Episode 56: Small but Mighty: What Bees Teach Believers

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mack. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: My dad, I am excited about this podcast. I do. We’ve had many front porch discussions about your bees as we watched them I buzzing

John McLarty: love my bees.

Kimberly Faith: Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your bees and maybe some start off with some little known facts about bees if you want to, or how do you want to start this?

John McLarty: Well, I could start by just saying, have some notes here. I gave a devotion in church about bees with the urging of Brother Mitch month after month. I finally put together a devotion. But I’ll just, as we get into this, I can just say, I titled this idea, Bees Give Us Insight Into the Mind and Character of God.

Kimberly Faith: I like that.

John McLarty: And I thought I’d be really clever and break it into two parts and tell the congregation what the two parts were going to be and then give them and then give a summary. But just the two parts that we can talk about is how bees give insight into the mind of God. One is their, little pun here, behaviors. Rachel got a big kick out of that Johnny Tittle type So their behaviors. And so we can talk about that first.

And then I got into the second part, and that’s God’s desire to bless us. Bees and honey are an example of that. But just their behaviors. Well, got into, I’ll kind of back up a little bit. I got into beekeeping.

I didn’t just think of the idea, a member of our church who’s been a missionary for a long time, Robert Creech, who’s a great, great guy, great family, the Creech family. But they were back to the Landers back in the day when Len and I were back to the Landers. In fact, they lived in a teepee.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, wow.

John McLarty: But they were in Madison County and got really integrated into the, you might say, the Madison County culture. And he logged and they grew garden and just what we at the time called the old timers, Lynn and I, they really loved these hippies moving out to the woods because a lot of their kids, the old timers’ kids, left. So here we were wanting to know about gardening

Kimberly Faith: Kind of what the homesteaders- Homesteaders are doing today. Yeah. This new homesteaders group that’s been Exactly.

John McLarty: So somewhere along the line, got acquainted with an old time beekeeper that would actually go out in the woods and find trees, honey bee trees, and sometimes rob a swarm or capture that and put them into a hive. Interesting. So Robert, he’s still very involved in missionary work, but he’s kind of moved back to The States. I think it was thirty years in Panama. But some either as he was moving back or once he moved back, he got into beehives.

And so he traps swarms. He puts up what’s called a swarm box in the spring as bees are splitting their hives. And he caught a swarm, and he had as many bees as he wanted out at his place. I think at the time he had seven or eight hives. So we were at church and he says, hey, John, do you want a swarm of bees?

I was like, just my typical, well, why not? So he said, well, you need to get a box. So I went to amazon.com, got me a two day delivery of a beehive. I said, I’m ready for them, Robert. So he brought a swarm over, and I knew nothing about bees when he brought them over.

Kimberly Faith: Do you remember when we were hippies? I don’t know if it was when you were in the family or not. It may have been before you, but there was a couple out in Virginia. I think they’re in Virginia. I think Rainbow and Change were their names.

John McLarty: I remember Rainbow and I remember the names.

Kimberly Faith: And they had bees. I remember watching him harvest the honey.

John McLarty: Interesting.

Kimberly Faith: And so I’d actually forgotten about that just now till you mentioned this is your first encounter because the honey was, of course, delicious and we would chew on the honeycomb. Anyway, that’s just a little side thing.

John McLarty: I just learned from that. I mean, that was two not this last spring, but the spring before. So I just got a hive and started Well, were early. You were in on that early. I remember one time I said, Kim, come look at this.

And it was evening. And we went out and the hive opening is just this slot at And the it was dusk and there was all these bees just guarding the front.

Kimberly Faith: They were just hanging As a

John McLarty: kid, they’re guarding their queen from invasion. We just had this fascination. Who taught them to do that?

Kimberly Faith: Right. So who are the enemies of bees?

John McLarty: You could have wasps Okay. Or, you know, a mouse try to come in. So we were just, you know, looking at this, taught the bees? And how did they decide who’s going to be the guard or the guards? Who’s on guard duty?

Do they take shifts? How do they do that?

Kimberly Faith: Right, how do they know?

John McLarty: And so just the more I learned about them, just their behaviors. So how did they show the mind of God? It shows intelligent design because the worker bees, they only live in the height of their honey harvest, their honey baking. They only live forty days. Wow.

The entire life cycle of a bee. They can live longer in the winter. They work themselves to death? They literally work themselves to death. That’s crazy.

