The Gospel In The Game Sports Podcast
Conversation and stories about real athletes and the journey thru sport, faith and life.
Connecting athletes, sports families and the church. Build bridges and telling real stories to help repair, build and grow people.
Hosts Dan Dromarsky and Dave Dawson
The Gospel In The Game Sports Podcast
Envy
Longing for that elusive championship win, only to watch another team claim the trophy, can spark a deep sense of envy in any sports fan. We open up about those raw moments when envy has taken hold, exploring how this complex emotion seeps into various facets of life, from possessions to personal achievements. By sharing personal experiences and insights from therapy, we uncover how envy can shift from a source of resentment to a catalyst for celebrating others' triumphs and personal growth.
Is social media distorting our perception of success and happiness? We tackle the digital age's influence on envy, pride, and authenticity, reflecting on how online personas often paint an unrealistic picture of perfection. We emphasize the value of genuine achievements and relationships and how projecting a false image can lead to emptiness and dissatisfaction. Inspired by biblical teachings, we advocate for living authentically, finding joy in real-life connections, and nurturing unity and peace. A light-hearted note on charades reminds us of the importance of true communication and understanding.
The journey towards success demands effort and integrity, a theme that permeates our discussion on envy and humility. We share stories of persistence, illustrating how envy can be transformed into admiration for the dedication behind others' achievements. Shortcuts may offer temporary gains, but lasting success is rooted in honesty and hard work, as divine justice promises fulfillment to those who walk righteously. Through the lens of biblical stewardship, we reflect on life's responsibilities and treasures, setting the stage for upcoming personal testimonies that promise to inspire and enrich your journey.
envy is a deep subject, especially if someone has something that's really cool. What is the coolest thing that maybe you would say in your lifetime you've been envious of someone else for having?
Speaker 2:oh man, I think, yeah, envy is an interesting topic because it can you can spin it so many different ways. I would say in my adult life that I can remember one of the biggest envy moments as a sports fan being from winnipeg when I was really big into the cfl, watching my other friends enjoy their teams winning championships as the Canadian football league in a nine team league. My team from Winnipeg went 29 years in a nine team league without winning a championship. So my whole adult life, as you know, this team is is at the top of the list of things that I love and celebrate. Why can't I just enjoy what that moment felt like? That was probably the apex, and envy and you want it's.
Speaker 1:You're right, it can go so many different directions and like, if it becomes items, and then it's really like coveting something that someone has. But you're right, envy can go so many different directions and that that's an interesting sports example.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it's the first thing I thought of it. I I can't, you know, and it's funny because envy is one of those things that early, I think I think in my life, maybe with a poverty mindset, you kind of look at someone and go, oh, I wish I had what they had. But the older that I've gotten and I've, you know, I mean I'll be honest, through therapy that a number of times I realized, no, if I see people who have a lot, I celebrate them. Like I genuinely have an excitement inside me going, wow, you probably worked for that, you probably, you know there's a lot of things in line. So, like, I honestly genuinely don't have a lot of that, lord willing, maybe I do, Maybe I don't.
Speaker 2:I mean I shouldn't declare that it's going to show me in this episode that I don't. I mean I shouldn't declare that it's going to show me in this episode that I mean, hey, you have a nice roadcaster, I don't. But, um, you know I I've arrived in a spot in my life that if I see people with great things, I honestly am genuinely excited for them. So for me, yeah, the, the, the sports team winning a championship, me being jealous and envious of like, can I just feel what that like. You had a nice hoodie that says champions. I want one of those.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm happy knowing you. I'm you're one of the guys that, when it comes to sports, you're not the bandwagon. I just love it when, all of a sudden, the playoffs happen and you know the team that, okay, this team looks like they're really going far. All of a sudden, he's jerseys come out of the woodwork and people are talking about hockey or football or baseball and something else that you've never mentioned that for the last 10 months.
Speaker 2:And now, all of a sudden, you've got a sticker on your vehicle.
Speaker 1:You're wearing your jersey on game day.
Speaker 2:You don't even know how to pronounce the players' names.
Speaker 1:That's right exactly.
Speaker 2:So what about you envious?
