Chrystal Hurst explains why starting something new feels hard and how to push through. She walks through habit formation in the brain, the importance of writing goals down and breaking them into small steps, and partnering with God through the process. Consistency and community accountability matter more than comparison.
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Hey there, it's Chrystal Hurst, and yes, my voice sounds a little raspy still, but I'm grateful to have a voice. You are either listening to the audio version of this podcast or you are watching the video version of this podcast, and either way, I'm glad you can see and/or hear me. Last week I had no voice 'cause Texas is cray cray with cray cray weather, which made me sound cray cray. So on today, I'm just glad I have a voice at all. I am so excited about what I'm going to share with you today. I'm about to hit play on a chat that I gave inside of the Inner Circle. We are currently in my online community in the middle of a 90-day experience. What is that, you ask? It is where we look forward to who we want to be, what kind of life do we want to live, and we backwards engineer that into how do we aim with that to that with success in the 90 days that we're in now? What do we do this month? What do we do this week? What do we do today? I believe that if you will decide where you're going and then decide how you get there, especially in the context of community, you can do anything. We are in the middle of it now and people are knocking it out of the ballpark. The Inner Circle assumes, so this talk assumes, that you are A person of faith. And this talk that I gave to the Inner Circle community was saying, listen, you can set all the goals you want to set in the world, but it is so very important that you partner with God because he has plans you don't even know about. Listen, y'all, this talk is about to really be a game changer and a life changer for you. I know it. But there are 3 things that I mentioned in this talk I want to give you context for because again, I did it inside of the Inner Circle for the Inner Circle community. And I did it a couple of months ago. So I wanna make sure that as you're listening, you know what I'm talking about. Number one, I mentioned a couple times the Sister Circle Live. That event was in January. If you missed it, you missed it. Except for this, our Inner Circle members get an opportunity to watch that anytime they want because after the event was over, we took that great content and put it inside of our course library for ongoing access for our members. So if you are interested in finding out more about the Inner Circle, or you just wanna figure out what you missed, go to chrystalevanshurst.com/innercircle. But y'all, that's not the only event I'm planning on doing this year. Fast forward to October of 2023. I want you to come to Cali with me. We did a retreat 4 years ago and people have been asking me ever since, Chrystal, are we going back? Can we go back? Can we go to another retreat somewhere? So we found another retreat somewhere, and California is the place. However, I'm only gonna go if y'all are serious. So you can save your spot, put down a small deposit by going to chrystalevanshurst.com/tscretreat. Now, if you just got here and you just met me, you may need a little bit more information. Information is also at that address. Chrystalevanshurst.com/tsc, like the Sister Circle, tsc retreat. You can not only find out a little bit more about it but also save your spot if you want to join me in California in October. Last but not least, I mentioned a couple of times in this video, use your planner, use your planner, use your planner. Y'all have bought me out of planners. The physical planners are no more. We'll order more. I'll let you know when they're there. However, in the meantime, you can download a PDF version of the planner, download it and print it out. It's undated, so you can use it whenever and however you want to. If you're interested in seeing what we have available for you, you can go to chrystalhurst.com/planner. All right. So /innercircle /tscretreat /planner, and those three links will catch you up on anything that I mentioned in this podcast that you might want to know more about. So without further ado, listen, y'all, you can do anything in 90 days. You can do anything if you make your mind up. You can do any new thing. But what I want to talk to you about today are the barriers that might get in your way. Because listen, if you've been trying to do the new thing over and over again every year for the last 5 years, maybe the new thing isn't the problem. Maybe it's the barriers. So let's move some barriers, why don't you? I believe God is for you, but I also believe that God will make things clear, but he may not always make that plan the comfortable way for you to go. So let's remove the barriers. Let's get rid of the idea that we should be comfortable, and let's move forward with clarity and confidence in the new direction that God has for you. Ready to hear it? Here it go. Why is doing a new thing so doggone hard. I mean, don't we want new? Don't we get excited about new? Don't we celebrate