375 | Charge The Storm - part 1

So I got a question for you today. How are you supposed to keep going, keep your joy up, keep your faith up when you're basically going through hell? You know, whether you like it or not, life has problems. And sometimes we hit a crisis, we hit a valley, we hit a dark, dark place. And in those places, sometimes we're like, where's God in all this? Why is my faith not working? Why is God not making sense? That's what we're going to talk about today because we're kicking off a brand new series here inside Crazy Blessed called Charge. The how to stay in heaven. When you're walking through hell, you don't want to miss a minute. Welcome to the Crazy Blessed Show. I'm Hannah Keeley, your host, and we're going to dig into some dark territory today. So. So, you know, I'm all about living a crazy, blessed life. Living with freedom, living with joy, living with abundance, laughing your way through life. It's all about it, right? Because if it's not fun, why are we even doing it? But I want to talk about something that gets a little more serious today, and I'm actually going to show you a step by step process as hidden in the Bible, of how we as believers are to not just go through tough times, but actually how we can go through them faster and how we can actually find the hidden blessing in those tough times. No one wants to go through tough times. I was talking with my daughter earlier and she's like, sometimes it just feels so unfair. It's like so hard. And I said, you're right, it is unfair. It's unfair that we're sitting here at a restaurant having a salad that we didn't even prepare and drinking clean water and we're about to leave and get in our car and, and it's not fair that we're going to go home to a. To a house that's, you know, heated. And she said, I, I get it, I get it. It's perspective. And I said, yes, perspective. But also it's okay that it is hard. It's okay that, that our heart hurts sometimes when you say, well, other people have it a lot worse. Well, I don't, I don't want to hear that. Of course other people have it worse. But I'm going through it and it hurts. And I want to share with you today that although we're not exempt from hard times, we do have a secret door that if we could just have the formula to open that door, walk through it, we could not just go through These tough times with more ease, but we could go through them quicker, and we could also be blessed abundantly as a result. And no one, like I said, no one's exempt from this. Okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna teach you today how to charge the storm, how to go forward into some of the toughest times of your life. See, I know that there are some tough times, and there's no one on this planet who has ever lived a life that is. That's not included. It comes with it, right? It comes with it. Jesus said, in this life, you will have trouble, you will have tribulation. That's not an if. That is a. Oh, no, no. When you will. One of the hardest times for me, and I still have this moment, is I'm just going to be real with you. When my mama had a series of strokes near the end of 2022, and she went on to be with Jesus, just really a. Just a couple weeks before Christmas and near the middle of December 14th. And that was not just hard emotionally, but it was so hard in every other area of my life. I couldn't. I couldn't show up for my ministry. I couldn't show up for my business. I could barely show up for my family. I was just. It really knocked the wind out of me in a lot of areas. And there were some really anxious moments there. I'm just gonna be real. Some really depressing moments there. And the glorious thing about it is that I saw Jesus like, I saw him show up. And this is a message that I could not have shared with you a year ago. It's a message I probably couldn't have shared with you six months ago, honestly. But it's time for it. And if you're going through a tough time in your life, if you're going through one of those chapters, I want you to really, really listen to what I'm going to share with you, because this is just kicking off a series. There is a series of steps that if. When we dig in the word, we are told, if we. If we can believe this, if we can embody this, if we can go through the hard times with this process, it's going to lead to such blessing. It's going to lead to so much abundance that you could have not had if it weren't for those hard times. Now, no one wants to go through them, but we all have to. So you're either coming out of a crisis, going into a crisis, or you're in a crisis. But I don't want you to Be afraid of the crisis. Like, that's the thing we often hold is I can't really fully live because I'm so scared of what could potentially happen. I don't know if you've ever been like that. Like, you. You really can't fully embrace motherhood and the joy and freedom of being a mom because you're so scared something's going to happen to your kids. Or you can't fully release yourself into the intimacy, intimacy of your marriage because you're so scared something can happen to that trust relationship. Or it's like fear. We're told in His Word, fear has torment. So if we are holding fear of a crisis, that will deplete us of more energy, more freedom, more abundance