TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles - Date: August 10, 2026. Lesson 156-2026. Title: Guard Your Hunger and Stay in Your Place

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

In today’s Morning Manna, Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart examine Proverbs 27:7–8 and two dangers that can quietly weaken the Christian life: losing our spiritual appetite and wandering from the place God has given us. Solomon teaches that a satisfied soul can despise even honey, while genuine hunger can make bitter things sweet. He then pictures the vulnerability of a bird wandering from its nest. This lesson challenges believers to guard their hunger for God, recognize when comfort has dulled their desire for His Word, and value the relationships, calling, church, and community in which God has established them. Spiritual hunger prepares us to receive, while rooted faithfulness provides protection, stability, and room to grow. Lesson 156-2026 Teachers: Rick Wiles and Doc Burkhart You can partner with us by visiting MannaNation.com, calling 1-888-519-4935, or by mail at PO Box 399 Vero Beach, FL 32961 MEGA FIRE reveals the ancient recurring cycles of war and economic collapse that have shaped history for 600 years. These patterns predict America is now entering its most dangerous period since World War II. Get your copy today! www.megafire.world Get high-quality emergency preparedness food today from American Reserves! www.AmericanReserves.com It’s the Final Day! The day Jesus Christ bursts into our dimension of time, space, and matter. Now available in eBook and audio formats! Order Final Day from Amazon today! www.Amazon.com/Final-Day Apple users, you can download the audio version on Apple Books! www.books.apple.com/final-day Purchase the 4-part DVD set or start streaming Sacrificing Liberty today. www.Sacrificingliberty.com

Welcome to Morning Manor. Welcome to Morning Manor the cafe that serves nutritious soul food every weekday to get your day started. So get comfortable and open your Bible to the book of Proverbs chapter 27, verse, verse. verses 7 and 8. Today's lesson number is 156-2026-156-2026. It is archived at manna nation.com and also on my channel on YouTube, Rick Wiles Today. When you visit Mana Nation, would you please show your appreciation for this worldwide Bible teaching ministry? There's a heart in the upper. right corner of the website. Please click that heart and it will take you to the donation page and your generous gift would be received by Doc and me with great sincerity and thanksgivings

because you make it possible for us to do this every day. God bless you. Dr. Burkhart is here, ready to open up today's lesson and let's pray. Invite the Holy Spirit. Then Doc will read the word and give us the introduction to today's lesson. Almighty God, our Father in heaven, Father, we give you glory and honor and praise and Thanksgiving. We are alive, Father, and we are forgiven, and our names are in your book of life. We rejoice and give you praise and Thanksgiving. Father, your sons and daughters from all over the world are gathered together right now in this virtual Bible study class, and we are hungry for your word. We have an appetite for your word. And so we ask for the presence of the Holy Spirit in this class to teach all of us

truth and understanding in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Praise the Lord. So glad to have you here with us for Morning Manah. And we're continuing our journey to the book of Proverbs. What a journey it has been. We're learning so much together, and I say together because Rick and I are learning as well as we prepare our lessons and get ready for each one of these lessons. God's working on us, too. And so today's passage is a very interesting one, and it was a challenging one for me to study and to wrap my head around. So let's get started today because we're in Proverbs chapter 27. We're looking at verses 7 and 8 today. Versus 7 and 8, Proverbs chapter 27.

So open up your Bibles, Proverbs chapter 27. I'm going to read from the King James and also from the Septuagint, from Brenton's version of Septuagint. And let's get started here with the authorized version. The full soul loatheth a honeycomb, but to the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. As the bird that wandereth from her nest, so as a bird that wandereth from her nest, man that wanders from his place. And then the subdugent, a full soul, scorns honeycombs, but a hungry soul steams bitter things sweet. As when a bird falls down from her own nest, so is a man brought into bondage whenever he is estranged from his own place.

Now, Proverbs chapter 27, verse 7 and 8, they pair two proverbs that at first glance, seem really unrelated, one about appetite and taste and others about birds and wandering mint. But they share a single governing concern, and that's the distortion that occurs when the creature is separated from its proper place and condition. So in verse 7, we're going to be examining the interior distortion of perception that the full soul cannot taste what the hungry soul tastes. because appetite itself governs the experience of sweetness and bitterness. That same honeycomb that is sweet at one time is loathed by one mouth and the same bitter herb is savored by another, and it depends entirely on the state of the one tasting it.

Then as we move into verse 8, it examines the exterior distortion of displacement. So it gives the example of a bird away for a nest and a man away from his place. And they're both pictured as creatures out of their proper element, out of place. They're both vulnerable and disordered in a way neither would be if they had simply stayed where they belonged.

So the unifying thread that both of these verses, both Proverbs, has is that context governs experience. Context governs experience. And so the soul's condition determines what tastes sweet. The man's location determines what he is exposed to and also Rick what he's capable of. So wisdom today is teaching the morning matter audience to examine both these dimensions in their lives,

the appetite within and the place without because contentment and safety depend on both being rightly ordered. And Rick's going to get us started today by looking at verse 7. Rick. Okay, Doc. This is a good lesson. I really enjoyed working on this lesson. And by the way, if you know anybody, if there's anybody in your life, your close friends, family, who is always moving from house to house, job to job, city to city, always on the move, never settled. not because their employer is relocating them, but there's some unsettleness. They're just never settled.

