0:00:00 - 0:00:22 I have a few thoughts. I want to share with one of my sons and I figured it would be better to record this and let him watch it so that he could replay it if he needed to and not have to remember it. And also I thought that there might be value in, in publishing this. There might be someone out there 0:00:22 - 0:00:45 who needs to see it. Uh This is directed towards a uh a child. So if it's useful for you in that respect, great. And as adults, maybe it's useful for you in some way. So I've called this the power of discipleship, harnessing childhood for the greatest outcomes in life. And it's kind of interesting the 0:00:45 - 0:01:10 way that this ended up. Um It's different than what I expected, but here goes. So I just want to start with the very short scripture to demonstrate the point that what is best, long term will only be obvious later. There's a, there's a false tendency to think that we see everything there is to see in 0:01:10 - 0:01:33 the moment, that's just not true. And it's quite important to understand this because so many decisions in life, you will only know what you need to know to see the right choice after it's too late to make it. This, this is something we try not to see something we try not to admit. Maybe because it seems 0:01:33 - 0:01:56 unfair, maybe because it's daunting, maybe because it threatens our desire to be independent or to see ourselves as such. But it is a case, some of the most important decisions, there's, there is no way you could possibly have the information. You need the wisdom, you need to make the decision correctly 0:01:55 - 0:02:22 , at least in a way where the correct decision truly seems like the one you should want the most. The reason for that is because our desires, they're based on what we have experienced in part, I guess to a large degree. So the less experience you've had, the less likely you are to have any clue what 0:02:22 - 0:02:57 to desire. And by how much so reality is a tricky thing, it's an obscured thing. And so here's a verse about it in John 717, Jesus said, if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself. So a little bit longer form application here or treatment 0:02:57 - 0:03:23 of the, of this idea is that the fact that God has better things prepared for us than we can know before we obtain them. So Jesus says, well, if you do it, you'll know there's only so much I can do to get you there before time ahead of time. It's really, really, really hard to persuade people what the 0:03:23 - 0:03:51 best path is and why it's worth it. It's really hard. So Jesus himself runs out of things he can do at some point. At some point, you actually have to believe him and give it a shot yourself in order to see that it's worth it. So both the path to God's greatest gift and the worth of God's greatest gift 0:03:50 - 0:04:17 are absolutely 100% hidden from you until you have them. It's only then you'll have any clue what the path is and what it's worth until then the best you can do is take someone's word for it. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't reasons to believe the, the, the person's word for it. It just means 0:04:17 - 0:04:40 the reasons won't be the thing itself. They won't be the gift itself. There will be other things, lesser things. And you'll have to, you have to look at that and say, well, it all lines up. So the next reasonable thing I can do is give this a shot too. So, in DNC 14 7, we're told that eternal life is 0:04:40 - 0:05:05 the greatest of all the gifts of God. The cost is to keep God's commandments and endure to the end and what that means in plain language is to learn and do His will no matter what it costs. That's the endure to the end bit. It's in spite of the fact that there will be times when it doesn't seem worth 0:05:05 - 0:05:35 it and you have to keep going. And if you do that, you will receive this gift and it's worth it. DNC 7818 in D CD uh 7818. The Lord says you cannot bear all things now, nevertheless, be of good cheer for. I will leave you alone. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours and the riches 0:05:35 - 0:06:06 of eternity are, are yours. So you can be in this path and still not have things fully figured out and still not be prepared to bear all things. So you need to have some kind of tool to see beyond the limits of where you are and what you can currently see. You have to have reasons beyond your personal 0:06:05 - 0:06:26 experience directly in this thing. In 13 5 17 2, the Lord is speaking to people he's visiting and he says, I perceive that you're weak that you cannot understand all my words, which I am commanded of the father to speak unto you at this time. So the father commanded him to, to teach a certain set of 0:06:26 - 0:06:55 ideas. And he says, well, I can't because you just won't, you're too weak, you won't understand you're not ready. And so there, like I said before, there are limits in how fully he can explain to you right now, the path to eternal life and the worth of eternal life. But the good news is, it's a process 0:06:55 - 0:07:23 , it's a process. And the part that's right before you, that that part can be made more apparent, but there are parts that you won't see until you're there. And then he said a similar thing in John 1612, I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. So how do you get there while 0:07:22 - 0:07:51 going back here? You do what you have sufficient reason to do right now. You do what you can see now and you're led, see, he says I will lead you along. You're led to where he can show you more. And this is the process. The challenge is that the challenges come as you go and they require increasing trust 0:07:51 - 0:08:22 in God as you go. So what does this have to do with normal life? Well, there are decisions before you all day, every day. Those tiny seemingly tiny decisions of how you're going to spend your time of what you're going to do and why the entire path to or away from eternal life is made up of those decisions 0:08:21 - 0:08:50 . Those tiny decisions every single day are going to determine which way you go and how quickly you move along. And so while it seems like what we're talking about when we're throwing around phrases like eternal life is some big far off after you die kind of situation. The truth is that it maps completely 0:08:49 - 0:09:12 to every single thing you do every single day. And you have to see that connection in order to make the right choices, every single day, every single moment of every single day. And if you don't make those choices, you absolutely will move away from that goal of receiving the greatest gift that God has 0:09:12 - 0:09:42 , which is eternal life. So let's look at how you see life right now. You see life as the uh offering you the possibility of nonstop goodies that only get better. Now, there's a scripture in Isaiah that says this, that describes this mentality as tomorrow will be like today only far better. And that 0:09:42 - 0:10:01 is you're not alone in your perspective of life like this. That's how most people see life, at least in wealthy nations, people in poor nations have enough around them to disprove that this is real. But the folks in wealthy nations, they entertain this illusion that life is just gonna get better and 0:10:01 - 0:10:19 better and better. Right now, there's enough around us that if you're honest and you look, you see that that's not the case. The older people get, they tend to get more miserable and you should ask why? Because there's a reason, there's a reason I'm going to show you not in specifics that would be a 0:10:19 - 0:10:42 really long conversation to cover all the cases. But in general terms are gonna show you the first piece of this is that as you grow older this grace period. And you can see how short it is because this is age, maturity and time. All those things wrapped into one. There is a small period where life is 0:10:42 - 0:11:02 nothing but green. It's nothing but benefit. It's goodies, goodies, goodies, it's, it's cotton candy and puppy dogs and all the good stuff. But then all of a sudden you start to become aware of this thing called cost. And the thing about cost is it grows over time, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger 0:11:01 - 0:11:30 and no matter what you do, you cannot stop that growth, you can't. And it's for reasons that are way bigger than what I can explain in this presentation. In a word, it's entropy. So costs are going to grow the more mature you get the more you age or even just with the passage of time. So even if and 0:11:30 - 0:11:54 this is sort of a best case scenario, even if things do get better and better and better, they're not gonna get better and better at the pace. You think if you're living in this dream world where there is no cost or only a tiny cost or a non growing cost cost grows over time, so you better find benefit 0:11:53 - 0:12:20 that does too. Because if your path is one where your benefit is not growing over time, then what you're going to find is that the cost will overtake benefit. So we could take this triangle and do this, right? And all of a sudden it's nothing but cost and there's this little grace period where all your 0:12:20 - 0:12:46 goodies come from, the sacrifices of your parents say and then boom, the cost takes over. So even in the best case, you better find a benefit that grows. Now, this