than if we were just going through the crisis in real time. See, the. The concept of a crisis, the mental concept of a crisis is actually harder than going through it. The thoughts of it are as excruciating as the actual event, sometimes more excruciating than the actual event. Isn't that crazy? Like, the thoughts about going through it are harder for your mind, for your immune system, for your body, for everything, as opposed to just going through it. Now, here's what I want to share with you. This is a story I just heard about at a conference. I was at Terry Savelle Foy's conference called Next, and she shared this one story that really hit me. And she shared a story of what happens with a cow and a buffalo. Now, when a storm is coming, there's a big difference between how a cow responds to it and how a buffalo responds to it. The difference is, when the storm is coming, a cow will sense the storm coming and run away from it. Now, of course, cows aren't known necessarily for their speed. They're not like racehorses. They kind of lumber around a little bit. So a cow running away from a storm, the storm will overtake him. And since he's running in the same direction, he's running away from the storm, and the storm is going in that direction, the storm will overtake the cow, and then he remains in the storm actually longer because he ran away from it, as opposed to the buffalo. If a buffalo senses that a storm is coming, what a buffalo will do is he will turn and face the storm, and he will charge toward the storm because he knows that that will shorten his exposure to it. And now the storm is on him and he runs through it. And so he has shortened the duration by which he has been exposed to that storm. Here's what I'm telling you, you can avoid the storms in life and you will make it last longer. It will be harder for you. Or we can turn face the storm, charge the storm and watch it be a shorter duration and you'll be blessed as a result. Now, like I said, this is a step by step process. And tonight I want to share with you this first step. And this first step is so vital. And all we have to do is, is really face the wind. That's all we have to do, is face the wind. Now I want to share with you, what do you do? What do you have a tendency to do? I want you to think about this in the hardest chapters of life. Do you have a tendency to go into isolation? Do you have a tendency toward depression? Do you move toward anxiety, anger? Do you, do you distract yourself so you don't have to think about it? What is your typical response system to storms? And if you're on YouTube, I definitely want you to leave a comment and share that with me. What is your typical response? See here in crazy blessed we're actually going to work with our mind, okay, to so that we can get real sustainable results. And Romans 12:2, we're taught don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, but you transformed by the renewing of your mind. Here I believe in order to live a crazy blessed life, you, you're going to have to think a little crazy. You're going to have to think a little different. Because the way we think becomes the way we live. It even says in Proverbs that above all else we need to guard our heart, which is your core belief, which is your inner, inner being, your subconscious. Above all else we need to guard that, for out of it flow all the issues of life. So here we're always going to go to the mind. We're always going to go to. Where is that secret place? What is the strategy we have to employ right here between our ears so that we can live with a different circumstance in life, different results. So I want to share this with you because this is a big problem that comes up especially among faith filled people among the church population, among believers, among Christians. This is a, this is a hard thing. Okay, in Second Corinthians 5, 7, I'm going to read you the Amplified version, Classic. Amplified. It says, for we walk by faith. We regulate our lives and conduct ourselves by our conviction or belief, respecting man's relationship to God and divine things with trust and holy fervor. Thus we walk not by sight or appearance. Now you've Heard we walk by faith and not by sight. That's basically the amplified version of this, of that verse. We walk by faith, not by sight. We're faith people, right? We're not going to look at our circumstances in life and be moved by that. We're going to be held firm by what we believe. Every one of you would probably say, yes, absolutely, amen. However, it doesn't feel like we do that all the time. Now think about it. How many times have you held anxiety? How many times have you felt fear? How many times have you rehearsed the most negative outcome of an event? You've seen it play out in your mind. You've heard it play out in your mind. You've responded emotionally to having it played out in your mind. But it says that we walk by faith and not by sight. So then why are we so moved? No matter how Bible believing a faith filled art, we are not exempt from having an emotional response to, to things that we see in our environment because we still have a human brain, even though we have the mind of Christ. So that's what I'm. We're always in the ministry of reconciliation, okay? That's what