Ep. 20 - Everyone LOVES Game day!

Join John Keene, Brandon Williams, Wes Keene (Dub) and special guest Kip Drown as they dive into the mental aspect of sports. What it takes to perform at various levels and how we have to have a dogged determination to practice like we want to perform. 

“It is not hard to find people who have the will to win, but it is extremely difficult to find people who have a will to prepare to win”. - Tom Osborne - University of Nebraska Head Football Coach 1973-1997

So often we want to just get to the game and do whatever it takes to win. We get so focused on the goal we completely overlook how important our preparation is. Preparation prevents panic! Whether we are all willing to accept it or not, practice is a big part of winning. And not just any practice. We have to practice like we are going to play. We have to go through every motion that we want to have in the heat of the game if we expect to achieve wining results. 

That can be applied to our vertical lives as well. We can be sure that we are going to see temptation along the way. The best way to be prepared to handle that is by having ourselves in the right mindset before the temptation ever comes. 

Kip mentioned his book, you can check it out and grab your own copy on Amazon. More by Kip Drown

Kip's book is a game plan for believers who desire to grow and become MORE like Christ and to do MORE for Christ in their lives. Like a coach who challenges their team to attain higher levels of performance, this book was written to be a powerful tool in growing believers toward greater spiritual maturity.

This game plan acts as a blueprint for how God desires for you to live out each day of your life. It is composed of five biblical fundamentals, that connect like pieces of a puzzle, to form the building blocks for a life of MORE.

• A life of Focused Faith
• A life of Abiding Faith
• A life of Inspired Faith
• A life of Trusting Faith
• A life of Heeding Faith

Thanks for joining us on The Bowtreader Podcast. Leave a comment to let us know where you are listening from as well as any topics that you would like to hear us cover. Be sure to like the episode and subscribe to follow along.

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Transcript

0:09

Hey guys, John, with the bow trader podcast. Thanks so much for joining us and following along with what we've got going on. You know, we're always searching for the perfect shot and we're not doing that just in archery, but in life and purpose, you know, really in moments that matter. Uh, every area we draw is, it's definitely a choice and we want to make sure that we're making choices that are pointing us closer to what is really true in this life. So whether you're aiming for answers or you're just along for the ride, grab your bow and join in with us. Who knows what we're going to get into, but one thing for sure, we will not miss the journey.

JOHN: 0:51

Okay, so let's go around the table. We'll introduce everybody. Of course, I'm John, um, and, uh, excited that you guys have joined us on the Bow Trader podcast. This is episode 19, episode 4 for our second season. So, uh, we're getting back to recording on a, on a, uh, consistent clip here. So, uh, I got, I got Dub over here this morning. Good morning. Good morning. There he is. All right. And we got Brandon.

BRANDON: 1:17

Howdy, I just wanted to say something different this week. Hey, mixing it up. Yeah, don't want to be stagnant And I've been too obedient with So, uh, I don't think there's a such thing as

JOHN: 1:29

too obedient. It depends on who you're obedient to. Well, I mean, when it's me, I really don't think that's exactly right. And then we got a new voice this morning. We got Kip Drown. Kip, tell everybody good morning. Good

KIP: 1:40

morning and I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Hey,

JOHN: 1:43

look at that, man. I love it. Okay. So today we're going to be talking about now, Kip, you know, we talked about this before we got started. We're going to be talking about a lot of archery and I know you're not an archer.

KIP: 1:54

No, I'm not.

JOHN: 1:55

But you ask questions. You have a question, you ask it. Uh, but Kip, I wanted him to be here because he's a great friend of mine. And, um, Kip actually spent a, a, um, large part of his life coaching basketball. 41

KIP: 2:12

years.

JOHN: 2:12

41 years. Yes. That is wild.

KIP: 2:17

It's, it's a crazier game now than it was when I was in it. I'm, I'm thankful to God that he took me out when he did, because it has blown up and it's so, so much different. Yeah.

JOHN: 2:27

Yeah. I mean, you still got to go down and score. You know, and you gotta go down and try to keep the other team from scoring

KIP: 2:35

the things on the court. The fundamentals never change, right? But it's the things off the court that have really made it tougher for coaches.

JOHN: 2:42

Oh yeah. Yeah. Just this week, there was a coach that said, you know, I tried to keep this thing going, but I'm out. Yeah. I think it was from Miami.

KIP: 2:50

Uh, yeah. Um, and Jim, I can't say, I never could say his last name, but yeah. Great coach. Yeah. But he just, he got tired of dealing with all the other stuff, so, uh Right. Yeah. But it's, it is become a younger man's game. Yeah.

JOHN: 3:04

I guess we'll call it that. It's, it's challenging, you know, and, and college sports in general is, um, man, it's so much different than, than it is so much different than it was even. Um, you know, it's it's uh it's happened really quick. Um so we we're going to be talking about the mental game of archery and and I think that really applies across the spectrum of the sports world is there's this mental game that you have to you have to overcome, right? That's right. To really get to where you can perform at a high level and specifically with archery, you know, we'll see it in. Um, what we'll see this, this, this, this mental struggle that people will have, um, you know, one of them is called target panic. And we have, we have all from an archer standpoint have struggled with that at some point. Um, you know, and it can, it can rear its ugly head in all kinds of different ways. Right. I gotta make sure I'm not, um, getting away from my mic here. But, Dub, you've, you've struggled with this before. Talk to us about it.

WES THE DUB: 4:16

With target panic?

JOHN: 4:17

Yeah, target panic, specifically.

WES THE DUB: 4:20

Well, I feel like there's a couple different versions of target panic.

JOHN: 4:24

Right, that's what I'm saying. It can rear its head in a lot of different ways.

WES THE DUB: 4:27

Yeah, so, what I really struggled with was punching the trigger. For me, that was a big thing. I had to get that under control Cuz in front of deer like I can have a control shot 20 yards 50 yards outside, whatever When I got in front of a deer, I was like Slamming it and I had to get over that. I still do it sometimes but I've gotten way better

JOHN: 4:59

Yeah, we've got we've got some some folks this past season that were struggling with it and man they were shooting trees. Yeah, that's how bad it was getting, you know, they go to they go to shoot and would just Is that why I do that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We just, I mean, you just, you, you basically, you, you, you'll flinch right as, right as soon as you go to go to release the shot, you know, or right before you release the shot, you'll flinch either with your bow arm or with your release hand or, or something or both or both, you know, or your whole body will just convulse right before you shoot. I mean, man, it's, it's crazy what it'll look like with folks. Um, or you won't keep consistent pressure on, on your, on your back wall and, um, and it will, um, man, it'll, it'll cause, it'll cause some major issues down range when, uh, when, when you're shooting. But I mean, so let's look at it from a, just from a sports standpoint, you know, we've all seen. We've all seen plenty of times where we'll see this, this athlete before we got started, we were talking about Michael Jordan, right? And I wasn't really in on that conversation completely. So y'all kind of catch me up to where what y'all were talking about. But We'll see this athlete that's just this incredibly talented athlete, you know, you look at them and you've seen some of the plays they've made and you see some of the stuff they do and you read their stats about, you know, how fast they can run a 40 and, um, what their, what their, what their jump is and, and, you know, all this kind of stuff and then it gets to game day and it just doesn't translate onto the field, you know, so what, what's causing that? What's the problem?

KIP: 6:44

You know, when I was listening to you talk about target panic, my first thought went to in basketball shooters, because they have a target, they're shooting at that rim, particularly free throw shooting. Because when you shoot free throws, you stop and now you think. During the course of a game, you take a jump shot or whatever. It's a flow to it and you tend to, you know, have rhythm and things, but you've seen a lot of great players that would go to the free throw line and now all of a sudden, They've got to engage the mind and, and, you know, and they all of a sudden they can't do it, you know, and, uh, that's why as in basketball with free throw shooting, we're constantly wanting kids to have a routine. They go through every time. Okay, you're going to bounce it. How many times? 234, whatever, whatever. Now you're going to take a break. You want the same routine every time that you get ready to do that so that it becomes muscle memory to them, you know, and I would guess it'd be kind of the same thing with shooting a bow, you know, that you would want to kind of go through that, that routine as you prepare to shoot and do it every time to try to get yourself calm and be able to calm. Hopefully have the best, uh, effort, best outcome that you could have,

JOHN: 7:59

right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I didn't realize that y'all would do that from a basketball standpoint. You see, you see people that are, you know, shooting free throws and they're like they do the exact same thing every time. I've always wondered, like, why are you, why are you spending the ball that way? Because they do it every single time. So I guess that's what you're, what you're talking about. And you

KIP: 8:18

know what, what upset me as a coach is I would know kids routine, but now we were shooting, say, 50 free throws in a practice. I would walk around and I'd see a kid, he's been practicing for two hours, he's tired and now he's just bouncing at once and shooting it. I'd go up to him, I said, shoot your routine routine because that's where you again get the muscle memory. And so when you just go through the motions and you really don't, you're not getting that routine down, you might as well not shoot free throws. You might as well go to the locker room, get a shower and go home, you know? So it's all about. Making them comfortable and giving them confidence. Here's what I do. So when I stepped to the line with one second to go, we're tied. I got a free throw to make. I'm going to do the very same thing that I did last Monday afternoon in practice at five o'clock, you know, and it's the very same thing so that transfers over.

JOHN: 9:06

Yeah. Yeah. I tell people all the time, bad practice might be worse than no practice at all. Um, so I think one of the things that we'll struggle with from an archery standpoint is having little to no shot process. You know, where we're not going through what we're going to do, right? And if you don't practice that, just like what you're talking about, if you're not practicing that, when you get in that moment, Wes, like you were talking about a minute ago, Dub, um, I don't have to go back and forth between Wes and Dub today because Wes Chester's not here, so there's no confusion. But when you, when you get in that moment, which is a, um, you know, kind of a high stress moment, you got a, you got a deer or whatever standing in front of you that you're trying to harvest. If you're, if you've practiced and you know what your shot process is, or if you're standing on the free throw line, you know, and you've got 20, 000 fans around you and you've got, you know, your opponent standing right next to you and your buddy standing on your other side, that's a high stress moment, right? And, um, if you know what your process is and you just go through that process, your chances of success. Probably increase infinitely.

