Ron + Hope: Unfiltered - Make Your Mind Obey

Foreign. Hey, everybody. It's Ron and Hope. Unfiltered. And we don't have our LED wall curtain. It's a curtain. It's beautiful.

So tell them what it is since they can't read it. It's Ron and Hope.

They can't read what?

Unfiltered.

There's no words here.

The LED board is broken. So what do you do when the LED will break? You bring in a curtain and put a light on it.

Beautiful. Kind of reminds me of our early days at Redemption.

It does.

When we had.

I think sometimes God wants to remind us of where we came from.

Yeah. When we had shower curtains on the wall.

And they don't know that. We just spent 30 minutes evening out this table before everybody got in here.

My word.

We couldn't make it quit wobbling. It took a team of about 14.

Yeah.

To make the table quit wobbling. So we don't come with the best of equipment today, but we come with a good heart.

Yeah, we do. And good content.

And I'm so hungry.

What?

I'm so hungry. Tell them what we're doing again. What you're making me do.

I am not making you do anything.

You won't cook meat, so I have to eat whatever you. Whatever you bring.

We decided about six weeks ago, seven.

Weeks, about seven weeks now, that we.

Were not going to eat chicken, pork, or red meat for a while. And Ron starving.

I can't eat so many leaves. I've eaten more. Love every kind of leaf.

He's. He lives hungry. He wakes up hungry. He's hungry. After he had. Don't look skinny after lunch. Hungry through the day. He's hungry.

I am hungry after. And I went and ate another salad with leaves. I ain't got no energy now.

Stop shaking your legs. But the deal is, Ron, you act like you're trying to be healthy, but I find Snicker wrappers in your pants.

Snicker is not meat.

But you're substituting something bad.

No. Twix is not meat. Snickers not meat. Rice Krispies. Treats are not meat.

But we're trying to get good blood work.

That's what I'm doing. What I'm doing. I'm trying to get blood work right. And I did some of y' all remember because I kind of chronicled it when I was working out in my garage. I went. I did this one time. What? During COVID I think it was during COVID And. And of all things, you're trying to get your numbers right. And the reason I'm trying to do it now is because I'm buying another life insurance policy and stuff. And because we want you to live. But if your numbers are off, it ain't that they won't give you the policy. It's that drives the price of the premium up. And so I said, no, I can fix a couple of those numbers. And all of it's because I'm a carnivore and I pound so much protein all the time. So I said I'm back off a little bit and try to do this a different way. Man, it's hard.

It is hard.

It's so hard. I passed by somebody today that was grilling a ribeye steak and I just wanted to steal them.

That meat is like the sustenance of your meal and so you just kind of eat it in like. Okay.

And then you come to the East Coast. So we're taping this one from the East Coast. Most people know we got. We got campuses on the east and the west coast. West coast make a lot of provision for plant based diets. Even chain restaurants will have like a vegetarian page. It's really odd you come to the East Coast. Not bad. It's a, it's a cow, a chicken, a pig. Somebody's dying.

Yes.

Yeah. Somebody's dying and it's going to be fried. Yeah. So anyway, that's where we're at right now. And that has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about today. We got a good one today and.

Actually does have something to do.

Because that might be one of the areas that we talk about. I said, I just want to list some areas. Let me tell you what we try to do, guys. What we try to do is, number one, you see me and Hope, when we're not. When we're not on a stage and we, me and Hope cut up a lot. Me and Hope have a great relationship, great marriage. We're best buds. But we do laugh. We do go back and forth with each other and it's funny. And we try to let you in on a little bit of that. And this is really the only platform where we get to do that. This is totally unscripted. We don't have any notes. Well, she does have something written down. I don't know if that's notes or not, but it's totally unscripted for the most part. But we just come up with the topic and then we start talking. And what we try to do is give you a little something spiritual and then the rest of it kind of natural. This ain't made to preach. This ain't made to pre.

You do end up preaching revelation really loud at times.

