Hope That Does Not Disappoint

You are.

I have a testimony.

I have a.

Story to sing.

This is my story this is my song.

Have a testimony. Rain came, wind blew My house was built on you I say with you I feel somebody's faith rising.

You.

This is the reason you made it. This is the reason I'm standing Oh, my.

Good morning. Good morning. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Happy Wednesday. Awesome to be with you. Another week, another Wednesday. Raj, thank you for all that you do. Love you, brother. Appreciate you.

Absolutely, man.

Happy to be home. Yeah. Look at that mane. Good, man. Looking good, looking good. Good stuff, good stuff. I am in Arkansas today. I have Matthew with me. We're working together this week. It's been, it's been an interesting week out here in Whitehall, Arkansas, but it's a, it's a blessed week. It's a blessed week. It's another opportunity for God to show up in our lives. Right. A lot of you guys were on the prayer call. A few, a few more folks joined as more people I'm sure will hop on here. Today. We are going to slow down a little bit. We've gone through the first four chapters in the book of Romans and we're gonna get into chapter five today, but we're only gonna go through the first five verses and Romans, as I mentioned before, it's some of the most theologically sound doctrine when we talk about, you know, some of those churchy words like justification, propitiation, even faith, grace, things like that. But I think this is a good day to slow it down a bit and just really unpack these first five verses in Romans 5, which talk a lot about hope. The first five verses, hope is mentioned three times. And aside from the book of psalms, which is 150 chapters, hope is mentioned more in this book here in the book of Romans than any other book in the Bible. So proportionately, it's the most hope filled book because there's, there's, it's a lot shorter than those 150 chapters in Psalms. And hope is something that I think is similar to love in the sense where before you come to know the Lord, you, you think you know love, you have a definition of love, you think you feel love, and then you experience God's love for the first time and then you realize everything you thought love was. It's like, oh, wait a second, even max capacity love apart from Christ only goes yay high. And then you experience the love of Christ and it just bursts the, the roof off, right? It's just a different feeling. It's a different. And, and Love in itself, a biblical love isn't just a feeling, right? It's a command. It's a decision. We, we commanded to love. We make the decision to love, but when we feel God's love, it's like, man, I know my mother loved me as much as she possibly could by her own strength, by her own merit, but didn't come close to the love of Christ and then come close to the way she could love once she received Christ. Well, hope is somewhat similar where we kind of have our idea of what hope is, and then when we come to know the Lord, we come to read scripture, really digest scripture. It's like, wait a second. This hope that I'm reading about in the Bible is different than the hope that I knew before I knew the Lord. The way we use the word hope, there's a connotation of doubt, right? It's, you know, I, I hope it, it's cloudy this morning. I hope it doesn't rain, but I have no idea if it's going to rain or not, right? I could hope it doesn't rain, but that I'm not. There's no trust, there's no faith involved in it. Even if I look at my, if I look at my weather app and it says, you know, 10 chance of rain, it looks cloudy. It's like, yeah, I guess I just hope it doesn't rain, right? It'd be better if it doesn't rain. But biblical hope, there's. There's a difference there because there's a confidence. As one theologian said, there's a happy assurance, right? There's. There's a confidence in biblical hope. So biblical hope has closer ties to faith than the way we know and use the word hope just in our language, in our culture. And certainly hope for unbelievers is different than biblical hope. But hope is a, is an impactful word for me. You know, we, we got the shirts made for King's Council, says hope dealer, right? And hope is so big for me, and my personal contract has the word hope in it with the King's Council. One of the things where we're big on is personal contracts, those I am declarations. And for me, after praying about it and thinking about it and just hearing from the Lord, my personal contract is I am a fearless beacon of light, spreading the hope and love of Jesus Christ with intention and fervencity.

Yes, you are. Yes, you are.

Amen. My OGs. My King's Council OGs. Amen. And spreading that hope and love of Jesus Christ, it, it's God really spoke that to me because when I got saved, I went from being in a place of complete hopelessness, complete despair, not having a foundation of anything that was strong, right? Just feeling like I was always in the sinking sand, feeling like a cloud was always over my head. And when I came to know the Lord and 20:11 and received his love and had this, this new profound, intimate relationship with him, and I saw others who were lost, who were right where I was, I was like, man, you just see it in, in, in an unbeliever's eye sometimes that they just are lacking that love and they're so hopeless they have no hope. Part of my, my journey to Christ, which you guys know that I suffered the back injury when I was a junior in high school, wound up having four back surgeries, got hooked on the pain pills for 14 years. But when I was a junior in high school, it wasn't just the back injury because, you know, like all 16 year olds, you have your whole life planned out and you know exactly what you want to do and then God will find a way to reroute you. And I'm grateful for the rerouting because ultimately it brought me to my knees to cry out to him. But that same year, when I was a junior in high school, you know, everything was going good. Transferred to this, this new high school, nationally ranked high school for basketball. My name's being known for basketball, you know, gonna, you know, think about where I'm gonna go to college, this and that. And then ultimately I was very, it was very short sighted with my, my hopes and dreams and how I have my life planned out because it was go to college and I was kind of riding that high of, you know, being known for basketball. So get injured, that gets taken away. I was like, oh man, that was my identity, you know, being the guy who's good at basketball right now. What, why would people like me, why would people talk about me? Why would people know my name if I can't play basketball anymore? But my junior year, all within a few months stretch my, my identity, which was kind of like in my family structure, I was one of the only kids that I knew where their parents were still together, hadn't gotten divorced, and shortly after my back injury, my parents split up. And nobody saw it coming. Like, no way. My mother didn't see it coming. My father just left. I was like, no, I'm 16 at this point. But still, it's like that was my, my, my, my identity was basketball and my family just good family. Structure. And that was gone. And then also in that time span, a girl that I was friends with at my previous high school, she died in a car accident. And I was just left there, like, what's the point of all this? What's the point of life?

