0:00:00 - 0:00:16 I just spent an hour what I thought was recording a video and, uh, I guess it wasn't recording. So it's a good chance to write some notes and process what I thought a little better. Can't promise you this will be better, but I'll, I'll make another attempt here and I hope it's better. Um, I got an email 0:00:16 - 0:00:42 from someone who was recounting an experience she had where the Lord told her to do something difficult and she asked him why and he said, uh, if you do it, you'll see and she did it and she saw and now she has reasons. It got me thinking, oh, she said, uh, see, this seems like the opposite of the cycle 0:00:41 - 0:01:03 you were showing the faith cycle in your book through faith. And it, it actually isn't, it's actually exactly what, what I was showing. Um So I'd like to explain that a bit and I think that there's something in here that's very, very important that I, I've had on my list to talk about anyway. So this 0:01:03 - 0:01:25 won't be the last time, but it's hopefully by getting this out, we're, we're gonna give some people some things that they can put into practice now instead of waiting for the full case. So let's see where to start here. So let me ask you, why did this lady do what God said? Well, she had reasons and 0:01:25 - 0:01:47 the reasons weren't specific to the thing. So usually, but there were still reasons. Usually when you ask God why he'll give you reasons. He has reasons. He always has reasons if it, because he, he only asks you to do what's for your greatest benefit. And he can make a case as to why. But we have limitations 0:01:45 - 0:02:08 that impede his, his, the, the benefit that would be rendered if he shared those reasons. So what are some of those? Well, it shouldn't surprise us by the way, if you're a parent, you can't just say any old thing to your kid. I mean, explain any old thing to your kid. Uh Understanding is sequential and 0:02:08 - 0:02:33 sometimes they're exposed to dangers or opportunities that exceed their ability to understand right now. And, and you, they just have to trust you, but that trust does not come in a vacuum. You, your objective as a parent is to build an accumulated set of evidence of why your kids should trust you. That 0:02:33 - 0:02:54 comes down to two things, your motive and your wisdom. So they need to know that you, they, that you love them more than you love yourself. And therefore anything you ask of them is for their benefit. And two that you know what you're talking about. Well, God loves us more than we love ourselves and 0:02:54 - 0:03:19 he definitely knows what he's talking about. He knows more than we do. And so what you'll see is in the scriptures, he will invoke his names, which are references to things he's done in the past or character qualities that he has. And sometimes he invokes past activities that demonstrate these things 0:03:18 - 0:03:41 or if prophets are speaking, they will invoke things that he did in the past to help people have faith in the present. And so, um you see these things like he says, or, or prophet will say, thus saith the Lord of hosts. What's that doing? It's bringing into the conversation, the evidence of all the mighty 0:03:41 - 0:04:13 things he's ever done as the commander of the host of heaven. So um be present barriers to him in the reasons he would otherwise use when um when the case at hand is an opportunity to exercise great faith because his power comes in our lives proportional to the faith that we exercise. The more reasons 0:04:12 - 0:04:40 we have, the less faith we can have faith is doing what you have sufficient reason to do. Surplus reasons above and beyond what is sufficient, they reduce faith and therefore reduce the blessing. That's important to understand it's a huge nugget. Um Sometimes what we request of God or what we desire 0:04:40 - 0:05:00 of God, even if we don't know exactly how that's gonna happen, be fulfilled. It requires massive faith. That's the price. And so he will send us a situation that requires massive faith to get what we say we want. And then people are like, yeah, I don't want that. And this is where I talked about in the 0:05:00 - 0:05:20 book. Often you get to choose between what you want and how you want it, but not both. And almost always what people do is they choose how they want and therefore they never receive what they want. And then they'll complain nonstop about not receiving what they want. It's like this is exactly what you 0:05:20 - 0:05:42 chose. You picked the path that you were willing to walk and that path does not lead to what you want. So if you like that better then pick that instead, put it first in the priority order, people put the paths first, you know, you get a young lady who says, oh, I really wish I was married. Well, what 0:05:42 - 0:06:07 are you willing to do? Uh Basically nothing. I'm gonna sit at home and I expect Prince charming to bust through the front door like I won't even open the front door. He needs a bus through. Oh gosh. So, um uh anyway, the other thing is that often we seek blessings that exceed our understanding of the 0:06:06 - 0:06:29 laws of cause and effect. So how's God gonna explain that one? You know, you say, well, I really want this and it's, it's like, well, in order to explain how to get that, I need to teach you for like 20 years because that's how far ahead what