0:00:00 - 0:00:34 I'm going to try to communicate a set of ideas that are extraordinarily difficult to communicate. And this is on the topic of communication. It is extraordinarily difficult to communicate truth. Beyond what someone already understands almost everything that you are accustomed to in life. When it comes 0:00:33 - 0:01:11 to communication and learning is essentially meaningless. No matter how much meaning you find in it, it's almost essentially meaningless. And it is I I in comparison to what is possible, it's almost completely devoid of information, the difficulty of obtaining ideas that have never been understood and 0:01:11 - 0:01:56 instantiating them into human ideas. Uh human words, excuse me, it is astronomically difficult. There isn't anyone I have met in this life that has the slightest clue about these things to live in a an attitude sufficient to do these things is the absolute hardest thing I'm aware of. When we ask questions 0:01:55 - 0:02:30 , there is a multitude of reasons for which we might not have the answer. One of those reasons is that we have no clue how complicated a network of information beyond our understanding is required to phrase the answer in a way that would be understandable to you. I'm in the process of writing somewhere 0:02:30 - 0:03:04 around 9000 pages worth of books. I I have about that much written well typed. I not indicating any level of Polish at this point, it's excruciatingly painful to process these words, these ideas that there's, there's nothing I can say to convey how difficult it is. As I process the ideas, I become more 0:03:04 - 0:03:34 familiar with them and they are refined and expanded upon by the Lord through my understanding, when someone asks me a question and I know the answer to it or even if I don't. And in that moment, the Lord tells me in both cases, it's drawing upon this network of all these ideas of which the 9000 pages 0:03:34 - 0:03:59 are just notes, barely capturing things, barely capturing snippets that are hopefully sufficient to reconstruct a broader idea. It's possible for me if someone asks me a question, I query the system, I build the answer, I bring it back. It's possible for me to answer a question in a paragraph or two 0:03:59 - 0:04:31 . And maybe it only takes me as long as it takes to type. But the full range of that goes all the way to investing my entire capacity for days to construct this answer. And there will be nothing about it that is guaranteed to convey what it took to build it. It'll just be, hey, here's a paragraph or 0:04:31 - 0:04:59 maybe here's five paragraphs or two sentences and you'll have no idea what it took to build that in the moment. You'll certainly have no idea what kind of life had to be lived to get to that. You'll have no idea even what the immediate sacrifice was to pull out of what I was doing and then get back into 0:04:59 - 0:05:25 it. And I'm not just talking about temporal things. This is very hard to communicate that, that telling you about how hard it is to communicate is hard to communicate, communicate these things. OK? So when I get a question and I look at that question and I know the answer to that question, I'm racking 0:05:25 - 0:05:52 my brain to see how I can connect you to it. And I want to tell you, there are so many barriers that people have that they don't even know that that make it extraordinarily difficult for God to tell you things. This is one of the things I've written about extensively and the things you don't have yet 0:05:52 - 0:06:20 , the materials you don't have yet. It's there are so many barriers. So let me just give you a quick example of something you, you wouldn't think of otherwise. What would happen? Suppose you asked a question and the answer of that question required knowing something that no one's ever known in the history 0:06:20 - 0:06:48 of the world. It's a mystery not revealed since the foundation of the world and you had no idea because it'd be really ridiculous to ask someone that kind of question, right? Unless you were talking to God say, well, suppose the person knows the answer and they give it to you, they write 2 to 4 sentences 0:06:47 - 0:07:16 . Here you go. Here's your answer. Did it help you? You would probably think of course it would help. Information's good. Well, you don't understand the way things work. Then every single piece of information has a price. And in the gospel, there are many mechanisms for us to pay prices for one another 0:07:15 - 0:07:49 , for God to pay prices for us, for us to pay prices to one another for one another. But that doesn't make a way for the recipient to have the joy connected to what is given. You have to understand the price. And if you don't, that limits the amount of value that you can have in this tremendously valuable 0:07:49 - 0:08:21 thing. So one of the limits is, are you willing to value it for what it's worth? That doesn't mean that you have to pay the price, but you have to see it for what it's worth. And if you don't, the person giving it to you is actually harming you. Why? Well, now that you have this thing that's highly valuable 0:08:20 - 0:08:48 , you will never value it highly because you didn't value it highly already. What could possibly cause you to value it highly later your awareness of not having it. That is the most likely path to valuing it. Let me just be really specific. So you don't get confused here. If I wanted to know something 0:08:48 - 0:09:11 , let's say, I want to know all about the end times and I pray naively but with faith to the Lord. And I say, look, I