Ron + Hope: Unfiltered - One Moment Can Change Your Life

Foreign.

Hello, guys. Welcome to Ron and Hope. Unfiltered. It's real, it's raw, it's relevant. He's got a big old coffee dribble on his. Come here.

Look.

No, it's still there, Ryan.

Yeah, well, it's twice as dribbled on me. I said, what's that?

Well, clearly you don't have the lid on right.

I need coffee. Baby, I'm just.

Anyway, we are so glad you're here today.

Long time. You know what?

Yes, you have. You've seen me all day.

All day. It's morning, baby.

You've seen.

I got in late last night. You were gone for like nine days.

Why do you exaggerate? It was not nine days.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Eight days, Ron. Anyhow, eight days.

I was just not off gallivanting.

That doesn't say why. I just said I ain't seen you. I missed you. Oh.

I missed you. Where you gonna take me out to eat?

I don't know. I was thinking Ryan's, like Chili's, Subway, Boston Market, something like that, right?

We got to save our money. It's Christmas time.

Nope.

These grandkids got a list.

A list. I heard Aria circled every single thing in the book.

Yes, that. You know how you get the little Target books in the mail? Or the little.

Chandler said she circled every last one.

Circled every single thing. She said, oh, I want this. Oh, yeah. I think I need this. And Roland wants this. And I want this. So. Man. Man, you got a lot to buy.

Let me give him a 60 second. What she did to me.

Oh, my goodness.

I told this in the church service. And they screamed in the church service. Aria is Chanlin, my youngest. Chandler is our youngest. She's their oldest. Yeah, she's their oldest.

Youngest.

And we made her. She is. She is. Hope time. About three. Okay. Cause you know, in my world, Hope feels as though she rules the world. And so, Aria.

I'm offended.

Aria is a diva. Time one million.

Aria's on another level, right?

She is. And where did she learn that? I just do not know.

I don't either.

Because the only women she knows is her mama and her grandma are Gigi. But she his boy. She's got it down past. So she gets hurt. She gets hurt. Her little brother jumped on her back. She couldn't get her hands in front of her. She busted her little face on the floor and hurt her nose. They were scared it was broken. Come to find out, thankfully, she said, I have blood. It was not. So she is There. They tell me what's happened. They want me to call. So I call. And she has been screaming. Her face is swollen. Her eyes are puffy. She is wiping. She's crying so much that her hair is like stuck to her face where the tears are. And I said, baby doll, I said, what can man man do? And she's five. So she started doing like this. She said, well, this is a quote. This is a quote.

Well, she dried her tears too, didn't she?

There is this gift. I just shook my head. There is this gift. And then she told me about some hamster.

Yes. In a cage.

And she wants. That was 49.99.

But now, because we'd already bought one. We'd. I had bought her, and she was.

Sick and she messed it up.

And she said I was. Because you said, well, where's your other one? Didn't Gigi buy you that? She said, I froed up in it when she was sick, she threw up in the hamster cage. So it was 49. I just bought it a month ago. So I went online. These scanning scalpers make me so mad. It was $129 at Walmart.

Tripled, tripled inside of just a few weeks.

She said, oh, I'm not doing that. Ron said, yes, you are.

These kids, man. I'm telling you, she worked that thing. She got it, too. Got it delivered to her house because I couldn't take it. But anyway, let's talk today. I got something.

There's this gift.

There's this gift. I'll never forget that.

That I want.

She just. There is this gift.

You're ignoring me.

Gosh.

There is this gift.

Gift.

It's Christmas. Christmas time is here.

There's the rental house we just moved into. My closet is in a whole another room.

It's just a small closet.

It's in a whole another room.

I. I mean, I couldn't.

I got to go in the guest room.

I organized closet to the hilt.

Yeah, but you talking about gifts. Talking about gifts. There's nothing else.

Santa Claus isn't really big. It would just tiny little things.

Yeah. Let's move on right here. Let's move on right here. Okay, what are we talking about today? I want to talk about defining moments. Last week on our podcast, we talked about things that have affected us on our journey. Not it's leadership, but it wasn't like the seven laws of leadership. It was number one, you have to progress your life. You had talked about the ability to develop self discipline. There's nobody that's ever done anything. Business, athletics, Olympians, don't matter. Extremely, extremely disciplined. Extremely disciplined. And I talked about also the right voices in your life. Right voices, mean right choices. You got to be careful who you give your ear to. And the fact that we have a generation that leans toward not listening to anybody.

So they're going nowhere.

