Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Do you have your Bibles? If you'll take those and turn, if you will please, to 1 Samuel, chapter 1. 1 Samuel, chapter 1. I'm going to read the first 17 verses.
1 Samuel, chapter 1.
Now there was a certain man of Mount Ephraim. And his name was Elkanah, the son of Jehoram, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuf and Ephrathite.
And he had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other was Peninnah. And Penina had children, but Hannah had no children. And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts in Shiloh, or Shiloh. And the two sons of Elach, Hophni and Phineas, the priests of the Lord, were there. And when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Penina his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions.
But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion. For he loved Hannah, but the Lord had shut up her womb. And her adversary, by the way, her adversary means the other wife, one of the joys of polygamy.
And her adversary also provoked her, provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb. And as he did so, yes, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, she so she provoked her, meaning the other wife, Panaya, provoked Hannah. Therefore she wept and would not eat.
Then said Elkanah, her husband to her, Hannah, why weepest thou? And why eatest thou not? And why is thy heart grieved?
Am I not better to thee than ten sons?
So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk. Now, now, Eli. Or if you said in Hebrew, Eli, now, Eli. The priest sat upon a seat by a post of the temple of the Lord, and she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore. And she vowed a vow, and said, o Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but will give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head. And it came to pass as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli marked her mouth.
Now, Hannah, she spoke in her heart. Only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard.
Therefore Eli thought she had been drunken.
And Eli said unto her, how long wilt thou be drunk and put away thy wine from thee? And Hannah answered and said, no, my Lord. I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Count not thine handmaid. For a daughter of Belial. Sons and daughters of Belial is really. It's a Hebrew idiomatic expression that means twisted people. It can even mean perverts. For out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto.
Then Eli answered and said, go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou has asked of him.
Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, with our hearts and minds as open as we know how to get them, we're asking you to do all the rest.
Come, Holy Spirit, speak to us. We believe you for it. We thank you for it in advance. In the wonderful name Jesus, the strong son of God. Amen.
This whole series is based on the idea of those also mentioned in the cast.
So in every movie and in every play, there's a protagonist, there's the person, the hero, but there are also those other people that are just mentioned in the cast. You may not ever know their name unless you stay to the end of the movie and let the credits roll.
And there are people who spend their whole career as people also mentioned in the cast.
So what I'm doing each week is choose somebody that is like that, a character actor, if you will, or actress, and highlight them and then choose a movie, if you will, if I can say, quote, unquote, movie in the Bible where there is a central figure and then look at the other people that are around that person. So tonight's actor also mentioned in the cast.
He is no more. But he had a rare, if not absolutely unique record.
Every film he ever appeared in was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He may be the only actor ever to achieve that.
He appeared with famous stars, people like Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, yet few outside of Hollywood. In Hollywood, he was celebrated, but very few outside of Hollywood even knew his name.
Even his wife, or to be more specific in Hollywood terms, his partner was more famous than he Was he was sometimes laughed at and called Mr. Meryl Streep because his partner was Meryl Streep.
His name was John Cazale, or if you want to be more Italian, John Cazale.
And you know him. I'm going to put his picture up now on the screen.
You know him as Fredo in the Godfather.
Now that's our actor of the week.
The protagonist of 1 and 2 Samuel is obviously Samuel.
Samuel was in every way the star of the movie.
He was a colossus.
He has one foot firmly planted in the Book of Judges, and yet he is the bridge into the empire, into the Davidic dynasty.
He is the bridge from the Judges to the kings.
He himself certainly served as a judge and as a leader and as a warrior. He was a man of war and a prophet. And yet he was also a person who was. Who led dramatically with spiritual authority.
He was the founder of a school of prophets. And it was to that school of prophets that David fled first when he fled from the face of Saul.
Now, you could say he's not as big a star as the two people who became stars of their own movies, Saul and David.
I would just point this out. If Saul and David were standing here. Two books in the Bible were named for Samuel. Neither one of you guys even got one.
So let's consider some of the.
Some of the lesser characters, some of the people also mentioned in the cast. When we consider the movie of Samuel. The first is Hannah, his mother.
She is representative of a tribe of women's stories in the Bible of women who, for one reason or another, were either barren or there was some way in which there was a miraculous.
Some miraculous occurrence relative to their childbirth.
It is a consistent theme in Scripture that reaches all the way, of course, to the virgin Mary.
