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Life happens for you. This is a quote I heard recently a couple of different times. And I just love the fact of this phrase and that it flips the script on how we normally think life happens for you. In a society where a lot of us tend to go to life happens to us. It's an effect.

It is something that we can't deal with, and it's just always going to take us and bog us down. That phrase life happens for you causes us to reflect on it and look and see opportunity, change how we think. I'm a big fan of changing how I think about things. Backstory on me at 17 was the first time that I ever felt depression. At 17, I dealt with suicidal thoughts.

Now for the Internet, I wanted to unalive myself. That is the PC version of what they say nowadays so they can get away with it. Hopefully our video doesn't get taken down, but at that age, I was on a spiral. At 17, I had already thought, life is happening to me and there's nothing I can do about it. Luckily, I had a very caring mother that decided to show me something.

And there's this book by Norman Vincent Peale. It's called Thought Conditioners. And the entire book, the entire premise of this is to go through you and show you scenarios and give you scripture to change the way that you think. The problem isn't that life is happening to you. The problem is how you're looking at life, how we perceive that.

So this is kind of also a part two of last week's Obviously, I'm Not Brent. So if you saw the schedule, Brent was supposed to be here. I thought about bringing a handkerchief to dab my head every now and then so that you guys could get the same feeling. Just really try and sweat. But unless I'm at camp, I don't sweat that much.

Sorry, Brent. It's not that hot up here.

But I did wear a sports coat, so I look more studious and professional. But, yeah. So obviously a lot of us heard in Scripture, Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be renewed, transformed by the renewal of your mind. Very common verse, very like elementary, we teach in high school. It's like, hey, you guys need to be renewed.

But I think we still struggle with it because we. We don't understand how we're supposed to change those thoughts, how we would. We should reorganize our mind to be renewed by scripture. Instead, we're conformed to a society of thinking.

So today I wanted to talk about something that kind of Changes how we perceive life, how we look at things a little bit differently. So yet again, I'm going back to 1 Corinthians. This time it's chapter seven. Paul here has an interesting thing. He's writing to the church of Corinth, which is a crazy church.

A lot of insane things going on at that church. Proselytizing, doing ungrateful things, being drunk at communion. So he's getting to some people that have kind of strayed. They're still calling themselves the church, but like drinking some weird Kool Aid, getting a little crazy. I mean, Passover can be great.

Like four cups of wine, you know, you can start feeling it. But like communion, little bit iffy. So anyway, he talks to this, he's talking to church of Corinth. And in chapter 7, verses 7 and 17 and 18, he says this. Each one must live his life in the situation the Lord assigned when God called him.

This is what I command in all the churches. Then in verse 24, skipping down a little bit, he says, brothers, each person should remain with God in whatever situation they were called. This flips the script on how we often think about things. We see God's going to find us. He's going to see us in this situation, this spot, and he wants to deliver us out of this situation.

He's like, he found me. He knows I'm at the bottom, I'm on ground level. I am in this terrible situation, surrounded by people that aren't spiritual, they're not godly people. They, they want to project me to things of this world. So God's plan must obviously be to deliver me out from this situation, to get me to his people, to get me to where a fruitful situation is already existing.

But what if God wanted us to grow there? What if God's plan for our time is to be in that situation and grow there so that his gospel can grow into the people around you. Maybe he wants you in that situation to be a seed in that environment, to be the little weed that's coming up through the cracks that gives a glimmer of hope, a fresh perspective. Obviously some of you, if you've like read any self help stuff, but again, I read that Norman Vincent Peale thing, very self help. I love self help books.

I do not read a lot of fiction. I read a lot of nonfiction. And if I pick a specific category, if I can speak too, if I pick a specific category, it would be a lot of these self help type books. Also when I was 17, there was a book by John Tesh, who had a radio show in the early 2000s called Intelligence for your Life. I read that book six times in one week.

It's the only book I've ever read that much, except for probably the Bible now, but I don't think I've ever read the Bible six times in a row, and in a week would be very impressive.