I believe my ministry is. If you're, if you ask me what my ministry is, it is reconciliation. Reconciling our human brain with the mind of Christ, our humanity and our divinity. How do we merge that and live in alignment with who we are in the kingdom of God, who we really, really are. For example, Hebrews 10:38, 39. Listen to this. I'm also going to read the classic amplified version. It says, for the just shall live by faith. My righteous servant shall live by his conviction respecting man's relationship to God and divine things, and holy fervor born of faith and conjoined with it. And if he draws back and shrinks in fear, my soul has no delight or pleasure in him. But our way is none of those who draw back to eternal misery and perdition and are utterly destroyed. But we are of those who believe, who cleave to and trust in and rely on God through Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and by faith preserve the soul. That's who we are. Can I get an amen? That is who we are. So if that is who we are, why do we still shrink back? Why do we still get scared? Why do we still want to? Why? Why do we still, when we see the storm coming, why do we want to turn and run away from it? Why do we resist crisis? Why do we resist the hard things in life? Well, Hannah, it's hard, right? But if you. If we really believe that we walk by faith, if we really believe, we live by faith, then we know that that faith will sustain us no matter what. So why are we so, so moved? Why are we still often emotionally fragile? Now, here's the truth. We're human beings. If you want to, like, put it as blunt as you can, we're human beings. And so we do have a natural response to adverse circumstances. So if the doctor gives you a negative diagnosis, if you look and there ain't enough money in your budget to pay the bills, if your marriage is falling apart, if something's wrong with one of your kids, if that legal matter is coming up again, of course you will have an emotional response to that, because we are human. So here's the first step that we're gonna do in order to charge the storm. That's what we're doing this entire series. This is part one. The entire series is how we're going to charge the storm, how we actually run to it, so we can shorten the duration and get to the blessing. But it looks like this, the very first thing, like I said, is we've got to face the wind. The first sign we're not going to ignore it. Think about it. If you could go back financial problems, if you could go back in the first sniff of financial hardship, if you had faced it, embraced it, you could probably have erased it. But the problem is we don't face it, we don't embrace it, and therefore we don't erase it until it becomes such a huge problem that now we're stuck in a storm. So I'm doing probably the very opposite of what most pastors would do. And I would say, look at it, recognize it, embrace it. That. That negative diagnosis, that balance you see in your account, that hardship in your marriage, that situation with your child, that unsolvable problem, that weight that hasn't dropped in 10 years, whatever that is, you still haven't found a man yet. I want you to look at it and just sit with it for a minute. Because the problem is we try to resist it. We're like, no, no, I'm a faith person. I'm not even going to recognize. I'm not going to pay attention to it. I'm just going to keep on spouting my verses and I'm standing where I am. Has that worked for you? Sometimes it has, but sometimes our subconscious rises up because, see, our subconscious is aware of it. Consciously, we're trying to block it, but our subconscious knows, hey, there's some poop about to go down here. There's a storm that's coming and it's scary. So here's the deal. The the cow is stuck in avoidance. I'm not even going to look at I want to run away from it. It's hard. I want to run away from it. And now the storm just chases him. The buffalo has opted for awareness. So we're talking about avoidance versus awareness. The cow is stuck in avoidance. The buffalo is embracing awareness. He's not afraid of the storm. It doesn't mean he has to like it. He's like, ah, man, one of these things again, this could probably be a real doozy. But what does he do? He recognizes the storm. Now I want to share with you a passage. It's in James, and although it has helped and encouraged a lot of believers, it has also made a lot of believers hold shame, spiritual shame, over their life. And I want to share this with you. It's in James, chapter one, verses six through eight. Let me read it to you. It says it must be in faith that he asks with no wavering, no hesitating, no doubting. For the one who wavers, hesitates, and doubts is like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind. For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything he asks for from the Lord. For being as he is, a man of two minds, hesitating, dubious, irresolute, he is unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything he thinks, feels, decides. Wow. Don't even imagine you're going to get what you want. Don't even imagine you're going to get that miracle or breakthrough. Do you see how, although this verse tells you, look, you have to live by faith. Faith has to be your only option. You can't