So that shows, it’s like who taught to be. So a verse I use, I’ll just go to it. So in Proverbs six:six, it says, the Bible says, Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and consider her ways and be wise, which having no God, overseer or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest. And we’ve all done that, right? We’ve looked at ants and they’re just so busy.

Kimberly Faith: Right, right.

John McLarty: And they’re doing stuff. And they’re storing up food. And so the Bible doesn’t specifically mention bees, like observe them.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: But all of this innate knowledge that creatures have.

Kimberly Faith: Do they all have different jobs?

John McLarty: They all have different jobs. It’s just

Kimberly Faith: How early do they start working? They only live forty days. Because I’ve

John McLarty: kind of studied this. So a bee, as soon as they’re hatched, day one or two, they have a job immediately. They clean the cell that they were born in. Wow. Can you imagine a little baby?

No. A human baby and job number one is to clean up the cell. I felt like we wiped

Kimberly Faith: their hiney for three So

John McLarty: they clean up their cell and then they become nurse bees. They nurse the young larvae, and then they start producing wax, honeycomb.

Kimberly Faith: And

John McLarty: then after maybe seven or eight days, they fly. Or they start flying and gathering pollen and nectar and water.

Kimberly Faith: Are the majority of the bees

John McLarty: is something.

Kimberly Faith: Are the majority of the bees males or females?

John McLarty: Well, now you will really love this part. The worker bees, hive is 90% female. Oh, wow. So the worker bees, the female bees do most of work.

Kimberly Faith: I won’t even comment on that.

John McLarty: There could be some interesting implications from that. But then how you talk about busy as a bee and the worker bees. Those are all the females. Just busy as a bee. So their cooperation with each other, their unity, this is how it shows, their behaviors show the design of God.

Their orderliness, they’re all about business, getting job done.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, listen.

John McLarty: And then they have this division of labor. Yeah. And the fascination though is who taught them that?

Kimberly Faith: Right, right.

John McLarty: You know

Kimberly Faith: I think about training a horse, to make a horse useful at least for the use of man, I mean, it takes years sometimes. It takes years to train a human to be useful, go beyond being selfish and being useful because we’re born just selfish.

John McLarty: So here’s some interesting facts about them. You have This is fascinating. The queen comes from the same cell as any other bee, same Wow. And once they decide they need another queen, the only difference is they feed the queen royal jelly. So just what would regularly hatch out as a worker bee becomes the queen because of the nutrition.

So think about that.

Kimberly Faith: That’s pretty profound because you think about On these podcasts, we talk about God using ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: And how any one of us can do that because we’re all created in the image of God. And when we soak ourselves in God’s Word and the obedience and we become part of His plan instead of following our own plan, how we can be I hate to say a VIP, I don’t mean it that way, but we can have this very important job that the queen has, bringing souls eternity into into eternity with Christ.

John McLarty: Then the queen so the whole hive is about protecting the queen. Interesting. So the guards are mainly protecting the queen. And then in winter, the whole hive to stay warm, they all cluster around the queen to keep her warm because that’s their life is the So it’s all about, you know, kind of preserving their hive, but they do that by preserving the queen.

Kimberly Faith: Such a great lesson on loyalty too.

John McLarty: Loyalty, yeah.

Kimberly Faith: You know, you think about like our I mean, I kinda look at these hives as like individual churches even, you know, how we have such a loss. We need to build loyalty within our churches, not exclusiveness, but loyalty. Loyalty is the mission. And the mission is to protect the gospel, protect, that’s what the church is the house of witness.

John McLarty: Yeah, that has such great application because they’re not arguing, Oh, I didn’t get to fly today, or I’m sick of cleaning the cells They and I wanna do just do their thing. They don’t fight among themselves.

Kimberly Faith: Right, right.

John McLarty: About the level of job duty.

Kimberly Faith: And beyond that, they have a common mission. Common mission. One of the things you were telling me earlier was the dance that they do when they see Honey. What is it called? The waggle dance or something?

John McLarty: Yeah, do a waggle dance. So yeah, we’ll kind of just jump down. They do this dance when they have gone out and found a particular field of flowers or a water source. The bees come back and they do this particular dance. And the dance, the direction of the dance, the motions of the dance, whether it’s a circle or a figure eight, is giving the direction of this food source.

And even the intensity of the dance, Say it’s a really good flower source. They do their dance with great vigor, so to speak. And it’s communicating to other bees, there’s something out there, it’s really exciting, this nectar, this water source. Right. And the direction.

