Leadership (Power of Diligence) | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Hey, guys. Here again, it's Ron and Hope unfiltered without the hope part. Will you hang around a few minutes? Because actually, I got something I believe is really helpful, really important I want to talk to you about. It's real raw and relevant, and me and Hope love to just come off the hip, talk about anything. It really is. I tell you all the time, and I keep saying it. We've been doing it for years now, because it's one of the most enjoyable things I do because it's a time where I finally just get to be unscripted. I don't have many unscripted moments. Sometime in a service when the spirit of God gets to move, I get to kind of come off the rails. I enjoy that. But most of my life is actually very planned and very prepared. And so it's enjoyable to me to come down and have a conversation with my favorite person and kind of invite you in the conversation. Sometimes it's informational. Sometimes it just absolutely has no information in it. But maybe you'll get a laugh out of it. But we have a lot of fun doing it. Me and Hope do. But every once in a while, you know, I have to do this because we do have responsibilities outside of this. And usually if she can't be here, I'll just hold it down. And then I try to think of some of the things that I have in my arsenal that may be of help to you. So I'm doing a little bit of a leadership podcast, and you may be sitting there folding clothes at home and saying, well, you know, I don't need to hear this. Everybody's a leader. Everybody leads somebody. But especially those of you who aspire to grow or you aspire to grow something. Pardon me. There's something in your oversight, your responsibility, or something you've birthed, something been handed down to you that you want to see it grow, want to see it prosper, you want to see it go to another level. There are things I like to talk out of my experience. Notice I don't have any notes. I do have my phone. It's not on, but I don't have any notes here because I love this, to keep the unscripted mode where I'm not coming with some notes and tell you something like, I'm teaching a class. I don't want to sit and listen to everybody teaching a class when I'm watching a podcast. I don't want you to have to do that either. So I want to talk conversational style. This won't be very long, maybe 20, 25 minutes. But I try to do it in such a way you can remember it. Now. Let me first of all tell you something about leadership podcasts. I get overwhelmed. There's just so many people teaching so many things. It's overwhelming to me. The amount of motivational clips, the amount of, you know, Instagram sites, the amount of reels, the amount of YouTube shorts, the amount of YouTube podcasts, the amount of podcast on streaming platforms. I mean, it's just, it's everywhere. The seven keys to this and five ways to do that and the most important thing I've learned and five things not to do and the seven things you need to start today and the 14 things I would quit and what I wish I would have told my 20 year old son. It's overwhelming to me. It does. It overwhelms me. I think I've got a touch of add. If you saw my closet, my closets are much smaller in hopes and I have nice stuff, but I don't have a lot of it because if I go in a closet, I just got stuff everywhere. It overwhelms me. It's like the Bible. I have to take it in little pages at a time. If I hold up 2000 pages, that overwhelms me. It's the same with. Who do you listen to? Because what Warren Buffet will tell you how he built his company will be something totally different than Jeff Baker Bezos will tell you how he built his company. But it's obviously, they both know what they're doing. And so you're sitting there with all this information, and that's what I don't want to do to you today. I want to give you from life experience, not from anything that I've read, but life experience, two things that are paramount to leadership. One of them I'd actually talked to my staff today about, and the other one I have not. But I want to talk to you about. The first one I want to talk about is diligence, which is very akin to discipline. Okay. Diligence is very akin to discipline. If you go and you start reading Proverbs, Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, has a lot to say about diligence. And when he talks about diligence, he uses the ant. I think it is a remarkable illustration and analogy that he uses about how the anti will prepare in one season for what they do or don't know is coming in another season. You can't get ready for something when it's there. You have to prepare for it. If you're preparing for a blessing, you can't get ready for the blessing. Once the blessing has shown up, you got to do, like, what I call Zacchaeus in the Bible. I love the biblical analogies of leadership. Zacchaeus heard Jesus was coming, and he was the only one that went and climbed a tree. He prepared for Jesus