She was not barren, but she was a virgin.
Hannah is.
Is barren.
It's interesting what it says. It doesn't say she is barren. Some women in the Old Testament are referred to as barren.
It says of her God shut up her womb.
Now, now, that's a challenging passage of Scripture, because does it then mean that God intended her to be childless, that God closed her womb?
Or could it mean that God is summoning her into supernatural faith, that he wants to open her womb, but he wants her to enter into the contractual arrangement of prayer. He wants her to seek Him?
Let me just say this to you.
God is God and he is sovereign, and we trust his sovereignty. But there are times, and Scripture is full of such times, when where God wants us to appeal to him. To do what he already wants to do.
There are times when he invites us to plead with him. It's not really that we need to convince God to do what we want, but he wants the interaction. He wants us involved in the process.
And I believe that's what's happened here.
Hannah mortified by her competitor.
We. There are several things in the story that just don't quite resonate with us in 21st century America.
One is polygamy itself.
The patriarchs of the Old Testament were polygamists. David multiple many wives and wives concubines. Of course, he was a piker compared to his son Solomon.
And when. All my travels in Africa, I've had to deal with the issue of polygamy many times. It's a real challenge in the contemporary African church because what, what, what happens if a man gets saved and he has multiple wives?
What do. How does the church handle that? And it's a big debate in the African church. In some churches in Africa, if a man gets saved and he has multiple wives, they will let him. He can be saved and he can come to church, but he can't take communion.
In some churches, they say you have to choose one wife and put the rest away.
In a sense, that's cruel because those women have no way to support themselves. That's what they are. What they are his wives.
Some churches take a different approach. They say you have to keep the first wife and, and put all the others away.
So it's a huge debate.
I have talked with, met with and interviewed many polygamists. And here's one thing that no polygamist has ever been able to explain to me. Why does any man in his right mind want five mother in laws?
Now, what do we know about Hannah, also mentioned in the cast of Samuel?
First of all, we know that she is passionate in prayer.
She is praying so passionately that Eli, and we'll be coming to him in just a moment, thinks she's stoned.
That she is. She's praying so passionately.
So she is passionate in prayer.
The second thing we know about her is that she is a woman of some faith.
She struggles with her faith. She's been all these years without a child and she's struggling, but she keeps coming, she keeps beseeching God. She keeps reaching her faith out. She keeps striving for God to answer her prayer. She's hammering on the doors of heaven.
We also know that she is faithful.
She comes year after year after year to bring this little boy, this little coat or robe that she Brings that she turns over to be raised as a child in the temple at the shrine at Shiloh. Not in the temple beyond that. This is the most important. Beyond all those, the most important thing.
She keeps her covenant with God.
I want you to think what she says. If you will give me a boy, if you'll give me a man child, as soon as he's weaned, I will come and bring him to the priest at Shiloh, and I will let him be raised as a child of the shrine.
And she does it.
Furthermore, she raises and dedicates him as a Nazarite.
Now, don't confuse the word Nazarite with Nazarene. Nazarene has to do with being from the village of Nazareth, Jesus of Nazareth. But a Nazarite was an order, if you will. If I can use a sort of a Roman Catholic term, an order of spirituality in the. In Judaism, it implies several things. One was, they would never cut their hair.
Samson was supposed to be a Nazarite. He just wasn't good at it.
But not supposed to cut their hair. They're not supposed to have anything to do with the fruit of the vine, not just not drink wine.
They're not even supposed to eat grapes. They're not even supposed to go into a vineyard.
So it's a very strict thing. So she dedicates this little boy, Samuel, to be raised as a Nazarite at the shrine at Shiloh. And she is faithful to remember him. I want to. I want to say something. And I know in the contemporary culture what I'm about to say now may have some level of controversy attached to it, though I can hardly imagine that it does. But it may.
And that is, please hear what I'm saying and listen to it and don't jump to the end of what I'm going to say.
There is no shame, no embarrassment. There is nothing in any way that attaches to a woman who is childless.
God bless her. God bless her desire for it. God bless her. Nothing I'm going to say now in any way makes light of or makes a childless woman seem secondary. Please don't hear that. What I am going to say is this.
We need to recapture the appreciation, value and sanctity of the job of being a mother of children, particularly a mother of sons.
