Ron + Hope: Unfiltered: Managing Disappointments

Foreign. Hey, everybody, do your thing.

Hey. It's running open filtered. Real raw, relevant. So glad you're here today. What an awesome day.

Didn't I do the last one without you? No. What was it I had to come out here and do? Well, me and Chess did one.

That was several weeks ago, baby.

My timing a little bit off.

We've been very, very, very busy.

Well, we're about to get, like, really busy.

Yes.

What we have been is nothing like what's getting ready to hit. So, anyway, yeah, next week. But you have just finished.

You got three speaking engagements next week.

In three different states.

I know it's crazy, but. Yeah. We've just come off of our women's conference. So amazing. So amazing.

60 seconds. Tell them what happened.

I don't even have words. It was just God. It was so God. How he orchestrated all the speakers and all the messages and the expectancy of the women who came. Just, you know, they were so happy.

So filled with largest registration ever.

And it was just a. It was a wonderful time from top to bottom. It was just over the top.

I'm cracking a cough drop, by the way, again. Yep. Because I'm always talking.

I love those times with the ladies. And we had I Church members flying.

That was big.

That was huge.

I Church is our virtual church community. I'm talking about live streaming or what? No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about. These are people that we pastor. We pastor them virtually, and they are members of Redemption, although they did not attend a physical location. And that's hard for people to understand.

They think they're people. I'll say, are you I Church? They're like, yeah, I'm I Church. I'm like, but how do you watch? And they're like, I just log on on YouTube or I'll watch on Facebook Live. I'm like, that's not I Church. You got to go to I. And then you log in that way, and you can interact with everybody who's a community of believers, the world, you know, who identify as redemption.

About 3,000 people. And our groups, our kids, our youth, our prayer, everything. You're entering a virtual community of believers. That is crazy good. Well, they're starting to come more and more to a lot of our conferences, and they. And they've been going back and forth in chat rooms with each other. But you said it was so cool to watch them meet each other for the first.

Known each other, some of them for years through chat, but had never met in person. And they ran into the room. Because we had a dinner. We hosted our church dinner. And they would run in the room, they go, oh my gosh, you're Heidi. Oh my. And they would just hug. They're like, you're taller in person. You know, it was just so cool to watch God bring that community.

And I just got off a zoom call with our I church pastor, Ashley, and she was just talking about how cool it was. And we're doing it again on the east coast.

Yeah.

And we're going to have several more of them. Yeah, we're going to have a dinner for them. So if you're part of that community as well about all the things that we do media wise, we'd love to see you there. So we're going to talk about today.

We're going to talk about several things, Ronaldo, but we're going to talk about managing disappointment. I mean, because, you know, we all have it. We really do. We've had some disappointing things today happen. Right. I mean, over our life. Life. Just listen, let me stop right here. Christians do a poor job at managing the curveballs of life because we get so bumfuzzled at, oh, I thought life was just supposed to be good all the time. We don't understand times and seasons. We don't understand. God knows more than we know. We don't understand process, realm. We don't understand. We don't. And we get so knocked off our rocker when things happen. And the bottom line is we just got to trust God with our life. And another way to, to get the will of God to happen in our life is to pray in the spirit. We're going to talk about that at the end. So.

Well, we decided to do this about half an hour ago when I got a phone call that was absolutely a kick in the gut. Just a kick in the gut. It was not anybody with a family, not anything like that would affect people. I'm just talking about something that would have been believing looks like it's going one way and you have no reason to believe. And it. And there's a domino effect of many other blessings springing out from. Then all of a sudden the whole rug.

That's right.

It's just jerked out from under you. And so it was right before we had to come and do the podcast. And you said, well, what are we going to do the podcast on? I said, why don't we do it on managing disappointment? Let me make a few statements because I know where we're going to end up. We're going to end up in Actually, what you and I are going to do later today.

Yes.