There's three months in this house and six months in this house and then they're in this city and they're, if you know somebody like that or they're going job to job to job and church to church, you know, there's nothing settled in their life. They need to listen to the second part of this lesson today.

verse eight it addresses that spirit that restless spirit so if that speaks to some about somebody you know maybe it speaks to you you might be the one who's moving about well solomon's got something to say to you all right so let's start with verse seven the full soul loaves loveth as a honeycomb but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet. A satisfied soul tramples on a honeycomb and treats it as nothing

of no value. You just walk past it. When your soul, when your stomach is full and you come to a honeycomb, there's no hunger pains in you saying, I've got to stop and eat it. You just walk past it. We have learned in previous morning

manal lessons that honey and honeycombs in the Bible symbolize sweetness. They are two of the most desirable natural pleasures available anywhere in the world. I don't know any place you go. Maybe the North Pole. Some place, I guess there are no frozen honey bees in the North Pole. But in most of the world, people love honey. In this verse, honeycombs and honey become a test case for a deeper truth. And this is the truth. Even the finest pleasure cannot move a soul that has already been satisfied. The most delicious food, the most wonderful dish a chef has ever prepared,

will not budge somebody who has eaten and is full and has no desire for any more food. That's the principle. It doesn't matter how good it is. The person's not hungry. And they'll walk past it and show no interest in it at all. The full soul, a soul that's filled, does not merely decline the honeycomb. Solomon says it loves it, it hates it.

It finds it revolting. Like, oh, just thinking about putting that in my mouth makes me want to throw up. When you're maxed out on food, the last thing you want to someone to say, here, taste this, eat this. You're like, no, oh, it's delicious. I don't care. I don't want it. I can't put one more bite of food in me. But to the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet.

The reversal is true. It's not merely tolerable. It's not merely acceptable. Every bitter thing becomes sweet to the soul that hungers. The Hebrew use of the word every. The Hebrew word is call, K-O-L for every. It leaves no exception. Hunger transforms the entire category of bitterness into a category of sweetness.

The governing principle is that the soul's internal condition, not the object's inherent qualities, determines the experience of taste. Let me explain that. The soul's internal condition, not the object's inherit qualities determines the experience of taste

that honey is sweet whether you put it in your mouth or not it's sweet but to you if you are full if you've been eating junk food all day long

and you've been gorging on potato chips and candy and sodas and, you know, all kinds of junk food. You don't care what that honey tastes like. You're full. You've been eating fake sugar.

You've been eating fake sweetness and think you're satisfied. And you'll walk past the real sweetness, natural honey, and go, I don't want it. That's the principle in this proverb. Honey does not change. Bitterness does not change. What changes is the appetite's reception of them. And that change in appetite is sufficient to invert the entire experience. The Proverbs' most immediate application is spiritual appetite for the things of God.

Obviously, you have an appetite. for things of God because you're watching or listening to a Bible study lesson. And those of you who come back four or five days a week, you're hungry. You're really hungry. Maybe you've just stumbled upon this ministry. It's the Holy Spirit that brought you here. The soul that has grown full, satisfied, saturated with the world's pleasures, the world's distractions. the world's junk food, finds the sweet offerings of the Holy Bible, of the sacred scripture,

of worship and praise and prayer and fellowship in church to be tasteless, tedious, burdensome, precisely because it has lost the hunger that would make them delightful. Meanwhile, the soul that is in genuine spiritual, hunger, desperate, needy, aware of his or her lack, finds even the hardest truths in the Holy Bible, the most searching correction, the most demanding calls for obedience, the strictest discipline that's in the Word of God, that person finds the Bible to be sweet. because hunger has prepared that person's soul to receive what fullness could never taste. Yes.

Matthew Henry, a great Presbyterian theologian in the 1700s, observed that prosperity is one of the surest ways to lose your taste for spiritual things because the soul grows full on lesser satisfactions and no longer craves the greater one, while genuine affliction or need often restores an appetite for God that comfort headdog. Now, that is not a prohibition against prosperity. It's a warning that you're in danger when you do, prosper, that you have to work harder at staying hungry for God, that your prosperity can make your soul become dull. Again, it's not a prohibition against prosperity. It's a, it's an admonition

to make sure your prosperity does not lessen your hunger for the God who made you prosperous. Amen. Charles Bridges. Charles Bridges, he was an Anglican bishop. He observed that seasons of genuine hunger, however painful, are frequently the very seasons that restore a believer's capacity to taste the sweetness of scripture and prayer, that comfort had made tasteless.

Bridges saw it as a mercy, hidden inside, what feels at the time like deprivation. It's actually God's mercy, pulling you, letting you experience some deprivation, some difficult times. It's God pulling you back to him that make you hungry for him again. Yes.

So, you know, Rick, when preparing for the lesson here today, I was trying to think of a way to wrap my mind around this first verse here. And I don't know how it was when you were growing up, Rick, but when I was growing up, whenever we had rice, it was a big deal. We rarely ate rice, maybe once, several times a year, maybe, you know. And so anytime we ate rice, it was a big deal. I mean, it was something special. It was something, oh, my, we're having rice tonight, you know.

and you always looked forward to it because it was something different, something special. Well, when I went to become a missionary in South Korea, and then, of course, I married Mia as well, in Korea and in the Philippines, rice is with every single meal, every meal, and with snacks. I'm serious about that, too. every meal here in the Philippines, you have to have rice. And if you have a snack, there's usually some sort of rice component. You can have rice cakes or, you know, a dessert made from rice, a rice pudding. Rice is, and they have a motto here in the Philippines, rice is life.

