Lead Pastors Conference: Joe Jansen

[00:00:00] But sometimes, and I think we're in a season, if I can use that overused word, where God wants to do new stuff. [00:00:07] And so we have to be very careful about the ground that he may want. Because what do you do with hardened ground over and over? And I think it's, Jose, what do you say? Break up that fallow ground. [00:00:18] We gotta. We've gotta constantly be asking, lord, is this, you know, is this habit? Is this routine? Is this the way we're doing this? [00:00:26] Right? Because we don't. The older you get, you know, the less likely you are to embrace change. Right? But that's what God wants to do. A new thing. [00:00:43] Welcome to the well, an Elam Fellowship leadership podcast. Join us today as we hear from Pastor Joe Jensen at the lead Pastors Conference. [00:00:53] Enjoy. [00:00:54] If you have a Bible or a tablet or whatever you use, we're going to be in Mark, chapter four. [00:01:01] With some of the time that I have left, I. I want to share with you one of the things that I. Somebody was asking me last night if I had to do things over again, something like that, you know, how would I. What would I do? And one of the things that I said to answer that question was I would go to counseling much sooner because I had. It's, you know, because there's issues of the heart. There's just, you know, the ministry, you know, some of the people that we deal with are just really mean. You know, they're. Some people say they're carnivorous sheep. You know, they. And I wasn't. I wasn't. I don't think I was really ready for that, for the emotional side, the emotional toll that the ministry and that life can bring. And. [00:01:46] And so one of the things that I do, I just look for in the Bible for things like issues of the heart and. Cause, you know, Solomon said. And I also look for these types of things, whereas Solomon said, above all else. So when I see a line like that in the Bible, I like that because it takes. I don't have. Again, I got like adhd, so I'm all over the place. But I can say above all else, then I don't have to worry about, you know, a lot of other stuff, because this is above all else. It's in the Bible, right? So it's above everything else. And he. And what does he say? Guard your heart because out of it flow the issues of life. And so I'm not crazy to think that I should have been taking care of my heart a lot sooner than what I did, you know, that Whole soul care thing. And in Mark 4, Jesus gives us a parable. And one of the things that it does, if I can get. If I can get there. [00:02:44] It's a very interesting parable because he says, don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand, you know, any parable? So he says, something, something there that, that this parable has a lot more to do than just, you know, telling you a nice story. But I just want to read you part of it here in verse 13. Then Jesus said to them, don't you understand this parable? Then how will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. [00:03:11] Some people are like the seed along the path where the word. Where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Is it, you know, and the devil's real. [00:03:23] Others, like seeds sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once they receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seeds sown among thorns, they hear the word. But the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for just other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. And then he says, other seeds sown on good soil hear the word, accept it and produce a crop. Some 30, some 60, some a hundred times. 30, 60, or 100 times. Isn't that what, 10. Isn't that what you want? I want on my grave that I wanted to say he was a hundred timer. [00:04:10] Don't you want that? [00:04:12] I don't want it to be. I don't even want it to be 30. I'll take the 30, but 30, 60, 100. So I like the end of the story here is that we're going to be fruitful, right? [00:04:23] If we jump to John 15, right, there's that whole abiding and remaining. And then he says, you know, if you abide, you're gonna bear fruit. You're gonna bear much fruit. You know, you're gonna. [00:04:34] We're going to be fruitful. [00:04:36] There's a happy ending here, right, of fruit in our lives. And so again, I like to go to the bottom line that if I stick to it, I'm going to be fruitful. If you stick to it. Somebody told us this weekend, or this isn't a weekend during this time, not to give up. If we don't give up, we're going to have fruit. It might be 30. You know, not all of us are going to be. Not all of us will be the hundred, but 30, 60, 100, every single one of us, we're going to, we're going to bear fruit. We're going to, we're going to have fruit in our lives. And, you know, the seed is constant, right? The seed is the word of God. Powerful. The word of God is powerful. It's creative. The word of God are the thoughts and the imagination of God, the creator of the universe. And he's. And he's. And he's planting. He's planting that. That power. It's a powerful, powerful word. It's a, you know, a creative picture. Of what, of something that, that God wants to see manifest on the earth. And he's gonna, and he's gonna do it through us. [00:05:37] The seed stays constant, but