Billy Dean

Married, Father, Follower of Christ, Texas Aggie '93 … retweet’s are not an endorsement.

[Secretary Brooke Rollins @SecRollins]

📍 Aggieland

This morning, @SecWar Hegseth and I addressed the full Texas A&M Corps of Cadets and watched cadets formally commit to serving our nation.

Aggies have always answered the call to serve with courage, integrity and selfless leadership. It was an honor to welcome my friend and @DeptofWar colleague to Aggieland and stand with the next generation of American leaders.

Gig ’em, and God bless our men and women in uniform! 🇺🇸

@AggieCorps
@TAMU

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

@FortyAcreN8 Nathan, the only color in this photo I hate is burnt orange. (For those that don’t know, I’m and Aggie and love Nathan). Shame on @bofrench .

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

@bradj_TX @MarkDavis @bofrench I voted for Bo in primary but will not be voting for him in general. And it’s not because I’m less conservative. It’s because I have principles and value people as individuals.

[Matt Shaheen @MattShaheen]

This is disgusting & falls below conservative standards. Most importantly, it falls well below the standard set by Christ!

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

Mark, give him the chance to explain, but I hope you will challenge and not enable spin. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

[Mark Davis @MarkDavis]

Bo joins us 905 am CT tomorrow. Listen live: https://t.co/KYbkqap4QI

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

@megbasham @robbysoave Megan, as Christians we cannot ever allow confusion that we see skin color as the first thing. No French was wrong and you playing middle ground is not the stand Christians should take. We should be clear in our condemnation.

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

Me too

[Scott ''Human Scum'' Faust @Stultis_TheFool]

Lifelong straight ticket @TexasGOP voter.
Don't even recall the name of the Dem running for Railroad Commissioner. But I'll vote for them to repudiate this.
My disgust with capture of my party by a populist cult that not only abides but cheers such depravity knows no bounds.

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

@MarkDavis @JohnCornyn @Burrows4TX It’s racism. FYI, I’m a republican, but this needs to be called out for what it is

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

What you did was racist, not starting a conversation

[Bo French @bofrench]

Generations of Texans have invested billions of dollars into UT. Today it is filled with foreign nationals and Leftists who boo Ted Cruz.

John Cornyn says we should accept decline. The voters I talk to want to return our institutions to serving the interests of citizens.

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

Agree! He should be called out and universally condemned by Christians and Republicans. Shame on you @bofrench

[Senator John Cornyn @JohnCornyn]

This is the Republican nominee for statewide office. Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized. This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad.

[Texas A&M Aggies 👍 @12thMan]

Today was a good day

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

@Evil_Sparky You are a bad person.

[979Turn&Burn210🔥👍 @TurnAndBurn210]

I've enjoyed your posts for months now (I was fortunate enough to have you pop up on my timeline during the first few days of auto-translate on this app) and was enthralled with your writing style. I love seeing how you describe aspects of American culture from your unique perspective. Your posts give me reason to re-examine what's mundane in my everyday comings and goings with fresh eyes.

This one was different. Very, very personal. I read the first sentence, and of course I immediately thought, "is this account about to write about my beloved alma mater?" You were, and it moved me irl to see the story of the origin of the 12th Man so beautifully described in your unique, respectfully celebratory style.

Texas A&M is a very strange place. Unexplainable from without and within, but the "Spirit Can Ne'er Be Told" is a powerful, tangible phenomenon to which every proud Texas Aggie will attest with all gravitas. My father went there. My brother went there. I met my wife of 15 years there, standing on those seats we'd never use as students. Many will deride Aggie traditions, and to be sure, they are ubiquitous and often mystifying to outsiders. But they all have meaning to the people that truly care about our one-of-a-kind, quintessentially Texan university. And that's all that truly matters at the end of the day.

Thanks (& Gig 'Em) for this one, @japan_nobunaga. From the bottom of my maroon heart 👍

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

Whoop

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Texas I went to a game where the entire student side of the stadium did not sit down for four hours.

I assumed the seats were broken. I checked the one next to me. It worked.

I asked a student named Tyler why nobody was sitting.

He said, "In case they need us."

That was the whole answer. In my land we have a saying, always on the battlefield. A samurai does not lounge in the presence of a lord who may call him. He stands, so that when the call comes there is no distance between the call and the man.

Here were thirty thousand of them. Standing. In case.

I asked Tyler how often they are needed.

He thought about it. "Once."

Once. In 1922. The team was running out of healthy men, and a student named Gill was called down out of the stands. He put on an injured player's uniform and stood on the sideline, ready, for the rest of the game. He never went in. They won without him.

That is the whole origin. A man who did not play. A hundred years of standing for a man who did not play.

So I stood. I am not a student. I was not going to be called under any reading of the rules. My knees began filing complaints in the third quarter and I ignored them, because Tyler was nineteen and had stood through every home game for three years and had never once been called, and was not bitter about it, and was in fact eating nachos.

Nobody was called. Nobody has been called since 1922. The knees of Texas do not care.

In my land we say be ready at every moment.
Texas built thirty thousand seats and refuses to use them.

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

The big idea that I have been meditating on quite a bit for the last year or two can be summed up in a single word: enough.

I am all for redeeming the concept of ambition and have written on it quite a bit. It’s good to aspire to great things for a great God. And it’s good to test your limits and capacity. That being said, a lot of what people call ambition is no more than discontentment with their lot in life. And consequently, they exhaust themselves in the pursuit of something that likely won’t happen and, if it does, will not be as satisfying as they imagine.

