SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.
SPEAKER_00: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_00: Embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Today be encouraged with a word from my guest speaker.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_01: Well, in true form and fashion, I don't know if you guys have checked your news and sound bites today, but the bad news, even though it's beautiful and the frost has worn off here, that Arnry Critter in Pennsylvania saw his shadow, and so we're gonna have a long and enduring hard winter, right?
SPEAKER_01: So that little groundhog thing got scared and went back wherever he goes from.
SPEAKER_01: And it's funny because I was reminded about these big traps we had.
SPEAKER_01: We used to kill those things, man.
SPEAKER_01: And it's like now they bring it out, they pet it, it's a pet.
SPEAKER_01: They named it Phil, but we had these big spikes.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if some of you see it, like they would tear up the ground.
SPEAKER_01: My dad's birthday is on Groundhog's Day, but was funny because the animal that came to symbolize his birthday was something that was a bit of a like his arch enemy.
SPEAKER_01: And so I would see him in the summertime planting these traps all over the ground, trying to snare these things.
SPEAKER_01: You pull them out.
SPEAKER_01: I remember the first time I saw one, I was like thinking like it's a little ground squirrel.
SPEAKER_01: But these things are big.
SPEAKER_01: They're pretty beefy, like they truly are like hogs that live underground.
SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, that's my side note.
SPEAKER_01: If you guys have your Bibles, turn to John 16.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be in 33, verse 33.
SPEAKER_01: And today we're gonna talk about tackling the tough.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a parody we're gonna be talking about habit number two in Pastor Steve's new book, Breakthrough Courage.
SPEAKER_01: In John 16, 33, Jesus writes these things to us.
SPEAKER_01: These things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace.
SPEAKER_01: In this life you will have tribulation, but be of good courage, I have overcome the world.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus here telling us that in him we will have peace.
SPEAKER_01: We will need peace in Jesus because we are going to have tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: And how do we have that?
SPEAKER_01: How can we be of good courage?
SPEAKER_01: He hasn't completely done his full work yet, even though as he's writing and penning these words, he hasn't gone to the cross.
SPEAKER_01: He knows where he's headed, he's in his preparation for that, but he hasn't yet arrived.
SPEAKER_01: But he knows where he's gonna end up, and he knows how he's gonna finish and how he's gonna conquer and he's gonna do it well.
SPEAKER_01: So he's leading into that with these promising words that we can build on.
SPEAKER_01: Jerzy Grigorigak, four-time world weightlifting champion, quoted this statement: Easy choices, hard life, hard choices, easy life.
SPEAKER_01: Here's a visual aid for you that I think captures that.
SPEAKER_01: I like visual aids.
SPEAKER_01: I will say that I've probably been on both spectrums of that diagram, but as you kind of take assessment right now, kind of checking your dashboard, where are you in that picture?
SPEAKER_01: Are you taking the easy slide down right now?
SPEAKER_01: Because that ends, and then you're gonna have to start climbing back up at an inverted degree.
SPEAKER_01: Or are you summiting the hard, are you facing the hard to where it will eventually level out and plateau?
SPEAKER_01: That's the payout.
SPEAKER_01: That's the work that we're trying to do.
SPEAKER_01: That'll be the focus of today's message as we talk about tackling the tough things in our life and how that works.
SPEAKER_01: The hardcore truth is that life is hard.
SPEAKER_01: There's a purpose and a plan by God for the heart in our lives, and he uses it to build us and shape us.
SPEAKER_01: Habit number two involves embracing hard things, the hard decision making in our relationships, in our setbacks.
SPEAKER_01: We do this on a belief system that these actions will eventually lead to a better life.
SPEAKER_01: Embracing hard is the breakthrough courage to believe God can use struggles to develop the spiritual and emotional sinew that transforms us into brave people.
SPEAKER_01: As we pause and we think about habits, good and bad, we all have habits.
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, especially with the dawn of the new year, we're faced, we take the resume, we look to our goal sheets, we look to our habits, and we say, Here are habits that I want to completely cut off, and there are habits that we want to build and strengthen in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: The wages of bad habits are bondage and death, but the wages of good habits are freedom and life when we build with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Bad habits, by their very nature, seem to be acquired easily, while good habits bring challenge and resistance from within ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: They take work and they are hard.
SPEAKER_01: We are at war with our flesh on this one.
SPEAKER_01: Our default setting is to embrace comfort and lethargy, the easy things.
SPEAKER_01: We came out this way after we were evicted from Eden.
SPEAKER_01: These are things that we all face, regardless of gender, man or woman, because there's only two, right?
SPEAKER_01: Trump to reaffirm that for us.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: We appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01: It's God.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Are we a true seeker, right?