Rice is life. But I'll just be honest with you. I get tired of rice. I mean, I get tired of it. And it is just too much for me. But when I was a kid, it was a very big deal. It was a very special thing when I was a kid. A kid.

In fact, I still remember the commercials on TV for Riceeroni. Remember that? It was a special treat. They called it a treat, right? But it's not that way now. Now, they treat rice here like in the U.S. we treat potatoes. We have potatoes with just about every meal in one form or another. But that helped me kind of get my mind wrapped around this.

And so the application here of verse 7 here extends directly into the doctrine of spiritual hungry as a gift of grace rather than a natural human default. And you've been teaching on the beatitudes lately, Rick, in a special session. And in Matthew 5, 6, it says, Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

And that hunger itself before that filling arrives is already named blessed, because it is hunger. not fullness, that positions a soul to receive what only God can give and to taste it as sweet, rather than dismiss it as something bland. And then over in 1st Peter chapter 2, verse 2, there's an instruction given there by the apostle that follows from the same principle. It says, as new word and babes desire or hunger, the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. And so it's that desire, the appetite itself,

that has to be actively cultivated because it doesn't sustain itself automatically. You see, a soul that's left to its own device is Rick tends toward fullness on lesser things and consequent loathing of greater things. And so the principle here is there's a danger of spiritual fullness. and that danger of spiritual fullness is one of scriptures most really consistent warnings

against the material and religious complacency alike. In fact, in Revelation chapter 3, verse 17, Jesus addresses the church at Laidoccia and says, rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing. And he described their condition, because of that, that they're wretched, they're miserable, they're poor, they're blind, and naked. And so a soul so full of lesser satisfaction, Derek, that it had entirely lost the capacity to recognize its true condition, let alone hunger for the remedy for its condition, too. And so the remedy that scripture prescribes is, you know,

it's not artificial deprivation for its own sake, but really honest self-examination. If we read, we have to ask a question here, Rick, has comfort, has routine, or has worldly satisfaction dulled the appetite that once made the word of God's sweet to taste? in Psalm 119, verse 103, it records the appetite this verse commence.

It says, How sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea sweeter than honey to my mouth. So it's a direct connection here to this verse. And so the psalmist honey sweet experience of scripture is really available only to the soul that has not grown too full of other things to taste that sweetness of the word.

So the encouragement for those currently in a season of genuine hunger, when we go through those seasons, maybe a season of spiritual dryness, maybe personal loss, maybe some sort of unmet longing. You talk about that restlessness, Rick. We'll get into in verse 8 here, is that this very hunger,

painful as it feels, is actually preparing them to receive as sweet when a comfortable season would have found just merely tolerable. So the bitterness of the present moment may be the better and the very thing that makes the eventual sweetness possible, Rick. Amen. And so, Doc, whenever we have hunger pains, we're going to stop everything we're doing

and satisfy that hunger pain. You're going to eat something. You're going to fill yourself up on something. And that's a danger for a lot of people because we reach for the wrong thing. We're like, I'm hungry right now. I've got to get something. And that's the danger is when you eat to process food,

fast food, snacks and things. The point is you will be hungry for something. the question is the something that you put in your mouth to satisfy the hunger. Let's take a look at the difference between the King James and the Greek Septuagint. Review the King James, the full soul loathe a honeycomb, but to the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. The subduigent says a full soul scorns, honeycones, but a hungry soul esteems bitter things sweet. So the Greek Septuagint tracks very closely with the King James and the underlying Hebrew that's in the King James with the comparison. And it remains fully intact.

There's not much difference here. The one thing I would point out, Doc, is the Greek verb for the full soul's reaction. The Greek word is impaisae. It carries a connotation as slightly stronger than mere distaste. It suggests mockery or contemptuous play, treating the honeycomb almost as an object of derision rather than a simple refusal. So if you take the subtergence version, the fullness described is not merely satisfied,

but has curdled into something bordering on scorn for what it once would have craved. Yeah. And Rick, that intensification suggests that unaddressed spiritual fullness does not remain neutral over time. What happens is it tends to progress toward active contempt for the very things that it found nourishing. And so the soul that's grown full on lesser pleasures does not simply forget the sweetness of the greater. Eventually, it comes to disdain it, to scorn it, to mock it. I'm mocking what it's lost, the capacity to taste. It's a tragic situation.

And so the situagen stability alongside this single intensification really should be a challenge to our morning manna audience today, for this fuller picture. There is a danger, if you will, of spiritual fullness that is not static, but progressive. And the earlier that appetite is examined and restored, the less likely it is to harden into that scornful dismissal that the Greek text specifically names.

Now, we're going to get into verse 8 here, and I have to admit and confess here today, I had to do a deep dive on this verse myself to come to terms with some of the implications of this verse. And because I saw in this verse, after I did a study, Rick, a picture of me in the past. and it was really a challenging thing for me.