is called a linear growth where it's a straight line, but not all lines are straight and cost tends to increase not linearly but exponentially 0:12:45 - 0:13:11 . So this is actually more close to reality. So here we have a young child, hopefully not so young that they're still in diapers. But you know, it's an icon and you have what looks like great benefit and look, you see how the the area of the green it's growing from the start until this point, it just 0:13:11 - 0:13:39 keeps getting better and better. But then something happens at a certain point, the rate of increase in cost it increases. So the graph gets sharper, it starts growing more quickly or rapidly. But the benefit that line stays the same, it it has the same slope. So this this person, this young person thought 0:13:38 - 0:13:59 they had it all figured out and then one day they turn 25 or whatever happens, there's a whole host of things that could happen here. And all of a sudden they realize life costs a lot more than they thought. And of course, we're talking about more than money here talking in much bigger terms. So the 0:13:59 - 0:14:27 negatives begin to grow a lot faster than the positives have been growing. Until that point. I had a friend of mine who grew up in, compared to me, relatively affluent circumstances and he texted me, oh, we must have been 34 at the time. 3334. He texted me and, and he said something like, hey, remember 0:14:27 - 0:14:43 we would, we would get a pizza and play Golden Eye on Nintendo 64. We were in high school and I said, yeah, I remember that and it wasn't like every weekend because we live pretty far apart and moved a lot and I had moved away. So it wasn't the easiest thing to get to his place. But he's like, I didn't 0:14:43 - 0:15:00 realize that that would be the high point of my life. And that was, that was one of the most depressing things I've ever heard. The guy's got kids. He's married, he's got a career and that that's he gets so little meaning out of those things that he looks back and says playing video games and eating 0:15:00 - 0:15:23 pizza was the best part of his life. You know, I mean, because the cost was so low back then, we just had so few things to worry about. I could see where he's coming from, but this is why because he never graduated from the kid in diapers mentality to do this, to find something that increases the benefit 0:15:22 - 0:15:54 at a higher rate. So he woke up one day and said, oh no, the best part's behind me. This is what you ought to aim for in life. Just like cost can have an inflection point where it starts growing more rapidly, so can benefit so can benefit. So how do you find a way of increasing benefit as you find the 0:15:54 - 0:16:20 cost increasing? Well, this circles back to what we started on. There are choices to make in life that have to be made way before you have the tools to figure it out for yourself. And this, this is a very important lesson. If like my friend, you wake up one time, one day and you're 34 say, and you realize 0:16:19 - 0:16:36 that your life is miserable and the person you chose to marry and the fact that you chose to have kids and the career you chose and all these things are just exploding in costs that you didn't anticipate. And so you've navigated this path and you're in a place you don't want to be, it could be far too 0:16:36 - 0:17:04 late to change that far too late. And you compare this to the path that, that I was and I on I did not feel that way. I did not feel that playing Goldeneye was the best time in my life eating pizza. Although I mean, it was fun, but there are better things in life and you have to navigate to them and 0:17:04 - 0:17:24 , and in that specific example, it highlights the importance of meaning people can be doing the same exact things for very different reasons and get very different results anyway. So how do you discover the paths that lead you here so that you don't wake up one day and you're 34 and you're like, wow 0:17:24 - 0:17:49 , it's too late for me to change the trajectory of my life in a way that's worthwhile. The decisions are passed. Well, you have to look outside of yourself and this is where we start finding out about discipleship. But I just want to cement um this idea that you're not going to know the way yourself 0:17:48 - 0:18:12 . You're not, you can't, you can't because the, the value that's apparent at this point in your life, that's not the way you're going to see things when you're here. So this is the scriptures are peppered with this idea. They're all over the place. But here's one passage from Proverbs three and I've 0:18:12 - 0:18:32 shortened it. The whole passage is good, but I've shortened it starting verse one. My son, forget not my law, but let thine heart, keep my commandments. This is a father speaking to his son and he says, keep my commandments. Why do you think he says, keep my commandments in my law? He doesn't say the 0:18:32 - 0:18:54 Lord's law. He doesn't say the Lord's commandments because he is, is highlighting the fact that he knows these things better than his son. Therefore, while it may well, and hopefully is the Lord's law and the Lord's commandments, the sun isn't going, going to see that very clearly because that's still 0:18:54 - 0:19:15 a far off. And what the father is trying to do is break all those things down like a, like a mother bird chews up the worms and then spits them into the kid's mouth. The kid, the baby bird's mouth, he's trying to be a conduit to bring things down to the daily life of the child in a way that's more obvious 0:19:15 - 0:19:33 to the kid. So when a baby is crawling and is going to touch a wood stove, the father doesn't take the baby aside and give them a lecture on thermodynamics and start teaching them calculus, right? To explain that the kid's hand is going to get burned. If the kid's young enough, the parents are not going 0:19:33 - 0:19:51 to say anything, they're gonna put up the little gate kind of thing to block the kid from the wood stove. And then if the kid pushes against the gate or does something dangerous, the parents just gonna whack the kid, you know, nothing crazy, but the child's gonna be too young to understand reasoning 0:19:51 - 0:20:14 . But the kid can understand pain. And a foolish person would look at that and say, well, that's cruel. Why would you inflict pain on a child? Well, is it less pain than they would inflict on themselves if you didn't? That's why continuing the passage for length of days and long life and peace shall 0:20:14 - 0:20:51 they add to the, the father is saying everything I teach you, everything I ever ask of you, it is for your benefit. And then he says, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. So he says, come along with me and align yourself with me because I've aligned myself 0:20:51 - 0:21:18 with Christ. And if you align yourself with me, I can be a way point for you. so that it's easier for you to see what he's like. And as you come closer and closer to me, you'll see what he's like for yourself, independent of me. That's what he's saying. And all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct 0:21:17 - 0:21:51 thy paths. What does that mean? Think about it all the time. Think about, ask yourself the question. What would the Lord do in my place? And if you don't know the answer to that, say, what would dad do? And there may come a time where those two answers are different and you have reason to believe that 0:21:51 - 0:22:22 what the Lord would do in your belief is better than what dad would do. Always, always follow your conscience. But you put God first, always and you have to acknowledge and you have to think about it and then you follow that all of the time because he never ever will direct you to things that aren't 0:22:21 - 0:22:56 in your own best interest. If there's ever a conflict between what you want and what you think God wants always do what God wants and it will always be better for you. And until you reach a certain point of wisdom, the same will be true with what your father wants for. You. Be not wise in thine own eyes 0:22:55 - 0:23:17 fear the Lord and depart from evil. That's exactly what I just said. My son despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. See, as humans, we hate correction, we hate it. We wanna be right all the time. But in life. So so often you have to decide between being right and being 0:23:17 - 0:23:41 right. And what I mean by that is, let's see, you can either be unchanged or correct. Usually you can't be both because so often the right way is something different than the way you were on before the way you had of seeing things or what you wanted before. So if you love truth, you're going to have 0:23:41 - 0:24:08 to love correction because what you think and feel right now is always going to be incomplete and incorrect, incomplete or incorrect for whom the Lord loveth. He correct eth, even as a father, the son in whom he delight happy is the man that find wisdom in the man that giveth understanding. So it's so 0:24:08 - 0:24:32 interesting here and again, this is a pattern. You'll see all over scripture that the idea of following the instruction of someone else, ideally the Lord, but also people more like the Lord than you are, is tied to getting independent wisdom. These, these aren't mutually exclusive. They're absolutely 0:24:31 - 0:24:54 inseparably coupled. If you