SPEAKER_01: So we want to be true seekers, and some of that is looking at our lives, taking assessment of where we're at in our habits.
SPEAKER_01: Have we been shirking and taking the short road around versus maybe the long road that God is calling us to endure for our benefit?
SPEAKER_01: Because he has a purpose to build in us endurance and resilience for the life that we face, for the war that we are in.
SPEAKER_01: I love how Paul writes about conquering his body, the flesh, subduing it, and making it his slave.
SPEAKER_01: Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 9, and we'll pick up some of his narrative here.
SPEAKER_01: And the thing about Paul that I love being a recovering athlete is that so much of his scripture is in that narrative of athletes and what we have to do to train, to compete.
SPEAKER_01: And this is um this is one of those famous verses where he's talking about running the race, striving for a crown.
SPEAKER_01: Do you not know that those who run in a race all run?
SPEAKER_01: But one receives the prize.
SPEAKER_01: Run in such a way that you may obtain it.
SPEAKER_01: And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things.
SPEAKER_01: Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty, thus I fight, not as one who beats the air, but I discipline my body and I bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is replacing the tangible earthly prize, the crown, the trophy that we run for, and he's replacing it with a focus towards an eternal crown, an eternal prize that is far lasting.
SPEAKER_01: And it gives us a different focus.
SPEAKER_01: It gives us a different purpose.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, might I say it gives us the theme in which we should be living our Christian life, not as a sprint, but as a marathon.
SPEAKER_01: To experience the freedom of building good habits, we must first subdue and conquer our own flesh, nailing it to the cross with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We're only able to go so far in our own strengths, our own skills, and our own character before we run against a brick wall which we cannot overcome until we have amputated the things that are holding us back from ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We do that to ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to get into some of those things a little bit later in the message that hold us back.
SPEAKER_01: But first we must identify with Christ and put it on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: He's invited us to do that.
SPEAKER_01: Now we give him glory, we give him praise because none of us in this room are going to walk the road to Galgotha and actually get nailed to Calvary.
SPEAKER_01: He's taken that for us.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to endure that kind of pain, that kind of death, that kind of shame.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, he invites us, because he's done that, to give it all to him.
SPEAKER_01: No one revels in hardship, but there are those who, through understanding its value, can embrace the transformation of our character that results from dealing with it.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us are stuffers.
SPEAKER_01: We stuff it and we think we'll just deal with that a later day.
SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
SPEAKER_01: You know who you are.
SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
SPEAKER_01: I can relate, I'm looking at you, I'm looking at the guy in the mirror.
SPEAKER_01: So we stuff it down and we don't want to face it today.
SPEAKER_01: We just think it's going to work itself out.
SPEAKER_01: But when left unchecked and unresolved, it festers, it becomes cancerous, tumor-like, and will ultimately take us completely out of the game and sign light, sideline us permanently.
SPEAKER_01: Hard choices usually involve delayed gratification.
SPEAKER_01: That's the hard part because in today's culture it's instant gratification.
SPEAKER_01: Have it your way.
SPEAKER_01: We get upset, we get frustrated when we're in a line to get our coffee at a drive-thru, and it takes more than the 3.5 minutes that we gave ourselves to get that item.
SPEAKER_01: You shouldn't even be in that line, to be honest.
SPEAKER_01: Let's be honest with ourselves, right?
SPEAKER_01: We should take ourselves out of the fast food line.
SPEAKER_01: I'll let you wrestle with that where you are.
SPEAKER_01: Where are you at on the graph?
SPEAKER_01: Are you sliding down the hill or are you climbing the mountain, right?
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: Interdiscipline and good habits, which result in a better life.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to exercise each day, eat clean food, but it makes us healthy.
SPEAKER_01: When we feel physically healthy, there's this beautiful correlation of strength in our spirit, man or woman, that builds resilience, strength, and character.
SPEAKER_01: I had moved from my parents' house into my grandparents' house when my parents were trying to figure out their marriage and things were kind of getting rocky over there.
SPEAKER_01: But I wanted some consistency, some stability, so I moved in with my grandparents.
SPEAKER_01: And I knew my grandfather was a man of discipline.
SPEAKER_01: He was a former Navy boxer.
SPEAKER_01: He was a UDT guy who went in underwater, blew up the hedgehog so they could land on Groundhog Day.
SPEAKER_01: He would later go on to not Groundhog Day, D-Day.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you over here.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: I saw him blow up groundhogs too, to be fair.
SPEAKER_01: He also had a uh adversity to those critters.
SPEAKER_01: Um but he had a discipline in his life where he would wake up every morning.
SPEAKER_01: The morning had its own routine and the evening had its own routine.
SPEAKER_01: In the morning, I would wake up, and our doors were across from each other, and he would be watching the morning news before we knew it was bad for us.