And I get animated. If I. If I'm in the Word, I get animated because I get excited about the Word and what I'm saying. But I tried to let you know that everything me and Hope do, we try to do it from a spiritual foundation. We really do. In other words, if you crawl down underneath all of our life habits, down at the bottom of it, there's a. There's a spiritual principle somewhere that's the.

Truth we live by.

And so I like to start there and say, hey, God says this, and then break that on down. How does that thing trickle all the way down in our life? Are we perfect? Absolutely not. But I do know that we aspire to build our life on the word of God, and that's what brings the peace and the joy. I think that's what keeps the laughter in the relationship and the marriage, because when you get away from God's laws, it just comes off the rails. And so, anyway, we're talking about boundaries. Don't turn it off. Stay right here.

Boundaries.

Talking about boundaries.

Boundaries.

Very difficult. Because you cannot talk about boundaries apart from discipline.

Yeah.

And I don't know that I've ever, in my life in a spiritual context quoted Mike Tyson, but I heard him the other day said something about discipline that I thought was amazing. He said, discipline is doing what you hate the exact same way you do what you love. I thought about that a minute. So with the same vigor, fervor, passion, and energy, I do something that I really don't care for because I know.

It will be better.

I know it will take me to the thing that I care for. And I thought, you know, would Webster call it that? I don't know. But discipline. Boundaries without discipline are impossible because boundaries are basically the fruit of. I'm putting some disciplines in place because what I've been doing ain't working no more.

Boundaries defined really as what's me and what's not me. Who am I? Who am I not? Boundaries is, you know, what's me, what's not me. And you know how your grandma used to say, birds of a feather flock together what's me, what's not me? And what do you want to be? Especially starting trying to have new boundaries. You have to say, you know, what are the standards for my life? And I'm not going to participate. I'm not going to identify. I'm not going to give time to. I'm not giving my life to those things. I'm having to draw protection. I'm having to draw boundaries, because that's not me. This is who I am.

So when you tell me. When you tell me I like seafood, you're telling me who you are. When you tell me I like Mexican food, makes food. When you tell me I like love stories and movies, all those things are important. Because what you're doing is you're giving me definition. You're giving me definition of who you are. Your likes, your dislikes, your passions. You do not like mice.

Oh, my God. No, I don't.

You don't like mice because one jumped in the tub with you when you were a kid. And what did it do?

It crossed a boundary.

Crossed a boundary. And she was a girl, and I heard that legs and feet went flying everywhere. And she screamed for her dad and he had to come in and get the mouse out of the tub. And ever since that time, she does not like my.

Of anything in the rodent family.

Because Chase had a snake. Remember that?

And we had to feed.

What was a python or boa constrictor?

I don't know.

And he had to. We had to feed it. Right. We would have to go buy mice.

Those tiny little white.

You know what? She wasn't scared of the snake. No, she's terrified. She was terrified of the mouse. And she was. We had to go buy those things, two and three at the time, to feed that snake. Crazy. But those are the things. I said all that to say this. Those were the things over life that let me know. This is who hope is.

Yeah.

This defines you.

Yeah. Boundaries are taking responsibility for your life. Taking responsibility.

Like, I would not get you and come home and say, babe, I got two tickets. What? I'm taking you to a tractor pool.

Oh, God, no. That's not me.

It's not you. Not you. There's some women out there that. That will be a great night. And they would go, have fun. You. You're dressed in pink.

I'm not going to try.

You're not you. But I come home and tell you that I. That, you know, Lion King or whatever is going to be held down at the Peace center or the Civic center or something like that. I got two tickets. Oh, you're going to light up. You're going to beam. That's because you have defined yourself to me. I would submit before you, not only just get married in a covenant relationship, but before you become good friends with anybody, make sure they can live with your boundaries and can I tell you something, is anybody that causes you to compromise your boundaries, I don't think that's a friend.

No, absolutely not.