you desire is. Or I could just tell you what to do and you 0:06:29 - 0:07:00 need to have faith in me. And let's talk about that phrase, faith in me. That's a good transition to the next thing. What we're talking about is not implicit trust in some arbitrary thing we're talking about. Honestly recognizing the real examples that demonstrate the reasons why God loves us and therefore 0:06:59 - 0:07:22 what he asks of us is for a best interest and knows what he's talking about. Those become the reasons instead of something detached from him. Like if you have a swampy yard, you should plant cottonwood trees because they suck up lots of water and it'll look nice and then you won't have a water problem 0:07:21 - 0:07:47 . Someone can give you reasons if, if God gives you reasons for something, you can then hand those reasons off to anyone else you want and they're not coming from God anymore directly and they're still just as valid as they were before. That's different than God saying I am God and everything you know 0:07:47 - 0:08:20 about me. I want you to bring into this conversation because I want you to do X or I really want you to stop doing. Y those are the reasons now and you can't hand that to someone else. You can't say God told me X and you should do X two. Unless, unless that chain can continue. And Isaiah goes to Hezekiah 0:08:19 - 0:08:40 and says, hey, you know, all these experiences we've had together where you've seen that I have this connection with the Lord that exceeds yours. Well, I just so happen to know you've been praying to him and he told me to come and tell you the answer to your prayer. Here it is. And now Hezekiah says 0:08:40 - 0:09:06 , oh yeah, OK. What if some random dude came in to see Hezekiah and said, um and, and Hezekiah hadn't been praying at all about anything because if he had that in and of itself would indicate something supernatural is going on like, hey, I know that you were praying about this one thing and here's God's 0:09:05 - 0:09:26 answer, that's kind of a big deal. But let's say some random person visits Hezekiah. Hezekiah is not praying at all. It is God told me to come tell you to, to um I don't know, let me marry your daughter or some crazy thing or give me your horse, right? That's red flag city. And you'd be an idiot to believe 0:09:26 - 0:09:52 that, right? There are no reasons for that. There are no reasons whatsoever to believe that this is important. So when, when, when we talk about trusting in God's character, we're, what we're doing is we're apportioning the belief we have in evidence. He's given us of who and how he is to the thing at 0:09:52 - 0:10:22 hand that he's telling us it doesn't solve the problem of whether he's telling us that's, we're just supposing that we know that already. Ok, that's a different conversation. But when we try to talk about people and how the past experiences with people can be employed as present evidence or evidence 0:10:22 - 0:10:42 of what they're saying presently before we're ready to understand that rationally, people lose their minds and they say this is trusting in the arm of the flesh. This is following a man. This is that this and the other thing, it's the same thing. If there are reasons, then there are reasons and if there 0:10:42 - 0:11:10 are not reasons, then there are not reasons, right? So we need to clarify our language and our beliefs and our feelings in regards to these things. Why? Well, I just made a case. I gave you two cases where greater blessings are only available in this channel. One is when our understanding, our present 0:11:09 - 0:11:32 understanding of cause and effect is far below this bless what this blessing requires. So there is no path of reason to get us there. I, I reason in the traditional, in the, in the, the set of reasons directly related to this specific thing. You have to rely on the character of the person telling you 0:11:32 - 0:12:04 whether it's a person or God. It's the same idea. The other case is when um the blessing requires greater faith than you can have when all the reasons are laid out in front of you directly related to that thing. OK? There's a third case at least, and the third case is actually probably the most common 0:12:03 - 0:12:26 of the two. It's just less glamorous. And this is when, you know, maybe the blessing is great, maybe it's not great. Maybe it's just the next increment of blessing, which is still great. But you know what I mean? We so often lock into this fight or flight mode and usually it's when one of our sacred 0:12:25 - 0:12:48 cows get kicked and we have a lot of them. And the second, any blessing requires passing through that stumbling block, we go into emotional mode and no amount of reason will be admitted. It doesn't matter if the best reasons in the world are given, they're totally clear. You can't contend with them in 0:12:48 - 0:13:16 any way. There's no answer. It doesn't matter. You will twist it up in your mind and come up with some convoluted excuse for why it doesn't apply. It's not exactly right, whatever. And that's because emotional mindsets are an impassable block to the higher order, uh faculties of reason, logic. This is 0:13:16 - 0:13:39 why it's so pernicious to have churches out there saying the way, you know, truth is how you feel about it. That's, that is a demonic satanic, terrible idea. It's a terrible idea. But here's