Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 19, 2017 | Men Of Success - Fall 2017, Session 5 - The Principle Of The Path

Transcript

October 19, 2017 | Men Of Success - Fall 2017, Session 5 - The Principle Of The Path · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: All right, men, good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see everybody here once again.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Man, was that not a great breakfast or what?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh for those that went through the line early, I think Tom just threw out some coffee cakes, so uh you might have to go back up and uh and get a piece of that and let it cool down for a minute.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every week I I always kind of uh ask the Lord, okay, what would you have me share in the morning?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, try to do something that after having received some counsel from God.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was at a little bit of loss this morning.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't sure what to say.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I thought, you know, Andy Stanley wrote the um the kind of the lesson we're gonna talk about today.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know how many of you have ever had a chance to listen to any of his teachings or uh whatever.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: He is a great teacher, his dad was a great preacher, but he's a good teacher.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um the church has got uh access to Right Now Media.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody familiar with Right Now Media as a live, it's an online library with all kinds of um small group uh you know stuff or uh or you know, Bible study or Sunday school.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage you if you haven't been exposed to Right Now Media that you might get in, get that app and uh it's really we've used it in a small group for a number of years, and uh it is really uh very good.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that I was thinking about, you know, a lot of times you hear in business circles, well, just pick pick two or three things that you're gonna work on this year.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can't work on 20 things, so pick two or three.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we are gonna get so many principles every week here that uh you know you might consider the same thing.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, gee, you've got to pick a couple that that you really feel like you need to work on.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And especially as we've talked about in our group, what can you do in with your family?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: We all know that we work on these principles in our business, but um which ones might you choose that you would work on uh with your wife and your kids and and your family?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, with that, I'm gonna turn it over here, let you guys uh take it.
• 1:53
  unknown: Cool.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for that intro, Paul.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: We appreciate that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Man, how are you guys doing this morning?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: All right, we got seven people are good.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: The other 37 are just waking up still.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, excited to be here.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Woo! There we go.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just a reminder we are gonna go up until the week before Thanksgiving.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know how many sessions that is, four or five more, something like that.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: For you math people, you can do it in your head.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh today, Principle of the Path.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Has anybody read this book before?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, a couple of you guys have read it.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Have you any of you guys heard of Andy Stanley before?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, most people have.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um We actually just went to a thing called Orange Tour on Tuesday, and it's a so if you aren't familiar with Orange One, well you can talk about the children's part.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's a Orange is an organization that uh that produces a lot of things.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one of the things they produce is a curriculum that we use for our four four-year-old through sixth grade Sunday school classes here at Topeka Bible Church.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it's a it's a it's a great organization that uh tries to produce resources that will pair up uh parents and the church to work together for the for the sake of the children and the spiritual development and uh growth and their uh attitude towards God and their life and shape their worldview.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the organization, that's the curriculum we use for Sunday school uh every single week here.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So all of the orange stuff, kind of the program, part of that was birthed out of the North Point ministries, which Andy Stanley founded and is head of and all that kind of stuff.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so a lot of reputable things.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things about this book, The Principle of the Path, and you guys can kind of see the picture on there, there's the green dot, and it's going towards the target.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of that's that's the straight line path.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: The interesting thing about this one is there is one main point in this whole book.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's one principle, one point, and so as we go through this, we're gonna kind of flesh that out and um talk about the different nuances, kind of the different areas around that that main point.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing I think about Andy Stanley is that he can take something that's fairly simple and he can expand upon it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: I I really uh respect that about his teaching.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: He can talk about something that everyone would just agree on, but then he can put a different light on it, different side of it that really like makes you think a different way.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he has a very good gift for that.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: So if this is interesting at all to you, I say do do look it up, do read the book because he has a lot of uh great insights that uh that maybe you wouldn't think of uh in this area about the path.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you see the main point, you're gonna be like, well, no kidding.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Duh.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then once I think once we start talking about it and we'll see, okay, that makes sense in my head, but then how does that actually play out in life?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: How does that actually play out in my family?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: How does that play out in my business?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we see that probably all of us have room to grow in in this main principle.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So here it is direction, not intention, determines destination.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you're English people, you like alliteration, you love this, but direction, not intention, determines destination.