565. Bill & Judy's Monthly Ministry Update (#15) - May 31, 2024

[00:00:06] Welcome to Wisdom Today. My name is Bill Kelley and I'll be your host. In this podcast we will be exploring the book of Proverbs. Open and prior, Father God, I thank you for anyone listening to this podcast today.

[00:00:27] Lord, I pray that you give everyone ears to hear and a heart to receive everything you have in store for them today. I ask this in Jesus name, Amen. This is Proverbs 31, beginning in verse 1.

[00:00:42] The words of King Lamoul, the utterance which his mother taught him, what, my son and what, son of my womb and what, son of my vows. Do not give your strength to women, nor your ways, to that which destroys kings.

[00:01:02] It is not for kings, O Lamul. It is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princess intoxicating drink. Less they drink and forget the law and pervert the justice of all the afflicted.

[00:01:17] Give strong drink to him who is perishing and wine to those who are bitter of heart. And remember his misery, no more. Open your mouth for the speechless in the cause of all who are appointed to die.

[00:01:37] Open your mouth judge righteously and plead the cause of the poor and needy. And find a virtuous wife for her worth is farm above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her, so he will have no lack of gain.

[00:01:55] She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeks wool and flacks and willingly works with her hands. She is like the merchant ships. She brings her food from afar and provides food for her household and a portion for her maid servants.

[00:02:16] She considers a field and buys it. From her profits she plants a vineyard. She girds herself with strength and strengthens her arms.

[00:02:27] She perceives that her merchandise is good and her lamp does not go out by night. She stretches out her hands to the dust staff and her hand holds the spindle.

[00:02:40] She extends her hand to the poor. Yes, she reaches out her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of snow for her household. For all her household is clothed with scorned. She makes tapestry for herself. Her clothing is fine, linen and purple.

[00:03:00] Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them and supplies sashes for the merchants. Strength and honor are her clothing. She shall rejoice in time to come.

[00:03:18] She opens her mouth with wisdom and on her tongue is the law of kindness. She watches over the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also, and he praises her.

[00:03:37] Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord. She shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands and let her own works, praise her in the gates.

[00:03:59] Beautiful, beautiful proverb. This was one that my dad always said about my mom. He said she was the proverb 31 woman. So I grew up hearing that from my dad. He thought that about her and she did stay up late and so close.

[00:04:16] And she was always very busy and never was idle. I was going to talk about how happy I am that we finally have a Friday and the 31st together. Because I'm going to talk about you being the proverb 31 woman. And you know, times have changed.

[00:04:39] And when I listen to some of these verses, a lot of these things may not apply today in our world today. But you have made, you have compensated for that. You do everything that this woman is implying. In other words, you take care of our household.

[00:05:01] You keep me in line. Everything that needs to be done. You're always on top of. And you know, I would be struggling without you. You basically are everything that I've ever wanted. And I really like the fact that you keep me going and you keep me in line.

[00:05:22] And you do the things that you do. But you are just absolutely wonderful. And it is such a blessing to have you as a wife. Well, that's awfully sweet. I could really say the same thing about you. So you keep me going. You're very industrious.

[00:05:39] You every day I just noticed today how beautiful the artist is looking in the plants. And he is definitely ambitious about that. He gets out and waters and gardens and just takes care of things. Moses on grass, which is not something people in our neighborhood do.

[00:05:56] He's only one. I am the only one. It seems like, you know, and I've never had a half acre of property to shake care up before. But I mean, in order to keep this property looking the way that it does.

[00:06:10] I need to spend a lot of time in the yard. So I mean, I often spend 15, 20 hours a week in the yard. But I mean, it keeps me going. It's a lot of energy. It takes a lot of exercise. A lot of sweat this time of year.

[00:06:25] Now, it's starting to get hot. It's 96 degrees as we're recording this today. And you know, it's that time of year in Florida when people start wanting to complain about the humidity. So it definitely is warmer and it's time of year when you kind and need to be careful.

[00:06:44] Or else you can get sunburned and you can get really, really roasted here in Florida. I'm dehydrated too. You've got to watch that drinking enough water. Well, hundreds of couple things that I'd like to go over since we last met and had our months.

[00:06:59] We had our monthly meeting on the 26th of April. And one of those is I have been on my first cruise. So we got to go on a five day cruise and what I'd like for you to do is share with the audience your take away from that.

[00:07:14] And I will talk about what I thought, but what did you particularly enjoy about that cruise we just finished? Well, just the spending time with you with, you know, we were together all the time. Not working on the yard, not working on any projects and just relaxing.

[00:07:32] And I didn't have to cook all week. That's what I really enjoyed too. And having somebody weighed on me and cook all the food that was really fun. And it was nice to see that you were enjoying it because this is the first time you've ever done it.