But obviously, if you're reading these kind of things, if you look at that, at any point, you'll probably have heard a phrase, and you might have heard this in church culture, grow where you're planted. And it's such a great phrase, like, wherever you're planted, start producing there, start thriving there. This goes along with that thought, but I'm going to flip it a little bit and have us get a different perspective. But when I think about growing where I'm planted, there's this mental picture I now have. So in 2020, right before the vid, right before the lockdown and all that stuff, I had the opportunity to go to Israel.

Wasn't really on my bucket list, to be honest, but I had the opportunity, and it was very good time. I did a lot of reflection there. But one of the things that I found really cool is that one of the stories in the Bible that I really love is the mustard seed thing. And I got an opportunity to have my perspective on that shifted. We're driving in the tour bus, and we're going across these hills, and we're driving to different places, and all of a sudden you look over and city after city, hill after hill, all of a sudden you see these giant hills just covered in yellow.

It's wild mustard growing. So I talked to our tour guide, and I'm like, is that like an actual, like, place that they're growing that? Is that what they specialize in? He said, no, this is all 100% wild mustard. Nobody plants it.

It grows. They cannot fight it. They try. It's like a weed to them at this point because it's just growing everywhere. But it makes the scenery so amazing because instead of just a desolate hill or some green, you're seeing this bright yellow.

That just changes your perspective. It's so enlightening. And so seeing that mustard seed, obviously we always typically look at that scripture and say, well, if I have a little bit of faith.

But I can't have a little bit of faith, because Jesus condemns people who have little faith. But our faith should be like that of a mustard seed, in that wherever it's planted, it grows. It changes the environment that it's in it makes you look at it and go, there's something different there. And it changes our perspective on it. Instead of a green hill, it has life, it has something to draw our eyes.

The other thing about when we're thinking about our situation and looking at, okay, well if I'm in this bad situation, I want to get out of it. And it should happen pretty quick. And so we start developing these timelines of, okay, well, by the end of the year I'm going to do this, or in five years we're going to have this plan. I self admittedly have never liked five year plans. I mean, in a job interview they're like, what's your five year plan?

I'm like, I don't know, get more money. Hopefully my bank account grows. Hopefully my status at the work grows. But like beyond that, I don't plan five years out. I hope I'm alive.

But we developed this timeline and also as a background in video editing, timelines are a little bit different to me because we have this timeframe. We're like, okay, here's this pinpoint and this pinpoint and this pinpoint. But if God's story is completely going and it's always been going, all we do is we hop into God's timeline. She doesn't have a beginning or an end. So how are we to set landmarks and milestones in a timeline that we have no control over?

Who are we to set those landmarks? But we're like, okay, by the time I'm 15, I'll do this. By the time I'm 21, I'll meet the girl of my dreams, I'll get married. By 30, I'm going to have this career in my bank account. I'll have $10,000 in it all the time.

It doesn't happen. But then we look at Jesus and even he had to wait to start his ministry. Why did Jesus have to wait till he was 30 to start that? Because he had to grow and be planted where he was planted. He had to establish those roots so people knew a history of who he was so they could go, he's always been a good person.

He's always reflected the Messiah or reflected God. Messiah's reflected Messiah. He's always reflected God in the community. So we needed that to get to that point. But we want to do it in two weeks.

Save, sanctified, filled with the Holy Ghost. Now I'm going to preach and now I'm going to be a pastor. Doesn't work like that. That's hashtag God's plan, which isn't just a song by Drake, but, you know, he has this plan for us, and we need to start looking and letting him fully be in charge of that plan. Now, I know that a bunch of us have terrible soil.

I don't know what your background is. I don't know what the situation you grew up in. I came from a small town in Oklahoma called chickasha. About 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how fast you drive that way. That town was known for, like, a lot of meth mostly.

So not a great place to be a kid and a very unsafe place. I also grew up very poor, so I always thought, like, I want to get out and I want to improve my situation.

But what if God wanted me to be there for that reason? So I had that foundation. Some of you may still be in situations like that. Terrible situations with family, friends, environments, unable to get out. We can't change that.

We can't change that foundation. But if we look at scripture, if we look at God, if we reflect on what he said, he is a gardener, he is a farmer, and he has a pretty green thumb. Like, I can't even keep a plant alive. How should I change the soil that I'm in? Like, I killed a ficus.