I'd like to hear your take on verse 8 here, Rick. You mean you want to talk about life in your 20s? 20s, 40s, maybe? I hate to admit, but there was a big period of time where maybe I know. I was a bird wandering. I know what you're saying. I had the same conviction. Verse 8, as a bird that wandereth from her name.

nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place. This pictures a specific and recognizable vulnerability. A bird, the bird that has left the one place built for the bird's protection and her rest and her young. So a nest is not, a nest is not. an incidental in a bird's life. The nest is everything to the bird's life. It's the structure that's specifically designed to shelter the bird from predators,

from weather, from exhaustion, a place to provide, it's where the bird provides a secure place where her eggs can be hatched, the young can be fed and grown up. the nest. So a bird that strays away from her nest has not merely relocated, she has abandoned the one thing in which she is safest, and the most productive and the most functional.

In other words, she becomes dysfunctional. I don't know, Doc. Have you ever met a dysfunctional bird? And I have. But now I'm trying to picture one. Right. What does that look like? Well, I'll tell you what it looks like.

So is a man that wandered from his place. That's what it looks like. The comparison extends the bird's vulnerability to a man or woman, displays from his or her proper place in life. Their home, their community, their calling, their purpose in life, the context in which God has established that man or woman. The Hebrew word is no dead, wandering, restless, fluttering,

roaming without settled purpose. You're living here one month, you moved over here three months later, you're not happy there, you move over here, and you're back and forth, nothing settled. This is the same root word. This is no dead. This is the same word in Genesis behind the name Kane gave to his condition after he murdered his brother, Abel. He was a fugitive and a vagabond cast out from the ground that should have received him.

Wandering in this proverb's vocabulary, wandering around is never known. neutral. It always carries the weight of exile. You're on the move. You can't settle. You're separated from what was meant to hold and sustain you to give your life some permanency, some meaning, that you can't take root anywhere. You know anybody like this? Is there anybody in your family and your friendships and your coworkers in your church that suffers from this wandering spirit. This is not a prohibition against travel, relocation for job purposes.

Abraham was called, called by God, to leave his home. Right. His homeland, leave his family, his mother and father, his brethren, his uncles and aunts, he was called by God to leave. being his wife packed up and left.

They didn't even know where they were going. Now, don't you think, Doc, don't you think that Abraham's mother and father and his cousins said, what's gotten into you? I mean, it's one thing you're leaving, but you don't even know where you're going. But God had called Abraham to do that. That's a different thing. Right. because that was an act of obedience.

God could have told Abraham to stay there, and that would have been an act of obedience. The principle in Abraham is the act of obedience. What we're talking about in this proverb, verse 8, is this restlessness, this wandering from place to place, leaving one's place, one's proper place, not in obedience to a clear calling, but through discontent,

instability, a refusal to remain rooted where God has placed a person to grow. Sometimes God takes you to a place that it's not comfortable. It's just not comfortable, but God placed you there for your own good and for his glory. Don't quit. Don't give up on it. Yes. You have to tough it out. And God will give you the grace to tough it out.

and put down your roots there. But you can't just pack up after two or three, four months and say, I'm done with this. I don't like it. I'm leaving. Yes. If God placed you there, why would you quit and leave? But this is what the proverb is dealing with. These people that are unstable, they say, well, I'm not happy.

You should be happy being where God has placed you. All right. Your happiness is in the will of God. But those people find their happiness in the external things. That's right. How do, Doc, I think you got some observations from the great theologians and preachers. Yeah, we'll start off with Matthew Henry here. Matthew Henry noted that the man who wanders from his proper place actually forfeits the protections that place was designed to provide.

And what happens is he exposes himself needlessly to dangers that faithful rootedness would have prevailed it. It's interesting Matthew Henry would have observed this himself. Adam Clark observed that the wandering bird is exposed to every danger her nest was built to prevent. Coal, predators, exhaustion, and that the wanderer. man exposes himself in precisely the same way to temptations, instabilities, losses that if they'd just been faithfully rooted in family, community, and calling, and I'll come back to that in just a moment,

would have shielded from. Charles Spurgeon observed that here in verse 8 that the church, like the nest, exists to shelter and sustained, and that the believer wanders from consistent fellowship exposes himself to exactly the vulnerabilities that the proverb describes. No community watching for him. No one to notice his absence. Trouble is already found in unprotected.

And then John Gill noted that the Septuagintification here in verse 8, bondage rather than mere discomfort, breaches, or excuse me, teaches, that displacement from one's proper place produces a loss of genuine freedom. And not merely inconvenience, Rick. The wander, what happens is he actually trades the true security of his ripe place for servitude he did not anticipate when he first grew restless with what he had. Now, from a personal point of view,

I gave my heart to the Lord when I was 15 years old, filled with the Holy Spirit when I was 16 and felt a calling to the ministry shortly after that, specifically to the mission field. And I genuinely felt a calling to the mission field when I was a teenager. There's no doubt about it. And I still remember telling my dad about it and family members about it. And I still remember them all saying, why waste your life doing that?

Why do that? Why spend your life doing something far off land, do all that? And so I compromised a bit with my dad, and I said, well, I'll be a medical missionary. I'll be a doctor and be a missionary too at the same time. And so I went to Bible college. At the same time I was going to Bible College, I was also going to school for pre-med. So I was doing both a Bible college degree and a biology degree in pre-med. And that's how you got the nickname doc.