SPEAKER_01: And he would be, you know, stretching, calisthenics, and going through his whole routine.
SPEAKER_01: And it was probably a 30-minute process.
SPEAKER_01: Then we'd go and have our day, but he was warming up the body, warming up the machine, and he would go and do his shot of olive oil, lubricate the system.
SPEAKER_01: He understood these things.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, that's gross, man, but it's cool.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand it as a youth.
SPEAKER_01: I get it now.
SPEAKER_01: But then in the evenings, after the day had been done, we were watching news, which led to mash, right?
SPEAKER_01: So you had to, you know, you had to have temperance.
SPEAKER_01: There was balance here.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you had to watch the news, and then you had to get some humor with mash.
SPEAKER_01: But then at the end of that, so he's then he gets the weights out at night and he's exercising.
SPEAKER_01: And he did this as long as I knew him.
SPEAKER_01: And he did this well into his early 80s, and that was his routine, that was his habit.
SPEAKER_01: And he knew that he had to do that to keep his machine, his body, working in the way that he needed to work because he was a man of action, he was a man of purpose, and he was a man of discipline, and so he would do those things.
SPEAKER_01: And it was not lost on me what that looked like.
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting when we pair this with the writing and work of Karen L.
SPEAKER_01: Jacobs, PhD.
SPEAKER_01: She's a program director of a residential treatment facility outside of Boston.
SPEAKER_01: She said this working, the actual physical job of working, has been shown to help stabilize people struggling with mental health conditions.
SPEAKER_01: A critical aspect of recovery involves regular work at a job.
SPEAKER_01: Going out, having purpose.
SPEAKER_01: We were made to have purpose in our day.
SPEAKER_01: We are healthier when we are working.
SPEAKER_01: I have some extended relatives, one in particular, who I don't think they've ever had a job, and they absolutely struggle from mental illness.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen them be divisive in our family.
SPEAKER_01: It's been very frustrating for a lot of us, but we're always like, you should just maybe think about a job that's foreign to them.
SPEAKER_01: And they've been very resistant.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting though is that my father got this.
SPEAKER_01: He came home one afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: I'm in the summertime, and I'd moved back home.
SPEAKER_01: He was at his job, and it was the summertime, and I he came home and I was not up yet.
SPEAKER_01: He came home for lunch.
SPEAKER_01: He lived close by and he found me yet to meet the day, meet the sunrise.
SPEAKER_01: Being a recovering farm boy himself, I'm sure he thought something like, Well, this just won't do.
SPEAKER_01: He woke me up, stirred me from my slumber, says time to get up, mow the grass, and when I get home, I'm gonna talk to you.
SPEAKER_01: I have some ideas for you.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, ideas?
SPEAKER_01: I didn't ask, I didn't even ask a question.
SPEAKER_01: What's the I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: What are we gonna talk about?
SPEAKER_01: And little did I find out he had made some calls when he went back to his work.
SPEAKER_01: And then when we came home, we had dinner that night.
SPEAKER_01: He goes, Hey, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_01: Tomorrow I want you to wake up, ready for work, dressed, you're gonna go out, get water, long sleeves, pants.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going, it's summer.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, You're gonna want the long sleeves.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what he was up to.
SPEAKER_01: But he's like, But be prepared, we're gonna get up early because I got to take you in early before I go to work.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, here we go.
SPEAKER_01: I think he's up to something.
SPEAKER_01: So then he drops me off.
SPEAKER_01: He delivers me to one of his farm friends, and I would spend the rest of my summer, not in lethargy with my friends in trouble, but baling hay.
SPEAKER_01: And that was awesome, right?
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, okay, my dad's teaching me and building into me hard work, resilience.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, like, I'm on the back of the tractor, I'm grabbing hay bales off.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, this is great, man.
SPEAKER_01: Bust the shirt off.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like getting a suntan, pumping the guns, getting good, man.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, look good, gonna look good at the pool this summer.
SPEAKER_01: Well, for those of you that bailed hay, you know that that's only part of the process.
SPEAKER_01: The real work begins when you go back to the farm, to the barn, and they put the skid loader up to the top, and you climb up into the barn, and you're up there in the heat, and it's hot, and it's dark, and the hay starts going everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's when you realize that you were grateful for your long shirt because it starts going down your back and you start to feel in complete misery.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking in that moment, I'm like, what would it have been like had I just woken up 15 minutes before Dad came home for lunch?
SPEAKER_01: But there was a greater lesson there.
SPEAKER_01: When Cornelius Vanderbilt died at the end of the 19th century, he had left a fortune bigger than the U.S.
SPEAKER_01: Treasury at the time.
SPEAKER_01: When his grandkids met less than a century later, there wasn't a millionaire among them.