BRANDON: 10:14

There's no tail end. I mean, I know I had the opportunity to play baseball at Georgia Southern for. Really good coach, Jack Stallings. Oh yeah. Um, we call him Skip and by saying I played baseball at Georgia Southern, it means basically I had really good seats. So I didn't, I guess by my third year, I played a little, you know, a decent amount. Um, but one of the things he would say is perfect practice makes perfect. You know, you hear the saying practice makes perfect, but like you were talking about, if you're not gonna. Go through your routine. If you're not going to practice correctly, you might as well go to the locker room. And so he would always tell us, perfect practice makes perfect. It's not just practice makes perfect. And the other thing he would do, and you're talking about the pressure situation, is he would always ask us a question. He would say, so you're at bat, we're down one, time runs on second, two outs in the bottom of the last inning. He says, pressure situation, what do you do different? And everybody's kind of quiet because you're like, you know, you don't want to say the wrong answer. So, and especially with Skip, you know, and so you're like, uh, just sitting there and he's like, what do you do different? And a couple of guys might volunteer to say something. And he's like. No, in his own way, you know, it could have had a couple of explicit is with it, you know, but he, he would be like, no. And then he would finally get to the point where he would say, what do you do different now? Nobody's answering. And he would say nothing. He's like, you do nothing different. You know, you, you execute what you've practiced. And so that was always something that I remembered. Um, in other areas of life, um, including bow hunting, when we went to Colorado elk hunting this year. Um, I remember riding out there, we drove, so long ride, um, Dake and I had a lot of time to talk and I told him, I said, Dake, when the elk steps out in front of you, go ahead and having, have seen it in your mind. Like, think about it. Picture it in your mind and don't let the moment be too big. You know, don't let that moment be too big. Already have it in your mind. I'm gonna kill the elk. You know, picture it different ways or whatever. But, have that mentality of It's not the situation's not too big, you know, and I think that helps is going ahead and even in sports. I used to visualize going through the routine going through the routine before we ever got in a situation. And I think that helps a lot with the mental side of bow hunting is I'll think about like, all right, this moment's not too big. You know, I'm practiced. I'm ready. Um, I'll just execute what I've been practicing, you

JOHN: 13:06

know, Yeah. Yeah. So the, the other side of that or the thing that we have to contend with from an archery standpoint is we have equipment that we have to make sure is set up the way that it should be. That's why you come to Bowtreader. Hey, that's why you come to Bowtreader. Yeah. But I mean, listen, seriously, um, if your equipment isn't set up right, if your draw length isn't right, if your peep's not where it needs to be, if your peep is turning when it, you know, and it's not straight and you're, you're looking through a third of the peep instead of the whole peep, That's affecting everything with your shot. Right. And, you know, one of the things that I talk about with people all the time when they're coming in to buy new equipment, you know, I've talked about this before, the archery world as an industrial, as a, as an industry vertical is extremely small, right? There's only, there's only so many bow companies. Um, There's only so many site companies and rest companies and all this kind of stuff. So they're, they're all vying for your attention and there's only a few of them that are doing it. And from a marketing standpoint, you know, there are some companies that are way better at marketing than others, but that does not necessarily mean that they make the best equipment. Yeah. Right. And I tell people all the time when they come in, you know, somebody will come in and they'll be like, You know, they'll walk in the door and they'll say, I want the new Matthews, you know, or I want the new, I want the new Hoyt or I want to check out the new Botech or what, you know, they're, they're, they come in and they're, they've already, they already have basically decided what bow they want to get and you know, the way that we've always approached it with people is, you know, all right, talk to me about what your budget is. Right. Okay. And then. So, let's look at all of the options in that, in that price range instead of, I want the new Matthews or, or whatever the case may be. Now, listen, I'm not picking on any of the bow companies. They, they all, they all make fantastic machines, but that's what they are. And some people are going to perform better with machine A versus machine B, right? So when we go through and we're having people shoot new bows. The bow doesn't have anything on it. It doesn't have a sight on it. All it's got is a rest and a D loop. And then we set their draw length and we let them shoot at like five yards. And I don't care how many times they shoot it. And I really don't care what bow they get. I mean, listen, I've got hundreds of bows in here at any given time. They all need a new home. Period. That's it. And, um, you know, so we start looking at it. And we'll, we'll, we'll put together a checklist for people. And I'll ask them, you know, what's on your list? And they're like. What do you mean? And I said, well, what matters to you when you shoot a bow and you know, almost, I'll almost never hear somebody say grip, you know, and to me, that's the most important thing about a bow because that's where you're holding that bow is going to do more. It's going to mean more about what's going to happen when you release your arrow than anything else, you know, because and, and the other side of that is if I don't have a grip. If I have a bow on a bow that I'm having to think about how I'm holding it, I will not shoot it. I won't like if I if I can't grab it and and know that my hand is where it needs to be and I'm not having to sit there and like really look at it and pay attention to how I've got my hand on the bow. If I'm having to do that, I'm not shooting the bow. Even if I love everything else about the bow, I'm not going to shoot it because I know when I get in that situation. Um, I'm going to have to add that to my shot process. I'm going to have to add that to my thought process, right? And there's only so much room in my brain. I'm not a very intelligent person. Okay. I don't have extra space. So, I need to, I need to really whittle that thing down to where I have very little to think about and if the draw cycle is a little bit harder, you know, whatever. Yeah. I mean, I can practice to that. I can, I can. I can beat my muscles into submission to a point where I can handle the draw cycle, you know, um, and that really comes from practice, you know, what we'll have guys come in here is it's funny, you know, I'm not picking on them because they're huge, but we'll have guys like athletes from Georgia Southern that will come in that are on the football team and they look like they could go outside and throw my truck in the ditch. I mean, they're huge. And they cannot draw a 70 pound bow to save their life. They just can't do it. And it's because you use muscles that you don't normally use when you draw a bow. And now we can work with them a little bit and show them what to do. It's kind of funny, we do it on purpose. Like they'll come in, yeah I want to shoot a bow, I'm thinking about getting a bow, so we'll just hand them a 70 pound bow. So, knowing you know, there's an 80 percent chance they ain't drawing it. And then, you know, once we work with them a little bit and show them what to do, they're able to do it, right? But anyway, going back to that idea of how you go through and you select that piece of equipment. I think the grip is a huge deal and then once we get something set up, let's say we have somebody come in come in that's got a bow that that they've been shooting for two or 3 years and they tell us that they're they're they're struggling and they can't figure out what's going on. We just watch them shoot for a few minutes and you know, it may be that when they're shooting, so Kip, on the, on the sights, on most sights on bows, they have a level on them and that helps you determine if you're, if you're holding the, the, the riser of the bow completely vertically, you know, holding it level and um, that has an impact down range if you're not doing that. Typically, you know, at 20 yards, so what, what'll happen is um, 20 yards. You'll just cite in for that, right? So, or whatever, whatever your shortest distance is that you're going to cite in for, uh, which is typically 20 yards. You'll cite in to that. You'll move your pen wherever you need to get to be hitting. But then when you go down range, if you're not holding that bow straight, if you're holding it, if it's canted over to the right, well, as that pen comes down, Right? What are you going to start doing? You're going to start hitting left of your target, you know, so at 30 yards, you'd be, you know, a little bit left, maybe an inch left or something, inch and a half left. Well, most people will be like, well, that's not a big deal. I just haven't practiced much at 30 and then they'll back up to 50 and they're like six inches off.

BRANDON: 19:46

Yeah.

JOHN: 19:47

And they're like, well, you know, what's going on? You know, and and in a few minutes, we can work with them and show them, hey, this is what you're doing. This is what you need to do and You get to that point where you realize you've got a problem with your bow or with the way that you're holding your bow, and you have to change that. And the reality is, we we're, we're we're creatures of habit. Yeah. And changing something like that, it sounds so simple, but changing something like that is extremely hard. to the point that you have to do it over and over and over again. So if you go back to that old way of doing it, it feels, it feels awkward, right? Um, so I think that that's a big part of being able to overcome having that issue. And I mean, people just don't like to practice.

BRANDON: 20:38

Yeah. You know, something that I thought about as you were talking to is eliminate Um, the things you can eliminate that are going to cause you to struggle. So, like you said, if if you have a grip that you have to think about, you don't use that bow, right? You're going to change that grip. Are you changing? Yeah, you do something to to change the the bow, right? That eliminates one thing you don't have to think about and you you said that but I think about um that in really any area of life too is get rid of things that Um, you know, things that aren't should not or don't have to be a distraction. Yeah. You know, or don't have to be something that occupies part of your process. And I really think that's great because you got, you know, there's enough stuff to think about and You know, I'm kind of like you. I'm, I'm not a real smart man. Um, and uh, we joke around a lot at the office that, um, kind of like a goldfish, you know, one time around the bowl and everything's new. Um, and so, uh, you know, makes life exciting, but it kind of can hinder, uh, hinder in other ways. But I think eliminate anything you can eliminate that's going to mess you up.

JOHN: 21:55

Go kill, go

BRANDON: 21:56

kill that. He's not talking about a deer. No, no, no. He's

JOHN: 22:00

talking about the heat. I mean, who needs the heat? You know, we live in Georgia, so this is the time of year where we get to really control our power bill. Put a shirt on. Which we've actually had a winter this year. We have definitely had a winter this

BRANDON: 22:16

year.

JOHN: 22:16

We got, what, five inches of snow last

BRANDON: 22:18

week or something?

JOHN: 22:19

Yeah, and any of you folks that are listening where you think you get snow, you don't get snow like we get in Georgia. We, we get, we get snow's evil cousin. It's more like a slushie. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's, it's, um, you know, I think that, I think that. We are so bent on wanting the easy way. Yeah. To the goal. Yeah. Right.

KIP: 22:52

Well, you know, you were talking about being off an inch, you know, and then one of the things that we always tried to make our players understand is that little things are critical. You know, they all want to do the big things, you know, and, and, but it's the little things oftentimes that separates from you doing it. Yeah. Perfect. Or, you know, achieving the goal or are missing the mark, you know, and so, um, you know, I just think, uh, and you have been talking about this repetition as a teacher to me. That was the key learning repetition and we do it with perfect practice. You know, you don't you don't, um, go through and do things halfway. You got to do it right every time and players have trouble fighting through repetition. They want to keep doing other things. I know when we, we would do drills, we'd do breakdown drills. Had three, four assistants and we'd have three players here, three players there doing things. We'd do them for two, three minutes. But we'd do them about daily. So they'd go someplace and they'd do something for like two minutes because we're trying to keep their attention, you know. And so they'd do it perfect. And then we'd rotate them and they'd keep moving them, you know. But we were constantly repeating those things daily and we were trying to stress do it right. Do the little things right, you know. So you don't have to be out there necessarily doing things two, three hours. But if you'll take, you know, sometimes just 5, 10, 15 minutes of doing it exactly right, we'll start to develop that perfect practice and that muscle memory. That can be the difference in and doing, doing something almost right and hitting something or exactly right. In this case, killing your target.

JOHN: 24:38

Right. Yeah. Or, or, or hitting that, hitting that, you know, That layup that you need to get that shop. Yeah. Yeah.

KIP: 24:46

So, um, yeah, we learned very quickly that if we stayed too long on anything, we lost the kids. We had to keep them going. Boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, and we had, we'd say water break, we give them one minute and go get it. Water, boom, drink back. And then we're going, we're just keep, keep that cycle going. Yeah. But that's how basketball is played. You know, now hunting, I would assume you guys have You don't have time on your hands to sit a lot of times as you're waiting for a target.

JOHN: 25:12

No way, man. So I sent an email out every day, you know, when I'm going to go hunting, a little calendar invitation. Tell them where they are. Yeah. They never respond. And that's,

BRANDON: 25:23

and that's the other thing is in, in basketball, you know, you get multiple opportunities. to do things in and and in other sports. You know, if you struggle at one at bat, there's always typically another bat coming, right? Um, but the thing with hunting is you may hunt all year for one or two shots.

JOHN: 25:48

Yeah.

BRANDON: 25:49

And, you know, you definitely don't want to screw that up. No, and it's

JOHN: 25:54

easy to screw it up. Yes, it's definitely easy to screw it up. So what I'm hearing, Kip, what you're saying is, you know, from the, from a sports standpoint, from basketball that you coached for 41 years, practice was something y'all did. Way more than you played. It sounds like,

KIP: 26:10

Oh, yes. Our practices were laid out. It would take me a lot of times two to two and a half hours to make up a practice, a two hour practice plan, you know, because I wanted things to be exactly in the right order. I wanted to go from one thing to the next to build, you know, and it was, it took up most days over two hours to just build that practice plan. Yeah. And, um, because again, we knew that it was going to be on the floor. where we were going to have a chance to get better. They're not going to get better in the game. You know, there's too much, too many things going on. And so, you're hoping they react now with the skills that they took from practice and they're going to be able to transfer those over to game time. And, um, so, but yeah, now players don't like practice. We were talking about Allen Iverson, you know, before we went on the air and his, his practice rant several years ago. But, you know, players don't like practice. But, um, I think after they probably get away from the game and they look back and they, I know a lot of them have told me, I wish I would have been more focused on practice time. You know, uh, it's something you just do every day, you know, but they, they're not able, a lot of players can't fight through that to, to go to that next level. It's just a, it's a mental block almost of, man, we do this, we do this drill every day. Well, yeah, but you're not doing it right. You got to do it right.