There is. There is no influence on the life of the next, including teachers, including ministers, including the church, including Sunday school teachers. There is no influence on the life of the next generation of leaders like the mother of leaders.
May God raise up leaders in order to do that he's going to have to raise up the mothers of leaders. I thank God for single dads. I thank God for married dads. I thank God. None of what I'm going to say is making any of those people secondary citizens, childless couples, anything. What I'm saying is that there is no influence upon a man of God like his mother.
Susanna Wesley had 19 children, bore 19 children, all to the same man. She was only married once. She bore 19 children. Eight of them died in childbirth.
One child, one baby was accidentally smothered by the housekeeper and was killed.
So the rest came to adulthood. And two of them were her boys, John and Charles.
She was the powerful force in their lives.
Their father, Samuel, was imprisoned twice for debts, though he was a minister.
And he was very unconventional. Minister, and he was often gone. But Susanna trained those children. She taught those children. She influenced.
I want to say this to you. John Wesley is not precisely the father of the Pentecostal movement, but he is the grandfather of the Pentecostal movement. And the grandmother or the great grandmother of the Pentecostal movement is Susanna Wesley.
An indomitable force, a powerful woman, a woman of grace and intelligence. She wrote books. She wrote gospel tracts. She taught her children herself. She homeschooled before anybody invented homeschooling.
And she had a pattern of teaching. She set aside a period of time each night, not each, each night, but one night with one child.
So tonight with John, tonight with Charles, tonight with this one. Each night she would take one child and be alone, just talk with them, teach them, answer questions. An intimate moment just with that boy or girl.
And everything that John and Charles Wesley accomplished. One of the greatest revivals known to the world, the Wesleyan Revival. Some of the greatest hymns ever written, some of the most wonderful sermons ever preached. And really, it's impossible to even estimate the impact of Susanna Wesley on those boys.
Monica, the mother of St. Augustine.
When St. Augustine of Hippo was gone, off in the world, lost as a ball in high weeds, nobody was thinking of Augustine of hippo as St. Augustine. It was Monica who went and got him and pleaded with him to come to church and prayed with him until he was. Until he came to faith.
Morrow Graham spent time invested, poured into her son Billy, and one of the greatest evangelists in the history of America, at least, and maybe of the world.
All of these women had impact on. On their sons.
When our son. We had two daughters and one son. When our son was young, he was.
He was born the year I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So I. He was born in June, and I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in December.
And my. My ministry was transformed overnight.
And what I had been a local pastor, and suddenly I was on the road.
And Allison had that little boy.
I can remember how she taught him Scriptures, how she would school him, how she would invest in him. When I hear him preach now, I'm very proud of our son.
And when I hear him preach every now and again, I pick up on some mannerism of mine in the pulpit, Some word he uses, some phrase he uses something. And I tend to say, well.
And then I see how he handles the word, his faithfulness, his diligence, his ability, his. His managerial ability.
And I realize I had very little to do with this.
So in the. In the supporting cast of the Samuel movie, there is hardly anyone of more significance than his mother, Hannah.
Now we come to the priest at Shiloh. Eli or Eli, by the way, let me just say, do you remember on the. On the cross when Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why thou forsaken me? The. The Pharisees say he's calling on Elisha.
Let's see if. Let's see if he'll come.
So it's. It is because in Hebrew he cries out, eli, Eli lama Shabbat.
Eli means my God.
We say Eli, which is fine, but it means my God. So Eli is what Jesus cries out from the cross. And this is the priest at Shiloh.
He is listed in the Hebrew catechism as the last judge.
He's the last judge, and then the judges end with Eli, and then come Samuel and then come the kings.
So Eli is certainly an important person, a supporting actor in the Samuel movie, but he's a mixed bag, to be sure.
He is also numbered in. In the Hebrew list of prophets. He is also numbered among the prophets specifically because he prophesies to Hannah that she's going to have a baby. He says, your prayers have been answered. Go home.
So he is a prophet.
The notable downside of Eli is he seems to lack discernment on any side. He seems to be unable to discern. He sees a woman in deep.
In deep pain, weeping and praying, and he thinks she's drunk.
Then he sees his sons who are drunk, and he doesn't seem to have the discernment to understand that he has to get rid of them. He compromises with his boys and. And causes untold damage. They are wicked.
Phineas and Hophni are wicked. They extort sexual favors from the women who come to sacrifice. They steal the food. They're wicked. And he compromises.