the variable is our hearts. Is our heart ready? Right? And then he talks about, He. We're going to talk about the heart that is. Is hardened, that the pathway. And we're going to talk about some of the rocks where persecution, you know, we can come up with a lot. In my studies, I saw a lot of different things about what these things represent, but Jesus told us what the rocks represent. Trouble and persecution. Just. And, and so we're gonna. That's gonna be a part of life. And see, I gotta settle that in my heart, that when I receive the Word, at some point, as I'm walking this word out, trouble and persecution are gonna come, right? And then we're gonna, and then we're gonna talk about distractions, the ADHD heart, right? [00:06:25] And a lot of pastors I found in my work over the last 17 or 18 years with pastors, that a lot of pastors have ADHD. [00:06:33] At least they work it out like that because it's just, they're after this and then they're after that, then they're after this and then they're after that, and it's like, hey, slow down. [00:06:42] And you just concentrate on one thing, right? You know, and so we want to have our heart, right? Our heart wants. We want to make sure that our heart is ready to receive the seed. Now, when we talk about the hard ground, why in the world would, at least to me, when I look at this, why would God sow seed on the path, on hardened ground? Why would he do that? And I just, I asked and I, you know, and use my imagination, but I think why he would do that is because he's amazingly generous, isn't he? [00:07:18] Let's give it a Shot. And he just, he throws it all, he throws it on a hardened area of our heart. And because there just might be a shot that somehow that seed will take place. And so he's generous, he's not miserly with the seed, even, even on the places that it doesn't seem like anything might happen, he's going to give it a try. He's going to give you a chance, right? And I spoke part of this message somewhere else one time and somebody, a person from New Zealand, I don't know, came to me with a picture of a tree literally coming out of a split in a rock. And that tree was growing. She said it is possible for things to grow in rocky places. And so you might think nothing can grow in parts of your heart, but God will give, God will give it a chance, right? Some people are like seed along the path. As soon as they hear Satan come, Satan comes and takes away the word. And so it just sits on the surface, right? And it's, and it's not taking root. But what the hardened places. Now, you know, we could talk about trauma, we could being hard in our hearts. We can talk about those mean people that I told you about. I know that none of them are your church, but in Herkimer there just seem to be a lot of mean people and that, you know, those mean people, when they take bites out of you, that can harden your heart because you're going to go into a protective mode. [00:08:39] Lots of things. But what about. I think that there's also places where the well worn paths, things, even the good things that we do can be places of hardness where God wants to come in. And I think somebody said it at some point, he wants to come in to do a new thing. And in a place where it's a well worn path, well, we've got that down. So now we can just, we can just go, we can just go. This happened to me one time when I, I was doing. [00:09:08] It was a, one of the first churches I ever went to was a storefront church in Cohoes, New York. And it was a rough town. I mean, it was a rough town. And I was, I was talking with this woman and, and, and, and she started manifesting, you know, demonic activity. She, you know, she jumped up and I, you know, I, I did, I was pretty young in the Lord, so I just said in the name of Jesus, settle down. And she just said, she settled right down. I was like, whoa, hey, I'm pretty good at this, right? Well, about three weeks later, I'm, I'M in this, I'm in the same situation with another lady. And she was kind of a big boned lady. I mean, she was big, okay? And all of a sudden she, she, she jumps up. And I said, and I, I said, I know just what to do in the name of Jesus, settle down. Well, she didn't settle down. She came out with both her hands like this and slammed me right in the chest. And I, I'm starting to suck out. [00:10:03] And I'm like, Jesus. And she hits me again. [00:10:07] I'm going down now. I'm going down. And so I, there was some people out in the hallway. I said, enough with the name of Jesus. Call the police. I said, yeah, yeah, that was, that's. I was the mighty man of God, But I just took it as well. Last, last time some, some woman jumped up and started trying to kill me. [00:10:32] The name I told her in the name of Jesus. Well, it didn't work, right? And that's, but that's, you know, that's just a, it's a kind of a funny illustration of how we can be that we just go and we get in our routines and we get in our habits and those are all good things to have. Godly habits, godly routines. But sometimes, and I think we're in a season, if I can use that overused word, where God wants to do new stuff. [00:10:56] And so we have to be very careful about the ground that he may want. Because what do you do with hardened ground over and over? And I think it's Jose, what did you