Rising Above The Storm With A Higher Perspective

The world can feel like it’s turning up the heat by the day, and a lot of us are carrying that pressure in our minds, families, and faith. We sit with a hard but hopeful idea: heavy times are not new, and living with real expectation for Jesus Christ’s soon return is meant to form us, not frighten us. When we keep that horizon in view, it fuels hunger to know Him now and invites us into deeper unity as the presence of God melts down our defenses and reshapes us from the inside out.

We dig into a simple metaphor with big spiritual punch: lift. Just as an aircraft wing needs resistance to rise, spiritual resistance can become the friction God uses to elevate our perspective. Instead of getting weighed down by conflict, suffering, and adversity, we talk about yielding to the Holy Spirit and discovering an inner-core peace that replaces striving. We also name the danger of relying on externals, especially in Western culture, and why God often uses pressure as a refiner’s fire that teaches us to live from the inside out.

Along the way, we anchor the conversation in key Bible passages for Christian encouragement and spiritual growth: Isaiah 40:31, Colossians 3:1–2, Ephesians 2:6, and 2 Corinthians 4:17–18. We challenge the modern “find yourself” mindset and point to identity in Christ as stable, secure, and Spirit-empowered. Finally, we get candid about the cost of discipleship, Bonhoeffer’s warning about cheap grace, and what it means to pick up the cross daily while trusting God’s timing as perfectly on time.

If this helped you reframe what you’re facing, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one pressure point in your life that you want God to turn into lift?

Transcript

Amazing Times And Heavy Pressure

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You know, we are living in some pretty amazing times with some significant things taking place. And some of them are negative and they are heavy and they are actually almost oppressive because they produce conflict, suffering, difficulties, things that are hard and negative like that. But we're living in a time where the pressure cooker of things is just, I mean, it's intense. But, you know, actually, everyone in every generation for the past thousand years, right? Let's say a thousand years, a millennium, for the past thousand years, people have been saying basically the same thing. They've been saying, we live in some amazing times. You know, the Lord is coming soon. And that's been said for a long time. And the same type of thing has been said. And you know what? That doesn't diminish the reality of what was going on then, nor what's taking place now. And I think it's actually a healthy thing to live with the anticipation of the soon return of the Lord. For me, it produces a sense of real hunger to know him better now and to allow him to use me to whatever length he possibly can now, so that as things continue to develop throughout eternity, we can say that we know one another. I mean, we really know each other. And the same goes for us as people, where we drop our guards, we allow Holy Spirit to move within us in a way that joins us together, and the presence of God being that refiner's fire that really melts us down and molds us into being one. It's his presence, it's the presence of the Lord that's going to unite us. Because it will produce either a love for him or it will produce hardness of heart even more, just like it was in the life of Pharaoh and Israel when Israel was set free from captivity in Egypt. And so we're living in some amazing times. And yes, we are living in the light of the soon return of Jesus Christ. And in that, there are going to be, in light of that, and in lieu of that, there are going to be times of pressure. And we're going to feel pressure. And sometimes it's going to come in, actually, sometimes, not every time. In fact, the formula is there is no formula. What we're sharing are some things that are beneficial, and they are beneficial to the degree that God breathes on, breathes on them and makes them real to you, and imparts to you that encouragement that gives you courage on the deepest, in the deepest way, in the deepest part of your life to be encouraged, curged on the inside so that you can move forward. And so once again, we're going to experience pressure, and we are right now, but just as aerodynamic lift, right? I get this, just as aerodynamic lift requires the resistance of air over the wings

Living Ready For Christ’s Return

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to propel an aircraft forward, spiritual resistance can act as the friction needed to launch us higher. The tension, right? The tension of our struggles, when met with the forward momentum and power of the Holy Spirit, provides the exact forces needed to elevate our perspective. And folks, we need that in our lives. We don't need to be weighed down by the pressures of the world. We need to rise above them and use the power of the Holy Spirit within us to propel us forward. And as we meet the resistance, we actually elevate and we are able to go higher. When we resist the devil and submit ourselves to God, we rise to a higher level. And in that respect, the devil flees from us. Because the lift that takes place takes place by the use of that negative stuff. So when we face adversity, shifting our vantage point allows us to rise above the details of a chaotic situation and view it with clarity, peace, and purpose. Right? The Lord wants us to align ourselves with Him. And in so doing, in covenant with Him, He empowers us to move forward, and in the kingdom of God, forward is upward. And so when we move forward, as God enables us to move forward, we actually experience at a given point in time a lift. And we rise above. Not because we're doubling down our efforts, but because we are yielding over to God and we're yielding to the power of His Spirit and not trying to do it on our own because we don't have enough power to get the lift above the situation. If we try to do it on our own power, that weighs us down, not the glory of the Lord, not the weight of God's presence, which we experience when we go higher. We don't experience the weight of that suffering or that difficulty or that negative tension. We don't experience the weight of that. We experience the weight of God's glory. Big difference. Instead of strife, it's peace. It's a inner core solid peace that comes. There's scripture that I'm gonna give you a list of scripture references so that you can look these up later and find some real encouragement in reading them. And they are Isaiah 40 verse 31, which compares those who trust in the Lord to eagles rising above storms, right? Colossians 3 verses 1 and 2. This commands believers to set their minds on things above, right? Not earthly