the trick of how you pass through like there's a blood brain barrier. This is how you pass through the emotional 0:13:39 - 0:14:14 barrier, it's through seeing someone who you know, cares about, you suffer as a result of your obstinate. I shouldn't laugh about it. It's not funny. But I mean, I guess you have to laugh so you don't cry sometimes. And here's where the opportunity of the servants of God really picks up because they 0:14:14 - 0:14:44 also work in those other areas when you willingly suffer for the benefit of another person. And that includes them, basically beating you for doing it. There is hope that in them, beating you and seeing that you still care about them, you'd still do anything you could for them. It might soften their 0:14:44 - 0:15:08 hearts or get them out of that emotional fight or flight state where, you know, maybe they're still not ready to listen to reasons. But the biggest reason you've just given them, maybe the biggest reason to consider that what someone says is true is what they're willing to suffer so that you can hear 0:15:08 - 0:15:28 it. What are examples of this? Remember when Samuel the Laman night got up on the wall and they were trying to kill him or a Beedi came back to preach to a people he knew were gonna kill him. He knew his destiny was to get burnt at the stake for saying what he was about to say. And he said it anyway 0:15:27 - 0:15:50 , what about the Lamanites who converted to Christ? And then their fellow Lamanites came and killed them. They came out to battle. But instead of fighting back, they just knelt down and prayed and it says that as they were being slaughtered and over 1000 died, many of the army attacking them stopped 0:15:49 - 0:16:15 what they were doing. They would not listen to reason. They didn't care what the arguments were. But when they saw that these people, we're more willing to die than to retract their position. They believed them why? Because they knew they wouldn't do that. And therefore this is obviously something greater 0:16:14 - 0:16:50 . That's the power of love, real love, messy love. So it's very important for us to realize that when we trust in God, it doesn't mean just willy nilly, you know, apply it to anything. It's a specific concept that means recognizing the true weight of the evidence already provided to you of his love and 0:16:50 - 0:17:15 his wisdom. And that is a power that is not unique to God. Although he is unique in his quantity and quality of love and wisdom, it echoes down through his whole kingdom. Every parent has love and wisdom and they leverage that to teach their Children beyond the current capacity of their Children to reason 0:17:15 - 0:17:48 . And that's how it is with all people everywhere, all the time. It's rare only because love, real love is rare. It's rare only because that kind of depth of love and wisdom is rare. But if you're in a case where you meet someone who has that, it is excruciatingly important that you do not cast that 0:17:47 - 0:18:18 aside as, oh, this is trusting in the arm of the flesh. This is following a man blah, blah, blah. Is there evidence? If yes, then respond appropriately, John 717. While I start reading in 16, Jesus answered them and said, my doctrine is not mine but his that sent me. That's a big claim. If someone came 0:18:17 - 0:18:36 to you and said what I'm teaching you is not my opinion. It's what God taught me. You've automatically elevated beyond the space of most conversations, even gospel ones, you're not just sharing opinions anymore. This guy's claiming to be teaching you something that God taught him. And thus, it was with 0:18:36 - 0:19:03 Jesus. He continued. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself, do it. And you'll find out. Now, I quote the scripture often, why on earth would anyone give that a shot? Why wouldn't it be foolish to just assume everything is correct 0:19:02 - 0:19:26 and try it. It would, that's not what he's saying to do. What is the sufficient threshold for implementing this advice? He says it in the very next verse. The very next verse reads, he that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory, but he that seeketh his glory that sent him the same is true and no 0:19:26 - 0:20:03 unrighteousness is in Him. Now you might read that and say, well, yeah, well, anyone who says they're preaching the gospel could say that. No, no, they can't. You need to read and reread and get tattooed on your back. John chapter 10. John chapter 10, how do you know, how do you know the good shepherd 0:20:02 - 0:20:38 is the good shepherd? Because he gives his life for the sheep. He demonstrates with everything he does that he prefers our own benefit to his own. How can you tell the difference between one of his sheep and a wolf pretending they're a sheep? You cut them open, you cut them open and you see what's under 0:20:38 - 0:21:36 the clothing. Jesus said, mm, the world will know my disciples because they will love like I love when you speak in love, inviting people to improve, you are not seeking your glory, you're seeking the glory of the one that sent you. The one that is true. The one who has no unrighteousness in Him that 0:21:35 - 0:21:51 is the opposite of trusting in the arm of the flesh. It is literally what it means to trust in God. I really hope that we can all learn and live this lesson better than what we do.