[00:07:48] I've done two previous cruisers and enjoyed both of those. And this was his first time. So this was something we got free, quote unquote. And anyway, we took advantage of it and we didn't really even upgrade.

[00:08:05] I thought, oh, he's got a really miss having a balcony or a window or anything. But our cabin was really nice and we didn't have problem with it at all. We were most of the time out of our room anyway and just slept in our room at night.

[00:08:19] So it was very nice room and very nice accommodations. And we were having fun. You know, it's so funny because I have always been under the impression. And I always had the thought that I will never go on a cruise.

[00:08:35] And you know, now that we're back from the cruise, now that I've been on one, I kind of asked myself why on earth did I think cruisers are not good?

[00:08:46] But there must have been something that I heard once a long time ago that made me think that way. But I really enjoyed being on the water. And I think part of what I hadn't wanted was being on the water and not seeing land.

[00:09:01] Right, that's what you don't mean. But I really enjoyed the comfort. And it was almost like it was very comforting being outside and watching the waves and watching how beautiful the water was.

[00:09:15] It was just, you know, it struck me as just unbelievable how clear and how blue the water was. And I just really enjoyed it.

[00:09:25] But some of my takeaways and I just, you know, really kind of feel I need to say this for those of you who are cruisers is how much people eat when they are on these cruisers.

[00:09:38] And you know, you can really, really gain a lot of weight if you want to. And you know, seeing some of the people on the cruisers, you definitely can see who likes to go on cruisers.

[00:09:52] But you know, the first night, I'm going to talk about this because the first night, I don't like putting stuff on my plate and not eating it. But that first night, my eyes got the better of me.

[00:10:05] You know, you can eat as much as you want so I put all this stuff on my plate and I forced myself to eat and finish the entire plate. And I paid for it later on.

[00:10:17] I tossed and turned that first night, I didn't sleep well because I had overwritten. So I learned my lesson. And you mentioned this a couple times is, is what did you hear about eating on a cruise?

[00:10:31] Well, I had shack talking to everyone on like a little info thing that was on our TV running from the cruise line. And you know, we were saying, my grandmother taught me that eat what you want. Get what you want but eat what you get.

[00:10:47] And I thought that's, that's really good. I try to do that myself and try to teach my grandchildren that because oftentimes we'll put way more on our plate. See we can not just go back for seconds. And I find this when we're traveling too.

[00:11:01] There are a lot of times we've started sharing meals if we can agree on what we want to eat that time. And if we want more food, hey, we can always order it.

[00:11:11] We don't need to overeat because you don't have a place to store food really that well when you're on trips and everything. So anyway, that was really I thought a good thing.

[00:11:22] And the ship too has some sort of recycling thing that if people do overeat or have leftovers, they just put all this food in a,

[00:11:30] and something that wars it all up together and they put something in with it and then they release it in the ocean to the fish. So they think that's a good thing. I don't know, but anyway, that's one of their conservation things they say.

[00:11:44] And for those of you who heard the name, Shack which Judy mentioned and don't know who that is. Shack used to be an NBA professional basketball player. He played for years on the Los Angeles Lakers. He won several world championships.

[00:12:01] So anyway, this is a big guy. And he was like seven foot one I think and wait about 300 pounds. So Shack fits in well on that cruise line. But yeah, that was a really good, really good time.

[00:12:16] And you know, I will never say again that we're never going to go on a cruise. I'm really looking forward to hopefully one day go into Alaska on a cruise.

[00:12:26] And a couple people I talked to said it's really neat to go overseas on cruises and maybe go up the damn you for something like that. But how did another thing we recently did since we last met is we had a couple guests and just visited us.

[00:12:43] And you know, it's always fun when we have people over but they've stayed for five days and not only are there our friends, but now they are recent graduates of carousels. So they just graduated last week.

[00:12:57] So if you would just share with the audience about that visit and what you'd like most about it. It's always good to spend time with people who are like minded.

[00:13:08] And, you know, there's no tension because you are listening to the word of God and you know the same teachers and just, you know, just the camaraderie that goes along with that. So I really really enjoyed that.

[00:13:24] You know what you miss talking about your excursion on the boat. Oh, I did it. He totally forgot. You know, he didn't go but he's so funny, you know, whenever you go on these cruises they have optional excursions that you should go to

[00:13:40] when I think some of you may get a kick out of this, but I went snorkeling with the sharks.

[00:13:47] So some of you may think that school, some of you, that may horrify some of you, but you know it was so neat and you know it just goes to show you that anyone can be basically taught and adapt to things.

[00:14:04] And these sharks obviously know that when that boat first comes, that it is not feeding time. And so it was so funny there probably were about maybe 10 sharks in all and these sharks were between five and eight feet long

[00:14:19] and you know at the very beginning when we went out, you know, when we jumped off the boat, these sharks are at the bottom of the water. So I would say it was probably about maybe 30 feet deep, but anyway they're cruising along the ground.

