Latest / Mission: 300 Podcast / Episode 94 - The Expectations of Change: Embracing Hope in New Beginnings

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Episode 94 - The Expectations of Change: Embracing Hope in New Beginnings · Mission: 300 Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Mission 300 podcast. My name is Jason, here with Brian, Tommy, David.
• 0:05
  We're going to get right into it. Last episode, we talked about embracing new
• 0:08
  beginnings and we left some things unfinished. So we need to go a step further into that.
• 0:13
  What we want to get into here, maybe a couple of different directions.
• 0:17
  We'll see where the mood takes us.
• 0:19
  But we were talking about what you do after you've started something fresh.
• 0:23
  And there tends to be a pull from the things that you left behind and you might
• 0:28
  start questioning if I made the right decision, if I need to change course a bit.
• 0:34
  But one thing we want to get to, and some of you guys might have recently gone
• 0:40
  through seasons like this, is remembering the reason that you started it in the first place.
• 0:46
  And we're going to get into topics of hope, which we had a bit of an argument
• 0:49
  about before we hit the red button to start recording.
• 0:51
  So maybe we start with that whole idea of hope in the first place to clear that up.
• 0:56
  So I think starting off talking about hope,
• 0:59
  it feels like something I've always struggled with of like viewing hope is like
• 1:05
  a biblical thing that we should be following after like the faith, hope, love.
• 1:12
  I got the love down. I got the faith down. But what does it mean to like hope for something? thing.
• 1:19
  The thing that challenges me the most is like, do I hope that I'm just going
• 1:25
  to make the sale tomorrow?
• 1:27
  Do I hope that I'm going to make it to work?
• 1:31
  Like, what is this, this hope? What is this supposed to be on a daily day,
• 1:37
  day-to-day life walking after going something new?
• 1:43
  Like, okay, I just started something fresh.
• 1:46
  I feel like I'm supposed to have some sort of hope. what do I hope in?
• 1:51
  And why do I feel like I have to hope in something that like already know is going to happen?
• 1:56
  So Tommy, when you're, when you're talking about starting something fresh,
• 1:59
  you don't really need hope because you kind of know what's going to happen.
• 2:02
  How do you know what's going to happen and how does it hold you when things
• 2:06
  go the opposite direction or feel like it's going the opposite direction?
• 2:10
  Well, and that's kind of like, that's my thought exactly is if I just have hope,
• 2:17
  how do I know what's going to happen?
• 2:19
  Like I am just, I just, you know, I hope, I hope this podcast performs well. I hope it does.
• 2:26
  To me, it just seems almost like a cop-out for being intentional and studying
• 2:33
  up so I can produce a good content, right?
• 2:37
  Or studying my literature so I can understand and know how to answer questions in a sales process.
• 2:44
  Or studying how to communicate properly so I can you know xyz but then it puts
• 2:53
  a lot of pressure on you and that's where i feel like.
• 2:57
  The scales for me are like the the
• 3:00
  balance right it's like i i have a feeling i understand what like what hope
• 3:05
  is but at the same time when i when i just like oh i hope this will go well
• 3:11
  then i don't put any effort towards it i just well i'm hoping it'll go good
• 3:16
  like it's more like Yeah.
• 3:19
  Yeah, exactly. I think that's kind of like the point I'm getting at is like,
• 3:23
  hope for me has always just been like, you know, I wish this happens.
• 3:28
  I could say, wouldn't it be nice if this did happen, but it's really a coin
• 3:32
  toss or there's so many variables that we can't know for sure,
• 3:35
  but we'll hope for the best.
• 3:37
  We'll wish for the best, that kind of thing.
• 3:40
  When you chose to get married or you chose to go to college,
• 3:44
  you know, over a different option, or you chose to take the type of job you did,
• 3:51
  or you start your training and how hard it was at the beginning when you're
• 3:55
  training to do your job and you weren't making any sales and everybody was saying, saying no,
• 4:00
  you, you didn't have an expectation that if you worked hard enough that it would turn out? Or did you?
• 4:09
  Did you have an expectation of something?
• 4:12
  And I think that's maybe a good point to draw is like, I did have an expectation
• 4:17
  of what I wanted to happen.
• 4:19
  And I was putting action to it.
• 4:23
  And I think that might be where like some of this, this hope word gets mixed around,
• 4:29
  maybe is people hope for something, but they'll never ever put the action into
• 4:33
  something or have like the faith to know that it is going to happen.
• 4:38
  Well, maybe we could define the
• 4:40
  difference. Okay. So I think what you're actually talking about is luck.
• 4:45
  You might get lucky. I hope this luckily turns out. I hope I get the right side of this.
• 4:53
  And I don't think that has anything to do with biblical hope.
• 4:57
  Paul says that the God of all hope fill you with joy and peace in believing.
• 5:01
  So the God of all hope fill you with joy and peace in believing.