move from it. Which is true. Also reading this, applying it, the problems come up when you start to feel fear, which is a human response, and then you add spiritual shame to it. Oh my gosh. I doubted. I messed everything up. I was planting seeds of faith. And now I went and I doubted and I was scared and I was angry and I probably like, ruined the whole crop. I probably stomped on all my seeds and I ruined them. I poisoned them with my doubt. And now I shouldn't even expect expect to get that miracle. I shouldn't even expect to get that breakthrough. I think God is bigger than that, personally, and I think Jesus represents a lot more redemption than that. And I think your faith, although we have the faith of God. And we can build our faith. The beautiful thing is God's enough to meet us right where we are. If he was able to rescue us from eternal damnation. I'm pretty sure he can do something with your fear. Pretty sure. Maybe you're not that strong enough to screw it up, but I want to share this with you. The cow avoids, the buffalo is aware. What if we practiced what I like to call as a master life coach, a covenant coach, which is vastly different from just being a life coach, what I like to call compassionate awareness. What if we, instead of holding spiritual shame around our fear and our doubt because we do, because we're human and because we have a natural fear response, what if instead of resisting it and denying it, because what happens when we resist that human response is that the core belief part of us, our subconscious feels the fear, our conscious is resisting the fear. And that is called cognitive dissonance. When you're subconscious and your conscious is arguing, battling each other. It even said, a man of two minds, being as he is, a man of two minds, hesitating, dubious, irresolute. He's unstable, unreliable, uncertain about everything he thinks and feels decis. That's the subconscious batting with the conscious. You're a man of two minds and they are having it out. And guess what? While they're having it out, you're stuck. You're paralyzed. You can't move forward, you can't move backwards. You're just sitting right there in the storm saying, oh, I should have more faith than this. I have faith. Oh no, I'm scared. Scared. Oh no, I have faith. Oh no, I'm scared. Oh no. With long life you will satisfy me. Oh, I'm gonna die. You're going back and forth and back and forth. Please understand. Nothing's wrong with you. You're normal. That's normal. You are both human and divine. You have the. The human brain in your skull, but you have the mind of Christ in the kingdom. How now do we merge the two so we can stop the battle of the two minds? And now get into alignment so we can turn and charge the storm. This first step, face the wind. Stop turning away from the wind and pretending it's not there. Because your subconscious knows is coming up usually around 11:45 at night. From 11:45 till about 2:15, right? You're lying awake. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm so scared. No, I can't let fear take over. So you get up and start to say the verses. None of this Is wrong. This is all good. It's healthy. But we may be able to go through the storm quicker if we just stop that internal battle and learned how to face the wind. First signs of storm. First sign of being scared. Turn and face it. Embrace it, so we can erase it. You know what I always say, Whenever you're stuck in the natural. That natural brain, we have to hold up, wait a minute, put a little super in it. I want you to stay with me, right? Whenever that those thoughts come up and your brain's babbling, first thing we got to do is like, hold up, wait a minute, put a little super in it. All this means is we're just having a natural response. So now we're going to put a supernatural response to it. We're going to pause long enough to create a supernatural response. Now, I want to share this verse with you that I think is going to be. I want to share this with you in a way that you may have never thought about this verse before. You ready for this? John 16:33. Basically, it says, in this world you will have trouble. But take joy. I've overcome the world. But I want to read you the amplified version. This is the regular amplified version. I have told you these things so that in me you may have perfect peace. In the world you have tribulation and distress and suffering. But be courageous, be confident, be undaunted, be filled with joy. I have overcome the world. My conquest is established, my victory abiding. That is cause to celebrate, my friend. But I want to show you a unique way of seeing this verse that I think is going to really help you in some of the most trying moments of life. There's one little symbol here that I want to show you. It says, in this world you will have trouble. And then there's a comma, just a little comma there. There's a pause, says, but be courageous, be filled with joy. Have overcome the world. I want you for a moment in between these two very different planes of existence. In this world, you will have trouble. That's the natural brain. Oh, my gosh, it's so hard. What am I gonna do? I'm sorry. So scared. Oh, my gosh, this can't be happening to me. What am I going to do? That's. In this world you will have