Why You Stay Stuck - And How To Break Out | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Foreign.

Hello, everybody. What in the world? This is Ron and Hope Unfiltered. Real, raw, relevant. Listen, we're in December. Can you believe that we are ending out season four.

Yes.

Of running Hope Unfiltered. Season four.

Time flies when you're having fun talking. Yeah.

You love language. Conversation sometimes.

But I know yours is number one. My love language. Things probably words of affirmation.

What is my love language?

Bring you something with a bow on it.

Gifts.

One second.

Acts of service.

Serve me.

By you and serve you.

Yes.

But you do those two so well. And it's Christmas time.

So buy from me and serve me.

What are you gonna buy me?

Are you gonna serve me?

Maybe.

I'm a butler full time now. Yes.

And your love language is.

Quality time.

Just be around.

Be around me.

Just be around.

Quality time.

Pretty easy.

Words of affirmation.

I have to build you up. Build you up. Touching till you overflow. Yeah. And physical touch like that.

That's nothing to do with what we're talking about today.

Nope. But what I was saying is the end of season four, we're about to start season five. It's gonna be good. So today we're gonna talk about.

Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's silly, sometimes it's informational, sometimes it's actually really serious. Today is one of the informational serious ones. Cause I want to help some people.

Serious ones.

I want to help people. I signed up for this to help people.

Signed up for the podcast.

No, I signed up for ministry because I wanted to help people. I wanted to serve God. I wanted to give my life to him and I wanted to give my life to him in the service of helping people. And that has taken on a million different roles, some of which I've liked, some of which I have not enjoyed at all.

But being able to give people information that they take and it changes their life is probably one of my biggest motivators in life. That right there. I've often told you. And you ask me what inspires you. I say, when I'm preaching and I see the light come on when I see the light come on. Or we get somebody that comes in our DMs and say, you preached on such and such last month. And I want you to know, since that word my life has, that's like water in my soul when I hear that. And I think I've got one of those things. I do a lot of teaching hope about the mind.

Right.

I do a lot of it.

Did a whole series on it.

I did in 2015. But I have ever since the mind world teaching in 2015, which back then was still heavily CDs and DVDs. It is more CDs and DVDs than we ever, ever got asked for or that were requested ever in the history of my ministry. Now I know now it's views and likes things have changed, but by far and away, I think it's probably one of the most popular topics that I ever spoke on because I really went through and I think people couldn't believe how much the Bible talked about the mind because we were raised everything with spirit. You remember?

I do.

It was, you know, people let their bodies go, they were powerfully anointed and they would die an early age because heart attacks. Nobody talked about their bodies. Yeah. Nobody talked about any type of holistic approach to serving God. Giving your body to God as a living sacrifice, you know, put the implanted word of God, which is able to save your soul.

Yeah.

You know, we never talked about that. We talked about being anointed. Yeah. And there was nothing wrong. Here's what I said. A lot of times I don't know that I ever really got taught anything wrong. I got taught things that were incomplete. Yes, incomplete. I don't know that I ever got taught. Downright heresy. But things that were not complete.

I don't know. I think it was heresy when we were taught women's not supposed to wear makeup.

That's legalism. Yeah, those were extremes. But, you know, that probably wasn't my norm. It was just an accepted culture. I don't know that my daddy got up from the pulpit and told people not to wear makeup. I don't ever remember that sermon your camp did. But yeah, the culture of the camp assumed it. And so those were some extremes that were, you know, some of them may have been downright ridiculous, but for the most part they were doctrinally pretty sound. And I was taught things that were sound, but nobody ever talked about my mind.

Right.

The first time somebody came up and said something to me about inner healing, I went, what?

I really. I honestly didn't know what they were talking about. I'd never heard of the concept. I'd never heard the concept that in my soul I could have trauma and God could heal me. There I was.

When you say in my soul, I think people think that's another part of your heart. The soul is not your heart.