SPEAKER_01: See, church, what can be built in two generations can be lost in two generations.
SPEAKER_01: In my banking career, my trust career, we had a term for those who just truly were living from trust check to trust check.
SPEAKER_01: We called them trustafarians.
SPEAKER_01: And literally it was sad because there was this idea that grandma, grandpa, mom, or dad had built this legacy for them to live and step and really like kind of use that as the standing stone or the stepping stone to level up and go to the next level in their life.
SPEAKER_01: But in many cases, uh, we found it to be the case where they actually leveled down two or three or even four rungs on the ladder and lived check to check in sometimes appalling conditions in almost destitute situations because they refused to go to work, they refused to do anything because they had this consistent handout, and it was hard to watch.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure that it was not the intent or the desire of their benefactor.
SPEAKER_01: Each generation church must learn hard work for their own strength.
SPEAKER_01: They must learn the value of calloused hands and how to embrace the heart in their lives so that they can rise to meet the purpose and value God has placed over their lives.
SPEAKER_01: The direction of being a brave disciple of the kingdom of God is the cross.
SPEAKER_01: There's an invitation from Christ at any point in our lives where we get invited into this journey of exponential growth, complete inheritance, and we're able to level up in our discernment of the kingdom of God and embrace and discover what's available to us as sons and daughters of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
SPEAKER_01: Never did Jesus proclaim you would have an easy life.
SPEAKER_01: He says, What you are looking for is the authentic life.
SPEAKER_01: But such a life comes only through death to self.
SPEAKER_01: Death in Him leads to life through Him.
SPEAKER_01: If you're going to walk in courage, you will have to face fear and difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: There was an invitation in my own life about six years ago that would begin a journey with me where I was comfortable with the stuffing that had happened.
SPEAKER_01: But God was not comfortable, and there was an invitation, and I could have ignored it and it would have cost me everything.
SPEAKER_01: But he goes, if you're willing to unpack this and walk through this with me, I want to heal you.
SPEAKER_01: I want to heal your heart, I want to heal your mind, I want to show you a deeper reality of what freedom can look like because you're suffering under the weight of your fear, your bondage, and ultimately your shame.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I've already taken your shame and I've nailed it to the cross with my son, so you're carrying something unnecessarily that you don't need to, but I want to heal you from that.
SPEAKER_01: But I had to take the invitation with my bride, with my family, and step into something that I didn't know what it was gonna look like.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how long it was gonna take.
SPEAKER_01: All I knew was everything that I had done in my life, the things that I thought mattered, the hard swim practices, the hard work on the farm, the hard things that I had done, just put my nose to the grindstone, right?
SPEAKER_01: Just all of that resilience and endurance that had been built in me, God was gonna use the leverage to just put one foot in front of the other.
SPEAKER_01: And there were those early days where that's all that was happening.
SPEAKER_01: It was one foot in front of the other, and I was renewing my mind in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 5, if you have your Bibles, turn to Romans 5, 1 through 5.
SPEAKER_01: I want to read this passage because I think Paul concentrates and kind of crystallizes this.
SPEAKER_01: And this has been so meaningful for me.
SPEAKER_01: I have this framed and I see this uh scripture daily in my daily um routines.
SPEAKER_01: And it blesses me every time I read it.
SPEAKER_01: And there's always some new nugget that I'm encouraged in my spirit to engage, to fight, to pick myself up with Christ and keep moving forward in the hard times.
SPEAKER_01: And it says this therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, that's such a huge revelation.
SPEAKER_01: I have peace with God.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not at war with him, he's not at war with me.
SPEAKER_01: Because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us, because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory.
SPEAKER_01: We can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance, and endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: And this hope will not lead to disappointment.
SPEAKER_01: For we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.
SPEAKER_01: We were created with the ability, church, to grow in strength and endurance when we face hard things and we push ourselves to new limits.
SPEAKER_01: This very thing has been hardwired in us, God's catalyst from the Holy Spirit, to build greater endurance and resilience in this life as we face the hard, as we tackle the tough.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the beauty of it.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter 5 10, after you have suffered a little while, God of all grace, the God of all grace who has called you to this eternal glory in Christ, will restore himself.
SPEAKER_01: Will himself, sorry, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
SPEAKER_01: The way that I think about this is that as a swimmer, and there's a lot of other sports, whether it's track, wrestling, um, even gymnastics, and Steve's talk about this, you go into a season of taper.
SPEAKER_01: You work all season long, super hard, pushing your limits, breaking your body down, coming into that next practice with really nothing left to give.
SPEAKER_01: But then as you start to move towards the big races, towards the end of the season, you start to rest your body, and there you get to see what growth you've made.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can get actually pretty discouraged, and I would oftentimes in the middle of a season where I'm not pushing past a certain mark.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not breaking a certain time, and I'm just going after it and after it, and I'm just like putting my guts into it, and nothing's happening that's discernible.