want to become wise, the way you do it is you learn from people who are wiser than you, they, they, they say that if you want to be a good general first, you have to learn how to be a good soldier, you have to be, be good at accepting orders and following them before you can 0:24:54 - 0:25:25 give them well and whatever the truth of that is, it's certainly the case that if you want more wisdom from God, you want to be a wise person, the path is to find and use the wisdom he's already given. So that's a good segue into this idea of discipline. Discipline is not regarded as a positive word 0:25:24 - 0:25:49 . People usually reduce it down to, you know, punishing. We talk about discipline and we use it as a euphemism for punishing Children, but that's not what discipline means. Um The closest relation to that is the definition of discipline as correction, but that's not the only kind of discipline. There's 0:25:48 - 0:26:25 education instruction, government, anything that aligns towards improvement, to advance and prepare someone and then to, to be a disciple is to allow yourself to be advanced and prepared by receiving these things, education instruction, correction, government. So that's what it means to be a disciple 0:26:25 - 0:26:54 . If you're a disciple of Christ, then you use his example in his words and his actions to correct you, to govern yourself, to improve yourself, to instruct yourself, to educate yourself, to be a disciple of another person would be to do all these same things with that person. And as we read in Proverbs 0:26:53 - 0:27:24 three, there's a pattern that lays out here, which is to be a disciple of your father in order to become a disciple of God. So here's another graph and we're still dealing with age and maturity on the X axis. And so instead of cost, we're talking about discipline now that that is not the only cost up 0:27:24 - 0:27:59 here. We are talking about a really broad, I don't know definition of cost that could include things like suffering. Um Here, we're just talking about discipline. But what happens is as you willingly acquire greater levels of discipline across broader applications, you end up gaining things like power 0:27:59 - 0:28:33 , joy, wisdom and freedom. Now, wisdom, we already talked about using Proverbs three and I'm pretty sure that hit on some joy too. Let's see, length of days, long, life and peace and find it wisdom and understanding. All right. But let's talk about, let's let's go explicitly through power, joy and freedom 0:28:32 - 0:29:04 . What is power? Power is the ability to obtain what you desire and keep it as long as you want. That's what power means. You cannot obtain what you want in an enduring way unless you know the laws of cause and effect those laws are known by God and he teaches them to those that love Him. If you meet 0:29:04 - 0:29:28 somebody that's ahead of you in the game, they've been able to exert greater heat and diligence because they've been alive longer and they've worked at it. They are going to have more power than you. And they will have beliefs which are putative mappings of cause and effect that we will have an idea 0:29:27 - 0:29:52 of the laws of God. And even if that idea is limited in some way in its accuracy or coverage, it will still be much more useful than whatever crazy idea you might have about it until it's not. But while the power is greater, so is the law of cause and effect that the understanding of cause and effect 0:29:52 - 0:30:21 . What about joy? Joy's a tricky one because a lot of times you think you have something like the Nintendo 64 example and then it evaporates, it turns to ashes. So joy is really valuable when it comes from an older person or at least if we're not talking about age, maturity or experience. So some people 0:30:20 - 0:30:45 are young but they've been through hell. And if someone's been through a lot of tough stuff in life and they still have joy, that's someone to pay attention to because somehow they found a way to get through all of that and to still have joy. That's not Nintendo 64 and pizza. Joy. That's hardcore. Joy 0:30:44 - 0:31:20 stands the test of affliction. Um, now let's, let's just briefly touch on freedom. Freedom is linked to power. But I guess one way of thinking about it is most pets in life, close doors, some paths in life, open doors, freedom is a path where more doors are opened than are closed or more important doors 0:31:20 - 0:31:51 are opened than the ones that are closed. And so one surprising factor about freedom is that it always requires the willing sacrifice of something else. And so in this case, discipline yields greater freedom. And let me give you an example of that, suppose what you care about is financial freedom. That's 0:31:51 - 0:32:17 a very narrow type of freedom. One specific kind. Well, maybe the way to get that is to sacrifice financial freedom right now. And if you do that for long enough where you save your money, you don't spend money on things. You don't have to, you go without things. Um and you work like a maniac in smart 0:32:16 - 0:32:45 ways, you can stockpile enough money so that you have greater financial freedom later where you're living off the principle. I mean, I'm sorry, the interest of your investment, not the principal. So that's an example of how discipline translates into all of these things. Now, the axes on this graph are 0:32:45 - 0:33:11 a little weird. And so I'm just kind of being fuzzy with this. But the more discipline you exert what happens is the kinds of power, joy, wisdom and freedom that you enjoy, get way better. They always stay above, they always stay above. But there is a second level of secrets when it comes to these ideas 0:33:10 - 0:33:37 . If all you do is apply what I've taught you so far, you will have a remarkably better life than anyone who doesn't. But I'm going to give you the after burner idea. Here, there is a way where you can change your perception of discipline so that the cost of it seems a lot less than it does. At first 0:33:37 - 0:34:06 , at first, it's going to seem like this is contrary to every fiber of your being and it costs you a great deal. But as you see the feedback loops, we could draw a swirly here corkscrew as you go through these feedback loops of John 717 of doing it. And then knowing for yourself that it's good like uh 0:34:06 - 0:34:26 we put you through piano lessons and made you do that and then you learn the piano and you hated it. But then once you learned it, you saw that the process was good because it got you to an outcome that you really couldn't see, even though someone told you about it until you got there, you really couldn't 0:34:25 - 0:34:56 experience it. So you go through those micro cycles and this is what happens. The discipline gets easier and easier and easier. Until in, in your perception, there's no difference. It's fully, completely wrapped into the power, joy, wisdom and freedom that comes from it. And this is like lifting weights 0:34:55 - 0:35:23 where it seems like a real pain in the butt until you get used to and fully expect and fully trust in the outcomes and then it merges together instead of seeing the results weeks later or feeling the endorphins. Only after a super intense workout, you start feeling good while you're lifting weights and 0:35:23 - 0:35:49 you could actually take away everything that came after and you'd still do it because it feels good. It's weird. But this is what happens and this is actually a property of things that come from God. Oh I thought I had that on here somewhere. Um Did we skip this one? I don't think we read through these 0:35:49 - 0:36:11 scriptures, but these are what I'm referring to. So there's this theme that, that it won't be clear until after the fact. Um And you see this thing come up in descriptions about the end times specifically the day of judgment. But these sorts of things happen, be start happening before that. But as God 0:36:10 - 0:36:36 starts making things on earth as fair as they would be in heaven. What happens is the circumstances of a lot of people dramatically shift and people's perceptions of what is good change and, and the people that think that life is like this, they find out it's actually like this and then these people 0:36:35 - 0:37:01 , these people end up having a tremendously different outcome. But let's keep this on, on, on target of what we're trying to talk about. So, um what happens is as you go through these circuits, you get more and more acquainted with what this all looks like and how it works and it becomes like a machine 0:37:00 - 0:37:20 where you put coins in the machine and you get dollars out, you put a quarter in and you get a dollar out, you put a dollar worth of quarters in, you get $5 out and you can only go through so many cycles of this before you're shoving every ounce of money that you have into this machine. And you're like 0:37:20 - 0:37:39 begging your friends to lend you some money so you can shove it in this machine and get it multiplied. That's the Lord's way that, that again, I'm not talking about money. I'm talking in much broader terms about meaning and purpose and value. The Lord's way is it always gets better, it always gets better 0:37:39 - 0:38:02 if you're doing it right. It always gets better even when it goes worse, it gets better, right? Because the, the outcome is always better than the inputs. And so the