Rise and Lead
Rise and Lead
Give Me 20 Minutes and You'll Realize You're Not Late, You're Not Behind, and You Haven't Missed It with Benjamin Lundquist - RAL 97
On this episode, Give Me 20 Minutes and You'll Realize You're Not Late, You're Not Behind, and You Haven't Missed It, Benjamin speaks directly to the quiet and constant pressure that you should be further along by now. In a world obsessed with speed, comparison, and highlight reels, it’s easy to believe the lie that you’re falling behind or that you missed your moment. In this teaching, he dismantles the comparison trap, unpacks why feeling “late” is so common, and re-frames struggle as a sign of growth, not failure. You’ll discover how God develops character, skills, and resilience long before He reveals outcomes. This will help you let go of hurry, stop comparing your life to lives you don’t even know, and trust that God has you exactly where you need to be. Your assignment is sacred. This moment is holy. And your story is still unfolding. Really lean into this episode, it'll change your life and transform your future.
Episode Quote:
"One of the most freeing and necessary decisions you will ever make is detaching your self-worth from society’s stopwatch. The world is constantly measuring your value by speed, milestones, productivity, and comparison. But your worth was never meant to be earned by how fast you arrive or how much you produce. When you tie your identity to the clock, you live in perpetual anxiety. Always feeling behind.Always feeling late. Always feeling like you’re not enough. But when your worth is anchored in who God says you are and the relationship you have with him in Jesus, time becomes a tool instead of a tyrant."
This episode, like all Rise and Lead Podcast episodes, is highly practical and motivating. Don't forget to subscribe to the Rise and Lead Podcast to ensure you get notified when new episodes release every month. When you share about the podcast, make sure and tag @benjaminlundquist, and he'll always try and give you a re-post. Remember, the best time to rise and lead is now!
Constant social comparison directly correlates with anxiety, depression, and diminished life satisfaction. Why? Because your nervous system was never designed to process thousands of other people's lives every single day. You weren't created to keep up with everyone. You were created to walk your path well and serve other people faithfully. We're comparing our real lives to curated lives. Welcome to Rise and Lead. I'm Benjamin Lundquist, and this podcast is all about personal growth and leadership. Thank you for listening and for being a part of our Rise and Lead community. We are a community of leaders who are passionate about growth, leadership, and expanding our impact on the world. If you've ever felt the quiet pressure that you should be further along by now, this episode is for you. In a world obsessed with speed, comparison, and highlight reels, it's easy to believe the lie that you're falling behind or that you've missed your moment. In this teaching, I'll dismantle the comparison trap, unpack why feeling late is so common, and reframe struggle as a sign of growth, not failure. You'll discover how God develops character, skill, and resilience long before he reveals outcomes. This will help you let go of hurry. Stop comparing your life to people you don't even know, and trust that God has you exactly where you need to be right now. Your assignment is sacred. This moment is holy, and your story is still unfolding. I want you to really lean into this episode. The Rise and Lead Podcast is designed specifically to motivate and equip you to live your greatest life with maximum impact. We are going to find out what makes great leaders great and how you can start growing yourself, rise, expanding your impact, lead and living the life you have been created to live. We are stronger together. That's something I'm always coming back to. And I want to personally invite you to be a rise and lead partner in spreading the word about this podcast and all the episodes that will follow so together we can reach more people. Thank you for being here. The fact that you give your time and attention to this podcast means more than you know. If these conversations and teachings are helping you grow, find clarity, and feel less alone in the process, one simple way you can help multiply the message is by following the podcast and leaving a rating and review. It makes a difference and helps this show find the people who need it most. And if you know someone in your world who's been feeling stuck, behind, or discouraged, share this episode with them. And when you share on your socials, make sure you tag me and I will always try and give you a repost. This podcast, it exists because of you. And I'm deeply grateful to be on this journey together. Your input, ratings, reviews, and shares help our team to continue creating a better podcast experience to serve great leaders like you. Today's teaching, it really matters. So we're gonna pause and invite God into this moment. God, right now we're asking you to quiet the voice of comparison and hurry in our hearts. Remind us that we are not late, not behind, and not forgotten. Help us to trust your timing, embrace this season, and grow where you have placed us and planted us right now. Give us faith to see this assignment as sacred and this moment as holy. We place our lives back in your hands and move forward with peace and confidence. In your name we pray. Amen. I want to start off by naming something almost everyone feels, but very few people ever say out loud. It's a quiet fear, a low grade anxiety, a constant internal pressure that whispers, I should be further along by now. I've probably missed my moment, missed my opportunity, missed my real calling, missed my person, missed my miracle, missed my breakthrough, or missed God's ultimate plan. So many people feel late in life, late financially, late professionally, late spiritually, late relationally, late compared to people they don't even know. And that feeling doesn't scream at you. It hums in the background. It shows up when you scroll, when you lie awake at night, when you measure your life against timelines you never agreed to, but somehow accepted. This