SPEAKER_01: But then taper comes.
SPEAKER_01: You rest, you restore, you allow yourself to heal, your body heals, and then you level up, and now you're like, sometimes, in some cases, three and a half seconds, which is huge in my world, right?
SPEAKER_01: In swimming, like that's big movement, and you see that kind of gain, and you're going, whoa, okay, so true in our spiritual walk where we're facing the hard, we're enduring, and we go in, God moves us into a time of taper, and we can rest, and he brings us into the green pasture.
SPEAKER_01: He takes us to still water, and then he's going to level us up where the voice of God is more discernible.
SPEAKER_01: The power of the Holy Spirit and his wisdom is engaging us in a new way that we'd never even experienced before.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what Peter's talking about right here.
SPEAKER_01: We have to allow ourselves to come into that place.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just you're going to face hard until you exit and enter eternity.
SPEAKER_01: There's going to be moments where God is going to restore you and heal you and level you up.
SPEAKER_01: In an interview explaining how he would approach a race, great American middle distance runner Steve P.
SPEAKER_01: Fontaine was quoted with the following A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they're capable of understanding.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people run a race to see who is the fastest.
SPEAKER_01: I run a race to see who has the most guts, who can push themselves into an exhausting pace, and then at the end punish himself even more.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end.
SPEAKER_01: And if it is, I'm the only one who can win it.
SPEAKER_01: We could take that same posture and our mental discipline and our spiritual alignment into the things that we're facing right now.
SPEAKER_01: You were built to endure, you were built for the hard, and you're not alone in that process.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit is here to engage.
SPEAKER_01: The National Institute of Health reports, and this is what we have to fight against, the core desires of the human brain are first to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and preserve energy.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're all hardwired with.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're facing, that's what we're up against.
SPEAKER_01: Seek pleasure, avoid pain, preserve energy.
SPEAKER_01: So, with that in mind, we need to ask God for a total kingdom system reboot on our frontal cortex.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: We have to say, I need to step out of my normal operating system that I was born with.
SPEAKER_01: I need to step into the hard and embrace those things and retrain my brain.
SPEAKER_01: Freshman year in high school, I went out for the swim team.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna keep using this illustration for a second, and I was awful.
SPEAKER_01: My first race looked much like the last race of the season, where there was I was finishing with two or three laps behind the last guy who finished.
SPEAKER_01: And even in the middle of that season, I was trying to figure out a flip turn, and I turned one time into the wall on the deep end, of course, not the shallow end.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't work out that way for me.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and this was a deep pool, and I cracked my head, like I turned too late, and I like looked at the wall and it's like bam, split my head open, and I'm like hemorrhaging in the pool, got a hazmat issue.
SPEAKER_01: They're like, this guy, I don't know, I don't know if it's gonna work out for him.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay, but in my heart, I really wanted this.
SPEAKER_01: Like I wanted, I wanted to be good at this.
SPEAKER_01: And and so I resolved in myself that I'm gonna have to do some things that maybe my friends and other people aren't willing to do.
SPEAKER_01: And so that summer, when my friends were out having fun, I committed and joined a club team.
SPEAKER_01: And I got up in the mornings, we swam outside, it was cold, even in the summer in Illinois.
SPEAKER_01: But we went and we did morning practice and then we would do evening practices, so there were two a days.
SPEAKER_01: And so in between, all my friends were waking up and having fun, but I was having to rest and have energy for the afternoon practice because it was so like exhausting, and I was not efficient yet.
SPEAKER_01: I was terrible and was getting better.
SPEAKER_01: But um worked it out that summer, put some things on the table, and said, I'm going to sacrifice fun, adventure, lethargy, all the things, and I'm gonna commit to this, I'm gonna commit to myself to achieve my goal, and I'm gonna face the hard.
SPEAKER_01: And so by that fall, or by the time that swim season came around again, my coach was um who had also been my summer coach, had moved me up from varsity.
SPEAKER_01: And so to see my freshman year performance into sophomore year was night and day, and it paid off, and it would continue to pay off for me, and it was something that I was able to build on in myself and be able to pull back to.
SPEAKER_01: I want to give you five practices to tackling the tough in your own lives.
SPEAKER_01: How do we do this?
SPEAKER_01: How do we take tools into this next season?
SPEAKER_01: How do we face the things that every one of us showed up today with our own hard thing, our own tough thing?
SPEAKER_01: We're looking at, we're trying to engage the kingdom of God, engage his throne room.
SPEAKER_01: I need the playbook, I need resilience, I need endurance.