Which direction is and how far.

Kimberly Faith: You were telling me about that.

John McLarty: It’s amazing.

Kimberly Faith: And I was thinking, because I like navigation. Distance and bearings. Was kind of just looking into that and they use the earth’s magnetic field and the distance and direction based on the sun’s position.

John McLarty: The sun, the magnetic field.

Kimberly Faith: I mean, so crazy. Mean, think about how long some people take to learn just regular navigation to fly, but they’re born with this knowledge.

John McLarty: They’re born with this.

Kimberly Faith: With this sense of navigation, distance, direction, the sun’s

John McLarty: No, I don’t see how anybody can think about that and comprehend that and not believe in an intelligent design, a creator that put that in them. I mean, it’s beyond figuring out. Nobody’s

Kimberly Faith: They didn’t go to grammar school to learn that. Yeah. It’s crazy. So some of

John McLarty: their characteristics, I just did a little study on it, is they have 170 this is, again, their design, 170 odor receptors. They have a 50 times more powerful scent of smell than a dog.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. Do you think they know who you are?

John McLarty: Studies have said that they recognize your face.

Kimberly Faith: That’s so weird. They have What? Five eyes or something?

John McLarty: They have yeah. I think they have five eyes. Yeah. So weird. They have 300 taste receptors.

Wow. So they can their discernment of pollen and its value is very incredible.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, wow. So like a daisy might have a different value than a honeysuckle. Right. Right. Interesting.

John McLarty: Then they can see ultraviolet light patterns. So they can see the light spectrum

Kimberly Faith: Beyond what we can.

John McLarty: Beyond what we can.

Kimberly Faith: That’s so

John McLarty: And then different flowers give off different, like, ultraviolet light. Interesting. And the bees are attracted to it. So they’re equipped Wow. With the smell and the sense of, you know, the odor and smell and their sight to do their job.

Kimberly Faith: You know, I think about just when you’re saying that, I was thinking about how someday we’re gonna have a new body, right, when we’re gonna have a transformed body. And I always wonder, are we gonna have the kind of sight that is like something like that, where we’ll be able to see across the spectrum and be able to really see the earth as it was created to be seen, like kinda like what the bees do.

John McLarty: Yeah. And that could be because you’ve seen pictures of the ultraviolet, just either infrared or ultraviolet, and it’s like beautiful. Yeah. So there could be actually all this beauty even in this earth and in this body that we just don’t see it. We’re just it’s reflecting, you know, we’re not picking it all up.

You know, our pastor Brian, he studied eyesight. So he can delve into that quite deeply. But yeah, just the different spectrums. I kind of picture also heaven just being this radiant beauty, these colors we’ve never even seen.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Of wonder if God didn’t limit our spectrum so that we would stay busy.

John McLarty: Yeah, we could just, yep, just think about it. I’ve gone out on the porch and I have things to do, but the sunset’s Right, so

Kimberly Faith: or a rainbow.

John McLarty: I can’t leave it. Right. It’s just like, yeah, it can be buried. Oh, I can’t leave this. It’s too magnificent.

So bees are just their behavior, it just shows intelligent design. They’re equipped to do this amazing job. Not only, like, their again, like we said, their sight and their smell, but then their behavior, their organization.

Kimberly Faith: Mhmm.

John McLarty: Like you said, the the division of duty. They just know what to do, and they do it. And it’s, like, amazing.

Kimberly Faith: What’s interesting to me as well is that I’ve read this, and you can tell me if I’m wrong, but I’ve read that honey doesn’t spoil, and they’ve discovered ancient This

John McLarty: is amazing. Honey, at least 3,000 years old.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. That’s crazy.

John McLarty: And I think you know, so that was in the tombs, the pharaoh tombs. Egyptian. But I think they found some even older honey, maybe someplace in Turkey that might be like 5,000 years old. And it’s still good.

Kimberly Faith: Why do you think that? I mean, I don’t even I mean, you think about all the preservatives we use to put food, MREs, just, I mean, And yet this tiny creature is enabled by God to create this food, this delightful food.

John McLarty: Yeah, and that kind of segues into this next segment. And that’s this honey produced by bees is also a picture of God’s desire to bless us. And I kind of just use, we won’t go there, but the Beatitudes is all about blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those that mourn, blessed are the meek. So this idea that God wants to bless us.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And then you think about honey. Why is honey so good? Yeah. I mean, it could be that it’s not good, that just bees produce it and they live off of it. Yeah.