entry into the town. And Jesus only went home with one person. Come down. I'm going to your house. Who did he go home with? The one who was prepared. Everybody else kind of gathered around once Jesus had shown up. Once Jesus has shown up, it's too late to climb a tree. But in anticipation that a blessing was coming, Zacchaeus went on before Jesus and climbed the tree. And then Jesus went home with the one who had prepared for his entry. Man, that's good stuff. So simple, but it's so good. And so Solomon talks about the diligence. And one of the things about the diligence is their preparation for a thing before the thing arrives. I've always told you that those of you who are always believing that God has got something he's going to bring into your life, you have to live in tomorrow and kind of tolerate today. And you've got to be willing to be misunderstood because you have to learn the vocabulary of the next season. You have to learn the culture of the next season, and you have to build structure for the next season. Stay with me while you're still in this one. So while you are preparing for the next one, you look foolish in this one. You sound foolish because you're talking a language where you're not at yet. You're preparing for a place you haven't gotten to yet. Yet. But you're doing it while you're here. That's why real leaders kind of always look out of step with what's going on right now. Because to be in step with your tomorrow, it puts you out of step with your today, and sometime puts you to be in step with your tomorrow. It puts you out of step with people that are in your life today. Okay. I gave the illustration one time of when I was going to the Promise. I went to the prom all four years, my freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year. But one year when I was going to prom, my dad, he had a Caprice Classic, a 1985 light blue Caprice Classic. And I thought the greatest thing in the world was my daddy let me drive his car to the prom. Well, I got in his car, and here I am, I'm in a lavender with a mullet I'm in a lavender tux with shaved right here and the long curly mullet in the back with a perm. Gotta pick it. Oh yeah, y' all don't know what I'm talking about. Y' all too young. But anyway, I got in the car and there was no gas. It was about on empty and we had, we were going to be doing a good bit of driving to the restaurants and several people's houses that night and I needed some gas. So I remember going to the gas station in a lavender tux. I'm in a town of 2,000 people, there's not but about three gas stations and nobody goes to them in a tux, okay? So I remember I'm sitting there pumping gas beside my dad's car with a tux on at just a small town gas and lube shop. And people would come up and look at me and they didn't even say nothing to me, they didn't even ask. And I said, I'm going to prom. In other words, I was so self conscious about being in a tux at a gas station. It's obvious I'm not dressed for the gas station. I'm not dressed for where I am. I'm dressed for where I'm going. Do you see what I'm talking about? And to be dressed for where you're going can make you look foolish where you are. You keep talking your faith talk, you keep believing God for big things, you keep being a dreamer, it's going to make you sound foolish. But you got to quiet the naysayers in your ear and hold onto the picture in your heart. And it's got to be bigger than the picture that's in front of your eyes or the voices that are in your ears telling you that you're crazy and it can't happen. So one of the great attributes of the diligence is preparedness. Another thing is they do a little thing a long time until something big happens. This could also be quasi defined as discipline. Doing a little thing a long time till something happens. People come up and say, when did you get in shape? November 20th of 2024. No, I to be healthy for my age. I don't know if I'm healthy for a 35 year old, but I try to be healthy for a 57 year old and trying to do so what I do, I do a little thing a long time till something I have a big outcome. So I've been able to get off a lot of medicine, but I keep chipping away. I worked out this morning, about 45 minutes. Nothing that would have impressed any of you. But I don't miss and I'm always doing it and I'm very consistent and diligent at it. And so here again, do a little thing a long time, you know. Well, you know. How did you get a degree? Well, you did a little thing a long time till something big happens. Well, how did you lose £100? You did a little thing a long time till something big happens. Diligence requires that you do the things you hate with the same passion and intent as the thing you love. And therein, that's what separates a lot of people. Hang on to that thought just a moment. I want to talk about one of our sponsors. Guys, when I go to our sponsors, I want you to take the promo codes that we give you, that gives you discounts and I want you to try these guys out. These are not just sponsors. These are people that we use and products and foods that we use that I'm going to tell you bring value to our lifestyle and we promote them to you. Not only are these sponsors a blessing to us, but they can be a blessing to you if you use their products. So I'm just going to ask you, are you annoyed with any misleading healthy meals? Tired of looking at another New Year's trend? Green Chef cuts through the noise as the trusted authority in clean eating, delivering only real food, farm source ingredients. Trust every bite. 