5 Forms of Encouragement - Part 1

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

This podcast is brought to you by Sage Hill, a social impact organization. Our mission is to help people be who they're made to be so that they can do what they're made to do. Find more resources to live fully, love deeply, and lead well at sagehillresources.com. We're gonna talk about five forms of encouragement, five ways we can express encouragement to other people. When we're born, we come into life with a great deal of courage that's little recognized from the world's context because courage is a full hearted participation in your life, which is vulnerability, faith, bring your hands, head, and heart to something. It's given your whole self to something. And even at birth, children can't even help it. I say that we're even powerless over our courage. But our courage can be discouraged or slighted, removed, minimized, sort of taken from us without it being encouraged. So encouraged is that people say, do, offer, give things to us that reinstates the capacity to give your whole heart to something because we know that life is a wounding experience. And with the wound, we cover. Whenever a person is wounded, they they the natural instinct of living is to cover. The unnatural instinct is to uncover. So you have to have a lot of help to sort of reveal the wound so it can be healed. You know, a lot of times, like like, we'll hold something that you say, I'm gonna put a shot in this. I'm gonna put, I need to see it. I need to clean it. It's like, oh, oh, oh, oh, and we recoil from exposing our wounds, but only healing can occur through exposure. Even as I prayed this morning, I said that I prayed that this person we were talking about would find a healing through the surrender so he could be touched, healing from the giving over of what he needs so that the need can be met. An open hand can be filled. A close fist can have something poured on it and will hold nothing afterwards. You see? So we're gonna get hurt by this world and this life. Therefore, we're gonna need to be reinstated, replenished, restored, recreated, recovered. You know, I found them thirsty, and I gave them water. I found them hungry. I gave them food. We're gonna be in that condition. And our admission of that condition is what's gonna get our healing to us. And through healing, we wind up having a wiser experience of life, but also a return to hope. The return to hope puts us back in sort of the the bearing life well, which means to be able to thrive in spite of that which threatens our existence and threatens our fullness. So that getting back into the river of life, we don't run from it with need to control through, anxiety. It threatens us to have to control life. We don't run from it by trying not to care about it, by depressing who God made. So first Corinthians 15 is a statement to us that says that we have something that the world doesn't have. We have the Holy Spirit, a seal, a guarantee, whether we utilize the Holy Spirit as Christians really or not. We have the Holy Spirit, whether it's a just a pilot light that keeps us moving or turned up, a full flaming expression that can warm a room. Let's say thinking about gas logs or something like that. So we have the Holy Spirit, and reflecting of the Holy Spirit is that we can continue to walk in faith, in hope, and love for a purpose. We can continue to walk in faith, in hope, in love for an outcome. We can continue to walk in faith and hope and love when we don't see it being productive or producing anything in the day. And when we don't see it producing or doing anything in the day, we're at risk of becoming discouraged. And the discouraged people need encouragement. The capacity to put their hearts fully back in to that which they know and has and will again hurt them, but they do it anyway. Christians can do that because number one, we're having the influence from another world, from eternity touching us. And we also have a place we're headed to so that even when it ends, there's no such thing for us as just dust to dust. There is a life to be had still. Now I want you to hear this, that the self help world, that the the world of motivation, the world of continuing on, take god out of the picture, Take the Holy Spirit that indwells in us out of the picture. In the world of, say, motivational speaking, which is always putting off to tomorrow what you can't do today. It's promising that if you do these things, these things are gonna happen. And by the time you've done these things, whoever taught you that's out of town. Do you get what I'm saying? They've sold you their goods and they're gone, so to speak. Or if you come to them, they're still living in town, they're telling you somehow, well, you didn't do this or you missed that. You get graded as having missed something, And on some level, you get compared to them, and then they can say, well, you just don't have it, or you have to look in the mirror and say, I'm just not made right. But I want you to know that the self help stuff, the human motivation stuff, the scientific discoveries about the brain mapping and all these things that show us that we we survive because of genetics, I want you to know that all the self help stuff that doesn't have god in it is still of god. And what I mean by that, they're still reflecting in a dim way the very beliefs that we have, that there is a reason to hope, that you can hope. There is a reason to keep faith, that you