And maybe we get a little nutrition and it lasts a long time.

Kimberly Faith: But it’s so good.

John McLarty: It could taste like blackstrap molasses. No. It’s You know what I’m saying? But it still function as beef food. Yeah.

But why is it so delicious? So I kind of went to this God’s desire to bless us, and I thought of Exodus three eight. So that’s when the voice out of the burning bush, so the voice of God spoke to Moses and said, I’m going to deliver my people, the Israelites, to a land flowing with milk and honey. So not just not just, you know

Kimberly Faith: Safety from the enemies.

John McLarty: Yeah. Safety from the enemies or not just food. I mean, just think of to me, the wonder of the different tastes of food Right. I think that’s even a picture of God’s desire to bless us. Yeah.

What food was just this bland? Have you ever had a protein bar?

Kimberly Faith: Oh, some of them are like

John McLarty: Carob Rocks. Over chalk.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Cardboard.

John McLarty: And but it has all these nutrients. Yeah. Well, food could be similar to that. Just bland, dull, but food is so amaze I can only think that it’s God’s blessing that we have the taste buds to taste it, everything from peaches to then think about milk and honey. Yeah.

It’s so wonderful. Think about yogurt with honey in it.

Kimberly Faith: Well, and you think about the manna in the wilderness, it was they said it was wafers made with honey. You know? Like, what’s better than a hot piece of bread with honey? This manna was described. Honey is an ancient food, obviously.

John McLarty: Right. So, yeah, you can have yogurt and honey today. Right. And the Israelites, the Egyptians had that.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.

John McLarty: Just so, you know, it wasn’t like they don’t have great food back. Of humanity has had this wonderful food even without all of our taste sensations, modern ones.

Kimberly Faith: I was thinking about when you’re talking about God blessing us, it maybe it kind of this really gives me a lot of hope because you think about how small the bee is. Right? And in first Corinthians one twenty seven, it says, God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are mighty. And then you think about, I read a statistic about bees that they produce one third. They’re responsible for the production of like one third of the earth’s food.

Have you read that?

John McLarty: Oh, that’s a whole another factor. Not only do they produce honey for us, but yeah, as pollinators.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Life on earth really almost couldn’t exist without honeybees. Was because they are super pollinators.

Kimberly Faith: I was reading that and I was thinking when you were talking about doing this podcast, I was reading that thinking, that to me gives me so much hope because a bee is not created in God’s image, but you and I are. And a bee is just this tiny, tiny creature. And yet we aren’t gonna have the food that we have without them being the super pollinators. You can see why I’m very

John McLarty: fond of my bees.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, yeah.

John McLarty: And then I see them going around pollinating, you know, and I was like, you know, they’re doing their job and they’re making honey to boot. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: And they’re it’s I think it’s just very inspiring because we when we think about that our life, maybe you’re somebody listening to this podcast, or maybe just you or I at times feel like our life isn’t worth anything. And then we can look to the bee and say, if God can do all these incredible things, create food that lasts for three thousand years, four thousand years, use the super pollinator, this tiny creature to be instrumental in creating one third of the earth’s food supply, then how much more can he use me if I surrender to him and work and live in the way that he has created me to live, to change the eternal destiny of even just one person?

John McLarty: Yeah. We’ll plug in to our job, God’s purpose for us. Right. Right. And then I think another thing is he wants in our purpose, he wants to fulfill us.

A lot of people think, well, the Christian life, oh, if I really surrendered to God, my life is gonna be miserable and the all the don’ts and the but it’s just the opposite. Yeah. And I just think of in Psalm 30 four:eight, and a lot of we know this verse, but taste and see, and think of honey, taste and see that the Lord is good. Yeah. So how do we know what that even means?

Because that verse is talking about spiritual, our spiritual connection with God.

Kimberly Faith: Mhmm.

John McLarty: Taste and see that the Lord is good. Right. So it’s like interact with God Right. And see if the Lord isn’t good. Right.

But how do we relate to taste? Well, we taste food. Right. And we can taste, boy, honey’s good.

Kimberly Faith: Mhmm.

John McLarty: Boy, peaches, they’re good. And apple pie is good. You know? It’s not just like survival. It’s more than just survival.