say? Break up that fallowed ground, right? We gotta, we've we've gotta constantly be asking Lord, is this, you know, is this habit? Is this routine? Is this the way we're doing this? [00:11:15] Right? Because we don't. The older you get, you know, the, the less likely you are to embrace change, right? But that's what God wants, to do a new thing. And in this day, he's. He's wanting to do a new thing. And breaking up fallow ground is not easy. Like, I, I'm not a farmer, I, I knew some farmers, but it's like there's like these three foot tongs that actually go down into the dirt to break it up. It's not, it's not an easy thing to break up the fallow ground. But if we want to receive that seed, right, I put in here. Hard hearts are probably familiar routines, long standing habits, assumptions that go unquestioned. [00:11:54] This is how we've always done it. It's the things that hard Ground can be made of good things, good ministries, good traditions, good disciplines. [00:12:05] But good things never get examined. And they can become places where God is no longer allowed to speak into. [00:12:12] Like, do I have things in my life? Do you have things in your life where kind of God can't touch those areas because they're settled areas and these are. They're good areas. I'm not talking about sin here. I'm talking about areas of good. But it's like, oh, that's all taken care of. And I think this parable kind of Jesus, at least for me, Jesus is saying to shake up some of those places and just see, he's not going to say that you have to break up every one of those and do every single new thing. But there can be places, especially in the season, that in that God wants to do something new and something fresh. You know, sometimes, like, I'll go out, get a different version of the Bible. [00:12:52] So just to read it in a different way, and one that's even uncomfortable. So that. So that it makes. So it makes me think again, well, what's that word? That's not the word that's used, right? It makes. It makes you kind of slow down and rethink what he's doing. [00:13:10] Let me just say, too, that Jesus. It's on that hardened ground, right? That the seed hits the hardened ground. It's sitting there. And Jesus said. Because if somebody else were to say to me that what Jesus said, that Satan comes in and steals the seed, I'd be like, oh, let's not give the devil too much glory here. And the devil's this, the devil's that. But Jesus said, I don't know how the devil does it, because I don't think he's omnipresent. [00:13:37] But. But Jesus is telling us that when seed hits hard ground, a hard heart that the devil comes in, just snatches away. [00:13:45] And that's why. And that's why Jesus gave us an example. When he was out there in the wilderness and he was fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. And the devil, the devil was tempting him. What did he do? He said, it is written. Now, he could have. Jesus could have vaporized the devil, right? Just in this. Just in thoughts. He could have just vaporized him right where he was. But for our benefit. It's for our benefit that he shows us a way, right? That you take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, that you put on the armor and you grab that sword. And when you see. And first of all, it has to be an awareness that the seed is even there on the hard ground. But once we're aware, we need to protect. That's the ideas and the thoughts and the creativity and the inspiration of, of God. His mind, it's part of his mind. [00:14:36] It's absolutely sacred and holy and other that you know, because it's not, that word is not going to come from anywhere else in the universe. In all of creation. That word can only come from God. Totally other, we need to protect that word. It's sacred. It's something that God wants that he's saying, you manifest this on the earth, you bring this out. [00:14:59] Part of who I am, I want you to bring it out. And so Peter said, resist the devil, right? And I think he said resist the devil and he'll flee. But he said he's a roaring lion. [00:15:12] Sometimes we make too light of these things because there is an enemy, right, that comes to kill. He steal the word, destroy the word, destroy the vision. He wants to stop us in our tracks. With God came. Jesus came to give us an abundant life. The abundance that 30, 60, a hundredfold. [00:15:37] That's the hard ground that he's coming. Then the rocky soil. When trouble or persecution comes because of the Word, they quickly fall away. And again I was struggling with this, what are the rocks? And maybe I'm just a little dense, I don't know. But some people like would talk and say it's sin, there's hidden sin under the earth and stuff like that. But Jesus says it very clearly that it's, it's trouble and persecution, you know, that Tom mentioned, Tom mentioned our building, you know and he, he didn't, he didn't expose me. It was me, it was actually my brother in law. [00:16:17] We had a prophecy about a six sided building and my brother in law came, we'll blame it on Dennis. He came in with, because he was, he was drawing things up with an eight side, an octagon building. And somebody even said, I remember somebody said, well I thought, I thought there was a prophetic word about a six sided building. And I was