So that basically means the only way God can teach you is through pain. I don't want to learn like that. So the third thing that we talked about was exposure. Just at different times in life, God would give us insight into another level and how that other level functions. And then we would come back and employ those things in our life, and it would take you to that level. So when you see it, you come back and do it, and it elevates you to that. Then you climb to another one. And such has been our life. It really has been that way. Every time we had conquered one level, God always exposed us to another level. So you just keep pressing toward the mark of the high call in God. And I want to talk about defining moments now. Let me tell you about defining moments. You do not have a defining moment every Thursday. Okay. Defining moments. I. I don't have data on this. I hadn't googled it. Maybe four or five. In your whole life. Literally in your whole life. What do I mean by defining moment? A defining moment is a moment where the decisions that you make be the moment good or be the moment bad. The decision that you make in that moment will define the trajectory of your life, the entirety of your next season, Whether that season be 10 or 15 years or whether it be 10 or 15 months. That moment, I tell people a lot of times, I say, you're in a defining moment right now. You got to be very careful the decisions you make, because right now what you do will define the next 10 years of your life. So you only have several of those here. Again, this is not scripted. We do not script this. I have no idea how she's going to answer. I'm curious as to whether some of the defining moments in your mind are the same as mine without us comparing notes. So I'm just curious. I started with you last week. I'm going to start with you again. Looking back, life, family, ministry, it doesn't matter. Things you look back on, that right there changed me forever. That right there changed things forever.

For me, it would be college, where I chose to go to college.

Did you have a scholarship to another place?

Several places. That's life choices. That's who your friends are going to Be. That's who you're going to meet. That's where I met you. That's where my life was radically changed.

Than how terrible your life would have been.

Yes.

If you would not have met me.

But listen to this, though. This is key. Ron.

She went right over that.

This is key. I had three more scholarships at three other colleges that were much larger scholarships.

Than the one where you.

Than the one that I chose. I chose Emanuel College because I had that feeling, that gut feeling that this is where I'm supposed to be. I felt the presence of God there. I didn't feel it at the other places, although two of them, two other ones were Christian schools. But when I walked on the campus at Emanuel College, I knew I felt that on the inside. And then I saw that blonde run, running up and down the basketball.

Did you feel God first or did you see Ron first?

Well, they're both the same.

I was wanting you to put the two together.

You can't separate them. No, you can't separate them.

You can't separate them.

So I saw you, and I'm like, oh, my goodness. So college for me was huge.

And you went home and told your mother, what, after you saw me?

Ron, I just want the people to hear some attention today.

I just want people here.

I went home and told my mom and dad. And listen, this is literally the first weekend I saw him and met him.

We weren't dating or anything.

No dating. We just spoke. We talked. I drove your car, made you break up with your girlfriend. All that good stuff happened.

But I didn't get no sugar or nothing.

No sugar? No. And then I went home and told my mom and dad. I said, I think I have found the man that I can marry. Literally said that at 18 years old. And they said, hope, come on. I said, no, it was something different. I said, when I met him, I felt something different.

You said my cheeks were red.

You were. You were running on the basketball court, and you got those little flushed cheeks. They were so cute.

And my boxers hung down under my.

Because you had to layer because your butt was so little.

No, it wasn't that. It was creating a swag.

No, that was not it.

No, baby, Even in the 80s, I was creating grip. I was creating grip.

That was not it.

I played basketball with my boxers hanging out my.

You layered. Cause your butt was so little.

It had nothing to do with my butt. I have a very muscly butt.

No, you don't.

It's not a fat butt.

No, no.

It's very muscly.

Anyway, let's stop this right here and talk about our wonderful sponsor.

I'm behind in where I got to defend myself.

No, it's not big, baby. It's not big at all. It's tiny.

Maybe it's. It's not like what you say.

Maybe at the end of the podcast we can show a picture of it. I don't know. But stick around. Who knows? You gonna model? Please don't do it to them. Don't do it.

These. 32. 34.

Oh, right. Okay. 32 my butt. Okay, here we go. Goodness, Ron, you're hard to do. You just. You veer off. You veer off.

This is the time I get to cut loose.

Is that right?

I don't get to do it no other time. So I take my podcast to cut loose.

Well, we love you and you're small. Behind. Yeah. Listen, no matter how much you try to prepare for the holiday season and it's here. Have you got my present?

Yep.

You do?

Yep. What? Yep.

Listen, I got a list this long.

I'm sure you haven't looked this morning. You've seen it.

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Got it. Don't forget the promo codes. I said I forgot what I was talking about. I was talking about my.

Your rear end.

Talking about my measurements, weren't you? My body.

Your rear end.

