We All Need Friends and Fathers || Victory Church [Cafe Convos #7]

Good news everyone, Andrew is here. Yay. Ooh, ooh, ooh. People, people, there's no one. There's no one. I wanna know, what do you have in store for us today? You got what I got? I got what you got. So in here- It's hot. It is very hot. We are gonna have to pop the lid, let it cool. All right. I love coffee. Okay. I mean, I will drink any coffee. I will drink cured coffee. I will drink bad diner coffee. I'll drink the, we don't know how long this can of grounds has been sitting in the cabinet, but it's still in there. Like, let's have some anyway. That's a thing. Like Folgers doesn't expire to me. So I like, I'll drink any coffee, but I also like really, really nice coffee. All right. But across the board, I'm a black coffee drinker. Oh boy. Yes. Especially like a good single origin. Single origin?

Like slow pour. Like it didn't come from nowhere else? Yeah, yeah, like just, hey, we want that Ethiopian floral bean, right? We want that Rwandan bean, right? Okay. And so this though, for the sake of efficiency, it's not just a black drip coffee. This is an Americano. Americano? Yes. Espresso and hot water. Oh, all right. So this is just the bean and water. Two, yeah, two ingredients. Okay. Gotta let it sit for a second. Should I let it sit? Yeah. We'll come back and try it. Let it, as they say, let it aerate. You know what? I'm gonna, I'm, aerate is good. I'm gonna take your wisdom on this because again, I am not a coffee drinker, but that leads right into what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you consider yourself a wise person? Hey. I should go.

All right, wrap it up, guys. I think wisdom is one of those things that has a ton of humility attached to it. If wisdom is a person, right? Instead of personifying wisdom as like the Gandalf or like this father time man, it's more like this kind of like cracked ribs, black eye, smile on your face. Just like, I'm good, man. Like I made it. Hey, I've got some advice for you boys. Yeah, yeah. I think you gain wisdom by doing and observing and partaking and experience, even though not all wisdom comes from experience, but I do think to some degree wisdom comes, it's like a tested knowledge, you know? Like you can be intelligent and not wise. Yeah, I think Pastor Johnson said something a couple of weeks ago, like that wisdom is not just having knowledge, but it's like knowing what to do with it. Yeah, yeah, what do I do with it? Knowing how to apply it. What do I do with what's in front of me? Right. And I would say, if you're gonna ask, if I'm a wise person, I think what I would consider wise about me is legitimately being open to seeking wisdom.

Gotcha, gotcha. Do you know what I mean? I think you become unwise the moment you've achieved wisdom. You go out to look for knowledge and then you realize how much you don't know. And the older I get and the more involved in ministry I get and the more people I encounter and the more seasons and whatever that I encounter. You just realize how much more there is to learn. Yeah, dude, I just like looking at your Ecclesiastes and I'm like, he's right. This is all vapor. None of us know anything. Everyone is winging it. Yep. And God help us, we love you. Please sit with us. My wisdom comes more from dependence and reliance on the Lord and on the people in my life. You gotta find stuff to hold on to. And I think that's wise, is not my need for control, but my need for acknowledging that, I don't know what I'm doing sometimes and I need people to keep my ground steady, keep my path straight. My therapist, Dr. Ruben, shout out to him, he got four girls and they're all grown.

You know what I'm saying? And so sometimes we talk on the clock, but sometimes we talk off the clock and I just ask him like, bro, how did you do it? You know what I'm saying? I'm sitting here trying to figure out why my oldest teenage girl is just crying and she don't even know why she crying. I'm just holding her like, I don't know what to do. Yeah, just needed to get one out. And so I think having people in my life like that, who have gone through it, when I hit those walls of like, I don't know what else to do. I am praying about this thing. I am thinking about this thing. I'm waiting on the Lord, but I do believe he's also set people around me who can give me some wisdom, some godly wisdom and some human experience wisdom and say, yeah, you should do it like this or maybe not do it like that. This is how it worked out for me. And so maybe if you can avoid that pitfall, like, do you think you surround yourself with like men or women like that in your life? Yeah, I have to. Especially because I know me. Facts. I, by nature, want to go and do something for myself.

I got you. I want to see it for myself. And sometimes the benefit is incredible because instead of hearing other people's stories, I have my own stories. So you were that kid that's like, hey, don't touch the stove because it's hot. Yes, or it's like, hey, I've touched that stove. Let me tell you. Okay, yeah. And so I literally, what's funny is I did touch the stove like three days ago. Not for fun, it was an accident. Okay. Oh yeah, I meant to tell you as I sipped, so you sip. Oh, okay. Yes. Okay, here we go. I sip, you sip, we sip. All right, this is a black coffee. Yeah, it's an Americano. Sorry, an Americano. Turn you into a cultured man. Oh boy, here we go. It's a little hot. God, that's hot and nasty at the same time. You look, a couple of years ago, I had like what I was later told, it was like a midlife crisis. I'm like walking down my street