like, oh, eight, six. God just doesn't want a rectangle, you know, that's, that's right, you know, you know, and then, and you know, then lo and behold, when the ark, when the architect came in with the six side, I was like, well somebody knows what we're supposed to be doing here. Thank God for, thank God for that. And you know, but we had, we had problems, man, you know, again you're, you know, when the architect comes he's got a, he's got a, not just a drawing of the building, he's got a model, right? And we're all just like, oh, look at this. We're just all excited, right? When, when you get a word right, you're. Isn't it the most exciting time when you first get that word? You're just. And you know, the prophet's telling you now, write it down and you know, read it every day. And all this stuff is really good. We're going to talk about it in a minute and we're all excited. But we got into this building program. First of all, people started leaving once we, we started raising money and like, people like, they were like leaving in droves, you know, we'll come back when that's done. And then we started building. We got, I used to say three eighths of the way there. My wife tells me, don't say three eighths. Most people don't know what it is. But, but all the homeschoolers, though, they do, they know what it is, the homeschools. So public education, they don't, they don't know 3A. So it's a little bit, a little bit less than halfway. We're building this. A 12,800 square foot building. Little less than halfway. Our builder leaves and I don't mean that he left and he's coming back in two weeks. He left, he's nowhere to be found and he's got about, oh, probably 30,000 of our dollars because, you know, you, you give, you give money up up front and stuff like that. Nowhere to be found. [00:18:10] And here we are. We already sold our building. We've got to be, we've got to be out of our building and we've got like six, six weeks to go, right? We have problems now. We, we have some major problems, right? And that's not what I signed on for when it was all exciting, Phil. You know, we're going to build. Yes, we're going to build. And the land, God. [00:18:28] It's funny how God sets you up because we. I could tell you a whole story about how we got the land, but just this five acre piece of land that was still in the village because we would have, we wanted to try to stay in the village. So we, everything's falling into place, but then, right, all of a sudden bad things are happening and I'm like, oh, my gosh, you know, we're going to be the laughing stock of the village, you know, this thing here. But God brought John Wicks to us. Which was from your church. And John Wicks was a guy who built. He helped churches build with all volunteers. You pay John. And then he said everything. He would set things up so that the building could get built with volunteers. Beck Lee was in our building and helped out. [00:19:11] But I said, when John came in this one night, he came and I said, john, you think we can do it? And he's looking around, he's like. He goes, I don't know. Six weeks ago, but we're going to give it a shot. And then John, the first week that he was there, he didn't do anything. Nothing was happening. Nothing's happening. The board members are saying, what's John doing? So finally, on Friday, I said, john, what's going on? Nothing's going. You're not doing anything. He said, don't worry. He said, I'm just getting everything ready. And he goes, you. I remember I told you, call every single volunteer you can find, every single person you can get here on Saturday. You get them here, and I'm going to be ready to. I'll be ready to have every one of those volunteers busy. It was. That's just what happened. I mean, they. Because John had a whole network of volunteers. They came from Syracuse, they came from Oswego, They. They just. They came from everywhere. But the guy that was doing our bathroom stalls, my wife went in there and, hey, do you know what you're doing? He says, like, do you know what I'm. Do I know what I'm doing? He goes, I do this for McDonald's all across the country. He was the McDonald's bathroom guy, you know, and he's putting up our souls. And so the, the lesson that I learned in the trouble and persecution we had, the whole body of Christ, I mean, they came from everywhere. Pastors were home. The whole body of Christ built our building. That building was built. Olig's in the building now. It was built by the whole body of Christ. See, now we could have just quit. We could have hung our heads down. Well, what are we going to do? Was maybe we could do it a little at a time. You know, we got the steel up and. But no, we. We just kept pressing into it, Pressing into it. We, We. We hit the rocks were, you know, the, the rocks were the trouble that somebody stole our money and somebody, you know, we're not going to be able to. We're not going to be able to get in, in time and stuff. [00:20:55] In fact, our first service, I think, was. It wasn't Easter Sunday, but we unloaded the, we unloaded our chairs like at 6 in the morning for the, for the 10 o' clock service. But you just, but yeah, you hit the rocks, you got to go deeper, right? You have to, you have to, you have to. There's that pressing in part. [00:21:12] There's that perseverance