Lord says, uh I, the Lord roll in the heavens above and among the armies of the earth. And in the day when I shall make up my jewels, all 0:38:01 - 0:38:26 men shall know what it is that bespeak the power of God and bespeak that, that's kind of an old word, it means to show ahead of time and he says, as I make up my jewels, people will know they'll learn the obvious things that were all around beforehand to show what it takes to be a jewel. I'm not sure 0:38:26 - 0:38:48 if that makes sense, but it's an idea that appears in Malachi three and this, this word make is really important. We'll see it again in Malachi three. So in Malachi three, it says, ye have said it is vain to serve God And what profit is it? And that definition of vain is without purpose. It is vain to 0:38:47 - 0:39:06 serve God. And what prophet is it that we have kept his ordinance and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts. So what good is it to serve God? And now we call the proud happy. Yeah, they that work, wickedness are set up. Yeah, they that tempt God or even delivered. In other words, all 0:39:06 - 0:39:21 the people who did all the wrong things are in pretty good shape and all the people who did the right things are in pretty awful shape. So what gives then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another and the Lord hearkened and heard it. And a book of remembrance was written before him for them 0:39:21 - 0:39:43 that feared the Lord and the thought upon his name. Let's skip over that one for today verse 17 and they shall be mine, saith the Lord of host in the day when I make up my jewels and I will spare them as a man, spare his own son that serve him. What does that mean in our context? It means you're on the 0:39:42 - 0:40:03 green curve that overcomes the red curve. You don't get lost in the red and they shall be mine. Saith the Lord of hosts in that day when I make up my jewels and I will spare them as a man, spare his own son that serve him, then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked between 0:40:02 - 0:40:25 him that serve God and him that serve him. Not, in other words, it's gonna be really obvious in that day what the right way was and the people that chose it are going to be way better off and they'll know it. So that's a long term thing that's gonna happen in the world. But short term versions of this 0:40:24 - 0:40:47 , you'll find all over your life and in the lives of anyone who you look at. So the word make here in both scripture passages, it means a lot of different things. It's one of these Hebrew words that's used. Uh It's over 2000 times in the Bible. This word shows up, it means to build, to do, to bring about 0:40:46 - 0:41:13 and to show. So again, the theme is, it's not easy to see why the Lord's way is better ahead of time. But if you trust that it is and you walk in it, you will get more and more and more evidence as you go. And if you go through enough of these cycles, this is what's going to happen. You'll get to the 0:41:13 - 0:41:36 point where the discipline is easy because you know what it goes to, you know what it leads to. It's like when the disciples of Christ were fleeing from him and he asked his apostles, will you go too? And Peter said, where are we going to go? Only? You have the words of eternal life. It's like, yeah 0:41:36 - 0:00:00 , discipline. It's not always easy and it's certainly not easy when you first get started. But where else are you gonna get power, joy, wisdom and freedom and all the other good things that only come from it. And while it might be the case, going back to the scriptures, we just read that for a time, 0:00:00 - 0:42:18 you might think you might get goodies without it. That, that illusion will come crashing down as life crushes you and grinds you to a pulp and you have to find something better. And some of us have already gone through enough that we know something better that we can help you have that way sooner in 0:42:18 - 0:42:48 your life, you won't be fully spared trials and afflictions. But you can have way more meaning without having to suffer in the same ways. Then it took us to find it. So this is the last slide. How do you become a disciplined person? What does that look like? You take charge? Of your own life. You think 0:42:48 - 0:43:08 about what your purpose in life is and you write out a plan and you live according to it, you treat it as a personal contract, contract with yourself. If you have to go back and edit it, you do it. But what's written down, you will live, you hold yourself to it all the time. You constantly ask yourself 0:43:08 - 0:43:34 , what would Jesus do in your place? And when there are blanks, you say, well, what would dad do? And you pray to him and ask him and maybe he will show you what that would do. You're constantly improving. You're always looking for how to make things better starting with yourself. You're always trying 0:43:34 - 0:43:54 to find ways to be a better person. You don't need other people to point out how you could be a better person because you're already on top of it. You already figured it out before they even got to you and you take charge of that. You're constantly asking how can I make things better? How can I be better 0:43:53 - 0:44:13 ? You're responsible. You take ownership over the things that you're asked to do. No one needs to chase you around. No one needs to get you to do stuff. They don't need to worry about when they're not looking because they know that you're going to do the best that you know, you don't give up. You make 0:44:12 - 0:44:38 things give up, you don't give up, you, you push things so hard that they fail, not you. And you're honest in what you do, you don't try to cheat people and you don't cheat yourself. When you see that you're jacked up in something you take ownership and you fix it and if you don't know how you ask for 0:44:38 - 0:44:58 help, you're not afraid of that because, you know, it's a good thing that turns to green too. You say I know I need help. I can't do this. I'm not sure what to do next. What, what, what else can I try that? I haven't tried. And sometimes even in asking yourself that question, God will tell you what more 0:44:58 - 0:45:22 you can do and you do it, you're active, you're not lazy, you go out of your way to think about and do all that. You can. If you're awake, you're making the world a better place starting with yourself. And you're motivated at first you're motivated because you believe the other people that have told 0:45:22 - 0:45:51 you that God is real and he's just as good as the scriptures say. But then you learn that for yourself as you learn that more and more, it will be harder and harder to be unmotivated. Because everywhere you look, you will see a burning opportunity, you will burn inside of you where you feel like you 0:45:51 - 0:46:17 have to do something to help the whole world know what goodness exists. Because as we started at the beginning of this presentation, they won't see it. You can't see it until you become it yourself. And as you do, you won't be able to rest. You will have to do everything you can to help other people 0:46:16 - 0:46:40 benefit from it. And, and so in all these things, you're looking to prepare yourself and advance yourself so that uh more than anything so that you can help other people. You look for correction, you look for governance. It, it will be the happiest moment in your life to find someone who has something 0:46:40 - 0:46:59 valuable to tell you that you didn't know before you'll seek and hunger for that kind of instruction. And when you, you cease to be able to find it from other people, you will find that God will step in and give it to you directly. But usually not before that. He'll expect you to use up everything around 0:46:58 - 0:47:14 you first and always. So so times and circumstances change and you might be in a different place or with different people and there, there will be different resources available to you and you have to use those up before you turn to Him. It's always, I mean, you should always turn to Him. You should always 0:47:14 - 0:47:38 ask him but expect that he's going to want you to look around you at all times and use what's already there before you ask him for help before he sends you extra help beyond what he has already placed in your path. So um the, the things you're looking for, it's, it's going to be, uh, actually situations 0:47:37 - 0:47:54 can teach you these things. You might not know something is a problem until you find yourself in a different situation. And then you say, oh, well, I guess there is a better way of doing this. I better find out what it is or what the way I was doing it before was fine. But obviously it's not good enough 0:47:54 - 0:48:14 anymore. I need something better and sometimes the, the pointers towards what is better are going to come from materials that other people have produced. And it might be a long time ago, they might be dead. You know, you might be reading the scriptures or a book written by someone who you've never met 0:48:13 - 0:48:37 and sometimes it's going to be face to face and you're going to gain these things through uh personal interaction. So that's what a disciplined person is like. And I invite you to become one, it will make an enormous difference in your life and you'll just see those, those benefits cascading the older 0:00:00 - 0:00:22 