JOHN: 27:35

So what creates that mental block that we, that we struggle with? Because, you know, and we're going to talk about this more about how we struggle with it in other aspects of life, but from, from specifically from a, from a sports standpoint. Why do we have this block that we can't get past that we don't, we don't give things the credit that they deserve? What causes that? Are we all just goldfish and once around the bowl and we've forgotten how important it is or something? Or, you know, what, what is it?

KIP: 28:05

Well, you know, in athletes that I

JOHN: 28:08

dealt with,

KIP: 28:09

yeah, we said there were three kinds. There were sloths, there were get buyers and there were extra milers. Okay. Give me an example. If we told a kid to go shoot 50 free throws, a sloth will go shoot 25 and he'll sneak out of the gym and leave. They're lazy. They're just not going to put the work in. You know, now they want the credit and they want the glory, but they don't want the work. Now the get buyer will shoot 50 free throws and you know, he may do it right. He may not do, may not follow his rhythm, you know, those things, but he'll shoot 50. He'll shoot 50. Yeah. The extra miler. Which in my experience, I've had about 10 percent of my players that I would call extra milers. We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of players. Yeah. They'll shoot 50 free throws. They'll shoot another 20. They'll go over and they'll do some, um, maybe something on the dot mat or they'll go over and work on an offensive move with an assistant coach. They'll put in another 35, 40 hour extra time to get better, you know. Those are the kids that are going to go to another level. Those are the kids that are not going to have that middle block because they have put in the time to take themselves to a different level. So, you know, it all goes back to preparation, you know, Prepare yourself for that moment. You were saying you may only get two shots in a season. Man, that's tough mentally to sit there and stay focused and ready when you may not get a shot all day. Right. So, um, but you want to prepare yourself for that moment when it comes. Because you grab it. Right. It's not going to be there often. You've got to grab it when it comes.

JOHN: 29:44

Yep, yep. That's exactly right. So. Brandon, what do you think? What do you think causes that, that mental block that we, we have to struggle with? That's cool that you, you would, uh, label your players in that way. We didn't tell, we didn't,

KIP: 29:55

we didn't tell them what their

JOHN: 29:55

label was. Y'all didn't call them sloth.

KIP: 29:57

It was in my mind though.

JOHN: 29:59

You thought it every time. You know, we're not supposed to have favorites, but I mean, we all have favorites. I

KIP: 30:04

really like that extra miler over there. That's right. Yeah, that's right.

JOHN: 30:07

You know, I, I call them, uh, with, with customers, uh, and you know, uh, I will, I will talk about. We have a lot of customers that come in our shop and everything and uh, some of them are EGRs, which means extra grace required and, and, but any given person can need a little extra grace on any day, you know, but uh, there are some that need it every single day. But

BRANDON: 30:35

anyhow, go ahead, Brandon. What do you think? So, I know for me, when I was in high school, I was kind of a big fish in a small bowl, right? So, I never really got to that point where I thought about failure much, you know? Um, when I got to college, uh, I was a small fish in a big bowl. And so, I had to be the extra miler if I wanted to stay on the team because I was less talented than pretty much everybody else on the team. You just wanted to keep your good seats. Yeah, I just wanted to be able to, well, back then, spit tobacco on people's shoes, on the bench, you know, that kind of thing. And so, you know, um, and so for me, once I got to college, one of the things I had to get over was fear of failure.

JOHN: 31:22

And

BRANDON: 31:23

so I think a lot of people struggle because instead of seeing themselves succeed, they have a fear of failure that keeps them from being able to excel. And that was something I had to get over. I realized the first at bat I had in college, man, uh, faced a guy who transferred him from Clemson. This was before the portal. So, um, yeah, he came in, but, and it, but it was more rare back then. And so. Um, he comes in and I face him. Um, he was a junior, I'm a freshman first, first at bat in an inner squad game at Georgia Southern. And this guy had a pretty nasty attitude towards when he pitched, which was good. I mean, he was coming at you, right? And so knowing it was my first time at the plate, he threw it straight at my head and I remember hearing it. Um, I don't know how much I saw it, but, you know, he threw at this and at this time, this was pretty, this was fast and he was probably sitting around 92 and, you know, you get to a certain speed, you can hear the seams on the baseball, um, even when it's not at your head. And so he threw it right at my head. I still remember it hitting the backstop and I'm like, that was different. Like, the speed of that was different and I realized this isn't high school anymore. Yeah. And I realized, like, I'm really gonna have to work harder, even harder than I did in high school to compete at this level and that caused me to, for a couple of years, have a greater fear of failure than going out and trying to really compete and succeed. If you don't compete, you don't have a chance. Um, you can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't have a competitive nature and you just lay down, not only are you not going to go far in athletics, you're not going to go very far in life. Um, we talk about a lot of times on our staff that, you know, we want people on our team that have character that are competent, um, that have the right chemistry. Those three C's you hear a lot, but I always had a fourth one. And it doesn't start with C, so it messes up the whole thing, but it's grit. Like, do you have grit? Are you able, have you ever had to face adversity and keep going? And I think that's the thing is, is like, can you stay focused and have a winning mentality, even when. It's not a layup. Mm. When you gotta hit a three pointer to win the game. Yeah. Instead of a layup, what's your mentality? Am I'm afraid I'm gonna fail? Or do I see, you know, have a confidence to succeed? I think there's a difference in a confidence and an arrogance, but I think, do I have a confidence that I can make this shot? I know for my boys, they all grew up playing football and baseball. And, um, especially with baseball, we, I don't know how many baseballs I've thrown and, and front toss to kids over the years. But, um, one of the things that I've, I've taught them is, there's no thinking in the box. Like, you don't get in the batter's box and start thinking. If you start thinking, you're, you're toast. And so, you better be ready when you step in the box. You get, you know, and that's where you build that confidence is, and you talk about doing little things. So many, especially young kids, they don't want to hit off a tee, you know, they think that that was something they should have quit doing when they were four or five years old. But one of the most important things you can do in preparation for baseball is hit off a tee. And so those little things, your grip, those kinds of things with a bow, those little things matter. And. that gives you confidence to succeed when that moment comes. And if we have a fear of failure, that's a challenge. But I think what helps you overcome failure and it's kind of one of those things that You know, which comes first, the chicken or the egg kind of thing.

JOHN: 35:35

Well, the chicken came first. Well, we know that. Just to say. Yeah.

BRANDON: 35:41

And so, um, you know, when, when you look at this, one of the things I think helps overcome failure is success. You know, fear of failure is success. And so, you know, having success begins to build confidence. You know, you gotta work until you get to that point of having a little bit of success and then it snowballs a little bit, you start feeling like, okay, you know, by my third year at Georgia Southern, I started thinking, okay, I kind of belong here now, you know, whereas before I'm like, man, I don't, I don't even know if I'm going to make it, I think they may cut me today, you know, and that fear of failure, um, was a great hindrance for me.

JOHN: 36:25

Yeah, you know, I see it in the, from a business standpoint, uh, with being an entrepreneur and starting something, you know, from an idea and. So, you know, talking with people and saying, hey, I got this idea about doing this because II rarely will just go and do something. You know, I usually I'll have an idea and I'll think about it and I'll pray about it for a while and a while might be a day or it might be a few years. Yeah. You know, and and then I'll start talking to people about it. Close friends, right? Um, who I trust that, um, that, who I know that will pray for me and, and help me go through and making a decision and everything. And um, man, it's, you want to talk about a fear of failure? I mean, it's, it, it can be paralyzing, you know, uh, when, when you're, when you're starting a business or you're, you're running a small business and you're trying to make decisions about what to do and, um, you know, from this standpoint with this business here, you know, we've got this, this inventory that we have to, that we have to deal with and we have to, you know, we have to try to decide, okay, what's, what are people going to want to buy? What do we need to have in here? What do we need to make sure we have? What do we need to, you know, not focus on, you know, because I mean, I don't think we can be everything, you know, I don't, I don't want to be, um, a, um, Um, a general store, so to speak, you know, we we want to be pretty specific with what we're doing. That's what we started out to do and that's that's what we've always focused on but it's it's a challenge, you know, to to be able to do that. I'll tell you this, every time I make my mortgage payment, I praise the lord because it is not a guarantee. I'll promise you that. I mean, even 8 years in to doing this, you you really never know and and the thing about this business is it is extremely seasonal. Um, you know, but we are, we, we're convinced of what our mission is and that's where that confidence comes from with us is we know what our mission is and we stay focused on that and um, everything else, you know, seems to take care of itself and it, it, it never ceases to amaze me. He never ceases to amaze me how he will make a way, you know, if I'll just. Um, you know, I think, I think from that standpoint, um, from a, from an entrepreneur standpoint, and I think that this transfers over, but if I'll put, if I put all the weight on my shoulders and try to carry it all by myself, man, I, I become so stagnant. It's too much. Yeah. And, and begin to worry. And I'm not a worrier. I really am not and I don't wear that as a badge of honor to say I'm not saying man I'm so holy look at me or something like that. I just don't worry. I think it's the dumbness in there That I just can't fit it in to worry about it. I just said just slides right all ignorance is I mean, I guess but anyway I just I don't worry about things and My wife she'll she'll she'll Um, she's always the first one to see if I'm worried about something. Mm hmm. You know, like she'll just see it. I won't say a word. You know, guys, we're really good at not saying stuff and I won't say a word and she'll just catch me one day. She'll say, hey, what are you worried about? You know, what's going on and you know, let's talk about it and um and man, the lord uses her to really recenter me on some things. Praise god for a good wife. Young man, let me tell you something. Don't you hit yourself to a woman that's not going to support you? That's right. It's not going to be faithful because it is not always going to be a bed of roses and You know, you're gonna go through some tough stuff and you know Like Brandon was saying, he wants people with grit on his staff. You want a wife with, with some grit because y'all are going to go through some stuff and you want to be able to get through it together because, you know, at times that's going to be all you got. Yeah. You know, I don't care if your mom and daddy are still alive or if you've got a brother that lives, you know, two doors down or what your, your bride is what you got. And no one that. The two of y'all are, are walking through that together is, it is, it is huge. It is absolutely huge. Yeah, there's no, there's no question about it. All right. So we look at this, we look at this idea of practice and that people don't like to do it. And, and I, I know this for a fact, because, you know, I talk about our business being very seasonal. I'm telling you right now, it's January. It's the end of January. Season went out two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago, whatever. I'm telling y'all right now, and all of you listening know this, you have put your bow up, you've rolled it under the bed, you've put it in the closet. It's riding around in your hunting trailer or something. And you're not going to look at it again until June or July. Mostly, most of the time, July, right? And then you'll come into the shop and something will be wrong and we'll need to fix it and you know, and that's fine. We want to fix it. We want to provide that service, you know, but then it every every day that you're waiting on something to get fixed is cutting down on your time to be able to practice, you know, and with what Kip was saying, going and doing something for you. A short period of time. A lot is a whole lot better than doing something for a long period of time a little bit. Right. So, so instead of taking that last month before the season opens and practicing for 2 hours a day or an hour a day, you know, keep your bow out right now and shoot it for 10 minutes a day. It's still cool outside. The mosquitoes haven't started coming back out yet. You can go outside and enjoy it and keep shooting and. You know, really hone in on what those fundamentals are, making sure that you've got a shot process down that may be something you've never even thought about before. You know, it may be that you just think, okay, I'm going to draw my bow and I'm going to shoot and that's it. And then every single time you're doing something a little bit different, you know, a little bit different anchor point can mean, you know, at 40 yards, it can mean hitting two or three inches different up or down left or right. You know, uh, so really drawing. focusing in on those fundamentals and getting to a point where you're really focusing on that stuff and doing it a little bit at the time and creating that muscle memory. Because I think that there's a, I think there's a huge thing about that, you know, dub over here. He's not saying a whole lot because he's not guilty of not shooting his bow.