We're going to go pray in the spirit we are. Those of you who don't know who that is, know what that is and how that works. I'm going to explain it probably in the last five to seven minutes. But let me just come back on the disappointment thing. I have made this statement and I'll add number two to it. What separates those who succeed from those who don't? I said several weeks ago in a podcast. I don't know what the podcast was now, but I just remember saying it in this venue that I think what separates successful people from unsuccessful is how they respond to failure. Because failure is inevitable.

Right?

Failure does not in any way whatsoever discriminate. It doesn't care who you are. It doesn't care what level you are. It doesn't care where you live, doesn't care how much money you have, doesn't care the color of your skin. It doesn't care anything. Doesn't care who your daddy's last name is.

Failure. That means like pain, trouble and traumatic.

That's tried and I failed. I tried and I came up short. I went, I launched out in faith and started my own company. And now I'm bankrupt. And, you know, we can spiritualize it and God's crushing me and I'm in the oil press and we Christians have got all these things. We do. Fact is, you launched out and thought it was going to happen and it did not happen. Okay. And what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

I married this guy, believed it was.

The love of my life. You thought that he was this, and you found out a year later. A year later, he's that, and everything's been a lie. And the rug of your life has been jerked out from under you. You thought you got your dream job. You were there three. They laid you off. They didn't even tell you why they laid you off. You done gone out and bought a new car. You done got a house with a mortgage. That's what I'm talking about, how you respond in those moments. Successful people are not people that don't have failures.

Right.

Successful people are people that make great decisions. In the failure, they get back up. It has been my experience. Hope you can chime in here because we may want to tell a few of ours. It has been my experience that failures usually bring what I call defining moments.

It's true.

I can't look back over any of my great victories and say that victory was a Defining moment. I got four, five off the top of my head. Moments of despair where I can tell you the decisions that I made in that moment define the trajectory of the next decade of my life.

That's true.

And I don't want to do all the talking. You can chime in any way you want to. But so, you know, for those of you who have just experienced. This is not disappointment, this is failure. Disappointment is number two. I'm talking about number one. So if you have just had a significant failure in your life, I don't mean you went bowling last night and didn't hit your normal high score. I ain't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about life. Life was headed one way and it dealt you something else. Totally out of left field, totally unexpected. And now all the cards have changed. And what are you going to do? Are you going to quit? Are you going to give up? Are you going to get bitter? Are you going to get resentful? Are you going to get terrible to deal with? Are you going to be hateful? You know, are you going to be a terrible husband, a terrible father, and nobody wants to partner with you? What are you going to do? And I don't have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. But I do know the fact is, at my times of failure, when me and Hope separated, I knew. The Lord spoke to me one night and said, you thought the greatest sermon would be preached with your lips. He said, but, Ron, it will be preached with your life. Basically. Choose carefully. God was telling me the next few decisions you make will determine whether or not you'll even be in this ten years from now. And it was at a point of devastation.

Yeah, I think the hardest things, the greatest. Let me say, the greatest things to grab a hold of. And the greatest, sweetest times and seasons of our life have come after the hardest. I'd say that the toughest, the the most strenuous, the most painstaking, the sweetest times have come after those, you have.

To depend on God. Because the fact is, it's a double negative. Your most important decisions are being made at the time you're probably least able to make them.

Yeah. When you're pinned up against the wall.

Your emotions are all over the place. Honestly, your problem is, you know, like this. You know, it's as small as a cough drop.

Yeah. But you got it.

But it's so close you can't see anything else because it's right up here in your face. And so you got to. You got to look at yourself. You Know when I have been dealt failure, Number one, first of all, ask your question. The Bible talks about, examine your ways.

Yeah.

You know the first thing I do when something don't happen, right? Is I go back and say, okay.

God, did I miss you?

Yeah.

Did I sin? Did I do something?

Is there something in my life? Did I screw up? Was I not listening? Did you try to tell me something? I was hardheaded. I don't go back and start pointing fingers and blaming. I start saying, is there anything wrong with Ron? Okay, Lord, was there anything wrong with what I was believing for?

Yeah.

