With The Perrys - Corona Crazy

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

Since the recent outbreak of Covid 19 in the States and in the World, all of our lives have been turned upside down. Listen in as Jackie and Preston discuss their thoughts on being quarantined, trusting God to provide financially, parenting during a pandemic, and the sovereignty of God. Subscribe to the Perrys' newsletter: https://withtheperrys.myflodesk.com/zhfus4jx1s Join Preston's discipleship community for men: https://www.patreon.com/PrestonPerry/membership To support the work of the Perrys, donate via PayPal: https://paypal.me/withtheperrys Shop BOLD Apparel: boldapparel.shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, quarantine Saints and AIDS. What's good with y'all? I hope you're doing well. Some of you are at home and have been at home for a long time. Washing your hands, watching your kids, vinging on Love is Blind and all those other things. Some of you might be in the medical field. We're praying for you. We appreciate you.

Thank you for staying in the trenches and taking care of folks. All my daddies at home with them kids sitting on the lazy boy going crazy. I'm one of them. If you wanted the delivery people from Target and Instacart, I'm thankful for you. I haven't stepped foot in the grocery store in three weeks all because of you. Y'all been walking up to our door with a little mask on. Somebody had a whole T-shirt wrapped around your face. I said, I ain't mad at you, sister.

Stay safe and get your money. Get your buddy. No, but it's crazy. Like, I feel like, yeah, when all of this kind of started to inch towards us, I didn't know that it would be this way. Me neither. Honestly, because it just, it was a thing that we saw on TV that was happening in China and it was sad, but it felt so distant. I remember looking at the news and seeing it on China. I'm like, man, thinking to myself like, man, that would be crazy if it came to America.

It was inevitable. Yeah. This is before I didn't know if it was a reality that it would come to America. Because the interesting thing is I was studying the history of epidemics and pandemics. So like polio, the bubonic plague, all that type of stuff. And one of the things about them is that all of those plagues always stay local. And I was thinking to myself, well, duh, they stay local with no planes. So like if there were mass amounts of deaths, it was always in the surrounding local countries, not across the ocean.

Yeah. And so I think this is a, this is. is a sad, but a real consequence of our technology. That's crazy. It's interesting. I didn't think about it that way. But, yeah, so I guess I don't know what you think about all this. Because yesterday I left the house for the first time in, what, eight days?

Because I just needed to get out because I'm going to stir crazy. And so I went to, I had to ship some boxes. And when I came back, Preston was standing by the door with a bottle of sanitizer. He didn't say hi. He didn't say welcome in. just was ready for me to come home. So you've kind of been like intense. Like you went to the store and bought 15,000 pounds of meat.

I did. I have more tissue in my pantry that I have ever had in my entire life. We're going to be clean. Our butts will be nice. We know crusty boots. Even though you bought that toilet tissue that scrapes up bottoms. And I know it's because you're a man. You don't even realize.

No, babe. That is, that don't work. That's all they had left. It was construction paper toilet tissue. That's all. No, I got some Charmin down there. No, you got some Scott. Oh, that's good. No, sir. No, sir.

That don't got tetties and bears and angels on it. You acting totally different. Because you don't have to wipe yourself every time you sit down. You get to just shake and move on. Yeah, y'all, like every trip, you got to. Yes, it is important. We need pillows on our situations. Anyway, how do you feel about all this?

It's crazy, man. Yeah, I went to the store. I got a deep freezer, packed up meat. We got so much chicken and beef and stuff like that. Yeah, I just, it's almost unreal. It kind of seems like a movie almost. It does. It seems, I went to the store.

And here in Georgia, I don't know how it is around the world. But people were just going crazy. I mean, the line in the grocery store was out the door in the parking lot. People fighting over tissue. And I'm like, Jesus, what is how? happening. I'm like, why y'all fighting over tissue? Oh, with tissue. You know? Not Lysol.

