Hello, I'm Alan, and you are with the family business with the Lessies, but you're not with the Lessies right now. I am clearly not in the Lessie, but I get to work with them every day in the family business, along with our production staff, Ashley and Jonathan. If you've been listening and watching the show for a while, you know that we are the behind the scenes and we get to do a little takeover during our mid-season and share some of the things that happened behind the scenes, both in Sundays in the family business and here in the podcast booth. Well, as we're going through the mid-season, I want to give you some tips that will help you get to season four, which we're preparing for right now. Number one, you can go ahead and share your favorite episode with five more people who haven't heard of the family business yet. They would definitely love to hear the stories and get into all the wisdom that the Alessie's share here on a weekly basis. Number two, I would love for you to go check out AlesiFamily Business.com. Just tap the link in the show notes, and you can find that little blue button that says Ask the Alesssies. That's where you can add your voice to our show, and you can actually let us know something you'd like to hear or a topic you'd like the Alessie's to tackle in season four. And finally, during the mid-season, we are going to be popping in from time to time and sharing some mid-season moments, some things that you maybe don't get a chance to hear or see because here in this podcast booth, we can't share it all. But there are some things that happen on Sundays in the family business that I think you would love to either listen to, watch, or review, even if you're already a member of the family. So we're gonna jump into one of those moments right now where PS, I get to call him P.S. by the way, if you go back to season three, episode I think 22, I get to share that little way of talking about my boss, Pastor Steve. Go and listen to that episode and all the other ones where you get to see how the family interacts. But this moment we're about to share comes from Sunday, where Pastor Steve shared a little bit of a fun, I'd say a predicament that he got into that also tells a story about how you can come out of any circumstance or obstacle you might reach. So stay tuned. Let's get right into that moment from Sundays in the family business.
SPEAKER_02So all year long we've been talking about faith for the good life, but here's a thought that I want you to consider this morning. And it's not so much that in this faith for the good life that we're talking about God, and I need your attention. Ready? Today I want to talk to you about having faith in yourself, having faith in you, and who you are as a man or a woman, and what God has deposited on the inside of you, so that you can accomplish everything that God wants you to have, and better yet, what you desire to have in your life. So, faith for the good life? Today is going to be about having faith in yourself. So some of you know that we have chickens at our house, and it's kind of crazy to have them in South Florida, but we're that neighbor. And uh the way that the whole thing started is because we have this farm in Georgia and we like to keep the chicken population healthy up there because it's in the wild. So coyotes and foxes and things like that there take out some of our chickens. So we hatch some little chickies here and we help them grow, and then they give us some good eggs, and so it's all about that. And now the the chickens are set up, we don't let them free range around the whole yard. The dogs will eat them. So, what we have is from the original owners of the house, they had a dog run on the side of the house. Well, we took that and that's where we put the chickens, and we built a coop that's like 20 feet wide by about 10 feet deep, and and then we have in that little coop, that's where most of the chickens stay most of the time, we have a small four feet by four feet by four foot tall, a cage. And that was a cage that I bought years ago for my dog. I would put my German shepherd in them at night. But now I use them when we hatch these little baby chicks to let the chicks grow up in there. So I was out the other day and I was doing some cleaning. I was by myself, Mary had gone somewhere, the girls were out and about, and I was sitting there, and I decided, let me go ahead and clean out the coop because it gets all nasty and so on. So I'm out there cleaning it up, and I happened to notice that the little chick cage was also pretty nasty. So I thought, let me get down in there and clean it up. So I'm in shorts and I'm in flip-flops and I'm uh nice t-shirt and stuff, and so I'm down in this thing, and I noticed one of the mother hens wanting to come around and jump in to be with one of her little chicks, and I didn't want that, and I closed the door behind me, and when I did, I realized, oh no, I locked myself in. Because that that particular latch on that door is one of those latches that has the post that goes in and it lifts up, and then as soon as the lats go, it comes down, and when it's stuck. So the first thing I go do is look for my phone, and I don't even have my phone. So