Hey, brother. So I've been talking to
Patricia. You sent me her information.
We've kind of befriended each other.
Well, not kind of. We've befriended each other.
We've been talking. And she said something
interesting to me today that I think would be a good podcast
topic, whether with me or someone else or just something
for you to riff on, which is that as she's gotten to know me,
she said to me today that, hey, you know, when I first heard
your podcast, I kind of thought, I thought of you as this, like,
spiritual giant. And I was kind of intimidated to
talk to you. But the more you share with me,
the more I realized that we're all just trying to get through.
Like, we're all just trying to do the best we can.
And even with people who you might look up to or admire,
you're still just struggling humans.
And it got me thinking about how often in Christianity we present
only our string of victories and we aren't honest about our
struggles. And if we are honest about our
struggles, we contextualize them only as past things.
And now I don't think that it would be super beneficial to
just have a griping session just constantly.
Every time a leader or somebody in in the church goes to preach
and they just start whining about all their life problems, I
feel like, you know, I remember you asking me, you know, what
was your process to get here? And I said to you dying, I died.
I died. 1000 *, I died. And then I died again.
If you think about the process of death, it's it's really not
cute, right? Like you lose your bowels, you
lose all the color in your face, it's ugly.
And then you begin to stink. Without that process of dying,
you, you don't ever get anywhere.
You if Jesus had to die, we have to die.
So what does that death actually look like?
And I think sometimes, I don't know, I think it was Elijah
after the prophets of Baal. And he calls down fire and he
just, they all get smoked. And then he finds out Jezebel's
after him and he goes running into the woods like a crying
little baby. And we look at that and we go,
what the heck, my dude, What's wrong with you?
How could you have just done that?
And now you're this. But that's the reality of the
situation, though. And like all the awesome things
I've shared that the encounters with God, the way he's used me,
etcetera, etcetera, they only come because God showed me the
depravity of my heart this fast. That Prince that I have been on,
oh sweet, blessed savior, I it's been dying day after day after
day. God being like, hey, look at how
you're a narcissist, Carly. Hey, look at how you idolize
yourself over me. Hey, look at this cesspool of
hate you actually have for your marriage.
Hey, this, this the next thing. The next thing.
And it's been extraordinarily
difficult and humbling, and it's been death.
It is I've I've been dying. I'm not sleeping, I'm not
eating. And I'm constantly being shown
what a Wretch I am. But that's the reality of it.
It's not cute. It's not just me going in my
prayer closet very tidily, reading the word out loud, and
all the cosmos just coming back into order.
No, it's not that at all. People think that the zenith of
spiritual power is the mountaintop with God, but it's
not. The zenith of power is the
valley of the shadow of death. It's the wilderness where Satan
comes to tempt you. That's where it happens.
That's where things change. And that's when more of him
abides in more of you, right? That's when the darkness that
we're been too afraid to look at gets pushed out and he takes up
residence. And I just think that to present
our Christian walks as the succession of victories is
really disengenuine. It's very disingenuine, but
nobody wants to talk about how ugly they are because obviously
right. And I just thought to myself,
man, I don't ever want to be the kind of influence or leader or
whatever over other people that only presents themselves as so,
so tight with the Lord and nothing ever goes wrong.
Because honestly, like as much as I want to be surrounded by
people who are trustworthy, obviously, right?
I don't. I don't ever want to be
surrounded with by people who are loyal to me, not me.
If we're doing something together, it's because God said
for you to come alongside and do something with me, you
understand? Like Prince is often asked by
the pastor in the church that we serve in.
What does he want to do? How does he want to serve?
To give him to give the pastor a scope of like what?
Why we're here and what we are looking to do.
And Prince is like, I'm here as long as the Lord has me here and
I'm I'm here to serve in the way that he tells me to serve.
I'm not here because of you. I'm here because this is where
he told me to be. And I'm, you know, we're not
even there because of the vision.
We're not there because of the vision to take the city and see
people cross the line of faith. We're there because God said be
there. And whatever that looks like
from day-to-day is what that looks like from day-to-day.
And to be honest with you, I think that the church has really
become such a cult of personality that we think we
need to find people who are loyal to the vision.
And even if God did give us that vision, it doesn't mean that
that the people who are loyal to the vision are actually obeying
God. They just might be gung ho to
see something change. I was telling God this morning
in prayer. Lord, I want like bring revival,
but bring it in the bus stop. Bring it in the target.
Bring it in the office. Bring it in the house where
nobody sees. Bring it in somebody's shower
while they're taking a shower. Bring it in the schools.
Take it out of the four walls of church where somebody can stand
up and say, I was pastor when this happened.
I fasted and I prayed and God answered.
Because it's really just a very passive way of crowning
ourselves, let's be honest, right?
But if revival breaks out in the bus stops all over the country,
who's gonna take? Who's gonna take credit for
that? Nobody.
Anyway, I'm on a bit of a tirade and this is a long message, but
I think it's worth talking about, you know, Because
otherwise what ends up happening is people end up looking to
other people as their source of answers and solutions.
And there is no formula. There is no three steps to a
better marriage. You have to get in your death
with Christ and deal with it. And that's going to look
different for everybody. Everybody.
That's not going to be a formula.
It cannot be a formula because it's only an obedience that we
that we see breakthrough obedience to God in the moments
of our lives. That's it.
Nobody can can make a three-step guide to that.
Who could do that? How?
How you need to be humbled by the Lord is going to be looking
completely different than me. Anyway, thank you brother.
I got a little heated with this one because it just hit me so
hard. It hit me really hard this
morning. Anyway, I hope you have a
beautiful, wonderful, awesome, amazing day.
OK. Bye.