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Salt + Light Community is a SOMA church plant in the heart of Fort Worth, TX. Here you’ll find teaching and discussions from our gatherings on Sundays.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Good morning Morning Hello Morning My
name is Brandon, if I don't know you.
What is it, uh, Gabe and
Graham said the other day?
I'm just a man.
I'm just here.
Um, it's good to see you all.
Uh, I have the opportunity to
teach today, and, uh, I hope you'll
forgive me that I'm just gonna tell
some of my story for most of it.
So I wanna start by way of
prayer, um, by way of a poem.
This is a poem by a Cambridge
poet named Malcolm Guite, and,
uh, he's a great poet if you know
him, and it's called O Sapientia
I cannot think unless I have been thought.
Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.
I cannot teach except as I am taught or
break the bread except as I am broken.
Oh, mind behind the mind
through which I seek.
Oh, light within the light by which I see.
Oh, word beneath the
words with which I speak.
Oh, founding unfound wisdom finding me.
Oh, sounding song whose
depth is sounding me.
Oh, memory of time reminding me.
My ground of being always grounding me.
My maker's bounding line defining me.
Come, hidden wisdom.
Come with all you bring.
Come to me now disguised as everything.
Amen.
So, uh, this is a picture,
uh, of the plane, uh, last
month I was supposed to be on.
I never got on it.
Uh, it was a plane, uh, in Atlanta
bound for Cape Town, South Africa.
And when I got there, the door,
the boarding door had closed, if
you ever run into that problem.
Uh, and so I'm sitting there a few minutes
late pleading with this gate agent,
like, "Is there anything you can do?
The plane is literally right there."
And, uh, all they said, without looking
up at me, was, "Go to customer service
and they'll rebook your flight."
And I said, "Okay, where is that?"
And they didn't answer me.
I don't know if they didn't
hear me or if I'm just that guy.
But they, uhâ¦
And then another guy came around
the corner and he was like,
"Hey, where is customer service?"
And they told him it
was by the food court.
So I left.
Um, so I was traveling to South
Africa, uh, to meet my team.
Um, so I own a marketing agency, and I
have had the good fortune of, uh, having
a team in, uh, Cape Town, South Africa.
They're wonderful.
I love those guys.
Uh, it's just the Lord's provision
that has brought them into my life.
Um, but I was 10 minutes late because
my connecting flight from Dallas to
Atlanta was 900 pounds overweight,
and so they had to redistribute
luggage and people and fuel and that
took too long and I got there late.
So that saga cost me an hour and a half.
Um, but that led me to this, this next
picture, where Suzette was behind the
desk at Delta Customer Service and she
had this sitting next to her computer.
It says, "Be still and
know that I am with you."
And in my sadness I pointed this out
and I said, "Sometimes I doubt this."
I was overwhelmed by how little it seems
like things go my way, and it had been
so hard that whole week, you know, and
for a long time, which I'll get into.
But the point I wanna make today is that
every time I get down, God shows up.
Back in March 2023, when Camille was three
weeks old and Christine and I were sitting
on our bed with her in the morning,
uh, just hanging out, enjoying our
parental leaves, I received a phone call.
And the voices on the other end were
leaders from the organization where
I worked, and they were informing me
that due to a reduction in revenue,
I would no longer have a job.
And three weeks, uh, from
then was my last paycheck.
So we had no income for two months
because, uh, Christine was out on
parental leave and I had no income.
Uh, then our savings went to zero,
and so, uh, this is a side note to say
that, um, the expenses that we save
for a rainy day, sometimes that rainy
day can be much longer than we think.
And so they say, you know,
save three months' expenses.
That is not true.
Save a year's expenses.
Um, so that's my new rule.
Uh, so during that period we
lost our health insurance and
with it all of our doctors.
Um, and that's when Camille started
daycare soon after that, and so she got
sick, and that first week I went to the
hospital, which is a different story.
Um, but she got sick every week it
seemed, and, um, so for kids that
are going into daycare, be warned
But God showed up during that season.
