When You're Stuck

Foreign. Hey, guys, this is Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real, raw and relevant. I said it. I always let Hope do that because it's, like, too complicated for me to get all those words together. I guess you're looking around and saying, well, you know what? I don't see Hope. Hope won't be with me. She filled in for me one time when I just absolutely could not be on set. And today I'm doing the same thing for her. And so I've got something. You know what I told the people that are helping me, all the technicians, the wonderful folk in here that assist us and help us do what we do, I told them, I said, if I get too preachy, I said, do your hands like this and calm me down. Because Hope keeps me conversational. But I am a preacher. That's what I am. It's not what I do. It's what I am. And when I get on a topic and I get excited about that topic, I tend to get intense. And these podcasts were not made for that. They were made to be informational, inspirational, comical, a little bit of all of it. And for you to get a little inside look at mine and Hope's life and what life is really like off stage. And so Hope will be back with me the next time. But I'm so glad that you gave me just a little bit of your time. I'm excited about what I'm gonna get tell you. Listen to the topic. Okay? Don't leave because Hope's not here. I know she's easier to look at than I am, but I just need you to hang around. Okay? Listen to me. What do you do when you're stuck? I'm not talking about literally stuck. I'm not talking about you're stuck in between a closet door and you can't get out. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when you feel like there's literally no forward movement in your life, when you feel like purpose has stalled and what difference do I make? What part do I play in the grander scheme of things? And all these questions come. I'm not talking about a midlife crisis. I'm talking about things that have happened to me systematically at different seasons of my life, when I just feel like things have stalled out. And that's not a fun feeling when you feel like you're expending energy, but you're not making any progress. And that's what Jesus actually told Martha and Mary. You know, Mary sat down and worshiped Jesus, and Martha was fluffing pillows and cooking dinner and everything else. And Martha got mad that Mary was not helping her. And Jesus said, martha, you are encumbered by many things. What he said was, you are expending a lot of energy, but you're running in circles. In other words, you're spending energy and not getting anywhere. And Mary has chosen the greater thing. Her worship is taking her further than your works. Okay, so I just want to talk about three areas. No, it's not a three point sermon. Three things that Ron Carpenter does. This is not a leadership teaching. This is not something I've taught my ministerial fellowship. Three things I do when I feel like I'm hitting the wall, when I feel like life's not going anywhere. And by the way, that highly frustrates me because I'm a builder, I'm a mover, I'm a builder. I'm happiest when I'm building. And so when I feel like there's no movement in my life or anywhere around me, that's a struggle for me because it goes against the grain of just how I'm built. So first of all, I want to be very spiritual and move to the practical. I don't want to start practical and move spiritual. So I know some of you may not really do the preacher side of me and hope you may become because maybe it's just straight up been entertaining. Because me and Hope together, it can be entertaining. I'm not going to lie. She keeps it like that. But today, if you would let me pour out something out of my heart that hopefully will benefit you and take you further. If you could give me just a few minutes, I think it'll make sense. I've always said you're not really stuck in life, you're stuck in your mind. Your life follows your think. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is the man. Some of y' all have heard me talk about this. Well, I'm going in a direction I've never taken anybody, so just stay with me. In other words, the Bible says that there's one action that leads to a state of being. It's the only one described in the Bible. He said, my thought, life and what I have believed to be true. Not a passing thought, not the thoughts that come and go, but the thoughts that come and stay. The meditations, the things you believe, they become a part of your faith. Those define your reality. Okay, So a lot of the realities and issues that we deal with, we don't understand it, but it's a product of Our think. How did we get to this place? Most of us thought our way, all the way here. That's how we got there. Yes, I understand there's things that people do to us that affect us and can throw us off course. But for the most part, where we are in life is not other people's fault. Where we are in life is virtue of what we've been exposed to, what we've been taught and what we believe to be true. Because as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Your thought life defines you. You are a house made of thoughts. And whatever that thought process is, whatever you think about money will be your reality in money. Whatever