new? But when it comes to our lives and some of the things that we want to see happen in our lives, they are new, they are changes, and change is stressful. Change is stressful. I've been reading, um, What Happened to You? It's a book by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce— his last name escapes me right now. But it has been sitting on my nightstand for a while. And over the last week, I've had a chance to pick it up. It's riveting. Most things I agree with, some things I don't, but that's okay. You have to know how to eat what you need to and throw out the bones. But this general idea that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that our brain is miraculous and the levels of the brain. At the Sister Circle Live, Casey Van Norman was talking about that too. She was talking about the different areas of your brain, like rooms in a house. And, um, and how those different rooms need different things. And one of the things that we know is that, right, children, when they're born, babies, when they're born, they are forming many tens of thousands of connections every second, right? As we get older, we're going to form a few thousand every day. There are things that you wire yourself to do. Ways that you wire yourself to think, ways that you wire yourself in terms of your behavior. Your habits get hardwired in. And that's why you can be doing so good with your eating or maybe with your smoking, or maybe, uh, you've got an addiction to a pill or to a drug, or maybe it is in relationships, codependent relationships. There are things that you don't want to do anymore, but as soon as you're stressed, you go back into those routines. The reason is, is because you've got all these connections made. Okay. Some of these connections are, they are in your frontal lobe, prefrontal cortex, your reasoning part of your brain. You can kind of think your way out of them. Some of these things are back here, right? They're in your limbic system. They're hardwired in and you don't even know it. In fact, sometimes the only way that you know it is because your body responds. You don't even know that you're nervous about something or anxious about something or angry about something. But all of a sudden you realize that your heart is beating faster or your palms are sweaty, or you can't think straight because your physical body is reacting to something your heart coded for, even if your front brain doesn't know it. There is a real challenge with doing new things, and new things are stressful. Why? Because new things require work to change old pathways, to do new things, to have new ways of thinking, to take new actions where old actions and old ways and old words are stored. New is simple. But it's not always easy. There are so many personal development gurus that insist that achieving goals require you to do something different than what you've done before. But most of them agree, in order to form new pathways, doing something different is necessary. But you want to know what they all agree on? Writing the doggone thing down. Writing it down. It doesn't fix it, it doesn't make it magic— magically happen, but it does crystallize it. And you should know by now that I'm all about crystallizing it, bringing it down to the common denominator, to the least common denominator, so you can see it and work with it. Sometimes doing new problems in our life, forming new connections in our life, simply requires that we break it down. Writing it down helps you to see the big thing, the problem that you're trying to solve. But as you continue to write things down and break them down into their pieces, then you can see step by step what you have to do to solve the problem. A lot of us know how to do that, but we don't— we just say, my goal is to write a book, but we don't break it down. And then we're struggling because we didn't not only break it down but decide how we're going to get there. But a lot of us don't even break it down. We don't even write it down. We just wish. We don't plan. And if we tried to plan, we don't know how. New things are gonna be stressful. New things are gonna require your energy. New things can be simple and still hard. New things, if you want to create new connections in your brain and get through the difficult parts of that, means you need to write down the problem that you wanna solve and you need to break that problem down into its parts until the problem and the solution is crystallized in your brain. You don't just need to know what the problem is, you need to know what the answer is and how you get there. That is what you want to write down. New is hard because if you could easily do the new thing, you wouldn't be making a decision to focus on the new thing in the new year, or at the turn of your birthday, or at a special occasion. You would have done it already. New takes energy and effort. There was a poll done and 34% of Americans said when it comes to meeting a goal and creating a plan, 34% said, I would just rather wing it. There are people in life that can just wing it. Okay. There are people like that. They tend to not be planners. They tend to be very spontaneous. Uh, they tend to be stressed out