Eli is a mixed bag in the story of Samuel.
But the. The most positive thing that he does, he raises this little boy.
And one night, Samuel, a little boy. Now he's in the shrine at Shiloh. And there's these boys that are grown men who are older than him. Eli's biological sons. And then he has this little.
It's not an adopted child, but a foster child that he's raising.
And the little boy is asleep. And God speaks to him. Samuel.
Samuel thinks it's the old man. So he rushes to him and says, did you call me? He says, no, I didn't call you. Go back to sleep.
It happens twice. And then slow to have discernment, he does finally discern.
And he says, I think this may be God.
If he comes again, say, here I am, Lord. Speak to me.
So what do we make of Eli?
There are those people that are. That can be dramatically used. And we all know this. We've seen it. If you've been in the church more than 24 hours, you've seen it.
There are those people in the church that can be dramatically and wonderfully and even supernaturally used of God.
And they are mixed at best.
They're just.
It's. It's hard to understand. How does God use somebody who is so compromised that he lets his grown sons exploit sexual favors from the people that come to Shiloh to worship?
How can. How can God use him?
And what does it mean to the word of prophecy that he gives to this woman who will have a baby?
So let me.
Let me comfort you with these words.
You may receive ministry.
Help find a healing miracle under the hands of someone whom you find out to be later on deeply compromised.
What does it mean to you?
In the Middle Ages, of course, when I say the Catholic Church, the only church there was the Church of Rome, had village churches everywhere. And so there's the. Imagine there's this village somewhere where the priest is corrupt, he's sexually immoral, he's a drunkard, he even has children. This was very common. Even has illegitimate children in the village. Everybody knows that's the priest, kids.
So the villagers sent word to Rome.
What do we make?
What about the mass?
What about when he serves Mass, celebrates Mass?
Does his sin invalidate the Mass?
And from Rome came a Catholic doctrine. And I'm a Protestant. Everybody stay calm. But I just want to share this with you because it is a comforting thing.
And this doctrine is exoper opera in the working. It works in the operation. It operates in other Words. The mass is of greater importance. The. The mass cannot be corrupted by the priest.
So there was, in the 1930s, 40s and early 50s, there was a famous. A famous, famous American healing evangelist.
It's no use for me to say his name, but he was famous. He had an alcohol problem.
Those who worked with him said that there were times that he had to come on the platform and they had to literally hold him up.
But there were, under his hands, documented miracles.
Documented miracles of people that were healed dramatically under his hands while he was so stoned, when he woke up the next morning, he couldn't remember praying for him.
Does that challenge anybody else but me?
Am I the only one that wants to say God?
Are we all on the same team?
But what God says, I can speak through a donkey. In the Old Testament, I can. If God gives a miracle through the hands of anyone, the most righteous man you've ever known or the wickedest sinner you could ever encounter, if God gives a healing miracle through the hands of anyone, it proves nothing about that person. It only proves God loves sick people.
That's all it proves. God can use anybody.
So Eli's a mixed bag, to be sure, but he is an indispensable player in the cast of characters.
Then we come to two very important people in the story of Samuel.
They would. If they were here, they would both resent the fact that I list them as characters in Samuel's movie.
The first is Saul, who becomes the king.
But he is not the king when we encounter him. Neither of these men are kings when we encounter them. When we encounter them in the movie about Samuel, they are. They are inauspicious persons.
So God reveals to Samuel that the king, the first king of Israel, is to be. Is to be Saul.
He's grand.
He's a.
He's a head and shoulders taller than the next tallest man in the country.
He looks kingly.
He looks great. He's big, he's strong, he's tall. But he doesn't want to be king.
So when Samuel goes to try to anoint him as the king and introduce him to the people, he goes and hides among the baggage.
So Saul is finally appointed as the king. He begins to unify the tribes. Remember, Israel under the judges is simply a scattered collection of tribes. And they killed each other often. As often as almost as often as they killed the Philistines.
So Saul does a great thing. He unifies the kingdom, brings them together. There is really no federal nation of Israel until Saul.
There are the tribal chieftains.
There's Dan and Asher and Judah and all the others. But there's not really a central government of Israel until Saul.
He begins to win some battles.
But Saul bears a striking similarity to Eli.
He's a mixed. He's a mixed bag at best.