What.

Like, what are we doing? Even if I do everything that I want to do in my mind, what would be a good, prosperous life? What's the point if we're all just going to die? Like. Like this? Does life mean anything? And I was so hopeless, so hopeless. And that's why it was so easy for me to get addicted to something that made me feel good. Because I was so hopeless. I was so empty. And whether an unbeliever wants to admit it or not, that there's that measure of emptiness, there's that measure of. Of hopelessness that they have, because the only true thing we could place our hope in is the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's not a hope where I hope that he's real. I hope that he's going to return. I hope that his promises are true. Biblical hope is that. That. That blessed assurance, that happy assurance that. That confidence that. That knowing that God is real and God is true and that our hope in Jesus Christ is not without any, any sort of fluctuation of uncertainty, right? There's a certainty when we talk about hope in Jesus Christ. So I'll read through these first five verses and we'll unpack them a little bit. And I hope today could be a day a lot of us unmute and make this a. A conversation we all could glean from. So Romans 5, starting at verse one, therefore. And I'll pause right there. Therefore. Obviously, Paul is writing this letter to the Romans, and therefore. Whenever you see a therefore, you always got to ask yourself, what is it, therefore? And he's essentially saying everything that he said so far in those first four chapters, therefore. And what did we learn those first four chapters, and particularly Romans 1, 21 through 3, no, 118 through 3, 21, 22 is, we're all guilty, right? We're all guilty. We're. We're all unrighteous. However, God imputes His righteousness to us, and we're. We're accounted as righteous upon placing our faith in Jesus Christ. It's by grace alone, through faith alone, that we're deemed righteous. So Paul is saying all that. And even in chapter four, he. Paul makes the argument because he knows all the objections. He's going to get ahead of time. So he says no, even the Father of the faith. Even Abraham, 400 years before the law was in place, he was deemed righteous. He was accredited righteousness for his faith, for his trust in God. So coming off all that, therefore, with that being said, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory. Or your translation may say rejoice in tribulations. Your translation may say sufferings, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance, character and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. So Paul's saying, therefore I, I laid this thing out for you. I gave you the bad news that, that none are righteous. And then I gave you the good news that we're accounted righteous. When we place our faith in Jesus Christ, there's no works involved and there's, there's no excuse for us not to, to know. Even if you don't know the name Jesus Christ and know that there's God. God reveals himself through his creation. He reveals Himself through our conscience and he reveals Himself through his commandments. And what Paul says here is we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't say we have the peace of God, he says we have peace with God. And what that means is it's not a feeling that being at peace with God, it's a fact. Because even though before I came to know Christ, I was at enmity with God, I, I was in a battle against God and there was no peace with God. And the beautiful thing about the God that we serve is when we battle God, when we're not at peace with God and He wins the battle, what does he win? He wins us, right? He, he wins our heart. So when we, we become, we come to this place of peace with God, it means that, okay, now all, all the things that we're blessed with now what, what are the benefits of being at peace with God? And Paul goes on to say what these benefits are right now. That we've been justified in a judiciary sense, it's, it's not guilty, been pardoned. Jesus is our advocate. It's like if we're sitting in a courtroom and the prosecutor is rattling off every sin we ever committed, our lawyer, who's our advocate, walks up to the, the judge who happens to be his Father and says, no no, no. He places faith in me and I. I died. The shedding of my blood covers his sins and he places faith in me and was it not guilty were imputed that righteousness. So now we can have peace with God. And having peace with God means that if I'm at peace with God, no matter what circumstance I'm facing in a carnal manner, in a natural manner, it's. I'm at peace with God. Jesus is my advocate, my abba Father. He is the creator of heaven and earth and we could have peace with him at all times despite any circumstance. And then Paul goes on to say peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. So what are the benefits of being justified? We have peace with God and we have access to God. And how, how great is it that we have access to God? For 30 minutes before this Bible study every Wednesday, we, we pray, we seek God, we have access to God. And it's really, it blows my mind that we have access to God even when, you know, Lucy was, was leading me to the Lord and she told me, wake up every morning, just thank God you're alive. Just say thank you, God for waking me up this morning. And I, I did it for a few days. I felt nothing. I fel. Was talking to the air. And then all of a sudden I felt like there was somebody there. Something, somebody there. There's somebody on the receiving end. And then I just started talking to God more and more and I started to develop this relationship and like there was access, right? There's access that I had. And ultimately the, the fact that we have access to the Lord. Think, think about in the Old Testament where the high priest once a year were going to the holy of holies. And to be in the presence of God, it's like, well, the presence of God is now us. We're the tabernacle, we're the temple. We have this access, not just access, but the spirit of the living God lives inside of us. God himself lives inside each and every one of us as his temple, as his church. And it's just mind blowing to think of that. But we're blessed with this access. And we're told to boldly go to him, right? We boldly go to him knowing that he's real, knowing who we are in him, and knowing that no matter what's on our heart, God wants us to come to him when we're weary, right when we're heavy laden, God wants us to come to him, when we're pissed off at him, he does. When you read through the Psalms, you see David at different points in life, through different seasons. And what I love about David is he just brought it to God. He brought it to God so we could kind of be in a funk, be in a season where, you know, we're questioning God, we're, we're doubting, we're