• 5:06
  So the God that's creating the expectation is the one also filling you with
• 5:12
  joy and peace as you believe for the thing you hope for. So,
• 5:15
  and then Hebrew says, faith is a substance of things hoped for.
• 5:20
  So you can't, to say I got faith down, but you don't have hope down.
• 5:24
  Now, Tommy, I know what you're saying.
• 5:25
  So I think we have to just redefine the word hope. But by definition,
• 5:29
  it's like, well, hope is disappointing.
• 5:32
  So I'm just going to go work at my thing. And I put faith that my labor is going to produce X.
• 5:38
  So your hope is just shifted. It's not that you get rid of hope.
• 5:41
  You just shift the hope to something you can measure in a different expectancy.
• 5:49
  So I think that's the bigger problem where when we look at...
• 5:54
  Our faith of, Tommy, why are you a Christian?
• 5:58
  Well, there's just good values to it, and it's good living, and it's better
• 6:00
  for my family, and it's better for society, and it's moral, and it's those things.
• 6:05
  There's really not a hope in God. There's just a hope that if I do these things,
• 6:08
  then life is better for me during the week, right?
• 6:12
  So that's not necessarily the biblical hope.
• 6:15
  The biblical hope is Stephen standing there being threatened to be stoned and
• 6:21
  saying, no, my hope isn't in this.
• 6:23
  Let me just tell you, you got it, blah, blah, blah. And then they kill Stephen
• 6:25
  in the book of Acts, and he's the first martyr.
• 6:29
  That's hope. He saw something different. And then at the end,
• 6:31
  he goes, I see my Lord standing at the right hand.
• 6:34
  I see my Lord standing at the Father's right hand.
• 6:37
  I see him standing there. His hope was in something that wasn't of this earth,
• 6:42
  and that caused him to react differently.
• 6:45
  So I think when we're talking about God kind of hope, it is the thing that drives
• 6:49
  us beyond the conformity, beyond the different avenues.
• 6:54
  Otherwise, everything we really do isn't change. It's just trying to grow differently.
• 6:59
  Like we really don't need to change. We just need to grow differently.
• 7:02
  There's no hope in that. I wonder if part of the difference is the thing that
• 7:07
  we're actually hoping in.
• 7:08
  And I feel like what we hope for isn't things of this world we have a hope in the king of heaven and so.
• 7:20
  It's like a light at the end of the tunnel we can hope in this and it brings
• 7:24
  peace and security that this is waiting for us.
• 7:31
  That seems a lot more confident than
• 7:34
  you're walking through pitch pitch black
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  and you hope you find a light at some point but there's
• 7:40
  no reason to think you will or won't but when there's an actual light at the
• 7:43
  end of the tunnel your hope is your your confident expectation of well i'm walking
• 7:48
  towards that so i'm going to get there well and the thing that david just described
• 7:53
  the in the book cs lewis weight of glory david just described what the thing is like.
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  Even in Hebrews, it talks about all these heroes of faith from Noah to Samson
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  to David to, you know, you just go list all the characters that did exploits
• 8:09
  and conquered kingdoms and subdued, conquered, killed lions and all these heroic things.
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  And some even suffered, would not accept an easier death, but chose to die to
• 8:20
  have a better glory or not a better glory, but a better resurrection.
• 8:23
  You have all these characters and it
• 8:26
  says that they chose they believed
• 8:29
  in a city whose builder and maker was god so they did not turn to look back
• 8:34
  from where they came from but they kept otherwise they would have been tempted
• 8:37
  to go back but so so in all these characters their hope was in something that
• 8:42
  didn't even exist yet it kind of clicked with me on sunday for the first time
• 8:47
  Like the pieces put together,
• 8:49
  it talked about how these men and women of old who gave their life for something
• 8:55
  and became heroes and did these great exploits because they believed in a kingdom
• 9:00
  whose builder and maker was God.
• 9:01
  And I thought it was interesting for the first time I connected when Jesus said,
• 9:05
  seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added unto you.
• 9:08
  In other words, he was saying, get that, allow that hope of what you truly desire
• 9:13
  that can't be supplied here to be your anchor point.
• 9:17
  And all these other things will, you'll either have the right perspective,
• 9:21
  right attitude, right growth process or whatever, but they'll take care of themselves.
• 9:26
  Get this as the centerpiece. So I think back to Tommy's initial question is
• 9:31
  we've gotten hope temporal versus hope of what really is our essence that we're desiring.
• 9:38
  I think for me, that's where the word hope becomes like misconstrued in my head,
• 9:44
  because I think of all the times where I put my hope in something external here,
• 9:49
  where I am right now, not on something eternal and everlasting.
• 9:55
  Like the glory, like where I'm supposed to be with my father in heaven.
