Live With No Limits

Did you know that you were designed to live without limits? Let me tell you about yourself. Come on, let's get into it. Hey there. I'm glad you're here watching and/or listening because this is a podcast too. My name is Chrystal Evans Hurst. I'm here every Sunday evening sharing content that I hope helps you to live your life well. Why? Because listen, I've had some wonderful people to share wisdom with me and it helped me. And as I live, I wanna share wisdom with you. If you are watching on YouTube or Facebook and you are not already subscribed to the YouTube channel or following me on Facebook, do that right now. Make sure you have your notifications on so that way when I go live, when I share a new video, or when I just pop on for fun and foolery, 'cause I do do that sometimes, you won't miss it. I'm so glad to talk to you today, but you need to know before I get into the teaching that I have prepared for you, that before we got to this point, of this recording. There was a whole hour and some odd minutes of foolery, a little bit of Biscoff cookies and being mistaken for somebody else because my passport picture didn't match my face. Also, um, you know, am I gonna stick to the wall at the fair or am I going to become a casualty? A whole series of foolery that belongs in the Inner Circle. I would love to have you be a part of the Inner Circle because I give the Inner Circle the best first. They get the most always, and they get the best discounts. I would love to also have the opportunity to share with you in a deeper way so that you can live your life well. If you feel like you need a virtual mentor or coach, I'm your big sister, and I would love to meet you on the other side. Simply go to chrystalhurtz.com/innercircle. We're getting geared up for the fourth quarter and it's going to be great. Now, let me tell you what I need to tell you. Okay? All right? You want to hear it? Here it go. You were designed to live beyond the limits that you place on yourself. No limits? Yes. Limits that you come up with are typically given to you because your upbringing or what you've seen in your life has taught you what you're capable of doing. And usually life has lied to you. There's a scripture that I love so much, it's Ephesians 3:20. And it says that he is able to do far more than you can even think about, than you can even ask for. Because I believe that God in us, every single one of us, has dreamed things for us we would never dream for ourselves. But we are boxed in by the expectations of others. We get boxed in by our experiences. We get boxed in because of our exposure. And we get limited in our thinking because of what we know is possible. But when you believe and understand that there is opportunity, that there are experiences, that there are places and people, that there are accomplishments that you haven't even thought of, then you will live knowing that the limits are off. It changes the game when you understand that you are probably living with limits that you don't even know you have. And that you were born because a God said, I want her to be here. And he thinks beyond the limitations that you have for yourself. Here's the problem though: we lack the knowledge, we lack the ability to see beyond what we know. This is why it's so important for your kids to have exposure, for them to go beyond, um, what they see every day. This is why it's so important when you can to travel or to read biographies and to travel in your head when you can't travel with your feet, so that you can experience experience the life that is possible, even when it's not the life you know to lead. So let me talk to you about why sometimes we live with limits. There are 3 primary reasons. One is we lack information. Two is we lack the discipline to shift the boundaries. Three is we lack the guidance and support. We lack the information, we lack the discipline, we lack the guidance and support. And there are solutions for each one of these things, but you have to decide that you want to push the boundaries of what you know. I believe for each one of us, there is something in us that wants to rise. This is why we get in trouble on social media. We get in trouble on social media because we experience something rising in us because we see it in other people. Even if what they're sharing is fake, even if what they're sharing is dressed up, even if what they're sharing is crafted, We still see it and we want it. We want to be put together. We want to experience financial freedom. We want to experience great relationship. We want to experience the ability to walk out and live in our calling. We want to experience reaching the heights of whatever career path we choose. We want to experience knowing that we're in the right place, that we're loved, that we've created a great memory. We want to experience walking around in nature on the other side of the world and understanding that God's creation was given to us to enjoy. We want to do these things, and so we see other people doing them. Something calls out to us in our soul and we say, I want that. But here's the opposite of knowing that you don't have a boundary or a limitation from reaching those heights. You look at it, you crave it, you compare, you get envious, you get jealous. And that limitation that you see, because they're doing it and I'm not, turns around and eats you alive. It actually deepens your sense of limited ness. So it calls out to us, we want to rise to it, but where we get stuck is we don't know how. We don't know how to have money not be a thing. We don't know how to reach the point where we can work for ourselves, own our own business, or be in somebody else's business but rise to the top. We don't know how to make it work. And so we say, I lack the information, so they have information I don't have, they have a leg up that I didn't get. Or we say, I lack the discipline I'm glad that they can do that. I would never be able to do that. I've tried it and I've failed over and over again. Or we lack the guidance and support. There is something that you need in order to shift things in your life, and you don't know who to ask. You don't know where to go. All of these will reinforce a belief that you had about yourself before you even looked outside of yourself for the answer. And that's the first problem. You looking outside of yourself. You have been given— let me say this really clearly, really clearly— you have been given everything you need. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have to go outside of you to discover some things, but you have everything you need to be driven enough to go get it, to be smart enough to ask the right questions, to be hungry enough to pursue it. You have been given everything you need to live the life God gave you. There is no limit on what you can do when you are doing what God wants for you, when you are flowing in the river of his purpose for you, when you are maximizing the potential he gave you. There is no limit. The limits that we often live with are limits that we've put on ourselves. There is a lady, um, that I just recently read about Her name is Audrey Mest. She was participating in a sport. It's no limit deep diving, and that is where you go 75, 85, 95, 105, 125 meters down below the surface of the ocean on one breath. She had experienced in her life some physical limitation. And for a research paper, for a thesis paper, she was talking about the limitations of the human body because of her own experience having limitations. And she discovered upon a guy with the last name of Pepin who was a no-limit deep diver. And she not only decided to make him the subject of her paper, she decided to research him in real time. She got to know this man, and actually she fell in love with this man. And he fall— falling in love with her enticed her into this sport. So she started diving deep and learning how to push the boundaries of the capacity of her lungs to carry her hundreds of feet down on one breath. We see this all the time in the Olympics. We see people making records, breaking records. They decide that their body can do more than what it can naturally do, and they train and they develop, and then they get coaching, and they push the boundaries of the human body. Why? To experience victory. To know that they can, as Eric Liddell said, feel the pleasure of God when they run, when they climb, when they jump, when they ski. They feel this exhilaration from pushing the boundaries of the human body and doing what most people will never do, and knowing and having some deep satisfaction that they are walking in their calling, pushing the boundaries and pushing limits. There is something that happens in your mind and in your heart when you push the limits. So the first question you need to ask yourself is, where am I thinking that I can't? Because that's probably the very place where you need to push the boundaries. Now, you may have to get the information, you may have to get the, uh, community or accountability around you so that you can exercise the discipline when motivation runs out. You may need guidance and support, you may need to read the book, you join the group, you get the coach, you take the class, but you expand your horizons when you decide that the very thing I think I can't do, or the very place that I feel called— something in me wants what I see. Not so much out of covetousness, like I want it because they have it, but I want it because something in me agrees with this, that this is supposed to be my life. We tell ourselves stories, you know, and the stories that we tell ourselves keep us comfortable. We, we like reliving the chapters of the stories that we know. I remember reading to my children and I would read books over and over to them, all the Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, all of these books. Do you know how much joy they got from being able to read along with me? When they got to know that they could recite the words of the book, not because they could read, but because they'd heard that story so many times. And then there came a point though where I had to push the limits. I had to teach them how to read so that they could read for themselves, even though they enjoyed the story as Mom read it to them. Mom reading to them is not the end-all. You may be comfortable with Mom reading to you, but that's not the end of the story. You may enjoy knowing the rhythm of the words, but you got to get beyond knowing the story just because Mom said it to you. You need to learn how to read for yourself. They didn't enjoy enjoy that. There are so many children that don't enjoy reading because learning to read is work. But I'm trying to get you to the point, dear children, where you can read for yourself. Why? Because once you stretch the limits, even though you were comfortable, it changes the game. I remember having a conversation with my cousin Winter one time. She passed away in 2018. And even though we grew up together, saw each other at least once a year, She had a different experience and a different reality where she grew up than where we grew up and how we grew up. And I didn't know that. I didn't— it took us being adults for her to walk me through her experience growing up in the inner city in Baltimore, what she saw, what she experienced, and how that contrasted to what I saw and what I experienced. She said, but the best thing that ever happened— she said, I was, I was smart and I was able to go to the school on a full scholarship. She