Demons of Ambition

On this episode of Still Becoming Ryan and Drew have a candid conversation around ambition; the good, the bad, and the ugly. They reflect on personal experience and building the Kingdom verses building your own empire and where grace meets us in all of it. 

Catch up with Drew: www.drewhensley.com & on Instagram @drewchensley

Visit KeyLife: www.keylife.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

All right, welcome back to Still Becoming, where Grace meets the unfinished, talking about conversations of faith in real life. And my name is Drew Hensley. If you're newer to the show, I am a pastor here in Charleston, South Carolina, and I'm here with our other host, my good friend Ryan Kearns, who is a pastor in Midlothian, Texas. Ryan, thanks for jumping back on. Thanks for not abandoning the ship.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yeah, dude, great to be here again. We're making it. No one's walked the plank yet.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

So yes, we are indeed making it. And we are honestly looking to have some of these just honest conversations that are hopefully encouraging, that are hopefully helpful. And so thank you for tuning in. Thank you for taking the time to be with us for the next 30 minutes or so. As we jump into today's topic, as I was thinking about this, I don't think most people set out to lose themselves. I think we slowly can build a life that we think looks right or we're doing the right things, but somewhere along the way, it starts forming us in ways that we didn't intend. And so today what we're going to talk about for a few minutes, and I think this is highly relatable, no matter whether you're in ministry or just in life in general, living in the culture in which we live, we're talking about ambition and success and where that can be healthy and then where it can become unhealthy. And it's not always the loud and obvious kind, but oftentimes I think it's a subtle kind that can live underneath really good things. And so with that being said, Ryan, I would love to just get some initial thoughts. I think it's healthy for us to just throw out some initial thoughts around this. Maybe what you're seeing, what you've experienced, especially when it does come to success and ambition. I know I've seen a lot with people that I'm walking alongside, with even young leaders. You see a lot online. And at the same time, you also eventually, I think we see the breakdown of this in some really unhealthy ways. And so I think our hope in this, I think you'd agree, our hope in this is to maybe provide some framework to be able to say, okay, where where is it healthy? Where is working hard and having ambition good? And then where can it go off the rails a bit? Because I don't think we really want to do that, but I think we can fall into that.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Yeah. You know, and I'll I'll try not to go on too many tangents here because there's so many things we can unpack. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