wavering, but it's like, wait a second, we have access to God. He already knows these things because he's omniscient. But when we actually speak to him about it, when we bring this up, He. He wants us to. To bring it all just like vomit at the foot of his altar, right at the foot of the cross. He wants us to do that. And oftentimes when we are mad at God or when we're just in a season of despair, when we're in a season of wilderness, a drought season, valley season, whatever you want to call it, what do we tend to do? We isolate. We isolate from other people. We isolate from God himself. It's like, wait a second, we have this privilege, we have this blessing of access to Him. And why would we want to isolate and kind of block out the. The Creator of all things that. That have ever been created? And then the next thing that we could see as a benefit is we have a preview to our future. It's right there. It says, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. So we rejoice. We could be happy in the hope of the glory of God. We could. We could be glad in all circumstances, right? The hope of the glory of God never changes, never wavers. So we always have something to rejoice about. We always have something to be happy about, despite any circumstance. When we. We fix our eyes on the things that are unseen. When we fix our eyes on God. And I was actually just sharing Matthew last night or the night before. One of the. The best things that happens when we read through Scripture is we take our carnal perspective where we see things through the lens of our eyes, and we shift it. We could get a glimpse of God's perspective, and we. We shift our perspective into God's perspective. And then circumstances don't change at all, but our perspective of those circumstances change a ton. And all of a sudden, those things that were weighing us down, those things that we were stressed out about, those burdens that we had, they're. They like, yeah, it's no big deal. It's wild that circumstances don't have to change, but we could Experience a peace, right? And, and change our perspective as to how we view all these circumstances. And then finally Paul reveals that there's purpose in our pain. There's purpose for the sufferings that we experience. There's purpose for the tribulations that we face, for the trials that come our way. And I, I mentioned this on the prayer call. We're, we're, we're guaranteed storms in our lives, right? When you look at the, the two builders, the one who built his house on sand, the one who built his, his house on solid rock. The, the, the key to that story is the storm comes for both, right? We're guaranteed and it's a blessing, it's a privilege to, to suffer on Christ's behalf. But the trials, the tribulations are going to come. But what does God promise us? That his grace is sufficient. And the trials and tribulations are different than the temptations, right? The God will, will test us. The enemy will tempt us when the enemy tempts us. That there's, there's a way we could resist. There's a way we could withstand. First Corinthians 10:13. We, we, we have, we have the secret weapon, right? We, we have the hidden weapon that the world doesn't have. They're going to be tempted the same as we're tempted. We're going to be tempted the same as they're tempted, but they're not going to be able to withstand their temptation because they can't draw from the power of the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit living within us, so we have the ability to withstand. But there is purpose and there's pain and suffering. And when we look at this, such a, A deep verse here, it says that we can glory, we could rejoice in our tribulations and our sufferings in those trials, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, right? So perseverance, same word for perseverance. It's the word in the Greek hippomine, right? And the only reason I remember how to pronounce that is because it sounded a little like me to hip hop Hooray. You know, noted by nature from back in the day. Hippomine. Hip hop. Right? So hippomy. And it's the same word here for perseverance. It's, it's a perseverance, it's a steadfastness, it's a constancy, it's an in endurance, right? We all want to be strong, but oftentimes we don't want to put in the work to get strong. We all want to be strong in our faith. We all want to be. Have grit as Christians, right? We should want to have grit. But nobody really wants to sign up to be in those situations or. Or sign up for those trials and tribulations and those sufferings that will help develop us to become steadfast, to become gritty, to. To endure, to be able to persevere and. Trying to think when I. I'll play this. As I was spending time in prayer this morning, it. God just kind of, like, put in my heart a gentleman that I met a few years ago through a mutual friend. His name is Tommy Harris. Used to play football for the Chicago Bears and met him, spent a whole day with him, and it was great. We're. We're friends now. I can reach out to him anytime. But Tommy, he wrote a book called Endure and His perspective. When I sat down with him now, I. I knew who Tommy Harris was when I met him, and I kind of had known when he talked about how his wife had passed away, it like, kind of rang a bell. And he wrote a book called Endure, and he wound up losing his wife to a brain aneurysm shortly after they got married. And his perspective was. It was like, oh, my gosh. How. What the heck was that? Did you guys see that? A ladybug just landed on my Bible. I don't know if you guys could see that. Scared the crap out of me. That's how you could tell I'm safe. Because even a few years after I was safe, something like that happened. I would be like, oh, so, yeah, you can tell. Holy Spirit is really doing a work in me at least today. At least today. Anyhow. Tommy wrote this book, Endure. And like I said, in sitting with him, it was like, he's more fired up for the Lord than I am right now. How could he have this much joy, this much, this much peace? Like, I can't imagine, like, losing your spouse to. Out of the blue, to a brain aneurysm. So I'm going to play with you. This from 2018. This is at some NFL awards. And he literally had two minutes to be on stage. And he shared briefly this testimony. And you could tell Tommy's father is a preacher because in the two minutes, he goes from just speaking to preaching his butt off. But I want to play this for you, and then we'll get into a little bit more the. These sufferings and these trials that we face. Oh, you know what? I didn't hit the button for the sound. Sorry, guys. Even Sharing a screen. My tech, tech abilities are not a. Okay. It's not giving me the option to for like enhancing the sound. So somebody just shout out if you don't hear this very well. Welcome three time pro baller and Chicago Bears legend Tom and Barrett.