As a related side note, I do think this is one of the great sources of irritability and anxiety that I see ruling over so many right now.

The obvious key to getting enough is realizing that nothing will ever be enough if you aren’t right with God. God, after all, is the only true God; therefore, the promises He makes, He keeps. Anything else that we look to for ultimate satisfaction is a false god, and like all idols, they make false promises. So contentment cascades down from the fountain of life that is Jesus.

I say cascades down because being right with God is the beginning of being able to know your place in creation and with others. It allows you to start to determine what is enough in all these other contexts. It would be a super-spiritual mistake to say all that matters is that you are right with God. Yes, it matters. Yes, it is the main thing. But no, it’s not the only thing. Being right with the limitless God brings into focus your limits, and it changes how you labor and what you labor for.

I just got done preaching Psalm 8, and one of the great takeaways is that though I am small compared to the great expanse above me, and even smaller compared to the God who made both, I matter to Him. Maybe I don’t matter to you. Certainly, I don’t matter to a whole lot of people. And maybe if you compare me to someone else, they are greater in whatever sense. But the God who made all and who is greater than all cares about me, and because of the work of His Son, I have His approval. Paul said that no one stood with him before Caesar, but the Lord did, and that was enough to allow him to stand boldly for the gospel. It didn’t mean he didn’t care about other people or that he didn’t want to see his mission complete. He did. But he could labor without anxiety, without worry, because his labor was done in the Lord, for the Lord. And whatever he got done was enough.

Much more could be said about enough, and I certainly have more thoughts. But one little application: it is my observation that social media is driven by comparison. It’s a place for you to come and look at people who have much more than you. And if you could be like them, then you would have enough. Or perhaps, to flip it, it’s a place for you to come and look down on people who have much less than you, meaning that you are better than them because you have more. More of what? More of whatever.

And, of course, comparison is the thief of joy, but it’s also the seedbed of bitterness and envy. And if you hang out in the wrong algorithm, it becomes a toxic sludge of discontentment that makes you radioactive in all of life, and nothing will ever be enough, even God Himself.

[Bob Martin @BobMartin_uvo]

The Resurrection changed Everything.

RIP Dolly - you blessed us more than you’ll ever know and we’re forever grateful.

He’s Alive!

[Billy Dean @williamhdean]

You are an insensitive joke. Not a time to use her passing to generate conflict. Bad!

[Matt Wallace @MattWallace888]

They just made an example of Dolly Parton

[Mr. Star Spangled MAGA @4thOfJuly365]

Quite possibly the best video from social media that I have ever seen.

Please give this a watch.

[Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos @Ramos4Texas]

Last May, I authored legislation to require a full forensic audit of the Texas Education Agency.

We estimated that staffing increases may have been as high as 50%. On Wednesday, we received the final audit. #txlege

It was much worse than we imagined (🧵1/8):

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

I got goosebumps studying my Bible today.

In Genesis 28, Jacob has his famous vision of a ladder stretching into heaven, with angels ascending and descending.

He wakes up trembling with awe. On his own initiative, he sets up the stone he slept on as a pillar, pours oil over it, renames the place Bethel ("House of God"), and vows to give God a tenth of everything if God protects him on the road.

Fast forward twenty years to Genesis 31.

Jacob has spent two decades being cheated, exhausted, and trapped in Laban's household.

When God finally appears to tell him it is time to return home, He does not introduce Himself with an intimidating, distant title. He does not announce Himself as the Almighty or the Creator of heaven and earth.

He looks at Jacob and says: "I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me."

Do you realize what is happening here? God grounds His very identity in a runaway's memory.

For twenty long years, God remembered a desperate prayer spoken over a rock in the dark. He lets a flawed human encounter define holy ground, taking the name a frightened fugitive gave to a stone and adopting it as His own divine signature.

Now leap forward over a thousand years to John 1.

Philip brings his friend Nathanael to meet Jesus. When Jesus sees him coming, He says: "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit."

Remember what the name Jacob actually means. Jacob was the deceiver, the supplanter. Jesus is deliberately invoking Jacob from the very first sentence.

Startled, Nathanael asks, "How do you know me?"

Jesus answers: "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."

In Jewish life, sitting under a fig tree was the recognized place for solitary prayer, meditation, and wrestling with God in private.

Whatever Nathanael was carrying beneath that tree, whether an unspoken sorrow, a quiet wrestling match of the soul, or a prayer he thought had vanished into the silence, he believed he was entirely alone.

He had built no altar, poured no oil, and made no grand vows. He was simply sitting in the quiet with an ache he could not fix.

Yet that single sentence undoes him completely. Nathanael breaks: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

Then Jesus ties the entire story together:

"You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

Angels ascending and descending. That is word for word the scene from Genesis 28!

Jesus is telling him that the ladder his ancestors saw was never a stone staircase in the desert, and Bethel was never just a coordinate on a map. The ladder was always a person. The bridge between heaven and earth was standing right in front of him on a dirt road in Galilee.

The contrast between these two men is striking.

Jacob’s encounter was structured. He had oil, built a stone monument, named the place, and negotiated with a formal vow.

Nathanael’s encounter was raw. He was sitting in the shadow of a tree, empty-handed, carrying a weight he had no ceremony for.

Yet God claims both as holy ground.

He is the God of Bethel, the God who honors the altars you build when you have the strength to build them.

And He is the God of the Fig Tree, the God who sees you when you are too exhausted to promise anything at all.