I've killed, you know, the things that are, like, if you just don't water it, it'll be okay. Like, it's dead now. But if I trust God to do that, trust God to look over the plants that exist in nature, he should be able to look after me and help my situation grow. Help me grow, change that environment around me.

Have you guys ever thought about, like, when we think about how we perceive things, it's an opportunity to reflect and just realize how dumb our brains are. Yeah, man, we are so stupid sometimes. Sorry if I said the S word and your kids are in here. I'm sorry, youth leader. I understand some families are a little bit different.

I apologize. But I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about the placebo effect. The fact that this exists points out how dumb we all can be. Be cut silly. How silly we can be.

The fact that we can be given something that's like chalk, basically. And they're like, this will cure you of any disease. And we take it and we're like, oh, we're healed. Like, suddenly, I don't feel that bad. This must be working.

They're like, psych. You're just silly goose. And this is working because your mind is changing how it's working because our Mind said, I don't feel good. But then we get a glimpse of hope and a solution, and suddenly our mind changes and we start feeling better. We start having the energy that we didn't have before.

So when I was talking about the timeline thing, there's another thing that we typically do when we have these landmarks or when we're thinking about, I'm going to set this pinpoint destination. As we look for these big moments in our life, we're like, I'm going to have this big thing, and when I get there, everything else will be okay. Well, what if that never comes?

In our corner of Christianity, there's been a thing about the tribulation, the exile, all this. I know I might be stirring a pot here. I understand this, but what if you don't get to. What if Messiah doesn't come back in your lifetime? Since 200 AD, people have been saying that this is the year.

What about for those people? Did they live their life great? Did they change their perspective? Did they produce fruit and grow? Or did they sit and wait for the end to come?

Because it's going to happen. That's going to be my ticket out. I just want to be taken out of here. I don't know about you, but I don't want to waste my life with an opportunity that might not come. If it does come, I'm going to be so grateful.

Our Messiah came. He rescued me from the filth of this world and decided to take me up and have an enormous feast where I can eat everything and I'm not lactose intolerant anymore, and it'll be awesome. But if that doesn't happen, I'm not going to feel bad about the time that I've spent here because I'm going to do what he wanted me to do. I'm not going to be looking for this big landmark escape. I'm not going to look for this milestone of, like, I'll get to here and then, because God wants me to do it today, his timeline's going.

The opportunities he hands us are every single moment.

Also, in this corner of Christianity, we have this thing where we go, well, okay, it'll get better, it'll improve. If I have more knowledge, I'm going to seek out scripture. I'm going to study the Greek and the Hebrew, and I'm going to unfold these things. And I'm not bashing anybody that studies Hebrew or Greek. You're a lot smarter than me and have a lot more, like, willpower, because I am not that guy.

Basic level Spanish and then I'm out like high school. That's it. It's great. I'm not saying anything against it, but I don't care even a little about jots and tittles. If your life is falling apart, if you have all this knowledge, but yet the world around you is constantly crumpling and things are not going your way, not going.

They're not improving. I've seen too many people study scripture and suddenly they're getting a divorce. Suddenly their kids hate them. Dealt with out a lot being in youth camps. My dad's very studious and he's got this like scholar level understanding.

But I hate him because he doesn't love me.

Be a parent who loves. Be a spouse that treats your other spouse with respect. As Jesus was the example to. And if you're not doing that, you're not getting the base level of the instructions. Try there first.

Something to back up my thing so that I'm not just a hypocrite up here yelling things because I have a microphone and it's a privilege or whatever. But there was some research done that I found very interesting. Heard about this at a conference I was at recently. They did two things of research where they had a group of professionals and they gave them some information to diagnose the situation and find a resolution for it. They gave them 10% of all the information that they had and allowed the people to find the solution.

They gave an answer. They're all 75% answered the same way. Then they gave them 25, 50, 75%, 100% of the information that was available to them. Their answer never changed. They had the same outcome for that situation.

No matter how much information that they had. It was just that their confidence in that answer grew.