really want to know all about the end times and I give them all the reasons. They're good reasons and he does not tell me all about the end times. Maybe he gives me this little crumb 0:09:11 - 0:00:00 and he makes me pray for it and, and hunger after it and search for it. And you know, I go and I read a book about it and it's a terrible book and I know that there are a bunch of things wrong in it. And then I say, OK, I'll, I'll see what else other people have to say about it and on and on and on. 0:00:00 - 0:09:58 I end up reading the standard works 15 times in 10 years specifically on this topic. And I just become obsessed about it and however long it takes and whatever it costs. Don't you understand how I will value it much more through having to work for it like that. When we ask questions, there's this huge 0:09:56 - 0:10:28 gap between where we are and where we would have to be to have the answer. You don't have to become that person to get the answer, but you do have to obtain an idea of the value of the answer. If you're dealing with someone who doesn't know very much, they will just pour out information on you without 0:10:28 - 0:10:55 handling this because they're ignorant and they don't know any better. But the more someone knows, the more familiar they will be with the way this works and they're not going to hurt you by dumping things on you. So they, they're going to burn tons of time to try to construct what you need to get you 0:10:55 - 0:11:17 what you want to know in a way that's going to harm you the least that, that you can actually have a sense of the value. Now, I went in depth about value here. Of course, all of this is just barely touching on all of these topics, but there are so many other facets that matter. For example, what if you 0:11:17 - 0:11:43 ask a question, whose answer you're not ready to align to when the parents of Samson were visited by an angel and told that she was gonna have this, this uh special baby. The father asked the angel, what's your name? And he said, why should I tell you? You wouldn't understand that seems kind of flippant 0:11:43 - 0:12:11 to us. Well, maybe to you not to me, but, but it probably does to you. And that's because you haven't interacted with many angels, they don't mess around, they really don't. And that angel knew that if he just blurted out his name, he'd be giving Manoah Samson's father, uh information that exceeded his 0:12:10 - 0:12:36 ability to correctly value, he'd hurt him by doing that. Can you imagine information that would hurt you by knowing it. There's a lot. Right. What if, what if the answer to your question runs smack into some sacred cow that you have? What if you're praying for some blessing? This isn't just about questions 0:12:36 - 0:12:59 and answers. It's anything from God. You're praying for some blessing that absolutely requires the removal of something you treasure in your life. You don't understand that these are mutually exclusive things. You don't even understand they're related. Very common, very common problem. Well, God's not 0:12:59 - 0:13:18 just gonna send along what you're asking for. It's gonna create this existential crisis in your life that you're not ready for. And so when we ask things, we need to understand that, that we have no idea of knowing if what you're asking is just the very next step from where you are or 50 steps into the 0:13:18 - 0:13:40 future, into the hardest path that beyond anything you've ever known. You have no idea. And where's the bias? People almost always assume that what they're asking is a simple question and, and that they've already paid the price. The assumption is, hey, I'm ready to know, I've already paid the price 0:13:40 - 0:13:58 . You know, I got an email today from a guy, he asked two questions. Uh I know that this person takes the gospel seriously. They've invested tons of their life into living it. The question is well worded. They spent time on the email, they've spent time trying to look up the answer they have proof. The 0:13:58 - 0:14:25 question is very specific. It's a reasonable thing for that person to believe that they're right at the precipice of, of knowing. But if you don't know and you have to ask a person, you should assume that you're not at the precipice of knowing. One thing that I've written into these books somewhere is 0:14:24 - 0:14:59 don't ask God for what you don't want more than anything else. This is a funny thought, huh? You probably, you probably never crossed your mind. That probably seems crazy to you. Don't bother asking God for what you don't want the most. Why? Because odds are, it's going to cost you everything else in 0:14:59 - 0:15:19 a prioritization of all things. If you had a ranked list of everything in terms of how important it was to you, whether it's something you have or you want, whether it's something you know, or you want to know, it doesn't matter if you had a ranked list of this, there'd be major stuff at the top and 0:15:19 - 0:15:46 then as you went down, it become more minor, right? Do you understand how that paradigm would require you to know the relative value of everything on your list? You'd have to know the value of everything relative to everything else. You'd also have to know the complete map of how these things are interrelated 0:15:45 - 0:00:00 , right? So just totally arbitrary specific example, let's say I say I want to be a good father. It just run your brain for a half a second. Do you realize what that entails in a life? How many uh decomposed sub things are a part of that? If you go three steps down the