you think about marriage will be your reality in marriage. Whatever you think about child rearing will be the way your child, your children will be raised. Okay. Whatever you think about God will determine your relationship with God. Some of you think God is ready to come down on you at any minute and so you serve him out of fear. Others of you know that he's gracious and he's slow to anger and he's quick in mercy and you serve him out of grace. So however you think about God will define your reality. However you think about relationships will define your relationships. However you think about women will define how you treat women. Let's go here. Real raw and relevant. Amen. Whatever you think about men will define the men that you attract. So we've got to understand it all starts in a thought process. So my relationships aren't stuck. If I keep attracting the same kind of person. My mindset is stuck. It's not that your economy is stuck, it really isn't. Especially if you live in America. Opportunities everywhere. It's that your mindset is stuck. We've got to understand that wherever I go in life, my mind has to go there first. So I've got to think it before I become it. So in other words, I can't stay in this place and wait for my life to change while I learn nothing new. Today is tomorrow. If you don't learn anything. In other words, tomorrow will look just like today. And we're all talking about the next season, next level and next dimension and this, that and other. They will all look just like the one you're in unless you learn something new. Nobody can live above their level of revelation. Nobody. It's impossible. So you will live up to the level of your revelation. And wherever you have revelation, the gates of hell cannot prevail against you. So in other words, when I know something, it's very difficult for me to be defeated. But where I don't have revelation, I'm very vulnerable to defeat. So the more I can move my mind, the more I can move my life. And the more I understand about God, the less vulnerability I am, the less vulnerability I have against the enemy's attack. Do you see what I'm talking about? So it's not really that life is stuck. It's that our thinking is stuck. Okay, let me move forward with the next. When you're stuck in your mind, you've got to understand there are two parts to your mind. I don't care where you go. I don't care about how long you studied neurology or you're a neuroscientist or a neurosurgeon. Your mind does two things. Now, I'm not talking about the brain. The brain is the organ in the body. I'm talking about the mind, the consciousness. Okay, the mind. The mind does two things. Jesus told the rich young ruler, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength, and then love your neighbor as yourself. Well, your mind is your mind, and your soul is your mind, will, and emotions. Why did Jesus tell the rich young ruler, love me with your mind twice, love me with your mind, and love me with your mind. That does not make sense. It's because every mind has two functions. Your mind basically remembers a past and imagines a future. Your mind is like a file cabinet, like a computer, and you can reach back into any one of those files at any time you want to, and you can relive that moment. That's what we call living in the past. It's people who live in the file cabinet of all their painful experiences. And they get up every morning, pull that file out, and they bring it into their presence, and it keeps repeating and repeating and repeating itself because they live out of the mind that shoots toward the past. Let me tell you something about your past. Your past is as big as a closet. Your imagination is as big as a universe. Why would you spend your whole life living in the closet? Your mind is built to imagine a future that is so great, it will pull you out of the doldrums of the pain of your past. And one of the ways to break the power of the pain of the past is to begin to imagine a tomorrow that is so great, what you've gone through pales in comparison to what God could actually do. Somebody needs to hear this. I'm trying not to preach, but this thing burns within me. When I start talking about the mind so you can remember and you can imagine neither one of them is bad. It's not. One is bad and one is good. But you got to realize what to remember. Okay, David. David was walking toward Goliath with that sling. I can't imagine being 12 years old and walking toward a 10 foot tall military trained killing machine. And I got a slingshot and I'm a kid with freckles on my face. He's walking toward him and David's thinking, I've killed a lion, I've killed a bear. He's remembering. You need to remember triumphs when Israel crossed over the sea, that God divided the sea and let him walk across on dry land. He said, now take stones of remembrance and place them right here and remember that I gave you the victory and caused you to cross over and I broke the power of Pharaoh off your back. In other words, you've got to know what to remember. Forgetting those things which are behind, we press forward. So I got to forget the hurts, the traumas, the failures, the resentment, the bitterness, the anger, the unforgiveness who did me wrong, who was unfaithful. And there's a