Lysol, too. Not echinacea, not vitamin C. Not ginger. See, y'all can tell Jackie wasn't out of new streets. I'm saying, I've seen articles about people fighting. These things are essentials, quote unquote, right? Yeah. But nobody's fighting

over things that help build or boost our immune systems. The produce is still stopped. So ain't nobody buying vegetables? And, there's ain't nobody buying vegetables. We just buying luncheables. We just buying hot pockets. We're not buying the things that help our red blood cells and our white blood cells work.

Yeah, I saw one article saying that the shells that got cleaned out the first was Doritos, cookies, hot pockets. My God. They're like, you know, we're going to snap while we in. Hypertension is skyrocketing as we speak. And nobody got the broccoli. That's going to be the next thing. Y'all didn't think the broccoli was going to help y'all immune sisters?

Ain't no radishes. I ain't nobody play anyway. I think one of the things about stuff like this is I always think to myself, what is what is God doing? Right? Because we serve a God who is sovereign, as in he controls or is in control of everything. There's nothing that happens in the world that God did not foresee or even allow. If he was not in control in some capacity, he would not be God.

He would be limited in some way. But he would be finite, but he's not. And so my question always goes back to God. Why is this happening in the world that you own? What is it that you're doing? What is it that you want the church to become from this? What is it that you want the world to see about you through this? So I've been asking those questions myself.

Yeah, yeah. I put that on Twitter the other day. And a couple people were kind of upset about it. And I think what you just said is good because it's like, I think because God is in control, some people can say, why would God be in control of such a horrible situation? But the fact that he is in control lets us know that we have security because God is a good God. And at the end of the day, he will work all things for the good of those who love him. And it's like if he wasn't in control, we should be afraid.

I would be scared. We should be terrified. Because that would mean that everything that happens in the world is random and unintentional. Absolutely. And that it doesn't have the potential to be useful. When you look throughout scripture, period, I think you see that God is a God of purpose and a God that uses and redeems things. And so you see from the beginning, Adam and Eve sin against God.

And he promises that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. and then you go through the kings and the prophets and the minor prophets and the major prophets and you see him weaving through these stories and these famines and these exiles and deaths and bad kings and good kings and terrible people and good people. All of this stuff happening, he uses it to bring into history Jesus and redeems us. But he doesn't even stop there. We see all the way through revelation that God is going to consummate and bring us all back to himself. You better teach us.

And so for that reason, I know that God's hand might be heavy sometimes, but he has always used really devastating, nasty, ugly things for really good purposes. Absolutely. And if you think about what you just said and you just relate that to our time, just think about the people who are dependent on the gospel and dependent on Jesus and thinking about God in ways that they never had to think about God before. Yeah. Right. God is doing, one, he's doing, we don't know exactly what he's doing, but he's doing a million things right now. Not to, that we don't know. Yeah.

Not to be negative. But I've thought about that, though. Like, if I was an atheist, would I think about God? Like, you know about atheism more than I do. Like, would they be considering him? Well, I think, what I think is I think all man, because the Bible tells us, suppress the truth. Right. Right.

It is a suppression of the truth about God. So a lot of people are not aware that they're suppressing the truth. But that's exactly what they're doing. And it's hard for me to believe that if you are a person that's worried that your mother is going to catch coronavirus or you're going to catch coronavirus, that you don't in some way or at some time don't consider the God that you rejected. It's like, man, like, man, what if? And I think that God is, I think that you talked about it the other day, is humbling the world and letting us know that, you know,

we have to, if we haven't been depended on him, even if we haven't believed in him, we at least have to consider God at this time. I think even if they don't call their, I guess, questioning God or their conclusions, God, I was thinking to myself, billionaires, millionaires, the travel industry, because of the economy suffering in the way that it is, you have all of these people who've been pretty independent or so they think for the most part. And I think what's happening is the things that all of us and even these top level people,

quote unquote, found security in, they're realizing how fragile and how shifting it is. And I would think that that's terrifying to the point that. that naturally, I think as a human and as a finite being, you're now starting to look for something that's more secure than everything that you thought was secure, if that makes sense. And so I would be wondering, where am I supposed to go, who am I supposed to turn to, that I can actually find some type of solid rock to stand on? And only God could provide that. And so I'm hoping that there are Christians in these people's worlds that will be able to point them to the truth. But personally, like, I guess how has been.