I have a few thoughts. I want to share with one of my sons and I figured it would be better to record this and let him watch it so that he could replay it if he needed to and not have to remember it. And also I thought that there might be value in, in publishing this. There might be someone out there 0:00:22 - 0:00:45 who needs to see it. Uh This is directed towards a uh a child. So if it's useful for you in that respect, great. And as adults, maybe it's useful for you in some way. So I've called this the power of discipleship, harnessing childhood for the greatest outcomes in life. And it's kind of interesting the 0:00:45 - 0:01:10 way that this ended up. Um It's different than what I expected, but here goes. So I just want to start with the very short scripture to demonstrate the point that what is best, long term will only be obvious later. There's a, there's a false tendency to think that we see everything there is to see in 0:01:10 - 0:01:33 the moment, that's just not true. And it's quite important to understand this because so many decisions in life, you will only know what you need to know to see the right choice after it's too late to make it. This, this is something we try not to see something we try not to admit. Maybe because it seems 0:01:33 - 0:01:56 unfair, maybe because it's daunting, maybe because it threatens our desire to be independent or to see ourselves as such. But it is a case, some of the most important decisions, there's, there is no way you could possibly have the information. You need the wisdom, you need to make the decision correctly 0:01:55 - 0:02:22 , at least in a way where the correct decision truly seems like the one you should want the most. The reason for that is because our desires, they're based on what we have experienced in part, I guess to a large degree. So the less experience you've had, the less likely you are to have any clue what 0:02:22 - 0:02:57 to desire. And by how much so reality is a tricky thing, it's an obscured thing. And so here's a verse about it in John 717, Jesus said, if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself. So a little bit longer form application here or treatment 0:02:57 - 0:03:23 of the, of this idea is that the fact that God has better things prepared for us than we can know before we obtain them. So Jesus says, well, if you do it, you'll know there's only so much I can do to get you there before time ahead of time. It's really, really, really hard to persuade people what the 0:03:23 - 0:03:51 best path is and why it's worth it. It's really hard. So Jesus himself runs out of things he can do at some point. At some point, you actually have to believe him and give it a shot yourself in order to see that it's worth it. So both the path to God's greatest gift and the worth of God's greatest gift 0:03:50 - 0:04:17 are absolutely 100% hidden from you until you have them. It's only then you'll have any clue what the path is and what it's worth until then the best you can do is take someone's word for it. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't reasons to believe the, the, the person's word for it. It just means 0:04:17 - 0:04:40 the reasons won't be the thing itself. They won't be the gift itself. There will be other things, lesser things. And you'll have to, you have to look at that and say, well, it all lines up. So the next reasonable thing I can do is give this a shot too. So, in DNC 14 7, we're told that eternal life is 0:04:40 - 0:05:05 the greatest of all the gifts of God. The cost is to keep God's commandments and endure to the end and what that means in plain language is to learn and do His will no matter what it costs. That's the endure to the end bit. It's in spite of the fact that there will be times when it doesn't seem worth 0:05:05 - 0:05:35 it and you have to keep going. And if you do that, you will receive this gift and it's worth it. DNC 7818 in D CD uh 7818. The Lord says you cannot bear all things now, nevertheless, be of good cheer for. I will leave you alone. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours and the riches 0:05:35 - 0:06:06 of eternity are, are yours. So you can be in this path and still not have things fully figured out and still not be prepared to bear all things. So you need to have some kind of tool to see beyond the limits of where you are and what you can currently see. You have to have reasons beyond your personal 0:06:05 - 0:06:26 experience directly in this thing. In 13 5 17 2, the Lord is speaking to people he's visiting and he says, I perceive that you're weak that you cannot understand all my words, which I am commanded of the father to speak unto you at this time. So the father commanded him to, to teach a certain set of 0:06:26 - 0:06:55 ideas. And he says, well, I can't because you just won't, you're too weak, you won't understand you're not ready. And so there, like I said before, there are limits in how fully he can explain to you right now, the path to eternal life and the worth of eternal life. But the good news is, it's a process 0:06:55 - 0:07:23 , it's a process. And the part that's right before you, that that part can be made more apparent, but there are parts that you won't see until you're there. And then he said a similar thing in John 1612, I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. So how do you get there while 0:07:22 - 0:07:51 going back here? You do what you have sufficient reason to do right now. You do what you can see now and you're led, see, he says I will lead you along. You're led to where he can show you more. And this is the process. The challenge is that the challenges come as you go and they require increasing trust 0:07:51 - 0:08:22 in God as you go. So what does this have to do with normal life? Well, there are decisions before you all day, every day. Those tiny seemingly tiny decisions of how you're going to spend your time of what you're going to do and why the entire path to or away from eternal life is made up of those decisions 0:08:21 - 0:08:50 . Those tiny decisions every single day are going to determine which way you go and how quickly you move along. And so while it seems like what we're talking about when we're throwing around phrases like eternal life is some big far off after you die kind of situation. The truth is that it maps completely 0:08:49 - 0:09:12 to every single thing you do every single day. And you have to see that connection in order to make the right choices, every single day, every single moment of every single day. And if you don't make those choices, you absolutely will move away from that goal of receiving the greatest gift that God has 0:09:12 - 0:09:42 , which is eternal life. So let's look at how you see life right now. You see life as the uh offering you the possibility of nonstop goodies that only get better. Now, there's a scripture in Isaiah that says this, that describes this mentality as tomorrow will be like today only far better. And that 0:09:42 - 0:10:01 is you're not alone in your perspective of life like this. That's how most people see life, at least in wealthy nations, people in poor nations have enough around them to disprove that this is real. But the folks in wealthy nations, they entertain this illusion that life is just gonna get better and 0:10:01 - 0:10:19 better and better. Right now, there's enough around us that if you're honest and you look, you see that that's not the case. The older people get, they tend to get more miserable and you should ask why? Because there's a reason, there's a reason I'm going to show you not in specifics that would be a 0:10:19 - 0:10:42 really long conversation to cover all the cases. But in general terms are gonna show you the first piece of this is that as you grow older this grace period. And you can see how short it is because this is age, maturity and time. All those things wrapped into one. There is a small period where life is 0:10:42 - 0:11:02 nothing but green. It's nothing but benefit. It's goodies, goodies, goodies, it's, it's cotton candy and puppy dogs and all the good stuff. But then all of a sudden you start to become aware of this thing called cost. And the thing about cost is it grows over time, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger 0:11:01 - 0:11:30 and no matter what you do, you cannot stop that growth, you can't. And it's for reasons that are way bigger than what I can explain in this presentation. In a word, it's entropy. So costs are going to grow the more mature you get the more you age or even just with the passage of time. So even if and 0:11:30 - 0:11:54 this is sort of a best case scenario, even if things do get better and better and better, they're not gonna get better and better at the pace. You think if you're living in this dream world where there is no cost or only a tiny cost or a non growing cost cost grows over time, so you better find benefit 0:11:53 - 0:12:20 that does too. Because if your path is one where your benefit is not growing over time, then what you're going to find is that the cost will overtake benefit. So we could take this triangle and do this, right? And all of a sudden it's nothing but cost and there's this little grace period where all your 0:12:20 - 0:12:46 goodies come from, the sacrifices of your parents say and then boom, the cost takes over. So even in the best case, you better find a benefit that grows. Now, this is called a linear