trouble. And now there's tiny little comma right there. And on the other side, we can have joy, we can have freedom. We can have abundance. We don't have to be troubled. How do you get from here to there? How do you get from the human to the divine. How do you get from the subcon, from the natural to the supernatural? Hold up, wait a minute. Put a little super in it. You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna pause right there in the middle. That's why that comma is there. It's saying, selah, pause. Just take a breath in the middle of the anxiety, in the middle of the depression, in the middle of the panic, in the middle of the darkness when it is so dark you can't even see where you're gonna put your foot next. When you are walking through hell, I want you to just pause, take a breath. This is not the time to react. I'm gonna live right here in the comma for just a little bit between these two very different planes of existence and just face it. And I'm gonna embrace it so I can erase it. This looks like compassionate awareness. You just becoming aware. It's like joining the subconscious with the conscious. Instead of those minds battling, let them embrace. And it looks like you saying, okay, I'm just gonna stop and recognize. This is hard. I don't want to be in this spot. I'm scared, I'm angry. This feels unfair. This feels like hell. This is horrible. This hurts. You know, sometimes we're so scared to say things like that because we're so scared to ruining something. Like. Like we are the ones to make sure that miracle happens and not God. But what if we could just abide in him and recognize that first of all, he can't leave me. He can't forsake me. I'm just going to breathe for a second. And when we give that fear a voice, not to try to believe it so that we can start to manifest in our life, but just. It's a pause. Now, that's not reality. It's just a pause long enough to integrate the two battling mindsets. She goes to be like, you know what? I. I'm very scared. And I just want to acknowledge. I. I feel so fearful. I. I'm angry, I'm so mad. Whatever that looks like, recognize it. We're so scared we're gonna jinx the love of Jesus somehow when we just give life to our human emotions. But I want to tell you, can't jinx the love of Jesus. He already knows you feel that way. He already knows you're mad as a hornet. He already knows you feel like you. You been too loyal to him to deserve such a harsh punishment. He knows that you're confused. Why is my faith not working? He knows that. So just in this moment, and it is just a moment, let's just face it, we're not going to stay there, okay? That's what I do with a lot of my clients. I'm like, we're just going to recognize it. We're just going to spend a moment with compassionate awareness because we have to have compassion. Stop holding spiritual shame like you're screwing everything up. Because guess what? You will screw everything up. You'll just become what you're. What you're manifesting, like what you're thinking about all the time. But we have to just integrate the mindsets and sit in that moment where we're like, I'm just going to recognize this is hard. I don't want to be in the spot. I feel shame, I feel fear, I feel confusion, I feel anger. I feel all the things. Because in that moment, you'll realize I can feel this and I can still breathe and I'm still okay. You know, Jesus never had a problem getting in the mess. He never had a problem touching the leper. He never had a problem getting mud on his hands to. To cause blind eyes to see again. He didn't have a problem getting down and in the dirt with a woman convicted of adultery and giving her love and forgiveness. So why do we think he has a problem getting in the mess with our emotions in this middle. In this middle of compassion awareness. And this is just like I said, all we're going to do is just. We're going to pivot and face the wind. Recognize the hardship, recognize we've never gone this road before. When I lost my mom, I didn't lose my mom. I know right where she is. When my mama passed on to be with Jesus, I never experienced that kind of loss before in my life. When I had legal problems in my finances as a result of being able to. I just checked out everything. I never experienced problems like that before. I never held so much confusion, anger, shame, sorrow, grief, all that at one time. But I could avoid it and make it last longer, like the cow, or I could be like the buffalo. And I had to give myself that moment of just complete transparency to recognize this is how I feel. Now, remember, we're not going to stay there. I want you to stick with me because this is not a one and done. This is just the first step. You stay there, you're going to be stuck. But the first step is we have to face it right? I know your natural response, but remember, gotta hold up. Wait a minute. Put a little super in it. And watch that storm shorten in time, lighten in the load, and we're gonna discover the blessing on the other side of that. You are not alone here, friend. I got you. We have each other. You are surrounded. I am praying over you. And I believe your best days. You haven't even seen your best days. And they are just gonna be your best days. Mmm. They are gonna be blessed like crazy.