SPEAKER_01: God, strengthen me today because I'm not able to do this on my own, nor should you, nor do you need to.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, our lives and futures are often shaped by comparing ourselves to others.
SPEAKER_01: This is huge.
SPEAKER_01: Instead of comparing yourself to others, take the challenge to compete against yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just pause since we're at the beginning of the month.
SPEAKER_01: I challenge the first service to it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna invite you guys to it.
SPEAKER_01: Take the month of February off from social media.
SPEAKER_01: Just saying.
SPEAKER_01: Give yourself a palette cleanse, do a mental reboot, and just take social media off.
SPEAKER_01: I don't even have it in my life.
SPEAKER_01: When it first came out, um, I was looking at it and it would come up, and my friends would be like, Oh, look at how great my life is.
SPEAKER_01: This is where I'm at.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the beach, I'm cool.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I'm driving to work.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that sucks.
SPEAKER_01: Like, that doesn't make me feel better about myself.
SPEAKER_01: It never has.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like, I don't, I don't want social media, I don't need it, and it's never like given anything back to me of any great meaning.
SPEAKER_01: So I just want to encourage you, invite you to take February off, do a little reset, check the dashboard at the end.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're feeling a little bit better about yourself.
SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be some tangible things that you're gonna be able to discern.
SPEAKER_01: And if not, spend the first part of March binging all the things you missed out on because it's still gonna be there, and the little shorts and all the stuff that's making you ADD, anyways, right?
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I'm trying to find something, and it's like these things come on and they change the channel so fast.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I can't even watch this, man.
SPEAKER_01: My kids, I'm like, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Anyways, there's the there's the challenge.
SPEAKER_01: Take a fast.
SPEAKER_01: Ask yourself these questions as a barometer to how you're doing and comparing yourself.
SPEAKER_01: These are great.
SPEAKER_01: Am I living up to my own standards?
SPEAKER_01: First of all, have I defined standards for myself?
SPEAKER_01: If you haven't, step forward, define some standards for your life.
SPEAKER_01: Am I keeping my promises?
SPEAKER_01: This is a biggie.
SPEAKER_01: As a dad, I'm looking in the mirror and I'm thinking to myself, okay, I promised some things today to my kids.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't live up to those.
SPEAKER_01: I'm letting them down.
SPEAKER_01: How can I repair that?
SPEAKER_01: Because I heard early on in parenting, be careful the promises you make because your kids will remember those.
SPEAKER_01: And they remind you of those, right?
SPEAKER_01: And mine do.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_01: I I did, and I've had to own that.
SPEAKER_01: I've said, okay, yesterday I said I was gonna do that, and we missed the time, the window, and I prioritized it the next day because I don't want them to think that they don't matter and my promises are hollow and I don't mean what I say, right?
SPEAKER_01: Because they're building something in themselves by watching this.
SPEAKER_01: Am I telling the truth?
SPEAKER_01: Are we truth seekers?
SPEAKER_01: We should be truth seekers.
SPEAKER_01: This is the key, this is probably a core pillar of the road.
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's what's drove us through COVID and been and created our narrative and our operating system as we align it with God's scripture.
SPEAKER_01: What should we be doing right now when the government's saying this?
SPEAKER_01: Well, this is what God's kingdom says.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be open, we're gonna be a hospital, and we're gonna be a triage to God's people because we need community, we need each other, and we need a place to worship.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what our uh litmus test was.
SPEAKER_01: That was our azimuth.
SPEAKER_01: In which areas of my life and character do I need to change?
SPEAKER_01: This is the good habits versus the old habits.
SPEAKER_01: There's some things that follow us from last year into this year.
SPEAKER_01: Time to totally amputate those things and move in and start building better habits.
SPEAKER_01: Quit focusing on what other people think about you.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, ask God what he thinks about you, and then what I would do in this season of restoration, and I would I would say this was happening almost daily.
SPEAKER_01: I had to renew my mind with what God was saying about me.
SPEAKER_01: Because when I understand what the triune God of the universe says about me, I can cement those truths as a firm foundation of my heart.
SPEAKER_01: You need to do the same.
SPEAKER_01: And I would read Romans 8, top to bottom, sometimes many times a day, but then it got to be a place where um it would be a combination of that, and then also the whole armor of God and what Paul is saying about the human condition, about the way God loves us, even how he closes out the chapter, that there's nothing in everything that he's created, including myself, which he created, that would ever separate me from his love when I'm really to receive his love through his son and the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So I step fully into that and we let God's word rewire our brain, rewire our identity.
SPEAKER_01: This is where you stand on it and you live from it.
SPEAKER_01: You walk into this day with a new boldness, complete confidence that you are beloved, made for his purpose, and created to be more than a conqueror in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Practice number two, you are unique.
SPEAKER_01: And not in the mean way the kids used to say on the playground.
