0:00:00 - 0:00:24 I'm sitting here writing and was led to this one particular book and I wanted to share a thought from about something that happened yesterday. Uh So, so this book has 410 pages right now. Um And it's, it's in flux. I just, I want to show you a little bit about how the sausage is made. Um This, this is 0:00:24 - 0:00:47 laid out. You can see there's content. If you look at the page numbers, you can see that some of these are really, really short. It's just sort of in flux. What you can't see is where all this came from, how long it's taken. Of course, the experiences that are connected to how these things came to be 0:00:47 - 0:01:05 . I don't mean writing. And I think a lot of people think the, I would need to write a book like anyone else would and that even that's imagined for most people because they've never written any books. Not that, that's a bad thing, but it's, it's like painting a picture. You would know what it's like 0:01:04 - 0:01:33 until you do it. So, um, if you saw a map through time of where every single piece of this came from, you'd see. Um There are actually several prototype books from which much of this came out of which some of those were, were quite well written. Um, thinking one in particular was about 500 pages written 0:01:32 - 0:01:53 . Um And some chunks c came out of that and I, I broke apart another thing to make this and, you know, I'll be writing and I just had a chapter or whatever the point is that, that the elements of this book have been in the works for at least four years, bare minimum, the direct elements. And then all 0:01:53 - 0:02:13 of those are just pieces links in a chain that goes back even further. Um And this book might not even see the light of day, in fact, in its current iteration that the skeleton is, uh this is not what it will be called. Uh I don't think who knows if it will stay this way. OK. So why am I going into this 0:02:13 - 0:02:38 ? So yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend. It was maybe a 5, 10 minute conversation. And what we were going over was this idea of making a life plan. And I've mentioned that several videos have laid it out a little bit and um I was able to share in 5 to 10 minutes enough content in such a way 0:02:37 - 0:03:01 that I think that this person is going to start living that way. And um I foresee that it's going to have tremendous positive effects in their lives. What's interesting to me is even if this book never comes to be at all. Um, now that value has been handed off to one person and of course, some of you 0:03:01 - 0:03:27 have seen the videos I made on the same topic. So, um, the ripples are much wider than just one person already. But from that choke point, it's, it's not easy to see everything that went into it. And sometimes it takes an immense sacrifice to bring forth something that in, in your life, a sacrifice in 0:03:27 - 0:03:57 your life to bring forth something that anyone who's going to partake in the benefit of that will never ever understand what it costs. And that's not only OK, it's a really good thing to do things like that. So if greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends. How much more valuable 0:03:57 - 0:04:26 is it to um do something that takes it a, a greater sacrifice than it is to do something that takes a lesser sacrifice. And, and so often we only measure value based on the impact the, the outcome side of the equation. But that's not the way that God does it. That's an important component of measuring 0:04:26 - 0:04:51 value. But sometimes it's more valuable to do what has a greater cost, even if the benefits, the same when the greater cost enables something to be done that could not otherwise be done if that makes sense. So it's not so much a, a measurement of the inputs versus the outputs all the time. As much as 0:04:51 - 0:05:21 it's a measurement of the necessity of the outputs and the lack of alternative ways to produce them. And this is one of the hidden powers of love because it's not always about um being worth. It is not always a question of inputs versus outputs. Frequently. It's a question of can the inputs exist in 0:05:21 - 0:05:50 any other way? And that should ring some bells because there was a very important situation where the person making the sacrifice said, isn't there any other way? And the father said, no, no, there's not any other way for this to happen. And the sun said, OK, then I'll do it. So um try to try to see 0:05:49 - 0:06:18 those opportunities in your life where you have the, the, the blessing of a mountain of work for what seems like a very small output when there is no other way to produce that output, don't confine yourself to the things to the calculation of value and the direct consequences, look at secondary and tertiary 0:06:17 - 0:06:44 downstream effects. And in this case, if the only outcome of all of this is that conversation that I had yesterday, that's great because I couldn't have done that without all the work I've put into this book and everything this came from. So what are things like that in your own life? Do you, do you 0:00:00 - 0:00:24 I'm sitting here writing and was led to this one particular book and I wanted to share a thought from about something that happened