We're so good with tangents. Yeah, if you were with this week. No, no commercial breaks. And if you were with us last week, we spent uh we spent some time talking about Philadelphia sports. So, you know, we're we're very good with tangents here. We just see where it takes us, just like the wind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Well, here's uh something in general that I think sometimes is hard for Christians in the West, primarily or modern Christians, is we don't like to live with things that are in tension. So we want things to be cut and dry. We want them to be simplified, we want them to be solved. But if you read most of the Bible, the storyline of the Bible, at least wisdom is a man or a woman who's learned to live with things in tension. So that tension is always there. You know, churches often can't live with tension. They'll say, Are we an evangelism church or we're a discipleship church? The answer should be yes. You're both. Um, are you generous or are you a good steward? Yes. You know, I mean, all of these things in general create a sense of tension. I think we have another one here when it comes to a subject like ambition. Because I think Christians can fall into different ditches. I think there can often be a category of Christian who falls in a space, or I'll hear them talk in a way that is you're just supposed to be content with your lot in life, keep your head down, preach the gospel, die and be forgotten, surrender your will and be very passive, as if like what the Lord wants for you to is to be a rubber ducky on the ocean of life and to do nothing. And then I think there's some others that are, you know, they're gonna buy into just kind of the hustle culture that is very popular in America right now. I've always got to have a side hustle, a next move, a strategy. I've got to burn both ends of the candle, I've got to work exceptionally hard. And it's all about me and how I'm elevating, advancing, and moving forward. And that ambition, too, can also be really destructive. So I think there's a tension here that really is so important for us to talk about it because both people are making the same mistake. They're missing what uh I think is at the core of it, which is what's the Lord made you for? Who has he designed you to be? And what does it look like for us to discover that and then embrace that along the way? Speaking of which, I think that's often the discovery a lot of us are on along the way. I know in my 20s and 30s, there's just a lot of working out of who in the world has God made me to be. And then even once I discover that, can I accept it and embrace it, or am I still going to fight against it in a really strong way?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, I think that's so good. You know, we do live in this tension because what we see, you know, before sin ever entered the world, and I I was, I don't know about you, I've actually found it incredibly refreshing. I found myself going back to Genesis one a lot more and um Genesis two, pre-fall, basically, and saying, okay, what was what was the world like before sin entered? And what did God really say about it? And what did he already have in place? And so what you see is that you know, work is good before sin ever entered. You see this in the garden, you know, that work wasn't really a result of the fall, it was a part of creation, that God gave Adam something to cultivate before anything was broken. And so the desire to build something, the desire to create something, even I think achieve something, that's not really the root problem. That's part of being made in God's image. And you can kind of see this clearly in scripture, you know, in other places it affirms effort. Um, I was thinking about this verse um from Colossians, you know, 3.23 says, Whatever you do, work heartily is for the Lord. Essentially, like pour yourself out. That's a good thing. And that's really not passive, that's intentional, it's focused, it's an engaged work. And then you also see, and I and I don't have the reference right now, but Laura and I were talking about it actually last week about this call to how it's good to even live a simple and peaceable life. And so I think that's where we can find ourselves, like you're saying, within this tension that you know, the problem isn't working hard. I think it's when work starts telling us who we are. And I'm just curious, where have you seen that? Uh and you can maybe it's in your own life, but even in people around you, as we're pastoring people. I think that's a big piece of it, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yeah. You know, I I'll I'll just reflect here for a minute how kind of you and I originally crossed paths. And uh we both were you know, this had to be like 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

You found me in an alleyway in Seattle. I was eating Taco Bell and just trying to live my life.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

A lot of Taco Bell. There's actually some truth to that. So for listeners out there, a lot of Taco Bell runs in Seattle. We were countercultural, everyone else was eating seaweed and vegan stuff out there, and you and I were eating Taco Bell and Jack in the Box, too. So yeah. There goes the sponsor. All right, ballers on a budget.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Sorry, Jack in the Box.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

But uh getting there, you know, we were uh going to a church at the time that was incredibly well known and renowned and had just a lot of uh popularity around it. And so for very ambitious young guys, it was the place you wanted to be a part of and what you wanted to be affiliated with, and it just it felt of opportunity, so and and platform along the way. And I, you know, I'm gonna come back to that word here in a second. And I remember, and this just kind of speaks into some of the dysfunction that was part of that culture to begin with, but I remember going up there for an interview, and in one of the conversations I was sitting there, and one of the guys I was interviewing with, he said to me at the end of the interview, Do you realize getting to come here is like being called up to the New York Yankees from the minor leagues? And it just has always stuck with me. And that being uh a way that sometimes ambition can allow us to be blinded by just seeing something as that is the place where I'll finally experience success, achievement. I'll feel good about myself, I'll feel like I've arrived. And at the core of that is I want to be part of something big because it'll make me feel loved. And I think until that question is really identified and wrestled with, and you really do lean into like, I am a child of God, I'm a son of God, my identity is in God. Like that has to not just be something that gets in your ears but gets all the way into your bones. Until you get there, ambition is going to be one of those things I do think that gets a little wonky for you. Because underneath that's gonna be churning something of like, I need to be attached or uh part of something, or I need to become something that's really successful because man, I want to know that I'm enough. I want to know that I'm loved.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I think, yeah, I think you hit it on the head. I I know that that's part of what took me to Seattle and joining up was, you know, I was 28 years old and it felt like this shiny thing. And not only did it feel like this shiny thing, it felt like almost this mountaintop. If I can do this or I can be a part of it, or I can be close to it, then that means I've arrived. Then that means that what I'm doing really matters. Now, looking back, and I mean, thank goodness, I think for you and I, we would say a lot of that, those ideals were shattered in a really healthy way eventually. But man, looking back, I think that oftentimes when we have those, I'll just call them idols, maybe the idol of ambition, whatever it might be. And we think this is the shiny thing I need to grab, this is what I need to reach for, this means that I'm good enough, that I've done enough, that I'm loved enough, all of those things. Oftentimes, I think when we actually grab that, if we do grab that or if we do get there wherever there is, we actually find that it's kind of a snake and it actually harms us and it bites us. And that's what I felt. Yeah. And even Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