• 9:59
  It it's so easy to get like bogged down with the external because it's all coming
• 10:06
  against you and when that's all your hope is in it's like man because now that
• 10:11
  i think of it as like man i have so much hope like hope is like all i'm thinking
• 10:17
  about is the hope but when you,
• 10:20
  it has to be put in that perspective for me of like the eternal god that i'm
• 10:27
  going to something something better that whether or not tomorrow is my health,
• 10:34
  let's say it's challenged.
• 10:35
  It's like, my hope is not in what's here right in front of me.
• 10:38
  My hope is in the future, the future glory.
• 10:42
  I feel like kind of coming to where all is or something where infirmly believe
• 10:49
  in like, Oh death, where's your sting?
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  You know, it's like all of that joy that comes from, um,
• 10:57
  say like trials and tribulations and things like that.
• 11:01
  All the joy that Paul and stuff get from that is from having a hope and a solid
• 11:07
  hope and constantly thinking about that hope in the eternal and how much we have in that.
• 11:15
  What has been like the holdup for you guys in the past, or do you think most
• 11:19
  people struggle with, with the idea of, I guess, accepting that as the hope.
• 11:24
  So we have the hope of the eternal, is it is it the intensity of the things
• 11:30
  around us make it more difficult to keep that hope the focus,
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  or do you think it's that we don't really believe that eternal hope is there
• 11:39
  well let's let's go back to tommy's first question of his confusion over the
• 11:45
  word hope totally get it because i think we all you know we pray for something
• 11:49
  and we're kind of hoping in that physical outcome and don't Don't get me wrong.
• 11:52
  I believe in the physical outcome from praying.
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  But actually, the reason that there's miracles isn't because I'm hoping that
• 11:59
  that physical, that natural thing has a miracle.
• 12:02
  I'm hoping in the eternal life that's in me that executes the miracle.
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  Does that make sense? So you see people that walk in something different, like Jesus did not.
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  Oh, I hope Lazarus will be raised from the dead. Oh, I hope that woman with
• 12:17
  the issue of blood will be healed.
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  Oh god i hope that this person will be
• 12:21
  delivered from the from the demons like when
• 12:24
  jesus walked he didn't live in a constant oh i hope this
• 12:27
  one turns out like it's almost like you're starting hope over
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  every single time no he hoped
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  in the eternal life that was given to him and he
• 12:36
  put faith in the eternal life so when he interacted life
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  flowed into those scenarios so i want
• 12:43
  to be careful when i'm saying that god isn't interested in natural things
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  but it it comes from this the
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  eternal side i think the greatest thing
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  that hinders me especially starting
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  something new is the i have
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  an expectation of what i want that change to look like because if you don't
• 13:04
  have like if you're just changing because you have to change okay there's forced
• 13:08
  change like we talked on the last podcast like there's forced change like okay
• 13:13
  you lose your job this traumatic event
• 13:16
  happen, you have to change, like there's just you're changing.
• 13:19
  So there's that kind of change.
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  Finding hope in change. So change is not growth.
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  You can grow off something, but change is something different.
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  You're going a different direction. You're letting go of the original and taking on something new.
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  And I know, like, think of a weight loss.
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  We could just think about any basic thing. You have a weight loss program or
• 13:50
  you have a challenge you're trying to do, or let's say you're in universities.
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  Like, I just want to get through my four years.
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  Like we have these short term goals that we put hope in that,
• 14:00
  man, if I can just get to this point, then I can.
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  And I think that's becomes the danger of hope because we think that that is accomplishing.
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  That is the the the the
• 14:13
  event that's going to cause the next thing now it can't but if that's what the
• 14:21
  goal is you're going to be highly disappointed because now you're measured your
• 14:27
  measurements are based on what man has dictated and what others have dictated and
• 14:33
  expectancies of others is driving that versus,
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  I want to go do this.
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  I'm choosing to go this route.
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  I believe it will expand me the most.
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  And your identity is not driven by those outward things.
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  And we see it. We see glimpses of this even outside of Christianity.
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  We see glimpses where you have, you know, whether it was Steve Jobs or take
• 15:02
  your pick, it's like they're in the middle of college and you got to have your
• 15:05
  college to be good at technology.
• 15:06
  And they're like, forget that. And they go start Apple computer.
• 15:10
  In other words, they didn't put an expect an expectancy on the natural.
• 15:16
  Now, I'm not saying they're perfect examples of this. I'm just trying to give a glimpse into.
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  They move beyond what man said was the norm and the okay and what the expectancy
• 15:27
  is and the accolades of what man says you're now qualified for X, Y, or Z.
• 15:35
  And I think something drove them differently. Now, here's the deal is anger can drive you that way.
• 15:41
  Maliciousness can drive you that way. Selfish ambition can drive you that way.
• 15:45
  There's other driving forces to try to accomplish a false hope.
• 15:50
  So we've got to be kind of be careful with when we're saying they're driven properly.
• 15:54
  So anyway, that will be a separate talk. But back to hope is a God's definition of hope.