Thank you.

Thank you all for having me out here in Minnesota. It is pretty chilly out there. I don't have long to be up here. My father would say I have enough time to make a sandwich. I wish I could speak a meal, but he only gave me so many seconds. But I just want to take advantage of this moment. About five years ago, I lost my wife to a brain aneurysm. And I remember sitting in the same auditorium. In the auditorium, just like you were. We were in Indianapolis and me and her were sitting here and I was watching a man come up there also and talk about how he lost his wife. And as I was sitting there in the audience, I was only married for 30 days at that moment. And I didn't know 11 days later I would lose my wife. So my job, I don't, don't, we won't all because I realized that death is a thing that, that happens in life. It's not a thing that happens to life. So my job is to go and tell everyone that is living to make life count.

Make it count. I don't care what it is. I don't care what it is. And as you breathe today, when was the last time you took a big deep breath? As I pulled my wife's monitor off.

And she took her laughing right now.

Take a deep one.

Let it out.

As long as you have that in your body, you got the Brady effect. That at any moment. I got time on the clock. I can come back at any moment. No things happen in my life, but I can make a change at any moment. So I came here today to tell you, to encourage all of you that's going through a difficult time. That trouble don't last always that I've never seen a cloud sit over one person's house for a long time. This too shall pass. So my job today to tell you all why you're here. To endure this thing. We've been made to endure the night. But our joy will come in the morning. Thank you guys.

Wow. Amen.

Powerful, right? Two minutes. Two minutes.

And.

I, I've watched that a bunch of times since I met him. But like I, I got to hear the whole story. And as I mentioned, like I, I, I saw Tommy and his character, like his heart for the Lord, the peace that he had the joy that he had, that. That's his character. But how did his character get that way? His character got that way because of a trial, of a suffering. And what did that suffering do? It gave him an opportunity to endure, to persevere, to grow. And then what comes from that is the character. And then what comes from the character? The hope, right, to get to that hope of Jesus Christ. The hope again, that confident expectation of Jesus Christ. The confidence, the, the expectation of his promises will, will come to pass. All of them from, from the big ones, like Jesus coming back. Yeah, but what are the things he specifically promised you? What did he speak to you? But our job, when the trials and tribulations come, and you know, we made reference of this before. I know I have. When you're going through a season, you know, when, you know, we lost the first two babies, when, when Lucy got pregnant. Everybody wants to quote James 1:2 to you, right? You know, you know, rejoice in this, you know, rejoice in your tribulations, knowing that it's an opportunity for your patience to grow, right? And it's like, yeah, I, I know the verse, but I don't want to hear it right now. But when we're not going through those trials, maybe you are going through a season like that, some sort of tribulation, some sort of suffering, and you need to take hold to these promises of God, right? You need to know that there's purpose for your pain, or maybe you're not in that season, but we need to, to fully let a verse like this take root in our hearts. So when that season comes, because again, they're promised to us, we're going to go through trials, we're going to go through tribulations that we know how to handle them, how to response, how to respond. And our job is when we suffer, to suffer well. Right, and what does that mean, to suffer? Well, to suffer well means to, to endure. Have you guys ever heard of. Well, before I get into this illustration, Sean.

When you're talking about suffering, well, it's going to look different for different people. Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, when he died, they both went to Jesus, and that's the key. But the way that he, the way that he approached each of them was very different. Martha was very type A, very driven, very task oriented. So he's able to have a theological conversation with her about what the resurrection was. And then he just cried. With Mary, you know, the key is going to Jesus with whatever it is that we're going Through.