Then that verse ends up with, blessed is the man that trusteth in him. So just the multivariety of food and taste, God has those those are that’s a picture of spiritual blessings. If we just plug in like the honeybee, get with God’s program, and it’s the abundant life. It’s not the terrible life.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. I really love that. And I love the analogy about the way we’ve talked about the church as it kind of ties into the hive. We were talking about that earlier anyway. And if you think about it, we’re recording this on Labor Day weekend and brother Pat got up and he was supposed to have ten minutes, he had three.

And he had a one liner and he said he was talking about how we were created for work. Before the curse, there were no thorns. The work was pleasurable and it was All we were doing was harvesting. But now we have enemies, we have thorns. We produce much less because of sin.

But when we do it God’s way, it’s this is the way I took it. It’s almost like we get to go back to the garden to an extent because when we’re doing our work God’s way, we are we’re letting his power take over. And then like the bees, we’re doing these magnificent things that we could never do without his power. And the bees don’t have They’re listening to him already because creation Right. Creation listens Right.

To And what a great promise for us.

John McLarty: Yeah. I really picked up on that because we think of work as only the curse. But before the curse of harder work, know, what you’re proud

Kimberly Faith: productive work.

John McLarty: Right. Adam and Eve still worked. Right. And to me, working is a It’s blessing. Keeping my bees, just tending them.

It’s not work. It is work. It’s labor, but

Kimberly Faith: it’s fun.

John McLarty: Well, and It’s a blessing.

Kimberly Faith: And we’re created in the image of God, and God works.

John McLarty: God works.

Kimberly Faith: God and he says he works he worked during creation. I mean, he he spoke creation into into existence. That’s work.

John McLarty: And he looked over his creation, and he said, that’s good.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty: Yeah. So we can look at the work of our hands or just, you know, the work of helping somebody.

Kimberly Faith: Right. He said, yeah. That was good. You

John McLarty: know, it it was a blessing to labor. Yeah. That’s really interesting. So I I thought that was a good a good comment on that. Work Work were intended to work.

Even before the fall, we worked.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And kids, they have this thing now they call gentle parenting. And this is a little bit of a rabbit, but I’m gonna chase it just a little bit. Where kids are not really taught to find any value in them within themselves and being part of the hard stuff. They’re shielded.

They’re protected. Whereas bees, no. You clean your own cell there, And that’s where you start.

John McLarty: Get the job, get to it.

Kimberly Faith: And it’s not like it’s not like they It’s like they know that instinctively. Well, if we instinctively understand that we were created for God’s glory, we were created to work for God’s glory. Glorifying God isn’t just sitting still, crossing your legs and putting your face in the sun. No, that’s doing things. That’s helping people because love is an action, right?

And the bees are so good at giving us that example because they’re instinctively doing it. And I think as parents, we have whatever stage we are in with our children or adults, whether we have young grandkids, whether we have young kids, you know, modeling that work ethic. Mom is really good about that. You know, mom is always working. She jumps, even if her shoulder’s hurting, she wants to do the dishes.

She wants to You know, she’s always working.

John McLarty: I can’t keep her still even though she’s shoulder hurting. She must be a little bee. She’s a bee. Busy as a bee.

Kimberly Faith: But I think we model that for the younger generation. We can’t just say, Do as I say, not as I do. We have to do right along with them.

John McLarty: Yeah. Lynn’s a good example. Servanthood.

Kimberly Faith: She’s serving others.

John McLarty: Is what love And then she’s blessed. She’s not a miserable person. That just gives her-

Kimberly Faith: Great joy. Great joy. Yeah. Absolutely.

John McLarty: So, yeah, this idea of and then the unity, you’re talking about just you can think of a church, the microcosm. Let’s look at a church. Well, we operate in unity, we’re happier. Right. And the job gets done.

That’s one of the important the job gets done. I kinda wrapped up or we’re close to could be close to wrapping up, but Psalm one hundred thirty three one says, Behold how good and pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell in unity. I just kind of compared that to Bees don’t fuss and argue about job descriptions and who you know, the or the peck the order, so to speak.

Kimberly Faith: Your title.

John McLarty: They just they’re titled. They just do their job. There’s only one queen. Right. The rest of them have their different divisions of duty.

Kimberly Faith: And there’s only one god.