• 16:02
  So we have a whole plethora of Old Testament characters to show you that none
• 16:06
  of these got there the way they thought they were going to get there.
• 16:09
  And they changed the world like that.
• 16:12
  That was, no one can say it was hopeful being in a prison, but Joseph somehow
• 16:16
  decided to organize the prison.
• 16:19
  All right, if I'm here, might as well administrate it here too.
• 16:22
  And then they made him in charge of the prison. I mean, who,
• 16:25
  you know, that's just what he was, wherever he was, he just did that thing.
• 16:28
  And next thing you know, he's leaving Egypt.
• 16:30
  I wonder if sometimes that's just our, our expectation is misplaced.
• 16:36
  So if you have this hope and this desire to be an innovator in tech,
• 16:41
  and you spend four years at college and you feel so frustrated,
• 16:45
  like, why aren't they innovating yet?
• 16:46
  Well, it's because you're in an institution that just wants you to sit there,
• 16:50
  be quiet and learn instead of being out there innovating and working hands-on
• 16:58
  with the product and tech.
• 16:59
  So it's, and that might not be the perfect example because sure,
• 17:02
  you can do that while you're at college.
• 17:04
  But my point being, it might be that the hope and the desire that you have,
• 17:09
  which is genuine is trying to be forced
• 17:13
  or placed in the wrong area like for
• 17:17
  for me before we moved how long
• 17:20
  ago was it now a year and a half and we moved away from the cities to the town
• 17:26
  we're living in now there were so many things that i was hoping to see happen
• 17:30
  there and you know for whatever reason they didn't i'll take the blame for that
• 17:36
  but there there's also this aspect of
• 17:39
  the thing that I was hoping for cannot grow there.
• 17:42
  And so the frustration of, well, why isn't this happening? Why isn't this happening?
• 17:47
  Maybe it's not that the hope or the desire is wrong. It's just in the wrong place.
• 17:51
  So then there's not a problem with hope itself. It's just a problem with my
• 17:54
  perspective of what it's supposed to be.
• 17:56
  Not to mention the fact that we have a hard time accepting longer timelines
• 18:00
  with things that we hope for.
• 18:03
  Can I just add to that, too, and kind of touch back on, Brian,
• 18:07
  what you were saying about, like, hope in the eternal life,
• 18:10
  then having faith, and then the love outpouring is what Jesus did when he was
• 18:17
  ministering in his time, right?
• 18:20
  And I think it's easy, like, for me, I think back of, like, when my grandpa
• 18:24
  got sick, like, I was hoping he would be healed, and I was hoping he wouldn't die.
• 18:30
  Why was my hope placed in that? my hope should have been placed in the eternal.
• 18:37
  And then I could have faith to say, it's going to be great. Whatever happens.
• 18:43
  I like, I knew where my, my, my grandpa was going. No problem with that.
• 18:48
  But I let my faith get bogged down.
• 18:51
  And then the love wasn't outpouring because my hope was in, I hope my grandpa doesn't die.
• 18:57
  I hope my grandpa can recover.
• 19:00
  And I think that goes along the same thing with what you're saying,
• 19:03
  jason like i hope this can grow here well why are you hoping in in this place
• 19:08
  you should be hoping in the eternal and i think that does that does also point out to that like.
• 19:16
  Like i think of like trying to grow something that requires a lot of water and
• 19:23
  in the middle of a dry place like i have hope it's gonna grow it's gonna come out i'm hoping it,
• 19:32
  it's like okay i'm hoping that those seeds sprout even though there's no water and no sunshine.
• 19:39
  You think it would be, so from, from your, your example with your grandpa,
• 19:45
  would it be fair to say you had this, you have and had this hope of eternity
• 19:49
  that he also shared. So that's the hope.
• 19:52
  What we would want in that moment is more time here.
• 19:57
  Exactly. My hope wasn't in the eternal. My hope was like right now I'm feeling
• 20:03
  like this way and I want this to happen because I'm not looking eternally.
• 20:08
  I'm looking for the external stuff like I haven't got to do this yet with him
• 20:13
  or I haven't had this conversation yet it's like,
• 20:16
  that's the here and the now that's not the eternal like if I was looking eternally
• 20:21
  I'm like my grandpa's gonna be in a better place I should be thankful I had
• 20:26
  all this time with him already.
• 20:29
  But that's like where the challenge comes is like man when you're faced with
• 20:34
  that it's like really hard to I would say it's like really, really challenging.
• 20:39
  Like think of like, if a wife or your kid, like, how do you keep that?
• 20:46
  And I think that's like, Jesus, like sweat and blood, trying to keep hope.
• 20:51
  How often do we sweat blood for, for our hope, for our eternal hope?
• 20:59
  And how often are we, we sweat and bullets just Just because about something
• 21:04
  external happening to you here and now.
• 21:09
  Oh man, I forgot to return my Amazon package. Now I have to keep this dumb thing
• 21:14
  and I just wasted $60 and my life is over. It's like, really?