list of them and we've all got them. But I've got to learn to forget that. You say, how do you forget it? You get amnesia. No, that's not what you do at all. The Bible says forgetting those things which are behind, it means to willfully. In other words, I get to the point of my life that was a failure and a pain and I look, I purposely don't look at it. In other words, it does not demand your focus. You know, it's there, you've acknowledged it, you've embraced it as a part of your life. But the fact is it's not your present focus. So forgetting, unnoticing those things which are behind, I put my seek, my pressure into something forward. Let me tell you something. Imagination is the power to pursue. If you have no desire to pursue anything, it's because you don't see anything. Whenever, Hallelujah. Whenever you imagine something, it begins to give you the ability and the energy to pursue what it is you see. I have a great vision for what I want to do in the locations and the churches that God has graced me and privileged me to be a pastor. I feel like I'm the most blessed man in the world with the opportunities I've been given and I get up every day and I want to make the most of those opportunities. I'm doing this with you right now. Because I want to maximize these few minutes that I have with you. I may not get but 20, 30 minutes a week, but I want to maximize them. I want to give you all that I can. I want to inspire you all that I can. So you got to understand, always imagining how big is your God said I can do exceedingly above and beyond all you can think or imagine. So when I have imagined the greatest exploit I could ever imagine, God says you not even begin to scratch the surface of my power and my ability. So some of you are scared to have an imagination that would put a demand on God. I'm telling you, God is waiting for you to do something that would make a demand on him. Give God a faith to picture that would make a demand on heaven's power to bring it in your life. Why live in the closet of the past when I have an imagination big as my universe? David, I've killed a lion. I've killed a bear. So learn how to properly pull the right victories from your past to fuel your present challenge. And then he listened. He looked at Goliath and said, and now I come at you in the name of the Lord of Hosts who has delivered you into my hands. He hadn't killed him yet. He switched from memory to imagination. He already saw him with his head in his hands, the head meaning authority. He already saw himself with his foot on his neck. He saw it before it ever happened, before he ever let the rock go. And that's what your mind has been given the ability to do, to extract the victories God has given you from your past and to give you an imagination to fuel the what great thing can God do in your future? Let me just give you 60 seconds of preach. The Bible says, praise him according to his excellent greatness. The word excellent, the root word, is excel. The word excel means to go beyond. In other words, God said, don't just praise me for what I've done, but praise me for my ability to go beyond anything that I've ever done. So sometime you gotta stand on this side of your miracle and praise God even though you haven't seen it manifest yet. Why? Because you've seen everything he's done which leads you to believe there's nothing that he can't do. You're not stuck in life, stuck in your mind. You got to watch your mind. Because the mind, the mind can set the parameters of what you believe. Your God is as big as your mind. The Bible says, magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together. If I put a magnifying glass over a bug as an 8 year old kid, I haven't increased the size of the bug, I've increased the size of its perception. To me, you can't increase God, you can't make God bigger. Magnifying the Lord and praising God does not make God bigger. But what you're doing when you magnify the Lord is you put such a focus on him, he becomes bigger to you and everything in your life that contradicts him and his word becomes smaller. That's how you magnify the Lord. The mind, you've got to be very careful, will set the parameters of your faith. What I mean by that? Thomas said, I will not believe unless I see the nail prints in his hands. So what did Jesus do? Met him at his point of faith. Why make Jesus jump through these hoops? Why make Jesus hurdle all this stuff? Why is your faith and listen to what Jesus said you saw and believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet believe. In other words, I did this for you and I'll meet you at your point of faith. But blessed are those. I ain't got to go through all these calisthenics. The woman with the issue of blood, if I can touch the hem of his garment. Praise God for that story. I've preached off of it many times. But why did she, in her weakened condition give herself a parameter that meant she had to exhaust herself to fight through the crowd and touch him? Why couldn't she be like the centurion who said, I ain't got to do none of this stuff? Send a word. The centurion said, you ain't got to come to my house. Just speak a word, My servant will be healed. That was the parameters of his faith. He doesn't have to touch me, he don't have to spit