A (0:03)

Hey, good morning, Sower Nation. It's Tuesday, January 27th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt, and this is your wake up call. Now, as you might imagine, I'm trying to record today's entry before the great apocalyptic ice storm that everybody says is coming. And I don't want to thumb my nose at that, but I'm very doubtful and I'm amazed at how just the word of a weather forecaster can move everything out of every grocery store in the rural metroplex area within five minutes and probably in every urban center too. And I think, what if we responded to the word of God like that? Okay, It's. I'm just doubtful that anything is going to happen. I've seen this movie, we've all seen this movie. It just, all the hand wringing and all the talking about the weather and it just winds up being a little bit here, a little bit there. Now, I could be eating my words by the time you see this. And yes, I too have been to the grocery store. We'll see. I guess you get my point. The grass withers, the flower fades. The weather forecast is utterly, you know, it is what it is. But the word of our Lord, the Word of God stands, endures, perseveres forever. No word from God will ever fail. And that's why we're up early on this Taco Tuesday to stake our lives on the Word of God. We're doing this. You ready? Consecration. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

B (3:07)

Amen.

A (3:09)

We're in where the door is open. We're in the tabernacle of transformation, which is the Word of God and the Spirit of God. So today's entry. What do we got? I love this one. Have you ever been Febred? I bet. So our text, all day long. Proverbs, chapter 27. Read the whole thing, please. Our verses of focus, verse six and nine. Hear now the word of the Lord. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies. Kisses. Verse 9. Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart. And the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice. The Word of the Lord. Now consider this. Some days ago, we explored the gift of friendship in a profoundly positive way. Friends are those people who take the time to see into us and help us understand ourselves. They patiently help us sort the complexities of our lives and encourage us to persevere in becoming our true selves. A real friend fragrances your your life there's something really winsome and fresh about a person who knows how to wear perfume or cologne. It becomes a smell by which you know them. It's always a welcome smell and one that lingers long after they have departed. It produces a pleasantness in your life, even joy. That's how Proverbs describes a friend. Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice. Proverbs also shows us the other side of the friendship coin. It's not all roses and Tommy Hilfiger cologne. It brings to mind a dissimilar but unrelated set of smells and fragrances. My two daughters. I remember them growing up. Probably they do this to this day. My two daughters, Mary Catherine and Lily, love to assault bad smells with overdoses of Febreze. Okay, so here's an irony. As I typed in Febreze, the autocorrect spelled it as Faberge in our home or worse, in our minivan. I think about that minivan growing up. If your olfactory senses were overtaken by a concentrated dose of something like ginger verbena or strawberry fig or violet bloom, you can bet you are either sitting near the culprit or the culprit is you. You've been Febrezed, they liked to say. It's not a pleasant experience. Besides the obvious insult of being Febrezed, there are the burning eyes, and the pungent air freshener doesn't soon dissipate. Hours after the assault. The odor morphs into something akin to carpet deodorizer on the second day. Effective, but unpleasant. Might be a good way to characterize the experience. Here's how Proverbs describes such an experience. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. Yes, I'm talking about the trustworthy wounds of a friend. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Another translation has it only your friends will Febreze you. They're trying to tell you something you need to hear. It may hurt your pride or offend your sensitivities or make you mad as a hornet. But you must remember this. They did it because they love you. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. They can be trusted. So how about you? You've been Febrezed lately. Let's pray. Abba Father, thank you for always speaking the truth in love to us. Thank you for friends who will do the same. Help us to be those kinds of friends to others, and let us so become the fragrance of Christ in the world. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Journal prompts for today. All right, you ready for these? Do you have friends who are willing to Febreze you when needed? Have you ever given open permission to friends to speak the truth in love to you? Are you the kind of friend who is willing to be a gracious truth teller when needed? I want you to think of a time when you did. You know, I. Lately, the other day, a friend said to me, J.D. you got a lot of blind spots. Okay, thank you. You want to share with me what they are? And, you know, they didn't chair. And so I came back later and circled back around and said, hey, I really appreciated you saying that to me the other day. That was hard to do, telling me that I had a lot of blind spots and I just want to keep that door open. Would you tell me, like. Because that's the problem with blind spots, right? You can't see them. It's kind of like in driving down the freeway and, you know, there's that space between right here, back behind you, where your rear view mirror won't pick them up and your side mirror won't pick them up, and you're running the risk of running them off the road. That's a blind spot. That's what happens. We've all got them and we don't know them. And, you know, now they make cars with those mirrors that. That have. They've got a little light that'll flash. It'll flash on. And if there's a car that's in your blind spot, it's just flashing orange, and you're like, okay, there's a car back there. I'm not going to change lanes right now. And I'm like, that's what a friend is. A friend is that little light that will flash in your Life to say, J.D. you got a blind spot now, I guess that person wasn't a great friend because they never would tell me what they were. So you know what I've been doing lately? I've been going to great friends. And I'll say, listen, I'll tell them the story of that somebody, that friend that told me I had blind spots. And I'll say, hey, I want to ask you. You ain't got to answer this right now, but I want you to pray for me and pray about it and Think about it. Would you tell me, help me under. Help me see my blind spots. What. What am I missing? What am I not seeing about myself? How am I running people off the road? Don't even have any idea of it. And so that friend, longtime good friend, bandmate, in fact, he. He has. He started sharing with me those. And it just reminded me of our text today which says, the wounds from a friend can be trusted. And that's it, right? A friend is not trying to hurt you. They're trying to be honest. They're trying to speak the truth to you in love. And this is in short supply because we all are. Well, you know what? Frankly, we just don't have those kind of relationships that. That afford that to us. That's what a band is about, is building those kind of relationships. It takes time, it takes trust, but that's what leads to transformation. I think you got me today. Be careful who you Febreze today. Word to the wise and. Yeah, this is good stuff, isn't it? The wounds of a friend can be trusted. You know why they can be trusted? Because they're not trying to hurt you. They're trying to help you. All right, y' all ready to sing? Guys, you're not even gonna believe what's happened today. While I was working on that last bit, my band came in. This is my farmer band here in Gillette, Arkansas. You got Jay, Seth, and Curtis. And they're all farmers. Guess what? They also all are preachers. And we've been having a farmer preacher band for over a year now. And our meeting's about to happen right here in the seed house right there. As I was talking about friends. And so, you know, I've. I've conscripted them, okay? I'm not really usually that type of person, but I've said, guys, we're singing together today. They didn't want to do it, but you know what? They're taking one for the team. They're going all in. Today we're going to sing. Curtis, what are we singing?