• 21:21
  But isn't it funny how those things, and maybe that's more trivial of an example,
• 21:27
  but how those things can seem to have such a big impact in the moment.
• 21:33
  And how that those little things like
• 21:36
  we've all been there where those little things will happen it'll start start
• 21:39
  to eat away in the back of your mind of well is this really going to work out
• 21:44
  because look at this happening are you really going to be able to buy this house
• 21:47
  but you can't even return amazon package on time you're not you're not being
• 21:50
  financially responsible enough how you're going to take care of a house and
• 21:52
  all these stupid little things will come in,
• 21:55
  all right but i think now we're transitioning to another idea and i think we
• 21:59
  need to introduce this because this is a part of starting fresh.
• 22:01
  So we're hitting hope and we'll probably bounce back to that.
• 22:04
  But now let me give you an example. Is it that you lost hope?
• 22:09
  Has the thing with the package caused you to lose hope?
• 22:12
  Or was it that you discovered your own weaknesses and forgetfulness and there
• 22:18
  was almost a shame on you for screwing this up?
• 22:22
  And that almost when you start looking at yourself creates the hopelessness.
• 22:29
  If I can't even get the darn package thing right, which I don't want to tell
• 22:33
  anybody, so I'm going to blame Amazon, blame the delivery driver,
• 22:36
  blame the box manufacturer, blame the tape person, because man,
• 22:41
  if I had good tape, I wouldn't have to go do this twice.
• 22:43
  And we start blaming everything else because what it's really revealing is something
• 22:50
  shameful or weak about us.
• 22:52
  So it says that faith works by love.
• 22:56
  That means the God of hope so values you already in what he created in you.
• 23:05
  Once we believe in Jesus and become part of him, even though he's pursuing everybody,
• 23:10
  not everybody receives them.
• 23:12
  So your hope is now anchored in not your, your Your identity changes, first of all.
• 23:19
  Second of all, your value system is what he thinks of you.
• 23:24
  So the idea that he even gives you this supernatural hope means he trusts you
• 23:30
  to get to that place, even though it may look like you mess up on the journey.
• 23:36
  Sometimes he says, well, in the sweet by and by, I'll be.
• 23:40
  But what about Peter that says, I've given you great and precious promises that
• 23:44
  by these, you may be a partaker of his divine nature, having escaped the corruption
• 23:50
  that is in this world through lust.
• 23:51
  So if we're not escaping it, therefore I don't have his nature,
• 23:54
  therefore I don't have hope.
• 23:56
  And we start looking back to us. And I know there's a dynamic that goes with this.
• 24:00
  And we all have this, like we all, we have a potential to this lie that Satan
• 24:06
  has created against us that we don't accept what the truth is.
• 24:10
  But I think that's part of the reason why we'd rather not hope.
• 24:14
  Well, I don't want to plan for that. I'm going to be disappointed again.
• 24:17
  Were you disappointed that the hope doesn't work?
• 24:19
  Are you disappointed that you have to look at yourself to bring forth that hope?
• 24:23
  I guess that's kind of a question because when you start new beginnings and
• 24:27
  you start on that, you know, whether it's a weight loss program,
• 24:30
  whether it's, Hey, I'm going to take over my life.
• 24:32
  I'm going to do something different. And you go down that journey and you're
• 24:35
  halfway through and you have all these emotions and feelings and remembering what it used to be.
• 24:39
  And it was almost better to be in Egypt than it is to be out in the
• 24:42
  standing in front of the red seed and he's like man just send me back i'll have
• 24:47
  the leeks and the garlic and you know at least i can eat some flavorful food
• 24:51
  now i'm stuck here with this angel droppings of bread that's the same every
• 24:57
  single day right and you're you're.
• 25:02
  The problem is the hope is almost like creating a mirror about you,
• 25:06
  but it's not us that brings forth the hope.
• 25:10
  It's Jesus brings forth the hope. And it just seems like it's hard to put that
• 25:15
  in day-to-day function.
• 25:16
  Like how do you let your identity affect your day-to-day functioning,
• 25:22
  which is really where the change is.
• 25:24
  So the real change is an area of your life dies so you can take on the area
• 25:30
  of life that God provided.
• 25:33
  But what if that life isn't as good as the death I was in?
• 25:36
  And you know, we kind of mock that perspective, especially when you read that in Exodus.
• 25:42
  But a lot of people have no idea how real that temptation is until you're actually
• 25:49
  pressed up against the Red Sea. until you're actually in the desert with no food or water.
• 25:55
  And you remember, I wasn't very happy back there, but I was provided for.
• 26:01
  That can be a very real thing.
• 26:03
  One thing that helped me in the last couple of years with that whole transition,
• 26:08
  because I don't know how much we've talked about it here, but we had some pretty
• 26:11
  major life changes for my wife, kids, and I in the last couple of years.