episode is about shifting your mindset. Let me say this as clearly and lovingly as I can. You are not late. You are not behind and you have not missed your opportunity. I want you to hear that again. You are not late. You are not behind and you have not missed your opportunity. What you're feeling, it's not failure, it's formation. You are in process, and the process is uncomfortable. You want product, and God wants you to trust the process. But when you don't understand formation, it feels like delay. Feeling behind is often the result of comparing your process to someone else's completed highlight reel. You're still in process, and God is working behind the scenes in ways you can't even see. But you're comparing your progress to someone else's finished product. In addition to comparison, some of you are allowing voices in your life that keep telling you you're not enough, you haven't done enough, you haven't accomplished enough. And a lot of that pressure comes wrapped in a shiny sales pitch that sounds like this I'm successful, you're not. Buy my program, and you'll be successful just like me. Hear me clearly. Not every voice deserves access to your inner world. Let me say that again. Not every voice deserves access to your inner world. You need to guard your mind and be intentional about what shapes your thinking. Don't let someone convince you that you're failing simply because your journey doesn't match their timeline. I've coached thousands of people over the last 20 years, and many have lives that look impressive on the outside, polished, confident, even verified, but behind closed doors, they're exhausted, fractured, and barely holding it all together. Don't let someone's voice or media account convince you that God has forgotten about you when he's actually doing some of his deepest work in you right now. Here's a line I want you to remember your identity is not the clock. One of the most freeing and necessary decisions you will ever make is detaching your self-worth from society's stopwatch. The world is constantly measuring your value by speed, milestones, productivity, and comparison. But your worth was never meant to be earned by how fast you arrive or how much you produce. When you tie your identity to the clock, you live in perpetual anxiety, always feeling behind, always feeling late, always feeling like you're not enough. But when your worth is anchored in who God says you are and in the relationship you have with Him in Jesus, time becomes a tool instead of a tyrant. Growth is not linear. Calling is not rushed, purpose is not on a deadline. Some of the deepest formation in your life happens in seasons that look slow, quiet, and uneventful. But those are the very seasons shaping your character and capacity. Let me say that again. Some of the deepest formation in your life happens in seasons that look slow, quiet, and uneventful. But those are the very seasons shaping your character and capacity. You are not behind. You're being prepared, you're being planted. Release the pressure to perform according to someone else's timeline and choose to live and lead with peace, presence, and faith. You're only late if you're living by someone else's clock and placing your identity in achievement instead of God's design. So why does this feeling and belief that we're late show up all the time? First, because we live in a culture obsessed with speed, faster growth, faster success, faster answers, faster results, but God is not impressed by speed. God is committed to depth. God is never rushed, and God is never late. Second, we feel late because we measure our lives by visible milestones instead of internal maturity. We celebrate platforms, titles, and outcomes, but God looks at faith, obedience, and character. Samuel sixteen, verse seven says this. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. That verse is a reset for your soul. The world measures success by visibility. God measures success by faithfulness. Stay anchored there. God sees what others miss, and he honors deep character work, soul work, and the internal work that nobody sees. Sustainability publicly is built on deep roots privately. You can only rise as high as your foundation is strong. And God can't bless who you're pretending to be. The condition of the heart matters. It matters to God, and it should matter to you. Third, we feel late because comparison has replaced calling, and comparison is brutal. We touched on this already. Comparison whispers they're ahead, you're falling behind. But comparison never tells the full story. Here's the truth. Comparison steals your joy by lying to you about your timeline. And research backs this up. Studies show that constant social comparison directly correlates with anxiety, depression, and diminished life satisfaction. Why? Because your nervous system was never designed to process thousands of other people's lives every single day. You weren't created to keep up with everyone. You were created to walk your path well and serve other people faithfully. We're comparing our real lives to curated lives, our messy middle to someone else's polished moment. And here's the dangerous part. You're comparing your behind the scenes to someone else's stage without knowing the cost, the pressure, the compromise, or the pain it took them to get there. If you're gonna go and do something, do it because God is calling you to it. You can feel it in your gut, not because you're trying to live someone else's life. Count the real cost, know what it will take, and go all in. You can't show up to God half-heartedly and expect him to move wholeheartedly. And remember, his silence doesn't mean he's absent. It means he's working in ways you can't see yet. God is never late, only preparing you for what's next. Pruning always comes before the harvest. Isolation comes before elevation. Your past, it's not a prism, it's preparation. Pray like it depends on him, and move like it depends on you. Take the step, walk by faith, and watch God show up. When you look at scripture, God hides people. Often in the wilderness, often in slow seasons, before he reveals them, before he elevates them in purpose and impact. And hiding is not punishment, it's protection. You don't rush people into rooms they're not ready to carry. Look