Ep 20: The Ants Go Marching (w/ Tyler Wunderlich)

Speaker1: Well. Good morning, I'm Daniel Delp, and this is for your Sunday morning drive. The short podcast designed to put you in a Colossians three two mindset and help prepare your mind for worship on those hectic Sunday mornings. And we are brought to you in partnership with the Ministry League Network of Podcasts. I do encourage you to check out the rest of the great podcast on their network, both at Ministry League, dot com and through their app. I do hope you're having a great day and we've got a fantastic episode for you this morning. You can read from the title that this is episode 20, and I figured you might be getting tired of my voice. So I got you someone else. And we are joined this morning by my good friend and dear brother in Christ, Tyler Wunderlich. Tyler is the associate minister at the North Side congregation in Mayfield, Kentucky, and he also serves as the director for Teen Week at Western Kentucky Youth Camp. Tyler and I grew up together in the youth group here in Evansville, and he is a brother that I cherish and also look up to Tremendously, regardless of how strange that feels to say. And I'm so thankful that Tyler agreed to do this episode. He has a great message for us. Tyler, thank you for joining us on our Sunday morning drive. This is episode 20, The Ants Go Marching. Let's go to church.

Speaker2: Are we there yet?

Speaker3: Army ants are very interesting to me. There's so many of them that live in these colonies. And when they work together to go out and find a food source, they will absolutely overwhelm the entirety of whatever food source they find. What's made even more impressive is that these insects are almost completely blind. To stay organized, they leave scent trails behind them for the others to follow. You have two lines, one headed out toward the food and one headed back in with the food toward the ant hill. These lines will be side by side. There's sometimes a very rare thing that will happen that is referred to as an ant mill or a really aggressive name, an army ant death circle. What happens is that two ants will bump into each other, and much like you do when you're passing someone in the hallway, they'll turn toward that other ant and accidentally pick up the scent. And so instead of heading out in the direction they were, now you have these two ants following each other's scent around and around in a circle. The problem is that the entire rest of the line will continue to follow them into that circle. The entire rest of the colony of workers will empty out millions of ants following the long line into this giant circle, all of them assuming they're headed the right way, they can't see.

Speaker3: They have to rely on what they have. They all think they're headed the right way toward food or toward home. And for days they will march around until one by one, they all starve to death, all the while thinking they're where they're supposed to be and headed in the right direction. In Matthew chapter 15 and verse 14, Jesus, speaking of the Pharisees, says that if the blind lead, the blind, both fall into a pit. The Pharisees were terrible leaders. We know this. On a journey. The problem with bad leaders is that they and everyone following them usually end up lost. Lost is not somewhere we want to be. That all starts with and hinges upon us making and keeping God as our guide. In Proverbs chapter three and verses five and six, the Bible says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. There's a wonderful old hymn that says, I once was lost, but now I'm found was blind, but now I see. Thank God that we can look to him, that we can look to other wonderful, faithful Christians as guides, not blind, but fully seeing with a path fully illuminated and wonderfully directed by our God.

Speaker1: Those were some great thoughts for our Sunday morning drive. Now it's time to hear yours, Tyler. Give us our discussion questions for this week.

Speaker3: What are some characteristics you think of in a good spiritual leader? Are the people we've allowed to take leadership positions in our lives, getting us where we want to go? And when thinking about those important characteristics for leaders, what's your greatest strength and greatest weakness out of that list?