at a plan. In fact, y'all, at the Sister Circle Live, we had a component before the main event. That was for people to come and work through their goals, right? We worked through them together, 5 hours in a room, me primarily setting the environment for women to think, me asking the questions and them taking the time to write their answers. Here's what happened in that room. Emotions were flowing full. We had to pass tissue out. Women were crying. The light bulbs were going off about how you break it down. Some were still struggling to break it down. We walked them through that. How do to do that. And what I realized is that the reason why we don't want to create a plan is because it requires some effort. Now, here's what I've noticed. Even the people in my life who don't like to plan have a plan. It's like an earthy plan. It's like, you know, do you have a yard? Yeah, you have a yard. But when I ask that question, I think, do you have grass and trees and maybe some flowers? And does it look like a yard? But no, a yard just means you have some, you have some space in the back of your house, grass or not, okay? But it's a yard. There are people in my life who don't like to plan, but here are the kinds of things they plan for even though they're not planning. Oh yeah, I'm not getting my day started until 10 AM. I don't think before 10. That sounds like a plan to me. Or they'll say, no, I just need, you know I just need— I'm not going to be able to create with all of this. I just need quiet. I need space. I need a clear desk. So what they've backwards engineered— a lot of times people who don't plan know themselves and know what they need, so they just don't have to plan for it. There's just so many other things they're not going to do because they know what works for them. Artists often are a lot like that. They just— they know what they need in order to create., and they will just shut things down. I may have to plan to shut them things down. They just know they do. We all have a course of action we follow to be successful with our goals, in our relationship with God, in our family. Because if we are not doing whatever it takes to be successful consistently, we won't enjoy that success. Think about it. So think about the most undisciplined person you know that has the most success, and you don't know how things are working out for them in their life. What do they consistently do even though they don't want to plan? What do they consistently do? And I can guarantee you there's something that they consistently do. They have a plan, they just don't write it down. Most people don't want to write a plan because it takes time. Takes time to think about who you want to be and what you want to do. It takes time to decide how that plan is going to get done, when it's going to get done, to hold yourself accountable and to state what you're going to do. It takes time to crystallize your plan. It takes time to show up and be consistent. It takes time to be committed to everything that you say you're going to do. And it does take time because there's only 24 hours in a day. Don't worry, that's enough. Everybody that has accomplished great things in our society has had the same 24 you did. It takes your time and it takes consistency and it takes commitment. And this plan that you create, you have to keep showing up to it. You can change it, you can alter it, But it does take your energy. Commitment means that when you don't want to do it, that you're still going to show up, that you're going to not get to the point of being so overwhelmed that you call it a day, that you will call it a day before you hit your overwhelm point because you're committed to coming back to it. You know when the lever— when the levee's about to break and you shore it up. It is hard. New is hard because you need a plan, whether it's official or not. You do need consistency and you do need commitment. You need to think about the fact and count the cost that there will be interruptions along the way, and you need to have a plan for that. This is what happens. This is why every day is day one, because if I fall off the wagon, what's my plan for getting back on? Because you have to decide before you fall off that when you fall off, you're going to get back on. You have to count the cost in knowing what it takes for you to be committed to your goals and then have a plan. Count the cost of the plan you need to make sure you don't fall too far. It takes courage, especially if it's something that you've hidden in your heart, like writing a song or writing a book or hosting friends or saving up money or getting out of debt or trying for a new career. It's something that maybe you've tried before and it didn't work. It takes courage to try again. It takes courage to take the first step. It takes courage to go into unfamiliar territory. And also, y'all, you need community. You can get this in your real life. You can get this with your husband or a roommate where you share your goals and say, hey, this is what I'm working on. I hope I can make it. Can you hold me? I just need somebody to know. I need somebody to see in the light what I'm doing. I need somebody to notice if I