The soul is your mind, your will, your emotions, your intellect, your knowledge, your experiences.

That is all in your soul. In your mind you can have trauma. In Your emotions, you can have trauma.

If I've had traumatic experiences, those things are housed in my souls, in my soul, events. So I fell and I got a scar on my eye, okay? But this happened in my marriage and I got a scar in my soul, right? The first person that came to me at an altar call and I remember looked at me. I remember it was a lady and she just was broken. And she said, I need so much inner healing. I didn't even know what to say to her because.

That was not a part of any amount of focus. So me and you went through utter and complete devastation. And for the first time in my life, I had a very peaceful upbringing. And I came from a great home. I'd never had to wade through divorce. I never had to lay in bed at night and wonder if mama or daddy was coming home. I never saw anybody addicted to anything in that regard. I had a very peaceful upbringing.

And when trouble hit our life, very painful trouble.

I was probably naive a lot even how to respond to it or what to do. I knew you were receiving ministry, and I knew I was a mess. I was just a mess. And for the first time in my life, I'm like, I gotta get my head right. My head's messed up, right? And so that was 2012 and 2013, 2014, right in there. Well, 2015, kind of coming out of the fog, getting our life back on track. God is redeeming things, restoring things. And I preach on mine world a lot because of my journey, because you.

Were going through it.

And I had never experienced that before. Never, you know, been stressed, been beat up, been defeated, but never having to take your mind, never traumatized and make.

It obey the word, had to get your mind out of the gutter.

I was never at a place before where I didn't feel like I could control my mind. And my mind was going everywhere and my sleep was taking place.

If you allow your mind just to wreak havoc, it will take you down the tubes as fast as any drug or alcohol will.

But hope I'm going to respond to that with this.

Do not understand. It is work.

Yes, work. The trauma. If you've been trauma bad enough.

Controlling it wears you out because it is constantly trying to go somewhere.

Going to the gym wears you out. To get a hold of your flesh. I mean, it's all work. It's cheap.

Remember, I told you, though, I said, it's like it blows a thousand holes in you and you're trying to hold all these things in. So I had never been in A place like that.

I was a very focused thinker, pretty disciplined in the way I lived my life and kept my thoughts and my emotions pretty much in check. I'm sure there's times I might have lost it, you might see me lose it, but that was not my norm. It was eventful, if that ever happened to me. And now I was in a state where I'm all over the place. And I remember I told you one time I couldn't go through a Wendy's drive through without breaking down. I was a mess, and I was a mess here.

And so this is something that came out of that, that changed my life. Now, I want to also say this. I want to talk about the next few minutes. The law of focus. You're like, what? The law of focus. Okay.

I don't listen to a lot of.

Motivational speakers, but I heard Tony Robbins the other night. I showed you that.

That's good, too.

I don't know if he has any faith. I don't follow him. But somehow or another one of his reels came across my feed, my timeline. And he made a statement that I showed you. I said, man, that sounds like he almost says verbatim what I told him. Mine world. So I don't know where he got the principle, but we talked from the same principle. We just said it a little different. And he said this statement. He said, you do not get the life you experience.

He said, you get the life you focus on.

Think about that just a minute. You don't get the life you experience because there's good and bad in all of it.

Now he's in an arena, and it looks like there's 15,000 people in that arena. So they're wanting to listen to what this guy's got to say. You get the life.

You focus on. Okay?

There's a lot of things in the Bible where God is speaking about focus but doesn't call it focus.

Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, right? You know what he's talking about? Why are you focused? And why do you have an obsession with everybody else's flaws and pay no attention to your own, but you got plenty. That's the law of focus. Yeah, I'm totally unaware of me, but I can pick you apart. Focus on you. Exactly. I can pick you. So Jesus didn't say, focus on yourself. That ain't what he said, but that's what he was talking about. Okay, another one. Forgetting those things which are behind, I press forward toward the upward call of God. In Christ Jesus, the law of focus. Because me and you have taught that verbatim many times. It means forgetting does not mean amnesia.