BRANDON: 43:31

Yeah, you told me the other day, he's probably shot the new bow for this year about 4, 000 times. I mean,

JOHN: 43:37

he's got to put a new string on it already. That's awesome. Yeah, he was, he was building a new string for his bow yesterday because he is slap wore his string out already. Yeah, it's bad. It's, I mean, and, and those strings, we, we know that we can, we can get somewhere between five and 10, 000 shots for those strings and it basically still look new. And his string looks like he put it in a blender at some point. I mean, it's, it's, it's rough. Um, so, um,

KIP: 44:04

that's an extra

JOHN: 44:05

for sure. Um, and it's not just cost so much money an gonna, we're gonna talk a talking about equipment an into the sport of archery your daughter or remortg something like your kidne know, going really extrem Because you can't get into it without without doing that now, can you go crazy with it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've seen multiple people spend five grand on a boat. I didn't think that was possible Yeah, you know until we start I mean, they just start adding stuff and adding stuff and by the time it's you know, all said and done I mean, it's five grand.

BRANDON: 44:49

Yeah, and I think it can go back to because I'm I'm I'm a gadget person I love gadgets. I love, like, just tinkering with stuff. But what I have to be careful of, again, is don't add so much stuff that it complicates the process. Right, yeah. You know, it's like baseball nowadays, and my youngest son is guilty of this. Um, they'll get up there, they got an elbow guard, a shin and ankle guard, they got something on their wrist, or, you know, they got all this stuff on, and I'm like So, I think, is that really necessary? How are you even

JOHN: 45:24

going to swing

BRANDON: 45:24

with all that on, right? Pretty soon, you look more like a a knight in armor than you do a baseball player and so, you know, and I think the same thing with our equipment is like, don't complicate it. Like, try to keep it as simple as you can so you don't have to have have more than you need and I think that keeps the expense down.

JOHN: 45:44

Yeah. Yeah, I think it does. I think it does. You know, I heard a quote, um, Um, like a year ago and um, uh, I texted Kip yesterday. I said, hey, there's this coach that said this thing one time. He's like, he probably thought I was crazy. It's like, man, John coaches say stuff like that all the time. They, they can be pretty pious. But anyway, I found it and it's um, he says, it's not hard to find people who have the will to win but it is extremely difficult to find people who have a will to prepare to win. And there's definitely a difference. There's definitely a difference. The person who said that was Tom Osborne, who of course was the University of Nebraska head football coach from 73 to 97. He's uh, he's one of two coaches who have a shared national championship. So, they shared a national championship with Michigan.

KIP: 46:39

I don't remember that. Yeah.

JOHN: 46:41

Yeah, look it up. It's weird.

KIP: 46:43

Well, he had a great run in

JOHN: 46:45

20, uh, 25 years, right? So yeah, I mean, and, and, uh, boy, he had those corn huskers where they were striking fear in the lives of whoever they were going to play. They put together five back to back 11 win seasons. That's pretty, that's pretty good. I think in five seasons they had a record of 62 3 or something like that. I mean, that's, that's, that's pretty solid. Yeah. Um, that was back in the day where when you paid for a player, you know, you just It was done in a You dropped a Cadillac off at his mama's house and the trunk was full of cash and, you know, then you got that player on your team. Well,

BRANDON: 47:22

so much of college sports and what I used to love about it was the purity of it. And yet, it was never really that pure, you know what I mean? It's just, what's happening now is it's just, it can be publicized, right? Yeah,

JOHN: 47:36

yeah, and made a big deal about. And I think that's the part of the game, Kip, that you were talking about that's just so different.

KIP: 47:43

I feel for coaches now, it's become two questions I ask coaches. How much am I going to play and how much are you going to pay me?

JOHN: 47:52

Oh yeah.

KIP: 47:52

And you know, that's, that's the bottom line for them. And, um, so, but it is what it is. Yeah. Uh, and the problem is when you let the genie out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. So they've got a mess and it'll be interesting to see how they. They try to corral it some, you know, and try to get a handle on it some because right now they really don't right and uh,

JOHN: 48:15

right now they're just pouring gas on fire. It's wild, wild west out there right now. Yeah.

KIP: 48:20

And so, um, they've got to get some type of, um, system in place. That's going to try to settle this down because from a monetary standpoint, schools can't afford to keep They can't keep paying this kind of money or, or boosters, they can't keep it for them to go through boosters and say, I need 4 million, 4 million for this quarterback, you know, I mean, that there comes a point in time, people are going to say no more. Well,

JOHN: 48:45

and NIL money is not the same as donating to the, to the right from a, from a tax standpoint.

KIP: 48:52

And right now. Um, they're universities would rather you had given NIO money, right? Because that gets players, right? Players win games, right? So facilities is not quite as important as it used to be. And, you know, right down the line, other things aren't quite as important because you've got to pay players.

JOHN: 49:09

And man, over the past decade or a couple of decades, facilities have gone. I mean, it is insane when you go to these college campuses and look at the facilities they got. It is unreal. And

BRANDON: 49:22

really to me, it's worse than professional sports right now. Because at least in, you know, the MLB, NFL, NBA, Um, you got a contract, right? So you know you at least got them for 4, 5, 8 years. Whatever you sign them to. These guys leave after 1 year now. I mean, there's nothing that keeps them there. You know, so they have a good year and then somebody is like, Hey, we'll give you 6 million and they're gone. Yeah. There's, there's no restraints. And I agree with Kip if they don't get it under control, man, it's, it's a, like a runaway train right now. So. Yeah. I think the track is running out there.

KIP: 50:02

Yeah. I don't know. I, I, I, you know, to be honest, I don't, I don't even want to go down this rabbit hole very far, but yeah, I think it's going to have to come something to do with Congress. Yeah. I think there's going to have to be some kind of some federal laws that are going to be, and I think it's being discussed of, of however they do that to try to keep the playing field somewhat level. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah. And I hate to say that because I have no government. I

JOHN: 50:29

know, man, I hate regulation. We got a president in right now that hates regulation. And, um, I just, I, I, I don't know the answer. But like you said,

BRANDON: 50:38

go ahead. If they do as well with the national debt as they do, if they could do that with college football, it would definitely. Fix it. I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Because we do, we do well with that.

JOHN: 50:50

Right. Yeah. We're, we're experts at that. Oh my goodness. Um, so we talked about, we, we've, we, we have this, we have this bent of wanting to get onto the goal. We want the product without the process. We want game day without any practice day. I mean, because who doesn't love game day? Everybody loves game day. You know, you love the stress that it creates. I mean, we really do. Yeah. It's why

BRANDON: 51:13

you go through two days in football. It's not because you love two days is because when they turn the lights on Friday night, it's one of the most incredible things you can experience. I mean, the smell of grass to, you know, play in front of people, you know, all of those things, you'll do a lot of, a lot of work to get to that point. But um, but very few people like you said, want to put in, they want to be great. They don't want to put in the work to be great.

JOHN: 51:39

Yeah, we want the victory without the, the, the, the battlefield to get there. That's right. Right. And we look at that from a, from a spiritual standpoint with this idea of temptation. None of us want to have to go through the valley of temptation. Right. I mean, I, I don't. I don't want to. Yeah. You know, Jesus taught us to pray that we would not be led into temptation, you know, but how about you guys? Do you face temptation? Nah, man, never. Of course. I mean, it's constant, right? Right. It's every day. It's like we can't get away from it. I mean, Dub, even you, you're 16 years old. You feel tempted by stuff, right? All the time. All the time, right? And I mean, so, you know, We don't, we don't want to, we don't want to go through that and we even question, you know, when we, when we are going through temptation. God, why are you, why are you allowing this to happen? You know, why are, why are you a sovereign God allowing me to go through temptation?

BRANDON: 52:45

Yeah.

JOHN: 52:45

You know, I go back to that idea of a player thinking, coach, why are you making me do this? You know, yeah. The coach does it because they know what's best for the player and what's best for the team. Yeah.

BRANDON: 53:01

The worst thing that can happen to you as a player is a coach quit coaching you. Because they give up on you.

JOHN: 53:09

Yeah, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a conversation talking about cuts in the future. And the thing

BRANDON: 53:15

that happened to me one time, speaking of failure. It is we were in the bottom of last in and we're down a couple of runs. We got men on first and second, uh, nobody out. So I go up, my job's just to lay down a blunt, which is harder than you probably think at times, but, uh, get a high fastball should have pulled back, back, didn't popped it up to the pitcher. Um, you know, didn't advance for runners. I mean, it's terrible at bat and I've got to make the wall back to the dugout. And I remember, I'm thinking, Coach Stallings is fixing to cuss me up one side and down the other and he didn't say anything. And I, and that cut me way deeper than if he had cussed me out. Did he even look at you? I mean, he didn't even acknowledge, like, my presence. Like, you know, I can still fog a mirror. You know, that was about the best I could do. But I'm like, you know, he didn't even acknowledge it and in that moment, I'm like, I don't even know that he expected me to be successful and I don't think it was probably that bad but it hurt me more that he didn't get on me then if he had and So, yeah, I mean it's the same way with God if if God is not Um, correcting us, um, teaching us, training us, even rebuking us, then what kind of father would he be? I mean, you know, he doesn't give up on us. So,

JOHN: 54:47

yeah, well, there's, there's definitely a difference between a test and a temptation. So, we need to, we need to clarify that. So, what would you guys say are going to be, um, key things that we can look for to determine is this a test or is this a temptation? What are you guys when when you face something in your life And you're trying to determine which I think we should be. I think we should be pretty um astute with this of Being able to look at a situation and being able to say This is temptation. I need to I need to get away from this, you know I need to do whatever I got to do to make this stop short of giving in to it, right? And then we also need to be able to look at the situation and say, you know This is a test that god's putting me through And I don't know why he's putting me through it exactly, you know, and I don't really think that's the question we should ask. I mean, I think asking God why is, you know, that's pretty, it's kind of superficial. You know, maybe we ask God, you know, what do you, what do you, What do you want to accomplish in my life with this?

KIP: 55:53

That's what I was going to say. Ask what instead

JOHN: 55:55

of why, you know,

KIP: 55:56

Charles Stanley said that he says, when you get caught in those situations, you know, don't get caught up on why God. But what do you want me to learn? You know, you've apparently led me to this point. So what do you want me to want me to take from this? Yeah. And I think that's when we approach it with the right mindset. So, I think that that god in our test that he's trying to grow us. Yeah. You know,

JOHN: 56:20

what are you trying to prune out of my life? Yeah. Uh by putting me through this. Right. Right. So, what are the, what are those things we look for? There's gotta be those key indicators that that we look, we look at to say, man, this is flat out. This is temptation. You know, I've gotta, I've gotta approach it as such, right? Yeah. So, what are those things that we look for?

KIP: 56:42

Well, I think, you know, I think we, we go to the Bible, right? Is, is it, is it going against God's teachings? And if it's going against God's teachings, it's not coming as a test from God. It's coming as a temptation from Satan

JOHN: 56:54

because we know he's consistent, right? We know he's faithful. You know, he's not casting a shifting shadow. He's not going to say this today and then something else tomorrow, right? So we, we, we've got that, we've got that standard that we can compare it to. Okay. That's perfect. What else? Yeah.

