This is the official weekly podcast of Westside Community Church in Beaverton, Oregon. We’re made up of a variety of people who like to keep it real, don’t take themselves too seriously and who want to get the most out of life. At Westside, we welcome people from all walks of life – in fact, there are NO PERFECT PEOPLE ALLOWED! We strive to be a "safe place to investigate faith" so people can come as they are and be themselves while they explore who Jesus is, find friends and make a difference.
We post content here that is practical, helpful, and relevant to real life. We hope you'll find the inspiration, motivation and help to grow.
What do you do when "past performance predicts future performance" starts to feel like a life sentence? This week, Gabe Kolstad unpacks the one shift that can take you from hopelessness to hope, even when your external circumstances haven't changed. He shares a real story from Westside of a man who walked in devastated and was visibly transformed just weeks later, then walks through 2 Corinthians 4 to reveal what might be happening behind the scenes of your struggle.
Discover:
Why the business rule "past performance predicts future performance" is the wrong lens for your life
The difference between your external scoreboard and your internal one
What Paul meant when he said our light and momentary troubles are achieving eternal glory
How to fix your eyes on what's unseen when the visible feels overwhelming
A practical mindset shift you can make today
Sometimes the worst seasons produce the strongest internal growth. If your life doesn't look like a win right now, this episode might reframe everything. The scoreboard you've been reading might not be the one that actually counts.
Key Takeaways:
You are not your own source of hope
External loss does not mean internal loss
What you can't see might be more real than what you can
Hope is expectation, and expectation can be redirected
God works in, through, and behind the hard stuff
Question for you to think about:
What if you stopped keeping score by what's visible and started paying attention to what God is building inside of you?
If this hit home, share it with someone who needs it this week. Drop a comment and tell us how you're processing this. Subscribe so you never miss a Midweek Motivation.
So there's, you know, a a funny little story about a man. He approached a little league baseball game in one afternoon and asked a boy in the dugout what the score was. The boy responded, 18 to nothing. We're behind. Wow, said the spectator. I'll bet you're discouraged. Why should I be discouraged? replied the little boy. We haven't even gotten up to bat yet. I mean, they hadn't even gotten up to bat yet. And it was 18 to nothing. And he's like, why should we be discouraged? We still have a chance to win this game. I love that attitude. Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast, where we bring practical help for your faith and life. Here's today's episode. Hey, I'm Gabe Colstad, and I'm back with you for Midweek Motivation. And if you're just popping into this, you need to know we do this every week. So make sure you subscribe to this because today I want to kind of dive into the idea that what if there was a switch you could flip on that would take you from hopelessness to hope? If so, I know that would make a big difference for you, just like it has for me. And when I do this, uh, when I practice what I'm about to talk about, it does. It lifts my spirit up and it puts me in a different kind of decision-making category. And decisions that we make, they kind of make our life. So I think we could be people who end up making a lot better decisions in the very near future, even today, based on this one thing. And I want to talk about it. I will tell you this. Recently, I saw this kind of thing happen right before my very eyes. This dude came to church at West Side and uh he came up front afterwards for prayer with his wife. And uh, I mean, he it seemed like he really needed to pray. And so I talked with him, and he was really, really torn up because uh he was afraid of what was gonna happen. Uh, he had he had made some decisions in the past, and sort of the consequences were coming, uh, coming due. And and it was a devastating feeling for him. And he was just reaching out for some prayer and some hope, really. And we we paused and we prayed, and it was a it was a kind of a turning point. I could tell something big was going on in his life. Well, just recently, only a few weeks later, the same person and uh his wife came to me in our lobby at church and shared just this kind of dramatic transformation that's been going on. I mean, they were talking about their prayer time at night and how they're reading the Bible together and they're ripping through it. I mean, I was so proud of them. Uh, but they're just making all these different decisions. And I wonder if it has something to do with the idea of hope, that some flicker of hope entered into his heart, and he decided to go with it. And it just begins to change you from the inside out, and certainly has made a very visible uh difference in his life. Let me define hope again. Hope is expectation. You know, what do you see coming? What do you think is going to happen? What do you expect? That's however much hope you have is, you know, how high or low that is. And for us, here's the problem. And I think this is where it goes south for me and for most of us is that uh we know this concept from business. Whether you're a manager or an employee, you know, they say past performance predicts future performance, right? And that's not great if you haven't done well. And it's not great for your hope if you feel like you've made a mistake, because you're looking at your life going, oh, if my past performance predicts my future performance, this is not good news for me. And I get so down on myself, and you probably get so down on yourself and discouraged because we didn't perform like we thought we should have. And that becomes for us sort of the benchmark that we think is possible for us. But I want to ask the question, and here's where I think this switch might flip. Is there something deeper happening that you're not seeing? That's the question. Is there something deeper happening that you're not seeing? Uh GK Chesterton says this says it's only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength. I mean, hope isn't even necessary if anything's going well, right? But hope is important when we do face adverse circumstances, when there is a trial, when there is a storm. That's when hope is important. And hope is