in my nice neighborhood, suburban neighborhood. You're like, I need a Corvette. No, I had already gone through that. And it was like, I need a BMW 6 Series because I need to feel some way. And I remember walking down the street and I'm like crying and I don't even know why I'm crying. And I'm like, what is- And you wonder why your daughter does it? Are you kidding me? And I'm like, Lord, what is going on with me? And I sought some counsel from an older gentleman. I'm explaining to him what I'm feeling. And he's like, Corey, how old are you again? I'm like, I'm like 42. He's like, ah, yeah, you're fine. You're fine, young man. Yeah, he was like, oh yeah. He was like, no, you just hit that point in your life where you're looking back over the last 20, 25 years over the things that you've been grinding for, fighting for, working for, trying to attain, whether that's the job, the family, the car, the money, the house, all of the things. And you're looking at it like, is this it? Yeah. All that hard work over decades and this is it. And you're realizing how little it matters. And he's like, but you're also starting to look at the next half of your life

and thinking about the things that really do matter. Time with my daughters, time with my wife, time with my family. Those are the things that are going to have some eternal kind of like impact, how I'm pouring into them and their spiritual growth. Like those are the things that really matter. Hearing you say that just made maybe the most significant light bulb pop off in my head about even talking through wisdom is that, you know, Proverbs is really a, it's a handover from a father to son, right? Like it's, hey, from father to child, this is something tangible I can give you to try to map you out as you walk each day, as you walk this life. There's gonna be people you see, places you go, things you do, and here's how to try to keep your head straight and your path straight, right? And even hearing you talk about realigning those priorities, it's like, there's multiple verses that talk about like the counsel of- Wise counsel. Yeah, your wise counsel, counsel of advisors, like these people that you're assumingly putting around your life to keep your path straight. But in our worldview, our culture, the way we operate, it's so much out of like efficiency and results. And so sometimes I'm afraid, like we like to microwave meal everything.

And I think we'll take some of those wise counsel scriptures and we put some people around us, but they end up becoming more of a like performance checkers and accountability partners. And it's like, I don't know, I even have friends who are pastors and they're like, oh, I have these other pastors that I'm connected to and they can check me on anything. It's like, do they know you? You know what I'm saying? Like my best friends now are just a couple of guys who live states away, who just make my life better and make me better, but they don't make me better because they're checking my stats. And like, they make me better because they don't give a rip about what version of myself I am today or how high or how low, like they're not reevaluating their involvement in my life based on the season I'm in and what I'm feeling. Sometimes I think we think of the wise counsel as just like professional advice bringers for my life. Hey, here's what you ought to do. Here's what I would do if I were you. Here's what I would do as a dad. Like a self-help book. Yeah, yeah. This is my board of personal investors. What do you guys think? And it's like, that's not it though. That's not always it.

Cause I don't need professional advice givers surrounding me. I need friends. Because the critiques are like, let's point out the problem. And then the oversharing advice givers are like, fix, fix, fix, fix. And it's like, dude, before you are a person to fix, you are a person to love. Or before you're a problem to fix, you're a person to love, right? And it's like, who are the. those people? Who are the people that love Andrew before my job? Who are the people that love Andrew? Who want to invest in me before anything else I touch? And those are the kind of people that I go, man, what do you think about this? I have, I'm literally thinking of one guy that I was just in Alaska with and he's a man of few words. Okay. Which I have no idea what that's like. Must be nice. But I was just thinking about him and I was like, you know, when I ask him a question or I present something to him, his words carry so much weight because of who he is to me, who I am to him. And because of his word choice, like I could be chooses them carefully. I could be sitting here with you. And you could be like, dang, Drew, it sounds like you need to take a break. And I'd be like, Oh, yeah, don't we all you know, and I'll probably brush it off. But if I was sitting with him, and he goes, you need to take a break. It would. I'm like, Oh, you're right. You know, like the way. Yeah. And it's just because I love him, man. And I trust him. Yeah. But I think that's the importance of finding those people in our lives who words do carry a lot more weight for us,

because they will help us to be guided on those right paths. And we find trust in those people. Yeah. Because like you said, we know that they know us in our totality, not because of a title, not because of a job, not because of any of that. I'm not a doesn't matter if I'm a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. Like you just know me behind closed doors, you know, me, we all need friends and fathers, friends. And that's like, take the last 200 sentences I just said. And that's the final thing. We all need friends and fathers. Yeah. And that's like what Proverbs essentially is getting at. Yeah. Like it is the fatherly like, I just I would not be anything without the spiritual dads I have, like my very close friends. Yep. And my spiritual dads, like, those are the guys that get us through who get get us through. Yeah. Listen, I thank you for sharing all of them. I feel like you just preached to me, homie. You definitely helped me out with how I'm figuring out these little girls in my house. What I definitely am not going to encourage them to do is to drink this type of coffee, though. Yeah, like that. So send us a letter and we hope to hear from you soon.