Ron + Hope: Unfiltered: I Need Discipline

Foreign. Hey guys, this is Ron and Hope. Real raw, relevant. It's Ron and Hope unfiltered. The only thing is, Hope's not here. I know, I know, I know, I know she's. I know she's the prettier one to look at by far. I know she's the more exciting one. I know she's the more bubbly personality and whenever we decide to do one by herself, she, you know, carries it and she's less gr. Whenever I get doing by myself, I usually don't want to invite a guest. I usually want to be by myself because I've had some topic that I've been wanting to talk about for some time. I'm not going to take real long. I think I have 25 or 30 minutes if I can get you to stay with me. Can I tell you something? I am so weary of success teachings. I just am so weary of getting DMed with. I can help you be successful and we make you successful and success conferences and success coaches and success this and how to be successful with your money and how to be success. I just, I really do. I get burned out with it. If you've been listening to my messages on Sunday, you've been hearing me preach a series on assignment where I've really said the, the thing in life we, we put such a value on success, but there's something much greater than success. It's called significance. And there's a lot of people that accumulate stuff, but they don't affect anybody. They don't affect anything. And I don't think that's successful. If you die and you just got a bunch of money, but nobody ever knows you've been here, maybe you do. I don't know the true definition of success. I could tell you some biblical definitions of it, but just as far as our circular world sees it, we do. We put success as money made accomplishments in the rearview mirror on how many things we've been able to gather. And you didn't bring anything with you. Certainly not going to be able to take any of it with you either. And I just believe that success is the difference I've made in people's lives. I can't tell you the feeling of value that I get when somebody tells me, you know, 2009, you said something that changed my life or when I watched you walk through that, you gave me hope that I could walk through. When somebody comes up and says something to me like that, that means more to me than a billion dollars times a billion dollars, what it does to My soul, the purpose. It makes me feel the significance. It makes me feel like when I wake up in the morning, my life means something to somebody. Hopefully. I live a long life. The Bible says my years are 120 on the earth. I quote that all the time over my life. I speak it, I confess it. But the fact is there's going to be a day, sometime or another I ain't gone. I hope somebody misses me. I hope somebody. I hope. I hope that when I'm there, you know, there's a vacancy, there's a void. Why? Because I feel something in somebody's life that they needed and they reaped from and they valued it. So I want to talk about this. Pardon me, about how to structure your life for success. And I hated to even use that. But there's nothing wrong with success. I just believe it's second tier. I believe it's significance than success. There's no doubt. The biblical model. I'm sorry if you were raised in something that told you opposite. You are the head, not the tail, above, not beneath. You are to eat the fat of the land. The earth is the Lord's, the fullness thereof. And you're the lender. You're not the borrower. You're above and not beneath. You're blessed coming in, you're blessed going out. You're blessed in the city, you're blessed in the field. And God came that you might send his son, that you might have life and have it more abundantly. There's no way around the fact God wants you to succeed. God gets nothing out of everybody that serves him walking around being a blumbering failure. God receives no glory from that. Everybody's a failure. That's not what it is. He brings success out of failure. And he brings beauty from ashes. Now that's where he gets glory. And that's what he wants to do to people's life. Even who've made terrible mistakes and find themselves on the bottom. I'm speaking this out of experience. One thing I have, fortunately. I guess not. I'm not going to say unfortunately, fortunately is I've got some years under me now and I've seen a lot. And on this podcast, I've seen people that are highly skilled with zero discipline. Don't tune me out. I need you to stay with me because I'm going in now. This is going to be challenging. Highly skilled people, zero discipline. It pains me when I know somebody has an uncommon gift or talent. When I say uncommon, I mean not normal. And given the right Set of disciplines. It could be platform for massive impact, but they affect basically no one because they don't have the discipline in their life to build the structure around them that it would take to succeed. I saw Steven Furtick the other day, which most everybody knows now. He's probably one of the most, if not the most influential leader among the millennials generation. And I heard him say, he said, I built a ton of structure around my life. He was talking to his wife. I don't think it was a podcast, but they were having a conversation. He said, I built all kinds of structure around my life. He because if I didn't, I'd be all over the place. Number one, I was surprised to hear him say that because I know him fairly well and I've always seen him to be a pretty disciplined guy. But he talked like, you know, in the core of him, he would be all over the place. So he has built structure in his life that forced him into disciplines that have created success. And I think that was being greatly and acutely self aware, being very self aware of himself, his strength and his weaknesses. And I try to do that because I realize we all have dominant strengths, but we also have dominant weaknesses. And your dominant weaknesses want to sabotage your dominant strengths. So let me talk about structuring your life for success. Number one, the word structure. The word structure, okay. Those of you especially that are creatives, you are going to have to embrace the word structure. Most creatives in the secular world that make it big sign with a company that brings