quarantined and being stuck in a house. What is that done for you? And even the implications of what that's done for your business and stuff. Yeah, I mean, as a person that's self-employed and who depends on traveling, who depends on, you know, yeah, ministry to provide for my family, it's done a lot. Yeah, I'll be lying if I say that I haven't worried or haven't had some type of, you know, anxiety or fear because events have gotten canceled. All of the things that I had planned for the next couple of months is literally put on the back burner.

You know, events out of the country have been canceled. So it's like, God, like, I need you to provide in a completely different way. It's like, even though I knew that God was my provision before all of this happened, it's like, now I have to trust in God to provide when I don't really know how he's going to provide. And that's just, yeah, I think, I think, yeah, I'm still dependent on God, but I'm more dependent on God because I'm depending on God when I, yeah, it's like a blind dependence. So it's a lot. Also, too, just as a father, when all of this stuff is happening and people are talking about, you know, potential rioting and people coming into your home to steal tissue, I'm like, yeah, yeah, as a protector, it's like, man, you worry about your family. So not only am I worried about the financial aspect, I'm also worried about, you know, making sure my family stays safe from coronavirus and people trying to steal out toilet tissue in the middle of the night. You know what I mean? So it's just, it's a lot. It's a lot. It's been a lot. But God is still in control. Yeah, the financial part is, is interesting. And it's a big deal. And a lot of people have lost their jobs, have been laid off. A lot of people don't have sick leave, which is super problematic. And so I think all of us in some capacity, maybe not all of us, like if you work for Amazon, but most of us are affected by this when it comes to providing for our families and ourselves. And I think it's scary. And I think what it feels like is like God is saying, hey, I've always been your provider.

Like all good things come through the Father of Lights. I have always provided for the birds of. the air. I have always been your father that knows what you need, but sometimes when you have some type of active source of incomes or whether that's a job or events or books or music or touring, whatever that is, it feels like your resource is the source. And you theoretically, theoretically, though, it's not. Oh, good thing. I know this came through the Lord, but when you lose the thing, then it feels like, oh, because I lost the thing, I'm not going to have the money that I need. And that's just like the money never came through these people. It came from the hand of God. They were just a, what's the word, a conduit of his provision for you. And so I think now I feel

like I really have to believe what I've been reading and teaching for so long. And I think about God as a father in that aspect, you know, because I think that he's using this situation to, yeah, to do different things in different people lives, but I think for the believer, like you said, I think that we, we know, we, we know, in theory that, you know, God is providing all of these opportunities, these traveling events, this, this money or whatever. But we, we become so used to doing things in just the everyday mundane, that we don't meditate on God the way we should. And I think that God, being a father, he's like, man, I'm going to have to let my children remember. where their source comes from

and who that source is. And I think we've all had to just pause at this time. I'm like, okay, God. For real. Because the crazy thing is, there's so many things that God provides for us that we don't even ask him for or consider him for. For example, we sleep in our heartbeats.

We sleep in our brain works. That's a really big deal. We wake up because what? Because we chose to wake up or because God allowed us to. It's like he is always providing for us. 24-7. So why would he change now? Like he has always been a father. That is intrinsic to who he is. He cannot stop being father because he cannot stop being God. And so I think that's something that I've had to believe and trust that God sees me, sees us, and he's going to take care of us.