I don't think that's a friend. I think people who really love Ron Carpenter will respect the boundaries that he has in place. And I go certain places to preach Hope, and they have all this stuff cooked, but they know I'm a tad bit health conscious. I'm trying to. The men in my family died young, almost all of them, and I'm trying to break that. I've broke a lot of things, and I'm trying to break that as well. So I tend to be a little bit health conscious. I appreciate the fact when I go preach and we go to the dinner after the thing is over with, you know, they'll be serving all that. They'll come lay me out, you know, my salmon with some rice beside it, something like that. And, you know, I want all the fried chicken, and I want. I want to. I want all the pie and I want all the cake, just like they do. But. Because where I'm trying to go, I have these boundaries, and I appreciate the fact they respect it. Yeah, they respect that.

Just like living in a house, you know, most people have a fence around their property line. Why. Why do you have a fence in the. In the first place? Where I stop and they start to protect your property.

Property.

That's what boundaries do. They protect us.

All right. For the preachers that are. Watch. Let me give you a sermon. Here's a sermon text. Here's the spiritual part. And then I really want to talk about some areas. We want to talk about boundaries with kids. We're talking about boundaries with money. I think we need to talk about boundaries with. In laws. We need to talk about boundaries with your career and some of the things that I think we did right and some of the things that we waited too long to do. But first of all, just let me give this right here. Ezekiel 47. Hope you're the one that when you came back from a lot of your ministry time 10 years ago, you had really done a lot of study with Ms. Denise in this river and the throne of God and everything. It's a throne of God seen in Ezekiel 47. Okay. I'm not trying to give you the prophetic insight of that. It is a prophetic picture. That's not what I'm trying to do. I want to excerpt a principle from. Said there's a river that flows. And it said, there's life in that river. And it said that there's trees that grow on the banks. And the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. Then it goes on to say, but where there are no banks is a swamp. And it said, and nothing can live in that swamp. Okay, what that means for Israel, for the church, for the end times, I haven't studied that, so I can't speak. Let me talk about the banks and river, okay? There is life in that river. And the reason there is life in that river is because a river has banks. The banks channel where the water can go. They channel where the water can't go. The water can come to here and it's got to stop. The water can come to here and it's got to stop. And it will keep flowing and things will keep living as long as it has banks. Now, there are trees on the banks, so what does it do? The banks protect the water, but the water feeds the banks. So the trees are not in the water, the trees are on the banks. I hear a lot of songs in a lot of churches, you know, river, get in the river, get in the river. Well, the fruit is not in the river. The fruit is on the banks. So, you know, you need to be in the presence of God, you need the glory of God, you need those things, but you also got to get out and build something.

But the fruit comes from the protection.

Exactly. And here they work for each other. The banks cause the water to flow. The water feeds the banks and then the trees and the leaves. There's healing on banks. There's heat. Boundaries. Boundaries will heal your life.

Yes, boundaries will heal your life. I don't like any to tell them nothing. You can't do this. You can't do this.

And I was listening to a teaching this morning on the podcast. I was listening to somebody dealing with proverbs, the whole chapter of Proverbs 1 this morning, just talking. It was not inspirational, literally, just, you know, monotonous. He was just talking, and this person was talking about. The person who refuses instruction is defined as a fool. So you want to. You want to know whether or not you're a fool when nobody can tell you what to do. And listen to this correction. And instruction is the proof I still care.

Yeah. When I says he chastens those he loves.

If I quit giving instructions and I quit giving any type of correction, you're in a bad place with me because that means I've given up. But boundaries are the things in life that will heal your life. Give me a drug addict. What are they trying to do? Put Boundaries in their life. They can heal it and turn it around. Give me a marriage that has fallen into great distrust. Give it new boundaries, and it can turn around. I mean, over and give a person who has been given to slothfulness and laziness, let them put boundaries in their life. I heard. Saw a guy today, seven things that will change your life. Get up at this time, do this, do this, do this. And then all these people were commenting by the thousands of. I did these five new things. Basically, boundaries.

That's what we're doing with our food. That is a boundary for us. And it is for our protection. It's for our good. Does it feel good? No. Are you hungry?

Yes, sometimes. But my cholesterol was 256.

So now.

And so I'm wanting to bring it down 100 and some points. So what do you do? Something's got to change. So there's. When it comes to food, there's got.

To be a stop.

And I can't go here.

Yep.

I can't go here. If you can praise the Lord, I don't judge you.