growth where it's a straight line, but not all lines are straight and cost tends to increase not linearly but exponentially 0:12:45 - 0:13:11 . So this is actually more close to reality. So here we have a young child, hopefully not so young that they're still in diapers. But you know, it's an icon and you have what looks like great benefit and look, you see how the the area of the green it's growing from the start until this point, it just 0:13:11 - 0:13:39 keeps getting better and better. But then something happens at a certain point, the rate of increase in cost it increases. So the graph gets sharper, it starts growing more quickly or rapidly. But the benefit that line stays the same, it it has the same slope. So this this person, this young person thought 0:13:38 - 0:13:59 they had it all figured out and then one day they turn 25 or whatever happens, there's a whole host of things that could happen here. And all of a sudden they realize life costs a lot more than they thought. And of course, we're talking about more than money here talking in much bigger terms. So the 0:13:59 - 0:14:27 negatives begin to grow a lot faster than the positives have been growing. Until that point. I had a friend of mine who grew up in, compared to me, relatively affluent circumstances and he texted me, oh, we must have been 34 at the time. 3334. He texted me and, and he said something like, hey, remember 0:14:27 - 0:14:43 we would, we would get a pizza and play Golden Eye on Nintendo 64. We were in high school and I said, yeah, I remember that and it wasn't like every weekend because we live pretty far apart and moved a lot and I had moved away. So it wasn't the easiest thing to get to his place. But he's like, I didn't 0:14:43 - 0:15:00 realize that that would be the high point of my life. And that was, that was one of the most depressing things I've ever heard. The guy's got kids. He's married, he's got a career and that that's he gets so little meaning out of those things that he looks back and says playing video games and eating 0:15:00 - 0:15:23 pizza was the best part of his life. You know, I mean, because the cost was so low back then, we just had so few things to worry about. I could see where he's coming from, but this is why because he never graduated from the kid in diapers mentality to do this, to find something that increases the benefit 0:15:22 - 0:15:54 at a higher rate. So he woke up one day and said, oh no, the best part's behind me. This is what you ought to aim for in life. Just like cost can have an inflection point where it starts growing more rapidly, so can benefit so can benefit. So how do you find a way of increasing benefit as you find the 0:15:54 - 0:16:20 cost increasing? Well, this circles back to what we started on. There are choices to make in life that have to be made way before you have the tools to figure it out for yourself. And this, this is a very important lesson. If like my friend, you wake up one time, one day and you're 34 say, and you realize 0:16:19 - 0:16:36 that your life is miserable and the person you chose to marry and the fact that you chose to have kids and the career you chose and all these things are just exploding in costs that you didn't anticipate. And so you've navigated this path and you're in a place you don't want to be, it could be far too 0:16:36 - 0:17:04 late to change that far too late. And you compare this to the path that, that I was and I on I did not feel that way. I did not feel that playing Goldeneye was the best time in my life eating pizza. Although I mean, it was fun, but there are better things in life and you have to navigate to them and 0:17:04 - 0:17:24 , and in that specific example, it highlights the importance of meaning people can be doing the same exact things for very different reasons and get very different results anyway. So how do you discover the paths that lead you here so that you don't wake up one day and you're 34 and you're like, wow 0:17:24 - 0:17:49 , it's too late for me to change the trajectory of my life in a way that's worthwhile. The decisions are passed. Well, you have to look outside of yourself and this is where we start finding out about discipleship. But I just want to cement um this idea that you're not going to know the way yourself 0:17:48 - 0:18:12 . You're not, you can't, you can't because the, the value that's apparent at this point in your life, that's not the way you're going to see things when you're here. So this is the scriptures are peppered with this idea. They're all over the place. But here's one passage from Proverbs three and I've 0:18:12 - 0:18:32 shortened it. The whole passage is good, but I've shortened it starting verse one. My son, forget not my law, but let thine heart, keep my commandments. This is a father speaking to his son and he says, keep my commandments. Why do you think he says, keep my commandments in my law? He doesn't say the 0:18:32 - 0:18:54 Lord's law. He doesn't say the Lord's commandments because he is, is highlighting the fact that he knows these things better than his son. Therefore, while it may well, and hopefully is the Lord's law and the Lord's commandments, the sun isn't going, going to see that very clearly because that's still 0:18:54 - 0:19:15 a far off. And what the father is trying to do is break all those things down like a, like a mother bird chews up the worms and then spits them into the kid's mouth. The kid, the baby bird's mouth, he's trying to be a conduit to bring things down to the daily life of the child in a way that's more obvious 0:19:15 - 0:19:33 to the kid. So when a baby is crawling and is going to touch a wood stove, the father doesn't take the baby aside and give them a lecture on thermodynamics and start teaching them calculus, right? To explain that the kid's hand is going to get burned. If the kid's young enough, the parents are not going 0:19:33 - 0:19:51 to say anything, they're gonna put up the little gate kind of thing to block the kid from the wood stove. And then if the kid pushes against the gate or does something dangerous, the parents just gonna whack the kid, you know, nothing crazy, but the child's gonna be too young to understand reasoning 0:19:51 - 0:20:14 . But the kid can understand pain. And a foolish person would look at that and say, well, that's cruel. Why would you inflict pain on a child? Well, is it less pain than they would inflict on themselves if you didn't? That's why continuing the passage for length of days and long life and peace shall 0:20:14 - 0:20:51 they add to the, the father is saying everything I teach you, everything I ever ask of you, it is for your benefit. And then he says, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. So he says, come along with me and align yourself with me because I've aligned myself 0:20:51 - 0:21:18 with Christ. And if you align yourself with me, I can be a way point for you. so that it's easier for you to see what he's like. And as you come closer and closer to me, you'll see what he's like for yourself, independent of me. That's what he's saying. And all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct 0:21:17 - 0:21:51 thy paths. What does that mean? Think about it all the time. Think about, ask yourself the question. What would the Lord do in my place? And if you don't know the answer to that, say, what would dad do? And there may come a time where those two answers are different and you have reason to believe that 0:21:51 - 0:22:22 what the Lord would do in your belief is better than what dad would do. Always, always follow your conscience. But you put God first, always and you have to acknowledge and you have to think about it and then you follow that all of the time because he never ever will direct you to things that aren't 0:22:21 - 0:22:56 in your own best interest. If there's ever a conflict between what you want and what you think God wants always do what God wants and it will always be better for you. And until you reach a certain point of wisdom, the same will be true with what your father wants for. You. Be not wise in thine own eyes 0:22:55 - 0:23:17 fear the Lord and depart from evil. That's exactly what I just said. My son despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. See, as humans, we hate correction, we hate it. We wanna be right all the time. But in life. So so often you have to decide between being right and being 0:23:17 - 0:23:41 right. And what I mean by that is, let's see, you can either be unchanged or correct. Usually you can't be both because so often the right way is something different than the way you were on before the way you had of seeing things or what you wanted before. So if you love truth, you're going to have 0:23:41 - 0:24:08 to love correction because what you think and feel right now is always going to be incomplete and incorrect, incomplete or incorrect for whom the Lord loveth. He correct eth, even as a father, the son in whom he delight happy is the man that find wisdom in the man that giveth understanding. So it's so 0:24:08 - 0:24:32 interesting here and again, this is a pattern. You'll see all over scripture that the idea of following the instruction of someone else, ideally the Lord, but also people more like the Lord than you are, is tied to getting independent wisdom. These, these aren't mutually exclusive. They're absolutely 0:24:31 - 0:24:54 inseparably coupled. If you want to become