I told you I was 32. 34. And you scoffed at me.

Because that is a lie. That's a blatant lie. That's how much you were when we met, not now.

I've just increased my muscle mass since then, haven't we?

Okay, okay.

I'm 54. You like me better at 19 or 54?

54, definitely.

All right.

Definitely.

Defining moments.

College. For me. That was the first one for me. College.

One more before I move on to me. One more. They don't have to be in succession or on a timeline. Just you look back on this. This changed the trajectory of my life.

Defining another, I mean, major, Major, Major is when you and I separated in 2013, and I had no hope of us being restored.

I don't even know if that was a defining moment. There was a fork in the road this way or this way.

Right. But right then, I had to make some choices for Hope, not even putting you in the equation or ministry.

How are you going to live your life?

What will I do with myself at this point? And I decided there to hunker down and to dig to the bottom of the junky, messy pile of my life and get to the roots of what had led me down the road. I had chosen to go down and fix it. Not blame, not accuse, not. Not take responsibility. I chose to take responsibility. I chose to go low. I chose to be embarrassed. My name was just mutilated publicly. But I chose to dig in. And I said, God, if I never get any of that back, I want you to fix me. And that was major, major for me. And now listen, it's like Job. I got double for my trouble. He fixed me, and I got it all back and better.

You did. You're in your best life. There's no doubt about that. And I've told you that several different times. I have. I'm going to talk about a defining moment in ministry then, a defining moment in us. I think there were two. There were three in ministry. Three that stick out. They were probably eight, 10 years apart from each other. Number one was deciding to start a church independent. That may not mean a lot to other people because that's the only thing they've known is redemption just kind of out there by itself and its own entity. But me and Hope both grew up in a very, very strict, very, very rigid denominational environment, of which my dad was an overseer. And the first waves that we made at 21 and 20 years old was to go out and do an independent work. That may not mean much to anybody now, but in 1990, that was taboo. That was a no, no. And so we started a ruckus basically right out of the gate doing that right there. And that was a defining moment because although I love the church, it's not known for its diversity, and diversity was in our hearts. And we just knew we had.

Because we believed it's biblical.

Yes. We just had to get outside the system because we knew the system would be very difficult for that vision to come to pass within the parameters of that system. So that was a defining moment. I do not think had we not have made that decision, the things that we've seen happen in ministry would have happened. I really don't.

And, you know, another thing with that, that defining moment caused us to live by faith. Because when you lost support by denomination, you know, they pay your salary, they pay the rent, they pay. You know, there are. There's stuff in motion.

There's stuff built in.

Yeah, there's stuff in motion. And for us, we really had to believe God for every single thing we did. We had to go out and try to raise money, like, please Support me, send $25 a month, you know, to churches. And. And we just truly had lock arms, hunker down, believe God. And you know what? God honors faith.

He came through every time.

He honors faith came through every time.

The second one in my mind is we went for years, you know, we may have had someone here or there, but we never had any multicultural breakthrough. We may have had a person attend or interracial couple come in, but we were pretty much white in my mind, as I remember correctly, about seven or eight years. And then I remember, you know, Robert Gray, Ken Hodges, and Carol at that time, Kemp, Carol came in and they sat on that row together. I think their wives were with them. And they came and sat on that row. And of course, in that lily white building, they stuck out like, you know, sore thumbs. But I had been praying and praying and praying, preaching against racism, preaching against preaching, kingdom, diversity, multiculturalism. And I remember we had a side door that went straight to the parking lot. It wasn't no car. Do you know, you open the door, you just. In the parking lot. And I went out in the parking lot and ran after the service, around to the front, stopped them before they got in their car and begged them.

And they became some of our best friends.

Begged them to stay. They became best friends, but they also became the door, the door to breakthrough. That was like 98, 98ish. Then 1999, Tommy Barnett, the mustard seed, the multiplication anointing, the mustard seed. That I still have in my closet right now, in a jar. In a jar. That he came and through it that day, released the multiplication anointing and our life exploded. There was a moment, this was not a process, this was a moment where God brought two things together. The first fruits of our multicultural breakthrough. And a man of God to release a multiplication anointing. And all I know is we went from a small congregation in a little metal warehouse building, a 22 acre campus, sprawling campus that had tens of thousands of people that were rolling through there, and it was just unreal. And that happened in a little span of time.

Yeah. And the thing about defining moments is they don't look like defining moments at the time. But I remember one of our mentors who's gone on to be with Jesus, Tony Miller, used to say, big doors swing on little hinges. Big doors swing on these little hinges. And I don't know that we knew at the time what was happening at those moments, but God knew.