John McLarty: There’s only I one

Kimberly Faith: think that Queen Bee illustration can go, know, plot a couple different ways, but, you know, really when we’re all living for the same Lord and we’re not on the throne, you know, maybe the analogy of saying we can be extraordinary from, you know, probably not as good analogy as Jesus is the He is the King, right? He is the one we’re living for. And the fact is, this is one of the things I love about my current office staff. We have a team. Everyone is a born again believer.

Everyone has the same goal, and that is to glorify God. So when

John McLarty: That’s unity.

Kimberly Faith: That’s unity. Because if there’s dissension

John McLarty: There’s division of duties. Right. But

Kimberly Faith: unity. But if there’s a problem, we come back to that. So if I need something done and it’s not getting done fast enough, if I go back to, well, my life needs to glorify God and this person, I need to make sure this other person that’s trying to help me is also glorifying God, then I will go to that person with a humble attitude and say, hey, I have this deadline and how can we work together to make this happen? That completely diffuses any tension. And that is just one example of how the church can work too.

John McLarty: Right, a common purpose.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, a common purpose, because we always can go back to that foundation. And it’s, you know, the And I guess the bee’s goal is to protect the queen and make honey. Is that kind of maybe

John McLarty: Protect the queen, make honey, and the survival of the hive.

Kimberly Faith: Okay. The

John McLarty: queen survives that that can winter over. Right. And that they reproduce and keep making honey and survive.

Kimberly Faith: That’s such a you know, you think about the the the that the house of Israel in the old testament and the church in the new testament times and modern times were the house of witness to preserve the gospel because the Old Testament was about all about the savior that was to come. The New Testament’s all about savior that did come and the early church and the preservation of the gospel. And if you you think about the all the dissension and all the different churches, if everybody was focused on the reason that we’re here, which is to glorify God and carry out the great commission, the dissension would kind of melt.

John McLarty: Yeah. Right.

Kimberly Faith: You know? It would be like, we really don’t care if a door is blue or green because you know what? It’s not in the big scheme of things, how is that gonna bring glory to God? And how is it going to bring souls to reconciliation with God? And man, it just makes it quite simple. The bees make our life simpler.

John McLarty: Yeah. And they kinda to me, the unity of purpose and they know their purpose. Like our main purpose is soul winning. And then, you know, see souls saved and then encourage the fellow laborers, which the the bees bees, are they have that unity. Right.

And then it’s interesting that they’re all about survival.

Kimberly Faith: Mhmm.

John McLarty: They may not even know that they’re producing honey, which is so delicious to us humans. Interesting. But God knew that. Right. So God designed them to show us all these lessons of just their behavior, their unity, their sense of purpose, their common purpose.

And that it’s a picture to us, but then they produce honey, which is just a blessing to us, which shows us God wants to bless

Kimberly Faith: us That’s through this a really good analogy for us to consider as well, because when God like when God said, hey, you know what? I mean, when he made it very clear, I was supposed do the were supposed start this podcast. Well, it’s a lot of work, you know? And it’s but we can’t see all the people that’s going to bless. We don’t know who might get saved.

We don’t know what the big purpose is. Like the bees don’t know that there’s another purpose beyond just their own survival, that they’re making this honey at the pleasure of God for to bless his people. You know?

John McLarty: Yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: And so we we get to operate under that divine guidance and just being obedient, not really understanding the extent of the blessings we’ll be able to be part of.

John McLarty: So I think I’d like to tell the listeners that, yeah, God wants to not just barely rescue us. Mhmm. Like, I I use the analogy of somebody’s drowning, and you could go save them, and that’s a loving thing to do, and put them on the bank. Say, okay. I saved you.

That was that was love. Right. See you later. Right. But God is like, oh, come home with me.

Come into my house. Yeah. Let me make you something to eat. Right. And this whole idea of honey and the land flowing with milk and honey, God didn’t just kind of save the Israelites from Egypt.

He wanted to bring them into a land of milk and honey. Right. So, you know, again, we say this all the time. We’re not talking about a prosperity gospel, but God wants to bless us. And it may not be with abundant wealth, but just a land of milk and honey, which is turn that spiritually, taste and see that the Lord is good.

He wants to give us abundant blessings. So I’ll just read this. We could kinda use this as somewhat of a wrap up. Ephesians two:four-seven. I’ll just read that.

It’s this idea of God being his loving, not just love, but loving kindness. And that’s that, I’m not just gonna pull you out of the creek. I wanna take you home and feed you some lunch or

Kimberly Faith: Run me up. Right.