Uh, he provided, uh, three times my
monthly income that May through different
projects that I was getting and things
that literally just landed in my lap.
And that's just one example
of ways that he showed up.
But every time Camille would get
sick, uh, one of us had to cancel
our clients and stay home with her.
So, um, Christine is paid hourly
as a counselor, so it was often me.
So I had to cancel all my clients and
reschedule everything, and I had to do
that every week, and I could tell some
of my clients were getting frustrated.
And during that time too, um, our
dog at the time, we don't have a dog
anymore, sorry, um, he had a three
thousand dollar medical emergency.
Our fridge went out, which was
four hundred dollars to fix that
and then two hundred and fifty
dollars to replace all the food.
Uh, we had rodents in our attic,
so it was five thousand dollars to
exterminate all that and re-insulate
the attic and plug up all the holes.
Uh, the sickness and sleeplessness
just dragged on during all this.
Our dishwasher went out the night before
Jones was born, so that was a thousand
dollars to fix that, but that was the
third time that that had happened.
Uh, so we were doing dishes by hand
all the time, which is really fun.
Um, three weeks later, he was in the
hospital as a three-week-old, um, in
the NICU for three days with viral
meningitis, which ended up being a
thirty-seven thousand dollar bill,
and he was sick seemingly every week.
So Camille was sick, and then he was sick.
Um, three months later, he was
back in the NICU for four days with
four viruses, including RSV, and
he went there, uh, to the, via the
ambulance 'cause he had low oxygen.
That was a fifty thousand dollar bill.
Still working on that one.
Um, and I should mention we're part
of, uh, Samaritan's Ministries, if
you guys know what that is, which
is like a health-sharing ministry.
It's really great.
You get a bunch of checks in the mail
from people all over the country.
It's a very primitive form of insurance.
Um, I, uh, but, you know, you,
you have to pay things, and then
all that money shows up often.
And so I'm still working on that,
the, some of these bills here.
During that time, uh, Jones had reflux.
So if you've ever had a child that
has reflux, uh, you are not sleeping.
So Christine did not sleep for
months, having to hold him upright,
um, for him to go to sleep.
Our dryer went out.
That was four hundred dollars.
Both garage doors stopped working.
That was twelve hundred dollars.
Our garage door panels have fallen off.
Somebody stole our doorbell
camera, had to replace that.
Uh, my hot water currently does
not work on my side of the sink.
It's twelve-- it's two thousand dollars
to fix that, so I haven't done it.
And then our, our car
mirror is broken now.
It's twelve hundred dollars.
And in the middle of this season,
when we were running out of money
because, uh, Christine was again
taking some time off with Jones,
um, I went to get my taxes done with
my accountant, which is always fun.
And so, uh, after Camille was born,
we found out that my accountant
did not put her on the tax return.
So we had a tax refund that year, this
was, uh, two years ago, and it covered
all of our expenses for that summer.
It's God showing up.
Um, and when he told me the, the refund
that I was gonna get finally because
Christine w- or Camille was added to
the, the, uh, tax return, I cried.
I wept in my accountant's office.
And he said, "This is, uh, moments
like these are what keep me going
after 40 years of accounting."
It took months to receive that money
though because the IRS thought I was
dead, which is a- ⦠another story.
And this is something that my
accountant said after 40 years
he's never seen this happen.
So, but what's, what's funny
about that story is the money,
because I was dead, the money
showed up right at the right time.
Like, if I had gotten it earlier
I probably would've spent it.
You know?
On all these little things
that I was, I was doing.
But because it delayed it showed up
literally as I was like running out
of money, and it showed up to just
pay my bills for that summer again.
So it was justâ¦
It's crazy how it worked out.
I have not, uh, received this year's
tax refund which un- a child is on
our return so it should be good.
Um, but I know that God will show
up and that's, that's the theme.