They changed everything.

They did.

They changed everything. They. They turned it into. I hate the term megachurch. I hate that term. But because it's the only one we've been getting, it turned it into a. From a little community group of people to really a global entity in a small amount of time. Only God can do that. Nobody's got the ingenuity to pull that off. God did that in a small amount of time. And I look back on that, that kind of. It wasn't a day, it was kind of a year. That 89, that, that 98 to 99, right in there, everything just exploded. And all of a sudden we went from leading it to trying to catch up with it.

That had kicked in. Why? I believe too, because of our faithfulness. Up until that point. You used. You preached a sermon, Ron, years ago about.

You remember?

Yep, I do. About be faithful, be faithful, be faithful. Be faith. Work, work, work, work. Then boom. Work, work, work, work, work, work.

I was going to talk about that to the staff this morning. You're bringing that up. That's what I told you. I got in the shower.

We are the same people.

You remember? When I got out of the shower, I said, I think God just gave me a word. That's what I was going to habakkuk to.

We are the same people.

Wait though. The vision. Tarry. Wait for it. The word wait there means the blast of a horn.

Yes. Blast of air.

The blast of air means it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Boom. You know, and that's the way it was. Because it looked like so long nothing was happening.

Yeah.

And man, what you're doing is you're. You're building up for the blast. And so, yeah, that was big. I would say, personally, the biggest defining moment in my life is. Is when I decided to reconcile with me. Yep. When I decided to reconcile in my woundedness and in my hurt, I just. I wanted to just get away, away from it. And had nothing to do with love or not loving. It just had to do with, you know, didn't want to hurt, didn't ever want to feel like that again. No. It's just. It was so big. It was so much to overcome. It was such a. I was already tired.

Yeah.

And the mountain seemed so tall that I would have to climb that. You know, just. Let's just call it a day, you know, and do our thing. And then I had that night. I won't take people into all that. I had that night where I had this moment with God and it was a defining moment.

I write about that in my book.

Yeah. It's almost.

If they want to hear the rest of that, they write my book.

The most beautiful disaster that night, whatever it was God did, it was almost like a Christmas carol story. When he was visited with the three different things that night and got up next morning, he was a different guy. I had a night like that. I went to bed one way and by 10 o' clock the next morning I was another way. And I look back on that now at the restoration of God. The double for your trouble to those who have really gone through, like Job. And I wouldn't trade places with anybody in the entirety of the world right now, maritally, relationally, ministry wise. Because hope God will do what he says he will do. Okay.

I know he will.

He will do what he says he will do. And I look back on that, had I made the wrong decision, what I would have done to my family, the generational curses I would have started in my family that would have spiraled through my bloodline. The immediate impact to kids and grandkids. The breaking up of everything God had put together.

Right.

It was that moment. That moment was that we had a process after that that was long. But in that moment, I made a decision. I do not want my family to break up.

But too, just like we've talked about before, it was that relationship with the Holy Spirit. Even for me choosing a college, it was that relationship already with the Holy Spirit leading me. That's what he does. He is our lead. He is our guide.

He.

So he led me I could have chosen differently and my life would be different. But he was leading you. He was guiding you that whole night because you were not willing to bend and break. So the Holy Spirit had to wrestle you to lead you, and you had to obey it.

Well, the Holy Spirit didn't have to wrestle you because I saw pictures of some of the other guys you dated.

Oh, my word.

And so there wasn't a lot of wrestling.

Ron.

She walked into that. She walked under that drip. When she said when she got in, she got around that Emanuel College drip that I had dripping.

Those double shorts.

It was done. She saw me play. She'd never seen anybody play basketball with boxers coming out the bottom of the drip.

It really was a size. I mean, here to report.

They were light blue.

Yeah, I know. And you kept them for many years. They were terry cloth.

No, not terry cloth.

The box shorts, Ron, you had terry cloth shorts that you wore.

Those are girl shorts.

Your jeans.

No.

Yes.

No, I did not.

This is real raw, relevant and truthful folk. You hear me?

I never owned Ron Terry.

Close carpenter.

They were yours. I never owned.

You're gonna be struck. I'm running off this set.

I said I never owned any.

Yes, you did.

They were yours. You need to be grateful.

Oh, my.

Because I saw what I rescued you from.

You are telling a true story. You are telling.

Anyway, defining moment. Let's say one more and we'll go over them quickly because here, again, we're running out of time. Defining moments in your mind. Do you have another one?

Right? You didn't got me so messed up over them. Terry cloth short. If y' all could see.

I don't know what you're talking about.

They look like a little girl. Like a little size 10.