That's how I got the nickname doc. And so because I was planning on being a medical missionary. But I have to get back to that in that God never actually called me to be a medical missionary. He never did. He did call me to be a missionary. but he never called me to be a medical missionary. That was my own invention. That was my own idea. And I actually got accepted to medical school, Rick. I got accepted to O'RU School of Medicine.

God was a mercy. Do you add to God's calling, God called you as a missionary, did you add the medical component to it to satisfy humans who didn't want you to be a missionary? Yes, I did. I can always say, well, I have a fallback plan. I can be a doctor. Right?

And I actually got accepted to medical school, O.R.U. Medical school, and God in his mercy, shut down O.R.U. School of Medicine shortly after I got accepted. And I ended up... That's what happened to O'RU. All right. Now I know the true story. Right. So, you know, that's the only explanation I can have. So I ended up going into pastoral ministry. But all the time, there was this restlessness in my heart.

All throughout most of my adult life, I wandered. I wandered from, and I was affected for the Lord. I did things for the Lord. I planted churches. I felt like I did good things for God, but I wasn't doing what God had called me to do. And there was this restlessness. And that restlessness was never satisfied, Rick, never, until I got to the lowest point of my life in the early 2000s. And I finally said, Lord, and I was in a mess.

I said, Lord, if you will help me out, I will go to the mission field and be what you called me to be. And within, I'm serious, Rick, within weeks after praying that prayer. Within weeks, God had arranged it so I could end up on the mission field in South Korea within weeks. And that began that, that began that faithful journey to go to the mission field. And for a period of time, he brought me back to work with you and to learn and to fill in all the gaps I needed to be where I am today, which is back on the mission field here in the Philippines. And where I'm just happy as a clam, I really am, there's that restlessness in the calling too, Reg.

Yes. And I'm thinking right now that there might be people watching or listening that maybe God spoke to them decades ago, right? And that God, in his mercy, if you'll just cry out to him, he can restore to you the years that the locusts and the canker worm has to eat, as Joel talks about.

And, you know, we talk about a lot of things in Proverbs, sometimes in the abstract, but this today is very personal to me. And I hope that if you're watching or listening today, it doesn't matter how old you are. It doesn't matter how far you think you are away from what God has called you to be, if you'll just simply turn to the Lord and say yes,

you will be amazed, amazed at how God will move heaven and earth to fulfill his calling on your life. He did in mind. It looked absolutely impossible. I mean, absolutely impossible. And yet, within weeks, God had complete. transformed, what appeared to be a totally hopeless situation into one that totally transformed my life and brought me, I really think in many ways, Rick, restored me not only in my calling, but also restored me in my relationship with the Lord.

Yes. Because that restlessness, the restlessness had more to do with my resting in the Lord than anything else in trusting in him and trusting in his promises despite what everybody else was saying around me and i thank god for it in his mercy rick it's his mercy really yes that transformed that situation so that's the practical application of verse 8 for me i got a very similar story doc i knew from early days i mean i saved in 19 1778, and I knew, I knew immediately that God wanted me in Christian media. I knew that.

And so in, you know, in 1984, I got hired by CBN and Virginia Beach, as a marketing manager for their new CBN cable network, which was the family channel, came the fan. family channel. But then later, I knew that the Lord told me to leave CBN. There's no doubt in my mind that he told me to leave. But I made a major mistake, Doc. My mistake was I moved back to my hometown. And it was the worst decision I ever made in my life. And I think, I might be speaking to somebody right now. God's called you out of where you grew up. Don't go back. Unless you have an emphatic word from the Lord, do not go back to your home down. Just don't do it.

It will arrest the plan of God for your life. Yeah, because they'll tell you what you can't do. They're going to tell you what you can't do. They're going to tell you, I know you, I knew you when you were four years old, okay? Don't go back, okay? That was my mistake. and I lost some years. It's very, very frustrated that I was not in God's place.

And I cried out, Doc, like you. I cried out and vowed, if you open a door, I promised to go through that door no matter the cost. Doc, for me, that door opened in 15 minutes of the prayer. within 15 minutes. And I was on the phone with Trinity Broadcasting Network, and they wanted to hire me. Praise God.

And that's how I ended up moving to Texas, working for Paul Crouch. There's a whole long story in there. You can read about it in Megafar in my book. I've got a chapter. I mentioned what really happened. But the point is, all right, that when you were out of God, God's will, when you're out of his place, when you're not living in the city, the state,

the country, wherever he assigned you to go. If you're not there, you are out of your nest. That's right. Find your nest. You're wandering. You are wandering around and you're not in your nest. So you could say, well, your nest is back in your hometown. No, that's not where God. So, God, he calls you from your hometown. Very few men are called by God to preach in their hometown. Yeah. Even Jesus couldn't go back to his hometown. He couldn't go back to Nazareth.

He could do few miracles there because of their unbelief. It's a biblical principle. If Jesus couldn't make it in his hometown, you're not going to make it there either. Okay. It's just the way it is. But, Doc, there's another principle. here I'd like to talk about. You mentioned this earlier when you talked about Matthew Henry, that Henry said that the man or woman who wanders from his proper place forfeits the

protections that that place was designed to provide. And I like to think about an umbrella. And that when you are in your assigned place, you are in the place God has assigned for you, doing what you're supposed to be doing, and working with the people you're supposed to be working with, there is an umbrella over you. And when you get out of that umbrella, you're now subject to the sun, the wind, the rain, the hail.