I'm not mentioning the seemingly,
seemingly endless issues at work
where my teammate's power goes out,
um, their kids run away, they have
migraines, there's political unrest,
water shortages, burglars in their
home, sickness, insane weather.
They had a tsunami one time in Cape Town.
Um, and then back in the US we
have lots of issues like this, like
AWS servers go down or Cloudflare
in- infrastructure go down.
If you guys know this it knocks
out like a third of the internet
including all of our software.
Uh, so that means I gotta reschedule
everything, clients get mad again.
And two weeks ago we got hit
with a $24,000 plumbing bill.
A pipe underneath our house was not
connected to the foundation and as
it shifted, uh, they had to, uh,
dig a 35-foot tunnel underneath our
house to replace that whole pipe.
And on that same day I lost a core client
of mine and now our sprinklers are broken
because the city uprooted the corner
of our lot on our, on our, uh, house.
We live down in Fairmount.
It was a perfectly fine sidewalk but
because it wasn't code compliant or
something they had to rip it all up.
They ruined our sprinklers
so now we have this big leak
every time the sprinklers run.
Um, and then that week, uh, this
was, so this was two weeks ago, we
had a pack of raccoons fighting in
our backyard at 3:30 in the morning.
Very loud like cats just
gnarling each other and, um,
two of them fell into the pool.
We have a little pool.
And they were just yelling and playing
and splashing and I'm out there in
my underwear and I'm like, "Hey!
Hey!"
And I wake up, I wake up, uh, Christine
and she's like, "What are you doing?"
Uh, so now we need to drain that
pool so we haven't done that yet.
So don't get in the pool.
But we need to drain it and clean it.
Uh, and at the same time now, uh, this
week, uh, Jones has started waking
up every night at midnight screaming.
We have no idea why.
So we have not slept in a very long time.
But every time something like this
has happened in the past, God has
showed up, so I know that He will
now, and it gives me a lot of, a lot
more confidence than I've ever had,
a lot more faith than I've ever had.
I know it will be at the last
minute, in the most unexpected
way, but God will show up.
I know that's the pattern.
Somehow, some way, He will show up.
And all this too is in the
middle of perhaps the most
revolutionary technological
transformation in human history.
A time when jobs and their
value are actively being, uh,
constantly reevaluated, when
my clients are questioning, you
know, "What's your value here?
Like, Claude can do a
lot of this, you know."
I'm like, "Yeah, sometimes."
There's also a volatile
presidential administration.
Tariffs and war have, uh, weakened the
dollar against the South African rand,
which has increased my labor costs 20%.
And then finally, the day before I
left for Cape Town last month, um,
my manager's daughter fell off the
trampoline, cracked her head open,
and received many big stitches.
But God showed up in that time anyway,
and so I know that He will continue.
I hope you hear that theme
Needless to say, I've been very
stressed and I've been very afraid.
I've been anxious about
money my whole life
But during this season, I've
had to quickly become a man, a
leader, a confident, non-anxious
presence to lead the roughly 50
people God has entrusted to me.
I often have no idea what I'm doing.
I have no idea how my paycheck
will turn out next month.
And that fear has at times
been more than I could bear.
I wrote in one of our newsletters
a couple weeks ago, um, that fear
has no place in the Christian life
because perfect love casts out fear.
You know, it's a, it's a verse in the
Bible, so clearly that's the logic.
But my friend Jared pointed out,
uh, that perhaps Jesus was afraid
in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Perhaps.
He was distressed to the point of
sweating like great drops of blood.
So I don't know if he was or not fearful.
It's hard to know.
But I can sense that distress,
if only in, in a small way
So the questions that I feel God is
bringing to me during this season that
he continues to ask me is, "Despite
all of this fear and anxiety and stress
that you feel, do you really believe?
Do you trust me?
And what would you do
if you weren't afraid?"
So with that context, I wanna return
to my earlier story of that, um, of
that thing on Suzette, Suzette's desk.
So immediately after I confessed my
doubt to her, that God is indeed with
me, this was a month ago, Suzette said,
"That's the only thing that matters.