Yeah. Amen. Amen. Have you guys ever heard of like the illustration of the potato, the egg and the coffee bean? All right, so you have boiling water. If you put an egg in, was an egg do, right? An egg gets hard, gets firm. Put a potato in that boiling water, what does it do? It gets soft. You put a coffee bean in that water, what does the water do? The water just enhances that coffee bean. And now the coffee bean has more impact on the boiling water than the boiling water has on it. So if you see sufferings, if you see trials, if you see tribulations, if you see junk that's thrown your way as that boiling water, know that the same, same trial that can harden somebody's heart, right? Or, or soften somebody to the point of just despair, of inadequacy, of worthlessness, that, that same water, if you put a coffee bean in it, can be impacted, right? That now that boiling water turns into the, this, this beautiful caffeine filled drink. But the potato starts hard, gets soft. The egg starts fragile inside and grows hard. But when it comes to, when it comes to that coffee bean, the coffee bean suffers well, takes that same boiling water and it's not affected by it, but the coffee bean now affects that trial. So when we, we suffer, well, it's kind of like, kind of an elementary illustration. But it's so true, right? It's the same boiling water. You're just putting different things in the boiling water. We're all going to face the boiling water, we're all going to face the trials, we're all going to face the storms. It's just, what are we going to be? Are we going to be the, the potato? Are we going to be the egg? Are we going to be the coffee bean? And as elementary as an illustration it is, it kind of fires me up to know that as a child of God, I'm a coffee bean, right? I'm not a potato, I'm not an egg. I, I was in my, in my olden days, right? But today, even if I don't believe it, even if I still feel like, hey, when, when things come my way, I get hard, I, I get, I get bitter. I, I, I want to isolate, I want to, I, I get mad at God. Well, that's not my identity in Christ. My identity is I am who he says I am. And these promises and these commands, they apply to me. So I could actually glory, I could rejoice in that boiling water because I know that, I know the path that God's taken me to. On it. I know that. That boiling water, what it's going to produce, it's going to produce perseverance, right? All of us as. As believers, none of us should just shrivel up and take what the world throws at us. Take what the devil throws at us. No, none of us should shrivel up and die. We. We may feel like that at times. There's times where we want to isolate. There's times we just want to lay in bed, put the covers over our head and just kind of run from circumstances. But that's not who God's called us to be. We're too special in our identity. We're too impactful to this world. We're too strong of instruments for God to use for us to. To respond to anything like that, to anything like that. And if that is our response, then we have to say, okay, well, where. Where does our trust truly lie? Where does our trust truly lie? Because if I'm in a season like that, if I'm in a season where I don't know how I'm get. Getting out of this. I don't know how I'm going to face this obstacle. And you feel depleted. You start to feel like just a touch of that emptiness that you felt before you even came to know Christ. It's like, how am I going to respond to this? It's like, wait a second. I'm gonna declare the promises of God over my life. The promises that are promised to all of us as children. The promises that he's promised to me this year. I told you guys, my word for this year is increase, right? And it's easy just to apply that increase finances, okay? Like, yeah, I believe that's going to come. But increase in what? Because if I increase in my character, which we all want to increase in our character, right? Like who we are. I mentioned Tommy. You just see him as a character. I just love meeting people like, I'd rather meet. I'm more in awe of people like that than if, like the most famous celebrity or, you know, Michael Jordan guy over LeBron. If it's Michael Jordan, I'd be more in awe of anybody. Any of you. Anybody who has maybe no. No followers. No. No name that rings bells, anything like that. But they have that character. Say, oh, I want to. I'd be more in awe of that person. I want to spend time next to that person. But in order for me to develop that character, that means I got to persevere, have to endure again that. That same word, perseverance, that. That same word is the same word of patience in James, right, that these trials, they. They give. Give an opportunity for. For patience, for endurance. So God gives us this opportunity to develop our character, which ultimately turns to hope, which is this. This. This faith, this expectation of who he is, to. To know with full confidence that. That God is real. And we all want that. We all want to know that hope, to feel that hope, to be rejuvenated every day by that hope. But the hope comes from the character, and the character only comes from the perseverance. The perseverance only comes from going through the suffering.

Right?

We all want to sign up for the end result. None of us want to go through what it takes to get to that end result. We all want God to show up in our lives. We all want God to perform miracles. We all want God to. To show up and show out, but nobody's quick to. To sign up for. All right, God. Yep. But, yep, I'm gonna sign up for this trial. I'm gonna sign up for this suffering so I can ultimately get to that place where the only way I can get through it is you, right? No, nobody willingly wants to sign up for that. But we should, right? We should be willing to do that. Because ultimately, if that brings me closer to him, if that refines my character and the character isn't just my reputation to everybody else, and the character isn't really. Well, doesn't really matter how other people see my character. It's really more what's being revealed to myself about my character. This is God giving us an opportunity to. To kind of check where we are in our own character. How do we handle things? He already knows. Oftentimes we don't know. Oftentimes we talk a big game like, yeah, I can endure. I can endure that. You go through it and then you're. You're that potato or you're that egg. You get soft, you get hard. You're not that coffee bean. Well, for every trial that comes my way, for every suffering that comes my way, I want to know that I'm that coffee bean. Because, like, in my mind, I see this little coffee bean with, like, a crown on it. And the crown represents, I'm a king's kid, I'm a child of God, an heir and a co heir with Jesus Christ to all. All the glory and riches in heaven. So I'm that coffee bean with a crown on its head. And when you put me through that, into that boiling water, it's like, oh, no. The devil may have thought this is the biggest Stumbling block in the world, you know, whatever comes my way. This is the biggest banana peel anybody could step and slip on, right? It's like, no, I'm a coffee bean with a crown on my head, and I'm going to impact my circumstance, my environment. My environment's not going to impact me, Leslie.