Speaker 1:Boy. You know what I think? Very young I remember an older guy saying to me. He said you know, we, we have to remember that life does not consist of the abundance of things. That's a scriptural principle. And I've, I've, uh, I have, boy, I think when it comes down to sports it would probably be something similar to that success when I was younger that I felt that I should have had or something drew attention that probably shouldn't have drawn attention. And then you're kind of like well, wait a second. Like how did you foster that sort of like, uh, step up, whether it's like career, life or something like that. And you almost like not that I'm envious or I want that, because I don't want the easy road. At the same time, it was just. You're just kind of like taken back by it. You're like wait a second, how did that work in your favor? It wasn't supposed to. You're being lazy, but yet somehow you got rewarded with success. I'm envious of the success without all the effort.
Speaker 2:Episode 18, gospel in the Game. I am Dave, that is Dan, this dan. This is envy and we've had some doozies in. Uh, in our episodes so far we've had some good ones. Thanksgiving was a fun one as well, enjoyed that. And um, there have been some topics. I don't know if this is a predictive text to be a heavy one. Maybe it won't be, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting one, and for sure yeah, yeah, I don't mean to cut you off, but we've discussed having the subject of envy for a few weeks now and I think it just kind of seems to like work its way up through the woodwork again.
Speaker 1:So I think it was good that you mentioned for us to tackle it and just brought it back to light again, because it's one of those things that it can easily be like pushed back. Well, you get, have an envious moment and all of a sudden you just push it away and it just kind of hangs there on the surface for a little bit without ever being dealt with or worked through it's funny, you know, when you look at topics that I think are that may be prevalent in our society, but we may not address them to the surface as much.
Speaker 2:Pride and envy are probably two oh yeah totally pretty big ones. So I'm glad that we're able to bring this to light today. The scripture for today comes out of James 3, verse 16. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder in every evil practice.
Speaker 1:And envy and athletics can go together very well, can't they? There's not multiple winners although the world would like it to be that way.
Speaker 2:Participation trophies everywhere. Yay.
Speaker 1:We can't put you up on a podium. No, the podium has to be level.
Speaker 2:That way, the third place, the second place they're all on the same level, even though you've trained for nine years, 365 days a year, for this and you clearly are the stronger athlete. Yeah, we don't want to make the second and third place people feel less than so. Let's not. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So we can't be envious of those that are better than us in the same way If you are if you are really good at your sport. Please don't be envious of those who struggle Sure, because, like they get all this time off, yeah, they would rather like train playing nhl 24 on their or 25 on their video game system I'm so old I'm going back to like nhl 2005 or 95 or 94.
Speaker 2:1992 is the first one that came out anyway actually the best was on saga.
Speaker 1:Marioieux's hockey had fighting in it and like you literally had to get three clean shots and then the guy would just lay there bleeding.
Speaker 2:I remember in NHL 93, if you got enough speed and you railed some guy, blood would fly out of his brain. He's laying on the ice. He clearly can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I always remember, remember. It's like I would be the buffalo sabers everyone be like.
Speaker 1:Why are you being the buffalo sabers they had like pat lafontaine and mcgillney and you could play them the whole entire time and you were like all they had to do was like fake, fake in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was like the move yeah, envious of an easier time in life, for sure. Um, you know, as athletes, envy can appear in a lot of different ways. Um, you and I talked about off the air an example of envy. You know, maybe it can be something as simple as three on three overtime, right, you're in on a two on one or maybe even a two on O. You know, the guy who's got the puck has got 10 goals and the other guy who on the wing has got 35, when he, you know, wants to score another goal. The guy makes a nice move, who's got 10, pops it in, teammates excited for him, but maybe deep down inside he's going. You know, that was my shot. Like I had a great celly planned, right, I've been saving this celly up and I wanted to throw it out and you took my moment. Like that maybe could be an end, for sure it could.
Speaker 1:Or the guy that's on the bench? Yeah, the guy that's on the bench that's like, okay, I, I should be out there. I'm, I'm better than this guy, I'm faster than this guy, or I'm a better face-off guy than this guy. Why is he out and I'm not? It can go easily across board.