have Oreo Thins in the pantry, or, you know, if I'm in my room too much on social media or on my computer watching TV. Like, I need accountability. I need you to know what I'm doing. But community becomes a problem when the community that you're surrounding yourself with or looking at informs what you're not doing. That's comparison. I'm not doing this and they are. That's not your community. The community is the people who, even if they're doing it, are rooting for you. They're rooting for you. And you are rejecting comparison because all comparison is, is looking for community. I'm looking for people who want what I want, who have done what I've done, and I want to learn from them. Or do I want to just be jealous of them? You need to know the difference. You need to know the difference. So you got to create a plan. You need to be consistent. You need to show commitment. You need to consider, uh, the obstacles. You need to count the You need to have courage. You need to not compare, and you need your community. No wonder we don't do new things or stick with them, because it requires something of you. But you should ask yourself, where have I been winging it, and where might I need a plan? Where have I not been consistent? Where have I been committed but then I stopped? Where am I not counting the cost? Because every time this gets hard, I flake. Where do I need community? Where do I need to stop comparing? Do I need to get off of social media? Because with me looking at everyone else, all I see is what I haven't done. Sometimes the things that we want, we don't quite know how we get there, or we don't quite know when we get there what life is like. We're afraid of the unknown, or we're afraid of what it's going to cost us to get there. But here's what it says, right? Remember 2 Peter 1:3? He called you for his own glory and for his own good. He gave you knowledge. He wants you to seek him out based on what you need. Which means that if you have— I have chills— if you have a calling on your life and you know it, you can't shake the passion, you can't shake the desire, you can't shake dreaming about it, thinking about it, talking about it, you can't shake it, but you just can't arrive at it. What if the reason why it's been difficult to hold it, to reach it, to touch it, to grab it, to receive it, to keep it, is because you don't actually believe that there's an end to the story? What if God has insight about your story that you don't What if you don't even know where the road leads, but if you would just be obedient with this little exit right here, that he would then open up the next turn and tell you where to get on the next freeway? What if the reason why you've been lackluster about pursuing the new things in your life is because you actually don't see the value? You don't know that if I do this thing, is this really going to have a payoff? Is this really going to matter? What if God has insight to your story? So the thing you can't shake, the thing you keep thinking about, the goal that you have, the people that you want to reach, the degrees that you want to achieve, the debt that you want to get, get out of. Of course we want to be obedient. We don't want to have debt. But what if it's really, really in your mind and in your heart this year? Because he knows what's coming. What if he has insight to your story you don't have? And what if that insight is what gives you a leg up, an edge? What if it gets you connected to what God is doing in spiritual places? What if deciding to do the new thing and all that comes with that— yes to the planning, yes to the community, yes to saying it out loud, yes to showing commitment, yes to being consistent— What if those things that have before now kept you from moving forward— what if the reason why you're pulled forward is because God has insight to your story? Maybe the reason why it's bothering you now at 35 and it wasn't bothering you at 25, or maybe it's bothering you now at 58 and it wasn't bothering you at 38, is because maybe it's the right time, and maybe he has insight about your story that you don't have. But what you do have is the stirring of passion. What you do have is the repetition. You keep running into it. What you do have is that it's on your list again this year. Again this year. What if his insight is why you feel called? And what if that's all you need? Psalm 139. Your eye saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them even came to be. God is always working. Even when you feel stuck in the mundane things of life, He wastes nothing. He's gonna pull together everything from every season of your life, and he will make it his good. Remember why? Because 2 Peter 1:3, he called you because of his own glory and good. He has been aiming for good through and with your good from the beginning of time. And the day you got here, what he said is, I need you to participate. What he said is, the day that you were born, he said, I need you to learn and grow in knowledge so that you can activate what I've put in you so that you can collaborate with what I'm already aiming for. So when you run into the opportunity to do something new and it is a little difficult and you're a little nervous and it's a little bit unseen, you're cooperating with God who already saw you. He already saw you and he knew what he was trying to do. God doesn't only desire to do a new thing in your life, he wants to do a new thing through your life for the benefit of others. God knows your story. He has insight in your story. So when he asks you to do something, he's not asking you about what you can see. He's asking you to do what he needs you to do in the grander economy of all that he's doing in humanity. And he just wants you to do your part. It's true. You can live, you can live and be content and be safe. You can do that. You can live and not ever do the things that are in your heart. 