So with that being like the result, it's like they may have still been wrong, but they were confidently wrong.

And I think there are some of us that are very confidently incompetent. I've definitely been there. I'm a man. Like, I've definitely been like, I'm very much right. And then I'm very much wrong.

And at least I'm admitting it. Okay, that's where the success is.

But that's that information. It's like I have all this information to change my perspective, but my perspective does not reflect the outcome of what's happening in my life. There's no growth.

So obviously we're doing things with flowers. I have flowers on my shirt. There's a flower background. I chose the very most masculine type of background possible. But if you know anything about me, I'm not the most masculine guy.

Not guns and trucks. That's not me. So I do this. So, whoa. No.

I was accused of things in high school. That's a story for another time.

Okay, I'll have to make that happen now to dig that out of the hole.

But going back to 1 Corinthians, we'll get a little bit further into this to show why there's flowers and stuff here. Verse 20 through 21, it says, each person should remain in the life situation in which he was called. Were you called while a slave? It should not be a concern to you, but if you can become free, by all means, take the opportunity. Yet again, changing the perspective, it's like, well, I'm a slave right now.

You should free me. And it's like, well, that's not your concern. I'm God. I'm going to take care of it. But also, if you get the opportunity, don't be like, well, God wants me to experience misery.

That's not what this is about. It's not about taking on the pain and being like, I guess I'm just supposed to suffer. Not at all. He's going to give us these moments to be free. If he sends you out of the situation you're currently in, great.

That's awesome. But if he never does, that's what we're talking about. How do you change that perspective? But we're not suffering because there was somebody that already suffered. So we have to change how we look at it.

Now, obviously, with the growing where you're planted, there's a difference. You can grow into a weed. You can grow into something unfavorable. You can grow and still be barely alive. Now, I'm saying all this from the perspective of not a farmer, not somebody that's good with plants.

I mentioned that I'd ask my wife things. I don't do that. I do not have a green thumb. But looking up all of these things, we need to learn how to bloom where we're planted, not just grow. Because that is a difference, that we want this fruit.

But did you know that plants have to bloom and flower before they can produce fruit? We go from being a seed being planted, growing into something and being like, all right, I have fruit now. I'm producing something. Right? Why am I not seeing this fruit?

It's because you haven't bloomed where you're at, there's been no life. You haven't shown the glory of God in your life yet. To have that fruit.

Cool thing about looking at comparing our lifestyle to flowers, did you know that some flowers actually have to cross pollinate? Something I discovered this week. Now, I knew you could cross pollinate to make some crazy stuff. I knew a guy that grew peppers and he would grow them all together so you could have cross pollinated peppers. You eat a habanero, it's as mild as a bell pepper.

You ate a bell pepper. It's Scotch bonnet level heat. You used to do hot pepper bingo. And it was not for the week. And you'd see a lot of grown men cry.

But I know it can change that thing. So it can change the status and the state of a thing that you would normally identify like, oh, well, that's a jalapeno. It's going to be great for salsa. Maybe I'll roast it now I'm getting hungry.

But then you experience it and it's different. Something about it is not normal because cross pollination. See, the other thing is that there's a lot of plants that need that to survive. So you set certain plants together and if they're not cross pollinating, they won't bloom and grow themselves and produce. So this is why community is an amazing thing.

Because if we're cross pollinating, if we're allowing ourselves to experience other people while they're blooming in their life, that pollination is helping each other's state change. It's helping us produce and grow better than we would have by ourselves. But some of us don't want to do community. Hopefully none of you here. That's why you're here, community.

But there's a tendency to do that, to cut off ourselves and be like, well, if I cut off myself from people because maybe they view one thing wrong, I'll grow. It's like, well, no, because you need other people to help you grow. And if you're talking about cross pollination and all that, you also have to look at pruning. Very common discussion in scripture. I'm in a pruning season.

God's just pruning me right now. It's just he's cutting off the bad, you know, or I did something wrong and he's cutting it out of my life. Did you know that pruning also works differently? It's not just removing the bad thing off of you or realizing that you're struggling. So taking something away.

