Changed

Brent Stone (00:00.61)
Hello, welcome to the Change Podcast. I'm Brent, and I'm so excited to be able to just share with you all today. I've got a special Bible verse that we're gonna talk about today in the special format of the Change Podcast. I don't have a guest today, however, I am gonna share on some real life stuff in relation to a verse that has given me some really great perspective today.

And I say today because the day actually started off in an interesting type of way. Currently at the moment, my wife and I have a situation in one of our businesses where we're a couple of staff members down and she was covering space at our office. And she left and hey, babysitter's coming at 8 a.m. Great.

No problem. I'm gonna hang out with the kids and it's gonna be fine and then Babysitter will arrive to rescue dad and then dad can get to work well

Eight o'clock came and I sent a text message to the sitter letting this person know that I would be in the playroom with my son and my daughter is currently sleeping. Just come on in. Don't ring the doorbell. And then 20 minutes later, I still don't have a text message or a phone call or anything else. So I send another text message acknowledging this person and saying, hello. I

need to know if you're coming or not coming. I have meetings this morning and I need to move those meetings if you're not coming. And I was trying to be as respectful as possible because you just never know. You just never know if someone's had an accident or a bad scenario pop up, emergency of some sort, whatever the case is. And I've tried to do a really good job here over the last couple months, year.

Brent Stone (02:05.627)
two years, three years of just basically not putting my calendar on a pedestal. For anyone that's like, oh man, you think that your time is more valuable than others? I really used to. I really did. I thought that I had a busier calendar than everyone else and it was just really arrogant. One of the things that I've come to find out is that everyone is busy to their capacity.

and I'll explain that a different way. Every single person can handle basically what they're dealing with. God doesn't give people stuff that they can't handle. And also, as we master certain things that the enemy throws at us with God's help, it just expands our capacity to handle more things. And today wasn't actually a...

horrible thing. It wasn't like I had a bunch of meetings that were, you know, make or break certain business things, certain business commitments, whatever. But they were meetings and I did have to move them and that was inconvenient. And I also had a screaming baby and a toddler that I had to wrangle simultaneously while I was trying to figure out like, is this really happening right now?

I'm really in a scenario where I don't have a sitter. And I thought I was going to have a sitter and I get work done, but all of a sudden I'm realizing that that's not a reality. And it just made me think, you know, how can I look at this day in a way to where I can get the best out of it? I get extra time with my kids, you know, all this stuff. I'm not gonna text my wife and.

freak out on her because you know she's the one that set the sitter up and all this stuff and hey do we have another sitter because a couple reasons one I just what she can she do about it she's doing something now where she's basically filling the role of a couple positions and she's you know she she's doing what we both agreed is most important for her to do at that point in the day and it's just gonna be a couple of hours and it's you know it's not

Brent Stone (04:22.718)
but it's what we needed to do in order to make it work. And all of a sudden I realized, you know, it's going to be okay. And I moved my meetings and so on and so forth. So anyway, so that's all fine and good. Now here's where the verse comes in because today's verse when I was I was talking to Jesus and I said, hey, Jesus, what verse should I talk about? And he said, Matthew 7.

and I don't have Matthew memorized yet, but I think to myself, man, this sounds like I'm getting into the Beatitudes. And so I pull it up on Bible Gateway here and it's Matthew 7 is about judging others. And all of a sudden I realize, man, this is really timely.

And here let me explain that before I read this verse to you. I actually read the verse to you and then I'll explain why it's really timely. So judging others, Matthew seven, and this is one through five. It's not the whole it's not the whole Matthew seven. But you not judge or you two will be judged for in the same way you judge others. You will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at?

the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye. How can you say to your brother, let me take a speck out of your eye when you all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite. First take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. So, this is really timely because around

12 and 1 I get a text message from our sitter and all of a sudden it becomes very clear that and I got a phone call and I got a text message and God bless this person it wasn't like I was being on my second text but it wasn't warm either and she

Brent Stone (06:33.046)
She apologized, I'm so sorry for the confusion. You know, when I spoke to Michelle, it was for another Friday that I was going to be coming to help. And we have other childcare for other, you know, other things, date nights, other times when we're both working, whatever. But today was a certain special set of circumstances.

and this person responded back and with a screenshot of the text message, just so, I guess she wanted me to be really sure that I knew that it wasn't her fault. And, you know, it made me think, man, I'm so glad I didn't call this person, hammer dial this person, hey, what happened, you know, and try to give this person a hard time. Now,

It's by God's grace that I didn't do that because I wanted to. And I know that there's been times where I've certainly started the, you know, judging right away on certain scenarios and made myself look like an, like, like an idiot. And, um, I don't know if anyone's guilty of that too. Um, but I definitely have been in the past. And one of the things that I think is really awesome as I meditate on this, on this, on this verse,

you know, judging people and being concerned about how our father's going to judge us on judgment day, you know, as we've judged others in this life, as we go into judgment after we pass away, you know, how are we going to be judged in the capacity that we've judged others? But it's also really great advice for in the here and now as we live our life from day to day. I mean, think about this.

What would that have done with my relationship with the sitter of ours if I would have just lost my cool and. I'm embarrassed to think about how my feelings were you know at 9 AM this morning you know an hour after I was supposed to have a sitter and I'm still trying to say it's not my kids fault you know I'm trying to make it fun for them and you know. You know a bit of a type a personality so it's grinding my gears you know I'd be.

Brent Stone (08:48.39)
lying if I said otherwise. And so I'm just, you know, trying to pull together. And then I had that realization. So anyway, you know, I'm talking to the Lord here this afternoon, getting ready to jump on here. And I'm just so thankful that He's given us grace and mercy for His Word, and especially this, because how timely is it that I reevaluate my own intentions and actions and things.

after a scenario like this so I can be better. And hopefully that rings true with some of you all. I know that my wife and I, we've been through scenarios where we've wanted to really judge people on different things in the past and with no, given no regard to how we will be judged in the future. And I should say me, I'm not going to speak for Michelle. She's pretty awesome. But

But I know that as we've gone through things, we've started to see, you know, it's hard to tell what people are going through on the back end, you know, behind the scenes. And maybe it's better to just not judge. And who knows, maybe we'll all have a little bit more patience for each other. If we can make it a habit of just thinking, you know, I don't know what's going on behind the

judge them for this action because maybe their intentions were meant to be better. So with that, I leave you all with Matthew 7, 1 through 5 on judging others. Thank you for tuning in to today's Changed Podcast. My name is Brent Stone and I'm so honored that you've just tuned into this. If you've watched the entire episode, please like and subscribe. We would be honored if you would follow us and share.

the stories and testimonies of encounters with Christ with others. Thanks so much.