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so basically, his main point, the point of the entire book is that the path that you're on, in whatever area of life, the path that you're on is going to lead you exactly where that path leads you.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna lead you somewhere different, it's not gonna lead you somewhere where you hope it might lead you, it's only gonna lead you where it leads you.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that it I mean, this is is a very simple thing.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: You may say that it's not intention.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um that that you know, intention is not uh where what takes you there is the path that takes you where you're gonna end up.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think every parent knows that.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: If you talk to your children and they say, Well, I didn't mean to, right?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: But they but they their whatever they did, uh their actions produced a certain ending, you know.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um my son Athen would always be like, Well, I didn't mean to hurt Henley, like, but you were pulling her hair, you know, like it you might your intention wasn't not to hurt her, but your actions and what you chose to do took you down a path where now she's upset, now you're in trouble, you know.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and all another thing that uh when my first ministry I worked in, I worked with elementary through uh high school age children, and we had youth sponsors that would come to these events we do for the youth group.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: There's one sponsor that would always sign up to help, and then we would like call her to make sure she was gonna help because she didn't come a lot.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: And when we would call her, she said this all the time, and it almost became like uh you know an inside joke between my wife and I that she would say, Yeah, I I'm gonna be there.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: I have I have every intention of being there, every intention, and we're like, Okay, here we go again.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because your intention may be to be there two days before, but actually, when you don't come, then it doesn't really matter what your intention was, uh, you know.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's what this is kind of talking about.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Reminds me of that.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think of when I was growing up with my brother, so I've got a brother, uh, we have we both have different dads, and but we grew up in the same household, and he is six years younger than me.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And for the most part, it was us two kids growing up in the house.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it was one of those things where you know, we grew up together the whole time, fighting like 95% of the time, a lot of times about the remote and who took the last Capri Sun out of the fridge.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: But then I got to my senior year of high school, and and something just clicked in my head of, oh man, I'm not gonna really see you that much anymore.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so, all during that time, like I hadn't been making efforts to hang out with him because he's my younger brother who's six years younger, and I'm a senior, and you're in middle school.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Why would we hang out and do that kind of thing?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: But now looking back on it, I can see exactly how we got to the point where we didn't necessarily have a bad relationship, but it wasn't a close relationship, and it's still not a super close relationship, but I can see that the path of continually not making an effort in that relationship, continually not wanting to spend time, not putting forth the effort to invite him in to where I was to build that close relationship, then led to a not close relationship.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't have that thought process going into it of, oh, I want to make sure that I don't have a good relationship or I don't have a close relationship.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the path that my actions took.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: So many people, here's a quote from the book, so many people wonder how in the world they wound up in the mess they're in.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Any of you guys ever asked that question?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: How did I even get here?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I've definitely asked that question.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is clear to everyone else, especially our wives, they know they wound up where they are because of the path that they chose.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Have you guys ever had that happen?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like, people around you are like, Yeah, how how in the world did this happen?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: And you're thinking in your head, well, I can tell you how that happened.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you I mean, it's very clear, but for whatever reason, sometimes when people are choosing, and are myself included, when you're choosing to go on a path, you don't really necessarily think, hey, I'm gonna choose this path that will lead to this.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: It kind of just happens, and you may not even see it, and other people around you can see clearly, like, this path is not a good thing that you're going down, and that's how you wound up there.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Are any of you guys old school map people?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you're driving and directions, you're not about the GPS.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Eric is.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a I'm not a huge GPS fan.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't you're a GPS hater.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I hate it.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we were going to a conference and we were trying to find the restaurant, and he had printed out map quest directions.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like trying to find I'm like, let me just use my phone.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, no, no, that type of people.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um I've had traumatic experiences with the lady on the experiences too, but not too many with the GPS.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm a lot better with directions with GPS than without, I can tell you that much.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had I had a TomTom.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: The voice that comes across is a lady's voice.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not Tom, it's not a guy, so I'm not sure why they do that.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I had a TomTom, and this was probably seven or eight years ago, and I typed in, I was trying to go to the airport.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was, I don't know where I was flying to, but I need to go to the Indianapolis airport when I was living in Indiana, and it was about an hour and a half or so away from my house.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just got this TomTom.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, this is great.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Plug in all the the coordinates, plug in um Indianapolis Airport, hit go, and it starts taking me down the turns.