yesterday. Uh So, so this book has 410 pages right now. Um And it's, it's in flux. I just, I want to show you a little bit about how the sausage is made. Um This, this is 0:00:24 - 0:00:47 laid out. You can see there's content. If you look at the page numbers, you can see that some of these are really, really short. It's just sort of in flux. What you can't see is where all this came from, how long it's taken. Of course, the experiences that are connected to how these things came to be 0:00:47 - 0:01:05 . I don't mean writing. And I think a lot of people think the, I would need to write a book like anyone else would and that even that's imagined for most people because they've never written any books. Not that, that's a bad thing, but it's, it's like painting a picture. You would know what it's like 0:01:04 - 0:01:33 until you do it. So, um, if you saw a map through time of where every single piece of this came from, you'd see. Um There are actually several prototype books from which much of this came out of which some of those were, were quite well written. Um, thinking one in particular was about 500 pages written 0:01:32 - 0:01:53 . Um And some chunks c came out of that and I, I broke apart another thing to make this and, you know, I'll be writing and I just had a chapter or whatever the point is that, that the elements of this book have been in the works for at least four years, bare minimum, the direct elements. And then all 0:01:53 - 0:02:13 of those are just pieces links in a chain that goes back even further. Um And this book might not even see the light of day, in fact, in its current iteration that the skeleton is, uh this is not what it will be called. Uh I don't think who knows if it will stay this way. OK. So why am I going into this 0:02:13 - 0:02:38 ? So yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend. It was maybe a 5, 10 minute conversation. And what we were going over was this idea of making a life plan. And I've mentioned that several videos have laid it out a little bit and um I was able to share in 5 to 10 minutes enough content in such a way 0:02:37 - 0:03:01 that I think that this person is going to start living that way. And um I foresee that it's going to have tremendous positive effects in their lives. What's interesting to me is even if this book never comes to be at all. Um, now that value has been handed off to one person and of course, some of you 0:03:01 - 0:03:27 have seen the videos I made on the same topic. So, um, the ripples are much wider than just one person already. But from that choke point, it's, it's not easy to see everything that went into it. And sometimes it takes an immense sacrifice to bring forth something that in, in your life, a sacrifice in 0:03:27 - 0:03:57 your life to bring forth something that anyone who's going to partake in the benefit of that will never ever understand what it costs. And that's not only OK, it's a really good thing to do things like that. So if greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends. How much more valuable 0:03:57 - 0:04:26 is it to um do something that takes it a, a greater sacrifice than it is to do something that takes a lesser sacrifice. And, and so often we only measure value based on the impact the, the outcome side of the equation. But that's not the way that God does it. That's an important component of measuring 0:04:26 - 0:04:51 value. But sometimes it's more valuable to do what has a greater cost, even if the benefits, the same when the greater cost enables something to be done that could not otherwise be done if that makes sense. So it's not so much a, a measurement of the inputs versus the outputs all the time. As much as 0:04:51 - 0:05:21 it's a measurement of the necessity of the outputs and the lack of alternative ways to produce them. And this is one of the hidden powers of love because it's not always about um being worth. It is not always a question of inputs versus outputs. Frequently. It's a question of can the inputs exist in 0:05:21 - 0:05:50 any other way? And that should ring some bells because there was a very important situation where the person making the sacrifice said, isn't there any other way? And the father said, no, no, there's not any other way for this to happen. And the sun said, OK, then I'll do it. So um try to try to see 0:05:49 - 0:06:18 those opportunities in your life where you have the, the, the blessing of a mountain of work for what seems like a very small output when there is no other way to produce that output, don't confine yourself to the things to the calculation of value and the direct consequences, look at secondary and tertiary 0:06:17 - 0:06:44 downstream effects. And in this case, if the only outcome of all of this is that conversation that I had yesterday, that's great because I couldn't have done that without all the work I've put into this book and everything this came from. So what are things like that in your own life? Do you, do you 0:06:44 - 0:07:04 have any examples or maybe because this is still, it's a weird thing to write a book. So help me out here and in the comments, just, just uh share some of your own experiences from life. Maybe something you can imagine that fits this mold and uh will help propagate this idea a little bit.