Pressure As Lift Through The Spirit

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realities. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 6 reveals that believers are already spiritually seated in heavenly places with Christ. Oh man, come on. Come on, come on. We are already there, positionally seated with Christ in heavenly places, yet we walk on planet earth, meaning we have dual citizenship and a dual reality of living in both the spiritual world and in the natural world. Christ has secured, Yeshua has secured, Jesus has secured our identity and it's found in him. Our identity is found in relationship with Jesus, not in our own pursuits of finding ourselves. I remember back in the 60s and 70s, there was a kind of a surge for a while of people finding the Eastern religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Hare Krishna, so on and so forth. And it was because people want to find themselves. There's a big push on find yourself. Well, finding yourself is like peeling the skin off an onion. You keep peeling the layers back, tend to find yourself until you get nothing. Because the effort that we put in finding ourselves is actually wasted effort and time because we can't. Our identity is not found in our pursuits or in our attempts to create that identity. And some of us have tried. And I mean it works for a while, but it's just really a lot of work. And it's eventually, I mean, it's like trying to keep a tire that's got a hole in it, inflated. You got to keep pumping it. And it just keeps leaking out. But when we're empowered by the Spirit of God and we're in covenant relationship with Him, things are different, and we can do some different things because of that. And 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 17 through 18 frames temporary affliction as a mechanism producing eternal, weighty issues that are weighty and they're glorious. We are able to experience things that produce eternal, weightier glory. We have a better resurrection. So the airfoil effect, right? Just as wings need resistance from the wind to create lift, faith requires testing to build spiritual endurance. The refiner's fire, heavy opposition burns away impurities, forcing reliance on internal spiritual power rather than external circumstances. That's a big one for us in the West. Learning not to rely on the externals and living in a way that we operate from the inside out. The momentum generation, right? The Holy Spirit provides forward velocity through grace, transforming the friction of sin and trials into upward thrust. That is good news. Things that we're going through that are difficult are not wasted time. It's not making you late for the date. You're right on time. You are not late, my friend. You are right on time. And God is not late. He is perfect in his timing, and he is right on time in your life, in my life, in our lives, and in what's going on in the world we live in. Sometimes it doesn't look like that, but in all reality, it is in control, and God is the one who is controlling it ultimately. Vantage point shift. Rising higher does not erase the storm below, but it changes our relationship to it by placing us above it. Not just in it, above it. And so God has something that He is doing to you and through you, just as He's doing it to me and through me.

Scripture Anchors And Identity In Christ

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We are equal in value, yet we differ in function, and God is doing something significant to us and through us because there are things taking place right now that have never taken place before. And you are called into the position that you're in to fulfill something that is beyond you, it's impossible for you to do, but you're called into it and you're chosen because God wants to reveal his glory, and he chooses things oftentimes that are weak, in order to confound the strong man. Or things that are of really no reputation to cause people of great reputation to be in wonders how that person can express themselves the way they're expressing themselves. Their background doesn't really indicate that they should be able to do that. But here they are speaking in a way that reveals that they've been with Jesus. Oh man. There are things going on that we're called into, and they are beyond us, and that's good. Because we get to have the opportunity to participate, to cooperate, to be part of the divine nature being expressed in the earth as it is in heaven, to the degree that it can be right now, and that degree is increasing. The depth to which God is revealing himself is increasing. Both river rising as well as his presence being magnified more and more and more as relationship, covenant relationship, cutting covenant with God as that becomes a reality throughout the generations, not just for people that are older, but for generations. All the generations, the younger generations, the younger generations being captivated by a living God, a living relationship. So that costs them everything. But it's worth being part of, and that's the kingdom of God, being a citizen. Hallelujah. Yes, when Christ bids man come, he bids him come and die, as Dietrich Bonhopper said in his book, The Cost of Discipleship. And it's true. Easy believism is not a blessing, it's bondage. Because when reality comes in and the truth is unveiled, those teachings are revealed as being false. We are called into something that costs us everything. Christ said, pick up our cross and follow him daily. I love it because that thing that we pick up is the thing that kills our old nature, which Jesus died for on the cross, taking its power and annihilating it along with the demonic forces and the devil himself demonstrating the supremacy of God as a man crucified on the

The Cost Of Discipleship And The Cross

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cross. Talk about weak. But then the resurrection power, three days later, comes a new man out from the tomb. Alive forevermore, King of kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus Christ, soon to return, the one who is aligning our hearts and minds in a way that is calling us to come together, to be one with him as he is one with the Father. And so, folks, we are living in a time when we are gaining higher perspective in the face of the difficulties that we see developing on planet Earth right now in June of 2026. Folks, our commitment is to express as best as possible the word of the Lord that would benefit you. And I believe that has been accomplished in this podcast episode. And so what I'd like to do right now is pray. And Father, we do right now, we come to you and we thank you, God, for who you are, for what you're doing, for how you're doing it, where you're doing it, all of the things that are involved in you unfold in your plans and your purposes. We thank you that you called and chosen us to be part of that, to be participation members together, to participate, to be partakers

Prayer, Perspective, And How To Reach Us

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of the divine nature, to share with you your kingdom, to see it demonstrated on planet earth, and to live out our call to cause your glory to spread across this earth, this land as the waters cover the sea. We are called to colonize planet earth with the kingdom of God. And so we doing that very thing right now, Lord, we are living out that call, and we ask you, Holy Spirit, to empower us to rise above these circumstances that are pressing in around us and cause us to see things from a higher perspective and then make declarations accordingly to your word, not our imaginations, but you and your word. And I thank you, God, once again, for establishing those realities in us, and we stand here in the very name of Jesus, and we declare these things to be true in his name. Amen. Amen. Amen. So be it, amen. Yeah, all right. Folks, we we love you. And if you have any thoughts, questions, or concerns, please feel free to drop us a line at LifeRoundthefire at gmail.com. That's our email address. Or you can just type in Life Around the Fire and look us up on the web. We would love to hear from you. In the meantime, God bless you. Adios, amigos.