[00:14:37] So you're feeling really comfortable. They're not anywhere near you. But after about 15 minutes they start rising a little bit from the ground and all of a sudden they're about five feet closer.

[00:14:49] Now they're 20 or 25 feet away and you know, some people could be really a little bit antsy by that. I actually thought it was pretty neat, but about 15 minutes later, next thing you know they're very close to us.

[00:15:03] And finally, about 15 minutes later and we are times almost out, these sharks were right next to us. And they had warned us and told us, do not touch the sharks no matter how close they get to you.

[00:15:19] And believe me, I was close enough, I could have literally touched the thin of the shark but I opted not to because I was instructing not to.

[00:15:29] But it was really interesting and it was fun because these sharks were five to eight feet, but they did not provide any fear because their teeth weren't open, you couldn't see their teeth at all and I never felt any semblance that I wasn't comfortable.

[00:15:47] So anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed that but anyway, let's go back to what we were talking about first. Yeah, we were talking about having company and being on the same page and enjoying the camaraderie and just always nice to relax and enjoy friends

[00:16:04] and we would really like to have more people come and visit us. You know, and I'm glad you brought that up because when these people came, they had just recently graduated.

[00:16:15] And we just graduated. So basically it's been one year and we graduated May 13 of last year and these friends of ours who just came over, they graduated this year on May 11th. So anyway, it's just a reminder that it has been a year since we've been in Colorado.

[00:16:35] And for those of you listening, if you are Careous students currently or if you went with us, you are welcome to come to our house here in Florida. And many of you I have your information, I have you in my phone.

[00:16:51] But this is an open invitation for anyone that went to school with us and knows us if you're ever going to be coming to Florida. Please text me and at least stop by for a visit.

[00:17:03] And many of you would be welcome to spend a night or two or even four or five. So so I am hoping that a number of people from Careous will one day visit us. What are your thoughts on that?

[00:17:18] We enjoy seeing people and talking to people. And I know that since we've graduated, we're just kind of not with the same type of people. And it's been a little difficult. And having our friends around, they reminded us of things.

[00:17:38] Encouraged us and, you know, my friend got me to listen to a series that she loved. And it's really good. And just to get back into things and not let, not be slack or not let go of what we learned.

[00:17:54] Well, you know, it's interesting you bring that up because we are having a Bible study at our house. And that gives us an opportunity to get into the word and to share the word with people in our area.

[00:18:09] So what I'd like to do at this time, it is almost time for us to close what I often ask you to do is go ahead and talk about what the Lord is currently talking to you about.

[00:18:22] And lead anyone that still has not yet received Jesus. Say a prayer for them. Yes, I think the Lord has been leading me to listen to healing teachings. I just listened to Andre Mack and his powerful, especially number seven of her healing series of 12.

[00:18:44] And she talks about how when we receive our healing, it's like if my husband went to the store and he bought something for me. And he came back and he gave me the receipt and said, go pick it up.

[00:19:00] And I didn't go pick it up or I got there and I didn't believe that it was for me that that wasn't mine. And it didn't take, take it. I didn't possess it. And that's kind of like this Jesus paid for it. He already paid for our healing.

[00:19:16] And all we need to do is stand on the word. There's so many scriptures in the Old Testament and the new that revealed a heart of God that he wants all of us to be well.

[00:19:27] And just stand up on the word and say, by his stripes I am healed. And take what he gave for us. He gave it all. Those stripes on his back is hard to imagine what he went through.

[00:19:43] It's hard to think about it because it was so gruesome and so so hard. Anyway, that's what I was thinking about that we just need to take it. We need to possess it and not let it go and be strong and stand on the word of God.

[00:19:59] But if anyone has not received Jesus as your Savior, I would say, do say a simple prayer or say, Father God, I want you to be in my life.

[00:20:12] I want Jesus to be the Lord of my life. I ask you to forgive my sins, cleanse me from all and righteousness and help me to follow you and follow Jesus all the days of my life. Amen. Well, hon, thank you.

[00:20:28] And friends, it's been fun and we will see you again in the end of June. It'll be June 28th, so four weeks from today. And, friends, I just encourage you.

[00:20:42] Draw closer to God, get into the word of God. I mean, read it on a regular basis if you're not used to doing that. I invite you to do that.

[00:20:51] And for anyone tuning in today, if you are not aware, I do have a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, regular podcast. Separate from this, it's the same thing but on Tuesdays, it's testimonies. And then I have teachings Monday Wednesday Thursday and Friday.

[00:21:10] So now, may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord liftoff, his countenance upon you and give you peace. Friends, please join me again tomorrow as we further explore wisdom today.