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You know, you did a little thing a long time till something big happened. Let me give you Two analogies that I gave my staff this morning. So it was good that I did the podcast by my staff because I'm kind of in leadership training mode. I kind of got it in my. That in my gut right now. We used to have this place that we would go up in the mountains of North Carolina and we would slide. It was a waterfall over rocks, Very slimy, slick rocks. A lot of people got hurt. Honestly, looking back on it, it's very dangerous. But nevertheless, us knucklehead teenagers, we would go to this place several times, and it constant water falling, dripping, running on these rocks. And the rocks were smooth and shaped and curved, and they were no rough edges. They were no jagged edges because everything over time had been shaped. And I thought to myself, what can reshape a rock? Ask anybody in construction. When they start grading and start a building project, what tears up their equipment fast? Anything. Rock. And they're using steel and iron and the rocks tearing their equipment all to pieces. But yet you look at this water constantly dripping on this rock and over time will change the whole shape and formation of the rock. So the heavy force of the backhoe machinery trying to get the rock out of the ground, and it ain't doing a thing to the rock, but it's tearing the machine all to pieces. But yet water has reshaped the whole rock. What is the difference? One came one day with a whole lot of force and quit. The other just keeps dripping. And a drip that will not quit dripping, but keep steady at it, doing a little thing a long time will reshape the formation of a rock. That's a powerful analogy, guys. You got people that start and come in hard and don't get the results they want and they quit. The ones that reshape things are the ones that just keep on dripping. If I was preaching right now and I had a congregation, I'd say, look at your neighbor and say, keep dripping. Keep dripping, because diligence is you continue to drip. What do I mean? Do a little thing a long time with great passion, with an internal motivation. Because immature people are people that have to constantly have external inspiration if they have to constantly be rewarded, constantly be praised, constantly be patted on the back, constantly be congratulated, constantly be acknowledged. Those things are nice. A good leader will do them. But the people who make it are not people who are inspired from the outside. They are people who are internally motivated. The motivation is intrinsic, not extrinsic. It's internal on the inside of them. I like to call it the fire of God. The fire of the Holy Spirit, you know, no encouragement. Encouragement committee came and woke me up and said, ron, you got this today. No encouragement committee comes to my house at 5:30, 6 o' clock on Sunday morning and said, you're going to preach your best sermon you've ever preached. It comes from something on the inside of me and I've preached it. When five showed up, I preached it. When 50 showed up, I preached it with 500 showed up, I preached it, 5,000 showed up because it was something, nothing outside of me. The 5,000 didn't motivate me to do it no more than the five demotivated me to do it. It's something that burned from within. Those are the people that go to distance. They keep dripping whether anybody recognizes their drip or not. And whatever it is you're doing just a little thing that you don't get congratulated for. I would tell you to keep dripping. Because the nature of life is when you do a little thing diligently a long time, you get big breakthroughs and everybody sees the breakthrough and then that's when they want to hop on your bandwagon. But they weren't there all the years you were dripping. I got a little fire pit. I love a fire pit. I love it. That's my. It's one of my happy places. And right out of our kitchen you got a little side glass door and we got a stone area and a fire pit. And when I get through with supper at night, it's very common for me to go out there until the sun sets and just me and Hope will go talk by my fire pit. Well, it's all around it, we've got thick stones. And I went out there yesterday, excuse me, Monday morning, and stone one of my. This thing's only been there two years. Stones split and there was a blade of grass and I'm like, how