I'd like to discuss a critical set of ideas. They're, they're absolutely vital in receiving more from God. If we, if someone were to ask you, if you have everything that you would like to have, if you're in any way normal, the answer is no. But then if, if we stopped and asked, has God given you everything
that you've asked from Him, the answer is probably similarly no. Now there might be a disconnect there because maybe you're not asking God for the things that you want. That's easily correctable. But let's assume that you're doing that. Well, the answer in most cases to the question, why don't you have
what you want is that you don't understand the value of what you're asking for. No, maybe that's AAA puzzling statement to make. But I just want to share a few slides to illustrate how to correct this issue and, and also why, why it happens. So we are here to maximize the amount of joy that we experience
eternally. The eternal time frame is the longest time frame that we can talk about. If you want to maximize that, that time frame, there's an awful lot that you need to know because our scope here, of what we understand is extremely limited. But if you recall one of the things that we're supposed to
learn here in our lives is to better discern between good and evil. Now, what that means in one sense, in a nutshell is to learn to better identify the things that give the greatest long term joy. And so it's a question of what things are worth. And the problem is that there's a, there's a disconnect
between the joy that, that we perceive in a thing now versus the joy that it actually will give long term to include the eternities. Now, there is someone who knows what that value is, what the total set of options are and what each of them are worth. In other words, who could map out which choices we
should make from moment to moment in order to maximize our long term joy. And that someone is God, this is one way of, of, of characterizing Him, of describing Him. He is the one who knows the path to the greatest joy for each individual. So in the ideal case, if, if we were to be in the best possible
position for the maximal possible joy, one way of describing that would be that the worth that we see in things in the set of things that we see as options perfectly matches what God sees. In other words, for any potential choice, its worth in our eyes, matches its worth in God's eyes. That's the goal
, that's the goal. So we are free to choose. And in order to make the choices that lead to the greatest eternal joy, we have to be choosing from the correct set of things because sometimes we perceive options that aren't actually there. And often we don't perceive options that are and also to correctly
assess the cost and benefit long term for each choice that we have before us. That's the challenge. What actually happens is one of two situations. In this case, we perceive less value in something than actually exists when that's the case, what's gonna happen is it will permanently cap the joy that
we can have in that thing. So if you only perceive a little slice of the joy that a thing actually provides, that it provides to God or that God actually sees in it. If we only perceive a tiny slice of that, we're never going to see the full amount. And this is important because it's not just that we
only perceive a limited amount right now, it's that that will continue to be limited forever. Why? Because this life is the time we have to prepare for eternity. And a big part of that preparation, like you said, we're here to better learn the difference between good and evil. Why do we have to do it
here? Because this is the place where it's done, everything is set up to facilitate that, that same set up does not exist in eternity after you die, your opportunity to do this ends. That's Jesus said, um you have to work while the sun shines because the night comes where no man can work after death
. This is sealed up, it's done. So you have to do what it takes to establish the correct value of something here. And now that's a a core purpose of life. And I also want to highlight here this this connection between what something is worth and the joy you will receive from it. An enormous problem in
life is that people want to get something for nothing and they expect that they can cheat the system and and get as much as they can without actually paying the price. And unfortunately, this is as much if not more the case in people who profess to be Christians as it is in the world, even though we
read that God is just and God can't be mocked, you reap what you sow and all this other um all these other examples of this principle in scripture. For some reason, almost all Christians don't believe it. They believe that they can get something for nothing. They believe that the point of this life is
to get as much as you can while paying as little as you can. But the truth is that joy and cost are coupled there, there is a strong association between these two things. And so what something is worth to you is very much tied up to what you're willing to pay for it. And what you're willing to pay for
something is very much tied to the joy that you'll perceive in it. It's very unlikely that you will have great joy in something that you get for free unless you understand and value what someone else paid for it. And so it still comes down to what someone pays for it. You really can't escape that another
potential situation. So we talked about when something is worth in your eyes, less than it is in God's eyes, you can invert that there are things that are worth very little to God, but worth very much to you. And that's very unfortunate because the only, the only solution here is for God to tear away
the value of something, the false value of something in your eyes. Now, the trick with these situations is that initially, initially, the thing is going to seem like it provides you a lot of joy. But over time that's going to decay and in the eternities, it decays down to an ACEP tote, which is the actual
value it has in God's eyes and that's the amount of joy that will endure. And so you can save yourself a tremendous amount of trouble and follow what it says in Proverbs three and not trust your own judgment, but trust God's judgment and yield to him in all things and, and not just yield but seek him
, seek his counsel in all things and joyfully receive it and follow it, not begrudgingly but joyfully because he's trying to orient you to the greatest possible joy. Now, let's get back to the question we started on which is why don't you have what you ask for what you desire. And we're go going to explore
the role of, of understanding value in this God. His purpose is to maximize your long term joy. And so when is he going to grant you the blessings that you request when they maximize the greatest long term joy for you? Now, the qualifier for you is vital here because people are different, the the limits