It's the only thing that keeps me
going after 32 years with Delta."
And she was kinda like,
" Speaker 4: The only thing
that keeps me going."
Speaker 3: Uh, she's pounding
an invisible desk, you know.
Um, and so just after that we had
this exchange, and she found me
a flight that got me to Cape Town
only four hours later, a plane that
would even carry my checked bag.
And so when she told me this, I cried.
Again, there's a theme here.
Um, the bag arrived three days
later, um, so I didn't have, uh, I
didn't have clothes for three days.
So I did buy underwear at,
uh, an off-brand Uniqlo
called Unique in South Africa.
And it was, uh, the wrong kind of
underwear, so that's a different story.
Uh, so when I said this to her,
I said, "I don't know why I doubt
I looked at her, and Suzette started
tearing up, crying, and she said,
"It's days like these that help me know
that I have a purpose here at Delta."
Just in customer service, you know?
And then she said, "I love you, man."
And I said, "I love you, too."
I thanked her, and I left.
I eventually got on another plane bound
for Cape Town by way of Johannesburg,
and sat next to a 34-year-old
Spanish neuroscientist from NYU
headed to a conference in Cape Town.
She was still working on her English, um,
but I asked her what her specialty was.
Can any of you guess?
Stress and anxiety.
She conducts basic research on
mice to understand how trauma in
youth affects stress later in life.
Perhaps God showed up.
Perhaps I missed that flight,
totally out of my control, to sit
next to her, and we talked for hours
about technology, science, faith.
She was not a Christian.
And so perhaps that was
why I was on the plane.
Perhaps that's how God showed up
So the theme is this over
this period of my life.
I get extremely overwhelmed
at a particular moment.
I cry, and God shows up.
Much to the chagrin of my patient
wife, every month has been like that.
Every month has been something.
Just constant.
It's like waves.
We, we were just in Charleston this
week, and just the waves just crashing
over you when you get out deep.
It's been like that.
And I don't know why I continue
to doubt even when this is what's
happening every single month
But this season of my life
has taught me about value.
It's taught me about what's important.
It's taught me about faith.
And I used to think that faith
was primarily intellectual.
That if I could understand systematic
theology or church history or apologetics
or something like that, I could have this
measure of control over my life, that
I could see around these counterfactual
corners and, and, and begin to understand
and take control over it, because
that's my anxiety, that's my fear.
And I've been taught that I have
very little control over anything.
I'm still working on that, but
I know that God will be with me.
I've also been taught about grace.
I've been taught that, uh, sometimes
people are just going through
really hard things, and they need
somebody to just sit and listen to
them, to be encouraging, to be kind.
And I've learned that faith
is often an experience.
It's not primarily intellectual.
It's a story that must be
lived, and it takes time
There's a Psalm that says, uh, "God is not
impressed by the strength of the horse or
the leg," which is interesting to think
about with frontier AI models and business
success, if that's kind of your thing.
Um, God is not impressed by those things.
Which raises the question, of
course, what is-- what God-- w-
what is God impressed by then?
And I think after this season, what
he's been teaching me, I think it's
trusting him, having faith in him.
I think that's what
actually impresses him.
If you remember the faith of the
centurion in Matthew eight, Jesus
literally marveled at his faith.
He's a Roman soldier.
He's not a teacher of the law.
He's not a Jew even, and he was-- he,
he impressed Jesus so much by his faith.
So in our text, when we see a man
walking through a field and stumbling
upon a treasure of such great value
that he hides it again and sells
everything he has to buy that field,
we can see something about faith and
about value and about what matters.
Notice that this parable is
addressed only to the disciples.
So if you read, um, you know,
through Matthew 13, you realize
he left the crowds, and he's
teaching his disciples then.
It says that, "The kingdom of heaven
is like treasure hidden in a field,
which a man found and covered up.
Then in his joy, he goes and sells
all that he has and buys that field."
In his joy, he sold everything he had.
