'm okay because, you know, it was a local airport. It's, yeah, it's whatever, five minutes, 10 minutes. I don't know, you know, but it's really close. So yeah, I just fooled around and cut it way too close, got there. And I mean, it's such a little airport. The same lady who was behind the counter that you checked in with was the same one doing then the security thing. You went to the security after you checked in. And then the same one who went out there with the, you know, the poles doing the, it was that little, you know.

So, you know, I get in there, I dash in there, and she's already at the security thing, having people go through the security. So, you know, I just walked up there quietly and I said, I'm on the same flight. She said, okay, wait at the counter. And I thought, I'm glad I'm in a little airport, you know. So there wasn't very many people going on the, it was just one of these little small commuter planes. So she gets back to the counter and said, okay, let me see when the next flight is. I said, the next flight, I said, I'm going on this flight, you know. I'm sorry, you know, you were late, you know.

And so let's see, the next flight. I said, I've got somebody meeting me in Pittsburgh. I mean, I've got to be on this flight or I'm going to, you know, miss my connection in Dallas and I'll miss the whole thing. Okay, yeah, the next flight to Dallas is, I mean, I said, all right, look, I'll take no luggage. Just walk, I'll just get on the plane like this. All right, the next flight is, and she wouldn't let me on, you know. And so, yeah, I had to take the next flight. Even though there was time, I mean, it was just, I mean, it's just a tiny airport, right? I mean, you know, you could see the people waiting there to get on the flight, you know.

Whatever, she wanted to be a stickler. And but I learned my lesson. I mean, it's, yeah, from now on, yeah, what time do I need to leave home to be at the airport? It doesn't matter if it's close or far. I'm not going to do that again.

Okay, let me share one more lesson. Time. This one I had been asked about. So a lot of you have heard this one. Okay, my last story is about the Lord's pig. Matthew 5:37 says, "Let your yes be yes and your no know."

Being a Christian means being dependable. When we say we're going to do something, it's important that we honor our commitments. So it all started, as most of you know, Deborah and I are involved with a microloan ministry in Honduras. But originally, the idea originated in Jamaica. We had just on a weekend vacation in Jamaica, and we had driven around the island. We had a guy we paid to drive us around. And we noticed just the enormous poverty there. I mean, it's a beautiful, you know, island and all that, but the people are mostly very poor.

And, you know, we just in the course of that weekend there, we visited a lot of places and, you know, saw a lot of little businesses. And like I asked the taxi driver, well, how does it work with you? Do you own this taxi? No, it's, you know, he pointed, told me there's some rich guy who owned the taxi, okay? So he would have to go every morning and pick up the taxi at the rich guy's house and then pay him in advance whatever there was a set amount that the owner was going to get. And then whatever the taxi driver got above that was his profit. And if he didn't get enough clients to go that day, he was in the hole.

But the rich guy was going to get his money, you know. And I realized, well, this poor guy, we had stopped by his house and he lived in this just little shack about to fall down, you know. I thought, how can a person get ahead in that kind of system? You know, he needs to, you know, own his own business. And so that's what, you know, the wheel started turning. Wow, if we could loan money to people where then they had their own business and they could pay back the loan and they would own the taxi or whatever.

So we thought, wow, I wonder if Americans, if they allow Americans to, you know, live in Jamaica. I didn't know what their immigration policy was. So we wrote to the government of Jamaica and, you know, to ask, and they sent us back this information. And they kind of want you to, if you're going to move there from America to own a business that involves export because they have a bad balance of trade. And so they wanted like if you were going to buy a small farm that would be exporting something like ginger, you know, things like that. So anyway, they said they would have a guy with the government just drive us around, you know.

So we spent a week there when we went back and this fellow drove us around every day just looking at different farms that were up for sale and some things like that. And we ended up not doing it just we saw Jamaica has been so ruined by tourism that if we did microloans there, the people would never pay us back.

To them, Americans are just somebody to sponge off of and all that. So we later ended up doing it in Honduras. But it turned out that this guy from the government was a Christian and a fairly devout Christian with the Church of God, a holiness church. And so yeah, we were sharing different Christian experiences and he said, yeah, I got to tell you something that happened in my church.

He said, there was this couple, I'm going to call him Joe Williams.

I'll call his wife Natalie. We don't have any Natalie's here. We got to sit your sister, but yeah, just making the name of it. I don't remember what their real names were. Okay. So he said they had bought this sow and they thought as just a little piglet and they would raise it and then have her bred and then raise, you know, pigs of their own and then, you know, sell them and, you know, start a little, you know, farm business that way. So, you know, they put all their life savings into buying this little sow. I mean, I'm sure it wasn't a lot of money, but they were, you know, dirt poor. But then the sow got sick and it looked like it was going to die.