No, I I think you're so spot on. In fact, what I have tried to encourage young people over the years when I can see just that glint of overtorked ambition of like, I've got to make something of myself. I've tried to say, hey, one, Ecclesiastes is your friend. So just realize it, you know, like other people have run this experiment and they're better than you. They were, they had, they were more resourced than you, and they've already run the experiment countless times and it's just come up empty. But I've said to folks, I thought there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and I got to the end of the rainbow, and it turns out that pot was empty. So I was still just left with me. Like, am I enough? Am I loved? And uh there was no amount of success or accomplishment that was uh gonna put gold back into that pot.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

So but it's a shiny lure. You're right. It is well, it is, and it and I've I've talked with, and and I'm sure you have too, I've talked with a lot of pastors over the years, kind of after what I would say is is that pot of gold, finding out that it's empty, and then actually finding really, I think, healthy contentment, which is a beautiful thing. And I think you know, we'll get into that too. And you talked about wanting to jump into platform as well, but I think that you know, that that mix or that finding that line between good desire and contentment. But um yeah, I can just sense in, especially I'm thinking about here's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about the the pastor or or the ministry leader, or even the person that's just um, you know, maybe maybe you have a job or a career completely outside of of ministry, of ministry in the sense of local church. But I've had those conversations where I could so sense, you know, um it's like, how's your church doing? So I'll just use pastor in his example. How's your church doing? And they're like, well, you know, we've got a hundred, but we're really growing. And it's always this caveat of I know that's not enough and and I want it to be more. And I think that there is such this huge lie of you know, um less in the sense of maybe you never maybe you pastor a church of of 50 people and maybe that's the most fantastic thing, and that's uh absolutely what God has for you. Instead of feeling this um this almost sense of, well, if I had I if I had only you know have grown this to that, then then this would have been a success. Or then this would have really mattered. Or just these metrics that I think we can play with. And that we can place really on ourselves, or that my goodness, you just get on and you see every what everybody else is doing in your sphere, and it seems like they're so far ahead, or it seems like they're doing so much more, or they're so much more impactful. And I think that's such a lie, and and I'll just speak honestly too. What I found is that when I was at the precipice of, I would say, driving ambition, unhealthy ambition, it often pulled me completely out of the present. It disconnected me with relationships. I was always thinking about what was next, and I started to see people not as people, but as a means to an end for me to feel like I was enough.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Yeah, no, that's so spot on. I think overtorked ambition or ambition that's unhealthy is gonna lead you to a place where it's impossible to be present. You know, you're just never satisfied. So you're thinking about what's next. And I would say if that's churning inside you right now, and when you think about the work that God's giving you, and your work's a gift, even sometimes when it doesn't feel like it, or if your your ministry feels inadequate or not enough, or you just feel that constant uh low-grade frustration, uh, just realizing it is pulling you out of the present. And uh, you know, I often encourage people too to think of it this way like, you know, the present is that's the only space the Lord really wants us to occupy uh ongoingly. You know, if we're too much in the past, that's often a sense of like there's a lot of shame we need to deal with. If we're constantly replaying for something from long ago, it's like Lord doesn't want you living in the past, like that's actually something that he's atoned for and he's he's expiated shame. So he wants to bring you back into the present. And then, folks, I think on the anxiety side is it's like we're maybe running too far into the future, where Jesus encouraged us once again, don't occupy the future. You don't belong there. Do not worry. For uh today has enough troubles of its own. So come into the present. Uh, and and you'll find a lot more joy when you do that. And another indication uh that drew you high to the light of there too. I just want to mention it again, is when we start uh looking at people as these are people I can build uh a platform on rather than people that I can bless. And I've met enough guys, just like you have over the years, where it seemed like they were much more interested in creating a crowd rather than loving a congregation. And uh or they were more interested in preaching than pastoring. And those are not always the same things. And sometimes if you want to preach, but you don't want to pastor, I think that can be another indication that your ambition, especially when you're young, is a little out of line. So watching some of those things, paying attention to your anxiety, your contentment, all of those things uh can be difficult.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah, and I think you mentioned, you mentioned before this word that pops up more and more and more, platform. And I think that that's something that, you know, we we can't negate. Obviously, we have a lot going on internally as we wrestle with the spirit and with flesh, but we also have a lot going on externally that reinforces some of these really unhealthy things and packages them as really healthy things. And platform, I think, is this word and this term and platform building that uh you know we've watched become this really dangerous thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