said, I went to the school, it was an all-girls school, all these people had money. She said, and I would go into these girls' homes and my My eyes were just buck-eyed wide open because I had never seen anything like that. And then I went on the trips because of this school. And then I had exposure to these great classes and great teachers and great books. And all of a sudden my eyes were open to what was possible and it changed the game for me. She said, exposure matters. So in order to fix the problem of information, you get the information. You take the class, you watch the YouTube videos, you sign up for the subscription, you join the membership group, you figure out where the information is, and you go get it. And it doesn't matter if you have the money or not. Do you know that you can go to a local college, find the syllabus for a professor for something you want to learn, or some way in which you want to grow, look at the books that that professor will have your— have his students read, read the books. Read the books. Self-education, Thomas Jefferson says, is the best education because you're not so much asking someone to digest it and give it to you. You wrestle with it and digest it for yourself. There is a preacher that I know, um, Reverend Charles Jr. His first name escapes me, but, uh, he totally self-taught. He was a pastor's son, but he never went to seminary. Um, his father passed away and immediately he became the pastor of that church. So he is very much so self-taught, but because he didn't have the exposure educationally like so many other people have had I can tell you that listening to him preach, he is one of the most well-studied, most riveting, most well-spoken, most ridiculously connective teachers I have ever heard. And I'm amazed that he's self-taught. Uh, Mark Cuban. Dropped outta college, playing around and tinkering in his parents' garage. He figures something out for himself. Voilà, there you go. Mark Cuban. We see it all the time. People that couldn't cut it in one environment, but then they built exposure or training or development on their own. And they strengthened the muscle of learning what I don't know. Myself. So I don't want to hear the excuse that you can't learn it just because you don't have the money to get a degree. I don't want to hear that. We are in a society where information is at your fingertips non-stop. You lack the information? Go get it. Ask questions. Seek out wise counsel. If you want it, it's there, but you may have to hunt for it and sacrifice to get it. Hey there. Not only do I get such joy by creating podcasts and videos for you, but I love creating the opportunity for women of faith to connect. If you would like to join me for more of what I'm already doing, but to go deeper with me and some great women who I call as friends, you should check out the Inner Circle. You can do that by going to chrystalevanshurst.com/innercircle. Inner Circle. We are getting geared up for an awesome fourth quarter. Did you know that the last quarter of this year is the best time to prepare for the first quarter of next year? This quarter we're going to be talking about navigating the holidays, practicing gratitude, and then y'all, it's that time of year, so we're going to have some fun because we believe in a little fun and foolery on the inside. Come on and join us. chrystalevanshurst.com/innercircle. /innercircle. Stop looking at what you don't know and start believing the truth that you're only limited by your belief that you can't know what you don't know. That if you change your belief system and realize that any information you need, you can get, you fix the problem. The second problem is a lack of discipline. We want to do what we feel like doing. We want to do what we feel like doing. The biggest bane of our existence is doing what we feel like doing. The difference between those who reach the highest heights and those who don't is not a matter of we know or don't know. Often it's we know and don't want to do it because we don't feel like it today. Quit operating based on how you feel. Quit waiting to be inspired to make a forward motion in your life. Stop waiting for motivation to do what you know you're supposed to do. Decide what you're going to do based on the information you have, and then do it. I mean, Nike got this right, didn't they? Just do it. You may not know everything there is to know, but what you do know, just do it. You may be starting with a, uh, you may not have a head start. You may be starting behind the starting line. It doesn't matter. Stop lamenting your starting point and just get started. Just Do it because something happens when you move forward into forward motion. Something happens. You change your belief in your brain about who you are and what you can do. You shift the gears. Motivation can start you up, but it's not gonna keep you. Discipline is what keeps you going. Discipline is simply the act of doing what needs to be done because you're supposed to do it. And you do what needs to be done when you're supposed to do it consistently. And when you fall off, you get up and you do it again. The solution for consistency often is in the third principle of lacking guidance or support. Many of us just need support to be consistent. We just need support to keep showing up. We just need to know that we're not alone, that we have community. Uh, we need information also, but oftentimes you just need support. Like, this is why Weight Watchers works. Because somebody's gonna weigh you every week. This is why running groups work, because if you don't show up, they're going to call you. This is why book clubs keep us reading, because if I know we're going to discuss this next week, I'm going to read the book. Discipline