the structure. So they have the marketing in the company, they have the distribution in the company, they have the accounting in the company, they have the labeling in the company. In other words, you have this very gifted person, but they have no structure. Then they sign with a record label. Record label brings everything around them that they do not have, so that they've gone out of their garage on YouTube and now been put out in the public forum, and you see them doing concerts all over the world. What has happened? You have had a great gift that has been surrounded by great structure, and now it is postured for great impact. Let me say that again. A great gift has to be surrounded by great structure if the gift is ever going to have great impact. And when I see people that are very gifted running from structure rebellion, rebelling from structure, won't listen to anybody, won't listen to counsel, you'll see them in 10 years. And they're just frustrated. Why? Because they're walking around with a gift that has still affected no one okay. Structure involves discipline. Now, we're in a world which is big on motivational speakers. A motivational speaker at a conference now in the secular world can bring six figures to get up and talk one hour. I know two of them. That's what they told me. So I got it straight from people who do it. $100,000 or more for an hour. Okay? To talk about motivation and inspiration. Can I tell you something? Forget motivation and inspiration. You better talk discipline, because there's a lot of days I have no motivation and I'm not inspired a lick. Now, I'm being for real with you, but I am disciplined because discipline doesn't care if you're motivated or not. I got five hours of sleep two nights ago. Yesterday morning, I got up and went and worked out on five hours of sleep when I went to the gym. Every muscle in my body hurt when I was in that gym. And I pushed all the way through an hour workout with 28 sets with everything hurting because I had not had enough sleep. Why did I do that? Was I inspired? Heck, no. Was I motivated? There wasn't a podcast in the world I could have listened to. That motivated me. I didn't want to be there. I didn't feel like going there. But I want to be on the world a long time. I'm fighting Daddy's blood pressure problems. I'm fighting daddy's cholesterol problems. So I have instituted a set of disciplines in my life that they do not matter if I'm motivated, inspired, or not. That never enters the equation. You do it like you're inspired to do it, whether or not you're inspired to do it or not. I'm mainly inspired most of the days of my life. I'm mainly inspired when I get up to preach, but there's been times when I've been sick. There's been times when I've stayed up with a baby all night long. There's been times when I took a red eye flight back on Saturday night from a conference and got flew in at six o'clock and had to be in the pulpit by nine, you know, and I didn't get up there inspired, but I got a job to do and I was up all night with my Bible open and my notepad out on my plate. Why? Because I have a job to do and I'm going to do it at a high level because I have made a decision. Discipline comes with making a decision. Decisions have to be made, and these are decisions that have to be made one time so you don't have to make them over and over again. I give a portion of my life to study period. So I don't have to every week. Am I going to study? Am I going to study? I've already made the decision. I don't have to make it every week. I made it one time. I'm not going to eat those doughnuts. Do I like them? Of course I like them. I like them just as much as you do. They taste the same way in my mouth. They taste in your mouth, but I'm not going to eat them. Why? I've already made a decision. So when somebody sticks them in my face or the rest restaurant brings them out and everybody at the table starts eating one and I just say, no, thank you. What does it mean I don't have to make a decision every time because I made it one time that I'm going to be disciplined concerning this matter. Now, I just want to tell you I don't want to get in preacher mode, but there's some of you that are going to need to make some one time decisions about stuff because if you don't, then you're going to make it over every time that you're tempted to do otherwise. And there's some things that I'm just not going there. I've already decided. Don't tempt me, don't ask me. I'm not doing it because I have a structure to my life that I believe is going to lead me to the ultimate end that I want to reach. And I'm not violating these set of disciplines. Don't click off. Stay right here with me, okay? Now my core values are built around my faith and the Bible. I realize that I probably have listeners that you're not of Christian persuasion, but maybe you feel like you get a little bit out of what we're doing. And I just want to let you know, when I speak of these things, I speak from a biblical perspective, okay? In the Bible, Ezekiel 37, the Bible talks about a river that flows out of the throne of God. Okay? I'm not trying to get into the prophetic and imagery and the poetry of it. I just want to show you, I want to extract a principle out of it. A river. Then he said, and on the banks of the river were the trees that grew. And these trees were for the healing of the nations. It said, but in the swamp there was no life there. I read that passage one day and I'm like, I'm not sure prophetically what that passage is saying, but there is a Powerful principle in there. That principle I want to talk about the next few minutes. What is a swamp and what is a river? What's the difference? They're both made up of water. A river has banks. The banks create a flow, and wherever it keeps moving, there's life. A swamp is water with no banks. And the Bible says there's no life there. Mildewy, moldy, stinks. And the only life that's there is ravenous life, reptile life. There's no life giving life. Same thing. Water. If I take water and pour it in a cup structure right here, I could drink it. If I take water and pour it out on this table, it's going to run everywhere. Why? Same water, no structure. So the water does me no good