BRANDON: 57:11

I think that's huge. I mean, I think if you compare everything to God's word, then You know, God's not gonna do anything that goes against his character or his revealed will. He's not going to tell you to do something that goes against his character or revealed will. You know, um, God didn't tell you to move in with that person because it's financially advantageous. Um, like I can 100 percent guarantee you that was not God. Um, and so you look at stuff like that and, and that's, that's pretty clear. Um, you know, what's interesting is a lot of times I think in a test, you come across temptation. Sure. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, I mean, because, and so I don't know that they always are completely exclusive, you know, um, when we go through a test, a lot of times the temptation is to quit, um, you know what I mean? And so I think, you know, there's going to be even temptation within the test. But being able to discern, is this a test? Is this something that God's putting me through? I think a lot of times looking at, um, Can I learn something from this? Is, and the question of what, what can I learn? What is God doing in me? Is this something that is, is not gonna in any way be beneficial to me? In my growth, in my intimacy with him, in life in general, if there, if there's really no benefit to it spiritually, then I would say it would lean more towards a temptation than it would towards a test because what God's always trying to do is to, to sanctify us, to make us more like Christ. You know, there's obvious which means he's trying

JOHN: 59:04

to bring us closer to him. Yes, right So we're we're we're really good at using we speak we speak church and ease. Yeah Christian ease You know, but really When we boil it down to the fundamentals, we've talked about fundamentals a lot this morning, fundamentally, God sent Jesus because he wants a relationship with us. That's right. Fundamentally, God created the world because he wanted us to have a domain to live in. Yeah. Right. So when we look at all these things that are God's character attributes, his character traits, it all points to him wanting to have. a personal, intimate relationship with every single one of us. You know, when we look at the idea of, of Jesus going to the cross, he would have done that if it was only me he had to save. Right. Right? And realizing that, that should undo. That's part of all of us. I mean, that's part of my salvation story is realizing that what Christ did, he would have done it if it was only for me and that it completely I I came, I came un, un, unhitched from who I was. I mean, it it was an immediate thing. Yeah. You know, but the reality is, you know, when I came down off that high You know, I still had those same temptations because I was still in the same environment, you know, I didn't get saved and go to heaven and get and be in a place where there was no longer any temptation. There was no longer any kind of. So, most of the stuff that I had to deal with. There's no longer bills I had to pay or obligations that I had to meet or anything like that. I still had to live in the confines of this world, right?

BRANDON: 1:00:52

Most of your circumstances didn't change. You changed in the circumstances.

JOHN: 1:00:55

Yup. Yup. It's exactly right. So, alright. So, so we've we've identified a couple ways that we can we can say um this is temptation. This is a test, right? We've got these two. We've got these two buckets that we can work with. I think another thing that we can look at is, um, talking with other believers about it. I think it, I think there's so much to, you know, just like God made us to be in relationship with him. He made us to be in relationship with each other and to sit down and talk about stuff with, with, with believers, with people who we know that, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody that's, um, further down the road. You know, then we are because I think that I think we're, we're all going to, um, we're all going to get hit with struggles at different points and, and face it in different ways and, and, and can be derailed by stuff that, you know, in the past, it wouldn't have affected us as bad, but now it will affect us really bad. I mean, think about when you were a kid, what's your biggest temptation? You know, I mean, I'm talking about as like a little kid, my biggest temptation was like candy or something, you know, whereas today candy is not a big temptation for me, you know, but as a, as you know, when you get to be 40 or 50 years old, the, the new candy that's tempting you is financial security or, or, um, you know, building wealth or, um, So, when you get a little bit older, maybe what's tempting you is building a legacy. You know, how are people going to remember me? Right. Right. And I mean, that's a temptation because why do you want to be remembered? Mm hmm. You know, when I when I leave a room, I don't want people thinking about me and how awesome I was. I want people thinking about Jesus. Yeah. You know, how do I live a life that causes people to think about Jesus when I leave the room? Yeah. You know, I don't want people thinking about, you know. You know, man, that guy's cologne smell is horrible or golly, I'm glad he finally shut up, you know, or something like that. I want, I want people to when, when, when they've, when I've had an interaction with them, they're like, man, something was different. I don't, you know, I can't really put my finger on it right now but something was different. How do we live in that way? That's what we're called to do. That's that's what it means to be in a intimate relationship with the lord is that We know his character. We know how he wants us to behave. We know how he wants us to behave if we realize we've made a mistake, right? Because, news alert, we're all going to make mistakes. You know, how we respond to them says a lot about our character. Um, and our character should point to God. That should be what it's pointing to because that's why Jesus came and did what he did. So when we're facing that temptation, what is always, what is always the easy way out? The, or what is the easiest way out, I would say, in the moment?

KIP: 1:04:05

Well, I guess the easiest way would be what Joseph did, and that's run. Yeah. Get away from it.

JOHN: 1:04:11

Yeah, so that, that would be the easiest way. So he was, he was, he was um. He was physically tempted by a woman, right? And he got out of there so quick, he left his jacket.

KIP: 1:04:25

He knew that to stay in that environment was going to put him at risk. And so he simply. left the environment. And of course, he was in a situation that was his job, but he didn't get a chance to come back because he got fired, thrown in prison, you know, but even though he didn't do anything wrong, but I think, you know, if we know situations can put us in peril, And I think the wisest thing to do is try to avoid the situation if possible. Yeah. You know?

JOHN: 1:04:56

Yeah. Stay away from that. Uh, Dr. David Jeremiah told a story in a sermon, uh, that I listened to a while back. And he said that, uh, he said he had a guy come to him and said that he's struggling with, um, struggling with lust in his life. Right? And where he's looking on another woman in a way that he shouldn't and, and all this kind of stuff. And, uh, so David asked him, he said, well, when, when is there a time where you're struggling with this more than any other time? And he said, well, you know, yeah, I'm struggling with it a lot when I get home from work. And he said, David said, okay, well, how do you, what, what happens when you get home from work? Tell me, tell me your routine. What, what happens? He said, well, uh, I don't live that far away from where I work. So I walk home, I walk home every day. And, uh, he said, you know, I walked through the worst part of town. And there's basically like a red light district and um, you know, so I see all this stuff before I, before I get home and uh, David was like, really? He said, uh, he said, why do you go that way? And he said, well, it's the shortest way. And David looked at him and he said, And he said, go the long way. He said, what do you mean? He said, don't walk through there. If you get home and this temptation is hitting you harder than any other time and you realize that you're walking through this stuff, going home and seeing the things that you're seeing, whether you're going in there and and partaking of anything or not, you're walking through there and you're seeing it and it's getting into your head and you're thinking about it, right? And then you get home and that temptation is. Where it's the greatest. He said, don't, don't walk through there. Go the long way, you know, so I think that's a really good response to temptation is to look at it and say, okay, what got me here? You know, what, what steps did I take to get me here with him? It was physical steps that he was taking. He was walking through a part of town that he didn't need to be in, you know, now, um,

BRANDON: 1:07:03

Well, that kind of goes back to the routine, right? Of, uh, a shooting routine or, you know, or this archery or, or basketball or whatever it is like you can get into a bad rhythm just like you get into a good rhythm. Right. And, and obviously that was a bad rhythm. Yeah. And so recognizing, and, and, you know, and like I said before, when you, you got saved, most of your circumstances did not change. Right. Change was you. But there are circumstances we can control and, and, and like Kip said, you know, don't, don't go, don't put yourself into those situations, environments, circumstances, if you know, this is what leads me to temptation.

JOHN: 1:07:46

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know, the fastest way to make temptation, the, the, the battle of temptation go away is to give into it. Absolutely. That's the fastest way. It's the easiest way. Yeah. To make, to make, to make temptation go away, give into it. Yeah. Now, the problem is you're going to be left with guilt and the struggle that comes along with making a poor choice. And the collateral damage. And yeah, and who knows? I mean, depending on what the temptation is, you know, I mean, it could be, you know, maybe you, maybe you, um, travel for your job and you go out of town. Yeah. And when you're out of town, um, and you're not with your wife and you're not home with, with your family, you're, you're going to face temptations that you wouldn't if you were at home with your family. I mean, let's just be, let's be honest about this. You're, you're going to face those temptations knowing that that's going to happen. What do you do, you know, what, what, what do you, what do you do to put yourself in a place where you're, you're not gonna, you're, you're not gonna, you know, get tempted by something and, and, and be in that place where you, you're having to, you're having to struggle with it. And I don't know what the answer is. I mean, I don't know what the temptation is. It could be, it could be a thousand different things that you're being tempted by, you know, it could be. Hanging out in the bar at the hotel or going to the bar down the street or, or, you know, looking at things on your, on your computer that you shouldn't be looking at, or watching things on television in the hotel room that, that you shouldn't be watching, you know, I mean, it could be any number of things. It could be. You know, meeting with a, uh, a, uh, a female coworker, you know, that, that works in the town where you're at or something, or that, you know, the two of you were there for a meeting and dude, that's, that is not a good road to walk down, you know, regardless of what your intentions are. That is not a good road to walk down. Yeah. Um, um, because I, I think that, that that can become something that it doesn't need to become. Yeah. For both of you. Um, so it's, it's something that we have to, we have to get ahead of. You know, just like we say we wanna, we wanna do, we wanna practice the way that we wanna play. Well, when we're doing that, obviously we have to make preparations to be able to practice. You know, we have to make sure we've got the equipment that we need, we've, we've got, uh, with archery, we've got a target that we can shoot at, all this kind of stuff. If I know that I'm going to be tempted in a certain way, I need to prepare to make sure I don't go in that place to be tempted. You know, I think Martin Luther said that, um, He said that we can't keep, we can't keep birds from flying over our head. Um, but we can keep them from building a nest on top of our head, right? Um so, which is pretty simple. You know, if a bird comes to try to tries to build a nest on your head, you know, you just swat it off. I don't know why anybody let him do that but but it's it's a good analogy. It's it sounds absurd. Uh what do you mean? But yeah, I mean, it's like, I mean, uh some of the some of the temptations that that um That that we face in life. So I'll tell you this, this past year, I had a revelation of how much I, I, I, I literally got down on my knees one morning. I do, I get up in the mornings and my routine is to get up and I pray. And sometimes I fall asleep when I pray because I'm not fully awake yet and you know, I wake up and God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to fall asleep and you know, I just feel like he is not mad at me for it. Disciples did that too. I think. Yeah, they did. In the garden. They did. Yeah. They just couldn't stay awake. But anyway, um, I get up in the mornings and I pray and I, and I read my Bible and I was, I was praying one morning and I realized, um, Um, I was, I just met with a friend who was, um, who had, who had given in to some temptation and man, he was, he was broken because of it. I mean, he, he called me and, and wanted me to come over and, and I went over and sat and talked with him and man, he just, he fell apart because he'd given in to some temptation and, um, the temptation that he had, had And that's what I had given into was I mean, it was, it was, it was a real thing. It was, it was causing issues. It was stuff that he needed to sit down and talk with people about and everything. And, and, you know, he just, he wanted me to pray with him and pray for him. And I still pray for him and check in with him on, you know, about it to make sure, you know, things are going good the way things should be going and everything. And, um, anyway, I was, I was praying one morning and I realized that there are certain things that absolutely do not tempt me. And that's not because I'm so good, you know, it's not, I mean, it's, it's because God has protected me from those things, you know, so. We still, yeah, we have all these temptations that are thrown at us, but it's still in a controlled environment because God is sovereign, right? So, when we, when we get to looking at the things that do tempt us, and we have this, we have this deceiver, we have this enemy, we have Satan who, he knows what's going to trip us up. And he's going to throw it at us every single chance he gets. Because he He didn't care about us. Like don't don't we don't need to misunderstand what he's what he's about He didn't really care about hurting us. He's trying to hurt god You know And I guess he didn't realize that he lost

BRANDON: 1:13:47

Maybe he does maybe He just trying to take out as many as he can. Yeah along the

JOHN: 1:13:53

way.

BRANDON: 1:13:53

Yeah,

JOHN: 1:13:53

I guess so. Yeah, but I mean he is He is consistently um Um, uh, buffeting us and trying to attack us. And I think just like you said, if we get to a point where we feel like we're not being tempted, man, we need to, we need to, we need to really examine what's going on.