SPEAKER_01: You're special.
SPEAKER_01: But you are.
SPEAKER_01: And God's like, be yourself.
SPEAKER_01: All other roles are taken.
SPEAKER_01: Comparison is the death of identity.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is the trap of maybe the social media thing.
SPEAKER_01: God made you uniquely, and he expects you to be the person he had in mind when he created you.
SPEAKER_01: He wants you to live from this imagination that he had about your life.
SPEAKER_01: God formed you for a unique purpose.
SPEAKER_01: He knows the unique hardships you will and have already faced.
SPEAKER_01: He's given you natural talents and spiritual gifts that will help you accomplish the plan and purpose he has designed for you.
SPEAKER_01: See, church, hardships are not happening to you, but they're happening for you.
SPEAKER_01: Hardships, setbacks, and disappointments meld us into the men and women who become courageous and brave.
SPEAKER_01: Practice number three, you are hardwired.
SPEAKER_01: In that, God wired you for hard things.
SPEAKER_01: You're stronger than you think you are, you have more resilience than you think you have.
SPEAKER_01: You can go further than you think you can.
SPEAKER_01: You were born for this.
SPEAKER_01: God has wired you for the fight, so run the race and fight the good fight God has set before you.
SPEAKER_01: 1 John 4, 4.
SPEAKER_01: You dear children, are from God and have overcome the world because the one within you is greater than the one who is in the world.
SPEAKER_01: John reminding us about the strength that we have that we can embrace, that we can engage in to overcome the hard things in life.
SPEAKER_01: Not because of our own natural skill sets, talents, and character, because those do eventually run out, but because we have Christ in us when we've invited him to be the king of our lives and sit on the throne of our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: The power of the Holy Spirit within you is greater than any earthly power.
SPEAKER_01: The power of the universe, the living God of creation and his kingdom, dwell within your heart through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Angela Lee Duckworth, a math teacher in San Francisco, in her extensive research, writes this about predicting success among inner city students.
SPEAKER_01: One characteristic emerged as the best predictor to success.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't social intelligence, it wasn't good looks, it wasn't physical health, and it was not IQ.
SPEAKER_01: It was grit.
SPEAKER_01: Grit to passion and perseverance.
SPEAKER_01: Grit to stick with your future day in and day out for years.
SPEAKER_01: Hard work to make that future a reality.
SPEAKER_01: Grit is living your life like a marathon and not a sprint.
SPEAKER_01: A person doesn't wake up one day with self-control, patience, love, or joy.
SPEAKER_01: You don't come hardwired for that by your nature.
SPEAKER_01: They must be developed, you must develop a new habit of thinking that builds self-control, love, peace, and joy.
SPEAKER_01: Without strength of mind, nothing worthwhile can be accomplished.
SPEAKER_01: You can change.
SPEAKER_01: With God's power living within you, through a new mindset, you can build a better future.
SPEAKER_01: A mind governed by the Holy Spirit is a mind filled with life and peace.
SPEAKER_01: When we rewire our brains with God's scripture, and Steve was saying, Pastor Steve was sharing last week about how we chew on God's word, what that does, the nourishment from it.
SPEAKER_01: We're chewing down to the marrow of God's bone and his scripture and getting that richness inside.
SPEAKER_01: That rewires us.
SPEAKER_01: That forms a firm foundation upon which we stand.
SPEAKER_01: And when we do, and we invite the Holy Spirit in, even though we're in the middle of a hardship, we can still experience a mind that's governed with life and peace because we know that what we're striving for will end eventually, and on the other side of it, we will be stronger, we will have grown, we will have gained endurance by embracing the hard, by tackling the tough.
SPEAKER_01: Sean Accord in his groundbreaking study of neuroplasticity writes the following 90% of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world.
SPEAKER_01: If we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, we change the way we can then affect reality.
SPEAKER_01: Our reality can be changed through the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: What you're experiencing now and the filters you're using to experience that can be reworked the way that God designed your brain to do that.
SPEAKER_01: And your happiness, your joy, your success, all of those things are attainable when you allow your thoughts and things to shift the way that the scriptures line them out.
SPEAKER_01: Action is the most important thing.
SPEAKER_01: Actions prove who someone is.
SPEAKER_01: Words just prove who they want to be.
SPEAKER_01: On Tuesday mornings, we sit around with guys at our table and we talk about our desires.
SPEAKER_01: Guys then are held accountable and those desires are put into action.
SPEAKER_01: And guys are making progress in their lives.
SPEAKER_01: They're coming in day in and day out.
SPEAKER_01: Get up, dust yourself off, keep moving towards your goals.
SPEAKER_01: You did not wake up today to be mediocre.
SPEAKER_01: You all decide to get up, put on pants, and come to church today.