part that says we're not going to let a little bit of trouble because trouble's going to come. Jesus said in his life you're going to have trouble, right? It's not on your pocket promise book, right? You don't, that's not what you read. And you're, oh, isn't that exciting? [00:21:25] But it is, but it is kind of a promise that you know, tough things are going to happen in life. Rocks are going to, rocks you, we're going to hit rocks. And it's not once and done because again, I know farmers. [00:21:37] We had, we had a farmer family and every year they would go out there and pick rocks. I would be like, there's got to be a better way. You know, I don't, you know, because, you know, the, I guess the frost and the freezing kind of lifts things up and then when you turn the ground over, you know, there's, there's more, there's more rocks there and so, you know, rocks. Well, let's look at the Bible. [00:21:59] Tom mentioned them last night. Joseph, right. You talk about a guy that's excited about his dream and his vision. I mean he was so excited. He was a noxious 17 year old, right to his brothers. But he's going to, he's going to be rise up and his family and you know, nations would be bowing down to him, this, you know, this type of thing. And he's excited about his father, loves him more than everybody else. He's, you know, he dresses better than the rest of the family and. But the family didn't like him too much, right? Look at, look at the persecution and the hardship that this guy had to go through at 17 years old. His brothers hated him. I mean there's a hate there. I said that, you know, in the churches, carnivorous sheep. Well, this, this guy had carnivorous brothers. His own family, they hated him and they, they plotted the kid, they were plotting to kill the kid. I mean it's just awful. And then instead of killing them and I, I don't know, I don't know. In some ways I think it would have been better to be dead because they say, oh no, let's not, let's not kill him. Look, there's some Ishmaelite Slave traders coming, let's sell them. I mean they, they sold their brother out to Ishmaelite slave traders to be a slave. I mean one, one time when I was about 11 years old, I was playing basketball with my brother and he was about three years older than me and I was a really, just a, I was a pain in the neck kid. I, I, you know, I, I just always, you know, just getting people and seeing if I get them explode. Well, I got my brother to explode on the basketball court and he, and he just roundhouse punched me right, right in the hip. I mean he hit me and I was, I, I'm down on the ground and, and I'm rolling in pain. But as I'm rolling in pain, he's going to the hospital because it turned out that he broke his knuckles. He shattered one of his knuckles on my, on my hip. But you know, and to this day, one of his fingers didn't grow. It didn't grow properly. But listen, all the time that I was down on that ground writhing in pain from a shattered knuckle, being hit by a shattered knuckle, I never once thought about selling my brother to Ishmaelite slave traders. You know, it's like if I knew at the time I probably would have done that. But this kid, this guy though the Bible keeps saying that God was with him. Joseph never, he never, he never like played the victim. [00:24:15] You could we, I just jumped for job, same thing. Job never played himself the victim. [00:24:20] He, he seems to God, it says that God was with him. He gets, he gets into Potiphar's house ready for. They threw him into a pit. [00:24:28] Then he goes to the pot and he's, he right, he rises to the top in Potiphar's house and he must have been one good looking Jewish kid because you know, Pot's wife is like, yeah, this would be nice. You know, pot's out on business and, but he, right, he doesn't want to sin against God. [00:24:48] This, this, he's got something right? God is secret and, and, and I think he mentioned Potiphar too, that he has some, he had an honor about him and, but he gets falsely accused and sent to prison. [00:25:05] Trouble, persecution, it's going to come just you know, settle that in your heart that what, you know, God gives us the grace and then you know, in, in prison he's forgotten and you know, I said he was falsely accused and I've done some prison ministry, you know, I don't have not very many people saying yeah, I was guilty in Prison. So when Joseph was trying to say to you guys, well, I really didn't do it, they were like, yeah, he either did. Wait, Joe. You know, it's like. Well, I think Potiphar kind of knew that his wife was a little, you know, crazy, because he would have been dead. He would have been dead had, you know, had he really thought he had done that. [00:25:45] And then, you know. You know the story. I like talking to pastors because, you know the story. He winds up. He's forgotten in prison. He. Even after he does a dream interpretation, I think it's for two years, he's just totally forgotten. But then God breaks him out and brings him from the prison to the palace, and he ri. And the dream. The dream comes to pass. Listen, settle it. That you're going to hit some rocks. [00:26:08] You're going to. And you're going to. [00:26:10] You're going to. You're going to grow through them. That these are here. These. These are here to build