on me. He don't have to come to my house. I ain't got to see nail print. I don't need any of that. Just speak a word. The woman with the issue of blood, her mind said, I got to touch him or I won't get it. Doubting Thomas said, if I don't see it in his hands, I'm not going to believe. Peter said, unless you tell me to come, I'm not getting out of this boat. So what did Jesus do? Come met him at his point of faith. Why? Just believe who he is and walk on the water. So you got to be careful that your mind is not limiting your concept of God because your faith will usually Rise up to the level of your think this is good. Let me give you a break on this for just a moment. I got an amazing, amazing sponsor for the first time in my life. I'm 54. I just turned 54. Happy birthday to me. If you didn't tell me, shame on you. I'm just kidding. Turned 54 a few days ago and July 8th. And I'm sorry that I'm only learning about some of these things now and can only tell you about them now. But you know what? Better to learn late than never. But I want to tell you about Chime. This is the first time I've ever had sponsors and I'm so grateful for these guys. And listen, you can help me out. You can help us out. Because when they know that our viewers are really tied in to the people who sponsor us as well, it allows us to make our platform larger and larger and reach more and more people. And that's all I'm trying to do. How many people need to hear what you're hearing right now? Chime busy lives. And all of us want to make our lives better. Let me tell you what the people at Chime do. Good thing that there's Chime and now you can get your paycheck. Does that sound good? You can get your paycheck up to two days early with Chime on a direct deposit and they make you feel more safe and more secure with your financial situation. It's an award winning mobile app. This is an app. Award winning mobile app and checking account, debit card, optional savings account, whichever you choose. So what are you waiting for? Hopefully not your next paycheck. Get started with Chime today. Applying for a free account. It takes less than two minutes. This is an app. It can help you get your paycheck up to two days early and it only takes two minutes to do it. Get started with Chime.com RunAndHope. Please don't forget that. Go to Chime.com RunAndHope banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Stride bank in a member's FDIC and early access to these deposits depend on the payer. But I tell you what, if you're one of those people that your payer qualifies and your payer can actually work with this company, you don't have to wait on your money anymore. Feel safe and secure about it. We're so grateful for the guys at Chime. I need you to go check it out. All right. Let me take these few minutes I got. Don't go Anywhere. Because I'm going to be honest with you. I think that some of the most important stuff still out on me. Look, we're not being formal here, so I'm going to ask the guys. I can't see the camera. How much time have I taken? About 15 minutes right there. I think it's about 14, 15, 19. Okay, got you right there. Got my guys in there helping me out. When the light's in my eyes, it's hard to see anything past the lights. I was talking about your mind setting the parameters of your faith. Let me go spiritual and then practical. Give me five minutes for this and five minutes on the practical one and I'll let you guys go. Please hear me. Today though, I felt strongly when I found out I was going to be doing this myself that this was what I needed to share with you. I'm amazed and not so much amused, but mystified at many of our new generations leaders who do not bring or incorporate the person of the Holy Spirit into our faith. I never wanted to be the older guy that turned around and bashed the younger guys. But it's hard to write the third person of the Trinity out of your life script. I think the younger generation saw a lot and maybe my father's and even my generation that they thought was kind of off the charts as far as stuff that were blamed on the Holy Ghost. But the fact is the Holy Ghost is your Central Intelligence Agency. I'm still talking about being stuck. It's your CIA because the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 2, I'm not going to read these scriptures, I'm just going to quote them. Who knows a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? And who knows God except the spirit of God? The spirit of God knows everything about you. I'm glad you can get a life coach. They're needed. I'm glad you have mentors and spiritual mothers and spiritual fathers. They're needed. I'm glad you're doing an internship. Some. I'm glad all that stuff is needed and they can help us build disciplines and they can make us better and more efficient. But there's only one person that knows your future. Don't call me and say I'm going to help you reach your destiny. You don't know my destiny. The only person who knows a man except the spirit of a man which is inside of him. So we got to understand that. I was chosen in Christ before the foundations of the world. I already had a life that God had planned for me. Before my mom and daddy ever shared a milkshake, okay? God had already had a plan for me in heaven