can have faith. There is a reason to love, and you can love, but they cannot have the same love that we're made to have because it doesn't come from the supreme being. So I want you to hear that the self help stuff is right on, except it has in it a dead end, because it doesn't teach us or show us how to continue to swim when we've lost hope, when our faith diminishes, and when our sense of hope, or love, it seems like useless. What is love but a secondhand emotion? You know, that whole world of what a waste it is to have it, how stupid I was to think it, and those kinds of things. But don't you see that our pain related to love is directly related to our inability to stop believing in it? Because the songs are always about betrayal, how stupid I was to think or hope or dream or believe that this could happen when now I'm left, I'm behind, I'm bereft, and I'm, abandoned. Okay. So first Corinthians 15 throws down a dare, and it throws down the truth. It throws down reality that Christians are fools or they're the most courageous people upon the face of the earth. So it's it's the gauntlet and the the dare is directly related to this. Now all of this is gonna bring us to five ways that we as Christians are capable of encouraging. But the irony of that is you cannot give what you do not have. You cannot offer what you haven't been given or gotten. So what's ironic about this whole thing about encouragement, the encouragement is still for us. We're just offering out of wealth. So I want you to know that we're gonna talk about that even encouragement to many of us in here is probably gonna sound selfish. If you're an encouraging person, you're gonna probably seem like, feel like, based upon the world's teaching, like a selfish person. Now selfishness defined like this. There was a guy treated years and years ago, and, he was brought up in a sharing household, in in a religious household. And his sixth birthday so his mama could start teaching about sharing and giving and love and hope and faith and charity and all those sorts of things. He started having his birthday on his birthday, he would get presents, and then he would have to give all his presents away. Started at six and continued onward. And then I met him in drug and alcohol treatment years later. K? Because it was selfish to want and have. It was selfish to desire and keep. Do you follow? His mama was missing the whole deal. You cannot give what you do not have. He was his capacity to have himself and have a life and have a need was being stripped from him. So you see what I mean by selfish? We're not selfish to need or to have. The more you need, the more you get. The more you have, the more you can offer. And there's a point at which if you got so much, it's like you can't help but give it away. Now our God is a God who doesn't run out of supplies. Remember that that David with Bathsheba in the I think it's the book of Kings. David with Bathsheba was trying to run away from his life because it says in a time of year when kings go out to war, I think it's the first Kings 19, I think, David wasn't going. So he was sort of running from doing what he was made to do, running from getting replenished, or even running from saying, god, I'm not ready. K? And we have a god that can help us deal with not ready. So David was on his rooftop sort of just wandering, or maybe he knew what would be up there, and he looked across the way, so to speak, and he saw Bathsheba, baby. So he decided he would have her. So he got her, and he got her pregnant. And then he goes, uh-oh. You know, just like our schemes often work out, we think nobody has to know. And then after we've done what it is and nobody has to know to fill ourselves without being in need, we go, okay. Now what if somebody finds out? We're in trouble. So David had that experience. Nobody has to know. One night, nobody we don't have to talk about it later. And then she got pregnant. He impregnated her. And then he goes, uh-oh. So he gets her husband to come home from war. He was a very trusted adviser and warrior with David. And he said, well, go home and sleep with your wife. So he thought he could get out of it. Uriah and his loyalty to his brothers in arms at war wouldn't sleep with his wife and stayed at the gates outside the the city. And so David had to come up with another plan because he was going to make sure that he didn't wind up having to live as a human in confession. So he sent a message to Joab, and he said, as soon as that you are in the thick of the fighting, withdraw from Uriah and sort of leave him to his chances. So David had him killed. And then, Joab sent a message back to that your deed your wishes are done. Nathan, the prophet, comes to David and says this most magnificent and seemingly insane thing. After David confessed to the truth of what he had done, Nathan said to him, David, do you not know that had you wanted anything, needed something, do you not know that God would have given you that and even more? So in the midst of a desecration of life, God was offering through Nathan even more of himself in spite of what David had done. I'm saying that that's our God. So our god's not gonna run out. So from the context of us trusting that god doesn't run out, and then when we get a pile up of restoration, replenishment, rejuvenation, recovery, recreation, you cannot help but be someone who reflects having something, and therefore, you cannot help but start giving it away. I got so much. Please come get some. Oh, no. Please take this home with you. Oh, no. Please come please take that. Can I bring that to you? You need you need to take that because we're expressing who god made us to be. So here's what first Corinthians 15 says. He's calling us to what the world or we have historically called selfishness. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised in our preaching then our preaching is useless and so is your faith. If there's no resurrection, your faith is foolish about a life beyond life. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about god. So we're delusional and we're liars. We make stuff up to make ourselves feel better. Anybody ever heard that religion is narcotics for the masses, opium of the masses. Right? So more than that, we are then found to be false witness about God. For we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead, but he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. It's useless. You are still in your sins. There is no hope. Your faith is useless, and love is nothing but a series of what you can take and get for yourself. It's a survival of the fittest, strongest get the most. You want something, you just take it, and you take it because life's unfair. That's the way it is. And if you don't like it, then deal with it. And if I die in it, I die in it. Either you die or I die. Every day is a boat. There's a cup of water, four days to sail, and two people on it. That's called survival. Scarcity. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all humans. We are the ultimate fools. Today is Easter. This is the day we celebrate by, you know, historical picking of a date. But what we're really celebrating is that something has happened in the universe that has changed everything, and we're the recipients of that change. And the change that we have is the capacity to live in faith, hope, and love in spite of a world that works against it in its futility to get away from human neediness. That's how we live if we dare. But we can't live that way without lots of encouragement. And I know this is is such a cliche, but if you sleep with dogs, do I need to finish it? You're gonna get fleas. If the ember is taken from the fire and dropped away from it, it goes out quickly. Do you see? So what we do, where we eat, how we live, where we sleep, who we associate with, what our fellowship is like is crucial to whether or not we are, one, courageous, two, encouraged ourselves, and three, encouraging. Because do we not live in a world where people finally have to eventually sort of give up when all the things that they've been taught will work don't work? And do you see any of you ever been under anesthesia? How many of you like it? I like it personally because I'm not there. When I go into anesthesia, I I the the stuff starts, Neil, you've had like, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying we look forward to it because what's gonna happen while we're under? But while we're under, we don't have to feel it. And when that stuff starts to flow, we literally go from light to dark. We think we're not it's not gonna happen. We're waiting for something to happen, and all of a sudden, we are gone. Resurrection is where we get the term surgery. It's a return from surgery. The resurrection is a return from anesthesia. If you don't have the spirit of God and a a reason to walk in hope, faith, and love, then anesthesia is the next best option. And I support almost all of us, and the world is doing it as we speak even now, literally spending daily moments and doing whatever we can to get away from the lives that we need to live. What can I do to get away from this? What can I do to not feel this? What can I do to not see this? What can I do not to be in need? What can I do to be stronger than human? And we don't know that the ultimate strength of stronger than human is the Holy Spirit lets us fully live here with Emmanuel, the God with us. Instead, we want to be human in a way that removes us from our heartbeat that makes us heartache. Heartbeat and heartache. Without heart, there's no homesickness. Homesickness is called a sickness because it really makes us sick not to be at home. You see, in the home, a home is 18 inches below our necks where we do everything we can to avoid having to go. Because when we go there, that's where the truth of living in this life is, All the fears and heartaches and heartbreaks and wonders and possibilities, and the future's coming. The future if you've had a past, then the future could be bad. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you got a past, the future could be bad. So every day is a day when you wake up and you have to decide, will you go to the well to drink that which will restore you or will you begin to seek through anxiety some way to avoid that day? You remember I've told you guys before, sometimes I used to get up as late as possible to go as quickly as possible to what I dreaded as fast as possible to get it over with as soon as I could so I could get out of there and go do something else before I had to start worrying about the next day doing the same thing. Does anybody understand that? So let's talk about the five forms of of living and encouragement, and they are really cool because they're they're yours and they're mine to have. And what's wild is that encouraging people don't intend to encourage. So I want you to hear that. Encouraging people don't intend to encourage. We don't try to make somebody have