supported by external supports is okay. Doesn't matter how much external support you need. Discipline is not about who you are, it's about what you do. And you're disciplined if you know what to do and you keep doing it. The other limitation, the other limitation besides lack of information and lack of discipline is lack of guidance. We all need a teacher. The beauty of the word of God, the reason why the Bible is so important— listen, I, I, I've gone to a Bible study for years where there were people who were atheists but understood that the Bible is one of the greatest literary books to be written in all of time. So many of the things that we know and say in culture come from the Bible, and they said, "I just want to get to know this literary work, so I'm coming to Bible study so I can read the book." There's a lot of shortcuts that you can take once you already know what God's word says. So if you don't read your Bible, start with that. Start with that guidance. But also, even in the Bible, we are taught that we need to follow other people. We need our parents to give us good guidance. We need teachers to give us good teaching. We need people in the world, pastors or mentors, to give us the information we don't need. "Let us follow you." How did you do it? Can I study from your footsteps and learn? This is why, um, the Inner Circle even exists. This is why we put out all this content, um, for Chrystal Evans Hurst and/or the Sister Circle, because I know that sometimes you just need the information. The problem is that when we know we need a teacher, we won't seek them out. The problem is when we know we need a mentor, we won't hunt that person down. We'll say, well, I ask them to help me and they wouldn't help me. And my My son is in college and he was struggling, uh, with a concept in one of his classes. I said, well, did you go to the office hours? He said, no. Son, you're not taking advantage of everything that's been given and paid for at your university. Go to the office hours. But I mean, you know, he's gonna show up in a group. Go to the office hours. You have not milked every bit of information you need to do well in that class until you have visited with the professor and they're availing themselves to you. I know that sometimes you ask someone to mentor you or you look for someone to coach you or you look for someone to teach you and they disappoint you. Parents don't always have all the answers. The person that you ask to meet with you isn't consistent in showing up. You're wanting to sit underneath someone and learn from them and maybe even sitting with them, they disappoint you because it's kind of smoke and mirrors what they do. What I'm telling you is you want to learn from someone. There's a girl named, um, Lisa Nichols. She's a motivational coach, and she said that she went to attend a, um, a workshop, a seminar. It was for teaching other people how to become life coaches. She went for a fraction of the rate because she was willing to volunteer.. And she said, I went to this thing 5 times as a volunteer so that I could afford it, so that I could learn what I needed to learn. I never met the person, but I sat under their teaching until I got it. Howard Hendricks at Dallas Theological Seminary, who was a teacher for Christian education, said, we read too many books. We read one book and then the next and then the next. And what you need to do is focus on making sure that whatever book you read that taught you something, that you read it again until you make sure you're actually doing it. The biggest thing that we need to do is take advantage of the people who are already there. On repeat, you listen to the podcast again, you heard the sermon, you watch it on YouTube again, you have read the book for this person who is your mentor. You've never met them, but they've written a book. You read the book again. You listen again, you watch again until you are able to rehearse because you've hidden that messaging, that skillset, that understanding in your heart. You absorb it, you absorb it, and you keep coming back to whoever it is that's feeding you what you need to know. There's different levels of coaching and mentoring. Sometimes you just need to watch people and watch what they do. To. Sometimes you get to get up close, sometimes you're far away. It doesn't matter. Books are some of the biggest mentors, coaching that I've ever received for people I've never met. You can fix your problems. Here's the deal: 80% of resolutions Forbes magazine says will fail. Only 9%, 9% of the people who set resolutions at the beginning of the year feel successful about their goals. The reason is, y'all, because we set our resolutions at the beginning of the year and then we start doing what we're comfortable with. And the information that we need is hard to get, or the discipline that we need is hard to keep, or the mentors that we need are hard to find. And so we shrink back to the story that we've been telling ourselves on repeat, the Cat in the Hat of our character, and we get settled with that. We get settled with that. And accept that it won't be the case for us. You are living with limits because you are accepting the limitations that you are putting on yourself. You wanna live without limits? Change your brain, renew your mind, change your thoughts about what you can do. And that starts with getting the information, showing up with discipline, and finding people or a person that you can follow up close or even in the distance. And you keep showing up until you get what you need. David Goggins, um, you can Google him on YouTube. He says there are two voices in your head. It's the easy voice and the hard voice. Your mommy voice is the easy voice. It's the, oh, you can do it. Oh, do you have a little boo-boo? Come here, let me hold you. Are you sure you do need my help? You'll be all right. That's the mommy voice. The hard voice says You gonna be able to do this? I think not. I'm not so sure if you're going to be able to make it. So here's what happens. We like the mommy voice. We like the it's gonna be okay voice. You can do it, let me help you. We like that voice because it's the Cat in the Hat. We don't like the hard voice, but the hard voice will show up and tell you what you can't do until you prove that you can. You have to decide to take the limits off. He says most of us live in an 80/20. 