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we start going down the turns, turn left here, turn left here, go down this highway, turn right, wait, do a huge turn, and then turn right left, this whole thing.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then it finally says, arrived at your destination.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I look around, there are no planes, there are no cars.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is definitely not the destination.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happened was Indianapolis had recently built an entirely new airport.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: TomTom did not know that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And TomTom took me to the wrong place.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, I made my flight.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: But it's one of those things where if you're following a certain path, no matter how much you really wanted to be somewhere else, you're gonna end up where exactly where that path takes you.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Period.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: No matter how much you know intention you had of doing something different.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's this next point is that you know the path trumps, not a political thing, the path trumps your intentions every single time.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Every choice, every choice we make is a path, and every path leads to a destination.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we think about these different areas, we think about with our kids, we think about in our work, we think about spiritually, we think about financially.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Where are we trying to get to?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Where is our intention in each of those areas?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: If we're trying to grow a business, we're trying to grow up by 50%, or we're trying to cut costs by you know 10%, or we're trying to have these different goals, we have these different intentions, are the actions that we're doing, is is the plan, is the path that we're on actually going to lead to that result, or are we hoping one thing, but our path and our actions are leading to something different?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: And even in just I think that small decisions that you make, that I make, that everyone makes every day, like you come home from work, are you tired?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Are you wanting some time by yourself?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, are you like that one time like, okay, I you know, I haven't done my quiet time today, but it's okay, I don't need to do it today, or what whatever it is, you make that one choice, not really thinking, I'm gonna put myself on a path towards something else.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: But every decision that you make could end up contributes to the path you're on, but also can set you down a different path too.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh even if it just seems like a small, simple decision, uh, something that maybe I should do this, but I'm not exactly gonna do this exactly the way it should be done, or anything like that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this is just review or direction, not our intention determines our destination.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've kind of got this picture, and I'll put it back up.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: So the picture on the book, I think, is is the cover of the book is really helpful, and we're gonna talk about two areas of this path.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got the green dot, this is where you are, and you guys can see that up there.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: You've got the green dot, and this is where you are.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the big target towards the bottom of the book on the screen, that's your place where you want to be.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we end up on a target that we didn't intend to be on.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: We end up in a place that we didn't intend to be.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: We end up in a spot that's maybe negative, that we're like, man, how in the world did I get here?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we come to those places, there's there's really two places that we can look.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: We can look backwards, kind of like I did with my relationship with my younger brother.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: We can look backwards and say, okay, what were the actions that brought me to this place?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when it's a negative place, um, Jason, you were just kind of talking about it a little bit.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: When it's a negative place, oftentimes it's because we are cheating in some type of area, or we think we're doing something that's not going to be really of consequence for us.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And some of these things are when we look backwards, we can see, man, some of these things and all of these are are from the book.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: 0% financing, no money down, I'm not paid enough, so therefore I deserve this.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm in the middle of reading this book about church fraud, where it's surprising actually, how many across how many churches uh in America where church fraud happens because of this idea of the treasurer, or or somebody else says, Well, I'm not paid enough, so therefore I deserve to take this little bit extra.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm sure it happens in any other organization.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not valued enough, or I'm not this, or I put in so many hours, so therefore I can take this little extra cut.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I can cheat a little bit.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: I had uh the first ministry I was uh at, uh, the pastor of that church told me about the first ministry he was at, and he was actually at a church in Wichita, and the pastor had decided that he wasn't getting paid enough money for for his service to the church.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: They just weren't paying him enough, and so he felt like he was justified and he would take all the cash out of the offering plate and just take it.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh this the pastor that was my pastor was telling me a story, and he was, I think, 24, 25 when he was working at this church, made a big impression on him.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and he told me that just to to get to as a warning, you know.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this guy he really looked up to him, he thought he was a great pastor, and uh he really saw nothing wrong with, hey, I'll just take the cash out of the offering plate, put it in my pocket, you know.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that he had he had rationalized his decision making to the point was like, yeah, I'll just take this as mine or whatever he thought.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think it can happen to anyone really if you start rationalizing certain things.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And as people, we're really good at rationalizing stuff because we're people who we want what we want, and when we start rationalizing, it may start out small, it may start out insignificant, it may start out in a place where nobody else knows what's going on, but eventually that sin, that rationalization is going to catch up with you.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you mean you guys can see some of these other quotes.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: She makes me feel like I used to feel.