It can be a couple of different things. One, yes, you may not need that thing anymore and you have to get rid of it for your life. For you to grow and to be healthy. The other is that maybe they didn't need you, so it has to be separated, which is a cool perspective, because then it shifts. Maybe they're being pruned off of you so they can grow on their own, and you can grow on your own to the person that God wants you to be.

But we often look at pruning, and we're just like. I mean, it's a hurt thing. God's taking it away from me. It's not a growth thing. It's not a.

You trim roses so that the flowers are more beautiful. You have to prune things off so that it grows. Right? But then you can also prune from. I forget what they're called.

Little trees that you get. They're like Asian trees. They take those and they prune them and make other plants with them. Jennifer knows what I'm talking about. Okay?

I saw some nods. People are like, I know what it is, but there's a word. Bonsai. That's it. Not just a fun thing to shout at parties.

Okay?

But if we look at the father as this gardener, we look at a plant or farmer throughout scripture that references there.

And he saves us where we're struggling. And maybe he wants us, like I said before, maybe he wants us to be saved there. He's cutting things back so that we can thrive where we're at right now in that status, in that situation, cutting off that one bad thing so that maybe from a distance, they're better off, maybe not. You're both better off, but they needed to be away from you, to see you change, to see you grow.

So fun little story. Everybody's had that first car experience, right? Like, for the most part are the adults. You've had that buying a first car. And usually it's a super exciting situation.

Like, I'm gonna go get my first car. For most people at the beater, it is the worst car imaginable. It gets by. It drives a little bit, and that's kind of what my first car ended up being. But I had this grand idea.

I was like, I'm gonna go to a car dealership. I've got some money saved up in my bank, and I think I can go buy a car. Get in there. Didn't even. The sales guy is being a sales guy.

So he's like, yeah, here's this one. We get in it, we drive it and go through it, the whole process. And then we get to the unfun side of buying a car where you have to Talk about your financial state and blah, blah, blah. And you're there for nine hours and locked in the cage. And they're like, you want a bottle of water?

You're like, no, I want sunlight and freedom.

But I'm sitting there at 17, 18 years old, trying to buy this first car. And the guy goes, the problem is you have no credit. Which I didn't. I was 18 years old and never had a credit card. Turns out you need debt to get credit.

It's a weird backwards thought in society, but it's true. And this reflects how we often think about our spiritual life. We want this fruit, but we've not spent anything or done anything in any way to accrue a reason for the fruit to grow. I haven't been cross pollinating. I haven't been trying to do things to help out.

I haven't poured my life into this situation. But I want to grow. I just want an 800 credit score. All of a sudden, at 18, then you get one and it's like, 400. Good luck.

A lot of us want this testimony of greatness, but a lot of us also don't want to go through the test. We're just like, I should just be producing. I should have this great story. But maybe God's still writing it. Maybe you're still in the situation because you need it for the testimony.

So why bloom? Why flower? I have seen so many people in the community, and it's great when you see people and they're trying and they're thriving to get to a point.

But it's hard to experience people trying but not realizing that they haven't yet bloomed, when they're trying to produce things, when they haven't gotten there yet and they haven't put in the work, when they haven't allowed that situation to shape them a little bit more.

And then they're over there trying to be this apple orchard, but they have yet to have apple blossoms.

So when it says in verse 24, it says that, you know, brothers, each should remain in the situation in whichever God called you.

I think that it'd be amazing to see a society where we bloom, where we're at, instead of trying to constantly escape. It'll change our perspective and our relationship with God ultimately. Because we're not just saying, like, God has to deliver me out of this situation, or God has to get me here for me to actually be a good Christian, for me to be a good believer.

It's just, I'm going to start doing what I'm told and see God move.

That's why this is kind of a part two to last week, when we're talking about falling into grace, falling into God's arms, and not falling back into the cycles of our thoughts and patterns is that my pattern would be to be sad and be like, I must have done something wrong. God must not love me if the situation keeps going. I must have sinned at some point for this to keep going, for me to not see change. Maybe you're not sinning at all, and maybe the reason you're not seeing change is because your perspective is wrong. Like, God hasn't freed me out of this spot I'm supposed to be delivered from right here.