All the elements of nature can beat down on you now. You've left the umbrella. See, I can have a big umbrella and be outside in a big storm, but I'm safe. because I'm under the umbrella. It doesn't make the storm go away. It protects me from the storm.

And when you leave the umbrella where God assigned you, you're now vulnerable to the elements. And that umbrella includes being connected to the man or woman that God has connected you for your purpose, your ministry. I'm not talking about marriage. I'm not talking about your purpose, your ministry. that person is not going to be perfect, that person is not going to be flawless,

but that person is anointed and has God's protection and grace and mercy on him or her. Doc's got a saying that I like, sit near the spout where the glory comes out. Yeah. Sit near the spout where the glory comes out. Find out where's the glory of heaven, the glory of God.

Where is it coming out? and get there and sit near that spout. Get as close to the spout as you can get. It's that way in ministry. You find a person that God is using that man or woman. Get near that person. Let that glory come on you. Let that anointing come on you.

There'll be a day that God says, okay, now, you've been a faithful servant and you've served me well here. Now I'm going to call you out. So these are practical lessons in life. And I believe this is speaking to some people right now that you're going, oh, yeah, this is what I need to hear right now. Hopefully you'll void some of the mistakes that Doc and I made along the way. Amen.

I hope so. Even though we didn't know each other, we made some of the same mistakes. Why? Because we're men, we're human. Okay, we just, that's what happens. We just, people just make the same mistakes. That's why we study the Word of God. Apostle Paul said, let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.

That applies to when you get saved. Basically, the way saying is, hey, if you were a bricklayer when you got saved, just continue lame brick. If you were a farmer when you got saved, just continue farming. If you were a nurse, continue being a nurse. just continue let the Lord that doesn't mean the Lord won't change it but let the Lord work in your life okay uh Psalm 68 verse 6 God seteth the solitary in families but the rebellious dwell in a dry land there it is if you're rebellious you leave the umbrella you're going you get out of the shade of the umbrella, you're going out into the dry land.

Yes. So being set in place in the family, in the community, in the church, in your calling is God's gracious action. The alternative to that settled place for the restless person, the rebellious person, is dryness and desolation. They never find happiness. They become like Kane. They're wandering around, a nomad, never ever able to settle down.

So, Doc, I'll let you pick up kind of our final words here before we close this lesson. All right. Well, this application that we're talking about, and we've both given our testimony here, but it extends. Really, to this day and age, to marriage and family with particular force. The reason why I say that is there's a wandering spirit in marriages and relationships today. And I hate to say it, even among Christians. So we're talking about the spouse or the parent who wanders emotionally from the home, sometimes physically. But let's just say emotionally first, for the sake of our discussion here.

They're present physically, but absent in attention. They're absent in investment, absent in commitment. And in many ways, they've left the nest. They've left the nest in every way that matters, even without changing their physical address. And the family left behind experiences exactly the exposure in the problem. The proverb describes, now I'm talking about men and women,

today. Because men are told that they can find something more. Women are told that there's something more than family and home. And it ends up that the family experiences

exactly the exposure and the vulnerability that this problem talks about. And so the remedy is not rigid immobility. Okay, that's not what we're talking about. I've heard the excuse, we've got to stay in a relationship or stay in a place because that's the way it is.

Well, that's not it. What we're talking about is faithfulness. There's a difference between sticking it out and faithfulness. Okay, and I hope people will have the discernment on this. We need to examine And this is every individual. Every individual needs to examine whether that restlessness that's pulling toward that next place, the next relationship, the next community, whatever it is, is something the Holy Spirit's doing.

It's the Spirit's clear calling to a new assignment. Most of the time it's just that we're fed up with a particular situation or we want something different. it's not the Holy Spirit at work, or whether it's that same discontent that has followed us through every previous place that we've left. I know I had to settle this in my own heart. Okay, so this is personal for me.

So this is a personal testimony for me that I had to settle this in my own heart, this restlessness in my own heart. The nest for me, Rick, the nest for me was the calling of God. That was my nest. And I wandered from that nest. I wandered from the nest.

I did things for God. This is what the deception really is, Rick. I did things for God. I started churches. I saw people saved. I launched Christian radio stations. I did things for God. And yet there was a restlessness in me.

Because why? I had left the nest. The nest of his calling. And so I would say to those that are watching today, and I hope it doesn't matter whether you're young or old, but I hope younger people are watching today, especially young people that feel a calling of God on their lives. maybe you're newly married, maybe you felt a calling of God on your life. And I'm telling you, you want to save yourself a lot of heartache, a lot of pain in your life. Learn this lesson now. Learn it now.

I pray that you learn it now. Learn it now. Don't be like me and waste two or three decades waiting to learn it. The nest was built for a reason. the nest was built for a reason and leaving it should never be some sort of casual decision or some sort of compromise or something just to appease others. The only one that you're obligated to please is God himself.

My friend, stay in the nest. Stay in the nest of God. That's where the protection is. That's where the future is. that's where it is. And Rick, if I'm sounding a little bit emotional right now, it's because I am. This is really speaking to me today. And I hope it really, you know, I'm 62 years old, Rick.