wise, the way you do it is you learn from people who are wiser than you, they, they, they say that if you want to be a good general first, you have to learn how to be a good soldier, you have to be, be good at accepting orders and following them before you can 0:24:54 - 0:25:25 give them well and whatever the truth of that is, it's certainly the case that if you want more wisdom from God, you want to be a wise person, the path is to find and use the wisdom he's already given. So that's a good segue into this idea of discipline. Discipline is not regarded as a positive word 0:25:24 - 0:25:49 . People usually reduce it down to, you know, punishing. We talk about discipline and we use it as a euphemism for punishing Children, but that's not what discipline means. Um The closest relation to that is the definition of discipline as correction, but that's not the only kind of discipline. There's 0:25:48 - 0:26:25 education instruction, government, anything that aligns towards improvement, to advance and prepare someone and then to, to be a disciple is to allow yourself to be advanced and prepared by receiving these things, education instruction, correction, government. So that's what it means to be a disciple 0:26:25 - 0:26:54 . If you're a disciple of Christ, then you use his example in his words and his actions to correct you, to govern yourself, to improve yourself, to instruct yourself, to educate yourself, to be a disciple of another person would be to do all these same things with that person. And as we read in Proverbs 0:26:53 - 0:27:24 three, there's a pattern that lays out here, which is to be a disciple of your father in order to become a disciple of God. So here's another graph and we're still dealing with age and maturity on the X axis. And so instead of cost, we're talking about discipline now that that is not the only cost up 0:27:24 - 0:27:59 here. We are talking about a really broad, I don't know definition of cost that could include things like suffering. Um Here, we're just talking about discipline. But what happens is as you willingly acquire greater levels of discipline across broader applications, you end up gaining things like power 0:27:59 - 0:28:33 , joy, wisdom and freedom. Now, wisdom, we already talked about using Proverbs three and I'm pretty sure that hit on some joy too. Let's see, length of days, long, life and peace and find it wisdom and understanding. All right. But let's talk about, let's let's go explicitly through power, joy and freedom 0:28:32 - 0:29:04 . What is power? Power is the ability to obtain what you desire and keep it as long as you want. That's what power means. You cannot obtain what you want in an enduring way unless you know the laws of cause and effect those laws are known by God and he teaches them to those that love Him. If you meet 0:29:04 - 0:29:28 somebody that's ahead of you in the game, they've been able to exert greater heat and diligence because they've been alive longer and they've worked at it. They are going to have more power than you. And they will have beliefs which are putative mappings of cause and effect that we will have an idea 0:29:27 - 0:29:52 of the laws of God. And even if that idea is limited in some way in its accuracy or coverage, it will still be much more useful than whatever crazy idea you might have about it until it's not. But while the power is greater, so is the law of cause and effect that the understanding of cause and effect 0:29:52 - 0:30:21 . What about joy? Joy's a tricky one because a lot of times you think you have something like the Nintendo 64 example and then it evaporates, it turns to ashes. So joy is really valuable when it comes from an older person or at least if we're not talking about age, maturity or experience. So some people 0:30:20 - 0:30:45 are young but they've been through hell. And if someone's been through a lot of tough stuff in life and they still have joy, that's someone to pay attention to because somehow they found a way to get through all of that and to still have joy. That's not Nintendo 64 and pizza. Joy. That's hardcore. Joy 0:30:44 - 0:31:20 stands the test of affliction. Um, now let's, let's just briefly touch on freedom. Freedom is linked to power. But I guess one way of thinking about it is most pets in life, close doors, some paths in life, open doors, freedom is a path where more doors are opened than are closed or more important doors 0:31:20 - 0:31:51 are opened than the ones that are closed. And so one surprising factor about freedom is that it always requires the willing sacrifice of something else. And so in this case, discipline yields greater freedom. And let me give you an example of that, suppose what you care about is financial freedom. That's 0:31:51 - 0:32:17 a very narrow type of freedom. One specific kind. Well, maybe the way to get that is to sacrifice financial freedom right now. And if you do that for long enough where you save your money, you don't spend money on things. You don't have to, you go without things. Um and you work like a maniac in smart 0:32:16 - 0:32:45 ways, you can stockpile enough money so that you have greater financial freedom later where you're living off the principle. I mean, I'm sorry, the interest of your investment, not the principal. So that's an example of how discipline translates into all of these things. Now, the axes on this graph are 0:32:45 - 0:33:11 a little weird. And so I'm just kind of being fuzzy with this. But the more discipline you exert what happens is the kinds of power, joy, wisdom and freedom that you enjoy, get way better. They always stay above, they always stay above. But there is a second level of secrets when it comes to these ideas 0:33:10 - 0:33:37 . If all you do is apply what I've taught you so far, you will have a remarkably better life than anyone who doesn't. But I'm going to give you the after burner idea. Here, there is a way where you can change your perception of discipline so that the cost of it seems a lot less than it does. At first 0:33:37 - 0:34:06 , at first, it's going to seem like this is contrary to every fiber of your being and it costs you a great deal. But as you see the feedback loops, we could draw a swirly here corkscrew as you go through these feedback loops of John 717 of doing it. And then knowing for yourself that it's good like uh 0:34:06 - 0:34:26 we put you through piano lessons and made you do that and then you learn the piano and you hated it. But then once you learned it, you saw that the process was good because it got you to an outcome that you really couldn't see, even though someone told you about it until you got there, you really couldn't 0:34:25 - 0:34:56 experience it. So you go through those micro cycles and this is what happens. The discipline gets easier and easier and easier. Until in, in your perception, there's no difference. It's fully, completely wrapped into the power, joy, wisdom and freedom that comes from it. And this is like lifting weights 0:34:55 - 0:35:23 where it seems like a real pain in the butt until you get used to and fully expect and fully trust in the outcomes and then it merges together instead of seeing the results weeks later or feeling the endorphins. Only after a super intense workout, you start feeling good while you're lifting weights and 0:35:23 - 0:35:49 you could actually take away everything that came after and you'd still do it because it feels good. It's weird. But this is what happens and this is actually a property of things that come from God. Oh I thought I had that on here somewhere. Um Did we skip this one? I don't think we read through these 0:35:49 - 0:36:11 scriptures, but these are what I'm referring to. So there's this theme that, that it won't be clear until after the fact. Um And you see this thing come up in descriptions about the end times specifically the day of judgment. But these sorts of things happen, be start happening before that. But as God 0:36:10 - 0:36:36 starts making things on earth as fair as they would be in heaven. What happens is the circumstances of a lot of people dramatically shift and people's perceptions of what is good change and, and the people that think that life is like this, they find out it's actually like this and then these people 0:36:35 - 0:37:01 , these people end up having a tremendously different outcome. But let's keep this on, on, on target of what we're trying to talk about. So, um what happens is as you go through these circuits, you get more and more acquainted with what this all looks like and how it works and it becomes like a machine 0:37:00 - 0:37:20 where you put coins in the machine and you get dollars out, you put a quarter in and you get a dollar out, you put a dollar worth of quarters in, you get $5 out and you can only go through so many cycles of this before you're shoving every ounce of money that you have into this machine. And you're like 0:37:20 - 0:37:39 begging your friends to lend you some money so you can shove it in this machine and get it multiplied. That's the Lord's way that, that again, I'm not talking about money. I'm talking in much broader terms about meaning and purpose and value. The Lord's way is it always gets better, it always gets better 0:37:39 - 0:38:02 if you're doing it right. It always gets better even when it goes worse, it gets better, right? Because the, the outcome is always better than the inputs. And so the Lord says, uh