It means this is so good.

It means you're going down the timeline of life and then you hit that pain and you do this.

It means willfully unnoticed.

Yes. Willfully overlooked focus. Yeah.

I choose not to let that have my focus. So here again, he didn't say, it's.

Not deleting it out of your life.

A lot of people think that.

Yeah, a lot of people do. How can I forget it? How? I just want to get it out of my head. It's not deleting painful events. It's choosing not to let your mind and your emotions stay on it.

Right, so this is what Tony Robbins went on to say. So I want to give him credit. I'm going to talk about the way I teach it, but it inspired me enough for me to stop it and send it to you. And I sent it to one of the people in our family. He said, there is a world of bad around you. I don't think he's talking about the earth. I think he's talking about in your life. There's crap all the time.

Yeah, always, he said.

And there is a world of amazing.

Around you at the same time.

At the same time, he said. And you will experience which one you focus on.

That's powerful.

It is powerful.

And it's biblical. I don't know if he got it from the Bible. I don't know if he acknowledges God on any level. But that is a biblical principle that I call the law of focus.

Let's take a minute and talk about Green Chef. So, Green Chef, there's just something about the fall. And we love it. We're almost through the fall.

Almost in winter.

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Yeah, that's become a real priority to us and Green Shift is one of the people that can help make that possible to eat right and still keep your schedule. So anyway, what, you're getting ready to fuss at me?

No, I said, what are you choking on over there?

Water.

I don't have to take water out of your diet because every time you start that, you say it's water.

It is. Strangles me.

Strangles you? Okay. All right. Focus. The power of focus. You said good things are happening, bad things are happening at the same time.

And then forgetting those things, we press on toward mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. So basically getting back to that is.

There'S always.

Things going on in your life you wish you could change. And there's always things going on in your life that are wonderful.

Right. But you know what too? There's just some things in life that's part of life. Our grandson today ran into the bleachers at PE and sliced his whole cheek open. Had to go to the hospital, get stitches. You know, we could look at things like that. Oh, my washing machine's broken. You know what Guys, here's some revelation for you. Washing machines break. They don't last forever. Kids fall. We get.

Here's the cycle. The negative thing happens. And then the negative stuff starts coming out of our mouth. That perpetuates the negative thing that should have been come and gone, but we keep talking about it. So here's an example. The washing machine broke, okay? Because the washing machine broke. I had water all over the floor and the kids were late to school. And as soon as I got to work and they fussed at me because I was late for work, because the kids were late. School. Then I get a call, my son just busted his cheek open. Nothing ever happens to me when you start.

Nothing good happens to me.

Nothing good ever happens to our family. My life is going to always be like this when you start that. You just perpetuate over and over.

Things in life just. It just happens.

It's life and not a demon. I'm not really talking about, you know, the little things. We're talking about big traumas. But you gotta be careful that you don't let that. You don't think that everything in your life. You know that the world gets up every morning and tries to find a way to screw you over.

Right.

And there are people that, like, they get up with that.

That's just that victim mentality, that negativity that you. You see the glass half empty all the time.

I want to tell one person a while back that I heard talking like that. I think. Do you think everybody's got time to get up every day and worry about you and try to give you a hard time? They're trying to get their kids to school. They're trying to figure out how to send their kids to college. They're trying to figure out what.

They're trying to pay their own bills.

Yeah. They're trying to buy a set of tires.

Yes.

You know, they might waking up morning trying to see how they can make your day bad. They got time to think about your day. So the law of focus does this hope.

What you focus on in your mind tends to happen in time. I didn't say every random thought you have, but your mind's obsessions.

Yeah.

Okay.

We what you get stuck on.

We were what you get focused on with ministry that broke cultural and racial barriers. And look, right, it was our focus.