He's very carnal. He makes carnal decisions.
At one point, in the middle of a battle, he orders his whole army to fast.
It's crazy. You're fighting a pitched battle. You need food.
So he thinks he can sort of bribe a victory from God by ordering his soldiers to fast.
One person doesn't hear about the fast. It's his son Jonathan.
So they're fighting his son Jonathan, who's a hero. Jonathan, by the way, between David and Saul and everybody else in the story, Jonathan is probably the nicest guy in the story.
So Jonathan takes his spear and stabs it into a nest. Bees nest and get some honey and eat some honey off the spear.
And Saul finds out about it and is going to have him killed because he said the person who breaks the fast before the battle is one deserves to die.
And so he's going to. He acts spontaneously, carnally, to call for this fast in the middle of the thing. Then he's going to kill his own son because he doesn't fast. Then the people appeal to him, don't do it. So he agrees not to do it.
So he's this great, big, strong, powerful, dominant king who can't overcome his own carnality.
And so finally, he winds up demonically attacked, unable to sleep, a distressed, lost, confused human being.
And Samuel comes and announces to him that he's been rejected as king.
It comes over partial obedience. And I don't want to get too fastened in on Saul. He's a character. He's a minor actor in the. In the Samuel movie.
So he rejects him, tells him he's rejected.
And Saul, again, big, strong, great guy, he reaches out and grabs Samuel's garment as he tries to leave the tent, and grabs hold. He's so strong, and it rips.
Listen to Dr. Mark.
Don't mess with prophets.
It's a. It's a bad mistake.
So Samuel turns around and he says, as you have torn my robe, God has torn your kingdom away from you, and he has found another who is greater than you, who will be the king.
Listen to what Saul responds. Saul says, okay, I hear a prophetic word. I know it. I recognize it. I even admit the authority that's going to happen.
But he says, let's don't tell anybody else this is true.
Let's don't tell anybody else. Come out onto the platform with me and act like I'm still the king in public.
Interestingly, Samuel says, that's all you want.
You just want to act like the king?
Fine.
Let's do it.
But from that moment on, Saul is no longer the king.
So this big, strong farm boy king now becomes former king.
And he winds up his life demon possessed, dealing with witchcraft and committing suicide. It's a. Saul is a. A Hebrew tragedy. It's. It's King Lear on jets.
This is a. This is a true tragedy.
Now, God speaks to Samuel. Remember, this is the movie about Samuel. This is not a movie about David and Saul.
He speaks to Samuel and says, go to Bethlehem and I'm going to show you who to be anointed as the next king. You all know the story.
Little David is called. All the other brothers are rejected.
But Samuel's impulse is to anoint the oldest one.
Why? Because he looks like Saul.
He's a great big, strong farm boy warrior. And he says, well, he's not Saul, but he's close.
And then God says this remarkable statement to Samuel. Remember, this is about Samuel.
Look not on the outward. I don't look at those things.
I look at the inward.
And Samuel orders that this David is not even there.
When David's father, Jesse Samuel says, bring all your sons in. And all of them are grown. David is this late in life.
Accident. Everybody know what I'm talking about. You know, your last one's a teenager. You think you're out of that. And then she says, I'm pregnant.
Great.
That's wonderful. Here in my 50s, we can start again.
And that's David. So his. All of his older brothers are all grown. He's just a kid.
And Samuel says one of the funniest lines in the Old Testament. He says, are you sure these are all your sons?
Am I the only one that thinks that's funny? I think he would know.
And Jesse says, kind of reluctantly, he says, okay, okay, okay.
There is another one.
I gotta tell you, he's a very weird little kid.
We're all not sure about Divitt.
He goes out, plays the guitar, sings to the sheep.
It comes in with the most cockamamie stories.
He told us he killed a lion with his bare fist.
So we'll bring him.
But I gotta tell you, odd little kid.
Samuel says, nobody's gonna eat or sit down till that child gets here.
David comes in. David knows nothing. Remember this? He's been out in the pasture.
David comes in and he doesn't even know what's going on. There are village elders, there's this old man, there's all of his brothers, there's his father. There's the women are peeking in through the door.
It's kind of evening, it's kind of creepy. And he comes in and he says, you call me. And this old man steps over with a horn and pours oil on his head and leaves and leaves.
From that moment on, David is king and not yet king.