because I have no structure to make it beneficial to me. Am I helping you? Okay. Real raw. These are the principles that I live by. So I could always be more disciplined. But in most parts of my life, even the woman who lives with me, my wife, will tell you I'm a very disciplined person. Now, I got some areas where I kind of cut it loose, and I got some areas where I got to, you know, let off some steam and get some of the boundaries out of my life and loosen up a little bit. Live tight all the time. But whenever there's somewhere I want to go or something I want to achieve, there are a set of disciplines that are going to have to come into play for me to get to that place. Most highly skilled people are swamps. They have a gift. They're water, but they have no banks, and it just goes everywhere. I had somebody tell me one time that's on the road a lot that said, they just buy new clothes because they don't feel like washing their dirty ones. That much discipline, I could save them a whole lot of money. Whole lot of money. Just that much. Let me tell you what I'm talking about. The banks grew trees. The river feeds the banks, and the banks have the fruit. The fruit of your life does not come from the water. It comes from the banks. How am I getting this podcast to you? Because there's a team of people. We all have a role. I think the majority of us have job descriptions. We've brought in equipment. We've brought in the discipline of time. We brought in the discipline of know how. We've brought in the discipline of expertise. We've brought in the discipline of a schedule. There are all types of disciplines taking place. Nobody in here is doing backflips right now because they're so inspired about this podcast, but we know that if we all bring our set of disciplines together, that something can go out that'll be life giving to you. That'll take the gifts and talents that we have, this structure and make them impactful for somebody else's life. Otherwise, this don't happen. I've always said if people had any idea when they watch Redemption on tv, all that it takes to get that. People have no idea. The structure, the protocol, the organization. Once it leaves this one, it goes to this one. Once it leaves this office, it goes to this one. And once it leaves graphics, it goes to editing. And it's just got this whole process. People don't even know the engineer expertise that it takes to run equipment. You just don't go on tv. It takes discipline after discipline after protocol. It takes banks. Banks. So if I have a word that can impact you, there's a tremendous amount of banks that has to be built for this word to get to you. It ain't just sitting in front of a microphone and talking. Even the image behind me, I don't even know how to do that. But I got wonderful people who do. So what do they do? They bring in those set of skills and those set of disciplines, and all of it comes together to become something beautiful that can impact your life in a positive way. So the fruit and the trees are on the bank. You think it's all about your talent and your skill set. It's not. It's about the skill structure you build around it. This is a powerful, powerful, powerful quote. It's not mine. I heard another pastor say this one time, name escapes me at the moment. He said, you do not rise to the level of your vision. You fall to the level of your system. That's good. You do not rise to the level of your vision. Oh, man. Let me tell you what I see, Ron. I don't. You do not rise to the level of your vision. You fall to the level of your system. When I have a vision that is not working, it's usually not a faulty vision. It's a faulty system I have built. Is your life working? It's not that your life don't work. Are you willing to re examine the way you organize your day, the way you spend your time, the people that you associate with, the disciplines that you've employed, the disciplines that you're unwilling to employ? Those are the questions you've got to start answering yourself. I get almost scared sometimes when people tell me I want to start my own business. I'm letting my mind like people have no idea. Because when people say, when they're working full company and they say, I want to start my own business, they have in their mind freedom. Okay? And what I want to tell them is you just went from a 40 hour workweek to a 70 hour work week. You just went from going home peacefully by clocking out to this thing, going to bed with you all night long and rolling around in the sheets with you. And people see that if I own my own business, I live in a bigger house and I drive a nicer car. But they have no idea the set of disciplines that are employed. Because when you own your own business, there is no organization forcing you to be disciplined. You have to create your own. You have to begin. You don't get up early because somebody's there going to fire you if you don't. You have to get up early on your own so you don't get to sleep till 11. When you start your own business, you ain't going to have no business. Do you see what I'm talking about? So, you know, I haven't had a 40 hour work week. I work 20 hour weeks. When I'm on vacation, it's, you know, and I can go to Kabah. And it's just me and my wife on my anniversary. Now I'm going to be four days. I get my first three hours. Every morning I'm on phone calls and zoom calls and on my computer. Why? Because I'm responsible for it. And I've got to be disciplined. Even on my anniversary when I'm trying to get out of a place where I got to be so disciplined. And that's what it takes when you run your own thing. And you need to know that right now. So I have done the same thing that I was talking about Steven Furtick a minute ago. I have a lot of structures in my life. When I got up this morning, my day was planned for me. My secretary sent me. This is your schedule today, Pastor. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I had to work in time to eat a salad. But at the end of the day, I will have been productive. Why? Because I brought these banks into my life. The fruitfulness of your life will be born on the boundaries that you bring into your life. The banks are the boundaries. What boundaries have you created in time management? I just want to ask you some questions. I'm not going to answer them. I want to ask them because you got to. Because you got to come up with your own solution. What boundaries have you created? How you're going to Spend your time. What boundaries have you created with how much of your money you're going to spend versus how much you're going to invest versus how much you're going to put into your new business versus how much, how much do you have those boundaries? I have those boundaries and I do not defy them. If I cannot afford it, I do not buy it. Period. Been that way for 30 years. I will put it on a credit card to help learn how to manipulate my credit, that I got a good credit score and. But If I put $500 on that credit card, it's because I know I got $500 to pay it right back off. I do not go buy things I can't afford. That is my boundary. So you want to go take a Caribbean cruise and you can't afford it and put it on credit card. That's your business. But I will tell you, it will stump your success. Why? That's undisciplined behavior. So we want to be motivated. $10,000. Tony Robbins. Let's go sit. Motivate you. Okay. Praise God for that. I guess I could use a little stimulation from somebody every once in a while to get my juices flowing again and see again. That's nothing wrong with that. Not criticizing any of that, but it's not going to happen because you were inspired or motivated. It's going to happen because you employed disciplines in your life that kept your life from being a swamp. When I get around a swamp is somebody where everything goes, look at their life. If they don't end up taking it, it's death everywhere because they have no restraint. The Bible says where there is no vision, people perish. That word perish don't mean they lay over and die. It says where there's no vision. That word vision means ongoing revelation where people don't see anything. They cast off restraint and run wild. Perish means cast off restraint and run wild. You let me see a life that has no structure and anything goes. I'll tell you somebody that has no vision. Vision zero. Because as soon as you get vision, restraint starts coming in. Let me move to the next level. There are things I can't do, not because they're wrong, but because of my vision. There's places I can't go, there's conversations I can't have. Other people can have it, but I can't because of my vision. Some of you don't know how you spend your how to spend your money because you have no vision. Vision drives everything. What is it? I'm Seeing that drives what I need. That drives who I hire. That drives where the resources go. That drives where the money is spent. It drives everything. Vision brings restraint. I want to be an 85, 90 year old healthy man that can go watch my great grandkids play soccer. I see that. So in my life, I have brought restraint. Do I want a double cheeseburger with cheese hanging offside and a biggie fry? More than you could ever know. But I'm probably going to get the Cobb salad with boiled egg and grilled chicken. Okay? It's not because I'm better than anybody else. It's because where I want to go demands it. Where are you wanting to go? What does it demand? That's not going to be motivation and inspiration. It's going to be discipline. Your life is a river. The banks make it fruitful. The lack thereof turn your life into a swamp. Don't get to the end of your life. And you have been a barrel of gifts and talents and skill sets that never made an impact because you always refused structure. I feel like I need to say this. This wasn't part of the thing that's in my head to talk about. Whenever you come up in life and there's contention a lot of times, you know, I came from real spiritual people. If there's ever contention, that's a, we got to rebuke a devil. There's a devil somewhere, you know, we got, we're being attacked by the devil, we got to rebuke them now. Contention is an indicator. Change is necessary. Contention is the blinking light on your dash that says service engine soon. In other words, if you don't pull over right then, the car is not going to shut down. But if you drive it two more months like that, sooner or later it's going to put you on side road. It's an indicator. The contention is not going to shut you down now, but eventually it will if it's not addressed. Contention is an indicator. Change is necessary. Most of the people with great skills but no structure live life full of contention. Their relationships are contentious. The way they function is contentious. Anything they try to do, there's always contention. There's always strife. There's always some type of tension in their life. What begins to remove that change is it's not a devil that you need to rebuke. It's a change that you need to make. And so be self aware, understand these things, see your weaknesses and be willing to listen to counsel and then find some discipline. Christians should be the most disciplined people in the world. Because what does he do? He. Disciples go into all the world and make disciples. What's the root word of disciple? Discipline. What did Jesus do? He got 12 rowdy guys and he disciplined them. When he got through, they were. They had restraint. They had boundaries. Peter didn't have any boundaries. Peter was crazy. But when Jesus was through with him, he was Petra Rock. That's what God does. That's how he brings these boundaries into your life. Man, I hope that you're getting something out of this. I don't like to go long. I know some people do podcasts for two or three hours. Number one, it's hard for me to do that. It's hard for me to find the time to do that. But I feel like the longer you go, the less you retain. So I'd like to give you something. And you say, man, that was impactful. Impactful. Structuring your life for success. It will not happen without it. This is Ron Carpenter. I wish Hope was here with me. Unfiltered, real, raw and relevant. Really, really love you guys. Hit the like button. Go. Subscribe. Go to all of your platforms where podcasts are available. Do everything. You can download our podcast and get it every week. We're dropping a new one every week, and we want you to have it. And until next time, God bless you.