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um we see this unfortunately too much as you know, you've got the person at work and they're married, and the church secretary looks really good to them, and so they start a thing and they go off.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or any other you know, area area like that.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we rationalize those things a lot of time, saying, Oh, well, it's not that bad.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that bad, it's just this once, or it's just this twice, it's just it's just three times, or we're just we're just friends, it's it's nothing serious and all those things.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the cool thing about this principle of the path is it's not it's not short term, it's it's long term, made up of multiple decisions, multiple actions along that path until you end up in this place where it's like, how in the world did I even get here?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, what can we do if we end up in a place that we didn't intend to be in, and we want to do something different?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: We we want to actually end up where we intended to end up.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: What are some things we can do?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think that what you were saying and looking at the the picture again of the target and where you're at and the green dot that we had up there.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um we were talking about this as in prep preparation for teaching this, and you made a good good point that if you find yourself there, it's important to look back at the steps that got yourself there.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, something that a lot of people don't do.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh people that have financial issues continually, a lot of times they won't like say hold up and say, Hey, what got me here and what can I change so I don't back up the path and and hopefully not go there the same way.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they are they say, Oh, what okay, I'm gonna transfer this bounce to another credit card and this and do this and try to play a game to try to figure out a better way to kind of manipulate the place they're in instead of backing up and choosing a better path.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think that's a really, really th good thing to do is look back at what brought you there.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we were talking about this too, that people say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: And if you find yourself stuck in that, it's like time to, hey, let's let's try something different.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if this has gotten me heartache or this has gotten me in a bad place financially, or this has gotten my marriage in a place where we barely know each other.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Let's back up and see what we've been doing and see where we could we can we can change.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's a helpful thing for anyone to do at any stage of their life.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big deal.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Realizing that and in it in our world, it it's extremely not gonna say it's difficult to do this, because it's actually really easy, but it's not common, it's not um really applauded for us to do this in each of our areas of our lives to stop wherever we're at and just evaluate.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Evaluate, okay, what are the steps that got us here?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Take some time and and reflect in my marriage, okay.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Timeout, how are we doing, and how what what are the actions that brought us to this place in this business?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's let's take a timeout.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Where are we at?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's the reality and how did we get there?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And just take time to not go forward, not innovate, not do new things, not all those things.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a time for all of that, but we also need this time of reflection and evaluation.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: How did we get here and what can we do differently if we want a different result?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because we can't keep doing the same thing and want something different.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like when you're playing football and you decide you want to run a 24 dive because you think it's just your stuff and you you want to get into the end zone.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you're 24 drive drive drive done.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: 24 dives getting stuffed every single time.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can't keep doing a 24 dive and expect something different.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: You have to do something different if you want to achieve and do something different.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's simple, right?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't think of it.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I think that's a lot of times we don't want to put in the work to really reflect.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we're always trying to look forward, not look back.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, people say things like that all the time.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Don't don't look back, look forward, pushing for you know, pushing forward.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: But every once in a while, if you don't know what got you there, it's good to look back and see.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, another thing I think that would be a beneficial thing to do, but it's a hard thing to do, is that if you find yourself in a place where I'm not where I want to be, or I don't know, you know, anything in your life that you're like, I'm on a path, I've gotten somewhere I did not intend to be or did not want to be.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: A good thing to do, which is a hard thing to do, is find someone that is wiser than you, more experienced than you, and talk to them about it.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh now, a lot of times that that comes with twofold.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: You need to, if you're gonna do that and they say something, you're like, oh no, that's hard.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to do that.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then you're probably gonna stay in the same path.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that's hard to do when someone can speak into your life and you think, okay, they might be right, but I'm no, I don't really want to do that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Or um and find that person that you know that you can trust to tell you the truth of what and actually see the situation that they see and tell you that.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because it takes it takes trust and a chance if you're a friend with someone, or someone says, Hey, what do you think about this?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you're kind of thinking in the back of your mind, if I tell you what I really think about that, you might not be my friend anymore.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, but it is important to have people that you know would tell you the truth and say, Hey, this is exactly how I see it, at least, you know.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of times we can we can deceive ourselves.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't remember where I heard this, but it was it was an illustration I and I thought it was perfect.