did a blade of grass split a stone? How did that happen? If I went out there to that stone and I took my fist and I said, I'm going to break this stone in half and I just start pounding it, I'm going to get up with bloody knuckles and maybe a few broken bones and I will not have done anything to that stone but a blade of grass split it in two because the blade of grass pushed up on that with a little bit of force and never let up until finally the constitution of the stone could not take the pressure and broke under the pressure of the push. The thing is not coming in with great force. The thing is just keep Pushing, keep dripping. Because to the diligent will come the breakthrough. If you can motivate yourself when there's nothing around you to motivate you to keep doing what you're doing. And discipline really is doing the thing you hate with the same intentionality and passion and excellence as the thing you love. Because usually you have to do the things you hate to get to do the thing that you love. Okay, I was going to do two things today. I might just kind of stop right here. But I just want to talk about that there's a reward. He is a rewarder. The Bible says of those that diligently seek him. What does diligently mean? You have a good revival twice a year. No, that's like going in there and pounding the stone and coming up with a bloody hand. No, every day. Every day, Lord. I'm acknowledging you, Lord. I'm bringing you into this situation, Lord. Is this what you would have me to do? Lord, I just wanted to thank you today for the small blessings. I just want to thank you for the little breakthroughs. I want to thank you, God, that you spared me from. I want to thank you that you protected my children. He is a rewarder. Those that diligently, they keep dripping, they keep pressing seek him. That way it doesn't have to be in a 21 days of prayer and fasting. And you did that twice a year and you're good. It's every day. Every day you walk out a lifestyle unto God where you want his involvement in every area of your life. Diligence. I don't know why out of all the topics in the world of my 38 year tenure in marriage, in marriage and in ministry, excuse me, 35 in marriage, 38 in ministry. You know why I came here today to talk about this and even my talk to my staff today when I talked, it's kind of a last minute thing actually when I was walking across the parking lot, Lord, I want you to speak to them about this. And then the Lord actually gave me a word for them, a prophetic word for the leadership and for the church. So I just wanted to encourage you today. Diligence over little things doesn't have anybody clapping. It doesn't have people celebrating. It don't usually get bonuses. And people only see the big stuff. And we're in a world now that if you don't do something big, they won't celebrate it. But behind something big happening is a whole bunch of something small. You see the rock star or the country star or the pop star. On the stage. Do you know how many people is in that road crew? But you know the one on the stage gets celebrated. But without all those other people dripping, there ain't going to be no stage. And such is life. Such is life. People will be there many times to celebrate. Maybe sometimes piggyback you'll break through, but they don't want to be a part of the drip. I want to encourage you today, you keep dripping and if you're that blade of grass, you keep, keep pushing because 2026, as I told my staff, could very well be your year where you break through. So anyway, and with that, I'm going to leave you with that today to ponder. Put it in your heart, think about it, rest on it, and I hope that it's helped somebody respond in the comments, respond in the caption. Share Like Let somebody else know if you know somebody that needs to hear this. And if you want to know more about Ron Carpenter, go get Ron Carpenter AI and download my app and use it. Ask questions anytime you want to. And it reaches from my personal archive of stretching almost four decades and we'll do everything in its power to help you. Not only that, but this is subscription based. The app's free, but then it'll let you know where it's drawing the answers from and you can go into the Vault. The Vault is my lifelong legacy of messages, and most of them have been digitally remastered, especially on the cassette tape days. I know I'm dating myself, but yep, we've had to redo those and it's all there for you in a big archive. And it's $9.95 or $9.99 a month and I would love to you to see if it brings value to your life. It used to be we'd sell DVDs for $9.99 and that's one message. Well, now you can get everything I've ever preached for that. So wonderful, wonderful things that you can draw from. I hope this has helped you today. Maybe hope we'll be time and we'll just sit here and laugh with you. All right, and until next time, this is Ron and Hope. Real raw and relevant and I'm glad you guys spent a little time with me. God bless.