But maybe whoever's listening, they need boundaries in their life for other reasons.

Yep. So then he says there's a swamp. And when he talks about that swamp, that is so interesting, he said there's no life there. And what is a swamp? A swamp is water that goes anywhere. That don't have boundaries.

Yeah. That just goes and does whatever it wants.

You have a swamp where there's no banks. You can't get any money for swamp land. You can't build on swamp land. There's. I mean, there's so many. It's mosquitoes. And it's.

Because you saw a bug.

Was there a bug on me? I saw something. I'm talking about mosquitoes. And saw a bug on me when I did that. In other words, nobody says, man, let's go down to the swamp day and have a great time.

Unless you're looking for gators.

Yeah. I mean, you know. Okay, well, you. Here's what you find in a swamp. Trouble.

Yeah.

Okay. You find trouble in a swampiness. I don't want you to live a swampy life.

Right.

I don't want you to live a life with no boundaries. You won't believe how many people get up every day with absolutely no plan.

No life.

No plan. No. No plan, no strategy. And. And those people. When you go out with some of those people and anything goes, that is a tragic life waiting to happen. That is a. That is a. That is a swamp on the way. Because why? You know, and they. And they will brag about the fact nobody tells me what to do. I do it my way.

But their life's going nowhere and their.

Life will turn into a wreck. We watched a chronicle the other night, me and you sat down two nights ago. And a life that had so much potential. But you know what? Zero boundaries in this star's life. And then it was just a tragic end. And I looked at you after we cut off tv and I said, she lost everything. Everything. Why? No boundaries with men, no boundaries with money, no boundaries with lifestyle, no boundaries with drug. No boundaries. And dead and gone at a very young age. It was sad to watch it. But that's the spiritual context that Hope and I, we build these things on now. Hope you something. Let's just be real, honest. A lot of times coming to agreement on boundaries within a marriage is hard.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Because by nature, not by personality, but by gender, male and female, we see things differently.

Right.

We just come at it from a different perspective. We talked all the years our kids were growing up. You know, what does the boundary need to be? And a lot of times, you and I would fall in a different place.

We did like.

Like, you know, we talk about how I didn't want you to cook six different. Me just cook one and make them eat it. And then you know where you came from. And so you would. What do you want? Okay, what do you want? Well, you don't like this? I'll fix you this, you know. And that was Carpenter.

Carpenter restaurant.

That would tear my nerves up. But you had a whole.

I want an Alfredo.

Yeah, you had a whole different vantage point. You came from by. I just want noodles or macaroni. Or macaroni, something like that. And so, you know, we had to come to place where sometimes boundaries, you arrive at them easily. Sometimes difficult.

Very difficult. Especially if you're coming. There's no way you can establish healthy boundaries if you're not healthy. The only way you can establish healthy boundaries is if you're coming from a healthy place. Because you're always going to have ill motives. It's always going to be, if you're not healthy spiritually, then you are going to try to always blur the lines. You're going to try to skirt the system. You're going to try to go underground, go underneath the fence and come up on the other side. So until you really have a healthy relationship, I'm not talking about glow in the dark. I'm talking about pursuit. A healthy, genuine. I'm Pursuing God. Yeah. I fall down sometime, but I get back up. But a true.

You love what God does.

Yeah. Where you are pursuing him first.

You love what God does.

Come to a place. Place where it's not my will, God, but yours. I want to submit my life to you, and I want to do life.

See, you breezed right over that. Do you know how many people are saying, not my will, but yours? Everybody right now saying, my will, my rights, my entitlement, my everything.

You know, I didn't say it was easy.

Yeah, that. I mean, coming to a place before God saying, not my will, thy will be done. That's a tough, tough place to be.

So just an example. What is a boundary? Just in the natural. Your skin. Your skin is a. Is a boundary. Why? Because it keeps the good in your skin.

If you didn't have your skin, keeps your blood in.

Yeah.