Nobody other than white people came year two, but it was still our focus. Nobody came year three, year four, year five. It was still our focus. Because if what you tend to keep in your mind will eventually happen in Time, Then it breaks through. Finally, multiculturalism breaks out. Culture barriers begin to break.

So if you think about your pain all day, long, long, you tend to.

Extend it in time.

See?

So what was a painful season becomes a painful life, right?

You got to break the cycle.

The power of definition. So you got the law of focus. Let me talk about the power of definition.

God allows you to define what happens to you and some of us.

This is powerful.

Give terrible definitions to life experiences.

This is so important.

Okay, me and you, let's go back to it. Because a lot of what our podcast started out was relationships and things we had to say about putting things back together. So let's go back.

Our life.

Is chaos. It's just chaos. The unthinkable has happened. Broken. It's public. It's crazy. We're pastors. We're broken. You're broken, I'm broken. The kids are suffering, you know, the church is suffering. Everything, just everything around us. It is. It's not good. Okay, now you and I have a decision to make.

This is the worst day of our life, and I'll never recover.

Choice one.

Okay, Am I going to define it that way?

Right.

And if I define it that way, that's what it will be, right.

Or choice two?

Choice two. God gave you Genesis 20, 50, 20. What the enemy meant for evil, God intends for good.

And you lay your head for the salvation of many.

For the salvation of many. And you lay your head on your pillow, saying, God will restore the years and redeem the time.

Was it a process getting there?

Yes.

Yeah. But, you know, a month into it, after, you know, I've cried and whined and kicked and slammed and threw my hands up and tossed a cat and everything else had a pity party, I'm like, okay, I gotta make a decision. Is this gonna be my life or are we gonna turn it around?

At the end of the day, it truly is a choice.

Yep.

It really. Everything's a choice.

Everything's a choice.

Life is choice driven. And if you want to stay stuck in the rut, that is a choice. And so why would you want to do that?

Well, we said, let's take the road less traveled. It's going to be the hardest thing we've ever done. And let's try to put our life back together and let's try to rebuild it. And instead of this being the point that we never recover from, let's let it be the point of our greatest story and our greatest testimony.

We made that choice together. It's hard to do that if you do it independently, but we made it together.

We're going to try to rebuild and let God have a miracle here. And then if we get the miracle, we'll go tell everybody God did a miracle. And I am convinced.

I have many more doors today. I speak to many more people today, and I have much more influence today because we chose the latter. This will not be the thing that ends me. In some ways, it'll be a genesis. It may be the thing that begins me. And it's the law of focus. And it's how you define it. It's how you define it. So I focused on our family. I focused on, I want to be together for Thanksgiving. I focused on. I made promises to you, and I want to keep those promises. I'm focused on the fact that. That I only wanted to be in love with one person almost. There are bad things all around me. Yeah. There are good things all around me.

But I'm going to.

I'm going to look at this.

Yeah. I'm going to look at that.

I'm going to stare at it, and I'm going to stare at it and I'm going to talk it and I'm going to say it and I'm going to believe it, and I'm going to pray for it.

That's Philippians, you know, the. Think on these things. Whatever's true and noble and right and pure and praiseworthy, think on. I mean, that's a commandment. It's not a suggestion. It's think on these things, even if you have to go home and make a list on what is good in your life, what is noble in your life, what is praiseworthy in your life. What. What are the blessings of God in your life? What. What are the things that you have overcome? How far have you come in Christ? How much better are you today? You know, you say, well, I'm not much better. Well, can you find one thing that that's better in your life today? Think on that.

When you. And when you say that to some people who've really been through some horrific things, they almost get quasi offended. They get mad because they're like, you don't know what I've been through. And let me tell you something, you're right. I don't know what you've been through. And there's some people that they've gone through hardships, and there's some people that have gone through tragedy, but the same principle applies.

It doesn't. It's not negotiable. Negotiable.

That scripture, it happened to you when you 11, or it happened to you last year. It was criminal. I mean, somebody deserves to be locked up for. I mean, it can be horrific, okay? But I've seen people 41, holding something that happened, that happened when they were 11, this close to them, Right? Because all.