of long term joy are going to vary from person to person based on their qualities, based on their desires, based on their faith among other things. So I, I would like to break this down as we have so far with, with the same approach looking at this um in terms of patterns. And so the first pattern coming
back to it is when something is worth a lot more to you than it is to, to God. So when that's the case, how does that delay the blessings that God would otherwise grant well, to give you what you want in this case is to give you misery. Because when you receive it, it's going to decay and you're going
to be disappointed in your experience versus your expectation. Do you understand why? So what's a real world example of this? Well, a young person is led to believe that the best thing they could do is take a year and backpack Europe after, after they graduate high school. Ok. Well, guess what? It's
gonna be awesome while you do it unless something unfortunate happens and then sometime after you get home, maybe years after the fact you're gonna realize that that was probably pretty close to the worst way you could have spent that year. You're gonna see that it had a long term cost, at least an opportunity
, the far exceeded any benefit it provided. And so you, there's gonna be this vacuum, this inversion of value and it's the most painful thing that a human can experience is loss. We are very loss averse and you will have loss in. I call this a a retroactive revision of value. You will retroactively revise
the value you saw in it and as it evaporates, it hurts a lot. Ok? It hurts a lot. There are many other examples we could go through but that probably suffices. Now, there are actually, there are two ways this can go. One is what happens if God actually gives you the thing that you want or you go out
and get it because we're empowered to do many things in this life. You could marry whoever you want as long as they consent for example, that could bring you a lifetime of pain. Um maybe more than most things. So we're empowered to make many choices, but also some things we, we rely very much on God
for explicitly because he hasn't delegated that power to us in those things. But anyway, so, so you could get into or be granted something that you desire very much only to experience lifelong regret in that thing and pain. The benefit of this is that you will learn a more accurate valuation of that
thing. Of course, the cost is that, that's a terrible thing to go through. The question is raised. Is there a better way? Absolutely. When God delays what you're asking him for, it's usually a wonderful blessing. In this case, when you value the thing you're asking for more than he does, what it does
is it gives you time to learn through faith a little bit more about what it's actually worth. And in this specific case to learn that it's worth less than what you think it is. Now, how are you gonna learn that well, through observation and reasoning, you have to actually introspect, you have to think
about it and you have to open your eyes and look for examples of this thing in the lives of other people. Now, the good news is, is that in our day, it's never been easier. It's never been easier to find examples of people who actually have the things that you think are valuable and it's never been easier
to reach out to them. Now, even if you don't achieve a face to face conversation or even email exchange with people, you can still hear what they have to say about it through finding someone online who, who makes a video about it. For example, or someone who's written a book about it. If, if you want
to be a, an automotive magnate, you can go read the biography of Lee Iaccoca, right? So there are things like that that are out there and they're more accessible than they've ever been. There's, there's really, there really aren't that many things you have to guess about anymore. There are some, but
for the most part, what people are shooting for are things that other people already have. And so you can look at them and make your own determination of the value of these things based on what you see in those who have them just like you can look at the people who have tried the ways you think you can
get it to verify whether it seems to work or not. You don't ha you know, life is only so long, you only have so many experiments you can run. And so you want to make use of all the people who have tried it and, and go from there, start with their, their, their, the sum of their experiences don't just
pretend like you're off on your own on an island having to figure out these things from square one because there's not enough time for that. You're not gonna go from zero to where you wanna go without using the examples of others. All right. Now let's let's change gears and look at the other example
that we started on, which is um a applied to, to where we are in, in this. The question is how does your understanding delay the receipt of what you're asking for from God when something is worth less to you than it is to him? Now, this is a very likely thing. The things that are best in life are not
regarded by the natural man as best. This is one of the barriers that we're here to learn to overcome. Now, just like with the other example, we can look at this in terms of what happens when God gives you this this thing early, the thing that you're asking for that you value less than Him. And what
happens when He gives it to you with a delay when he delays giving it to you? Well, in this case, when you receive it early, just like in the other case, it's actually not a very good thing. The reason is you might say, well, but it's worth so much more than what you think. Why wouldn't it be good to
get it as soon as you can? The reason is because it's extremely difficult to learn the value of something that you have undervalued. Once you receive it, it's much easier to teach you the value of something before you receive it. It's actually much better as well. Typically, the only way you can learn
the value of something that you have undervalued is through losing it. So this would be God gives it to you and then you lose it. So you hear this often with people who didn't really appreciate their spouse until they got divorced or the spouse died. It's very sad because nothing they can do will bring
that spouse back. And so then they understand the value but they no longer have the blessing. All they have is regret and that's not very fun. So in in the case, when you value something less than God does, it's an enormous blessing for Him to delay his response to your request because as he does, the
rational response would be to increase what you're willing to pay to obtain it. So like I said, the natural man tries to get something for nothing. So when God ignores that request or says you need to try a little harder stretch a little more, this is worth more than you think your response, if you decide