my character. These are here to build the fruit of the Spirit in my life. To build who Jesus is, his character in us. That's the fruit of the Spirit is who Jesus is. And so every rock, every. Every. And it's. It seems like I. I don't know if this happens to you, but in my life, it seems like God always keeps upping the ante. [00:26:37] You know, it's. It's just like, you know, in Herkimer, that used to be one thing after another that seems like every two or three years. And I used to go to counseling and thinking, you know, it's got to be me. Like, you know, it's like, who's. Who's the. [00:26:50] Who's the common denominator here? You know, it's me, you know, But Bernard Evans, he helped me a lot because he says. He said the Mohawk Valley is special. You know, he said it's a special place. It's a special place to be. But listen, he's. We got to settle it. That persecution and testing is all part of growing in Christ. [00:27:13] It's all part of vision fulfillment, is that we're going to hit some hard times. We're going to hit impossibility, impossible stuff. Look at Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego, right? They were faithful. [00:27:26] This is. And, you know, they're going to get thrown into a. Into a. Into a furnace that's seven times hotter than it's ever been before. The. The guys that are near it, they're dying from the heat of it. And these guys are faithful. All the Way through. And. And their faithfulness. Again, the ante just keeps getting upped. And until they're finally thrown into the furnace, right? You're going to find yourself in the challenges of being thrown into furnaces and burned alive in their story. And that's why I told both the stories, because in Joseph, he literally had to go through some really hard times. These guys get thrown in, they have to stay faithful. They don't know that they're going to get saved. Right? So there's a real challenge they had to grow through, but they get thrown in and. Right. It wasn't that Nebuchadnezzar looks in there. It's like, who. What's going. Did we have how many eyes did we have? Three. No, there's a fourth one. [00:28:15] And see, it's in those times when we're obedient and faithful that Jesus meets us. And when they. What a revelation they. They've got. Nobody else got that revelation of Jesus in the fire, Jesus meeting Jesus in the furnace. It's only the people that'll step in to the fiery places that get to meet Jesus in those fiery places. And it's got to be an amazing revelation of who God is in there. And when they come out, the only thing that's removed is their bondages. [00:28:46] What are we missing when we try to sidestep the hard things? [00:28:52] What is it that God has in store for us when we embrace the hard things, the trouble, the persecution, the hard stuff that happens in life? That's where we meet the. Some of the best revelations and some of the. I think some of the good fruit inside. Because I think what he's most interested in is not churches of thousands. He's most interested in me and you becoming more like Jesus that me and you are more and more every day conformed into the image of his son. [00:29:24] That's what it's really all about. He wants to look over the rail of heaven and be able to say, hey, look, Joe's got Jesus eyes, right? [00:29:35] He wants to see the image of his son created in us. And sometimes that takes some rocky places that we're gonna. That we're gonna have to. [00:29:43] To grow, to grow through. [00:29:47] Let's see. [00:29:51] Trouble doesn't mean the word is failing. It often means the word is working. Shallow faith avoids pressure. Deep faith grows through it. And then we have the thorny soil, which is. Which I call the ADHD heart, the distracted heart, the worries of life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things. [00:30:08] The words received. The problem's not the problem isn't rejecting the word. It's competition. [00:30:14] And again, I found. Again, I found. I don't want to. [00:30:18] What do they call that stereotype type, you know, But I found that pastors, we like the dopamine, you know, and we're. We're running after the next shiny thing. In fact, I had it. I remember. I. I don't know if you weren't. I think you were on the board at the time. I used to go to a conference, come back and change everything. Go to another conference, come back, change everything. And so the guy where I was telling them, I'm going to a conference, they're all like, oh, oh, my gosh. You know, and they said, we don't know who you are. We don't know who we are. Like, you know, because every time I read or I read a book, you know, and I read a book and I go, we're doing it. You know, it's John Maxwell time. It's Frank Damasio time. You know, it's. You know, we had Apollo Bizari. We're going to be into deliverance now, you know, just one thing after another. And. And that. That's the. The distractions, you know, that we have to get focused on, I think, on one thing in Philip, in the book of Philippians, right? When Paul says this one. This one thing, I do, right? [00:31:22] And I know in pastoring, it's very difficult to focus on one thing, but there has to be that emphasis, right? When we. When we. When we heard God say build, that's what we did. [00:31:34] We built. We. That was our main