They didn't have money for a veterinarian. So that Sunday at church, the husband, Joe, had come forward and said, told the congregation, you know, their sow, it looks like she's going to die. And, you know, all of their hopes had been built on this and that if the congregation would pray, you know, for the healing that the sow would recover, he said, we'll have her bred and then one of the piglets will be the Lord's pig. We'll dedicate it to the Lord and we'll fatten it up and we'll bring it and give it to the church and the church can do what it wants with it, you know, raise pigs from it or butcher it, sell it, whatever.

But it'll be the Lord's pig. And so the congregation prayed and the sow recovered. God seems to have answered the prayer. And later they were able to have her bred and everything was going picture perfect. And so about three and a half months later when his piglets were due, you know, every day he'd go out to the pig pen and, you know, look to see if there were any babies yet, you know. So one morning he goes out there and there's the sow, a bunch of little piglets, you know, nursing and, you know, he's all excited. And he looks around and then he notices in the corner of the pig pen, there was a pig that had probably was stillborn, was laying there dead, you know.

And he kind of studied the scene and then he called, "Natalie, Natalie, come out here. Something horrible has happened," you know. And she comes out with her apron and all that. Did the sow die? What went wrong? He said, "It's worse than that. It's even worse than that." She said, "What could be worse? What's happened?"

He said, "The Lord's pig died."

Anyway, so like I say, this brother in Jamaica was telling me this and, you know, Deborah and I were like, "Oh man, what a hypocrite. Like, oh wow, I can't believe someone would be that low to pull that on God and after making that promise, you know." And anyway, I knew I would never do anything like that.

I never really thought about it except we probably told this story to a whole lot of people, you know. It was just semi-funny and just semi, you know, just like disgusting at the same time, you know, and all that. Anyway, this was, oh boy, I don't know, 10, 12 years later.

One night, our youngest son, Isaiah, and I, and maybe, I don't know if any other children were there, Deborah maybe was there too. We were putting a puzzle together and, man, we almost were done with it. And we normally had a devotion every night. I hope this is something all of you do. And it's a lesson that I learned just concerning nightly devotion. So we were going through the one-year Bible, which gives you a reading in the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the New Testament. And if you read them all, then you get through the Bible in one year. So we would read all of the sections every night. And then we would, you know, if there's something relevant that, you know, caught our attention, we would discuss, talk about.

And then we would all kneel and each member of the family would all take turns praying. And maybe, you know, it would take us about a half hour every evening. That was our nighttime ritual. Well, this night, you know, we're working on the puzzle. We're almost done.

I didn't want to quit. You know, we had a few last pieces to, you know, to figure out. So we just kept going and going. We got the puzzle done. You know, we were all happy. And I looked at the time and it was like, "Oh wow, it's really late." So I told the family, "I'm sorry, yeah, we won't be able to do devotional tonight. I'll just pray for everybody." So, you know, I gave a nightly prayer and we all went to bed, you know. And I was laying there in bed. I guess God convicted me. David, you are Joe Williams. And my mind went back to the Lord's pig, the Lord's pig that died, you know.

What had I just done, you know? I could have let my pig die. I could have said, "Whoops, we got to end the puzzle now because it's time for devotions." And, you know, we'll have to just finish tomorrow night. But I didn't want my pig to die. Instead, it was, "Oh no, not time for devotions tonight. Too bad, the Lord's pig died, you know." And yeah, just, I wish we had time. Just don't have time tonight. So we'll just cut it short tonight. I thought, you know, there were other times I had done that. Maybe we were playing Monopoly or just whatever, you know. And yeah, we wanted to finish whatever we were doing. And then, oh, time ran out.

Too bad, the Lord's pig died. Tonight, just short devotions, you know. Too bad, yeah. It's like, yeah, I'm Joe Williams. You know, it's the same principle, you know, that, yeah, whose pig is going to die? Am I going to make the sacrifice in something that's, yeah, inconvenient for me? Or am I going to, yeah, I can't help it. The Lord's pig died and so no devotions tonight.

So I realized, yeah, if devotions are going to work, it's got to be every night. And yeah, sure, in everyone's life, there's going to be something just totally outside your control. But you got to make sure that if it's within your control, then it's your pig that dies. You make that sacrifice. And it became then a family thing. I shared it with the family the next day. I apologized to them. And so, yeah, anytime after that, if, you know, it started getting late, we hadn't started devotions yet or something like that, yeah, I'd start hearing from the whole family, "Oh, the Lord's pig's going to die," you know. And that became a family. Deborah and I, we still will say that, uh-oh, we're going to let the Lord's pig die, you know.

Or if we, yeah, really do a bad one, it's like, "The Lord's pig died," you know, shame on us. So yeah, I'd encourage you just to remember that story. And I don't think it applies just to devotionals. It could be whatever it is. But yeah, is it going to be my pig that died or is it going to be the Lord's pig? And yeah, hopefully none of us will be a Joe Williams. I've made that resolution in my life. I don't want to be like, and that's not his real name. I never met the guy.

But anyway, so let's stop there. And maybe next time I share, I've got some other life stories I'll share with you.