100%. That, but you won't be participating in what he's doing. And there's nothing better than doing that. I, um, sense often when God wants me to do something, and I ask him to make it clear. He's so gracious to, to make it clear. That does not mean that he makes it comfortable. The win for me is when he's telling me I can't shake it, and it's getting louder. When I'm calling my children down in the morning when they're late, I call them. If I don't hear footsteps, I go to the edge of the stairs. I call them louder. If I don't hear movement, I go up the stairs. I stand at their doorway. I call them even louder. Because when I'm calling them for my glory and my good, I'm going to keep calling them until they hear. There is a point at which we reach disobedience. There's a point at which they heard me and they're just not getting out of the covers and coming downstairs. And I know when that moment is too. But normally the when is when God just says, just do it, Chrystal Hurst. It's just a force. It's just a push. It's just, you know, it's like I'm standing on the diving board contemplating jumping off and the hand comes behind me and just nudges me off and I feel it and I don't. Resist. I can't shake it. It's getting louder. I can't shake it. I'm hearing it all over the place. It's been in my heart for some time, and today's the day. I can't let it go. There have been seasons where we've done new things. Half of y'all are here because of the pandemic, and you found me during COVID Some of y'all are here because you just found me with a viral video on YouTube, the Write It Down video. I think it's got 460,000 views now. All that started because I'd been thinking I should not just podcast, I should go on video, and I had all the equipment. Should I go live on Monday? Should I go live on Monday? Should I go live? I should. I felt it. Nudge. I felt it. Most of the time I would like to have ducks in a row, but normally It's a nudge, it's a push, it's a right now, right now, urgent, urgent. And yes, I pray about it, I ask God to guide my steps, but urgent. When you walk with God and you're listening to God, when you're reading his word, when you're getting that knowledge and you have everything you need and you have divine power at work on the inside When you sense something telling you right now, right now. Have you ever— has this happened to anyone where your alarm clock was going off or you opened your eyes and it was time to get up and you know, you knew that you could sleep in a little bit longer, but you opened your eyes and had the sense, get up now, now, inside, from deep inside of you, now wake up. And then you got to work late. Not like 20 minutes late, like just the extra minute or two that you took because the lights were all red this morning, or you ran into a train this morning, or something happened. But you know, you can go back and think, I remember when I was in the bed and, you know, normally I can play with these 2 or 3 minutes, but something inside of me said, get up now, get up now. Has anybody ever experienced that? Because I have. And I'm like, today was the day God knew I was going to run into red lights. Today was the day he knew I was going to have car trouble. Today is the day. And when I felt the nudge to go, that was him going, I've been trying to tell you something. Now go right now. Go. This is the beauty of walking with God, because God is as interested in your new pathways as you are. And because he knows that, just like we know Goals have to be broken down into smaller steps. Guess what he does? Smaller steps. Sometimes he doesn't give you the whole picture because if he gave you the whole picture, you'd be frightened. If he gave you the whole picture, you would be concerned, you'd be anxious, you'd be worried. If he gave you the whole picture, you wouldn't agree with him, you would run the other way. So sometimes what God does is he just gives you a hint so that by the time it's time to move You already know. You already know. God can create new opportunities for you, and when you see what he's been saying to you lining up with the opportunities that he's giving you, that's the win. That's the win. It's a crossroads. You're gonna have all of your life to do some of the things that God wants you to do. The thing is is you will not have all of your life to do the things God wants you to do the way he wants you to do it. Can you pour into the lives of small children if God has put that in your heart, to be involved at your ministry, at your church with the children's ministry? Can you do that when you're 67 or when you're 79? 