And so I'd love for you to talk a little bit about platform and just what what you've seen, what you're what you would say to people about around the I forgot who wrote on this years ago, and this is where you know we do need to just be reminded if we're just going to be realistic about what humans are, is the human heart is deceitful above all things who can understand it. So what my motivations are, they're never perfect, and they're never all bad either. You know, it's just a mixed cocktail inside of that that only the Lord fully could fully suss out and understand. You know, to me, uh I can do the prayer of self-examine and I can try to understand who I am. And I think that's a great practice. I mean, I'm I'm reading Psalm 139 all the time. Lord, search me and know me, make me familiar with all my ways. So I'm a big advocate of that. But yet, still, there's going to be some motivations inside me that are driving me in ways. And with that, I think we need to be very careful, especially as ministry leaders or pastors, if that's who you are, of not being able to understand that when we say sometimes we're building the kingdom, we might actually be trying to build our own empire. And empire and kingdom often look identical for a long period of time. And we can justify a lot of our empire building as kingdom building and not be able to delineate the difference between the two. You know, you and I worked at a church where we would vocally say it's all about Jesus, and at the same time, uh have a lot of internal conversations about platforms and making sure people had brands and things of that nature. And uh that dichotomy has been something that I've I've always been stuck with over the years since, you know, going back to that Yankees comment, too, of just making sure we're being honest with ourselves. Is it all about Jesus? Or behind the scenes, is there's still a lot of conversations about my platform and my brand and my renown. And uh I think those are like those are going to be heart-level questions once again of like the empire versus kingdom and uh us being really willing to say, Lord, not my will be done, but your will be done. I'm just I've become more and more interested, and I'd be curious if you had thoughts on it, of that difference or how you would encourage guys to think about that difference between empire and kingdom as we're wanting to build stuff. And I'm all for that. Like I've got a lot of drive in me. I'm always wanting to build stuff and advance stuff and make things better and move things along. But uh, I think those are things we have to continue to focus on and talk about.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think that those can become very muddy waters. I think that we need to constantly, I feel like we need to constantly go back to almost a David type posture where he's saying, and I know he's saying this in you know Psalm 51, and he's just confessed, but he's in a very raw place. And and and I love this phrasing where he just says, Lord, if there's anything, you know, if there's anything essentially sideways with my heart, like reveal it to me. I think if we're willing to be honest with that, it can help keep us in a I think more humble, more spirit-inviting place where we can say, actually, like, man, I'm I don't really know if this is kingdom building. This feels maybe like I'm building my own empire here. I think that it requires brutal honesty. And it also requires the humility of having to say, you know, if this doesn't produce this, or if this doesn't happen, that's okay. And that it truly is not about me first or my plans or my desires. And I and I do think that's where, you know, I'm I was thinking about contentment and desire and the tension that lives there. Because I because I do think there's a real tension there, you know, contentment in scripture, what we see is it really isn't the absence of ambition. I think it's the reordering of it. Paul says, you know, Paul, so the apostle Paul, I think he was one of the most productive, ambitious builders that we've ever seen. And he says this line at Philippians 4. He says, I've learned to be content in all circumstances. He uses this word content, and at the same time, he's still planting churches, he's still moving, he's working harder than anyone, he's still going. And so I don't think contentment kills movement, I think it actually anchors it. But I think that's that question, and I'm I'm curious to hear from you on this. But where do you think, where does healthy contentment lie? And how do we get there? Because I don't think that contentment means we just become, you know, couch potatoes and we're not doing anything and we throw our hands up. But how can we um continue to work hard, I think, continue to strive for the right things, and yet find ourselves in a place of contentment?