Or if your blood gets out, okay. The life is in the blood. You're going to die. So your skin is a boundary. But what does it do? It keeps out disease. It keeps out, you know, bacteria keeps out. And whenever something that's supposed to be kept out, like a virus gets in, it makes you sick. Whenever you let something pass the boundary. Come on, that shouldn't be past the boundary. It makes you sick. It makes you sick. Something in your life is going to get sick. So skin is a boundary. There are relational boundaries. And you know what? Relationship talks can get a crowd anytime you do it. So let's just go there for a minute. Relational boundaries. Relational boundaries are the hardest because they're invisible. I can see my skin. It's keeping stuff out. It's keeping stuff in. Okay, I can see a fence. I'm not going to rake the leaves on the other side of the fence. I'm going to rake the leaves ones on this side of the fence. Because I don't want to rake his leaves. They're his leaves. These are my leaves.

His responsibility.

The fence is defining my property from his property. Okay. There are bedrooms in a house. The kids will say, I don't want him in my room. That's their space. That's their boundary. That's their property. Those boundaries are easily seen. Relational ones are so tough because we let people cross lines. Invisible lines that should have been erected not to let people in. Everybody does not deserve to get all the way in. And I tell people this all the time. There's some people hope that let people in too quick. And I'm like, you just met that person. And the very fact that you're having that conversation. There's been a hundred boundaries already crossed.

Right.

They have not earned that conversation. So there are levels to relationships. Number one, I just met you after that. I've met you and been around you a couple of times. We're an acquaintance, and I can walk it all the way into best friends. There are levels to that. So some boundaries have to be reset because they've earned trust with the last one. So you reset a new one right here. And if they've proved faithful, you can set it up closer. That's called intimacy. You're creating intimacy. What is intimacy?

Information.

Intimacy is not sex. Intimacy is information. There are people all over the world having sex, and they're not intimate at all. But when I start telling you stuff.

Yeah.

When you're. Yeah. And bonds create out of that. The worst thing you can do is have two victims having a conversation. Bonding over pain. That's one of the worst things you do. You start telling another victim everything that's happened to you that they've not earned, and they have to outdo you with their story's got to be a little bit worse than you. And all that pain is creating bonds. All these boundaries are being crossed.

And then that ends up being codependent.

Yes.

Because you're dependent on. By unhealthy things. We have a whole podcast on that.

What is. What is the enmeshment? I forgot the definition of that. When the relationship.

When you're. You're not separate anymore, you have enmeshed. You have.

There's no definition.

There's no definition.

There's no definition where you stop and the other person starts. Okay.

It's codependency.

I knew. I knew that I remembered the word. I just couldn't remember the exact definition for it. So kids.

And there's so many levels to children because there's children in your home. There's teenage children. There's adults.

Let's talk about children. Let's talk about children. And I'm not talking about children with special needs. I'm not talking about children who's going through something. I'm not talking about. Let's just say you just got three kids, you know, and they're four, two, and they're six months.

Wow.

Three kids.

I felt tired when you said that.

I have seen marriages on the brink because mama will not make the kids sleep in their bed. It is amazing what letting a kid sleep in their bed four years has done to that marriage.

Right.

I mean, resentment, cursing, you know, the total, complete loss of intimacy conversation has been shut down.

Rest.

Because two people have not come together and gotten a boundary. Okay. I always. And we always talked about, you know, are our kids going to sleep with us if they're sick, if there's a thunderstorm, if they had a nightmare, yes, there are babies. But just sleeping in our bed. I didn't allow it.

Why?

Because after I've spent all day making sure my kids are taken care of, and we did. That's mine. In your time, I want to hold you. I want to be near you. I want to build my wife. So I think that's one place that we rode to. Healthy boundaries. But, you know, I can't tell you what that should be, but I can tell you you're going to have to do it because the resentment you feel and the wedge in the relationship is not leaving until you've done about it. Okay. What. What age can your kid date?

There's a million things we could talk about with kids for boundaries.

I just want to bring some stuff up. Not to tell you what your boundaries got to be, but to tell you you do have to have one. Yeah, you do have to have one, you know, because there's so much disgruntledness around the house because the boundaries have not been set. Whenever you fail to respect little boundaries, you end up drawing a huge one.