Speaker 1:When I was in boy I was probably only, I was probably about 11 playing hockey we used to have, as part of minor hockey, week tournaments we used to have. If you go into overtime you pull the goalies and then you go play for a few minutes and then you take a guy off and then you take a guy off, yeah, they would do that. But at first they play overtime with the goalie. And I remember um telling my coach I didn't get a whole lot of ice time playing as a winger that year. And I remember looking at my coach he put didn't get a whole lot of ice time playing as a winger that year. And I remember looking at my coach, he put me out there in overtime. I was like he put me out there in overtime. This is my moment. I looked at the bench, I skated back, I took a little turn by the bench and I said, coach, I'm going to put it in the net. He goes, you go for it, dan. And I went out there. I scored the overtime winner and I was so excited, so excited, and I remember how many guys that were obviously better on our hockey team were like absolutely shocked that I scored this overtime winner for us to win the game.
Speaker 1:And literally the comments were afterwards by a couple of them I can't believe. Like you got put out there and I'm like wait, aren't you excited? So it's the other side of the envy, where all of a sudden it was like, aren't you excited? So it's the other side of the envy, where all of a sudden it was like, aren't you excited that we like won? Wouldn't you be happy that I scored? Like what, what if I went out there and they scored on us would be envious that I was on the ice when they scored on us, sure? So I think there's no, the other side of envy. It's not always the person who's envious, but people being envious of us is also the other side of the coin yeah, so let's.
Speaker 2:I mean we can take that. Sport is obviously the focus, the gospel in the game podcast, the sport is the focus of, but we want to believe life together as well. Let's apply that to life overall. Right you, although great friends live in two different life realms, worlds. You're a father, a husband, you're a business owner, chaplain, pastor nine more hats, right Me as a single guy. We live in different worlds.
Speaker 1:You do Well and I think not to interrupt your thought.
Speaker 2:No, no. But where I was going with it is that, if you can relate to situations like that, you know as a listener, if you are a single person and you are spending time with a married person, there can be envy coming on both sides.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely Again. We hung out the other evening, away from this podcast, spending time together, and I actually the thought came to my mind was I had finished doing something. I was headed to go to meet up with you and I was thinking even just like, okay, we're doing something together outside of this, but we're coming from totally different schedules as well. And so not only different schedules, but different schedules. The next morning I had a very early morning the next morning, and so it was like I didn't.
Speaker 1:But so it's not only life stage, because we're both very similar ages as well. But I think that's one of the reasons why sometimes things can work well together, because God has blessed us with a friendship, even though we have two different perspectives and life experiences and years before that, we can come together and talk about similar ground that we have and hopefully give the listener something to take away from um. One thing that I really wanted to bring up as part of this is the digital world. Sure, we live in a world of envy, yeah, where the, the portion that's often um processed and presented, is not always as life entails, and usually that digital snapshot of someone's life that's given can often cause envy and unbeknownst or maybe even unwittingly give that perception that everything is great, or you should be jealous of me for doing this, sure.
Speaker 2:I was going to lead us on a road to kind of define this spot that'll come back. Actually, this went on a good because you're following the itinerary I was going to take us on a bit of a rabbit trail, so I want to dig into where envy comes from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do that, because I think Yep, yep, that's a good thing to start with.
Speaker 2:Yeah so I I think that you know as, as we profess to be you know, believers in jesus, we are christians that the antithesis to the gospel is the enemy, the devil, satan, he's the one who comes to. The bible says that the thief, the enemy who comes to steal, kill and destroy so the good things that the Lord has planned. The enemy wants to try and turn them into evil. So God wants us to live in unity with each other, wants us to live in peace amongst each other. The Bible refers to that. Live peaceably among, if you're able to live peaceably among all of you together.