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah. You know, I I don't think it's by accident. I think it's intentional that Jesus used so many parables and metaphors that were related to agriculture and farming. So, and I'm not gonna pretend I have a deep inside of that. I'm about as suburban as you get and lived in urban areas. I've gone to a few strawberry farms with my kids and uh pumpkin farms, but that's about the extent of my farming experience.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah, when we lived in Seattle, they were farming stuff.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

That's yeah. So I I go to the farmer's market, so my wife spends lots of money. But uh, that's about it. So, but point being, I think a farmer, like if you just look at the life of a farmer, all you really have control over are the inputs. You can't control the outputs. So if you're a farmer, it's like I'm getting up in faith every day during the spring to till this soil, to weed this soil, to plant and to water. And then it really is God who's gonna give the growth. And God is the one who will. Bear the fruit. And God intentionally designed things that way because every last one of us is a glory thief. And we want to grab that glory. We want to say we made the fruit. We gave the growth. And yet God is not going to compete with us for his glory. He's going to get all of the glory as far as like the life change, the transformation, the salvations, all of those things along the way. So the inputs are things we do in faith and with when we do them with optimism too, in a spirit of like the Lord is going to work and the Lord's going to show up and the Lord's going to do great things. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I go to work every day, I don't go with an ee or spirit. I go believing that my labor's not in vain. Do not grow weary in doing good. So go and do all you can to water the soil. And parenting is another good example of this. I don't know how my kids are going to turn out. I'm trying to do all the things that I think are good along the way. I mean, I'm sure a lot of folks listening right now, you're in that same boat. You're trying to do the right things, the good things. You're reading to your kids, you're hopefully feeding them good foods and all that stuff, reading them the Bible, and you're hoping that there'll be a great outcome. But if we're honest with ourselves, we can't control that. And I think that sense of uh here's here's where it gets messy is if you at the end don't get the outcome that you want and you find yourself getting disgruntled or even angry, uh, I think that is a sign that your ambition's out of place. Like let's just say uh I am that pastor and my church is 70 people, and these are amazing 70 people, and they love the Lord and we love each other and we have, you know, the Lord's doing great things. But if I expect them to turn into 300 people and they don't, and then I get disgruntled and upset at them, that has nothing to do with those 70 people. That has everything to do with my unholy ambition. And I was wanting something for these people that the Lord didn't want. And yeah, I put in all the inputs. You should love those people and shepherd them and pastor them and pray for them and preach to them. But at the same time, love them for who the Lord ends up making them into, just like your kids, and not because they weren't made into your image. Allow them to be made into the Lord's image.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