20% of what is easy to do, what we want to do, and the 80% that we desire to do, but it takes work. 80% of your life is going to be suffering. I hate to tell you this, 80% of your life is going to be uphill. 80% of your life is going to be painful. It's going to be difficult. 80% of your life is going to gonna involve some kind of self-doubt. 80% of your life is going to involve some stretching. We don't like the first 18 years of our life because we have to go to school. It's because every year we're stretched beyond our limits. And the teachers know if they will show up to class, do the homework, take the test, we can stretch their capacity. And then you become an adult and you have to decide to stretch your capacity yourself. The very place where you think you're going to wilt is probably the place where you have to prove to the hard voice that you can do it. You have no idea of what you're capable until you look your hard stuff in the eye and ask yourself, is this actually really a limit or is this just a lie I've been telling myself? Now, you do have to have a vision of what's possible, and this is why exposure matters. But here's the good news. Here's the good part. Even if you haven't been exposed, if you are exposed to the Spirit of God in you, he can dream dreams that you don't even know you want to have. He can open up possibilities that you didn't even know existed. Your victory in going the distance and being satisfied with yourself and also in, in, in just enamored with what you're capable of can come from someone outside of you. This is why it's so important that you're a follower of God and why it's so important that you read the Bible, why it's so important that you pray, why it's so important that you connect with the Spirit of God in you. Because you actually don't even know what's possible until you live with someone who lives outside of the possibilities that you know and can tell you what you're supposed to do, who can cry out to the deepest parts of your soul so that you want what you didn't even know existed. Stop quitting because you're not good at things. Stop quitting when it gets hard. Stop quitting because you're exhausted. Stop quitting because it's difficult. Stop quitting because no one has ever done it. Stop quitting because you think that you have a limit. And just ask the person who sees no limits for you, is there another way I can get this done? Dr. Laura Boyd, she did a TED Talk. She talks about neuroplasticity and how your brain actually, through your behaviors, can learn different paths. The neurons fired up by the chemicals in your brain can make new connections, and sustained structural changes in your brain have when you continue to show up, fire up those neurons, and teach your body, your brain, your soul, what you're capable of. If you are thinking you have limits, it's because the structural capacity of your brain has been fixed a certain way. But even in science, even in the natural, we learn that neuroplasticity says even the structure of my brain can change, which means that the limits that exist in the current structure of your brain are based in what you've been doing. So how do you break your limitations? How do you change what you think you're capable of? You do something different. You stretch yourself beyond what you've been doing. You stop living the Cat in the Hat life and you start learning to sound out the sound of your life on your own. How do I read my chapters? The chapters in my life, the book of my life. How do I read that myself? You learn to read. You learn how to connect with the ability that you have to see vision for your life that someone else in your life might not have even given you. So it doesn't matter if you haven't had the guidance and support. It doesn't matter if up to now you haven't been a disciplined person. It doesn't matter if up to now you haven't had the information. If you believe that your brain can change, if you believe that you can renew your mind, if you believe that you can and do serve a God, that a God who existed before the beginning of time has given you not only the power to change but the power to be involved in your changing, that you can do the things that are hard that you can do the things that you couldn't do last year, that you can do the things that last time you tried, you didn't know how to, because you can learn, you can grow, you can change, and you can get the information you need. Doggone it, we live in the information age. Stop telling me what you don't know. You are speaking death to the possibilities of your life. You want to live with no limits? Change your mind. Change your mind. Give yourself the benefit of a doubt, and what you find that your soul is craving, maybe God put it there. Maybe there's a healthy, balanced version of what you want because God created you to rule and exercise dominion in your life. It's a Genesis mandate. There's a book that I have read There's two actually. I'll make sure that when this video is live, we link to them in the comments. One of them is called Essentialism. There is a page in this book that looks like this. You have a circle with rays