All of their focus, it's as fresh as it was when they're 11.

Staring at it. And truly, I mean, it is choice driven. Are you going to choose. That's your choice, to let it go, put it under the blood and get better because of it? Because God can use. God will. That's Romans 8:28. He wants to use it to make you better.

And this is the preacher in me.

And I would say to you, if something has taken 10, 20, 30 years of your life from you, because you can't, what are you going to do with the life you have left?

Okay, it's taken this from you, but go out into your future. Is it going to take that from you, too?

Right.

Because you're going to have to focus on something different. The law of definition. I've always used to think, you know, we have two different boys that could not have been polar opposites. They are truly personality, polar opposites, goal interests. They're just polar opposites. And we would go to a place like Six Flags of Carowinds, wherever you go, at Disney World and Universal Studios.

And they wanted two totally different things.

So I come up to a roller coaster. I remember, I think this is actually Six Flags Over Georgia or either Carowinds, I can't remember. In North Carolina. I remember coming up to a roller coaster, and I had to really talk to Chaz to even get him to come in the line with me. He's our second son. So Chase is the. Bring it on. Chaz is the. Let me think about this. They get to the roller coaster. Chase is he.

Can't wait.

Can't wait, Chaz. Palms sweaty, clammy.

Yep.

Okay. Same roller coaster.

Two different definitions.

One definition, this is something that will thrill me. Another definition is, this is something that'll scare me. And they're both looking at the same thing.

So other people whose marriage almost fell apart, how are you going to look at it?

How are you going to look at it? Because it'll just keep falling apart until it's falling apart. Or this is an opportunity to burn up all of our mistakes and create the life we dreamed of.

But you got. You got to change your focus.

Yep. Your focus. How do you define it? You know, the Bible you know, by talks about our enemies. Well, the enemy's coming against me. Well, the Bible says your enemy is your footstool. That's right Here again, how do you define it? How do you define it? This my enemy's overcoming me. Oh, you know, woe is me. Or I must be getting ready for elevation.

Right.

There must be a next level that is about to dawn on my life. And do I get it right every time? No, but I know enough about God in my tenure to try not to let hardship. I try obsess over it. Yeah, you gotta talk. Yeah. Things bother me. Yeah, I need to flush it. My term to you is give me 24 hours and I can flush it. You'll say, ron, is this thing bothering you? I'm like, yes, it is.

Give me some time to process.

Let me flush it.

But you don't hold onto it forever.

No. But two months later, I'm not sitting there still mad about it. Give me some time. I'll flush it from my system. I'll get my confession back, I'll get my focus back and I'll start back moving it forward.

Because you know that's the principles of God. You know it is. And you cannot say that you are following God and being spirit led and truly pursuing a relationship with God and you still holding on to bitterness and pain. There's no way you're allowing the enemy to manipulate you and manipulate your mind and manipulate your heart. There's no way that you are pouring everything you have into your relationship with God. And you're still holding onto this way back here when you know God's word says something different about trauma and pain and trials. The Bible says trials are for what? Our benefit, it's for our good.

That's why you say, consider it pure joy when you go through trials of diverse kinds.

Because they work something in you. It's meant to work something.

Everything that's going on around you is working something in you. Yes, Though our outward man is being destroyed, our inward man is being renewed day by day.

And I think it's so important to remember what he said about.

Light and momentary affliction. It's not supposed to last.

So don't stretch it out.

So don't stretch it out. It's light and it's momentary. We all go through different seasons. Some are great, some are not. But they are. They come to pass. And you have to let them pass. And you have to let them pass out of your mind.

I. There's one other illustration I was going to give. I Slipped my mind. While you were talking, I was looking at your beauty and it slipped.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I fly, for instance. I call it the law of focus. Tony Robbins called it. You get the life you focus on.