Okay, did you really say do that? Did I go out behind my house and try to walk on the water on my swimming pool because Peter walked on the water or did you tell me to walk on water?

That's good.

Did you speak to me? Was this something you even wanted in the first place? Because God is not obligated for visions. He didn't dream.

That's good.

He's not obligated for that. Third thing I tell people when they fail. Who are you around? Who are you with? Who are you partnering with? Who are you hanging around? Who are you dating? Who are you running with? At those times, all these things have to happen and then you've got to come to a place at this moment. This is the way I tell people. When you're in failure and a lot of things are stacked up against you, you solve the problem closest to you. Jesus did not feed 5,000. I know that little thing in your Bible at the top of the paragraph says he did. Jesus fed 12, the 12 didn't feed 5,000. The 12 fed 50 at a time.

Right?

They broke them down inside of 50. So Jesus took an overwhelming problem and.

Look at this, into bite sized pieces.

Into bite size pieces and he broke it down. That's what I tell people. Break your problem down. And then what is the one closest to you? I'm giving you valuable information right now. When you solve that one, go to the next closest one to you. When you solve that, go. But don't step out and say, I got to solve all 716 of them today. What's the one closest to you? So those are some things. Number two, the difference between successful and unsuccessful people to me, 55 years old, been in this 33 years. It's how do they manage disappointment?

Okay, before we come back, before we go to that, we're going to go to our sponsor, it's Nutrafol. And we've talked about these guys several times. But I mean, Ron you can be a testimony to neutrophil. You've been taking neutrophil two or three months.

Two bottles.

Two bottles. So that's two months. Can you tell a difference?

Can you tell?

I can. I can. In your hair. Your hair. And not just. I'm talking about even the growing of hair. We've had to cut your hair a lot more. Your neck, it's just growing. It' becoming healthy. So over 80 million men and women in the US experience thinning hair. Go ahead.

Go ahead.

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Let me ask you a question about that. Why is it when you get a little older, that hair stops growing on your head but starts growing in your.

Ear, in your chin and your nose?

I went in there the other night. Now, y', all, I hope don't mind. I hope it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. But I went there and she had a little tweezer she did. I said, what are you doing? She said, I'm getting these little hairs off my chin. I'm like, I don't want to know.

That and it's the same thing I did to you today.

I don't want to know that. And then she came to me this morning.

I said, come here.

She said, I got to get rid of that. And I had a.

Old man hairs.

I had a wild eyelash.

You did. You had one hair coming out here, and you had old man hairs in your ear.

Out of my ears. Out of my. Just stay right here. Just grow on my head. Just. We're fine if you're. It might be neutrophil, but anyway, making all my hairs grow and all my eyelashes grow. Disappointment number two, people that succeed versus those that tend not to be as successful is I have encountered many people that, once they get disappointed, hope, they just never recover.

Yeah.

I don't know.

They just spiral.

Yeah. I don't know if that's. I don't know if that's a spiritual thing. I don't know if it's a personality profile type, maybe a little bit of all of it. But there are some people that just. They just don't seem to be able to pull out of it if they ever get the wind knocked out of them. And I don't know what that is.

They haven't built endurance.

Everything in life that is sweet, that is significant, that is successful has gone through some type of process.

Yeah. It just does.

You can't get food on your table without it going through a process. You can't give olive oil to cook your food in unless there's a process. You can't put a diamond on your fiance's finger without that rock going through a process. You can't mature without going through a process. When I was growing at night, I used to have terrible leg aches because you're going through a process. All of life has process. So to arrive at any destination, there is a process involved. And usually it's not the destination that defines you, it's the process.

Yeah. Because what is the process? The process is for potential.

The process is for potential.

The process so that you can reach.

The potential and you can maintain it when you get there.

Yes.

Always said it's a lot easier to obtain than it is to maintain. So the process is enabling you to maintain the blessing.

Right.

So when the blessing breaks out, the process prepares you.

You have built endurance.