before he ever said, let there be light. So life begins in heaven. We arguing over whether or not it begins at conception. It's past that. Life begins in heaven. So now I've got to understand that I've come into this world. My spirit knows everything about me, but my mind doesn't. First John 2:20 says, you have an anointing or a Holy Spirit, and you know all things. Where do I know all things? I know all things in my spirit, but I don't know all things in my head. So when I got saved, when I got born again, when you got saved, Jesus Christ saved you, and the Holy Spirit came to live on the inside of you. And the Holy Spirit. Who knows a man except the spirit of a man who knows God except the Spirit of God? First Corinthians 2, verses 10 and 11. Now, the Spirit of God has searched the mind of God about your life, and he comes out of eternity when you get saved and into time and lives in you. And Jesus declared in John 16, when the Spirit himself comes, he will be your guide. I took my grandkids to Disney World a while back. Disney World's a huge place, especially with small children. And it's hot. I don't want a guide who has never been through the park. I want a guide who knows where everything is. The Holy Spirit knows where everything is in your life and knows exactly who you are. Everything you're supposed to be, everything you're supposed to do, everything you're supposed to accomplish, you're supposed to become. The Holy Spirit knows all that. And inside your spirit, you know all things. But the Bible says that my other father, Adam, the man of the flesh, ate from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So I have a fleshly or a carnal mind. Okay. The Bible says in Romans 8 that the carnal mind is the enemy of God. So my spirit knows what God wants, but my head fights it. That's so good. So in your spirit, your spirit may know you're victorious, but your mind fights that and says, no, you're still a loser. And in your spirit, your spirit knows you're supposed to prosper. But in your mind, your mind fights it and it wants to keep you in poverty. In your spirit, it knows how to manage relationships successfully. But in your mind, when one broken relationship after another, you got to understand that you have an anointing and you know all things. But until you get your mind to a place where it can think like this. Then you will be where your mind is, not where your spirit. You'll never arrive at the location of your anointing. You always arrive at the location of your think. Well, I have a great anointing on my life. I have a powerful anointing on my. I have a great gift on my life. I'm glad. But you will not arrive at that gift or that anointing. You will arrive at your think. So Colossians says this. Set your mind on things above where the anointing or where the Holy Spirit is, and not on things on the earth. For you died and your life is hidden in Christ. Ah, so God takes my life and hides it in my anointing. And he says, now you've got to take your mind and set it on things above. Anointing is. You've got to make your mind think like he thinks. Now let me show you something. You got your mind, you got your flesh, and you've got your spirit. Your mind makes the decision. Your flesh and your spirit send signals. So your flesh is trying to say, follow me. And he who sows to the flesh reaps corruption. But your spirit says, follow me. And he who sows to the spirit is life and peace. Don't you want to have life? Don't you want to have life abundantly as Jesus promised it? Don't you want some peace? I've said peace is the most expensive thing on the planet. Peace. He who sows to the spirit. So if my mind is in tune with my spirit, my life will be joyful and peaceful and full. If I'm constantly listening to my flesh and where it wants to pull me and the atmosphere it wants me to go in, the activities it's taking me into and the people it wants me to hang around, then it's going to be a life of corruption, man. My mind gets to make the decision. So he says, take your mind and set your mind on things above where the Holy Spirit is. Why? Because who knows you except the Holy Spirit? So you. The word set. The word set is a medical term, like if you'd broken a bone. I broke 18 bones in my youth. 18 hard headedness. Mostly a lot of it was sports, but other things just doing dumb stuff. And they always told me, I don't know if they're just trying to make you feel better while you're sitting there seeing bones stuck out your arm, but they would also always say, this bone, after it set will grow back stronger than before you broke it they would always say that no matter what doctor I had, no matter what stage of life I was at the word set is a medical term. And he's saying, set your mind to. So God is already presupposing your mind is broken. The Holy Spirit, when you got saved, comes live inside of you. He's down on the inside screaming, you're better than this. You're greater than this. This is not you. This is not where you're supposed to be. This is not who you've been created to be. This is not the mess you're supposed to be in. And therein lies that frustration. Because you got your Holy Spirit, destiny's beaten on the inside of you. But you look around you and it's a mess. That's because you're not arriving at the place you're anointed to arrive at. You're anointed at the place you think. So he says, take your broken mind and set it where the anointing is. Man, that's so good. That's so good. For your life is hidden in your anointing. So take your mind and set it on your anointing. So the Bible says we take the water of the Word and with that word we renew our mind. The word of God has the ability to uproot mindsets that are contrary to God's purpose and promise. And it has the ability to plant seeds that are consistent with what God has put on the inside of you. Last verse. Romans 12. 