• 26:16
  And one thing that really helped me to keep the hope of where God was bringing us,
• 26:21
  to keep that very central through so many delays and setbacks and issues with
• 26:29
  just physically getting us to this new place,
• 26:32
  was that God accounts for my screw-ups in, well,
• 26:39
  if God's leading me to this place, what if I don't do this thing right?
• 26:43
  If he wants us to buy this house or this house over here, what if I make the
• 26:48
  wrong choice? Or what if I have the wrong conversation and I end up doing things wrong?
• 26:51
  And to know that if there is a hope that he has me set on, he can account for
• 26:57
  me making mistakes throughout that.
• 27:00
  And that alone, at least for me, it really helped me refocus on what's the goal? What's the point?
• 27:07
  What is the hope that he's leading me towards? The desire here,
• 27:11
  I'm going to go after that.
• 27:13
  And God is my father. You know, I might miss something. I might not see something perfectly.
• 27:18
  And I need you to help account for that. And he does because he's more than capable to do that.
• 27:24
  And at least for me, that helped center my hope.
• 27:28
  Because I never questioned, was it the right thing for us to start this new journey?
• 27:34
  My question was only, am I doing it right? Like you were saying earlier,
• 27:37
  Brian, we always question, am I handling this the right way?
• 27:41
  And it just really helped me to understand I'm probably not Not going to do
• 27:45
  it perfectly, but he accounts for that anyways, because then the the hope isn't on my shoulders.
• 27:53
  I have a role to play in it, but it's it's not me holding it up.
• 27:59
  A practical example of that the god
• 28:04
  accounting for your mistakes just in
• 28:07
  like a worldly perspective like looking at my job like there was a sale that
• 28:12
  i was working on i was working this and i finally got the sale to go through
• 28:17
  and i made just a mistake in writing in the order just made a mistake,
• 28:25
  didn't catch it, got delivered to the customer,
• 28:29
  found out I made this massive mistake.
• 28:33
  And you might say, well, you got to work on your processes and get that all
• 28:36
  right and get that fixed up.
• 28:38
  Well, this process has worked hundreds and thousands of times. I made a mistake.
• 28:44
  I remember just like being so afraid to go to my boss and rectify the situation
• 28:51
  because I'm like, Like I made a mistake, like something is wrong with me.
• 28:56
  And why did I do that? And I remember going to him and him just being like,
• 29:01
  Tommy, we account for this in, in, in the cost of the machine.
• 29:08
  Like we know mistakes are going to happen along the way. Like that,
• 29:12
  that is already accounted for. You don't have to worry about that.
• 29:15
  Like just go focus on trying to close more deals.
• 29:18
  That's what you're here to do. I just remember being like what?
• 29:24
  I was so held up on this thing when it was already accounted for wow and thank
• 29:33
  you for listening to our podcast today that should just keep a good rap.
• 29:39
  That'll do it and I guess just to wrap that up like God's way bigger than my
• 29:46
  boss so I'm accounted for Or I'm going to make mistakes.
• 29:50
  I think the one thing, too, is when we're talking about this,
• 29:53
  about hope, it's not like it's not like we it's not a goal. It's not you setting a goal. Right.
• 30:01
  And I think this is really kind of a little different. There's nothing wrong
• 30:04
  with setting goals, but goals are just really kind of like markers on a trail.
• 30:09
  But they're not objectives.
• 30:11
  They're not they're not hope.
• 30:14
  Just kind of targets that you're shooting for and you work towards that target.
• 30:18
  And, but there's way different between hope and a goal.
• 30:23
  So hope has a life term. It's, it's based on a promise.
• 30:27
  So a hope is something you cannot produce.
• 30:30
  You cannot produce the hope.
• 30:33
  You cannot produce your salvation. You cannot produce forgiveness of sins.
• 30:38
  You cannot produce healing.
• 30:41
  You cannot produce deliverance. You cannot produce those things.
• 30:46
  So anything hoped for is what you cannot produce.
• 30:51
  There's a humility to a hope because it's beyond you to do it.
• 30:56
  It is not a goal. A goal is something we kind of set a pursuit like,
• 31:01
  wow, I can lift X amount of pounds.
• 31:03
  I'm going to keep working. My goal is to get to this amount of pounds by the
• 31:08
  end of the month. And even if you don't get there, you're farther along. long.
• 31:11
  Okay. So your, your journey moved forward. Does that make sense?
• 31:16
  So, but hope is not something you can attain.
• 31:19
  It has to come by something that's been promised.
• 31:23
  So our hope as a believer is the words that have been promised.
• 31:28
  So any word that has been promised is our hope.
• 31:32
  And then we put faith in the one who promised that to bring forth that into
• 31:37
  our life and his love for us to To want to.
• 31:41
  So his love for us creates the identity capable of receiving that promise.
• 31:46
  Number one, the hardest thing about receiving a promise is when we measure our worth to the promise.