The process has prepared you for it. So if you're one of those people that, you know, one thing can happen to you and you're still reeling from it, you know, five years later, I encourage you today to dial in tight because I'm Going to try to give you some things in the next few minutes. Got a lot of wonderful things happening at Redemption. Redemption everything. Redemption now is a big word. There's a lot of wheels and subsidiaries and arms of Redemption. There's a lot of nonprofits under Redemption. But there was one big thing that was going to have an effect on everything. And we got a call that it's either delayed or denied, literally right before we come in and did a podcast. And everything was supposed to be finished by the end of office hours today. So it was like a. I mean, you came in.

It was like a what?

I mean, you walked in the room and I was sitting there looking like, you know, I was sitting there like, wow, really? I got to deal with this.

Yeah. Like, all the blood had been drained.

From your body, and a lot of machinery has already been enacted for all this. And so you're sitting there thinking about.

What do I do for this, what.

Do I do for that? You got all these what I do's coming up. But the first thing you got to do is manage those extreme feelings. I'm sitting in a chair and my own feelings. I really just kind of want everybody to go away and leave me alone and just kind of let me process the fact that I am God's man of faith and power, that I am the one I want my whole family to believe in, to know that my dad has relationship with God, all those things. But the fact is, I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed. It's a curve ball. It's going to cost me a lot of work. It's going to cost me a lot of energy to redirect and to navigate a new path. And I'm sitting there, I'm disappointed, and I'm dreading all the energy I got to pour in to trying to define what do I do from here. So this is, you know, the principles.

We'Re talking about apply to everybody's disappointment.

But here's where we're different. You can't be. You can't be like a person who has no God.

Right.

And there is one major consistency in my life. When I am down, I go to the rock that is higher than I am.

I probably won't see you tonight. You'll probably be in the sanctuary till midnight, praying.

When I'm down, I go to God. When you're disappointed, disappointment is usually tied to unexpectation. Something unexpected.

Yeah.

Or either you wouldn't have been disappointed, you got a result you weren't expecting, you got a response you weren't expecting. You got an answer you weren't expecting and you're disappointed. I remember Myles Monroe talked about dis meaning is the same word as miss appointment. Disappointment is a missed appointment. You had an appointment with something and it was missed. And so what I do, I don't have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 like I did on the first window. Who are you hanging around with? Managing disappointment is where do you draw from? Because life just went out of you, right? You know, you set your expectations. You can't serve God without setting an expectation. You can't, you know, the man of God told him, said strike the ground and he only struck it three times. And the man of God was furious because you got to expect more. Did God deliver us from low expectation? But the vulnerability is sometimes you expect things and they just don't pan out and you don't have a reason for.

It and you're low. It knocks you down.

You get low. It does.

So where do you go? What do you do?

Here's what I do. So the first thing the Bible says, building yourself up in the faith. My faith has been diminished. Now doubt and unbelief wants to set in.

That's right.

And the Bible says that he who is double minded can receive nothing from the Lord. So I can't be. Well, I sort of believe and I'm sort of doubt a double minded man will receive nothing. So I've got to stay in faith. I've got disappointing news. But my faith cannot suffer. Whoo boy, that's a hard debate.

It is.

So number one, I know faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I got to get in a place where I got to hear God speak. And number two, I build back up my faith praying in the Holy Spirit. Now I'm going to act like we have an audience that has no idea what I'm talking about.

Most of them probably don't.

Okay. There is a subsequent experience with God that was the original intent of Jesus coming in the first place. And it was that the same spirit that Jesus had in him, the Holy Spirit. The Bible says the works that he did, he did by the Holy Spirit. The only difference between Jesus and us, the Bible says he had the spirit without measure.

Right? We have a measure.

We have a measure. The Bible said we've been given a measure of grace, a measure of gift, a measure of faith. We've been given a measure of everything. Jesus functioned without a measure. So Jesus came to remove our sin so that the same Holy Spirit that lived in him by which he did signs, wonders, miracles, and knew everything that he knew came by that Holy Spirit. He wants that now to dwell on the inside of us. And the Bible says in First Corinthians 3 and First Corinthians 6 that we now are the temple Holy Spirit.