Does that mean that I'll have everything that I've had in the last six months? No. Do I have the freedom to just spend in frivolous ways like I have in the past? Absolutely not. Now I'm down to the necessities. What do we need? That's what we need to get. I think another way God has personally been dealing with me is with my parenting just because Eden, she's been out of school, what, at this point? Almost two weeks? Almost. And we have a nanny. My best friend lives with me, and so she nannies for us. And so I do have some type of, I do have the ability. to be able to work and be away, you know, and go to the office or whatever.

But I'm still here. I'm still at home. And I'm just not used to being around my children this much. Yeah, we would have been on a couple of flights by now. Yeah, I'm just not used to seeing a couple of airports. I'm not used to it. We're not used to the. Can I get a snack?

Can I get a snack? Can you play with me? Just all day. All day. All day. Like every home school mom. and dad in the world. I pray that the Lord of hosts gives you so many crown or jewels in your crown on the day that you see his son because you deserve it. You deserve all. Y'all need one of them

long white robes. Oh my goodness. That's made out of a cloud. You need to sit on the side of Moses. That's what you deserve. You need to sit right next to Moses who gave the law to Israel. You need to it right next to Jeremiah who prophetically preached to God's people because you have done a work in the world and we didn't appreciate you. But I say all that's saying. We're making it sound like our daughter eating is such a handful. No, but she is. Like child rearing a five-year-old and an almost two-year-old is just next level. But I say all that to say, I feel like God has shown me how selfish I am as a parent because a lot of the things that Eden does or eating needs are not negative things. She wants a snack because she's hungry. She has a question because she has a question.

She wants to go outside because she's bored. But all of these things somehow irritate me and make me angry only because they impede on me wanting to be comfortable. And it's just like you're mad at her for being the child that God made her to be. You are just as needy as she is and God is never irritated with you. And so it's like I've had to really beg God to help me be a good mother. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Eden wrecked me the other day because I think this whole, you know, us quarantining and being in the house has forced us to just all interact with our children in a way that we haven't had to in a long time. If your child's going to daycare of your child is going to school every single day. And me and Eden, we, um, we,

We pray every night. And in our prayer time, we talk. But yeah, just because she has been in my space for so long, you know, 24 hours a day, we've just been talking more. And the other day she said, Daddy, well, she actually told Jackie, you know, that she doesn't feel like Daddy is patient with her. So the other night when we prayed, she opened up and she said, you know, Daddy, sometimes, you know, I want you to be more patient with me. And it just wrecked me because I was thinking to myself, I was like, how many times have I thank God for being patient with me? How many times have I thank God for just having long suffering and not, yeah, just brought you to repentance? Letting out his wrath to me.

And I was just like, you know what, I know this time is stressful. And I think as parents, it's very important for us to not allow our frustrations, our anxieties, our fears to be lashed. on our children because God doesn't treat us that way. Yeah. So God is patient. You know what I'm saying? God doesn't unleash his anger on his children, but he's patient and he's and he has long suffering.

And I think that's something that we can learn. Like allow this time with your children to be sweet. Allow you allow this time, allow this time to, you know, help you learn your children better and serve them better and become closer with them because I feel like God wants us as parents to, you know, just be closer to our children and have patience with them. So when we were having a virtual church on Sunday, we attended Brian Carter's Church in Dallas Concord Church. And he was teaching about Paul, is that Philippians where Paul says I've learned to be abased and to be abound or I learned to, yeah, that. And one thing that he was saying is that,

like about Paul's perspective, you know, it's like his perspective while he was abounding, his perspective while he was abased, really did determine. how he was able to, I guess, stay faithful in both seasons. And I think for me, I realize that my perspective has been off. Like, I've been meditating more on the negatives related to being quarantine than the positives that God is trying to do because God really is good. And I know he wants to do something within us and within our families that he probably, I mean, he could do it by other means, but this is probably a really good means to do it. And so I felt God was like, you need to change your perspective and see, like, man, what fruitfulness can come from you being with your daughter all the time?