100%. Will you do it with the same physicality that you would do it at 26? No. And it's not just that God— it's not the what that God wants us to do, it's the how. And that's why seasons matter, because if you delay something to another season, your time is not guaranteed. But also how he wants you to show up. This is why it's so important if you're single, while you're single, whether you're young, middle age, or old, to maximize your time, because so So many women spend so much time trying to plan and scheme for how they can get that man in their life, and God is like, I need you to be the woman he needs in 2 years, in a year, in 5 years, in 10. You're not ready for him. He's not ready for you. And while you're single, this is the season. This is the season that you can do what I want you to do, how I want you to do it. What if you have been trying to re-season God, and he's like, dear, this pot is already seasoned. I know exactly what I need you to cook, when I need you to cook it, and how I need you to cook it. And you're here trying to come up with another pan. You're wasting time. This is the pan. This is the seasoning. Cook it now, here, this way. Every season though, for many of us, is a shocker. I know when people turn 30, they're like, oh my gosh, I'm for real grown. Then they turn 40, oh my goodness, like, am I an adult? And then 50, it's like, oh yeah, I'm I'm an adult and whatever I'm gonna do, I better hurry up and do it. And every season brings with it this excitement and a little dread. Let me just tell you this, every season is an opportunity, every single one. So the answer to the question when is what is the right thing for this season? Because many of us have goals and you're going to get this planner, whether you download it or whether you bought it, you're going to get this planner, right? And you're going to try to backwards engineer— because I've been talking about backwards engineering— you're going to try to backwards engineer some of the stuff that's not for this season today because you want to do it today. Some of y'all are going to try to do in this season what you were supposed to do in a previous season that way. This is this season. Doesn't mean you can't do it, but you're not going to do it that way. Some of you should have done it when you were single, but you didn't. So now that you have children, you're putting your children on the altar of what was for last season in terms of how you were supposed to do it, or you are forcing into this season something that's for the next season, and you're doing too many things at once, which means you're not doing anything well. Ouch, that hit me. It's all about seasons. That is the win. That is the win. So what is it that you want to do? What is the new thing? We're going to spend the whole 90 days talking about that. Yes, it's hard to form new connections in your brain. It's not natural. New connections are stressful. None of us want to do new things except the things that feed some other kind of satisfaction, right? If you have never gone to Australia but you want to go to Australia, guess what? It's new. But the reason why you're willing to accept the stress of a new place and a long flight is because there is pleasure. There's a reward at the end of that. And because you see the reward, you're willing to do the uncomfortable thing. Well, here's the thing. You have a reward on the other side of you operating in the complete power that God has given you. You want to know why? Because, you know, and I'm gonna say it this way because I just think it's a plain good way to say it. Being the best version of yourself is a win. Now I know that the world has taken it, and then there are people who may not believe like we believe who have said it, but that doesn't mean it's not true. When God put you here, 2 Peter 1:3, he said, I want you— oh, this is hitting me— I want you to operate in the full divine power I gave you. And the only way that you're going to do that, the only way that you're going to do that is to do new things. Because if I let you stay the way you were in the previous season, you'd be no good. If I let my baby stay in diapers until they were 18, that would not be good for them. If I let my little children sit in a high chair and eat food with their fingers, that would not be good for them. If I never call them to be responsible for washing their own clothes and putting their clothes away, I would be developing a maldeveloped adult. This would not be good, and anybody could see that. We know that at a certain age It's about time that you should be doing A, B, or C. It's new though. And when you think about your children, they don't ever want to do anything new. They don't want the new responsibility. They don't want the new territory. Oh, the things that they do want new, they want new without any responsibility on their part. God is like, nope, I'm a parent. I am the consummate father. So when I want you to grow up, when I see what I put in seed form in the womb of your mother based on the seed of your father, however