coming out of the circle, and all of the rays form a nice neat pathway. They stretch the circle just a little further. And the circle looks like a sun. And then right next to it, there's a picture of that circle with one long ray pointing to the top. And the messaging here is simple. You are limitless, but only to the degree that you are focused and not spending your energy in other places that are stealing your energy energy for the most important thing in your life. Let me give you a diabolical truth here. You are limited. You will not live forever. You are limited to time and space. You live in a body. You can't know everything or do everything in a lifetime. You do have to choose. There is the reality that even if you decide to climb Mount Everest, there are limitations to what your body can do in certain temperatures. But it is the reality of acknowledging your limits, your God-given limitations, that will allow you to be limitless in an area that he has called you to be. Limitless is not about never reaching an end. It's about reaching God's end for you and going past the endpoints you were giving yourself. So another book I love, it's called The One Thing by Gary Keller. And it's talking about focus. Now listen, y'all, I, I am— I struggle with focus. I want to be the little sun that has rays going in all the different directions. One of the biggest challenges of my life right now is figuring out which rays are sucking my energy, sucking my energy from the things that are more— most important, that are supposed to take me beyond the boundaries of my own capacity. You have to decide if you want to be limitless, what you're going to cut. Because if you're feeding all the things, you won't have enough energy to feed the main thing. Limitless is not about having no end. It's about having God's end in mind for you. It is learning to live within the boundaries the God-given boundaries, so that you can experience true freedom. You know, Adam and Eve in the garden had boundaries. You can eat of any of these trees, don't eat of that one. They experienced total freedom except for one thing. And when they got distracted by the one thing, that's when they lost their limitless freedom in the garden that God had provided. Some of you are doing things limitlessly that are killing you. The time that you're spending on social media, the amount of food that you're putting in your mouth, the people that you're with, the company that you're keeping— it's killing you because you're not willing to draw boundaries. I'm not willing to draw boundaries around the things that are stealing my limitless life. Here's what God says. Philippians 1:6: He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. He has an end in mind for you that you may not have for yourself. 1 Corinthians 9 says Run like all runners who win a race. Run like you want to win the prize. Like, there's an end to this, but can you maximize your capacity while you're running, acting like you want to win whatever prize it is that God has for you based on what he's given you to work with in this life? Galatians 6:9 says, I know you're going to get tired, but don't get weary of doing the good things that he's put in your path to do. And Hebrews 12 says lay aside every weight. Stop getting bogged down with all the things. Stop getting bogged down, y'all. I'm the worst traveler ever. The worst traveler ever. I pack way too much stuff. For a 24-hour trip, I'll pack 5 books I can't read. People always pick up my check-on— check-in luggage and say, what is in your bag? All the things I don't need. All the things I don't need. It slows me down. I'm trying to learn how to be a lighter packer. I'm trying, I'm trying, because it's no fun carrying heavy bags. Here's the question: what is in your bag you don't need? Like, it's great to have it, but you don't need it. Think about runners who run. They dress in the clothing that's going to enable them to have the least wind resistance possible. Because they're trying to win. What is enabling you to move with better focus, and what is keeping you from focus? And get rid of it. Get rid of it. I told you about Audrey Mest. Let me tell you the rest of her story. How long can you hold your breath? How long can you push the boundaries of your existence? How limitless are you really? The last time she went on a dive, she was trying to break a record. What happens when you go on a dive is you actually ride a sled down, takes really no major physical exertion. You ride a sled down, you are tethered by a cable, and then attached to you, you have an inflatable tank that will fill with air so that when it's time for you to come back to the top, you come back to the top quickly. Without going to a gross amount of detail, there were multiple things wrong that day that she dived. The first one was the weather was bad. And you know, if the weather is bad on top of the water, the water gets choppy underneath too. It wasn't bad enough for her to stop her dive, but it was one of a few things that weren't right that day. The second thing is the cable, which is supposed to have a tightly tethered tautness to it, it was loose. And so she wasn't going down as fast or up as fast because there was slack in the line, which meant that when it was time for her to be pulled to safety, there was too much slack in the line to make that move go quickly. And the inflatable tank was empty. So not only did she not have the buoyancy that she needed, not only did she have the tightness in the cable that she needed, not only Did she not have good weather conditions? All three of these happened at the same time. What should have been a 3-minute dive was a 9-minute dive. When she got back to the surface, there were— there was not the emergency systems