Yeah, like divorce.

That's what I told people. I say, you know what divorce is? Divorce is you cross so many little ones. Now I'm on draw a huge one.

Right.

I'm on dig one you can't get past. That's what divorce is. A thousand bound. A thousand little boundaries have been crossed. So I'm going to put a big one.

You didn't do what you said you.

Were going to do. Exactly. Right.

Or you keep crossing lines or you.

Do things you shouldn't do.

Yes. And you keep doing it and doing it and doing it. So ultimately, I've got to draw a huge boundary to show you I'm not putting up with this big boundary.

And that's where restraining orders and custody battles and all those things come in. All that is, is the little boundaries were never built and respected. So I'm building a big. You know what a jail is?

A boundary.

A jail is you have no internal boundaries.

So we got to give you.

And since you have no internal boundaries, we're going to build a physical boundary to make sure you can't harm yourself or anybody because you have no internal boundaries that we can trust you with. All of these boundaries are inside of you. And You've got to learn how not to cross those lines inside of you men. How much do you talk to women at work before you have crossed a line?

Yeah. What is the line?

What's the line? Has the line been drawn? We know exactly what our lines are. I know what my lines are. We drew those lines. Some of them we didn't drove fast enough, some of them we had to redraw them. But the fact is we have lines when it comes how we respond to the other sex, how much we're going to be around the other sex. And if you don't respect those boundaries, nothing good comes out of it.

Right.

And here again, just throwing up stuff that you need to look about spending. There are certain amounts. Hope you can go spend it. I, I don't care. You ain't got to show me a receipt. It don't matter. But you know, if you were to spend an exorbitant amount of money, you.

Know, to communicate, we both, we have, we know the number, we don't have to say it exactly, but Ronnie and I have already decided years ago what the amount is. We're like you. You can spend whatever you want, whenever you want, but if you try to make a purchase of this amount or more, we have to sit down and have a discussion.

You know, she comes walking in with a bag, hey, what's in that bag?

Nobody wants to live like that.

That's not fun to be with. That's not what.

How much you spend?

Yeah.

No.

So she's a grown adult. She does well. God's blessed her. You do what you want to do with your money. You know, I don't, I don't come in and question all that. Nor do you. Now, I was at a place the other day and our oldest grandson has been wanting something for about three years. No, no, no. Well, finally I'm like, you know what?

You know what? That was a boundary because we said you're not old enough. You're not old enough.

But this. But he wanted a four wheeler. Well, you know, four wheeler wasn't two or $300. So what did I do? You called me baby. Let me tell you what's going on. And it ain't that I'm asking your permission, it's that I want your agreement. And if I would have, since you would not been in agreement with me, I'm just going to tell you the purchase probably would not have been made if I'd sense we were not on the same page with that thing. So boundaries with money have y' all set. Boundaries. Don't just sit there and be resentful.

Right.

Don't be mad.

See, that's the whole thing with boundaries. There has to be a spoken word. This is what my boundary is. This is what I like. This is what I don't like. This is what I want. This is what I don't want. This is what I expect. You have to establish it out loud. And one of the easiest boundaries, the easiest, most universal boundary, is the word no. Do you want to go out with us this weekend? We're going downtown. It's just the girls. Well, if your internal boundary is, I'm not putting myself in that situation. I'm a married woman.

I'm not going out with four single ladies.

Right. So my answer is no, I'm not going. That is my boundary. Hey, would you help pick up my kids tomorrow? I need to run. Da, da, da. No, I'm sorry, I can't. I have to be home to cook.

Here's what people do. Instead of being. There's this irresponsible. Is a bug chasing. I must have good cologne on today.

Or you don't have any.

You stinky have a stinky boundary. I just got through preaching, so I forgot what I was talking about.

Me too.

I got talking about going out. Yeah, okay.

Boundaries.

Saying, here's what people do instead of we talk about people being irresponsible. There's another side of boundaries called being over responsible. People feel responsible for everything and everybody.

Right.