they came together and wherever they are now. When I created a seed, I had divine power in mind, and I wanted that divine power to be executed, to be, to be built, to be overflowing, so that people would see my glory and how good I am when they see you. So no, I'm not going to let you stay an infant. No, I'm not going to let you stay a toddler. No, I'm not going to let you stay an elementary school kid. No, I'm not going to let you stay in your middle school trouble years. No, I'm not going to let you stay in high school. And no, you You cannot be in college forever. And yes, when you're 20-something, you have to pay your own bills. And yes, by the time you're in your late 20s, you got to get off your parents' insurance. And yes, when you're 30 years old, if you haven't started saving, you better. And yes, when you're 40, if you weren't taking care of your body, then you better take care of your body now because your body's going to start talking to you. And yes, when you realize that you're 50 and you look back at the things you left on the vine, you need to get busy because life is short and there is no guarantee. I am in the business of you going forward. You have a future. I have come— Jeremiah says he believes that you have a future and a hope. Even when things aren't great, he is always thinking about where you're going. And so when he nudges you, you may not want to move because new ain't easy. You may not want to write it down. You may not want to think about it, pray about it, break it down. Lord, I know that you put this in my heart, but this is big. What do you want me to do right now in this season to move this this thing forward. I'm asking you, tell me, give me the steps, show me the way, show me the way. When do you do it? You keep having that conversation. Let him repeat himself because he, he delights in you hearing from him. He wants you to hear from— he wants you to move in confidence in your calling even if you feel fear. Love casts out all fear. It, it is perfecting. And so even if it's there, it gets squelched because you are more interested in the love that he offers, in the plan that he has for you, than on the fear that you feel. So even in that, he's like, just come to me and keep talking to me about it, because I got a word for you. I'll keep— I will keep bringing who you need into your path. I will show you the information that you're supposed to get, and I will keep you uncomfortable if that's what it takes to get you to move. New things require work. They require some energy. Most people don't want to do it. They sure don't want to write it down. They don't want to do the work of breaking it down into little pieces, but you are learning new things. You should be. You're a growing child of God. As God speaks to you, as you read his word, as you grow in the knowledge of his word, as you learn what it is to listen to his voice, he'll repeat himself. The power of the divine is operating in you. And as you get better at that, because he will guide more the person who obeyed what he had to say last, as you get better at being obedient, better at living holy, better at being righteous, better at guarding your tongue, better at thinking on good things, better at being kind, better at being generous, as you become better at these things based on what you're learning in the word, you know what he's going to do? Reveal more of himself to you. And as he reveals more of himself to you, you know what you're going to do? You're going to be able to hear him better. And when you're able to hear him better, you know what you're going be able to hear with very good clarity not just what you need to do to form the new synapses and what you need to do to form the new connections, but when you're supposed to do it and what is for this season. He is interested in you growing up. Uh, my daughter Charis has 4 children, so that means I'm a grandmother of 4. And I was standing the most recent baby up on my thighs And then I sat her down real quick and I said, I don't need to be doing that yet. And Chrystal Hurst said, why? I said, because you know, you don't want to stand them up too early. I have no idea if this is true or not. This is what my mother told me. You don't want to stand them up too early. You can mess up their feet or their legs like that. Whether it's true or not, the point is this, you want to be on time. And you know when you know that you're on time? The same way I know how to stand that little girl up on my leg. Legs. I know when her legs are ready. I know when it's not too much pressure because she actually is pushing back. She's actually standing on her own. She just lacks balance, so she can handle the weight. She can handle a little pressure. She's building, and I can sense that, and so can she. God knows where you are. He knows what you can handle. He knows where you are. He knows what you want. He just wants you to agree to get activated. He wants you to agree to participate with him. He's not going to do it for you. You have to learn to walk. You have to learn to run. You have to learn how to manage your life. But he wants you to do that with knowledge, with power, for his glory and for your