that she needed to preserve her life. They had to get to shore before emergency systems were in place. I've heard people say, I've read about this, that No Limit that deep diving is actually one of the best sports there are, that skiing in comparison down a ski slope is rife with way more opportunities for you to get hurt or die than this. But that day she was testing her limits and realized she actually did have limitations. The reason why it's so important for you in your effort to live without limits, to understand your limitation and to be connected to your God is because there will come times in life where the conditions are not great. There will be times in your life when the things that have kept you tethered to your sanity, to your soulfulness, to your connections, to your communities— they're looser than you want them to be. There will be times in your life when the things that normally bring you back to yourself, that get you above the surface of the water— your faith, your emotional stability, your finances, the tank will be empty, and what you relied on in the past doesn't work now. The reason why it's so crucial for you to be connected to God is because you do have limits. And while he has designed you to test the boundaries of your limitations, the only place that you want to go down deep, chasing your limitations, are the places that he wants you to go when he wants you to go, tethered to who he wants you to be tethered to, going to the place that he wants you to go. Because if you push past your limitations in your natural self, you might not end up exactly where you want to be. And there are people that we know who have done that. They test the boundaries of themselves to a fault because they're doing things God never asked them to do. I don't want you to test the limits of your humanity just because you want to test them. I want you to test the limits of your humanity to the places and spaces where God has dreamed of no limits for you. You want to know no limits? No God. You want to know no limits? Know his purposes and plans for your life. You want to know no limits? You need to ask yourself, where does he want me to stretch? Where does he want me to go? What call has he placed in my heart? The thing, the passion that I cannot shake, that I cannot get rid of it. You need to walk in wise counsel and only go to those places where God in your heart and the wise counsel around you are supporting you. So get the information, exercise the discipline, get the mentor, get the guidance, get the support. Yes, test the limits of your brain and of your body, but do that at where he leads, because you can test the limits. That's exactly what Adam and Eve did, and they messed everything up. Audrey Mest is remembered because she did go beyond her physical capacity many, many, many, many, many, many times. No harm, no foul. But the one time she sought to break a boundary and everything that was supposed to support her was not aligned. It broke her. I want you to live with no limits where it won't break you. Bend you? Yes. Test you? Yes. Stretch you? Yes. Surprise you? Absolutely. But I want you to do that in a way you were designed for. And the only way that I know how to tell you how to know the difference. Yep, get the information. Yep, exercise the discipline. Absolutely, get a guide or guidance. Get guidance, get support, get a mentor. But you better know God. You better know God. I believe you were designed to live way beyond the limitations you were placing on yourself. I believe it down deep in my bones. This is why I'm here week in and week out with podcasts and videos. This is why I speak, teach the Bible, speak, encourage and inspire. This is why I write books. This is why we put out blogs. This is why my team, I keep them chasing their tails, because there is a whole group of people who just need somebody in their ear, in their face, saying, quit messing around, test your limits, live your life. Time is limited, don't waste it. I believe it within the core of everything that I have that you can do more than you think you can. I believe it. But I also believe if you try to do it without God, you won't win. So this is me showing up again to tell you whatever it is, girl, guy, for little guys that show up and tell me that they're here while their wives are listening, or on the down low, they don't want to comment, but they're here. Test the limits. Quit messing around. Quit wasting time. Time and know that yes, he does dream bigger than you dream for yourself. He is able to do exceedingly above, beyond what you can even ask or think about. So I'd love for you to tell me in the comments as we wrap this up, what has God been thinking about for you? What is in the depth of your soul that you have put limits on for yourself, but believe down deep? I can't shake it. I think he's been calling me to this ever since I was a little girl. This is what I remember hoping for, dreaming for, praying for, wondering about. This is what I crave when I see other people doing it. What are the things that you desire to do, who you desire to be, what you desire to accomplish that you've been limiting yourself from? What is What is it? Call it out. There's power in saying it out loud, typing it so other people can see, acknowledging the hope that you have in you. You are a creature with limited resources that has limitless potential. So stop allowing what you lack to convince you that you're lacking. You have everything you need for this life he's given you to live. Take the limits off. Reconnect. New thoughts, new dreams, new realities. Shift the surface in your brain. And if you need somebody today to tell you, you can do it. Well, I'm your girl. Talk to me in the comments, and I'll see you next time.