And I'm thinking to myself, what if I had obeyed the Lord in my 30s? What difference would have made? I mean, I can't cry over spilt milk. I can't correct the past. I can leave that all to the Lord. And I can only take all of that, all those decades of experiences, learning to bring me to the point where I'm at today. But how much easier it would have been to stay in the nest and to be obedient to the Lord and to trust him? I'm telling you, you can trust him.

You can trust him. You can trust the nest of God. and I encourage you to do so today. Well, Doc, it's amazing how similar our paths have been, and we didn't know each other. As you were describing your earlier life, I was thinking the situation after I left CBN and before I was hired at TBN, that space in there,

where I was out of God's will. I was out of God's will because I was out of God's will because I went back to my hometown, and my hometown friends and family, and everybody said, no, you're not going to be a preacher. See, they could handle me working for a ministry, doc. That was okay. Yeah. That was not a problem.

Yeah, okay, Rick's got to working for Pat Robertson. Well, that's okay. But when I came back and said, God has called me to preach, oh, no, he didn't. We know you. and we're not going to let you do it, okay? That was my problem, and I didn't know how to handle it. And so I knew in my heart God had called me to proclaim the gospel, but I couldn't find any support among my hometown friends and church people and relatives.

It was very, very depressing. And so I was working secular jobs and trying to find out. fulfill the call of God of my life, and God wouldn't let it work. He just kept shutting every door, Doc. He shut door after door after door in my life. And I remember a job interview, and I distinctly remember this. It was a department store called Routtsons. It was owned by the Routson family Allen Routson. And back in those days, Doc, it was, they were like the J.C. pennies of, it was a regional store chain, okay? But it was like a J.C. pennies.

And this is back when stores were downtown before the malls. And so the Routsen store chain was a very prosperous, popular chain in our area. And they had a management job, and I got called in. and the person doing the interview was Mr. Routtson himself. And Doc, he interrupted me in that interview. I was in my mid-30s. He interrupted me. Maybe it was late 38 or so.

He interrupted me and he said, Rick, you're the most qualified person I've interviewed for this job. And I'm thinking, I've got it. He says, but I'm not going to hire you. Praise God. I said, Mr. Routtson, why? He said, because I will be taking you from what you're supposed to do. And working for me is not what you're supposed to do.

And he stood up, shook my hand, and he said, young man, best wishes, find what you're supposed to do. I knew what I was supposed to do. And he did too. And he did too. And he wouldn't harm me. All right? So I'm telling you true stories of what it's like to be out of the nest. Doc, I wanted to get back in that nest so bad.

I wanted in that nest so bad. Once you're out of that nest, you've got to get back in that nest. Because you're just wandering around outside. So I hope this is speaking to somebody right now. Maybe you're in that state. You're out of the nest. Or maybe you're thinking about getting out of the nest. And maybe this is going to help you think it through and not get out of the nest or to help you get back in the nest.

Here's the thing. And Doc knows this. When I interview job candidates, I always ask them, if money and time were no object, what would you do with your life? And usually they light up and start talking about something. is their passion. I don't know, like, that's what you're supposed to be doing. That's the thing you're supposed to be doing, the thing that's making you passionate right now.

Doc, I remember a man who used to be a very generous supporter of our ministry. I haven't talked to him in a number of years. And he ran a corporation. He ran a manufacturing. plant that is family owned. It was a family-owned business. His parents had started it many years earlier, maybe his grandparents. It was an old family business, and he was managing it for the family. And he told me one day, Rick, I really don't want to be managing this company. I'm only doing it from my parents. Now, this man was in his 40s. He said, I'm only doing this because it's a family-owned

business. I said, well, what is it that you want to do? He said, I want to conduct an orchestra. Really? Yes. He wanted to be an orchestra conductor. Instead, he was running a manufacturing plan. Folks, I'm just telling you right now, I've never heard this story before. You haven't?

Okay. No, I haven't heard this one. Okay. No, he, his face lit up. He started talking about being a conductor. And I'm like, well, go do it. He goes, I can't. I'm locked into this factory.

I got to do it for my parents. They're old. You know, the family depends on me. But it wasn't where he, it wasn't his nest. It was his parents' nest. See, God has a nest for you. Don't spend your life doing what somebody else says you should be doing. Do what God has told you to do.

And usually the thing that you love the most is what God has put in your heart. He gives you the desires of your heart. He placed that desire in you. And so pursue it. All right, hey, we've got to wrap this up. Let's take a quick look, Doc, at the Septuagint version of verse 8. King James, as a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place. Now, the Septuagin says, as when a bird falls down from her own nest, so is a man brought into bondage.

wherever he is estranged from his own place. Different connotations here. So the Septuagint says, the bird doesn't just wander away from the nest, you know, starts fluttering, gets lost, can't remember where did that build the nest? No, in the subduigent, the bird is cast down, falls down, falls out of the nest, okay?

it's a violent, involuntary departure from where the bird is supposed to be resting. The bird has been involuntarily dislodged, cast out, plunged from her position instead of just stray. And then it says the consequences is that the man is brought into bondage, enslaved, made a servant, deprived of his freedom. deprived of the security and the comfort of being in the proper place. So the Septuagint's man does not merely wander around into discomfort. He wanders into servitude, into slavery. So this incentivization, Rick, that we're talking about here carries a lot of weight. So we've got this displacement from one's proper place.