good, being a representative of his good in you. Whether you're focused— this 90 days is a new new thing, or a new thing revisited. I want you to develop curiosity in your life about what God is doing. Where do you see him working? What is he saying to you? I want you to believe that God is always willing to do something new in your life. It doesn't matter your age, it doesn't matter what you know, where you've been, how you've done things right, or where you've messed things up. It doesn't matter. He always wants to do new. He always wants to get rid of the old wineskins and have new wineskins for the new wine. He's always stripping away the way we used to think, what we used to do, the way we used to spend money, the way we used to give to other people. Or maybe we didn't ever do that because we were too stingy. He wants to strip away the way we talk and add words to a vocabulary that are building up of other people, the people we love and the people we don't even know, and ourselves. He is interested in your development, which means that you will always be setting goals. You will always be aiming towards something. The question is, will you be participating really? And really participating, y'all, means identifying what you're focusing on, writing it down, and having a plan. I want you to know that this is a beautiful year. 2023 is a beautiful year. One, you're still here. You're still here. It's a beautiful year because is we can take all of the things that we've learned from the last 3 years. And even though we've got money stuff happening right now, even though we have craziness happening right now, the news is crazy. I mean, it's just like we— January 1st, one of my dearest friends was in a motorcycle accident. We didn't even make it through the first day of the year. And he's doing okay. For those of y'all who ask, he's out of ICU. We're grateful. But you get to take all of the resilience, the things that you've learned about yourself, what you want, what you don't want, how you operate, and you get to bring that into this year. This is a good year to have experienced 3 years of collective trauma, to come into a year knowing more about yourself. It's a good year to grow. It's a good year to do something new. What? That's what we'll be exploring in the 90-Day Journey because we believe, I believe that your life is worthy of exploration. It's like looking at what God has given you and deciding how you can use it. What can I do? It's time for something new. I'm going to say this because it's resonating. I mean, I'm feeling the resonance of this for myself and for somebody who's listening. New is good. Doesn't mean old is bad. Old was for that season. Old was for that scenario. Old was for you in that spot. New is not bad. New just requires new effort. But it's for a new horizon. And God cannot do something more if you won't do less of what was a part of the 2022, the 2021, or the 2020 plan. We're not on the 2020 plan, y'all. We're not on the 2022 plan. We're on the 2023 plan, and that requires something new. I need you to be brave and relinquish some of the old things. I need you to be consistent and do the small things often. I need you to be committed, no matter how challenging, difficult, how many questions you have, to do the thing. Why? Because he gave you everything you needed when you were in seed form. And if he created you and gave you everything you needed for his glory, and because he's good What does that make you? Awesome. Only one of you. And he said, let me give her everything she needs, 'cause I want to see what my glory looks like on her when she's operating in the divine with me. All right, I hope that that helped you to not only be inspired but encouraged. And more importantly, I hope that that teaching helped you to identify, to identify what new thing you ought to be working towards, what season you believe that you're in, and/or what area of your life you think that God is asking you to do something. And he is inviting you to partner with him in what he's already doing. I cannot wait to see you tell me in the comments, what's your new What season are you in and where is God asking you to partner with what he's already doing? You want to know why I want you to put it in the comments? Because something magical happens when you write it down. So put it in the comments. Let me know. I'd love to see what stirred in your heart and your mind after listening and watching this teaching. And then listen to what I need you to do. Listen at this. Listen at this. I need you to get that thing that you tell me in the comments. Comments and put it somewhere else where you're going to see it. On your mirror with lipstick, on a 3x5 card in front of where you wash dishes, in your journal. Put it in your car somewhere where you'll see it near your— near your dashboard. Put it in front of you because what you write down comes alive. What you see, you remember. But start with the comments below. I'd love to celebrate with you the revelation that you've received after watching this teaching. All right, y'all, I'm here regularly Make sure you're subscribed wherever you're listening or watching, and I'll see you next time.