heart. We have heart, and heart is attractive or repulsive. So number one, a person who is encouraging is a person who knows the human struggle. You know the human struggle for yourself, which means you know what it's like to be scared, to hurt, to have joy. You know what it's like to feel lonely. You know what it's like to be in need. You know what it's like to wonder. You know what it's like to create something. You know what it's like to create something, wanna show somebody, and they're thrilled too. You know what it's like to wish for something, and you show up at the time that you thought the other person would be there, and they're not there. You know what it's like to have a love that's lost. You know what it's like to have a love that's gained that can end. You know what it's love like to have a love that's gained and the gratitude is simply there and the love simply continues. In other words, you are able to relate. A person who's encouraging is able to relate. They are therefore relational. And remember, everything in life is about relationship. Relationship with ourselves, like having to face that we've got a heartbeat within us that's looking for life we can't find alone. So we have relationship with using our heads to speak to our hearts and speak out of our hearts. We have a need of relationship, my heart, with your heart? Don't we know that we need somebody to understand when we're struggling with the questions that we don't know the answers to? And do you understand that there aren't enough answers for the number of questions we have? So we have to be able to live the questions better than we live the answers. Do you hear that? Isn't that amazing? So it's like the more relational we are, relationship with ourselves, others, and God, the more sort of we are aware of what it's like to be here, and therefore, we know we're like everybody else, and then we have a thing called empathy. When we see pain, we know pain because that could easily be us. Either something we've experienced, something we don't want to experience, or something we've someone who we've loved has experienced and we wish they wouldn't have to go through it again. Or we're able to tolerate other people being in pain because we know and trust and believe that they can get through it as we have ourselves, because we're still here. The Solomon, the wisest man, the wisest, probably one of the most depressed men who have ever lived, book of Ecclesiastes, He says that humans, we are born with eternity in our hearts, but only God knows the beginning from the end. So you got all this capacity for dreams and capabilities, room for faith, hope, and love inside of you, but you don't get any control. Excuse me. I think I want another deal. And that's what anesthesia is all about, the other deal. So it's like, there was there's your deal. You either get in it or try to run from it. Okay. To get in it, you gotta have some courage. Believe it or not, the people who go towards anesthesia, they have courage too. They have courage to do everything they can to shut faith, hope, and love down. See, addiction remember this. Addiction, which there are about two hundred million addicts in this country. Addiction is not a badness. It's not about a lack of courage or lack of hope. It's not knowing what to do with it. Or it is about lack of courage. But it is it is not about a lack of hope. Addiction is an impaired attempt to find the life you're made to have without having to pay the price of feeling fully. Addiction is a a mood altering seeking set of behaviors that a person does to avoid having to face life on life's terms, to keep from having to be in need because need seems useless. Hope seems stupid. Feelings seem ridiculous. Desire seems like a joke, and longing's like whatever. It's whatever. So number one, a person who is encouraging knows the human struggle, and they're relational because they're empathic. Now that means that a person who is relational is sensitive. A person who is encouraging has and does experience grace and mercy. They know that in their neediness, something happened, something was done for them that they can't explain rationally except to say where they were, what happened, what it did, and where they are now. In other words, you can't say how it did it, but you can say where you were, what happened, what your experience of it was, and where you are now. So the closest we get to an explanation of something that sustains us is our capacity to tell the story. So first, an encouraging person is relational. Secondly, an encouraging person can tell their story. They have a story. Now don't you know that stories reveal the inner workings of something? And the inner workings of something is what you were feeling while life was happening with you in it. So the story isn't just chronology or facts, the story is what you experienced in the chronology and the facts, the human experience of you being there. I remember when I was a elementary school kid, I used to love to read those books. And, like, in fourth grade, I think it really, like, everyone in the library, I was there. We were there. We were there with Paul Revere. We were there with Abraham Lincoln. We were there. It's like, I just gobbled them up because they took me there because there was somebody like me. It was a kid who was there at those places. So I'm like, yeah. I get that. And he was seeing everything and telling me about it. Like, I see that. I see that. And I found those books