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you've got something, you know, you want your relationships to go well, but you it seems like every relationship you're in, there's continual strife and maybe anger, animosity, and they and they always end badly.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's always a bad ending in that particular relationship, whether it's with a friend or a guy or a girl or whoever.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And every person that you start a relationship, it always ends in the same way.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we think it's their fault that this happened.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: They did this, this, or this, and so it just ended badly.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: They did this, this, and this, and it ended badly.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't do these things and it ended badly.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the common denominator between all those things is you are there in each of those relationships, and you haven't changed anything that you're doing in each of those relationships.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we we forget to look at ourselves and say, well, may it's it's maybe it's not everybody else's fault.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's some things that I need to do differently if I want a different result in that.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um in the in the book, and actually there's also a sermon series that you can watch on YouTube, probably other places too, but it's free on YouTube, uh, the Andy Stanley talking about destination and the principle of the path, and he talks about Proverbs chapter seven, and it really made an effect on me because uh first off, he he re he taught about Proverbs 7 uh a way that I had never really thought of it before.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: And what's happening in Proverbs 7 is that there is an older gentleman looking at a younger gentleman and looking at a situation that he's able to get into.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: And this younger guy is walking down the street and he comes in contact with this lady that's dressed like a prostitute, but she's not a prostitute, but she's dressed like a prostitute, and she is seducing him.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: She's saying, Hey, come on in.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: I've been waiting, I've been looking for you, and really just like puffing him up and making him feel good.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the the wiser man that is telling the giving the advice in this proverb is looking down at him and saying, This is not the right path.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you should be hearing Jaws music in your head, you know.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: But the younger gentleman's like, Wow, you know, he's has whatever song that would be in his head, you know, I don't know, easy like Sunday morning or something.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, he's he's like, wow, this lady's been looking for me and and and she wants me, and this is gonna be great.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then she goes on to say, and my husband's not home, and he's like, Yeah, hopefully not.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, this is great.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the way Andy Stanley describes it just made me think of it.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like, there is two, there, there are definitely two ways of looking at the situation.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: The younger guy is is totally like, Man, this I how I'm dreaming.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: This is the you know, this is the best thing that ever could happen to me.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the older guy's like, This is a path, it's not just a choice, it's a path you're going down.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, at the end of verse uh 27, he says, Her house is a highway to the grave leading down to the chambers of death.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: That he was going by making these decisions, he didn't realize it.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: He thought it was all fun and games, but it was really calling his heart towards God, callusing his decision making, and calling who he was, you know, bringing him down to death.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: All the way he was smiling, thinking it was the greatest thing ever is going on.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: And uh sometimes that's what happens when we're on a path, we can't see the end of it, uh, we get stuck in the middle of it, and that's why it's good to have other counsel too.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 17, nine, the heart is deceitful above all things, it's desperately sick or wicked, who can understand it?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of the things that we have to understand about our hearts is that naturally we want deceitful things, we want our things, and we don't necessarily want God things.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: But that's why, as believers, we have the Holy Spirit to rely on, and we just need to make sure that we are relying on that spirit every single day.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then James 1.5, if you need wisdom, ask our generous God and He will give it to you.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: If we want wisdom, we want a better destination, then we need to be in communication with the one who has all the wisdom.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um so next week, Drive by Daniel H.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Pink.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Pink.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's talking about motivation and what actually motivates us.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say this verse together.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is Proverbs 426.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Proverbs 426.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: There we go, for recording purposes.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Group discussion.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's four things on here.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Recall a time you were traveling, you took the wrong road.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: How'd you get there?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: The principle of paths teaches that direction determines destination.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: What are some paths you have taken and where did they lead you?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's your desired destination and finances, marriage, those types of areas, and then what path are you on now with each of those?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the right path?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is that not the right path?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Could you pray for us?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for bringing a group of guys together early in the morning to enjoy each other's company, but also to learn from your word, Father.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: I pray that uh we would understand that you do have a path of righteousness for us all to step upon and walk upon, Father.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I pray that we would understand how to do that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: I pray that if we find ourselves not walking that way, that we would uh cry out to you, seek seek wisdom of other people, of other godly people, and and uh Father, I just pray for the path that we're we're on.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: I pray that it would lead to you and lead uh to other people to you.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's in Jesus' name I pray.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.