That you want over responsible. As you won't say no, and then what you won't say no to? You sit there and resent it the whole time you're doing it. So you only had one night. This whole week you've worked 70 hours. All your nights have been spoken for. You only have this little bit of time. And then your mother calls and says, will you such and such and such with me? And you don't say no because it's mother. And then you sit there and you're aggravated the entire time. Not at your mother, at the fact you didn't say no.

I can't say no to people.

And when you can't say no to people, that's a swamp, too.

It is. People coming all up into your yard, crossing over your fence.

Now, in our boundary line, this is our life. You know, if you're a banker, if you're a schoolteacher, if you're a nurse, it's something else. In our life, we're in the people. We're in the business of people. You and I have maintained, no matter how much we've been burned, hurt, upset, betrayed, whatever, we still love people and we desire to help people. I want to help people. I want people to live their best life. Having said that, we learned some very hard lessons about. Okay, I don't care if I am a minister. A minister does not mean that I have no boundary. And you have 24 hour a day access to me. Now, I was kind of taught that's what that was. That to give your life to God and be a man of the cloth. You're now no man of the claw. That you no longer really have a life. Know it. What's man of the cloth?

Tickled me. Man of the cloth.

I have a priestly color.

Go ahead.

I have a priestly collar. I have a cloth. Okay. So you distract me. I can't.

I'm a woman of the cloth.

I don't know what I'm saying. Now.

You said we ain't 24. 7 access.

Yeah. You can have 24. 7 access to me. So what did we do? What did we decide to do? One thing we decided to do, we put Monday in place.

Right? Monday's our day off. Unless you're dead or dying, don't call us.

And I get so aggravated. So aggravated. If I break my own rule, I do. Well, this. You know somebody. I want you to come preach. The only day I got that week's Monday. I don't.

You don't even like me to get a doctor's appointment on Monday.

I don't like it so. Because I work real hard and I'm very committed to what I do, but Monday. And so whenever I do jump on the plane, I'm sitting there and I'm almost resentful, but I can't be resentful at the people. They hadn't done anything.

You did it.

I'm resentful that I crossed my own boundary. And so I get back and talk about how tired I am. Why? Because I didn't have a day off that week. And Tuesday I hit it wide open. Only person I can be mad at is me.

So no. The word no is a boundary. How you can start with boundaries? Distance is a boundary. Distance. Proverbs 22:3 says, the prudent see danger and they take refuge.

The.

The prudent see danger and they run from it. Distance. You must distance yourself from danger. That's so hard for some people. So. So many people think, well, I'm just going to go be the light. I'm just going to. They're My friend, I'm just going to help them. Oh, I've known them all my life. The prudent see danger and they take refuge. Stay away.

I hear people say that all the time. You know, God saved me from it and so I can go back and save it. And, you know, and they fall right back into the same thing.

That's like. Like taking an alcoholic and you've sent him to rehab and he's not drinking anymore, but say, okay, now we're going to go get a job at the bar.

I want you to be barker and.

Expect that nothing's going to happen to you. The prudent see danger and they take refuge.

They understand that their weaknesses and they place boundaries and what I call lines of separation.

Right. Distance.

Lines of separation between you and the thing that wants to take you out. Those are all boundaries. What's another set in laws? Those were tough boundaries. I won't talk much. I'll let you speak if you want to speak. I've learned my boundary.

Oh, my God. But I had to set boundaries with my parents.

Okay. I think that's what I wanted you to say.

I had to set the boundary as to how far that could come into our marriage.

It was a huge overreach.

Oh, yeah, it was. I'm not talking about just casual talking or not tomorrow.

Are you coming over for Thanksgiving or not?

Yes. I'm not. No. Or given advice. I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about severe control and manipulation of me where I was not submissive and one with you. So I had to draw a huge boundary.

Yep. And I remember when you came out of your long ministry time that was actually apart for me. One of the things you took care of I did is this will not happen again. This will not happen again.

And now it's very healthy.

Healthy.

Probably ever been.

So in other words, once you said these are lines and you will not cross them, then it got healthy.

Yeah. Listen, guys, this stuff really works.

This stuff works. This stuff really works. I am.

