Welcome to the in touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, July 23rd.

Jesus shared a parable about a farmer who left his wealth so much that he planned to pull down his barns and build bigger ones.

The selfish intentions of this man are the backdrop for today's podcast.

Is there anything in your life that you have a dead grip on? Something that you have a dead grip on, something that you absolutely

I'm not going to let go, something that you know you've worked hard for it,

you've got it, it's yours. Or maybe it's something of some other

nature, you've got it and you have a grip on it and you're not going to let it go and it's just

something very very important to you.

So I want us to think about some of those possibilities because you could say very easy,

well I'm not a wealthy person.

And so because I'm not a wealthy person,

this doesn't apply to me. So we can get ourselves all been

out of shape about gripping this and gripping that. So what we have to look in the Bible

for example at Judas. Judas held on so tightly to this idea. He watched Jesus perform miracles,

he watched Jesus raise people from the dead, all kind of things he saw, so he

knew Jesus was the Messiah no doubt about it and

being the Messiah he had that kind of power he could do what Judas wanted above

everything else for Jesus to destroy the Roman government that ruled over them and set up his kingdom on earth

right then and there because he knew that Jesus could do it. He couldn't give it up.

This was his opportunity. This was the opportunity for Judaism, for the Hebrew world to take what was rightfully theirs. And so what did he do?

Whatever would force Jesus to bring down those legions that he'd heard Jesus talk about, whatever it took to do it, he betrayed him.

Or what about Pilot, for example? Pilot was gripped by what?

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