I often tell people, and we'll end with this kind of. This illustration.

That you're not where your body is. Yeah.

You're where your mind is.

You're where your mind is. I don't care where your body is. Your body can be at work. Your body can be in a concert. Your body can be at church. It don't matter where your body is. You are where your mind is. If I'm sitting down and I've taken you out to eat and something's preoccupying me, you know if I'm with you or not.

Yeah.

Now my body's there. Ron, come here. What's bothering you? Okay.

I spent a lot of time on a plane and you are my favorite company. I'm not trying to win points here, but company. I love your company. I love your company. And I hate these cross country trips by myself. I just hate them because you won't sleep five and a half hours, you.

Know, you won't watch a movie, don't.

Know anybody next to you. So, you know, I don't even, really, like, do a lot of movies. So I either usually study.

Maybe watch a little something or just be bored.

But if you're there, even if we're not talking, I just. If you're there, it's just better. And. But a lot of times, because of our schedule, we have to fly by ourself. And so I go in my mind world.

You know, and it's the red eye flight. I just got through with the Christmas service. I'm flying back to be there for all of our grandkids Christmas morning. And the smile comes across my face.

Why I'm not in a plane.

You're where your mind is.

I'm sitting at the Christmas tree. My grandkids are taking wrapping paper and throwing it everywhere. And the house is 100 decibels. And a smile comes across my face because I'm where my mind is. And then 20 minutes later, I'm sitting over there looking out the window because I don't want nobody to see. My eyes are puddled up with tears because I'm thinking about my daddy. Ain't gonna be there. My daddy will miss these Christmases. I wish he could have seen these grandkids, you know? I am where my mind is. You are where your mind is.

And nobody can shift your mind for you.

Yep. And you want to go change your life. I don't like my life, so I'm going to go change my job. I'm going to change. I'm going to change where my office is. Those aren't necessarily bad things, but I tell people, you're never really stuck in life. You're stuck in your mind.

Nobody can do it for you. It's real work. It's just as hard, even harder, I think, than, you know, discipline in your flesh to lose weight, to not eat a certain thing, whatever it is, but it is truly a discipline.

That nobody can do for you. And you have to take charge of your thoughts, and you have to make every one of them captive and make every one of them obey God's word. If those thoughts going through your head are contrary to the word of God, that's not God thoughts. And you have to capture them, make them obey, and replace them with what God says.

And depending on the depth of the trauma and the depth of the, you know, whatever happened to you, it'll be the battle of a lifetime. It will be the battle of a lifetime.

But you can be free.

But the Bible says, Romans 7:25, it's with the mind that we serve the Lord. So hopefully somebody got something from this because we're closing out a year going into the next one. And you say, man, my last 10 years has just been a train wreck. Okay, well, what are you gonna do with what you got left? Maybe that's just a question you need to write. Put on your refrigerator, what am I gonna do with 20, 26?

And then go find the Scripture in Philippians that says, think on these things and make you a list. Remember we used to do that with Chaz when he used to struggle when he was a little boy with anxiety and fear and unrealistic fears. I'd say, chaz, let's come back to what's true and what's right and what's noble and what's pure and what's praisew. Got to think on these things. Don't think about something's under my bed or I'm afraid of stuffed animals. No, stuffed. What's true? Stuffed animals aren't real. Make you a list of those things and put your mind to focus on those things. I promise you, it works. We love you guys. Thank you for being here today and listening. I hope we helped. Ladies, if you want to get away, it's January right around the corner. I would love to have you to come to the conference calling all queens in San Antonio, Texas. Go to hopecarpenter.com events and come join us. It's the perfect time to start your new year.

Right, couples, February 5 through 7, our marriage bootcamp. Ron and Hope's Marriage Conference. Been doing it for over 20 years. Monterey, California. Go the website, myredemption cc get signed up. We would love to see you there. And until next time, it's Ron and Hope.

Unfiltered, real, raw, relevant.

See you soon.