• 31:51
  But you don't create the worth he does. So he declares by the promise you're
• 31:55
  worthy of that promise. Does that make sense?
• 31:58
  So this is something supernatural. It's not a natural thing.
• 32:03
  So when he says I have something better for you, you may work.
• 32:06
  You may go develop yourself. You may take on skills and behaviors that are better,
• 32:10
  but that's not creating the hope.
• 32:12
  So Tommy, by being a better salesperson is not creating hope.
• 32:17
  Now you're going to have more opportunity. You're going to be more skilled.
• 32:22
  You're going to, but if you put your trust in that, you're creating your own hope.
• 32:27
  And now you're the only one who can fulfill your hope is you.
• 32:32
  So this is something, there's a humility in the God kind of hope because you can't make it happen.
• 32:38
  So we can bring this back to, go ahead. I was just bringing it back to,
• 32:42
  okay, you start on a new venture. Well, what if it's just a weight loss program?
• 32:45
  What does all this have to do with me losing a few pounds?
• 32:49
  What I was going to say is, you know, if maybe that is the first step then,
• 32:53
  because when you do hit those walls, it's like we said at the top of this,
• 32:57
  it's remembering the reason for this, not what were you trying to escape?
• 33:01
  But what is the thing you were drawn to and that
• 33:05
  when you saw the picture of it you knew it was
• 33:07
  worth leaving all those other things behind it was worth risking it
• 33:10
  was worth leaving that old thing that was rotting that you were drawn out of
• 33:16
  what were you drawn to in philippians 3 4 he said though i have confidence in
• 33:22
  the flesh though i might have confidence in my flesh or in my abilities my skills,
• 33:28
  the things I've developed.
• 33:29
  If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so circumcise
• 33:34
  the eighth day of the stock of Israel.
• 33:36
  Not that circumcision makes you a superhero, unless I guess if you're old and you can endure it.
• 33:42
  But it's just the idea that you're marked as a, you're marked into the right kingdom.
• 33:48
  You're marked into the right tribe of Israel. Okay. So you have a covenant with God.
• 33:52
  So he was that of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin,
• 33:55
  a Hebrew of the Hebrews, concerning the law of Pharisee, concerning zeal persecuting
• 34:01
  the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.
• 34:05
  He obeyed the law. People don't sometimes realize this about Paul.
• 34:10
  He was, according to the law, he was blameless.
• 34:14
  But what things were gained to me, these I've counted for loss for Christ,
• 34:19
  yet indeed I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ
• 34:22
  Jesus my Lord, for whom Whom I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as dung.
• 34:30
  Some translation to use the word rubbish, but the word dung has a deeper waste where it's foul.
• 34:39
  It is detestable. You can go to a rubbish pile and walk around in it.
• 34:44
  You can't go to a dung pile and walk around in it. It's filthy.
• 34:49
  So he's using this, but he's not saying, and I think this is where we can get
• 34:54
  off. Don't get an education. Don't practice skills.
• 34:57
  Don't do those. He wasn't saying don't do that. He goes, don't find your identity
• 35:01
  in it. My identity is in who Jesus is.
• 35:04
  This I can walk away from at any moment.
• 35:07
  So you're not changing to make your identity better. You're not changing to
• 35:12
  add another medal on your shirt of accomplishment.
• 35:15
  You're changing. And really what you're changing is you're dying.
• 35:19
  The reason you have to change is it's taken on a different form and you're dying
• 35:24
  to what was previous and taking on new life in something new.
• 35:29
  That's why we don't look back.
• 35:31
  And I think maybe part of the challenge is we don't, we still like the identity
• 35:37
  of the old trying to add the new.
• 35:39
  And we see this so clearly in the Israelites leaving Egypt.
• 35:44
  They didn't leave slavery, even though the Pharaoh was afraid of them for their strength.
• 35:49
  The people in the promised land were afraid of them because of their God,
• 35:54
  but they saw themselves as grasshoppers.
• 35:56
  So their identity never died in Egypt.
• 36:01
  They had to die in order to take on this new area.
• 36:05
  And so when I'm looking at change of taking on anything new,
• 36:09
  that was a big reality that finally hit it.
• 36:11
  You had to die to what value you got from what you were before,
• 36:15
  even if it was good, you died to it. So you can take on the new.
• 36:21
  That's that dying to that's you putting words into thoughts that I knew were
• 36:28
  there, but I couldn't put words to, I think of like graduating.
• 36:32
  I had to die from something and become something else in college.
• 36:36
  Yeah. Graduating college. I had to die from going to bed at three in the morning
• 36:41
  and waking up at 8am because that's not sustainable when you have to work marriage
• 36:47
  same thing you have to die,
• 36:51
  yourself i was just talking with people
• 36:54
  about this the last couple of days there's because there
• 36:57
  are people and we and we all know them where let's say you'll go to college
• 37:01
  or you'll have a kid young and you refuse to let go of the old high school college
• 37:06
  lifestyle and accept the The fact
• 37:08
  that you're now a parent and it was a heartbreaking specific instance,
• 37:14
  but it makes you realize like there are moments in your life where you have to let something die.