at David. David was anointed king and then sent back to the field, chosen but not promoted, called but not crowned for years. And during those years, David wasn't late. David was learning leadership. David was developing courage. David was forming character. God is more concerned with who you are becoming than where you're going. And here's the truth. If David had stepped into kingship too early, it would have crushed him. Delay is often mercy you don't recognize yet. Let me say that again. Delay is often mercy you don't recognize yet. The field didn't delay David's destiny, it prepared him for it. Let me help you reframe the discomfort of the field or your waiting wilderness season. If your life feels uncomfortable right now, that doesn't mean you're off track. It often means you're growing. Growth is uncomfortable. Comfort keeps you stuck. Resistance builds you. Comfort doesn't require faith. Comfort doesn't sharpen discernment. Comfort doesn't build resilience. Struggle is not proof of failure. Struggle is proof of engagement. No harvest grows without tension in the soil. Here's the reframe: you're not behind. You're developing skills. You're not late. You're developing discernment. You haven't missed it. You're developing resilience. God develops people in faith seasons before he deploys them into expanded influence. Seasons where you have to trust God, even though you don't know what's going on, and you don't know how this is all going to play out, how this is all going to come together. And development often looks like obscurity, like repetition again and again, day after day, like faithfulness that no one applauds for. But I want to tell you this nothing is wasted. God doesn't waste anything. God won't waste your pain and God won't waste a single moment. Keep showing up every day. Keep leading yourself well. Keep caring for the people who have been entrusted to your care. Keep stewarding the micro moments God is setting up for you. Each little moment has purpose. And keep leaning into the spaces and places you see God moving. Where God is moving is exactly where you need to be. Comparison will always distract you from your assignment. So here's a better question. What is God asking you to be faithful to right now? Not five years from now, not someone else's life right now. Your assignment is not random. Your season is intentional. When you commit to your lane, peace returns. God has you exactly where you need to be. Not accidentally, not as punishment, not because you missed something. This moment, this moment right now is sacred. This assignment is holy. You're not late. You're being shaped. Stop rushing what God is refining. Stop comparing what God is forming. Stop doubting what God is developing. Learn the lesson. Build the skill. Strengthen the character. And trust this truth with everything in you. God is never late and He's not done with you. Keep showing up. Keep growing. Keep trusting. Your time is coming and you'll be ready when it does. If this Is stirring something in you? It's probably because a part of your heart has been carrying a quiet weight for a long time. The weight of feeling behind. The weight of wondering if you waited too long. The weight of replaying old decisions and asking, What if? Hear me when I say this. God is not replaying your past the way you are, He's redeeming it. There is no panic in heaven about your timeline. There is no urgency in God rooted in fear. What feels delayed to you is often God being intentional. Some of you have been interpreting silence as absence. It's not, it's preparation. Some of you have been calling this season a setback. It's not. It's a setup. And some of you have been treating your current assignment like it's beneath you. When in reality, it's building the strength you'll need for what's ahead. Let me say something directly to you. You don't need a new season. You need a new lens, a new perspective, and a new mindset. God doesn't waste years. And he definitely doesn't waste people who keep showing up even when it's hard. You are not disqualified because of your age. You're not disqualified because of your experience. You're not disqualified because of your mistakes. You are not disqualified because your life didn't unfold the way you expected. Moses thought he missed it. Joseph sat in obscurity. David waited. Esther was positioned quietly. Ruth took one faithful step at a time. And none of them were late. They were all becoming. If you feel unseen right now, remember this. God often does his deepest work when there's no audience. If you feel tired, it doesn't mean you're weak. It means you've been carrying responsibility. If you feel restless, it may not be impatience. It may be purpose waking up inside of you. So here's your invitation as we close out this episode. Stop rehearsing what you wish you had done differently. Stop measuring yourself against lives you were never called to live. Stop letting regret have the final word. Lift your head. Take your next step. Do the faithful thing in front of you. You don't need clarity for the rest of your life. You just need courage for today. And today I want to remind you: God is with you. He's guiding you. He's not finished with you. Let this be the season where peace replaces pressure, where trust replaces striving, where faith replaces fear. You are not late. You are not behind, and you have not missed your moment. You are still being written into a story of redemption, purpose, and massive impact. And when your moment comes, you won't just be ready. You'll be rooted. Keep walking, keep trusting, keep becoming. God is faithful, and your story is far from over. I hope this episode impacted and inspired you. Send me a DM and let me know. I read every message that comes in. Make sure you screenshot this episode, share it with someone, and post it to your social media accounts. Don't forget to tag me so I can give you a repost. I know there was someone you know who needs to hear this episode. Thank you for sharing, subscribing, and rating the podcast. Seriously, that means the world to me. Look for new episodes to release every month. You won't want to miss those. Thank you for taking the time to invest in yourself. You are worth it. Remember, the best time to rise and lead is now.