John McLarty: But God who is rich in mercy for his great love, where he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, he hath quickened us together with Christ for by grace are he saved and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And then this verse seven, that in the ages to come, he might show us the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. I just God is kind. He wants it’s it’s a loving kindness.

Kimberly Faith: Kinda reminds me of the the prayer that Paul prayed in Ephesians, where he says, now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.

John McLarty: That’s a perfect kinda capstone. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: It’s just you think about the bees and they’re just so focused on, they’ve got this hive and there’s thousands of hives all over the world, but they’re all working collectively to do the work that God’s given them. And they are blessing people they can’t even see, blessing people they don’t even Yeah. Know

John McLarty: They don’t know.

Kimberly Faith: They don’t even know. And What

John McLarty: a blessing their honey is.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And and, you know, we as individual born again believers, you know, first of all, if anyone is listening to this and does not 1000% know that if you died today, you would you would go to meet God in heaven or, you know, that then you need to rectify that because you will you never never promise tomorrow. We were just talking to a neighbor who witnessed a tragedy yesterday where a little of nine year old boy was run over, acts complete accident, freak accident, right next to the football stadium. And I mean, just a horrible, horrible, tragic event. That could be us.

That could be We are not promised one in the next hour. And Jesus came and He died to pay for our sins so that we could be reconciled through his grace, by grace, through faith. And if you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, then he will give you repentance. He will give you faith so that you can believe in him and you can trust him for salvation. That is a promise of God.

It is an irrevocable promise of God. But if you are born again and you’re unhappy, you’re stressed out, you’re anxious, you’re just living with a complete, almost like a baseline dissatisfaction, then this devotional, which, dad, thank you so much for telling us about the bees, is so on point. Because if you do not feel and experience the exceeding abundance of God that’s so far beyond what you could ask or imagine, then it’s not hard to get there. You

John McLarty: I’ll interject this, Kim, just Sure. Because the rest of Ephesians there in two:eight and nine, a lot of people know this. For by grace are you saved through faith, but not of yourselves, it’s a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. So it’s by faith, but By grace

Kimberly Faith: through faith.

John McLarty: By grace through faith.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And but, know, I mean, dad, I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of people who claim to be born again, around who are just dissatisfied. And I’ve been that person. I’m not sitting here pointing finger by else. And there are times when I still get that way.

And it’s always you know, what can always fix that, you know, when we of course, we have to repent. We have to get back in align with God’s will. But if you just start doing what you know is right, you know, sometimes you just don’t feel like doing anything. But if you just will get off the couch and say, you know what? I’m gonna go I’m gonna go do something nice for my neighbor.

God will jumpstart you. Sometimes we just need that. The bees, they’re just working, working, working, or doing what they know to do. And they don’t get depressed, not that we know of anyway, you know?

John McLarty: I think they seem pretty happy.

Kimberly Faith: They seem pretty happy. And and we can learn so many lessons about just how to live a satisfied life from the bees.

John McLarty: Yeah. And that’s the real message is that God wants to not just barely save us.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: But he saves us by grace, through faith, we have eternal security. Mhmm. But he wants us to have the abundant life. And it is, like you said, it’s through really serving him. Mhmm.

And we do that how that really plays out is by serving others.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. Yes. Yes. We You

John McLarty: know, it’s not going off to live in a cave and

Kimberly Faith: just Right. It’s not a miserable life. Yeah. It’s really not. I mean, it may be, hey, on my next vacation, I’m gonna take somebody who’s never had a vacation, you know?

Or I’m just gonna cook a dinner for my neighbors and have them all over and show them what it looks like to sit around a table and not look at devices and pray together and have a meal, you know? Because God like, I love that example that you gave where God doesn’t just rescue us from drowning, He brings us home with him. And God’s house is great. It’s really great. Well, that

John McLarty: This table is is abundant.

Kimberly Faith: Thanks for for sharing, your beekeeping, secrets

John McLarty: with the journey for me. I’m just more fascinated with bees every day.

Kimberly Faith: I can see why. Are you looking for a place to recharge your faith, refocus your mind, and reignite your passion for Christ? Head over to gofaithstrong.com, your one stop hub for powerful devotionals, life giving podcasts, uplifting worship music, and real stories from real people walking their faith out just like you. We know life gets busy and it’s easy to feel spiritually drained. That’s why everything we create at Go Faith Strong is designed to be clear, Christ centered, and easy to plug into.

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