path of thinking through this, 0:00:00 - 0:16:51 you are going to be so lost in complexity. It's not even funny. This is if you're a highly intelligent person that has thought a lot about stuff with eyes open, you're mature, you've had experiences in life, not to mention everyone else. Reality is exceedingly complicated. If you want the best things 0:16:51 - 0:17:27 out of life, you have to figure out what matters the most to you and dedicate your life to seeking God for it. Many more things require that level of precision than you think. Now in our modern culture where we're inundated by information, we tend to, to believe we tend to adopt this belief that, hey 0:17:26 - 0:17:45 , you can just go ask someone a question and get the answer and we're basically all the same. And if someone knows, you know, if I wanna know what the deal is with the screw on my roof, I'm gonna go ask my roofer neighbor. He's gonna tell me he knows because he's a roofer, but it's just because he picked 0:17:45 - 0:18:09 that path in life and I picked programming and here we are. If he's got a question about his computer, he can ask me and then I'll say, don't use windows and we'll be good. Right? No, no, that's all artificial. Folks that's like the, just the film on the top of the water. It's not the lake you live in 0:18:09 - 0:18:34 the film. There's so much more and when you start getting into these deep things, you need to throw away the film level paradigm. If you can get the information just by asking a random person. And hey, we're all the same. It's just they happen to have, you know, they spent four weeks or four years studying 0:18:33 - 0:19:05 something. And so they have this nice note sheet on it. Great. Those things they don't really matter. Not very much, not compared to what's out there. You have no idea the prices that can be paid in this life for information. It's information from God, but it's not just churchy stuff. It's the deep things 0:19:04 - 0:19:32 that envelop everything envelope like surround in, through and around all things. That's how God describes himself. He says he's above all things. He's through all things. He's around all things. That's the way the truth is the deep truth and no surprise, you have to go closer to him. So much of what 0:19:31 - 0:00:00 you want to know is not about what you know, it's about who you've become or more accurately how you are, not what, you know, how you are. You can know things on a superficial level very easily just from someone telling you. But to become something that carries an extraordinarily high price, a very, 0:00:00 - 0:20:32 very high price and these things that you want to know so many of them are at that level. So does this mean you shouldn't ask questions to people that are gonna rant at you for 20 minutes about how hard it is to answer the questions? Not because they don't know, but because they don't have easy ways 0:20:32 - 0:21:00 of explaining it to you. No, it does mean that you really should calibrate to do the things that are directly before you and understand that that is the most important part of you receiving the answers that you seek. Everything you want lies through what you already know. Everything you want, lies through 0:21:00 - 0:21:32 what you already know. There isn't an easy way. There isn't any way to get to where you want to go or what you want to know without. I was trying to think of a clever way to rhyme this without growing in the ways you need to grow. There isn't a, there isn't an easy way or any way to know or to go without 0:21:31 - 0:21:53 the need to grow. Ok? And the growth is the things right in front of you, the things that we keep hammering in these videos and you all just probably roll your eyes and, and say like I'm just here to wait for the goodies, the nuggets that he spits out every once in a while. My goodness. Is he gonna talk 0:21:53 - 0:22:24 about dating again? Right? Or parenting again? That's the gateway. If I could say these things in less than 9000 typed pages. I absolutely would. I learn a ton as I'm writing, writing is a wonderful way to expose the holes in your understanding. It's also a really good way of finding better ways of saying 0:22:23 - 0:23:00 things. But I already know these things. For the most part, the challenge everything I'm doing is to find ways of communicating it to you. And I really believe it's going to take 9000 pages plus plus. So I, I think I'm going to save this link somewhere and then just forward this video when people ask 0:22:59 - 0:23:25 me a question that I just really, there's no way I can, I can answer it in a, in a brief format with a person that doesn't have the prerequisite um tool bag that being said, the reason I'm making this video is I spent 20 minutes writing an email reply to this person that asked me two questions and the 0:23:25 - 0:23:51 answer is right there and I'm going to hit delete and send them this video. Instead, there are rules of engagement and I can't write someone an email that's going to cause an existential crisis in their lives. I have to lay out everything around it so that they're left without excuse, those are the rules 0:23:50 - 0:24:15 that I operate in. You should also operate in those rules, but that's your choice. You might not even know them yet. They're in the scriptures. But so that's that um it's really difficult So I think that I'll tie this up. Although I'm sure that I'll think of 100 things to add to this as soon as it hits 0:24:15 - 0:24:21 . Stop. Thankfully, I'm out of time today so I won't be able to do anything about that.