expectation. So there's, you know, a funny little story about a man. He approached a little league baseball game in one afternoon and asked a boy in the dugout what the score was. The boy responded, 18 to nothing. We're behind. Wow, said the spectator. I'll bet you're discouraged. Why should I be discouraged? replied the little boy. We haven't even gotten up to bat yet. I mean, they hadn't even gotten up to bat yet. And it was 18 to nothing. And he's like, Why should we be discouraged? We still have a chance to win this game. I love that attitude. And I think sometimes you got to look at, well, what's really going on behind the scenes? Because there is what you can see, and then there is reality. And if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're a person of faith, you realize, yeah, there are things happening behind the scenes that God is doing, also that the enemy is doing, that are really, they are factors. And there is a kind of a whole reality behind what we see. And Paul talks about it in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians chapter four. And I really want to just read a few of these verses to you because he says this. He says in verse 7, he says, But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that all surpassing power is from God and not from us. He goes, We're we're just kind of like broken pots of clay, he says. And then he says, We are hard-pressed on every side. Listen to how Paul was describing his circumstances, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in us. He's talking about how they had been through all sorts of bad stuff. I mean, shipwrecks, beatings, persecution. You know, that Paul had been stoned, uh, rocks, thrown at him until he was nearly dead. I mean, things that no person would want to have happen. You're you're you're looking at your life going, I don't think we're winning right now. And you might feel like that sometimes. I don't think I'm winning right now. But he says this. He says, Therefore we do not lose heart. This is in verse 16 of 2 Corinthians chapter 4. We don't lose heart. Though outwardly he says we are wasting away, yet inwardly we're being renewed day by day. He's he's like, there's a difference between what you see happening on the outside and what's happening on the inside. Could it be possible that your scoreboard for life might not look good, but your spirit is getting stronger? Could it be? Could it be that maybe you do have some external losses, but that actually those are the things that God might use to build you inwardly? And what if something's going on behind the scenes that's valuable, even though you might have people looking at you going, like, wow, sucks to be you, you know, you're really not doing great here in this first inning of the game. You might be dealing with some consequences from some past decisions and going, Oh man, this is my future. It's going downhill. But could it be that God is strengthening you on the inside? I think that's a really, really important question. And really, it's a reality because this is what Paul is teaching us. Verse 17 of this passage says, For our light and momentary troubles, listen, are achieving for us an eternal glory that outweighs them all. He goes, like all these things that are around us that we struggle with, we got all these things. We got relationship things, we got money things, we got job things, we got, we got, you know, life things, we got internal, we got internal battles, all these things that we're struggling with. He's like, they are light and momentary troubles. And they, the troubles themselves, are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. He's like, we're getting better. He says in verse 18 of this passage, and this is where I think the magic happens, because this is where you flip the switch on. He says, So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. That's awesome. He's like, You got all these problems around you, but don't forget to look at the progress within you. This is hope. Could you could you find a minute today to reflect on that? Okay, maybe the way you've been keeping score of life hasn't really been going great. And so you you would look at your life and go, I'm not winning. And so my view is down, not up. My expectation is down. Because what that's really doing is looking at yourself as your own source of hope, looking at your performance as your own source of hope. And I'm guilty of doing this constantly. I have to, I have to, I'm wired for this, I guess. I have to constantly remind myself that I am not my own source of hope. I have to constantly go, look, you didn't do what you wanted to do, but God is doing something in you that's greater. God is doing something in you to build you. And uh I think this is really a key to flipping that switch of hope on is get your eyes off of all the circumstances. Stop looking at that scoreboard and start looking at the internal scoreboard. What is God achieving in you? How are you growing as a person? I think it's so important. You can reframe your circumstances through the lens of what God is doing behind the scenes. I love Psalm 121. It's the psalmist saying, I look up to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. You know, there's a God that loves you, that is working in all kinds of ways in your life. And he's working for good. That's what our series here at Westside, uh, Hope and Future, is really based on. It's Jeremiah 29, 11. God says, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. He has a future for you, he has a hope for you. And there are things that he has created that are gonna be better than you could imagine. It's gonna be better than the, you know, the wind that you have kind of decided that if that doesn't happen, you're gonna lose hope. Well, what if that win doesn't happen, but God produces in you something that's greater, a character, a character trait, a value that's coming inside of you. He's he's producing what Paul called an eternal weight of glory, something really, really great that you can pass on and that you can give away, and that can actually make this world a better place. There might be more going on than you know. And it's time to flip that switch, look behind the scenes, and realize God is at work. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Midweek Motivation. To make sure you don't miss any content in the future, please subscribe, share, and if you enjoyed this, give us a like and consider popping by a Westside service some weekend. You can find out more at Westside Community Church.com.
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