to be very, like, inspiring. And I found those books to be very encouraging. Like, I would like to be like that. I would like to be like Paul Revere or Abraham Lincoln. I would like to send out the call. I would like to be able to stand in the the courageous place. Now a person who can tell their story, they live in reality, and at the same time, they're telling the truth about their experience of that reality. People are looking for the truth, and the truth is the expression of your human experience in the reality that we live. It hurts. It's scary. It's sad. And yet you're still here as you tell the story. So the person's wondering how how how did you happen and how is it that you're okay? How is it that you're still here? What did you gain from it? And I want you to know that you don't have to have a moral to the story or a conclusion even, you know, I don't know, but I am. What's it like? I still have hope or I still continue. You just keep living until your desire for life comes back. Do you know that a a person who has a story on some level that they are alive to life, They're they're still living in spite of life. So a person who has a story is still living in spite of life. Even if their story is tragic and there's a story handwritten about I couldn't go on, It's like we don't wanna be them. So the story can be the worst story in the world and still the story can encourage us to not be that. Oh, by the way, grace is receiving what you probably, in some ways, didn't even ask for, but you got it anyway. Grace is getting what you cannot ever earn, and mercy is getting what you cannot ever deserve. Nothing is much more humbling than those two experiences. Now, do you understand that mercy is insulting if your goal is self sufficiency? Because somebody's giving you what you don't deserve and therefore, on some level, you can't pay back what you cannot make up for. So do you see the insult to pride, to self sufficiency? You see the insult to thinking that you can make it on your own? Do you see the insult to personal power? The insult to god helps them who help themselves? It's an insult. It humbles or humiliates. And secondly, grace is a worse insult because you are being given what you will never earn, and it's more than you could ever get. So grace is given by a giver who has is giving you, even though you can't pay, will never be able to pay, and this giver will not send you a bill. Do you see the insult in that? Is grace painful? I've never asked somebody who I believe has experienced grace. And when I ask if it's painful, they say yes. And I I think I think, okay. You know what that is. It is an absolute heartbreak because it's everything that you're looking for and everything that cost somebody else something. It's like the love of a parent. Can't stop loving a child. Can't stop. Even when I've done this, even when I've done that, even when I've done this, even though I can't pay you back, you've given your life to me? You've given your life to me? And you're not expecting anything in return from me? No. Don't. No. Expect something. Expect something. Let me pay you. Let me give you something. No. No. Pay it forward. I did this for you so that you would do it for the other, not for me. But only a parent can do that who has been given to by another, another parent, another place, another person, and another god. So grace and mercy has to have been received before we really have a story to talk about where we were, what happened, how we got there, and where we are now. The story the true stories that are encouraging really come out of grace and mercy experience. And I don't mean dwelling on the bad stuff. I mean, just tell the darn truth. Because, you know, dwelling on bad stuff could be another way of bragging. It's so bad. It's so bad. Worse than anybody in the whole wide world. But if this weren't so, if this weren't true and if this weren't encouraging, we wouldn't have the song Amazing Grace. And you know about that song. Right? John Newton, slave trader, awakened in desperation in the sea, and later penned the song, I once was lost and now I'm found. I was blind and now I see. There's a story there. And that story, for anyone who's awake, is our story. It's my story and your story. And, ultimately, the ultimate encouraging story is where you were, where did grace touch you, how was your mercy received, what did it do for you, and where are you now? Because you're gonna have the tears of saying, like, I burned my ship. I sailed the ocean. I made it to land, and I burned my ship. And thank god I could, and I ain't ever going back. God willing kind of things. Like, that's encouraging because you're reflecting courage, and you're telling this other person who's adrift at sea that once you land and you will, burn your ship. Isn't that something? That's like, god, that person's scary. They burned their ship. Like, they got nowhere to go but forward. They can't go back. And love's like that, I think. You know, once you have your child, you gotta burn your ship. And, it's very scary. Number three, a person who is encouraging can express grief and delight. The two antipodals, the two opposites of life. Life is lived fully between the pole of grief on one end and the pole of delight or joy on the other. I really say delight because there is joy in grief, but we I don't wanna get into that today, but between grief and delight. And everything in between is where life happens. A person who is encouraging is capable of