BRANDON: 1:14:13

And I think too, you know, scripture talks about how the devil's like a roaring lion, you know, prowling around looking for him, he can devour. And to devour, it literally means like to destroy, right? It's to, not just like we think about eating a hamburger and we devoured that hamburger, but like to completely destroy and tear apart. You think about a lion, how it eats, and that's what the enemy wants to do to our lives. Is, he doesn't want to hinder us, he wants to take us out. Um, and, and completely destroy us. And so I think, um You know, it says be sober and alert, be, be, um, sober minded. And I think the thing that we have to do is expect it. You know, we, we, we need to expect adversity. It's part of life and we need to expect that temptations going to come is it's a part of life There are things we're not perfect You know and things are going to be tempting and I think not being surprised by it, you know

JOHN: 1:15:21

Or or completely Like taken off guard by it. Yeah. If we're not expecting it, if we're not, if we're not on guard about it, man, when it happens, we don't know what to do. You know, we're, we're like, we're like a deer in headlights. You know, we're just, we're, we're just sitting there treading water and, and, and, and don't even know how to respond. Right. You know, like, man, why is this happening? I go to church every Sunday. Um, um, um, you know, I, I accepted salvation. Why is this happening? Well, you know, Being saved doesn't mean that we get put into an armchair, a comfy chair with wheels on it, and we get rolled right into heaven. You know, there is a fight that we've got to go through while we're here. And I think that, in large part, that happens because it brings us into closer, into closer relationship with God. He gets to show us how, if we'll do it the way he designed for us to do it. How it's how he's faithful, right?

BRANDON: 1:16:24

Yeah, I think when you go through a test or a temptation, it's going to do one of two things. It's going to draw you closer to God or it's going to push you away. And I think we have to make the decision and make a determination that I'm going to draw close, even though this hurts, even though this is hard. I'm going to draw close. I'm not going to take the easy way out. And, and that's not always easy. And I think, you know, you were talking about making decisions earlier and you said, I'll go talk to friends. Uh, you know, talk to my wife. I think the same thing as you're going through a test or a temptation. One of the biggest things we need is godly community around us. That we can go to some, I've got people, you know, who I can text in a moment and just say pray. I don't have to send a long text explaining what to pray for. I'll just, I'm able to text them and just say pray. And when I do that, um, I know they're praying for me in that moment. And I think we, we have to have those people in our lives that we know come hell or high water, they're going to be there. And they're able to walk with us through these things because we're not meant to do life alone, and we can't do life alone. At least not the way God wants us to.

JOHN: 1:17:49

Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to share a, a, um, a verse. It's from 13. It says, No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. But with the temptation, will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. So, I think a couple of things that we need to look at right there is that number one, if we're tempted, it's not because we're outside of God's will necessarily. Alright? Because it says, it says, basically it says it's going to happen. Um, you know, that now, there going to be times where we're going to be tempted and we're going to be completely outside of God's will and that's why we're tempted because we're, we're going somewhere we shouldn't be going, right? But there are times where we can be firmly in God's will doing what he's called us to do. We can be on a mission trip somewhere and our only goal in that mission trip is to be there for God doing what we feel that he's called us to do and we can face temptation in that time, right? Am I wrong or do y'all

BRANDON: 1:19:09

agree with that? No, I mean, it's, it's everywhere. I know, uh, gosh, I can't even remember who said it. But, uh, it was a, it was a football coach. And he said, um, talking to his players when they would come in as freshmen. And he said, you know, guys, you don't have to go looking for temptation. Temptation's gonna find you. And, and I mean, I think that's the truth. It's going to be where you are, you know, because the issue is, I mean, James tells us not to say the devil's tempting me. You know, we're led away by our own evil desires.

JOHN: 1:19:47

Yeah. I think we're pretty quick to blame stuff on the devil. You know, the devil made me do it and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I've, I've talked about recently that we need to be really careful saying. The devil made me do something. Yeah.

BRANDON: 1:19:59

Well, I mean again that kind of really goes against scripture Yeah, it's it's our own evil desires. Now. He may put the bait out there.

JOHN: 1:20:06

Sure Yeah, look at what he did with Adam and Eve with the original, you know, the original sin You know He didn't force them to do anything He all he did was ask some questions To, to make them think, well, did God really, God really say that? Does God really mean that he would do that? And then the next thing you know, they're hiding from God. Yeah. I mean, it's like, what? Come on, Adam. You've ruined it. You know, and it was Adam's fault in case any of you think it is Eve's fault. Uh uh. Adam was standing right there. I mean, she was naked. He didn't go far. Let's be honest about this. It's

BRANDON: 1:20:48

a tough situation. I mean, you know, if, well, I'm not, I'm not going to go there. Well, yeah. Yeah. So. So, she's naked as you said. It's kind of if your wife's feeding you fruit in that situation, kind of hard to say no, right? Maybe D can edit that part out.

JOHN: 1:21:12

No, no, we're not editing that out. That's true. I mean, you know, we're we we are we are pretty simple creatures, Brandon when it comes down to it. I mean, oh my gosh. That is a fact. Sorry.

KIP: 1:21:28

You know, Satan

JOHN: 1:21:29

I've enjoyed being on this

BRANDON: 1:21:31

podcast.

KIP: 1:21:33

I made it I made it four

JOHN: 1:21:34

episodes. Brandon's like, well, I just got cut.

KIP: 1:21:39

You know, he's he's the presenter. He's the one who presents the temptation. You're right. It is our choice. We have that choice to make. But Satan knows us. That he no longer can have your soul, right? So he wants to have your impact. Yeah, he wants to have your influence.

JOHN: 1:21:58

Yeah. He wants

KIP: 1:21:59

to diminish now what you can accomplish for Christ. Because, um, once, once you go down that road, then people are going to look at you and say, well, I thought you were Christian. I thought this. And so that, that ability to do for Christ, what he has for you to do. has been affected. Yeah. You know? And um, so while he may doesn't, while he doesn't make us do things, um, he knows that we have that ability to make a decision one way or the other. And he's going to constantly come at you. Because he's hoping that if I, if I tempt you 10 times, maybe one of the 10, you're going to take the bait on, you know, and that will be the start then of diminishing what you can do for Christ. Yeah. And we don't

BRANDON: 1:22:49

realize there's a hook in that bait. Yeah. And I think too, until we learn to overcome a certain temptation, he's going to keep putting in front of us. And so one of the things that I struggled, we played a lot of inter squad games going back to baseball and the sports aspect. I struggled hitting a fastball inside. Well, our whole team knew that. I mean, after a while, you, you figure that out. What do you think I saw all the time in inter squad games? Inside fastballs. And so, um, he's the same way. I mean, if he knows that there's something we struggle with, he's going to keep putting it there. And so we, we need to be aware of that. You know, that this is going to happen. My mind is going to go to this place. And I think that comes back to that Romans 12, two passage of renewing our mind. How does that happen through God's word? So it's amazing when we spend time in God's word. Um, how a lot of things that we struggle with will begin to go away. Not always. I'm not saying like, if you struggle with pornography, that just reading the Bible is going to fix you. That praying hard is going to fix you. There's some other things that in steps that you've got to take. Yeah. You've got to take other steps, but there are things in your life that will begin to change as your mind's renewed because you'll begin to think differently. Um, and I think that's one of the ways that we, God has given us the ability to overcome those temptations is to think differently. But until we are able to find a way, um, until, you know, God shows us a way or we begin to practice biblical principles, um, the enemy's going to keep putting that thing in front of us, you know. So,

JOHN: 1:24:32

yeah, you know, I, I've, I've never struggled with pornography. It's never been a, never been a vice for me or anything, but I can tell you had it been one, having a daughter would have changed all of that, you know, and, and I think that maybe that that has prevented it from becoming an issue for me because it is, you know, when we were growing up, it was not as readily available as it is today, but I mean. We all have little boxes in our pockets right now that within a few seconds we could be looking at something that we don't want to be looking at. Yeah.

BRANDON: 1:25:09

You know, we did a series, um, I'm sure you guys remember when, uh, the book Fifty Shades of Grey came out. Um, not, not, not a good book. Um, and so, uh, and we did a series because it became so popular. called 50 Shades of Gray. The color is, I think the gray and the title was someone's name. But we did a series called 50 Shades of Gray, meaning the color and we call it the black and white on sexual issues. And so in that series, we talked about, um, just sex in general. We talked about sexuality. We talked about pornography and we talked about abortion. And so, we were getting hate before we ever preached the first message. And, you know, and, and we approached it with a lot of grace. But in that pornography message, this was a few years ago. That is still, by far, the most listened to message we've ever done in 16. 5 years. Wow. And you know, and for men, I believe that that that lust aspect for women is probably the number one thing that trips us up in many ways. Um, we all have certain things right there, bigger temptations than others. But I think That's one of those things that, that podcast hadn't been listened to that, or that message hasn't been listened to that many times because it's not a struggle, you know, or because they like your voice so much or something. Well, they could listen to any message to hear my incredible voice, but it's, um, it's one of those though, that is listened to over and over and over and over again. And because it is an issue, it's a struggle that people have. And one of the toughest struggles to overcome. And I think one of the things that a lot of times we don't realize and talk about this with Um, sex outside of marriage is God created us in a way that when we have, um, intimacy with our spouse, there is a, um, chemical released in our brain, um, and is the love hormone basically is what it is. And it actually is such a strong, um, almost, almost to the point of like a drug that it, It bonds us to our, our, our spouse. It bonds us to our, our, um, our wife, our husband, whatever. Well, the same thing happens when people experience that intimacy outside of marriage. Same thing happens with pornography. And so this chemical is released in our brain, which begins to cause us to desire to recreate that, that action again. And, and when we do that, it, it becomes an addiction. It becomes something that we, we have been bound in a way to this. And I think that's one of the reasons pornography, um, lust, uh, sexual addiction, through the years, sexual addiction and pornography have been the two, the most difficult things that I've seen for men to get out of. Um, a lot of times even more so than drug use and abuse is, is breaking a cycle of sexual addiction.

JOHN: 1:28:46

Well, when you are doing, when you're doing drugs, there's a, there's a, um, there's an outward expression of that, right? Everybody, I mean, like if I came, if I came to the table this morning and I was, I was high. The three of you would be able to see that.

BRANDON: 1:29:03

Sure.

JOHN: 1:29:04

Right. But if I came to the table this morning, having been up for two hours, looking at pornography, ain't a single one of you here that would know that. Yeah, you could hide it a lot easier. Yeah, I mean, you can hide that. So, I think that that's one of the things that makes it, makes it more of a challenge to get over or to get past is that yeah. You know, any, any kind of addiction that you can hide really well makes it that much harder to, to deal with, you know, um, so, man, it's unfortunately, you know, we're not sitting here saying, okay, if you're tempted, this is, this is what you do. Boom, you're done. You're never going to have to face that temptation again. You've got it whipped, you know, square it with it, beat it and you're done. Unfortunately. That's just not the way it works, you know, and I think that that's the that's the struggle that that we go through is that You know, just like one of you said Kip you said this Satan knows that he you know, he knows he can eventually get us with this and like he'll he'll try Ten times knowing that you know, maybe one out of those ten times he's gonna get us Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that for 10 days, we're going to face this temptation and that on the seventh day or the sixth day, we're going to give into it and then, you know, we'll be good. Absolutely. You know, it might be over the course of 10 years or three decades

BRANDON: 1:30:31

that he tempts us with this stuff. You know, when Jesus was tempted in the desert and it says, you know, after the third temptation, Um, Jesus resist and it says that satan left him until an opportune time, right? And yeah, he wasn't done. The only other time I found in scripture is that it says it was an opportune time is when Jesus was in the garden. And he was wrestling with going to the cross and basically he's like, father, you know, if there, if there's a way, this, this, this judgment I'm about to go through this, this cross and take it away from me and I mean, when I read it and I see that, that that's the next time it talks about it being an opportune time, like, I think maybe those were two, the two greatest times of temptation for Jesus is in the desert. And right before he went to the cross and as you're saying, it might be 10 years apart. Well, this is, well, three years apart, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and you look at that and, and, um, realizing it may not be something that is just constant, but for some people it is. And I think about this, how many men and women, but speaking a lot to men in this is. How many of them are living in the guilt and shame and condemnation because they consistently fail in this temptation and how many have just given in or given up and I would encourage people who are listening like you can overcome it not by yourself but with the power of the Holy Spirit and with community around you, you can overcome it and then some practical steps of Um, like you're talking about, you know, what do you do when you're on the road, you know, they're again, uh, what, what is a routine you can go through that gives you that ability, you know what it might be at some point you don't go on the road, you know, if you, yeah, if you, if

JOHN: 1:32:37

you can't

BRANDON: 1:32:37

figure

JOHN: 1:32:38

out how to take those steps, get a different job. Exactly. That means marriage

BRANDON: 1:32:42

is more important than your job.