Speaker 2:So the envy, if you look at, as we've talked about in previous episodes before, what caused Lucifer to fall from heaven was pride, right? So envy and pride can often go hand in hand together. So when we are envious of other people, that is a root of selfishness and pride which is, you know, derived from the devil. But we have a flesh, but we have a selfishness in our being. We are broken people. So that would be the heart of where that comes from, right? So I would want to look at someone else's life in the digital world, right, as I'm scrolling, if I see someone's having success. Hey, look at me, I built my business, blah, blah, blah, blah. I got a nice car, nice family. The intent for that will be great and good for you. You should want to encourage others to hey, this is what you can attain. But what often happens through that is people will go oh, my life isn't fulfilling enough, like I wish I had that Now I feel empty. I need to have what they have right. That's what doom scrolling can turn into.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm glad you brought this up because I think it comes into a part. Where I was going with it was the presentation of it. The enemy relies on counterfeit. Yes, so the enemy can't present himself. That's what pride was, where Satan desired to be like God, and. But you can't be like god because you're not god and so, because you can't, everything's counterfeit. And so now, because everything's counterfeit and the presentation of something is fake and so like that's even a terminology that we use when it comes to presenting yourself in a social media or digital world you're presenting yourself as fake. It's like the person that poses next to the lamborghini and they're leaning on it, and then the guy is like you don't catch the part where the guy's like, hey, don't touch my car, right, because it's like that's not yours or have you seen those, those videos of a guy posing he like he's in an airplane but he's taking a picture through a toilet seat?
Speaker 2:yeah, or the milk jug I'm sure the milk jug handle it's like, or the washing machine right it's like yeah, it's like and that's exactly it.
Speaker 1:And so I think it's like, if I can like give a perception of, not necessarily to cause envy, but to make people like wish that they had my situation, but you're lying you're lying you're presenting a lie, and so I think you're so right.
Speaker 1:Where it's like the danger is is to be envious of having something that's legitimate and people wanting that. You want to create that. You want people to have something that's authentic. You want people to have things that are real. We don't want to give false joy or false hope, and so I think it's important that we present that as a believer. That's some of the false christ that we have. Real hope.
Speaker 2:We have, we can have, we can experience real love, real relationship yeah, and we'll talk more about that in episode 19, which I'm excited about the concept and I can tell you what it is. But authenticity. I think, more and more in our world today, we're gravitating more towards authenticity because, you know, I just I want to talk about, we're not gonna, we're saving for the next episode, but but, yeah, you're so right that and there there are people on instagram that I follow that present, like their life is all put together, but I spend a lot of time you and I both do studying people and the ability to just interact with people. You know you can kind of poke holes and go okay, well, there's like some real um, can't think of the word, uh, it's a disunity, oh, okay, I was gonna guess scooter yes, binoculars there's some real binoculars over there.
Speaker 2:Um, there's uh some real unhealth in some areas. I can't think of the word.
Speaker 1:It's um okay let's do trades so like if you fart, no, is that what you were doing?
Speaker 2:no, no, no, I was waving my hands.
Speaker 1:The runs um we used to you know what I had my dinner table like with my kids when they were really young. We used to sit down like if they were wound up or excited. We'd say, okay, wait, wait, wait, silent meal. You have to communicate everything with actions, like as charades, sure. And so sometimes the kids would get frustrated and I'd hold my hands up and clench my fists together and pretend like I'm grunting Right, my fist together and pretend like I'm grunting right, and then, like someone would guess, they'd be like you're plugged up or like, no, I'm frustrated we really got off track here.
Speaker 2:But anyway, some of those influencers, you can see the unhealth in their life going okay, everything, everything is presented, great, but like, what about this and what about this? And there's, you know, some anxiety there and some whatever, and so nobody's got everything perfect. But I think you're right. In the digital world, envy can appear, can, can rear its ugly head because it's counterfeit, like that is the perfect word for envy is counterfeit you can and see people can present it really well like there's honest achievements.
Speaker 1:You look at the sports world and, okay, a guy goes and he scores a hat trick in hockey or gets two touchdowns or a certain number of receptions, or yards run or home runs, and it's an achievement. An accomplishment, and it's not him that produces it, it's maybe the team or the league or someone else puts that out and even without intention, all of a sudden, oh hey, look, he made the all-star team. Well, I didn't pick myself to be on the all-Star team, I just performed at a certain level that I got selected to be on the All-Star team. Now, all of a sudden, this causes envy, even though it wasn't even inflicted by the person it was about. But then all of a sudden, you know the guy like every lap. Well, you know, hey, you're still posting about four years ago, when you made the All-Star team, like get over it, like that's been done and gone already.