1, 2. Don't be conformed to this world. Don't think like the tree. Don't think fleshly. Don't think like the world thinks. But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may be able to prove what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God. The will of God. What is it? The will of God is in your spirit. Who knows a man except the Spirit? So everything God wants in your life, he's put it in your spirit. The Bible says, renew your mind that you may be able to prove what that will is. Prove. The word prove in the Greek means allow. Your spirit knows who you are, but your mind won't allow it. So you take your mind by the word of God and wash it and renew it in accordance with your spirit. And then if any two agree as touching anything in the earth, phew, it shall be done by our Father in heaven. Are you getting what I'm saying? Number one, we're stuck in our mind. Number two, our future is in us. It's not. Are you anointed it's can you think on the level of your anointing? Thirdly, and I close, is the law of exposure. Whenever Ron Carpenter feels stuck, I get in an atmosphere that is greater than the one I'm normally in. When I lived in apartments, I would drive around in neighborhoods and look at houses. And you got to understand how far away a house was from me. It was so far away, but I was exposed to it. What do they do? How do they take care of their yard? What are their responsibilities? Nobody in my family had ever owned a house, ever. Nobody in my dad's whole bloodline. But I wanted to. So I would get out and go drive around in places that were next level and I would look and I would observe. When my church had 100 members, I was going sitting in churches that had 8,000. Don't ever let greatness intimidate you. Let it inspire you. And I didn't go with a guy with 8,000. You know, most people's success, they bash it and they beat. I wasn't bashing it. I was watching. I was looking. Because I realized those were my next levels and I needed to be exposed to it. I remember I was raised in a small town in a small church, went to small schools, then went to a small Bible school. And my whole world, when I got saved and out of college, was still about this big. And it was in college I joined a contemporary Christian group and we went on our first tour during the Christmas break and we went south to Florida. Of course, we wanted to be warm for the winter, so we went to Florida. And I remember the first church we had a concert at was called Carpenter's Home Church, which in the 80s sat 10,311 people. This was a massive, massive facility. It had three radio towers on top of it with radio stations. It had two retirement home towers beside of it that the church built and owned for retirees. And I remember getting off the bus with my tiny little world and I looked at those radio towers. I looked at that 10,000 seat dome, I looked at those two and I'm like, somebody has lied to me. Nobody told me God could do all that. The law of exposure, it got on the inside of me. And once you begin to see the next level and envision the next level, you can begin to pursue and chase the next level. Get out. Find somebody that has been more economically successful than you. Find somebody who's been able to take their marriage 30, 40, 50 years. Find somebody, come on now. Find somebody who lives on a different level than you live. Find somebody who does exactly what you do, but they do it on a more excellent level, a more excellent stage. And don't be intimidated by it. Don't hate on it, but be inspired by it. You're not stuck. See, what is the law of exposure doing? It's moving your mind. When you see something you've never seen before, it moves your mind. I'm going to quit. I know it's not near as funny when Hope ain't here. We are partners in the fact that I'm very intense and she's very hilarious and spontaneous and full of life and I miss her any moment I'm not with her. We're doing more together now than we ever had and it's the been the joy of my life and she should be back with me on the next one. I hope this information helped you. I know people have written in and said, man, I just love how you and Hope play off each other. Well, I didn't have that today, but this information is powerful. I didn't give you something I read out of book. This is what I do. I can't give you any greater information than what do I do. This is what I do when things stop moving and I want you to incorporate them because I believe it can get life moving again. God bless you guys. I appreciate you so much. Don't forget to check out chime. They've been good to us. I want you to go be good to them. And until next time, God bless you guys.