Right.

The Bible says that one of the gifts that the Holy Spirit brings is the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues, which we have a whole generation of believers that know nothing about it because we have a whole generation of teachers that won't teach it.

Right. It's not talked about.

Okay. It's not talked about.

It's too spooky.

It's not sung about, it's not written about, and it doesn't make for polished church.

Right.

And we don't want to make people feel uncomfortable in our no offense, age that we live in. So we're taking the Holy Spirit out of it. Well, here's the danger in moments like this, Hope. The reason I don't go into a downward spiral that lasts seven years is because I know who to go. I know how to build myself back up.

Yeah. The most holy faith. Praying in the Spirit.

In the Holy Spirit. So when you pray in the Spirit, it is a language, a heavenly language that God has given you. And the Bible says in First Corinthians 2, when you pray in the Holy Spirit, you are praying the mysteries of God.

Yeah. The things you don't know.

Okay. Romans 8 says, when we don't know what to pray as we ought, the Holy Spirit himself makes intercession. I don't know how it can be any more plain than people just overlooking it and saying, I'm not going to read that page.

Right.

I just don't understand it unless they just say I'm skipping that page. He says, the Holy Spirit himself. Okay, I got hit with news. I do not understand it. I don't know why. I can't answer any questions about it. If you started asking me. I literally said, I don't know. But I'm itching to go get with God because when I pray in the Spirit number one, the disappointment begins to be flushed and dissipates and I'm built back. I feel my inner man becoming strong again and my faith getting centered again. And I'm not moved by what I see, hear, touch, smell, taste, feel. In other words, my surroundings has having no effect on me because my spirit man is confident and it's settled and looking not at the things which are seen. I go to that verse all the time. But the things which are unseen. When you pray in the spirit, you have transitioned out of the things around you.

Never passes your mind.

You have hit an eternal realm, an unseen realm where all your answers lie anyway. What, you will lie to you?

Yeah.

And hope the enemy will tend to let. I just may have got an answer for myself. Jesus told Peter when he wanted to come out of the boat in the storm, he said, come on. And he went and he stepped out. And the Bible says Jesus walked on water. Peter walked on water. He did not walk on water. He walked on the word. If Jesus had not have said come, he would have sunk to the bottom of the sea. He had a word, and that word, let the miracle happen.

That's right.

Then the Bible says, and he saw the wind and the waves and he began to sink. Do I focus on what he said, or do I focus on the winds and the waves?

That's good.

Because wherever my focus is will determine whether I'm in disappointment or whether I'm in pain.

That's good.

There's always an assault on your senses at the moment God causes you to believe, wants to give you bad information or let you see something to the contrary. I've said many times, the enemy's job is to build something around you that contradicts what's in you.

Because God didn't lie. And God don't change his mind.

God doesn't change his mind. So I began to pray in the Spirit, my heavenly prayer language that God has given me. And the Bible says, for the Spirit knows the mind of God and prays in perfect accordance with his will. That's Romans 8. You go to 1 Corinthians 14, it says that the mind is unfruitful when someone is praying in the Spirit, because in the Spirit he utters mysteries. So right now, what God's doing is technically a mystery to Ron Carpenter.

Right?

But in the Spirit. In the Spirit, I can utter mysteries.

That's right. I can get in one accord.

Hallelujah.

What's going on in spirit.

So I can bypass the biases, the limitations of my mind, my wants, desires, my wants, my desires, my agendas, selfish ambitions, vanity, all these other things, we got to make sure that they don't pollute the will of God.

That's right.

I can get. I can bypass every one of them. And when I pray in the Spirit, it is the spirit of sonship crying out to Abba, Father. So the spirit of a son crying out to the Father. So when I do that, when I'm praying like that, I have Moved away from natural things. I have began to enter into spiritual things. And then I'm beginning to release out of my mouth faith for things that I do not know.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. I am right now in a state of. It's a mystery. And I do not know. I have no recourse in the Bible other than to pray in the Holy Spirit.