Speaker 1:But it's easy to make that part of our identity, isn't it when, all of a sudden, it's like we have an accomplishment in sport. We make it our identity. It's the old, it's the old thing. Yeah, back in 76, I in my high school football team. You haven't ran for 15 years, let alone played football.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 50 years, yeah, but you're still reliving the dream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 50 years, yeah, but you're still reliving the dream, yeah, so I think that's the one of the dangers with envy is like envy can almost build into those other things. Like you said, it's that now we have pride, now we have all these other things. It's really a root thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:well. That's why, in sport we talked about when we did pride. Is that why often athletes get addicted to cocaine and things like that? Because they can't get that high that they felt when they were at that peak of what they were doing. So you know, and and even in in the concept we talked about off the start of the show, right in situation that, what do you do when, when others are doing really, really well and you're envious of them? Right? Like getting back to the example there about you know two different lives we live, right. I mean, you have a beautiful family, you have a nice setup in your life, which someone from the outside driving through your neighborhood can look and go oh, he's stinking, whatever. You know rich people if they were going to do that, on one side of the coin, right, yeah, but you don't often look at the journey that went there, or you know or the fact that I drive past a really nice acreage.
Speaker 1:You'd be like, wow, that person has a really nice place, it's way better.
Speaker 2:It's way better than my place, yeah, and it's you know what? And we can get caught in that, that leveling up always.
Speaker 1:We don't ever have enough that's right, or someone has something, that's always better yeah, yeah, and not content in what you have right.
Speaker 2:So, um, yeah and and I think a big component to that in chatting with someone just yesterday, it was talking about a situation that you never really know what's happening underneath. I have a friend of mine right now who's going through some difficulty. You know there are family members that like if you do the whole story of everything behind the scenes, you'd go, my goodness, like how heavy is that? But this person does a great job of just on the outside going, hey, everything's fine, right, you know, drives up nice vehicle, got a nice house, things are good.
Speaker 1:But like you don't know the whole story, you don't know the whole story, right.
Speaker 2:So you know, and early in my teenage years years and again I talked about at the top of the show that I've really, you know, gone through some therapy over the years to be able to really understand, like, hey, like I, I want to celebrate successes. Now, right, because I found in my my life when I get jealous of others, I'm going underneath and going what about me is insecure, that I can't get to a point of celebrating somebody, hey, like, wow, what a marriage. You guys have been together for how long. Like, you look just great together, but you don't know what they're going through behind the scenes. Hey, nice truck. Yeah, you don't know the four jobs that these persons have to work. Or maybe their whole family died in a car accident and they got this money. You don't think they'd trade that in a heartbeat to get their family back, for their family back, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:Right, so it's so easy just to get our minds in that spot.
Speaker 1:And I think one of the things I'll give a personal anecdote I guess One of the things that I, as a hockey coach, that I struggle with is the world of sensitivity. So I have a roster of 20 young guys and I have to work with them and I don't know their background, I don't know their home life, I don't know all the details, like you just touched on and said, I don't know the history, I don't know the relationship to their parents, those people that are in their life as as that are my age, that are mentors, I'm the age of their parents. And so now, all of a sudden, there was a couple of these young guys that said, age, that are mentors, I'm the age of their parents. And so now, all of a sudden, there was a couple of these young guys that said, hey, listen, can you be a little bit more harder on us vocally, in practice? And so I said to them, I said, hey, can I? I need to just explain something to you. I believe that it's important to communicate. So if I'm just always angry at you and upset at you, then you'll only see me as angry and upset, and I always want you to understand the why of what I'm what I'm doing, and so we've had a pretty good, decent run of success lately and I, today, I planned on having a kind of a softer practice with them. Um, we're a little bit banged up injury wise and got a little smaller roster, but some of the simple things we're making mistakes on.