The world is crazy. Why do I keep experiencing crazy? Because he wants you to make a difference where you're at.

He doesn't want to remove you from that situation. He wants you to put him in the situation.

Back to when we have, like, a lot of knowledge and obviously we read a lot of scripture and the band can come back up at this point. We read a lot of scripture and we often overlook ones that seem very simple. Obviously. I quoted Romans 12, 2 Very, very common verse. There's another one that's pretty common.

If you look at people's social media profiles, you'll probably 90% see this one, you know, Philippians 4:13 everywhere. It's an often misused verse. There's some funny jokes about that, but starting at verse 11, it kind of shows how this perspective shift should happen. Philippians 4, 11, 13. I don't say this out of need, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I am in.

I know both how to have a little and how to have a lot in any and all circumstances. I have learned the secret of being content. Whether being well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or need, I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me. That verse right there shows the perspective of being content where you're at, growing in that situation. Because God's got it.

Whether I have a little right now or whether I have a lot, my status doesn't change. I'm still who God made me to be, and I'm growing in that. I'm blooming in that so that I can change the environment around me, so that I can start putting out pollen as well and helping change those around me.

You know, I stated that, you know, each fruit starts with flowers, but then there's four events that are in that sequence afterwards. There's pollination, fertilization, growth and development, and Then ripening.

It isn't flower than fruit. It is. I'm blooming where I'm at. I'm showing the glory of God in my life. Because that's often overlooked.

We don't. What kind of message are we sending the world if we're drawn down, if we're in turmoil, if our thoughts hold us captive, if we seem like we've met God and He hasn't taken us out of that situation yet, but we're not reflecting any sort of change to the world, how does that make other people want to feel about going to God? If somebody else in your life is like, yes, I need something and you're like, you need Jesus, but then you're not showing a change in your life because you've experienced Him. That's how we change our environment, how we change our situation.

And then we can pollinate, we can help fertilize the soil that we're in. But we don't often fertilize the soil that we're in. We dig it up, we dig up the past, we dig up those things. Not allowing the. If you keep digging up the ground around a plant, it's going to die.

But we keep just digging up things around us. We're like, well, yeah. And there was this mistake in this situation. Instead of pouring the nutrients that we get from him into our situation, pouring that fruit, that understanding that those who are thirsty came to him to drink and we are allowing that to change the environment.

So we are all co workers together, community, we are all being planted wherever we're at in life. And when we come together we're cross pollinating, we're making each other grow up and get better and improve and change our status so that we can fully produce fruit.

And if we are in this and this is the field and God's building it, then we just have to trust Him.

Often I did this silly thing where if I had to identify as a flower, yes, I'm add and childish, but if I had to identify as a flower, I've always thought more of a sunflower. If I have bad times, literally I will physically go outside and just stand in the sun. It's why seasonal depression is a thing. Because it's dark, it's gloomy, there's no sun seeping in. You need that vitamin D to change your perspective.

So if I always feel bogged down, I like gratin to stand in the sun like this. My co workers think I'm crazy.

But imagine if we did that, if we treated our life situation as sunflowers that anytime we needed nutrients, anytime we wanted to change and grow, our perspective went to the sun. Wherever they. They planted where they're planted. But those things move where the sun is and just soak it in as long as they can. And the only time that they're not soaking in the sun is when they're dead or they're asleep.

So be awake. Point yourself to the sun. Grow, bloom where you're planted, and show that this world around us, that may be terrible, but there's a difference in me, because I have Christ in me, and I'm constantly just looking at him and soaking him in.

Father, thank you for today. Thank you for allowing us to gather and just reflect on your word that you planted us in this community. And I have seen such growth. The more that we focus on you, the more we point our situations, our sins, our shortcomings, our failures. We hold it out before you and say, you're changing this.

But, Father, I pray that all of our hearts now look at it and say, it's not in my timeline, but it's yours, because I'm grafted into eternity, and I'm gonna let you let it happen on your time and your plan. Just let me bloom where I am so that I can start changing the environment I'm in to reflect you and to show growth.