You know, like, what could she learn or observe or hear or see? She's able to cook with you in a way that is different. She's able to interact with you in a way that's different. So to just see the good things that can come out of this, I think, helps us to have more joy. Yeah, and just to piggyback on that, I think that God is speaking to all of us individually. in different ways. I think for the person, you know, who has a hard time trusting God, I think God wants you to see that, no, at this time, I want you to trust me more.

I want you to learn how to trust me for the person who is a busy body. God is saying, this is rest that you wouldn't have taken on your own. Ooh, you're coming for me. You know what I'm saying? Because I don't like me and still, job. Right. God is saying for the person who doesn't like community. You quarantining. Now you see.

Now you see. I miss change. How important community is. You know what I'm saying? For the person who is. is lazy or has a hard time being productive. You have more than enough time to be productive right now. I think for the nation, God is teaching all of us.

No, like, we're not always on the other end of these disasters or these pandemics, but God is showing us, no, we have to depend on him like the rest of the world does, that we're not untouchable as a nation. God is teaching us all great things individually. And if we allow ourselves to just focus on the negative, we won't see what God is trying to teach us. And also, too, I don't want to, you know, just talk about finances and stuff like that and undermine so many people who have lost lives, who have, you know, have family members that's in a hospital, sick, kids, grandparents, wives, husbands. Because when we look at it,

you know, I think, I think God is showing us that no one is exempt from suffering. Yeah, that's true. When seeing an incident into this world, yeah, they let us know that everybody in this world will have to suffer at some point, you know, in their life or whatever, because that's the result that we have living in this broken world and a sinful world. But in First Peter four, Peter talks about suffering in such a beautiful way. And he's writing to God's church and he's basically letting them know, like, for the Christian who suffers, I want you to know that. You're not supposed to suffer in the same way that the world suffers. Even though the world might be going through the same exact thing that you're going through, God is teaching his church something completely different.

He lets us know as Christians that we are not supposed to suffer as a meddler or an evil doer or one who glorifies an evil. But in verse 16 in 1 Peter 4, it says, yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let them not be a shame, but let them glorify God in their name. And I think the reason why he said that is because after the world suffers, if they don't turn to Jesus, there is more suffering, you know, at the end of their life. But after we suffer in this world, we have a life feel, you know, we have a life of eternity with Jesus. And I think that's the beautiful thing. But he says something very, very deep in verse 17. He says, for, for, for, for, for, you.

it's time for judgment to begin at the household of God. And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome of those who do not bathe the gospel of God? And I think what Peter is trying to explain here, I think Peter is saying that judgment, one, will start with the church, that God will use suffering to judge the whole world, but it will start with God's church. But God will use suffering to judge the church differently than how he used suffering to judge the world. And this is I mean. If you look at a filtering system, right, when we take water out of this natural element and we put it in this filtering system and the job of this filtering system is to sip out all the things in water that it's not good, like the dirty minerals and the rocks and the things

that it's not good for human consumption. So when we go to the store, we can pick up a bottle and we can look at it and we can judge it good. And that's what God is doing with suffering when he uses suffering to judge his church. He wants to use this time so that the suffering that we're going through can sip out all the selfishness that we have as parents. It can sip out all the sin, the jealousy, the pride, the things that make us not like him so that when he comes back for his people, he can look at us and judge us righteous. So I want us as Christians to be encouraged by that, that God is using.

suffering not to condemn us, but to judge us. That is teaching us how to be more like Jesus and to be conformed in the image of the sun. And, you know, so just be encouraged that in this time of suffering that we're not supposed to suffer like the world suffered, like with no hope, even if we have family members dying, even if we have people who are, you know, in the hospital, God doesn't want us to suffer like the world because we have a hope in this name of Jesus. You crazy.

You came in here, huh? You said, I'm going to give a word. I'm just saying. I just want the saints to be encouraged. I'm going to give a word on tonight. I want the saints to be encouraged. Okay. Yeah, that is encouraging.