living and expressing living in that. In other words, they have heart and they use their brains to speak it. And they they experience a lot of grief and delight because they have a passion of headed towards something. So they have more grief and they have more delight because they're hungrier and thirstier and more hopeful and more wanting and more wishing and more dreaming than the person who tries to keep their life between four and six, where life is lived between one and 10. So the person who can live between one and 10 is more encouraging the person who lives between four and six. What's that movie Up? That guy, he was just trying to keep everything small. I mean, it turns out though, what he thought was just small was really big. And the woman that he married, he thought he had cheated when actually he had given her everything she'd ever looked for, but he didn't see it. So I want you to know that between one and ten doesn't have to be something that's on the stage where you roll around the parking lot going and people are going, what? What? Oh, they're grieving or they're delighting. I don't know which one it actually is. You don't have to be a show. I mean, your life may not even be ever on display, but you loved one woman, you loved one man, you loved another well, and that changed everything for them. Not anybody in here will ever remember missus j n Blair, But the woman lived across the road from me growing up, the woman irrevocably, irretrievably changed my life. How? Because she was kind to me. Because she said, oh, honey, to me. Because she said I'd become by her house on some afternoons coming home from school or something like that. She'd be on her back porch reading the paper. I go up here and sit with her. She talked about how bad life is by reading the paper. I'm like, okay. But I take her cold in the wintertime. I take her I cut her grass. In the summers, I would rake her leaves, and she would make lemonade and apple pie for me. And then when she got old, she got so old that she made an an apple pie one time and didn't turn the oven on as apple sauce, not apples. And I remember eating a piece thinking miss Blair's in trouble. So I called her nephew Bill, said, you know, your your aunts, your great aunt's in trouble. You know? And then she died soon soon after that. So this woman, y'all will never know. I mean and she was really honestly, when she turned 30, her husband died. And she lived in the house where they were living from then that point on, on the corner of Patriot Drive in Pitts Lane. And she didn't get out that much. She was really kind of a shut in in many ways. She would drive to the store like old ladies do, but she sat in that house and kinda got old. I do not know what other lives she touched, but I know she touched mine. And now that I'm telling you that, she's touching yours, encouraged. And you cannot help but be encouraged even in the midst of the sadness of that. What a sad life she had. Well, guess what? Yours is probably better than that. And if that's all you do with your life, then you have pushed someone into their lives. And I would say that I have simply said, I paid it for, miss Blair. Thank you for loving me. Because when I finally landed on shore, you were one of the islands I rested on. And when I had to go back out to sea to get to wherever god had me made to go, when I finally landed on land, one of the persons I could stand on the beach and look out towards the ocean, I could say, miss Blair, you're the one that helped me get me here. Now I'm burning the ship just like you would want me to do. That's amazing to me. That is honestly a person who was expressing grief and delight. She lost her husband at 30. It's amazing to me. And lived well, trusting. This person who can express grief and delight is attractive and they're thriving. They're free. They're liberated. In other words, the addiction of approval seeking, the addiction of people pleasing is they do not exist in its power. They have a power greater than themselves that they trust. K. Number four, a person who is encouraging has a long range view of life. They know that they are WIPs, works in progress. Now you're 15, Ali, and it's like, I'll tell you that it's gonna take you a lifetime if you have one. Sorry for the fear. A lifetime if you have one to learn how to live. Do you like that? No. I don't either. I'm 58. I don't like it either. But that's the way it is. That we're never gonna reach perfect here. We're always gonna be works in progress. We're never gonna get there. You're not gonna get there until you're done, which means over, which means the ultimate anesthesia. Well, no, it's not anesthesia. Actually, the ultimate awakening, isn't it? Okay. Well, we're not made to like that, but that's where we have to come to a place called acceptance. Now acceptance means that you're resolved to continue in spite of the way things are. Resolved to continue in spite of the way things are. Now acceptance means this. Now listen to this definition. Acceptance means it's not okay, and that's okay, Things being not okay because it's gonna be okay. Alright? How about that? So we're works in progress. And the best we ever get, honestly, is like giraffes running on ice. I think that's a picture that's right out of the cartoons. Guys, I know it's a crummy analogy, but even physicians who we sorta hand our lives to in the darkness of anesthesia are practicing, which means that they are going to make mistakes, which the best