in the Septuagint's reading, it's not simply inconvenient or uncomfortable. It produces actual bondage, okay, where you're in change. And so a loss of the very freedom and security that rootedness provides. And so we're talking about that man estranged from his place becomes in,

really in some functional sense, enslaved to whatever new and unstable circumstances is wandering. has delivered him into. And I can speak to personal testimony of that, that once you wander away from the calling of God and you go into something else, into something less,

you get trapped at it. And it's hard to get out of it. You're in bondage to it, and it could be good, but it's not great. It's strange from his own place. And it uses the Greek word behind the word, Zenos. It's that word for stranger or foreigner. It's the same word family that gives the New

Testament, its vocabulary for hospitality towards strangers and Christ's own identification with the stranger in Matthew 2535. So the man who wanders from his place, if you will, becomes in his own former home and his own former community really a stranger to what should have been most familiar to it a sobering picture of what restless wandering ultimately produces even when the wandering eventually it returns and I can say this that

every once while I return to my hometown Rick where I grew up where my friends I graduated high school and went to school and played with these people as kids and played basketball and did everything. And yet I go back to my hometown now and I feel like a stranger. I feel like a stranger. I don't belong there. I don't belong there. I belong where I'm at now.

Where I'm supposed to be right now. Yes. Yes. No, that feeling. You go back to your hometown. It's like, I don't even recognize this place anymore. I don't feel right here.

I don't feel it home. And you know, Rick, this is a principle all the way back to Genesis, where it says that a man would leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. In other words, he has to leave everything behind and start a whole new community. A whole new, he has to fulfill his own calling, not his family's calling, but his own personal calling. And so, you know, this is a principle that's been in place even before the garden. I mean, you really get, I mean, at least to the garden. And so to me, Rick, this passage today, this was a real challenge for me. I have to be honest with you.

I'm going to add one more thing. Hopefully it's going to help somebody in my own life. I think Doc would say, yes, I've felt the same thing. You know when you're in the right place, geographically, you're living in the right place. You know it. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing. And then they'll come maybe after many years, you'll feel this disconnect. You'll feel this release.

Something's not the same. Something's not right. It's like, what's changed? And what this is, is the Lord is releasing you from that location. Yes. It's like you're happy. You've got friends. Everything's going great.

You got, you know, social life. Everything's going fine. And then after so many years, you start to feel this disconnect. Like, it's time to go. It's time to leave. And nothing really has the same. feeling that it had before. I'm personally at that place right now. I've been in Florida for nearly 20 years. Love the state of Florida. But the Lord is telling me the Caribbean. You've got a

calling in the Caribbean. I've got work for you to do in the Caribbean. And he's also for this ministry. Doc, and I'm sharing things here. I feel like the Lord is saying this ministry is going back to its roots in Texas. Like, I'm going to the islands, but the ministry is going back to Texas. This is the feeling that's happening to me right now. And God took you and put you back in the Philippines. Right. And, was there a moment last year where you felt a disconnect from Florida?

Yeah, I remember the moment. I remember we were in a staff meeting, and I still remember the moment. It was, you know, where all of a sudden it just, and it was had to do with feeding the children. Feed the children first. Yes. And all of a sudden is like, all right, this is it. This is, this is it. That's where I'm at, Doc.

It was the very moment, Doc. That very moment. is when I knew last year, God is making changes. There's going to be physical relocations. So when you're in the place he has sent you, you want to stay there. That's the nest he's made for you. But he will ruffle your nest. The principle here is don't get out of the nest until the Lord ruffles your nest.

That's right. Because it means he's got another nest for you. And then you go through that nest and you stay there until he says you're done with this nest. That's right. It's a spiritual principle. God moves people around. It's just that you are not supposed to move yourself around. You're to wait on the Lord and then obey.

Go to where he tells you to go and stay there until he says leave. What about the prophet who was sent told to go to the brook sheriff and the ravens brought the food? He had it's like drones coming in every day, dropping meat and food to him. He had water. But then the ravens stopped coming. The brook dried up. It was time to have on. and Elijah knew his time.

It's time to move. Why? Because God had another place for him to live in Zarapat. Because there was ministry work to do there. You go to where God tells you to go and you stay there and obey him until he says leave. He may never tell you to leave. It might be your permanent place. That's okay.

The issue is obedience and trust. That's the issue. do you trust God and do you obey him? Because there's no trust until you obey. Okay. Obedience is proof of trust. Amen. All right. Anybody can talk to talk. Oh, I trust the Lord. Okay. But do you obey the Lord? That's where the rubber meets the road, right? Okay. That's enough for today. It's been a long lesson. But hopefully this is ministered to some specific people today and you needed to hear this message. message, maybe to help make sense of your past or maybe to help you make plans for the future. Yes. And don't let age be a factor for you. Okay. Don't let age be a factor. Someone say,

well, I'm too old to make a change. Nope. Think about how old Moses was when God called him. Think about how old Abraham was when God said, you're going to have a kid. Colonel Sanders was 65 on Social Security when he started Kentucky Fried Chicken. That's right. Sold it out of the trunk of his car for years. That's right. You can start a business that becomes a national success, and you could do it in your 60s and 70s. Amen.

All right. The Lord is the one who decides when he's done with you. And if you're still breathing and you're still moving around and you can dream and do things for the Lord, then keep going. He's got you in the game. Okay. Amen. That's it for today. Thank you so much.

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