Speaker 1:So today we started off with a very simple drill and we were struggling doing it and so I said, ok, slow down the speed, let's bring down the speed of it. Let's make sure it's more important that you're accurate with your passing and slower with your speed in order to accomplish your goal, because our theme for December is going to be doing it with excellence, so we have to be able to do it with excellence. These guys couldn't get it, could not get the fundamental thing. So we included some skating, we included some other things, and I started building up the emotion a little bit in order to get them stop and explain, go over it again and then stop. Okay, now you have to do it again. Nope, now I have to do it again. And we had one time when we did the same drill. The same two guys had to do it four times in a row because I wouldn't let them do it incorrectly times in a row, because I wouldn't let them do it incorrectly. And so I finally brought everyone in and I said listen, I have to give you the why and why you're doing this and you have to do it again. We're going to escape because you're not doing it correctly. We'll escape for a couple months and we'll come back. We'll do it again About the eighth time that we did this drill, they finally did it, and then we continued on through the practice and we did the second version of it and they couldn't grasp it again.
Speaker 1:So we had to go through the same thing again, guys repeating, guys doing it, and at the end of the practice I had to communicate to them and say, listen, if I didn't care about you, I would have let you fail. Sure, if I didn't care about you, I would have just not pushed you, not gotten emotional, I would just let it like go off my back. But because I care about you so much, I don't want you to fail on the simple things, and I think that really is the opposite. Like you opened up with the opposite of envy, with being excited about other people's accomplishments, in the same way I need to be frustrated with their frustrations. I need to experience this and I think it's really kind of adopting this principle.
Speaker 1:When we have something like, whether it's pride or envy or anger, god always provides the opposite side of a coin Right, and it's so hard to convey sometimes, where it's like listen. I want to give you the story behind why I have what I have or I'm doing what I'm doing. It wasn't just because it was handed to me, but there's a story behind it. In order to help that envy become understanding and I think it would be greater if we could do that instead of preventing something, presenting something for people to be envious about. Give the story behind it.
Speaker 2:Say hey listen.
Speaker 1:Oh, here's the guy leaving on the car. Today I was out for dinner with my wife and we happened to go by this really cool parking, this parking lot where we would park for dinner, and we saw this really neat car. Today I was out for dinner with my wife and we happened to go by this really cool parking, this parking lot where we would park for dinner, and we saw this really neat car. Here's a picture of it, and I wanted to pose a picture of it because I wanted to say, wow, like same thing. I noticed that the guy I actually chatted with him and asked him about his car and he was talking about how he had to work his way through medical school in order to become a doctor and in order to celebrate his 20 years of being a doctor, he finally bought himself a really cool car. And if we were able to tell more stories like that, then it would be like, wow, look that we can come up against some of those things like envy and uh and other things.
Speaker 2:So, and the final component to that, I think you know what about situations. And the final component to that, I think you know what about situations. And I think we can all think of people or groups or situations where people maybe are cutting corners or maybe even engaging in evil, dishonest activities, getting away with it, profiting from it, benefiting from it and seems that you know they're getting off easy, right when you have gone the long road, you know if you built an enterprise, a company, whatever it is, it took you years and years and years and years to build you where you are. And this person shortcutted someone, cheated on their spouse, whatever it was, to get this. How do you navigate?
Speaker 1:through that. Well, here's an interesting one. I remember this one guy that I had met and he actually had stolen some technology from a company he worked at and he just changed it a tiny bit in order to not be caught with it. And it was interesting because he thought of himself as a success. And then, once I got the story out of him on how he became doing what he was doing, I realized how empty he was because he did not have a sense of accomplishment. He presented like he had a sense of accomplishment but deep downside he knew the truth. He knew that he had cheated his way to become quote successful and sadly, his business ended up dissolving. He ended up losing a bunch of other stuff, because when that foundation isn't secure, all of a sudden whatever is being built on it crumbles. Sure.
Speaker 2:And we know that even from that, um, that example given to us in the bible don't build your house on the sandy land build your house on on the rock and you know, I also think of that verse where meant revenge is mine, says the lord, and then not in a way that you know god is sitting there going. I'll smite them, let me show you and I'll, you know, turn it around, but the lord will find a way to deal with it in a way that's just, in a way that will present an opportunity for this person to engage in a reflection and go oh, shoot, you know what I really need to change? Or even if it's the evil of evil, god has his own methods and ways. Right, revenge, I think, is that word.