So I kind of love this. I run long races. I actually am signed up for a marathon this year. So talking about endurance, I'm already like, that's on my brain. But speaking from a meditative perspective, for me, I'm like, practically, how do I practice endurance and suffering? Well, is if you're doing something hard on a run, if you start complaining in your mind, even about the weather and what a bad day it is, et cetera, and you get into that negative mindset and you just start to complain about the circumstance that tends to end up not. You're not suffering well, and it's harder to get through the trial. You know, you may get through it, but you didn't do it well. And it kind of feels like this negative thing. And, you know, I don't know if you guys have ever, like, done something hard, like, you know, gone on a hike with somebody and there's that person who's like, complaining, complaining the whole way up the mountain, and then you get to the top and it's beautiful, and you're, like, happy because you suffered well. And someone is bringing everybody down. It's like they're not rejoicing, you know, they're not suffering well. And it's just that one person, you're like, gosh, it's. It's so unfortunate. You couldn't understand the strengthening happening right now. And then the. In the relationship, you can have through that suffering together. Because if you suffer well together, you get to enjoy that peak kind of feeling together. So I don't know. I just. For me, it's like, I enjoy doing things in life that are similar with endurance. Like listening to David Goggins, for example, is one thing. And I talked about this book, sorry, I put in the comments, another book about there's actually a ship called the Endurance. And it's a great story about, you know, the persistence of human character and teams coming together. So this is a concept near and dear to my heart that I could talk about for a long time. But I just wanted to point that out about just, like, looking your. Like, you know, the question is, I guess in your own life, how are you suffering and are you complaining about it, or are you finding the joy that's Good stuff.

I just clicked on that link. I want to check out that book. Charles Spurgeon says the same sun that melts wax hardens clay, right? So it's the same sun, it'll melt one thing and harden something else, similar to the potato and the egg. And speaking of running, a couple years back, we, we got to know Chad Wright a little bit. Former Navy seal, he would hop on King's Council calls from time to time and he, you know, he would be running ultramarathons, things like that. He's kind of cut from that David Goggins cloth, right? And he said, you know, he would be a mile, whatever. I don't even know how long ultramarathons are. And, you know, somebody will come up alongside him, how you feeling? And he'd be like, my toes are bleeding, I got blisters. And he said, my answer always be, I'm fantastic. Right? I'm fantastic. And that's suffering. Well, of course, like running a marathon, having bloody blistered feet. You know, it's, it's nothing in comparison to some real trials, perhaps, that you face, but the perspective. Best believe Chad Wright, when a real trial has his way, what do you think he's going to say? You know, he's not going to say, oh man, you'll never believe when it rains, it pours. You know, just things keep piling up, mounting up. He's going to say, no, I'm fantastic, I'm fantastic. I'm that coffee bean where I'm not going to be affected by my circumstances. I'm going to be the impact of my environment around me. Jonathan?

Yeah, this is super good. I was waiting to get to this chapter since you discussed getting to Roman, so I'm glad you're taking time on these first five verses, but I think the, everything you're saying is just so, so good and actually very, very timely. But the hope, Hope cycle, these first five verses, I've been looking at them the last year. It's kind of like the hope cycle. And because in verse two, you start in hope and in verse three or in verse four, you end in hope. You know, your perseverance, character and character, hope. But your hope changes and it's more settled, it's more. Sure, it's different. Your hope expands and so, you know, even just like On a broad 30,000 foot view, you know, your hope starts in basketball, but it ends in Jesus, right? And so it's this, it's. That's the testing, that's the, the maturity and that's Finding new levels of hope. And, and so there's this book I have on my to read list called. It's from a, it's from like a scientist perspective, what's called the hope cycle. And I want to read that and just like the neural pathways and everything on, on the cycle of hope pretty much. And what that really means. And I feel like Paul, Paul got it right here probably before science and science confirming now what the Bible says. But I wanna, I wanna dig into that book this year. And so I love how it, it ends in the love of God, you know, verse five there, because, you know, like First Corinthians says, love always hopes. Love always hopes is like one of my favorite phrases in the Bible probably, if not my favorite phrase in the Bible. And so as long as you can hold on to the love of the Father, hopeful, I was fine to see it at your side. And that's where like the real anchor of truth comes from.

Amen. Amen. That's good. Those hope dealer shirts that we made, the verse on the back is Romans 15:13. Now may the God of hope fill you with all peace in believing that you may abound in the hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. I hope, man, just hope. I love the word, Brandon. So, man.

How much, man? You know, I've. Romans 5, 3, 5 has been something that I've been one of my core, core scriptures for a long time now. You know, back in 2011, my son's mom and I split up. I lost my job, I didn't have a place to live, my car broke down, I got beat up outside of my apartment. Money stolen from me right before Christmas, an allergic reaction to some medicine that I was taking, all within like six months. And it was, it was super difficult to get through. And I wasn't rooted in Christ at the time. And so you do feel, you do feel that hopelessness when you go through those things. And there was some suicidal ideation that went along with it and, you know, so there was a, a longing for something more. But when I turned my life back around to Christ, gave it back to him in 2012, these were one of the first verses that kind of stuck with me. And again, it goes back to starting in verse 2. Having peace with God, knowing that we are no longer enemies. You know, we have victory because we are his, we belong to His. That, that gives you that assurance that no matter what you're going through, you have victory, whether it's in this lifetime or whether it's in the next. But that you know, those. Those.