And girl. I don't know what she's talking about. Anyway, Terry Claus short. She making stuff up.

Another defining moment for us was moving to California.

Yep.

Moving to California. That was huge. It was so huge.

Because people only. Yeah, people only do stuff like that when something is bad or deteriorating or falling apart or you've just had to make sense. That's what I tell people. I said we had just experienced the greatest statistical year in history, in history, ever, in 27 years.

We didn't want to move. That was another thing.

That's why I never took the opportunity serious. Because I was just disinterested. I was totally not interested. But it is the most unreached area of America. It is an area that is known to be full of atheists and people that mock God and scoff at God. It is an area that is almost too expensive to go in there and try, you know, try to do something. And if you fail, you just would lose all kinds of money. There's no prepackaged Christians there by the untold thousands waiting for you to show up. So there was nothing attractive about it.

Moving across country from all of us.

Across the country, from all of the relationships we had ever created.

But we knew God was saying, it was that small voice, it was that leading of the Holy Spirit that we knew and we didn't understand it. We couldn't figure it out.

Because I believe there was something in us that the Bay Area of California had never experience. And so we are now and we just decided to be ourself. It's changed us. It's made me see my world differently. It's made me believe that we can accomplish things and God can do things that I probably wouldn't have believed several years ago. Now we have coast to coast campuses, east and west coast and people look at us all the time. What do they say? Don't know how you do it. I look at them and say, I don't know how we do it either, but God's doing it and it's marvelous in our sight. It's crazy what is happening in the airplane though.

And I will not, and I will not ever apologize for it. If we get.

You just had a what, six hour late delay, delay in Detroit.

I got late, I got stuck in New York a couple of months ago, three days because all the flights were canceled.

We got stuck in Jacksonville, Florida and it's just, yes, we need a plane.

So if there's anybody listening, that's rough. Who has one who would love to make donation.

We would like to simplify it. But anyway, to the ministry, the long and short of it is those the things we're talking about right there where I chose to go to school, you know, when we chose to reconcile planning our church outside of the traditional system. The moves that we make, every one of these are trajectory setting decisions. You make decisions every day, but they don't set the course of your life. You have other ones that moving to the east coast affected family, affected, affected the way we live, our finances affected our finances. It affected the way we minister. We've had to restructure what we do, how we do it. We've had to rethink everything. In some ways we've almost torn it down and rebuilt it. And so those were big time major life changing events.

Why are we talking about this? We're talking about this because we want you, listeners, people who are listening today. There will be these times in your life where you will have to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit to lead you. It may not make sense, it may seem strange, but. But if it makes sense on the inside of you, the Bible says we're led by our what? By our peace. The peace of God is what counts. A decision. In or out. That word translates to umpire.

Umpire calls it in, it calls it.

In, it calls it out. So there will be times in this journey of your life where you will have to make life altering decisions.

Defining moments.

To have the Holy Spirit.

Defining moments are usually not pleasurable moments in your life.

No, they're a crunch.

And so you have to be careful that the pain of that moment does not drive the decision.

Yeah.

That those of you right now that are in a terrible time and you got to make a decision about a marriage, about staying married, about a business and you are a partnership or declaring bankruptcy, you got to understand right now the way you feel cannot drive that decision. You have got to make a God decision. In the midst of your feelings and in the midst of a difficult time.

You have to be led by peace.

We do have a couple of, you know, defining moments. Her choosing to go to our college, well, she wasn't in a terrible time in her life. That was a good time in her life and she made the right decision.

But I had several doors.

You had several doors. When we decided to reconcile, that was in a horrible time. Our feelings and our emotions were all over the place.

But we did look at that.

But at the end of the day, you come back and say, God, you know, not my will. Garden of Gethsemane. What are you telling me to do? And I will obey that because I trust you that the outcome is going to be the best if I can make this decision right here. So we need to close this out.

Yeah, guys, it's been great. I hope this information has helped you because, you know, we're not young, we're not old, but we're midlife, we're in our 50s and we've learned a few things. And if you can listen to the voice of people who have been there and done that, I can tell you some terrible decisions we've made that we didn't follow our peace. Maybe we'll do that in a different podcast, but the whole thing is being led by the Holy Spirit. There will be major doors in your life and you will be faced with several doors in your life. But if you will cling to the voice of the Holy Spirit and the peace on the inside of you, you can live life and always make the right decisions. It's possible.

So, Lord, for those out there that are making decisions that are going to affect a lot of people a long time, may the peace of God which passes understanding guard their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And to that we say amen.

Amen.

God bless you.

We'll see you next time.