Hey guys, welcome to Before the Noise, the place where we slow down before the chaos kicks in every weekday.

Join us for more at BeforeThe Noise.com. Let's go. Hey guys, good Thursday morning. It is May the 7th, 2026. Time seems to flying by, but that's always true. I hope you guys are doing well this morning. Welcome to Before the Noise. My name is Chad Prather. If you've never been here before, you're saying, what in the world is this?

Well, we're working through the Bible.

We worked through the script. The Noise. My name is Chad Prather. If you've never been here before, you're saying,

what in the world is this? Well, we're working through the Bible. We work through the scripture. These are my devotional thoughts. You guys sit in with me. I'm not a preacher, not a pastor, not trying to tell you what to do. But I like to read the Bible in the morning, and I read it with you guys. Recently, we've been working our way through the book of Mark. we're in Mark chapter two. We're going to end the chapter today. We've been taking little bite-sized chunks out of the book of Mark. And we've seen this pattern of Jesus revealing himself

and religious people resisting what is being revealed. Jesus came to show us that the kingdom of God is at hand, which literally means God's way of doing things, you can now put your hand on it. It's right here in your midst. It's in our atmosphere. It's in our environment. And so I hope you've enjoyed a little bit of the soapbock preaching. I did a lot of it yesterday trying to call out that spirit of religion. There's one thing you won't find here, and that is a religious spirit.

And I'll tell you what I mean about that. If you haven't been paying attention or you haven't been keeping up with the show,

religion is about controlling you. It's about keeping you in the rules and regulations, keeping you on a performance treadmill.

That's why your soul is so anxious. That's why you have anxiety. That's why you can't rest.

Your relationship with Christ is not free. It is not freeing. It is not bringing you liberty.

It's not bringing you rest. We're going to deal with some more of that today because I just think that's what...

It's interesting that the book of Marx starts out really revealing that how religion, systemized religion, gets perverted

because it's seen externally on the outside and it gets traded for what God wants to do

with us on the inside. So what if I told you this morning that it's possible to know the scripture, know the Bible,

defend religion, defend Christianity, attend church every single week, know all the vocabulary,

and still completely missed the heart of God.

Mark Chapter 2 has been showing us how Jesus walks through

these situations and exposes that religion can exhaust people and we're already exhausted.

The last thing I need is more religion on me to make me even more tired. But Jesus didn't come

to put more of that on you. He came to give your weary soul arrest. And that's what we're all about. So I hope you guys are doing well. I see there in the Rommel chat. Let me see some of those dancing bananas. If you're over on X or Facebook or YouTube, welcome you guys there in the live chat. Party steve is the hall monitor and he is silently

putting people in time out when they get crazy so don't get crazy in the live chat that's not what

we're here for go debate it somewhere else um we're just having a good time enjoying one another

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