SPEAKER_01: So you've already leveled up that game.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't stay in lethargy.
SPEAKER_01: You said, I'm gonna go and be in God's house, I'm gonna go and be with God's people, and I'm going to go and receive what He has for me today.
SPEAKER_01: Number four, focus in a new direction.
SPEAKER_01: You have to change your compass and change your azimuth to develop a new habit of building a better you.
SPEAKER_01: Stop looking around, stop looking down, start looking up.
SPEAKER_01: Instead of looking at your problems or comparing yourself to others, look up and focus on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your life and faith.
SPEAKER_01: Look at him and live in partnership with him.
SPEAKER_01: Give him your struggles.
SPEAKER_01: Take your eyes and focus off your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Fix your gaze on Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Surrender your character, hopes, and desires to him.
SPEAKER_01: You have to discern the cross.
SPEAKER_01: As you do, you will watch it transform into the door that leads you into a deeper level of intimacy with Jesus and a connection with the Father.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to succeed, you have to start saying no.
SPEAKER_01: You have to start saying no to the addictions in your life, the self-medication that we do.
SPEAKER_01: Stop saying, start saying no to the lust, the porn, the drugs, the alcohol, the gossip.
SPEAKER_01: Start saying yes to time with the Lord, alone time, time in his scriptures, time in prayer with your brother and sister.
SPEAKER_01: Invite Christ to live in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Invite Christ to live his life through yours.
SPEAKER_01: Looking up to him and his cross in the midst of hardship is the key to victory and overcoming the struggles of his life.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you're facing today, if you just look at the cross and you're reminded of what he endured, what he faced for us, what he overcame, what he conquered, that gives us resilience, that gives us resolve, and we can then find the courage and endurance to endure what we have in front of us.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph, David, Paul were all men who were crucified with Christ, faced difficulties and allowed the power of God to flow through them even in the most dire of circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: They were completely and totally human, the same as you and me.
SPEAKER_01: We encourage each other with stories.
SPEAKER_01: We're encouraged by their stories.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we stand on their shoulders and others stand on ours, we then are all leveling up as God's children and living in the way that He wants us to live as a light and a hope to our community.
SPEAKER_01: Practice number five: setbacks are setups for comebacks.
SPEAKER_01: If you were to exit the locker room of the Notre Dame football team and onto the field, you would read the words, play like a champion today.
SPEAKER_01: Theirs is a program steeped in a tradition of excellence.
SPEAKER_01: A champion plays with excellence.
SPEAKER_01: Excellence does not come without cost, it does not come without failure.
SPEAKER_01: How do you view your own failure?
SPEAKER_01: Not someone else's, as a response to maybe something you haven't achieved, but how do you view your own failure?
SPEAKER_01: The failures of life should be the next step on the ladder to achieving success and breakthrough in our hardships.
SPEAKER_01: You should look at your failure as God just putting another rung on your ladder to level up and climb higher in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: For some, failure takes them out of the game.
SPEAKER_01: They stay sidelined permanently.
SPEAKER_01: But failures, when leveraged in union with God, are catalysts for greater resilience in us.
SPEAKER_01: When you fail, fail forward.
SPEAKER_01: Let the lessons that propel you forward in forward progress not stall you out.
SPEAKER_01: Champions are not those who never fail, but those who refuse to quit.
SPEAKER_01: Fear of failure is no reason for lack of commitment, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: Failures and setbacks may occur, but the champion holds out for his or her goal.
SPEAKER_01: Champions are men and women in whom courage has become visible.
SPEAKER_01: Behind your fear are the true and holy, righteous desires God has placed in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: And when you begin to believe that you are not under a spirit of fear and not crushed by your circumstances, but rather have power over fear and power over your life, you're stepping into the truth of who the Father says you are in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So to give anything less than your best is to waste the gift.
SPEAKER_01: Former runner Steve Prefontaine was quoted that God has given us his eternal gift, his son, who's accomplished everything that we need to accomplish on this side of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: And he's using that as a paradigm and a model to step into and through to partnership with Christ to face the hard, to tackle the tough that we're all facing today.
SPEAKER_01: Each one of your stories is significant, it's unique, and it's in its own way hard for you and your circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: But God has overcome the world and all of its problems, and in you, he wants to accomplish another victory today.
SPEAKER_01: Will you step into that?
SPEAKER_01: Will you step in and face the heart and embrace the truth of his life, the cross, what's promised to you through the Holy Spirit and the full inheritance?
SPEAKER_01: James 4.17, he tells us this once we know that, once we have the truth, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
SPEAKER_01: The great missionary and martyr Jim Elliott said, Wherever you are, be all there.
SPEAKER_01: Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_02: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_02: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.
SPEAKER_02: God bless.