Another translation says,
"In his excitement."
He was excited, joyful to sell everything.
His joy is what motivated him to do that.
So think of something that's
valuable in our culture today.
You could think of, you know, if
you're, if you're younger, watching
a lot of Disney movies, there's
pirate's booty, pirate's treasure.
It's very valuable.
Everybody's always after
that in the movies.
Or lottery winners, you know, we're always
thinking about, how can I win the lottery?
Could be a beautiful car.
I'm a car guy.
I've been watching a lot of F1, if you
wanna talk about, uh, having a man crush
on Toto Wolff after that, I'm game.
He's really great.
Uh, so if you discovered, say, an old
Ferrari or this, you know, incredible
car or something in an old barn, and you
knew that you could flip that car, you
know, for $100,000 or something, would
you sell some of your possessions to buy
that thing knowing that you could flip it?
Maybe you don't relate to that.
That's fine.
Uh, would you sell some of your
possessions to have a newer home, or
to avoid sickness in your family, or
spend more time with a lost loved one?
We all value different things, but
the question is, what are you willing
to give up for something greater?
That's the question that
I've been wrestling with.
And how do you even know what
that greater thing is, or even
that it is indeed greater?
Which is the conundrum here.
I think this man stumbled upon a treasure,
and he was first able to recognize that
it was a treasure, that it was valuable.
Which says something about his
attunement, his sensitivities, what he
was putting his mind on, what he was
paying attention to, what he valued.
Not everyone recognizes the value
of the kingdom of heaven, which has
been made clear in some of the, the
previous parables that we've heard.
It is hidden in some way,
which is interesting.
And the finder of this treasure even
hides it again, which is a peculiar thing
that scholars like to wrestle about.
So the question is, do you recognize
the kingdom of heaven in that way?
Do you see it as the value that it is?
Do you recognize how valuable it is?
What do you think of when you
think of the kingdom of heaven?
Do you think of a cloud-covered floaty
place with winged babies playing harps?
Do you think of a Disney castle on a
mountain pass with crepuscular rays
penetrating the clouds from a distance?
Do you think of a person, family
member, homeless person, a child?
What is the kingdom of God, and
would you sell everything to have it?
Would you endure hardship to have it?
Suffering, persecution, death
It's hard to know, at least for me.
I pray that the Spirit would give
me strength during hard times like
that to see clearly the kingdom of
heaven, to understand its value.
I feel as though I've been through
hard times these last couple of
years, and at the same time, I
recognize I live in a beautiful home.
It's got air conditioning and
working plumbing now, clean water.
I'm not imprisoned or terminally ill.
I'm not begging for food.
I'm married to the best person
on Earth, so I'm not lonely.
My kids are happy and healthy.
They go to a great little school.
I have it really good
Over the last year or so, I've been
reading this economist theologian.
His name is Bob Swartz.
He's a Dutch Reformed scholar, and,
uh, he writes about the economics of
enough or the economics of sufficiency.
It's, that's his specialty.
And you hear things, uh, like that,
the economics of enough, sufficiency
in, uh, writers like Wendell Berry and
other great writers who write about
things like that, if that's your thing.
They write about value, really.
Do you have enough?
Do you feel that what you have is enough?
Do you feel like you don't
need anything else, that you're
content and you understand value?
In the last few weeks, I feel like my
faith has been growing a lot stronger.
Um, literally in just the last few weeks,
I feel more hopeful and more confident in
the Lord's ability to care for me like a
good father 'cause I'm understanding what
it means to be a father more and more.
And even still, would I give all that up?
What do I really value?
And what do I really believe?
Perhaps God showed up in my life over
the last four, uh, few years, um,
just to bring this message to you.
The medium is the message.
Maybe that's why I'm here.
Maybe this is why it's always happened
to me in the last couple of years.
The second story in our parables
we see is that of a merchant on
the lookout for choice pearls.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a
merchant in search of fine pearls, who
on finding one pearl of great value, went
and sold all that he had and bought it."