now I'm down in this thing, and I don't want to touch anything because there's chicken poopy everywhere, and I and I'm I'm like this, and it's about four foot high, and you know, after a while you can only stay like this for so long. So I'm thinking to myself, okay, Mary's gone, so it does me no good to sit there and yell and whistle. Nothing, nobody's gonna hear. My kids are not there, and I don't have my stinking cell phone. So I'm sitting there for about 15 minutes trying to get out of this thing. Now I put my hand in the little door, you know, where the latch is. But the more I put my fat hand, who's got fat hands? The more I put my fat hand in there, it's pushing the door, so the pressure is on that latch, and that latch just isn't opening up at all. And I'm stuck in that thing, and I'm like, this is a great sermon story, but this stinks right now in the moment. Because I don't want to sit, I can't sit, because if I sit, I'm gonna get the stuff on me. This is really bad. So I looked around and I'm I'm looking for all the little things, you know, it's not as though you can ask a chicken for help, you know. Hey, so this is really getting ridiculous. So I finally take one of the posts where we put them aside and the chickens sit up on them, they roost sit in there, and I finally pulled one of them out, and it's filled with poop and everything. And and I start to maneuver how I'm gonna get that thing in there, and finally, after like five minutes or so, boom, popped the thing open, and I got out and was like, wow. Thank God. I'm brilliant, but thank God. You know, and and here's the thought, because it's easy to find ourselves just like this in life. You know what it feels like to be caged in? That. Where when you're going through something in life where you feel as though you're just not yourself and you're it's harsh, it's it's uncomfortable, there's stuff all around you. You know, maybe maybe it's your own doing. Maybe it's something that you created, or maybe it was something that was imposed on you. You know that feeling of being caged in? Here's my question to you. What do you do when you feel caged in and there's not a man around to help you? What do you do? How do you handle it? When there's no angelic being all of a sudden showing up to answer your prayers? When maybe you're so deep and in a dark place that you feel as though there's no way out, and all you can do is rely on your instincts and your own skill, your own gifts, your own abilities. Now listen, I know faith in God is a must. Everything that I pretty much have in my life today is the result of having faith in God. And we're all going to get to the place that if we want to have the good life, the real good life, we've got to make sure this right here, our faith is intact with God. But second to your faith in God, you are going to have to have faith in yourself. Now I know your spouse may be the dream come true for you, and they are your everything. But there's going to be times when that spouse can't be your everything. Then what do you do? When the prayer team can't be contacted, and you feel as though your prayers can't produce any immediate relief. Have you ever noticed? It's like the person that prays for patience. The worst thing you ever want to do is say, God, give me patience. Because you're never delivered from your impatience. You have to walk out some things in your life to develop patience. What happens when you're in one of those moments of in-between? It's like one guy who says, you know, when what God closes one door? And and uh, how's that little phrase go? When when when you find uh the door is closed, you know, and then you wait for another one to open, right? But what happens when the other one doesn't open right away? It's they call it, they say it's hell in the hallway. What do you do when man closes a door and God doesn't open another one right away? It's hell in the hallway. What do you do then? And Pastor Steve, you don't have a cell phone, and you do, and you text him, but he doesn't answer right away because he's stuck in his own cage. What do you do? I'll tell you what you do. You look deep down on the inside of yourself and you see that everything God has ever given you is enough to help you scratch and fight and push and trust and get yourself back up on your feet because you're gonna have to need faith in yourself.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening to the Family Business Podcast with the Alesssies. We appreciate you listening and learning with us as we just shared more about the Family Business. You know, I bet there's someone you know who can use this kind of advice, encouragement. So make sure to share this episode with them and their family because let's face it, family is everyone's business. If you want to be a part of our family, subscribe to the show right now on your favorite app and make sure to download the episodes so you can hear them at any time. Oh, and one more thing one of the best ways to help us spread the word about the family business with the Alesssies is by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. So help us out, write a review, and join us next time at the Family Business Podcast with the Alesi.