And no, we're not talking about being ugly. We're not talking about being mean to people. The Bible says, speak the truth in love. I mean, sit down. This is the way. This is what we've decided. This is what I've decided. And then you have to have consequences when the boundaries are broken.

Credit. We do not put anything on credit unless we have the money to pay it off.

Right.

Period. Well, I say money. The plan. I have a strategy. Bless. You have a plan. A strategy. Okay. If we're Going to get this, then this. This.

It'll take three months to pay it off.

Yeah. And I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this to pay that off. And that's the way we use our credit. We actually use credit to build our credit. Not because we need to buy a lot of things on credit.

We use it.

But. But here again, people going out running up enormous amounts of credit cards with absolutely no idea.

Yeah. That's just. No.

How they're ever going to bring that back down. But it's very common. It's very, very common. And so, you know, boundaries and spinning. We tithe, period.

Yeah.

If we split pork and beans.

Right. We're going to tithe.

It is a financial dispute. I see me losing about half of my audience right now, where I'm going with this. But what. These are just boundaries that we don't cross.

So boundaries are for your health.

Yep.

It's really for your good, your career.

How far can what you do invade you? How far. I had to say, how far can my church come into my home? I had to make that decision.

It's in every nook and cranny.

You know what I'm talking about, baby.

It's in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the porch.

We've done a very good job of keeping our house a refuge.

It is a refuge.

It's a refuge.

We can't even go on a date and not talk about church.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about how much can what I have to do in ministry interfere with my personal life. And we have marked that off pretty defined. And we've kept our house a refuge, which was very important to me. I'm like, I can't live in this all the time. I work hard, I'll give it all I got. But that's not sustainable to live in an eternal state of ministry, no matter where I'm at geographically. So we've made our home a refuge. And we actually don't bring a lot of people or a lot of things to our home. We don't. Because it. We've kept it that. So some of you, you know, that are trying to build something great. Nothing wrong with that. God. God believes in greatness. But how far can it invade your life?

It's been good, babe.

How far?

And there's a lot more we could talk about. We could talk for hours. But there's a wonderful book called Boundaries, Henry Cloud, and he has.

Is it MacLeod? Or Cloud.

Cloud.

Cloud, Henry. Cloud.

So there's also boundaries in marriage, boundaries with children, boundaries with teenagers.

I need some friends.

Yeah, it's just he has a lot of books, so if you want to know more about it, go buy his books. He's not a sponsor today, but we love his material and it's really helped us and there's so much more to learn about it.

Well, let's end with this. We do have two sponsors today.

We do ourselves.

We're sponsoring ourselves today. Some of our normal sponsors are not with us today, so we've taken this to sponsor our own podcast. I am revisiting a 2009 subject. When I released the book Hope Necessity of an enemy, I had 10,000 Facebook followers. Now I have 1.8 million. And people tell me all the time you need to do a re release. I do believe the book was good. I just didn't have as much following.

So good. Such a great book.

So I'm revisiting that and preaching it on Sunday. I would love for people to. To go to Ron Carpenter.com go to the online bookstore and check out the Necessity of an Enemy. Why? To find out who you're fighting and why you're fighting.

Yeah, you can get it@roncarpenter.com or anywhere.

Books are so sponsored.

Hope Carpenter. Oh, they heard about my book plenty of times.

What is it?

They've heard about my book. Let's talk about your book, the Most Beautiful. The Most beautiful disaster. Hope carpenter.com.

You talk about boundaries a little bit.

I do.

I thought you did. I remember. Yeah, I remember. I thought you touched on it a little bit in one of the.

You can get both of these books anywhere books are sold. Amazon, Walmart, books, a million. All of the places you can get books. Or you can go to Ron.

She's a little bit more fluid and better writer than I am, but both of them are very substantive. And so I believe they can help and change your life. So there's our sponsors today. Guys, we love you. Thank you for being on here. Maybe we didn't give you answers, but maybe we can spark a conversation. We sparked the conversation and got you talking then. I think this has been a success. So until next time, running filtered Hope Unfiltered, Real, raw and relevant. We love you guys. We'll see you later.