to continue with it, with, with seeking this thing is to pay more for it. And so for example, maybe you, what you want is a job and you're looking for a job. But your version of looking for a job is uh doing an, a, a Google search for a specific job and you're only willing to work right around where
you live, et cetera, et cetera. There are all these constraints. Well, if that fails, then you have to widen your net. You have to look for jobs that are in fields that you didn't consider before. Or maybe you have to go and confront places, face to face and bring copies of your resume and drop them
off and have uncomfortable conversations with people that you don't wanna have or work in fields that maybe embarrass you or maybe take a salary that's lower than what you had hoped for or go through some training experience to qualify for a different job or move to a different place. And so you see
that all of these things are examples of greater costs. Now, it could just so happen that the cost exceeds the benefit that you seeing something. And so um that that could happen and, and one potential outcome to that is that you look at other things instead and maybe the job example isn't the greatest
here. But what about dating? Let's say that you're looking for someone that, that in, in your, in your search, you're requiring someone to be a 10 on the 10 scale of looks. And let's say that you manage to get a couple of dates with tens or you decide that what a 10 requires as far as the requirements
that they have is not something you're willing to do or maybe that you can do in your life. Well, you, your value might shift and you might start to see people who are lower on the attractiveness scale as actually being more attractive, maybe not in looks, but you might look at these other aspects of
the problem and that might modify your, your assessed value of a person and, and this is all part of the process. This is how you learn what actually has worth and how much worth it has, right? Something that, that I'm not particularly talking about dating now. Something in life that is very attractive
to you right now might become very unattractive to you as you learn the true cost. But also something that's only worth a little might change into something that's worth a lot as you have to pay more for it. And so it's a, it can be a huge blessing for God to delay His his fulfillment of your requests
so that you can learn through what you pay for it, what something is worth. All right to sum up this. And I hope it's obvious that there's so much to these ideas. I'm just trying to make it as condensed as possible to give you an early introduction to these things that will be laid out in much more detail
through time. The question in Maroni seven, we read about how we're supposed to lay hold on every good thing and there's an incremental sense to that passage. I, I made a very long series of videos on moon I seven that I invite you to watch or, or rewa but the question is, how do you lay hold of greater
things in less time? We only have one lifetime here. How do we use it to the best advantage? Well, here are some tips, use your faculties to search for the best things and learn more about what they're worth. That's an active thing. It's not a passive thing. If all you're doing is floating through life
, you're not doing this. You actually have to be looking and searching and thinking. Pay attention to the list of options that are before you in every moment and and across different time scales, you can apply this to the daily or even smaller than daily. Like how's your morning shaping up? What options
are before you? And are you choosing the best thing in every moment? In order you can, you can look at larger time scales and, and you have to in order to do this weekly, monthly, yearly, a decade at a time, if you, if you want a lot of practical tools to help you do this, read the book, I wrote Joy
on purpose. So for each of these options, you need to understand the cost and benefit of each. You have to understand the cause and effect of each and you have all these tools to use in order to do to do this. Um Like the lives of other people, enough can't be said about how much value can be extracted
from looking at what other people do or don't do. You can get a large list of things that you should try to do and also things that you should avoid based on how it has, has gone in the lives of other people. The second point of advice is that you should actually do what is reasonable to obtain what
you currently believe is best. And the resource on this is a book I wrote called Through Faith, which you should read or reread with this idea in mind. Are you doing everything reasonable to obtain what you currently believe is best? The answer is most assuredly no. What do you stand to gain if you shift
that and you start doing everything that's reasonable to obtain what you currently believe is best. Well, you're going to obtain much better things in much shorter time and it will astound you if you can achieve this in a chain, if, if you can achieve some sort of consistency in this, you are going to
be amazed at the cumulative change that it works in your life. Now, finally, one way that you can increase in the value of things that you have that are valuable, but that you perceive to be less valuable than they are is to do the work to share those things with others, to pay the price, to share them
with others. And that is a, a vitally important way to increase in the joy that you could already have because you have the things that, that are capable of producing it, but you don't have because you have no idea of the value of what you have. So how can you 111 very effective way of increasing your
sense of that value is paying the price to share it with other people. Now, it doesn't matter what the thing is. And for simplicity throughout this presentation, I I just keep saying thing, it could be a situation, it could be a person, it could be any idea, right? It could be a hobby that you have a
skill, it doesn't matter whatever facet of life that provides you with value. If you share that with others, you will increase the joy that it gives you. And one piece of that is that you gain a better understanding of what it costs and, and someone paid the price to share it with you, whether you recognize
who that someone is or not, whether it was a scene person or someone that, that was connected with you in some way or not. It doesn't matter, it's there. And it came from someone that someone in the ultimate is God, but he uses a lot of helpers. So you, you can get a better understanding of the value
by sharing it with others. And these are the things that I encourage you to do. If you, if you do these things, you're gonna see a dramatic change in the amount of joy that you have in life and in the quality of the things that you've done or obtained.