But.

And because you have that peace with God, that's why you can glory in your trials, you can boast in trials. You can, you know, be shouting, yes, I have another trial. Because you know that you have victory in it, but not only so that you know when you. You know that those. Those struggles are producing your character, and your character is one who overcomes. You are someone who is an overcomer, you know, because your. Your sufferings have produced that perseverance. So you can look back and even if your next trial is longer or more difficult than the first one you went through, you know, it's that. That building block of I can overcome because I've already done it. I am an overcomer. And it just solidifies that of. Of that's who your character is, is one who overcomes, one who has victory, one who can be assured that you will overcome. And then that produces you the hope of, hey, whatever is going to come next time, whether it's longer, whether it's more difficult, whether I don't see the end of it, I have the hope in. In the victory of Jesus Christ. And that.

That's.

That's the love that's poured into our heart. And so this has always spoke to me so much. I told my wife the same thing last night was like, I cannot miss today, right? Like. Like, we have to. You know, I've been looking forward to this, too, kind of like Jonathan said, since we. Since we started Romans. But it's just been a core verse of mine that just has always sat in me. And even in this season of my life, as I've been trying to build this business up, and it's not financially, you know, making the money I want to, and I've left my job for it. There's difficulty associated with it, and I don't know what the other side looks like. I don't know when it ends. But I know that God has called me to overcome and that there is a hope that he will have victory in it in the end.

Amen. You got me fired up, Brandon. Hopefully that's what I did this morning.

Yes.

Yeah. Love it. Love it, Gita.

Yeah, thank you. This is great. And, you know, I just want to share a testimony because God told me hope in him. Right? And if you read this word carefully, it's like, hope in the Lord. Those who hope in the Lord will not be disappointed. And it's like hoping in him. Because when we see. When I first got saved, my pastor says something. She's like, we still Cry, but we cry with hope. The world cries, but they cry without hope. And last week, I needed something for my car to be done. And I called the dealership, and they were like, oh, it'll be 5,700 bucks to fix that. I was like, what? 5,700 bucks? And then I went to call, you know, a few private mechanics, and they were like. One guy was like, well, 1500. And I just didn't like that. I still felt uneasy about it. And I called around more, and somebody from my church recommended someone, and he said, well, it'll be 700 to fix this. It's a break lines. And he seemed honest, and I was like, you know what? I'll go with him. And then after I hired him, I dropped the car off, I came home and I prayed and I said, lord, I'm trusting in you. It's not about people. It's not about the dealership. Favor comes from you. Hope comes from you. And I just prayed and I gave it to him. And then a couple hours later, they called, My car was done. And he's like, well, we did it for 500. You know, it wasn't 700 after all. And that never happens. If anything, it would be 200 extra. They wouldn't take it off. And they're, you know. You know how they are. So that just really enforced something so deeply in my spirit that give it to God. Hope in him, not people. People will fail you. You know, people will lie. But God will never fail. Our hope is in him, and he can't disappoint us.

He.

Because that's just who he is.

Yeah.

Amen. Isn't it remarkable, the correlation between the blessings we receive with the trust we put in God? It's like the more we put our trust in him, all of a sudden, there's more and more blessings. There's more favor. We start to literally feel like his favor surrounds us as a shield. But it. The correlation is, are we trusting him more and more? And he never fails. He never fails us. Good stuff. Sean, does the little guy have anything to say this morning? Any feedback? Any words of wisdom?

For some reason, my unmute button was not working. He had a. He had a pretty mighty burp a minute ago.

This.

That was.

That was pretty deep. That's how babies say amen.

Yeah, he was definitely amening the entire conversation.

And adults after a good meal, I guess. Sure, sure.

I was thinking about a couple chapters ahead where in Romans 8, Paul writes in verse 6, the mind governed by the flesh is death. But the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. And it's just like you were talking about earlier with circumstances. Like, just the way that we approach things changes our perspective. If we're relying on ourselves. If, if our mind is governed by the flesh, man, it's just, it's a spiral, man. It's a, it's a downward spiral where there's just no real hope. We might hope for something that we can attain, but it may or may not pan out the way that we're hoping for it to. And then we just have no hope. Nothing real to grasp, nothing real to hold on to. And then when we have our mind governed by the Spirit, it's life, it's peace. Even when things don't go exactly the way that we expect for them to go, we still have peace and we still have life. Man, I just absolutely trusting in Jesus changes everything. Yeah.