I think that's so good. And also I think that when I'm thinking about this too, I think comparison plays such a part here too. I think comparison is one of the greatest destroyers of contentment. Is that we we look at the church down the street, we look at even, you know, parent and and again, this is for anybody and everybody. I think even if we're mentioning ministry here, you can package it any way you want. But oh, those parents over there, they seem to really have it together. Or man, this organization, they really seem to have it together. Or this church, they really seem, I need to, I need to be that, I need to do that. And I think that that not only destroys contentment, but it robs us of the joy that God actually has for us in the midst of what we're doing, in the midst of working hard and being faithful. And we're constantly looking outward at this false idea, maybe of what should be, what could be. And I tell I tell new couples in premarital about this too. I say, hey, one thing that I would just encourage you to not do is not compare your relationship to your friends' relationships. Because they're each unique, they're each different. But I think in life, man, I think comparison is such a dangerous piece and a destroyer of true contentment and faithfulness.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, C.S. Lewis, he always says it best, doesn't he? That comparison is a thief of joy. And when I compare my life to others, what they have, what I don't have, I mean, this is the Lord, too, all the way back to the Ten Commandments. Don't covet, you know, and he's not saying that. The Lord's not giving us that instruction because he's just a angry school teacher, but because he wants community to flourish. The Ten Commandments really are saying if these things are lived out, like community will be amazing. You guys will love how lush and amazing and vibrant it feels for you all. But when I covet, I'm slowly allowing joy to be robbed from my life. And sadly, I think this is one of the biggest challenges, structurally speaking, for us as Christians in America, because all of our economics is based on this idea of getting us to covet, of wanting us to consume. I need something else. Someone else has something else. They went on a trip somewhere, they bought something, they did something, whatever it is, like that covet thing. I have a covet engine basically in my pocket at all times. That's just reminding me, hey, Ryan, you haven't coveted in about 10 minutes. Time to covet again. So, and that is just robbing joy. It's robbing peace from me and all that along the way. And I think you're right. Like, I think that, you know, and I'll I'll say this too, because I that we're right back to the ditch of like contentment and ambition. Yeah. I don't think think uh the Lord's calling us to say, okay, well, the goal then is to not have any goals or any plans or to want to strive for anything in your life. I think it's just saying have an open hand with those things. You know, this is James 4 of going, if the Lord wills, yeah, I'm gonna plan a church, I'm gonna start this ministry, I'm gonna start this Bible study, I'm gonna reach out to my neighbor. And then if the Lord wills, we'll see what happens. But I think sometimes people also get stuck and go, Well, I don't know if it's gonna work and I don't know if I should, so I'm just gonna do nothing. And that's also not something I think the Lord wants us to lean into.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

I agree with you there. And I think that there is this subtle shift that can happen there. You know, we you can use whatever word you want. I I feel like the term calling can be overused, but if we use it in a generic sense, in the sense of God does place things in front of us. I think God leads us. So maybe leading. But I think ambition, it can tend to go sideways when calling, if you will, turns into control. Right. And I think that's what you're mentioning with being open-handed. You know, when I'm no longer doing something because God's called me to that or he's placed it in front of me, but because I need it to go a certain way so that I can feel okay. And I think that's um, you know, that that even clarity when it comes to ambition, I think is so important. Clarity in the sense of, and maybe it's a daily clarity of just God, what are you placing in front of me? What have you placed in front of me? Where do you want me to be faithful today? And then moving in that direction instead of being so distracted and detached because of everything around me that I could grab onto.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah. Allow me to comment on something here and and you throw a pencil at me if I start ranting too much, but I think you're hitting on something, hopefully, that will be helpful for people in life. That part of Christians, I think we can be very guilty sometimes of baptizing our agenda in spiritual language. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we, you know, if you really look at calling or being led by the Lord, uh, I think the primary means that often the Lord's doing that is his word. So, like, man, is it in the Bible? Is it permissible? Is it encouraged? You know, do I have a general direction? Love my neighbor. It's like I've got explicit biblical command to do that. So that's probably the will of the Lord. And then the other means for really knowing the will of the Lord in our life is community, like having other brothers and sisters who love the Lord as well and know me, and I'm allowing them to speak into my life. And I think sometimes when ambition gets out of place or becomes more about our own kingdom, our own empire, what I've seen people do is they've baptized that agenda in spiritual language of saying, The Lord's called me. And when you do that, you have removed yourself from uh further conversation or examination. I mean, I've had people say, the Lord told me to do this. And even as a pastor, then I feel bound up to go, well, if I start questioning that, does that mean I'm telling them they didn't hear the Lord or they haven't? You know, and it just gets real messy. So I think humility actually allows us to go to friends and say, Hey, I really have a sense this might be a good thing for me to pursue. What do you think? What do you see in me? How do you think the Lord's made me? Does the opportunity seem to make sense? Instead of starting from a place where we're almost trying to control the outcome and control what that is going to happen and actually bind the other people up in our life that might actually be able to help us along the way. So, okay, rant over. I just I really wanted to say that because I think that's another danger. In this ambition conversation, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