No, that's it. That's why I told you today. I said we got to pray in the Spirit for two straight days. We got to pray in the Spirit.

I would just encourage those of you now say, pastor Ron, I got to be honest with you. I was turned on to Yalls podcast by a friend of mine. I've never even heard what you're talking about. Number one, I'm sorry if that's true. That is a sad indictment against where we are as teachers with all tv, all the Internet, all the Facebook lives, all the Instagram posts, and nobody even knows that the whole reason Jesus came was so that the Holy Spirit could have a personal relationship with you and you could walk in supernatural things and don't have to be moved by everything around you.

So good.

That was the whole intent of God in the first place. I apologize on behalf of the church if you've been with God any amount of time and this has not been made known to you. Secondly, I would tell those of you who have faced some major disappointment, go ask God to fill you with his wonderful Holy Spirit, and he will. And the Bible says. And they spoke in other tongues as the Spirit gave utterance. The Holy Ghost doesn't speak in tongues. He just brings to your mind what to say and you give it a voice.

That's why it's the most holy faith, because you don't understand what you're saying unless you find.

I've always defined. He says it's the most holy faithful. He didn't say it was holy faith. He didn't say it was more holy faith. He said it was most. You can't increase on most. So the most holy faith Ron Carpenter can operate in is praying to a God he can't see, he can't feel.

In a language he doesn't understand.

And he's praying things he don't know in a language that he don't understand for results that he don't even know what they're supposed to be.

And this is not. Praying in the Spirit is not for show. It's not for church. It's not looking spiritual. It's for these things. It's for the mysteries of God. To be revealed in your life. It's praying the will of God over your life and your situation and your circumstance.

I am. I just want to encourage somebody right now who is in the middle of not knowing and who's in the middle of managing your disappointment. My Bible tells me the way I build myself back up. How many times have we been knocked down to the ground? I mean, just knocked down to the ground. You know, an hour before church.

Yeah. Yeah. With whatever it was, kids, money or two.

Fifteen in the morning on Saturday night. You know, six hours before church, Just knocked to the ground.

Our marriage. I believe today our marriage is put back together because I committed to pray in the Spirit every single day for 30 days over our marriage. I prayed when I could see nothing, when. When all hope was gone. I. I mean, there was nothing in the natural to say that our marriage was going to work. I prayed in the Spirit and I prayed and I travailed and I cried and I prayed. And because I did not know what to pray, I had no. No words to say. God, what I needed, what I wanted, what I hope to see. Because you said no. It was over. It was gone. There was no hope. But I prayed in the Spirit and prayed in the Spirit. And who arrested you? The Spirit arrested you in the middle of the night.

In the night. And, you know, and when you pray in the Spirit, then you need to expect again. Yeah, expect again. You know, they were praying. The Bible says that Peter was in jail and in prison, and the saints were praying for him to be free. The angels came and threw open the doors. He was set free and went and knocked on the door, and a girl named Rhoda answered and said she saw him and shut the door back in his face. Why? Because sometimes you're praying for something and really don't even believe God can do it. The answer showed up at the door, and they shut the door on the answer's face. So you expected and you got disappointed. Well, I ain't doing that again, Pastor. Because if you don't expect nothing, you don't have to worry about getting disappointed. That's a ridiculous way to do it. That is, you build yourself back up and you place your expectations again and then watch God come through.

Amen.

I can't explain all the difficulties. I can't explain the times and seasons. But I will tell you this.

It's a way to get out of it.

Being confident of this.

Yeah.

God, who has begun a good work in you, we'll be faithful to complete it.

That's good. Ron.

And with that, we conclude this podcast.

With that. Let's go pray in the spirit. We love you guys. We know life happens. Life happens to every single one of us. None of us are exempt. But listen, you have a God who loves you. You have a God who wants the best for you. And you need to get in one accord with him. Go pray in the spirit. We love you. Till next time, Ron. And hope unfiltered.