I, the Lord roll in the heavens above and among the armies of the earth. And in the day when I shall make up my jewels, all 0:38:01 - 0:38:26 men shall know what it is that bespeak the power of God and bespeak that, that's kind of an old word, it means to show ahead of time and he says, as I make up my jewels, people will know they'll learn the obvious things that were all around beforehand to show what it takes to be a jewel. I'm not sure 0:38:26 - 0:38:48 if that makes sense, but it's an idea that appears in Malachi three and this, this word make is really important. We'll see it again in Malachi three. So in Malachi three, it says, ye have said it is vain to serve God And what profit is it? And that definition of vain is without purpose. It is vain to 0:38:47 - 0:39:06 serve God. And what prophet is it that we have kept his ordinance and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts. So what good is it to serve God? And now we call the proud happy. Yeah, they that work, wickedness are set up. Yeah, they that tempt God or even delivered. In other words, all 0:39:06 - 0:39:21 the people who did all the wrong things are in pretty good shape and all the people who did the right things are in pretty awful shape. So what gives then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another and the Lord hearkened and heard it. And a book of remembrance was written before him for them 0:39:21 - 0:39:43 that feared the Lord and the thought upon his name. Let's skip over that one for today verse 17 and they shall be mine, saith the Lord of host in the day when I make up my jewels and I will spare them as a man, spare his own son that serve him. What does that mean in our context? It means you're on the 0:39:42 - 0:40:03 green curve that overcomes the red curve. You don't get lost in the red and they shall be mine. Saith the Lord of hosts in that day when I make up my jewels and I will spare them as a man, spare his own son that serve him, then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked between 0:40:02 - 0:40:25 him that serve God and him that serve him. Not, in other words, it's gonna be really obvious in that day what the right way was and the people that chose it are going to be way better off and they'll know it. So that's a long term thing that's gonna happen in the world. But short term versions of this 0:40:24 - 0:40:47 , you'll find all over your life and in the lives of anyone who you look at. So the word make here in both scripture passages, it means a lot of different things. It's one of these Hebrew words that's used. Uh It's over 2000 times in the Bible. This word shows up, it means to build, to do, to bring about 0:40:46 - 0:41:13 and to show. So again, the theme is, it's not easy to see why the Lord's way is better ahead of time. But if you trust that it is and you walk in it, you will get more and more and more evidence as you go. And if you go through enough of these cycles, this is what's going to happen. You'll get to the 0:41:13 - 0:41:36 point where the discipline is easy because you know what it goes to, you know what it leads to. It's like when the disciples of Christ were fleeing from him and he asked his apostles, will you go too? And Peter said, where are we going to go? Only? You have the words of eternal life. It's like, yeah 0:41:36 - 0:00:00 , discipline. It's not always easy and it's certainly not easy when you first get started. But where else are you gonna get power, joy, wisdom and freedom and all the other good things that only come from it. And while it might be the case, going back to the scriptures, we just read that for a time, 0:00:00 - 0:42:18 you might think you might get goodies without it. That, that illusion will come crashing down as life crushes you and grinds you to a pulp and you have to find something better. And some of us have already gone through enough that we know something better that we can help you have that way sooner in 0:42:18 - 0:42:48 your life, you won't be fully spared trials and afflictions. But you can have way more meaning without having to suffer in the same ways. Then it took us to find it. So this is the last slide. How do you become a disciplined person? What does that look like? You take charge? Of your own life. You think 0:42:48 - 0:43:08 about what your purpose in life is and you write out a plan and you live according to it, you treat it as a personal contract, contract with yourself. If you have to go back and edit it, you do it. But what's written down, you will live, you hold yourself to it all the time. You constantly ask yourself 0:43:08 - 0:43:34 , what would Jesus do in your place? And when there are blanks, you say, well, what would dad do? And you pray to him and ask him and maybe he will show you what that would do. You're constantly improving. You're always looking for how to make things better starting with yourself. You're always trying 0:43:34 - 0:43:54 to find ways to be a better person. You don't need other people to point out how you could be a better person because you're already on top of it. You already figured it out before they even got to you and you take charge of that. You're constantly asking how can I make things better? How can I be better 0:43:53 - 0:44:13 ? You're responsible. You take ownership over the things that you're asked to do. No one needs to chase you around. No one needs to get you to do stuff. They don't need to worry about when they're not looking because they know that you're going to do the best that you know, you don't give up. You make 0:44:12 - 0:44:38 things give up, you don't give up, you, you push things so hard that they fail, not you. And you're honest in what you do, you don't try to cheat people and you don't cheat yourself. When you see that you're jacked up in something you take ownership and you fix it and if you don't know how you ask for 0:44:38 - 0:44:58 help, you're not afraid of that because, you know, it's a good thing that turns to green too. You say I know I need help. I can't do this. I'm not sure what to do next. What, what, what else can I try that? I haven't tried. And sometimes even in asking yourself that question, God will tell you what more 0:44:58 - 0:45:22 you can do and you do it, you're active, you're not lazy, you go out of your way to think about and do all that. You can. If you're awake, you're making the world a better place starting with yourself. And you're motivated at first you're motivated because you believe the other people that have told 0:45:22 - 0:45:51 you that God is real and he's just as good as the scriptures say. But then you learn that for yourself as you learn that more and more, it will be harder and harder to be unmotivated. Because everywhere you look, you will see a burning opportunity, you will burn inside of you where you feel like you 0:45:51 - 0:46:17 have to do something to help the whole world know what goodness exists. Because as we started at the beginning of this presentation, they won't see it. You can't see it until you become it yourself. And as you do, you won't be able to rest. You will have to do everything you can to help other people 0:46:16 - 0:46:40 benefit from it. And, and so in all these things, you're looking to prepare yourself and advance yourself so that uh more than anything so that you can help other people. You look for correction, you look for governance. It, it will be the happiest moment in your life to find someone who has something 0:46:40 - 0:46:59 valuable to tell you that you didn't know before you'll seek and hunger for that kind of instruction. And when you, you cease to be able to find it from other people, you will find that God will step in and give it to you directly. But usually not before that. He'll expect you to use up everything around 0:46:58 - 0:47:14 you first and always. So so times and circumstances change and you might be in a different place or with different people and there, there will be different resources available to you and you have to use those up before you turn to Him. It's always, I mean, you should always turn to Him. You should always 0:47:14 - 0:47:38 ask him but expect that he's going to want you to look around you at all times and use what's already there before you ask him for help before he sends you extra help beyond what he has already placed in your path. So um the, the things you're looking for, it's, it's going to be, uh, actually situations 0:47:37 - 0:47:54 can teach you these things. You might not know something is a problem until you find yourself in a different situation. And then you say, oh, well, I guess there is a better way of doing this. I better find out what it is or what the way I was doing it before was fine. But obviously it's not good enough 0:47:54 - 0:48:14 anymore. I need something better and sometimes the, the pointers towards what is better are going to come from materials that other people have produced. And it might be a long time ago, they might be dead. You know, you might be reading the scriptures or a book written by someone who you've never met 0:48:13 - 0:48:37 and sometimes it's going to be face to face and you're going to gain these things through uh personal interaction. So that's what a disciplined person is like. And I invite you to become one, it will make an enormous difference in your life and you'll just see those, those benefits cascading the older 0:48:36 - 0:48:37 that you get.