🚨Sen Mike Lee confirmed on Glenn Beck:
JD Vance can walk into the Senate ANY TIME he wants and immediately take the Presiding Officer chair.
As VP, he’s the constitutional ‘President of the Senate’, he doesn’t need permission.
JD VANCE, make your mark, the Country needs you!
ln 1992 Al Gore predicted that within two decades, Florida would lose 60% of its population due to climate change. Today, 34 years later, Florida’s population is 425% higher than it was in 1992.
Activist: "The grain that goes to cattle could end world hunger."
Farmer: "Which grain?"
Activist: "The grain you feed your cows."
Farmer: "Mine eat grass."
Activist: "...all of them?"
Farmer: "All of them. The field grows grass. The cow eats the grass. Through winter she gets a bit of brewer's mash and sugar beet pulp alongside the silage."
Activist: "There it is."
Farmer: "There what is. Brewer's mash is the spent barley from a brewery. The brewery has already taken the sugars out for the beer. Sugar beet pulp is what's left after the sugar is pressed out for your tea. The cow eats what's left after we've squeezed the calories out for ourselves."
Activist: "But Ethiopia could eat it."
Farmer: "Ethiopia would politely send it back. It's wet, mouldy, and ferments in the bag inside a week. She's the recycling bin. You're shipping the bin to a country that already has bins."
Activist: "But the actual grain. Wheat. Barley."
Farmer: "Goes to humans. The cow gets the husks and the pressings. The bit your jaw would file a complaint about."
Activist: "There must be a way."
Farmer: "There is. The cow turns the leftovers into beef. The bin has been full for a century. You just noticed."
Jesus rose from the dead and the first person He went to was His brother who thought He was crazy.
Not Peter. Not John. Not the twelve.
James.
His kid brother. The one who grew up sharing a room with God and didn’t know it.
Think about James for a second. His older brother is Jesus. Not “Jesus the Christ.” Not “Jesus the Savior.” Jesus the guy who worked in the carpenter shop and came home smelling like sawdust and sweat. Jesus who snored. Jesus who ate too fast. Jesus who their mother treated different and James never understood why.
Because Mary kept her mouth shut.
Luke 2:19. She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Angels showed up at His birth. Shepherds fell on their faces. Wise men brought gold. And Mary told nobody. She just watched her firstborn grow up in a ghetto in Nazareth and kept the secret in her chest like a coal she couldn’t put down.
James didn’t know his brother was God.
He knew his brother was weird.
He knew his mother looked at Jesus different. He knew Joseph moved the whole family to Egypt when they were little and never fully explained why. He knew that one time his parents lost Jesus at the temple and found Him three days later arguing with rabbis like He owned the place. Twelve years old. Already gone.
Then Jesus grew up. Worked the shop. Paid the bills.
Because Joseph died — the Bible doesn’t say when but Joseph disappears from the story — and in Jewish custom the eldest son takes over. So Jesus wasn’t posing for paintings in that carpenter shop. He was feeding His family. Putting bread on the table for His mom and His brothers and sisters in a town so poor Nathanael said “can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Then one day He left.
Walked away from the shop. Walked away from the family. Left James holding the hammer and the bills and the responsibility for a widowed mother.
James was pissed.
Mark 3:21. His own family went to collect Him because they said He was out of His mind. That’s James. That’s the brothers. Showing up to bring the crazy one home before He embarrasses the family worse.
John 7:5. His brethren did not believe in Him.
His own blood. Ate dinner with Him for thirty years. Didn’t believe.
Then Wednesday happened.
The brother James thought was insane got arrested at night by temple guards. Got beaten until His face swelled shut. Got whipped until His back looked like raw meat. Got nailed to wood and hung up on a garbage hill outside the city.
And James had to stand somewhere — maybe in the crowd, maybe at home, maybe hearing it secondhand — and process the fact that the brother he called crazy just died like a criminal.
Three days and nights of silence.
Three days of James sitting with the guilt of every eye roll. Every argument. Every time he told people “I don’t know what’s wrong with Him.” Every time he showed up to drag Jesus home because He was embarrassing the family name.
Then Sunday morning.
Jesus rose. Conquered death. Walked out of the tomb.
And He went to James.
1 Corinthians 15:7. He appeared to James.
Not in a crowd. Not at a distance. He went to His brother. The one who didn’t believe. The one who thought He was crazy. The one who was pissed that He left the family behind.
He showed up and let James see the holes in His hands.
Matthew 28:10. Go tell my brethren. Not my servants. Not my followers. My brethren.
John 20:17. My Father and your Father. My God and your God.
He rose to the highest position in the universe and His vocabulary didn’t change.
Most men get a promotion and stop returning phone calls. Jesus conquered death and called the brother who doubted Him family.
James went from “He’s out of His mind” to leading the church in Jerusalem.
James went from trying to drag Jesus home to writing a book of the Bible.
James went from skeptic to martyr. They threw him off the temple wall and when he survived the fall they beat him to death with a club. He died for the brother he once thought was insane.
That’s what happened when Jesus showed up after the resurrection and said brother.
One word changed everything.
He’s not calling you servant today.
He’s not calling you subject.
He’s calling you what He called James.
Brother.
The same James who didn’t believe. Who rolled his eyes. Who showed up to take Him home. Who sat in the dark for three days choking on regret.
He went to THAT guy first.
If He went to James, He’ll come to you.
So I watched "The Passion of the Christ" last night. And I am on my back deck tonight thinking.
Think about this.
In the movie, they have beaten him to near death and when they first take him to his cross, Jesus clings to it, and the thief chastised him for embracing his own cross. Mocking him for doing so.
Then Christ gave all he had to carry that cross which weighed as much as him.. They beat him while he did. It came to the point that his physical body couldn't carry it any longer, so a man was ordered to carry it with him. Yet Christ still clung to the cross.
Do you know why?
Because he knew at the other end of that short journey was OUR freedom. Not his.... OURS..... with every single step, with every drop of blood, with every single tear, he knew he was one moment closer to being at the right hand of the Father and his mission complete to free us all.
The man embraced the cross. Begged God to forgive the men nailing him to it. Begged God to forgive those that had beaten him with whips and canes and hammered a crown of thorns on his head.
He embraced it all.... for US......
And now, when times get hard and life gets even slightly uncomfortable, we claim that "God isn't listening and won't take my burden" as if we even know what a real burden is...
How many times would we cling to the proverbial cross for another and suffer as he did to free them from the pain? Would we ever do it at all? Maybe for our own child? Maybe?
As you lay down tonight, pray a prayer of thanks. Not for the normal things. Not tonight. Tonight, pray a special prayer of thanks that he held on to that cross and carried it as far as his mortal body would allow... because that took more dedication than any of us could give for anyone.
By the time you wake up in the morning, he will have risen, 2000 years ago. He will have beat death. 2000 years ago, all the sin you and I will ever commit was paid for because he clung to that cross like it was a lifeline.... not for him... But for you and me.