it ever gets won't be perfect. It's like, oh, okay. So let's just avoid everything we've got to do to live well. You can't. So acceptance means that it's gonna stay bad here. And the ultimate freedom here is to live in it, but not of it. People who live in it and not of it are people who are willing to wake up every day. Acceptance only comes from daily neediness. Waking up every day knowing that you don't have control of life. So you give yourself to the one who does. And having given yourself to the one who does, you rise up from your prayers, and you're trusting the day to the one who's watching you in charge. So then when things don't turn out like you hoped they would, you need to know who office you need to go to, knock on doors, say, what's that about? K. You're capable of confessing, complaining, and retrusting again or celebrating. So the fourth one is acceptance is about self care. Jesus spent a lot of time in acceptance. Jesus spent a lot of time not healing. Jesus wasted a lot of time according to production methods and corporate thinking, according to social issues and what was the problem. He didn't get a lot done. And he even stayed in one place, like a little bitty country. Come on. I mean, a lot of other countries out there, he coulda, like, you know, shut his eyes, like, bewitched and wiggled his nose and, boom, he could be over there in China doing stuff. But he didn't do it that way. He was living in a bigger picture. And then the last one is to continue to let yourself grow in faith. The last one is to keep singing. And I know that seems like a strange thing. Keep singing means keep dreaming, keep hoping, keep growing, keep, looking over the horizon where all the songs come from. Even Rainy Night in Georgia is like a sad song about, man, this is like raining all over the world. This is, I'm in a bad place. And yet somehow that song says, You know what? Maybe it'll get better. We have this crucial inability to stop hoping. So just keep swimming, Dory. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. And then she forget what she was doing. And it's like the only song she really had was just keep swimming. And there's a a show that Sonya watches, the midwives, and this woman who went through drastic horror. And kinda like, how do you do it? And she says, you just keep living until you feel alive again. And this person is gonna say, well, how how did you keep swimming? How did you do it? And you're gonna say, well, here's my struggle. Here's my how I relate, here's my story, here's my experience of grace and mercy, here's my grief and delight, here's my acceptance, and here's where I am today with you. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. And then the line from the movie about prayer, Waru, it's not your job. The black lady says, the wise black lady says, the prayer warrior says to, Priscilla Shire, she says, it's not your job. You're not here to fix people. It's not your job. It's yours to give to God. It's your job to walk in faith, hope, and love. You don't play God. Get out of the way. You give that man to God. Like, woah. Now whatever song that is, I don't know, but it plays well. Because she had the song of living in worship. She had the song of believing. She had the song walking around in hymns. She had the song walking around from everything from grief to delight. She poured her heart and soul out upon the chair that was the altar to pray to her god. I mean, it's just amazing. But the big line in that movie, one of the big lines is, it's not your job. You're not god. You don't know best. Your job is to not surpass Immanuel, which is god with us. Your job my job is to be with you and let the holy spirit of the resurrected Christ do its work. How we'll end is for Mary Poppins. And I know it's silly, but it's so precious. Remember it ends, mister Banks finally becomes a human being, the daddy who couldn't awake to living in heart. It's like, let's go fly a kite. I better say it. Up to the highest heights, let's all go fly a kite. And even Jiminy Cricket throws in at the end with, if you Wish wish upon a star God made stars. I know it's a little lower than the prayers to the Holy Spirit through in Jesus' name to God. I got that. When you wish upon a star, it makes no difference who you are. Because God says in Psalm eight, who who am I that you would ever think of me, God? David says. And the answer back was, you're kinda like my crowning creative achievement, and I created you to be crowned with glory and honor. God said to David, you ain't big. You're not being bigger than Jiminy Cricket, but you sure are a big deal. It makes no difference who you are when you wish upon the possibility of that there's a god who made those stars. Then all your dreams really and truly will come true. And that's the promise of the resurrection, That honestly and truly, regardless of what it looks like here, when we get there, we find that all our dreams really, really, really, really did come true. If we will stay in the heartache and the heartbreak, we we willing to be thirsty and hungry, so we can be fed and watered, so that we can offer food and water to those who are thirsty and hungry. That's the resurrected Christ and the gift he gave us to give to others. If we will be first Christ and the gift he gave us to give to others. If we will be first takers, will we be greedy? Will we be in need? Will we take? Will we be first receivers? Will we be first followers? So that we can be first givers.