This was not a man
stumbling through a field.
This is a shrewd capitalist
looking for a great deal.
He's a man of arbitrage.
Buys low, sells high.
He's researching, scanning the
news, interviewing sellers.
But like the last story, when he
found a pearl of great price, he sold
everything he owned, and he bought it
Uh, have you ever read
or seen The Big Short?
That book, Michael Lewis.
Great writer, great book.
It's a story of a man who was on
the lookout for choice investments.
He was a shrewd capitalist.
He ran a hedge fund at the time,
and now has closed that down.
He writes on Substack, if you wanna
follow his endeavors these days.
Uh, he discovered a great deal where
mortgage-backed securities weren't
worth what people thought they were.
And so he basically invented this asset
that would short these securities,
called credit default swaps, and
they were like insurance policies.
In a, in a great financial emergency,
the value of these assets would go
down, and he would make money on them.
So he made deals with the largest
banks at the time, who thought he
was crazy because he put up $100
million for those deals, that he was
basically betting against the American
house market, which is insane to do.
Like, people thought he was nuts.
And he bet everything.
Almost, like, all the
money in the hedge fund.
He burnt the boats, as the saying goes.
His investors thought he was crazy,
you know, hearing what this, this
thing that he's investing in.
They're like, "Are you kidding?"
Was he crazy?
Hindsight's 2020.
Or did he just recognize value?
It ended up being one of the greatest
trades of all time, where at one point
the value of that trade was worth $8.4
billion.
So $100 million for $8.4
billion.
So would you scrap your way
selling everything to make $8.4
billion on the other side?
He ended up profiting nearly 800 million
for his investors, so it was an 8X return
in just a few years, which is hard to
do if you know anything about investing.
So recognizing true value in that
case, it might look crazy because they
don't see the value, and when you do
recognize the value, he acted on it.
Can you act on the value
that you recognize?
How would you know?
How can you be sure?
If you wanna trade 100 million for
8 billion, you better be pretty
darn confident, or else you'll
look like a fool in front of
everyone and never be trusted again
So think of the man or the merchant
selling everything they owned.
They went back to their communities,
their families, telling them
they were selling it all.
So imagine I'm going back to Christine.
My hair is disheveled, my eyes
are wide, I'm licking my lips
and I'm like, "Babe, listen.
I've got this great deal.
I gotta move fast, trust me,
but I gotta sell everything."
And I'm, I'm excited.
I'm joyful.
Um, can you imagine?
So contrast this story with the story of
the rich, young ruler in Matthew 19 when
he asks, "What must I do to be saved?"
And Jesus says, "Sell all your
possessions and give to the poor."
And the rich, young ruler walked
away sorrowful, not joyful.
So there's recognizing
value and acting on value
Those are two different things,
and the second requires an
enormous amount of faith
But that's what faith is, right?
It's confidence in things hoped for.
Assurance of things we do not
see, as it says in Hebrews.
So is there something in your life
where you recognize the value but
you might be afraid to act on it
even though you know what it is?
You're confident about it.
Could be as simple as prioritizing
working out and eating healthy,
Speaker: something I know is
valuable and I don't do it.
Speaker 3: Uh, it could be as complex
as having a confrontation with a
family member, seeking therapy for
things you know you need help with,
confessing your sins to another person.
What do you value?
And will you have the courage,
the faith to act on it?
Do you really believe what you believe?
Do you trust him?
When Jesus went to the
cross, he knew the value.
His death and resurrection would
fulfill the work the Father gave him
to do, bringing glory to himself,
bringing salvation to all who
believe, once for all, forever.
It would be the most powerful day
in history, the day of redemption.
This is the greatest story ever written.
And thankfully, he had the courage, the
faith to act on it, to endure the cross
for the joy set before him, because
he valued his people and his church.
He valued you.
And that is what we celebrate with
communion, that in his joy, he endured
the cross, having the courage to act
decisively on what he knew to be valuable.
And thank God he did.