JOHN: 1:32:44

Well, yeah. And, and you're, and you're, you're. Your influence for God is more important like we're, we're, we're called to be his ambassadors. I use that word all the time that we're, we're supposed to be his ambassador and I love how Tony Evans talks about that. He talks about refs in the NFL. You know, we know that they're refs because they got those awesome, beautiful white and black striped shirts. Yeah, they're zebras, right? We know, we know who they are. We can pick them out on the field. And they are there to make sure that the games played by the rules that the NFL Commission has set up. That's all they're there to do, is enforce the rules of the game, right? And to make sure that it's played within the confines of what's been set up. I mean, that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to make sure that we're living our lives the way that God intended us to live them. And so often, you know, I mean, let's go back to that, that, that, that idea about, uh, being an entrepreneur. There are so many times when I'll look at a situation and I'll be like, man, I don't know if I can, I don't know if I need to do this this way. Uh, or, um, I don't know if I need to bring this, these products in, you know, how am I, how, how are we going to do this? How's this going to work? Um, how am I going to, you know, Um, offer this to a, to a I have to, I have to go back to what that mission is, right? And what that purpose is. And then just say, you know what, this is what God's called me to do. I'm going to be obedient to it. That's right. And I'm going to trust him to take care of the consequences. And it's so easy to say that, but it's so stinking hard to do. You know, it's so, it's so hard to say, you know what. But I feel, I feel like I feel led to, to, to, to give this money to this organization. And man, this, this amount of money, this, this hurts a little bit, right? And I say it hurts a little bit, like it makes it like you have to sacrifice a little bit to do it. You know, let's say you're going to give a hundred dollars, you know, and, um, 100 is a big deal. Yeah. You know, that particular week or that particular month or whatever, but you've made that commitment that you're going to do that, you know, follow through on it and let God work it out. And I, listen, I'm not, I'm not saying that this is. I don't, I don't prescribe the prosperity gospel. I'm not saying if you'll give 100 to God, he's going to give you 500 back. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I don't believe that. Dang it. Yeah. Sorry. You know, but I mean, I do, I do believe that. That when, when God, when God leads us to do something, whether it's financially or whatever, you know, take that out of the game. It's easy to talk about numbers, you know, cause numbers are black and white. You know, if you give 5, then, you know, don't worry. God's going to make up that 5 somewhere. You know, it doesn't necessarily mean he's going to put 20 in your pocket or something like that. He might put four 50 in your pocket. I don't know. I mean, I think he's, I think he's faithful. And if he's called you to do something, he's going to make a way for you to do it. And, um, I just, that, that has been probably the biggest challenge that I have faced. I don't know if I want to say it's a temptation. I mean, I think, I think it is a temptation because sometimes you'll do things. I think the temptation comes from what is your motive for doing it, right? What is your motive for making a decision to do something? I think that's where the temptation can present itself. Because, you know, sometimes you can, you can make a decision to do something because you feel called to do it. Sometimes you can move on something a little bit faster than you should. And when you do that, you know, you're, you're putting yourself in a, in a bad, in a bad place. Sometimes you're completely blinded and deceiving yourself and you're really just acting out of selfish ambition. You know, like I want the praise of man. Over the praise of God. And the reality is we're probably more guilty of that than we even realize. Um, because it's, it's so simple to, to get there because, you know, we, we, we always talk about things from a horizontal standpoint, from a vertical standpoint, horizontal is everything we can see, hear, touch, smell, all that kind of stuff. That's everything in front of us. Well, the reality is everything that I can see right now, like we're sitting over in the, in the front corner of the store and we can basically see everything. All this stuff is going to be gone one day. I'm going to be gone one day. So that vertical part of my life is the one that matters more than anything else. And we are all so guilty of putting so little effort into the vertical part of our lives. That, that part of our life is going to last for eternity. You know, and so getting back to that mission, I know what my mission is. My mission is to help people understand that. Yeah, what's interesting about what you're

BRANDON: 1:38:20

saying. with, you know, I actually wrote this in my journal and do a lot of journaling. And, um, I asked myself the question, do I really believe that only those things that are eternal, you know, are worth pouring my life into? And, and, you know, I want to say the answer is yes, but when I look at my life, is that the reality of do. do my actions, back up my confession, you know,

JOHN: 1:38:49

and how often do we evaluate that? Yeah. Right. Like Kip, how often are, do we really sit and, and evaluate, okay, this week, this is what I did and I did really good. Or do we only do it when our birthday rolls around?

BRANDON: 1:39:02

Yeah.

JOHN: 1:39:03

You know, or do we only do it when a new, when a new year rolls around, right? So. New year, new me,

BRANDON: 1:39:10

man.

JOHN: 1:39:11

Yeah.

KIP: 1:39:12

Well, I think, you know, we, we should probably daily, right. You know, we should probably daily take a look at everything that we're doing and, and, uh, is this going to honor God or not? But we get caught up in the world. We get caught up in the busyness of things. The work of day life. Yeah. And, uh, those things slip through the cracks. And a day or two becomes a week. A week becomes a month. And, you know, uh, we look back and we realize, you know, Man, I really didn't I really didn't do that much for God lately, or I really didn't grow in him in these last few weeks or, you know, I call it drifting, you know, to drift from him, but, um, you know, it's, um, I think that's really the key is that we live this life daily because if we try to live it monthly, you know, yearly or whatever quarterly or whatever, yeah, it's just, it's just too big, you know, so it's just a day by day process of trying to be obedient to God. Yeah. And, uh, trying to live as, as he directs us through his word. And, uh, that's why, you know, it's so important that we, we read his word daily, that we spend time in prayer daily, that we worship him daily. You know, um, I'm a big, big believer in the word focus and you know this from our Sunday school class, you know, and, uh, you know, focus is critical to anything you do, whether it be hunting. or athletics or your job or whatever. But the key is that, that God's got to be kind of like an umbrella over everything and everything else falls under that. So if we keep our focus on God, everything else will, we'll find, you'll work all those things out for us. You know, it's when we allow that focus to go, as you say, horizontal, you know, and it goes, it goes that way that we get ourselves into trouble.

BRANDON: 1:41:03

You know, something that, that really points to that is in the church. A lot of times we'll have people who, when it comes to like giving or being generous, um, they'll make the comment of, well, I just don't know what you're going to do with the money. Um, but then I look at that and I go, but you're trusting us with your spiritual life, right? You're trusting us to guide you spiritually in this vertical relationship. But you're not trusting us with the financial aspect of your life with dollars and cents. Yeah. And so it's not necessarily, I don't want to trust God with my money. I don't trust you with my money. And I'm like, but why would you trust us with what's most important? Yeah. Yeah. You, you see what I'm saying? Yeah. It's where the priority is. Yeah.

JOHN: 1:41:57

Yep. Man, that's uh, that's a, that's a tough thing to deal with, you know, I've, uh, I've, I've never been called to be a pastor and I, I praise the lord for that, you know, because that is a tough, that's a tough job, man. I mean, it's like every, everything that you get to do. Um, I, I talked about this with a, a, a pastor friend of mine. I was really close to him. And. I was starting another business at the time. This was, and this was 20 years ago. And so he would ask me questions about it and everything. And, you know, I was able to pull, I was able to pull spreadsheets and look at financial data and stuff. And that's kind of what you do to, to judge how, how a new business is doing. You know, you look at the performance and I asked him one day, I said, how do you do that with church? Yeah. You know, like, what do you look at? And he said, John, we, we can't, you know, cause we can't, we can't look at people's hearts, you know, and I, I, I've always thought, man, what a struggle.

BRANDON: 1:43:06

Yeah. Well, and I came out of the construction business, so I was, um. Um, in roofing for 10 years. And so I was accustomed to every day when I left, I could look at what I had accomplished. Yeah, you were building something. Yeah. I could look at this, the school and I could go before I got here this morning, there were no roof panels on that wing of that school. Yeah. Now there are. When I got into ministry, one of the toughest transitions was I left almost every day. Not knowing really what did I accomplish. Yeah. And and that can be a challenge but that's where you know you go back to god's word and he tells us like if you do not grow weary in doing good and do season you will reap a harvest. Yeah. It doesn't say you might. It says you will. It says you will. Yeah. Yeah.

KIP: 1:43:53

You know, it's interesting you say that because Sunday as we were driving home from church, my wife looked at me and she goes, you know, we go to First Baptist, Doctor Waters and she goes, do you think Doctor Waters when he. preaches his heart out, you know, for salvation and no one comes forward. Do you think that that hurts him? You know, do you think that that saddens him or whatever? And I thought about it for a minute and I said, well, you know, he wants people to come, but I think he also understands that what he's doing is planting seeds and we don't always see. That seed grow immediately, you know, and so while you don't, you see a school being built and you can take satisfaction that as Christians, we have to plant seeds and and uh, you know, I tell the story. I had a kid one time played for me and he was going through a lot of things when he played for me. We didn't have the best relationship. This is when I was coaching high school boys basketball and about 10 years after he graduated, we came back for a funeral for one of his teammates. Yeah. And he pulled me aside and he said, coach, you're not as stupid as I thought you were. And I kind of laughed and we talked a little bit, but what he was saying was, coach, you, you were putting things into my life that at that time I didn't understand and I couldn't relate to. But as I've grown, gotten older and I've had family, I'm married and things, he says, now I look back on the things that you were telling me. And I realized how true those things were, you know, so all I was doing at that moment when he and I were not butting heads and we were not having the greatest relationship, I was trying to plant seeds in his life. And it was very, most of the time you don't get to even see those grow. Yeah. I, I thanked him that he, he told me that, you know, because it reinforced my belief that that's what we do as Christians. We plant seeds and then, I don't know, somewhere in the New Testament it says somebody plants, Paul's talking, I think it's maybe he and, I can't even remember who it was, Apollo or Apollo. And he says, one of us waters, one of us plants. God's in charge of God gives the increase. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, that's that's kind of what day by day we plant seeds Yeah,

BRANDON: 1:46:09

you know what I had to realize in in preaching pretty much every week somewhere is God calls me to do two things. He calls me to Say what he told me to say and he calls me to do my best saying it and I had to get to a point where I would go in my office, I would kneel down at the couch after a message, and I would ask myself, did I do those two things? And if I did, I went to lunch. You know, if I didn't, there was a moment of repentance and saying, Lord, I know I should have done that. You know, but talking about Dr. Waters and did somebody respond or not? I think one thing I had to, you know, really ask myself is, well, why do I want them to respond? Is it to make me feel like I preached a good message or is it because I truly care about them and their salvation? The other thing that I had to realize is exactly what you just said. I can't save anybody, right? Yeah, I can't do it. All I can do is be faithful with those two things and and I'll even tell our people we give an opportunity to respond to salvation like Um, you're, you're not going to hurt my feelings by not responding. That's not what I'm here for. You know, I'm not here to get my ego, um, you know, stroked and feel better about myself because I preached this message. But I'm, I'm given this opportunity because God wants you to come to him. And I think being able to remind myself of those things has been very freeing for me. Um, to not even walk around beating myself up all day Sunday, you know, because man, if I could have preached a little better or that message was terrible. And to be honest, usually God will do more through messages that I think were bad than he does. You know, sometimes you walk off and you're like, man, I'm going to spike my Bible. That was like, that was, that was so fun, man. I felt like the spirit was moving, man. That was awesome. And and you know, and it's like