From that moment on, he is anointed. He is the one sin. He is the future king of Israel.
Saul, who is king, is not king.
David, who is not king, is king.
What does it tell us?
God's idea of reality is not the same as our idea of reality.
The rest of the world saw Saul as the king. God says, he's not the king.
Everybody else says, a weird little shepherd boy. God said, no, he's the king.
Now let's think about the cast of characters for a moment.
Who is the.
This is a very difficult story for ancient Hebrews because it's such a male oriented patriarchal culture.
The most important and admirable person in the story, supporting actor in the story of Samuel, is not a man.
It's a woman.
The reality, the apparent reality of her life is that she's chalice.
The real reality is that she's the chosen vessel for a colossal human being.
The apparent reality is that she has no influence at all upon the child that she bears.
The real reality is that without Hannah, there is no Samuel, there is no Saul, there is no David, there is no Israel, there is no David. Davidic dynasty.
Hannah is not the star of the movie. That's Samuel.
She's just the most important person in the movie.
So I want to say something to you as I close tonight.
You may feel like you are not the star of the movie, of any movie.
You may feel like you are the most ignored character. You may feel that you. Nobody even knows you're in the movie.
But the fact of the matter is there may be some thing, some influence, some word, something that you may be divinely situated just to say that one thing to that person.
When I was a boy in East Texas, I was from a relatively poor family that were from a very poor family that were from an even poorer family.
My great grandfather was a blacksmith in East Texas. And of course the blacksmith trade dried up when horses came, when cars came and horses no longer. He was.
He was quite old by that time. He ran a little tiny convenience store in a little Town called Randolph, Texas, that doesn't even really much exist anymore. Just a little collection of houses and a. An abandoned church. I've been there recently.
My. That was my great grandfather, Tinsley Bledsoe, his daughter, My. My grandmother, his daughter married an alcoholic.
So my grandfather on my maternal side was an.
An out and out drunk, not a functional alcoholic. The fallen down village drunk, drunk, out. Besides my grandfather on my paternal side, my dad's dad was a functional alcoholic.
He was a postmaster in Commerce, Texas, another town.
But I never saw him. I never saw him falling down drunk by the side of the road, but I never saw him sober.
So I was never close to my grandparents, who I was close to because of several young marriages.
I was close to my great grandfather, Tinsley Bledsoe. He's a great big man in his 80s. I saw him put his forearms underneath an anvil and pick it up.
He was a great big man, big hands. And he was a devoted Christian.
If there was a revival in town, he walked to it. If the Presbyterians were having one, the Methodists were having, the Baptists were everyone, wherever it was. His wife, my great grandmother, was an Irish lady, a little Irish lady with a temper that would just scald the hair off of anybody.
And she was very impatient with my great grandfather's religion. I can remember her saying, oh, 10, they called him 10. 10. You're going to walk off down. You're not a Baptist. Why are you going to that Baptist church?
And he'd say, now, Lucy, I'm going. She said, well, don't bring that preacher back here.
He'd say, lucy, if nobody takes the preacher home for dinner, I'm bringing him, I'm bringing. Ah. And he'd go off down the road with Lucy screaming.
I would spend a lot of time at that little house.
I can remember sleeping on a pallet on the front porch on hot East Texas nights. Cause it was too hot to go in the house hearing. My great grandmother played the guitar and sing Irish folk songs like for the Love of Barbie Allen.
But my great grandfather had a huge impact on my life.
He made my first bow and arrow from a chinaberry tree.
I thought I was Quanah Parker. I killed more white men than the. Than the Comanches did.
And I adored him.
One day we were in the shed in the blacksmith shop and I called him Pappy. I said, pappy, can I ask you something?
Are you a Methodist?
He said, yes, Mark, I'm a Methodist.
I said, well, my mom and dad are Methodists. They don't go to church.
Papa, that was his son in law. Papa's a Methodist. He won't go to church. He's drunk all the time.
Pop is a Methodist. He didn't go to church.
Mammy, that's his wife, my great grandmother. I said, mammy won't go much, she's a Methodist.
Are you a different kind of Methodist?
And he laughed and he picked that little boy up and held me up over his head like that and he said, I'm a second chapter of Acts. Methodist.
I didn't know what he meant.
For nearly 30 years, you don't know what influence you're having on somebody.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on X at Dr.markrutland or visit his website, drmarkrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