Speaker 2:When we think of revenge, we think of sticking it to them, or I'll show you, and it's like okay, well, this person cut me off in traffic. Well, revenge is mine. God's going to make them crash in a. You know this, whatever it's like no, that's not. I don't think what the verse means at all, cause that's our human understanding of revenge.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:But I think I love what you talked about with envy. The opposite side of envy is understanding and maybe a generosity component to it as well, right, A humility, all those things kind of tied together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you had mentioned to me one time, just conversing and talking about someone that you had known who had found success and had gained success and he had gained all these assets and gained all these things and wasn't necessarily investing to his people, and it was frustrating. And all of a sudden you were reminded of wait a second, do I really want these problems? I don't want that guy's position, because that guy had me have a million items but he's got a million problems to go along with them. And so I think sometimes in our human thing we might say see the success or see the gain and say, oh, wow, I really want that. But then you realize, wait a second, there's a whole lot of problems, go along with it. It's like the whole thing.
Speaker 1:People say, well, I'm going to go buy a farm. Do you realize how much work is involved in a farm, not just getting it, but the daily work involved in the investment of time and resources? Otherwise everything starts to crumble and fall apart if it's not maintained. And so I think sometimes envy can be. We have to look at the bigger picture of that. We'll see nice things in this world, we really will, but ultimately we have to realize God's in control. He'll sort it out right.
Speaker 2:And maybe the best way to wrap it up is stewardship, I think is the best way to understand how to navigate your life that you know the Lord will give you. As I'm trying to think of that verse when it talks about the unrighteous mammon, if can trust you with unrighteous wealth, how can I present you with the riches?
Speaker 1:pastor just spoke on it two weeks last weekend well, even too, even when nicodemus was talking with jesus in john 3, and nicodemus asked him and he tells him he has to be born again. And jesus says to him, like if I tell you earthly things and you can't understand this, how are you supposed to understand things? And so it's like that deeper dynamic of understanding. I kind of get what you're getting with that. You find it no.
Speaker 2:The thought like the pastor literally just spoke on this. It was from Luke, yeah, talking about stewardship and that unrighteous wealth, anyway.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what? There's parables, even too, even with the talents, the parables of the talents. And all of a sudden being given a lot and one guy's given less, and one guy goes and he buries it in the ground. Right yeah, being entrusted with those things, I had a great example that I couldn't think. It's one of those days. Today it's going to come to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you know the best, best way to summarize it is it's easy to look at others and it's a. It's a simple concept. It's not even really a biblical concept to look at it. Well, just, there's always more to the story, yes, but the like, the real honest way, the biblical principle I think we want to steer people to on this show is you just rest, spend some time with the Lord and let him examine your heart and really understand and come to a true peace of knowing. Like why is it if you are looking at someone else and going I want what they have? Like what's the root of that? Yeah, yeah for sure. What's hiding underneath that?
Speaker 1:Examining your heart is a good way of doing it. You know, when I was a young man I had the privilege of getting to know a very old man. I would travel to the States and visit and just to wrap up our time together and his name was Henry. And Henry would meet with me in the morning for a 6 am Bible study and then I'd come back and meet with family and then we'd take off for the day and we would spend two to three hours together. And I remember learning from his wife that Henry actually would get up at 3 am to prepare for our 6 am time together. And I had said to him one time he was in his late 80s and I had said to him Henry, I'm envious of you. He said why are you envious of me? I'm like in the late 80s. My time is short here.
Speaker 1:I said no, I said you're going to have the opportunity to be with God sooner than I am. I'm envious of that. He said Dan, don't be envious of me because I'm envious of you. I said how is that? He said you're a young man. You have many more years and many more opportunities to serve God than I do, and I thought that was powerful, that here was.
Speaker 1:This man, who had served the Lord for so many years, was envious of a young man because he had more potential windows of time in order to give towards God. And I think that's a good reminder. To close with that, there are real things to be.
Speaker 2:Quote envious about, and I think we all have it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is.
Speaker 2:Everybody, regardless of who you are For sure we do.
Speaker 1:So. Instead of desiring the things of this world, maybe we desire an opportunity to serve him more.
Speaker 2:Gospel in the Game, episode number 18. We got a good one coming up, 19, called Testimony. We're excited to bring you that one. You can follow us on all areas, all platforms of social media Instagram, twitter and where all podcasts are found, you can download us. Thanks so much for listening. I am Dave, he is Dan.