Amen. James 1:12. I like the way it's written in the NIV. Blessed is the man who prayed perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. So all this, like, this whole thing about it, ultimately we hit because we have our, our circumstances, we have our day to day things that we go through, but ultimately this thing we call life, it's all one big example of this, this opportunity to, to grow. How do we handle all this collectively? Not day to day, but the lifespan, whether it's 90 years, 80 years, 30 years, whatever it is, that lifespan, I want to, I want to be told that I stood the test, right? Like I was approved. I, I passed the test. And it's so much better to be filled with hope. Filled with hope that when just hopelessness and despair, the enemy wants us to be there, wants us to feel it. And it's a real thing. That, that's why, you know, people wind up taking their own lives. They're so hopeless. They just feel so much despair. And that feeling, even if it's just a feeling, it's not a real thing. That feeling, that emotion, it's a real thing. It's heavy. And man, I felt it for a lot of years. Being on this side of it, my heart breaks. But I can look into the eye of somebody who doesn't know the Lord and they, you just see that hopelessness, that hopelessness. It's like he's right here, he's right in front of you. That we serve a God who, who is it hard to find? We serve a God who who is actually seeking after our hearts. We have a Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who actually says, come to me. And his arms are wide open for all of us. And our God is so, so good. So good. And he's worthy of our praise. The rest of chapter five is awesome as well. As we get into that, we'll probably finish chapter five next week. Leslie.

Sorry. One thing you just touched on real quick, something that helps me kind of when in the midst of suffering. And it can be very hard to, like, remain strong in the. In God when it feels like everything is so dark and closing in on you. And you mentioned how these thoughts kind of come through. And one thing that helped me is to not, like, invalidate what was happening, but just to understand that while this feeling and this thought is real and I'm experiencing, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true. And kind of, at least in the darkest depths, it's just that it doesn't feel like you're exercising so much energy and, like, viewing it and like, lifting yourself up, but just like, okay, this is really happening, but. And this thought is truly here, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's true. And then that. That little twist on the thought that's happening or the feeling that you're experiencing can at least help you take on the new perspective to then kind of give it back to God. But sometimes giving it to God feels so hard. So that was just one thing that I don't know if anyone else has experienced, but just remembering that every thought doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

Yeah. Amen. The enemy. He's the father of lies, right? He's good at getting us to believe those lies, those things that are untrue. That's good. Alan, bless us with your words of wisdom, brother. Good morning.

Good morning.

Yeah.

One of the things that the Lord's been kind of leading me on as well is in. In this. This persevering hope when we're going through any type of difficulty is ultimately that as we finish and hope with whatever that trial is, that he's given us a Tony and because he's about multiplying his kingdom. Right. So when we keep our eyes really on what he's doing in the. In the big picture of us is, which is, you know, giving us that victory to share with other people. Right. And, and, and tell people, whether it's in our family, our children, our church or community, whatever it is of how God helped us to overcome something, it kind of takes our, you know, it takes our Focus off of ourselves and what we're maybe going through at the moment and puts it on. Okay, you know what? God's got a bigger plan here. He's about multiplication and building his kingdom through us. And he's going to use these trials that, you know, the enemy wants us to feel, you know, weighed down with or burdened with, to really, you know, as seeds to, to, to plant and to ultimately have a harvest in his kingdom. So I think that's something that, that helps me to finish well and to have that peace and joy as we're going through whatever it is, whatever building God's doing in us is like, all right, God's going to prune us, but it's for growth, not only in our own life, but in his kingdom. So that, that, that just idea and that truth is like, okay, it's, it's not just about me overcoming, it's not just about myself in this trial. He's going to use it to, to maybe relate to somebody else that's going through something that needs to hear it.

Yeah.

Amen. Use the word pruning. Yeah. John 15 man, that pruning. Think about pruning. Pruning isn't fun. You know, like the pruning process isn't fun. I don't want to be signed up for pruning. It's the same shears that do the pruning, right? But the, the pruning is what, ultimately if you don't prune, then, you know, the, the beautiful tree. When we lived in New Jersey, we had a tree. Literally it was like the same week of May every year. It, it grew these beautiful. I don't know anything about trees, plants, anything like that, but it, it all turned white. The whole thing turned white. And it would last a couple days and then those white leaves will fall off and it'll be back to a regular tree. And it was just such a beautiful thing. So to actually blossom, to bloom into the character that God wants us to be, that he's calling us to be, it requires that pruning required. And the pruning oftentimes is through this boiling water. These trials, these tribulations, these sufferings that we go through, this has been great. I love hearing all your feedback. I know I typically run longer than two minutes over. Matthew and I, we, we have a lot of folks to meet with today, and I'm hoping to make the five hour drive back home tonight at the end of the day as well. So. Love you guys. Zach, I'll probably call you on my drive you. You. You kind of did us dirty by not sharing anything today, Zach. So.

I'll.

I'll hog you to myself later when I'm driving. He doesn't want to unmute to say anything now. Okay. Okay. So I'm calling on you first next week. You know, it's just that Lauren. Lauren's phone was connected to the car, so if I unmuted, I just had to undo all that audio. We rigged it up today, so.

But right now we can't hear you.

Because we've got an hour and a half drive here in a little bit, so maybe we can. We can talk later. Okay. All right. And I know that you get the credit. It's Lauren who's talking to you while you're on mute and telling you all the. The awesome wisdom things that she's hearing from the Lord. Are you just a mute and share? Oh, yeah.

I'm.

I'm just the. The shell. Of the two of us, she's the one where all the. The real value comes from, so. Absolutely not. Love it.

Love it.

Well, I love you guys. Have a blessed week. Everybody who had prayer requests, I. I write them all down. Not just so I remember during prayer time, but I spent time with this, my own personal prayer time as well. But I love you all. Bless your day, bless your families, and I'll see you all next week. See you guys.