I feel like this is a really unique situation just because I haven't ever been a part of something that feels so communal. And what I mean by that is that this has hit every aspect of society. And so when you go on Twitter, to some degree, all of us are relating to each other in a way that we've never related to each other, which tells you how interconnected all the humanity is. And I think there's some beauty in that because I think when all of this is said and done, when the quarantine is over, when things are kind of normal, I think we'll be so much more excited to go back to church and to fellowship. I might not even want to skip, you know, the visitor time. I might actually want to just stay there. You might become an extrovert for like two Sundays.

That ain't going to happen. But I'll be a little more willing to sit and talk with people. I'm saying for like two Sundays, then you'll go back to your old ways. Yeah, I'll be like, oh, I missed you. And I don't miss you no more because I see you. I'll be more, I think having dinner with people or even having people in your homes, I think hospitality will feel more like a gift than a burden. And so I think there's a lot of good fruit that will come from this.

And so, yeah, I think. we just got to stay focused, keep praying. Because God is in control, God can change things. We need to pray for our government. We need to pray for our senators. We need to pray for our president. But we need to ultimately pray to God that he gives them the wisdom to know how to govern accordingly and wisely and in a way that loves and seeks to dignify people.

And while we do that, we just, I trust God. Yeah. Before we end, the other day we was on the couch and you were talking and you were studying James and you were saying some good stuff in that. I think that you should share that because it was really, really good. Yeah, well, James, he comes for everybody's head, probably because he was Jesus and Jude's brother. But in James 4, 13 through 16, James talks about how people make all of these.

Sorry, I don't have coronavirus. People make all of these plans saying today and tomorrow, I'm going to this merchant and I'm going to make this profit. And James calls it boasting. He says it's evil because they have not considered the fact that it's the Lord's will that depends or what you do and how you succeed at what you do is dependent upon the Lord that wills it. And I think that's how I feel about this whole situation is that we have gotten so used to our routine that we have figured that our calendars are actually controlling our days instead of the Lord who controls our days.

And so it feels like God is saying, no, I have always been king. I have always been in control. All of the plans that you probably made for 2020 have been redirected and thrown out of whack. And that's a great thing. And that's a good thing because you realize that you are finite and I am infinite. And I think that that's really good news to know that a really, really, really good God has always been in control of everything. That's powerful. I don't know.

That's where I'm at right now. Where it's like, I can't keep talking about today and tomorrow without saying, I'll do this if the Lord wills. Yeah. And it's crazy that James went as far to say, it is boastful to say, oh, next week I'm going to do this. Yeah. As if it's as if we control it. And it doesn't feel boastful because none of us are saying it to be arrogant. We're not willfully saying, girl, I'm going to make these, I'm going to go tomorrow and I'm going to make these noodles or next week.

I'm going to go to Italy or this, that day I'm going to do. Like, it's, it's, it's. Natural. But we often, we often forget that God is the one in control. But the fact that it's natural means that it needs to be redirected towards something supernatural, which is to, it is not normal for us to function as dependent beings, though we are intrinsically dependent because we're created. And so I think what God is bringing us back to is the fact that because you are a created thing, you are automatically dependent on me. Amen. And that's a beautiful thing to know that you are just as needy now. as you have always been, you just feel it more. That's some good stuff. But that's that. All right, y'all.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you for tuning in. Make sure y'all wash your hands. Yeah, wash your hands. Don't be coughing on people. Now, keep washing your hands, but don't forget to take showers. Because here's a thing. I heard people aren't amazing.

I mean, it's like, people like, we don't go outside so we ain't got to take showers. I ain't been out. That's a thing. You know. You went to bed. And you just, you lived. Yeah. You walked around the house.

Don't forget to wash your boots. Your little armpits was moving around. Right. If your armpit a little moist, it probably stink a little bit. Ew. You don't use the bathroom. Yeah, why? Just do that.

I know we ain't leaving the crib, but wash y'all butts. All right, Joe. All right, peace.