• 37:19
  If you don't, then you're constantly trying to keep it alive when what you are
• 37:23
  becoming is not that anymore.
• 37:25
  And you can't do that. You've got to step into it.
• 37:29
  You'll start becoming bitter and frustrated and you'll want to go back.
• 37:34
  And I think there still comes a point where in dying, it means you have to give
• 37:39
  up an identity, your old identity, not your identity in him,
• 37:43
  but your old opinions and persuasions and where you got your value from.
• 37:48
  The real death is the value where you get value from what, what is important.
• 37:53
  What, what is that is probably the biggest thing. And maybe that's a question
• 37:59
  for a lot of people with that feeling of things are just not like I feel stuck.
• 38:04
  I feel like this whole new thing isn't working out.
• 38:07
  Have you actually died to the old thing or are you hoping that you can just
• 38:11
  add some some of these new fresh things on to what you were and be OK?
• 38:16
  Or have you actually given up the old?
• 38:20
  Phenomenal question. My, my last thought on all this is one thing that really
• 38:25
  has stirred in me is that revelation or not revelation in Hebrews 12,
• 38:30
  12, one, it says, therefore, since we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses
• 38:35
  and if anybody's listened long enough, this has been a big deal to me.
• 38:38
  It's been a big deal to Jason too with his kind of
• 38:41
  new series walking through these characters is you we
• 38:45
  have these witnesses of old heroes of faith that are cheering us on for our
• 38:50
  race and then it says but they didn't receive the prize they're incomplete without
• 38:56
  us yet they still they still did what they did they still accomplished what
• 39:00
  they did and they never even were able to receive the prize,
• 39:03
  but they saw it afar off and we have it, but we don't even run.
• 39:08
  So it says, run the race that is set before you. So lay aside every weight and
• 39:13
  the sin that easily besets you and run with patience the race that is set before
• 39:17
  you, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
• 39:22
  This is something that's really important is, is there's this constant as a
• 39:25
  runner and David will probably attest to this is there's things you have to let go.
• 39:30
  And the more you do something, it's like even the wrong shoelaces or the wrong
• 39:34
  type of shoes can drag you down.
• 39:35
  We don't know it now if you're not a runner, but once you start running,
• 39:39
  there's little things that start weighing you down. They're not sins.
• 39:43
  They're just part of you that has to be stripped away because it's hindering you from, from running.
• 39:50
  And those are the dying things. but there's a pursuit you're going after.
• 39:53
  One book that is your concept that has helped me recently with this whole thing is the gap in the game.
• 40:04
  And it's sort of a, of a theory of talking about these goals that you have and
• 40:10
  reframing from looking at where you missed and looking at how much you've gained in the process.
• 40:18
  And so I would say when we're moving on to changing and new things that you're
• 40:24
  dying from your old self, don't die from the experiences and how much you gained from that.
• 40:30
  But you can't let that be holding you up from that new thing that you're supposed to experience.
• 40:36
  And I think that's the crucial point for me. But I would also just say from
• 40:41
  a general perspective that this book and viewing goals and achieving that is super important.
• 40:49
  I think of like the practical stuff of like when you're saying like losing weight, Brian,
• 40:53
  like, yeah, you might put a number to what weight you want to get to,
• 40:58
  but you may get to a point where it's like, you're just healthy now. That's just who you are.
• 41:05
  Well, if you haven't hit that, that number on the scale, forget the number,
• 41:09
  man, you, you, you got what that goal was trying to achieve,
• 41:13
  die to that, forget that and move on to something more.
• 41:19
  So I think that's where the, where like the growth comes from.
• 41:22
  It's like, if you get hung up on a stupid number on a scale,
• 41:26
  when God's calling you to run a marathon and you're getting hung up on a number.
• 41:32
  And if you just gave that up, you could run the marathon tomorrow and you could
• 41:36
  achieve what you're set out to do.
• 41:38
  When you're not dying to that old thing and you're not seeing that as a gain,
• 41:43
  you're seeing it as a weight holding you back.
• 41:46
  It's like, man, snip, snip, cut that, be gone. Like, move on.
• 41:52
  Yeah, that's good. Well, we're going to wrap it up with that.
• 41:55
  I just wanted to add on to tag along with Tommy there They're talking about
• 41:59
  the thing that you were dead to.
• 42:00
  The old things don't have a pull on you when you realize that you are dead to them.
• 42:05
  And that doesn't mean that you need to keep dragging the corpse around just
• 42:08
  to prove to everyone how dead it is to you.
• 42:11
  So stop giving it mental attention, put your eyes on the new hope and keep moving
• 42:15
  forward. So until next time, keep the faith and stay in the fight.