JOHN: 1:48:19

don't do that. But if you do, please get it on video. Yeah. Well,

BRANDON: 1:48:23

I've done a lot of stupid things that are on video. And so, um, but, but, you know, a lot of times what I find is God does more through, as we know, like when I'm weak, he's strong and it's not my strength that brings people to salvation. It's the message. And the message has an anointing of the Holy Spirit that. Um, does things that we can't do and, and looking at I remember one time, um, after a message, I felt like it was so bad. I didn't want to give him salvation invitation, but in my heart, I knew I was supposed to, and I walked off the stage and didn't, and the Lord rebuked me and was like, do not ever not give that opportunity. Because you're looking at what you've done. And, and I remember that, like it was just, and it's been several years ago, but you know, God gives the increase, you know, and. Um, that word is good seed, and if you can just get it out there, it's going to find some good soil, um, and eventually it's going to produce a harvest, um, you know, in people's hearts, and so,

JOHN: 1:49:33

um, Well, and, and, you know, so, a lot has to happen for salvation to occur, right? The reading of the word, and the movement of the Holy Spirit, without those two things, there are none saved, right? And. Um, you know, I I talk about it, um, like with doing youth events or doing summer camps or something every, every year, the same kids are getting saved, you know, and it's like, and that's okay. You know, it's like, man, we want you to, we want you to, to go through that or whatever. We want you to, you know, hopefully it's going to stick at some point, but it's like, it's falling on that rocky ground. Yeah. You know, and it grows a little bit, but then something comes along and just completely wipes it out. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

BRANDON: 1:50:24

Quick funny story. Um, oh, funny and, and yeah, funny. Um, so we had a lady in our church who, um, was getting on up in age, and this was early, early on after we started the church. And we probably had a hundred, 150 people come in at that time. A lot of college students starting to drift in and, um. So, every week that I would give a salvation opportunity, we would ask people to stand if they wanted to receive salvation and so, I would say, you know, just stand to your feet. We want to help you take your next steps in faith. It's the beginning, not the end, right? And so, um, you know, and I would say, stand your feet. Well, this lady, poor lady, she would gotten where she just, she's kinda like me. She couldn't remember stuff. Well, she would stand up for every salvation invitation. But what was funny about it is there were people there who wanted to stand up, but they wouldn't. And when she would stand up, they would feel free to do it. And so I actually did her funeral and I'm like, I wonder how many people responded to salvation over the years because they felt the freedom to be able to do that. But it's kind of like you said. So, I think that just consistently responding over and over for her, it was a different reason.

JOHN: 1:51:44

Yeah.

BRANDON: 1:51:44

But I think a lot of times, it can be the rocky soil or it can be what we talked about last week, not having a security in our salvation. Yeah, not,

JOHN: 1:51:53

not truly knowing for whatever reason or thinking, man, maybe, maybe I, maybe I didn't actually. Maybe I didn't, you know, experience salvation. Maybe I didn't receive salvation. Maybe I'm, maybe I misunderstood something because if I, if I'm facing this temptation now, why am I facing this temptation? Why haven't I been, why haven't I been fixed? Right? And and

BRANDON: 1:52:15

then one thing I would caution people to is if you, if you've had a difficult time overcoming a temptation, it doesn't mean God's given up on you. Like, it doesn't mean God hasn't picked you or chosen you. It means you're human. Right? Yeah. And, and I've had people who have had that struggle that God must not love me if I have to keep dealing with this. Well, again, goes against his word.

JOHN: 1:52:45

Yeah. And God wants more for us. Right. And Kip, you wrote a book. Talk to us about that because you talk a lot about. How God wants more for us and more from, from this life and more for us to, to be able to put aside the things that, that drag us down. Um, Well, you know,

KIP: 1:53:03

I kind of, it's kind of a story in my life a little bit. I was saved at seven. But I actually, as I look back years later, I didn't really grow. I just kind of drive it. The analogy I had was kind of floating down a lazy river. I was going in the right direction. but it wasn't very fast. And it wasn't

JOHN: 1:53:21

because of effort that you were. Oh, I was, I was in church. I

KIP: 1:53:25

was, I was doing everything that you, my grandfather was my pastor. My parents were there every Sunday. You know, I mean, I was doing all the things, but it just, I believe, and I know I really believe I was saved, but I just wasn't doing the work to, to grow in my, my faith. And there came a point when I was about 37. And some circumstances in my life occurred that I really came to where I, I realized that I could do, I could be much more for God, that there was so much more of God that I was missing out on in my life. And, and over the course of the next 20 some years, um, God kind of put that on my heart. And you know, when, um, when God took me out of coaching, he gave me time, he, he isolated me. And during that period of isolation. I kind of went back to all those things that had occurred in that time in terms of, of I needed to grow more. I need, and you know, that verse, uh, you know, John 15, one and two, I think it is where he says, I'm the true grapevine. The father is the gardener. You know, he cuts off every branch of mine that does not produce fruit and he prunes those branches that do bear fruit. So they'll produce. produce even more. And that word, just more just stuck in me. And, and I felt during that time that he wanted me to share some of the things he had taught me about growth, about spiritual growth. And so, um, you know, I, I, I, I wrote it down and put it in a book and took a couple of years to write, which was a great experience. Uh, so far, God's not used it a lot, you know, I know the feeling. So, uh, you know, but He has opened up some doors through it. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I continue to pray that he'll use it, the book, and myself, uh, in terms of sharing. I look at myself now as, I coached basketball for 41 years, and I look now as, I feel like he's put a desire in my heart to coach spiritual growth, and so I'm just looking for opportunities now to do that, uh, to, to share what God taught me about, because I think, I, I come at spiritual growth from how a coach looks. not from how a minister would look at things or a theologian or someone like that. So I come at it from an idea of a game plan, putting together a game plan that God showed me. I felt like in Phoenix, you know, and, and I tried to live out for 20 years. So, um, you know, that's the desire of my heart right now. I'm in a phase where I'm kind of, Okay, God, now what, you know, the book's written and I'm wanting to do this, um, but I don't feel like he's opening a lot of doors, you know, so, um, but, uh, I trust him. I really do. I trust him for his timing. And right now my big thing is prepare yourself, you know, make sure you're ready when God is ready to use you. It's like the verse in the Bible that I love, I look around and I see all this bold stuff where God, one of the, I think it was one of the prophets talked about, you're like an arrow. God, God, God, God, God. has been put in the quiver and it's just sitting there. It's just waiting and waiting. And when your time's ready, when God's ready, he'll reach in, grab that arrow, you, and he'll, he'll fire it. He'll shoot it. And he'll put you into whatever he wants, you know? So, um, you know, uh, I, yeah, spiritual growth has become like, I desire my heart, uh, for first for myself, because if I don't do it, I can't talk about it, but then to help other believers, hopefully in that journey to become more for God.

JOHN: 1:57:06

Yeah. Well, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna like the lesson this week, Ben. Good. Good. Yeah. So, Kip and I, we're, we're in the same, uh, Sunday school small group together. And, uh, and we're going through a study, uh, called Holiness by J. C. or R. C. Ryle? I think it's R. C. R. C. Ryle. Uh, which he was, uh, he was, uh, a man from another time. He was like, his contemporaries were like, uh, Abraham Lincoln, right? To put in perspective when, when this book was written, but it's, it's rich and it's, uh, so what we're talking about this week in our, in our quest for holiness is growth. Uh, and that really falls into what we're talking about today. You know, how do we get to a place where we overcome temptation? Well, the reality is it's not going to go away, right? That's what we've talked about so far today is it's not going to go away just like with Jesus. Satan himself tempted him and then came back 3 years later to tempt him again. When it was the, like you said, the opportune time or the opportune moment to do that. So, it's not going to go away, but how we can be prepared for it. You know, how we can be prepared to handle that and be on our guard. You know, and realizing that, you know, we look at, we can look at life as a race. And which race are we trying to win? Are we trying to win that race that that that horizontal race or are we pressing on towards a different goal? And I think that that's what I think that's what we really need to set our mind to is the The good and true goal that we should be driving towards, um, and you know, like I said, it's gonna, it's gonna hit us at different times and different moments and, and, and different seasons of life. It's going to present itself in, in different ways and being in that place to be able to, to respond to it, um, is, is, uh, is what we're, what we're called to do. You know,

KIP: 1:59:07

this whole podcast about growth. Yeah. You're trying to grow. Archers. Yep. You know, uh, you're, and, and everything in our life's about growth. Right. We should be growing our marriage. Yep. We should be growing, you know, everything we do should be, should be that idea. Satan is trying, he doesn't want growth, you know, in our lives. He doesn't want us to get closer to God, so he's doing everything in his power to go against us. Yeah. To stunt that growth. To stunt that growth. Yeah. And so, you know, if, if, if we're not growing, we're not. Living as God would have us to do not just spiritually. Yeah, but in everything. Yeah, and so Yeah, it's life's about constant growth and change is not always good. So we don't have to necessarily change We just got to do what we're doing better sometimes.

JOHN: 1:59:54

Yeah. Yeah, it's not always about I got to change, I got to change this. I got to change that. That may not be the answer, you know? I mean, it's okay to fight change because sometimes you might be doing exactly what you need to be doing. You might not be getting the results that you think you should be. That doesn't mean you need to just do a complete overhaul change of everything in your life. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes perfect execution does not yield good results. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, so like we started out the conversation talking about that athlete that we see that is just an incredible athlete, you know, If he hadn't practiced and prepared and known and studied that that playbook And know that okay when they call this play, this is the route i'm supposed to run. Well, he might run A fantastic route and he might get open But if he's five yards from where the quarterback is expecting him to be they ain't gonna connect. Yeah,

BRANDON: 2:00:47

and think about another baseball analogy

JOHN: 2:00:49

Yeah,

BRANDON: 2:00:50

you've practiced you go to the plate you execute the swing perfectly you get the right pitch You want to hit you square it up. You're on time. You mash it a line drive and it's straight to the center field,

JOHN: 2:01:01

right?

BRANDON: 2:01:02

Yeah. You know, perfect execution. Yeah, but what, but what

JOHN: 2:01:06

the coach called was a bun. You're supposed to lay that thing down. Well, or, or, or, yeah. Yeah. You walk out there and you're looking at the first base coaching, you're like, what? But what, what was the last thing he did? Oh, home run. I got it. Coach It's probably not what he called. I wish it was that easy.

KIP: 2:01:22

Yeah. Now you're in disobedience, so that Yeah. You know, I think about, um,

BRANDON: 2:01:26

I guess the last thing I would say in regard to this is. My advice is just to encourage people who may be struggling with something is one, to remember you will not regret living for God. Like when you get to the end of your life, you're not going to regret living for God. Two, you're not going to regret doing things God's way. Nobody ever made the greatest mistake of their life doing what God told them to do. Um, three, don't let shame keep you from getting help. And the last one I would say is don't do life alone, you know, in our lives, we all have, we all have fans, we all have friends and we all have foes. And the ones we really want are those friends who will walk beside us and, um, cause we're not meant to do it by ourselves. That's a

JOHN: 2:02:18

good word. That's really good. All right, guys, let's wrap it up. Thank all of you for joining us this morning. Wes, thank you for being here. I know you didn't say a lot, but I know you were listening over there. So. We never know what these seeds are going to do in your life, buddy. So, Kip, I appreciate you being here. It's been an honor, John. Thank you. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. So, and Brandon, I'm glad you were here. We'll have you back again. Don't worry. You think so? Oh, wow. New life. New life. Just don't screw it up again. That's right. That's right. Alright, let's get out of

2:02:48

here.