Voice Memos — 2026-05-11

Two memos. Verbatim transcripts. Not extracted to lines.md per your instruction — "I'm just putting voice memos here to be organized first."

Voice Memo 1 — walking in the sprinkling rain

All right, this needs to be recorded. I'll try to remain calm as I try to backtrack on what I just said. Trace my steps.

I was walking. I had a little bit of time to take a break. I was walking, and there was sprinkling rain outside. And I walked a short loop in the neighborhood, and I was praying. I was coming to some conclusions. God, you are so good. Just that.

I guess I'll start at the end. I was quoting Dallas Willard's book about Psalm 23 in there. It talks about death to self, and it's perfect fruit of humility. Now I was thinking about how even God wasn't above dying, death and dying, but it's through hardship, which is the pathway to peace. It's through death, which is the pathway to life. Um, death is swallowed up, as it says in Isaiah 25, I think.

And, okay, somewhere in there, I was also thinking about making apologetics or that word, meaning a defense for the gospel. And it's like, we couldn't, I think, I have a hunch that a lot of people have said this before, so I'm not new. And this is probably how it works, that it needs to be, that is the gospel, like the life of God, um, how to live, all of these deep questions that we have. It needs to be approached on the basis of faith. If it wasn't, and God worked in a different way, then maybe there would be a sign next to the moon, that's neon, and it says Jesus saves. But it's not like that. It needs to be received on the basis of faith.

Faith in what? Well, the rubber hits the road at the resurrection. An actual event that can intersect with our lives and change our stories forever, a moment of clarity, and the faith that we have that what that means for our death. Death seems so final. But our confession, our Christian confession, is that we can have a sigh of relief after that interval, that we can sigh and say, finally, you know, I'm, I'm now through my transport, through the Christ, I am now given and delivered to what is actually real, to what is, we're in the subreality right now, but what is actually real, is where we will wake up.

And this faith? Through the life that comes through death, it produces its perfect fruit. Of humility.

I was thinking about the word worship and serve. We bow down and we serve our God. And all of the leaders in the Bible aren't called leaders. They're called servants. We have so many examples that we could imitate, but we have the ultimate one in Christ who served us, who died. He didn't die so that we wouldn't have to. He died so we could be crucified with him. And then he could always be with us. His spirit would make us into a temple for the Holy Spirit, to dwell in our hearts through faith, that we could be made one through covenant.

But we worship and serve. And we serve him reverently with a healthy and reverent fear. We serve him in awe because of who he is, and also because he served us. That's the truth, and worship, the highest form of flattery is imitation. So we want to be like him. That's the example I was talking about earlier, and he's not above it, the master is an above the servant's business, or the other way around.

Um, it's just cool that it connects to what you think worship is, which is like just this utter devotion. Um, and that's just because he's God, but also we'd have to serve God even if he was like 99% good and 1% sketchy, but he's 100% good. But also worship is imitation. All the other so-called gods or faiths worship something in a different way. Um, the Christian confession, or I guess the worship that we have in Christ, is by imitation, like we want to become like the thing that we behold. The other worship is different. You could read about it in books, but usually it calls for libation in drink and housing, and asking a god, um, on their whim, so they don't destroy you so that they can bless your harvest or something like that.

But anyway, these are maybe not all the thoughts I was having, but hopefully a good amount.

Voice Memo 2 — preeminence, eternality, the series slogan

Okay, I'm thinking about a few threads right here. So, just praying that, um, I was praying in terms of preeminence and eternality, um, like the foundations of worship, the reverence, um, God and the word in creation, um, creator, transcript that we have.

And also in terms of one of the newly added John Piper's sermons, where he says, like, if we declare that God isn't supreme or pre-eminent, then it's a lie. And then he adds a little bit more color in that that I want to go track down and see if I can put in my own words or even quote.

Um, but I was just praying, yeah, in terms of that, creator video. And also in terms of the series packet in our new, like, aren't you saying that we're stamping on everything? Because it's true. Like, I guess our slogan is Jesus first. Christ crucified in love. Raised in power, reigning forever as our king.

Note from later that day (me-from-the-future)

I'm going to essentially plan to preach passionately and/or pray in this manner. I'm going to study the Hillsong video where Brooke Ligertwood from the creator video talks about preeminence and eternity, but when she says that he's first and ranked first in honor, first in power, and that is eternal — like, I'm really passionate about that — and connecting it to the John Piper thing that he said, and then connecting it to "Jesus first / crucified in love / raised in power / reigning forever as our king" is all just perfect.

It will end up in lines.md — but you don't put it there. I'm just putting voice memos here to be organized first.