I think that's so important, you know. And as we start to wrap up this conversation, you know, I do go back to this, and this is a this is something Jesus said that I find myself going back to again and again and again and trying to approach it with genuine curiosity and humility, and honestly a healthy fear. And what I mean is not I'm scared, but but a healthy kind of awe of of God and what he's doing. And you know, he puts it really directly, and I think he does this in a lot of ways out of his kindness because he knows that we don't understand a lot. So he puts it really directly when he says this. And I think this is um this is something that I think should stop us and have us really examine. Okay, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? How is that helping build the kingdom? Or am I just building my own empire? What have I bought into that's maybe false, or what am I trying to control? And he just says, what what does it profit a band to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul, right? Mark 8, 36. And I think the scary part is that you can quote unquote gain the world in ways that actually look faithful on the outside. And so I do think you have to be really approach it with humility, approach it with a sense of contentment of God, your will be done and open hands. And I think that's a good place to kind of wrap this with Ryan. I'd love to hear from you. Let's say that you have somebody, let's say let's say you have a young person, even though you don't have to be young, you could be 40, 50, 60, 70 years old and be wrestling with us. Let's say you have a young person in your office right now that is bound up by this idea. They have an unhealthy sense, or they just feel the tension. They feel a little bit lost. I feel like I I feel like my life, what I'm doing, um, even though I'm being faithful, I feel like maybe it's not enough. I need to do more, be more, um, have a louder voice. What encouragement would you give them?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah, you know, I uh we have quite a few young folks on our our team and uh around our church. And I I find myself in conversations like this all the time with young people in general, just trying to sort out like what am I supposed to do with my life? And but I think you're right. I think it spans all age groups and seasons of life uh along the way. You know, one of the things I think is so important for us all to hear and be reminded of is that uh everything counts. Everything counts. You know, in the economy of God, uh, what you are doing, as you said even earlier, Colossians 3, uh 23. I bring that up all the time with our staff. Like, whatever you are doing, do it onto the Lord. And that's for the stay-at-home mom who's picking up Cheerios off the ground. Uh, that's for the uh parents who are taking kids uh to the eighth baseball practice of the week. Uh, that's for the person working in office right now and just filling out reports. I mean, no matter what the task is, the Lord sees that and it matters. Uh, your work matters. So I have found such an encouragement too, and even my own journey of like really wanting to know what the Lord's up to in my life has been much more of just trying to be faithful right where I am, and then say yes to what comes my way. I mean, I didn't grow up in the church, so I showed up to a church at about 19 and just become a Christian. And I said, I think I'm a Christian. How can I now? How should I help? And they said, Can you hold this door open when people walk in for service? And I was like, I can do that. So I just did that. That's what I was asked to do. And then did that for a while. And I'm just talking to people, and they're like, There's a student ministry upstairs. Would you mind going up there? It seems like you're still young. And I so I go up there and I, you know, just it was one thing after another, but it was much more an unfolding of me being faithful in the thing that was right there in front of me. So I heard a pastor say one time, just keep the room clean that the Lord has you in, and then he'll open the door to the next one. And sometimes we're so much wanting to kick down the door to the next room. And the room that the Lord's placed us in is an absolute mess. And I think the Lord's looking and saying, Hey, let me just entrust you with that right now. And if you can show you're a good steward, I'll gladly open the next door. But just let's focus on where you're at right now, and then the next thing will come. That's so good.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Hard work is good. Control is a killer, contentment is essential. Whatever you do, do it is for the Lord. I think that's so good. Thank you, everybody, for listening in. Thank you, Ryan. My goodness, so much wisdom there, and I think an important conversation for joining us here on Still Becoming, where grace meets the unfinished conversations about faith in real life. I hope that you've been encouraged. I hope that you've been challenged in some good ways. I know I have, even through this conversation. And I hope that you will join us again next week. Have a great week and appreciate you taking the time and joining us here. I'm still becoming