emphasis, especially when we had. We had all those problems. And, you know, but it wasn't like we could run off, you know, we had to. We could. We could just run off. Now when we were done, we were done, right? In fact, some of the guys. I had to say, we're not doing that anymore. We're going to finish. There was a few things that we're going to finish slowly, but I said, I got to get back to pastoring a church. [00:31:59] I can't keep building this building. We got to pastor this church, and we got to reach this community, but can we get focused? That's where it's so important to have people in our lives. And that's one of the things that happened to me. I recognize that I. [00:32:13] I just like to go after shiny things, you know, and the board helped me, my. And the elders in that. I was. I reckon I didn't even know I was doing it. [00:32:23] And I started to learn how to focus and use. What I used was goals that goals. And Paul, it's in the Bible. Paul said this one. You know, there's one thing I do and even uses the word goals. Goals, our faith, their faith declarations, right? It's saying, and I know some people get uptight about goals. [00:32:44] The increase, the accomplishment of the goal is really up to God. [00:32:50] And it's, they can be very small that hey, we're going to, we're going to try to get, we're going to try to get the electrical done in the building that's by this date, See. And what a goal does is again it, it creates faith which pleases God, right? And it gives me purpose. And when things are going haywire, I know when I get up in the morning, I know what I'm going to do, right? This is where I'm going to go. [00:33:18] This is what I have to do. Remember, Tom can tell you stories about building the building. That's all you know, that's what we just knew, as tired as we were, we're going to get this thing done. We knew we got to get this building done. And so it was just. And then we laid out goals, we broke goals. Break. They break the vision down into little pieces, little faith steps along the way, faith achievements along the way that I can get done. And here's the thing. God is working on me while I'm working on the goals, right? So he's building character in me through these faith steps and these faith achievements. And it helps in my, in all, in all my distract and all of my distractions. It keeps me on pace. [00:34:01] And then, then finally there's the good soil where Jesus said others like seeds, seeds sown on good soil. They hear the word, they accept it and produce a crop. 30, 60, even 100 fold. That word accept there is it kind of, you know, except yeah, it's like a, we kind of feel like. Oh yeah, no, it's a welcoming word. It's a, it's a, a word of hospitality. It's a word of, of intentional acceptance that oh, we're gonna again, we're gonna. When, when guests come to our house, right? We don't, we don't treat them like we're gonna like, you know, we're doing a thousand other things and oh, we have some guests here. The focus comes, right? The focus comes on. Like when Tom was talking about his parents house, when you went to his parents house for a meal, you were the king and queen at that meal. Like that. There was a total focus. And that's what, when, when, when that word comes, you accept that word. If you want to be a thirty, sixty or a hundredfold, it's focusing in, on and, and treating that word like a, like an honored guest in your house. It's, it's, it's, that's what it takes to see some of these words come to pass. Not, you know, we're not going to leave it right where it is on the ground. You know, sometimes like I like that story in the book of Revelation, I think it's chapter three where Jesus says he's standing at the door knocking, you know, he's talking to Christians there. And it's kind of like we left Jesus on the outside. You know, we can leave our words on the outside. Jesus wants to come. He wants to come all the way in, right? Can you invite him all the way in? Don't leave him in the mud room. All right, don't leave the word, you know, because that's. [00:35:44] Some of us get upset that the word doesn't get come to pass, but it's not coming to pass because we're not, we're not treating the soil properly. We're not, our hearts aren't there. We're just, we're just leaving it, like leaving, like leaving Jesus in the mud room of our lives. Leaving the words just kind of on the shelf of our life. And he, you know, that to really see the 3600, it's a full acceptance and embracing of it. [00:36:09] So the challenge is this, the preparing the soil. What kind of soil are you becoming today? [00:36:16] Are you breaking up your hard ground? [00:36:19] You know, like, I have a couple questions. Where have I stopped listening to God? [00:36:26] What good thing have I stopped surrendering? [00:36:30] You got to reframe the rocks because pressure is going to come, hard times are going to come. Trouble is going to come. What pressure might God be using to deepen my roots? [00:36:41] And how about those thorns? What distractions are choking, what God wants to grow? What good things are you doing that in order to really be the hundred timer that God wants you to be, some of those good things are going to have to be put away so that you can focus on what it is that God really put you on the planet for. For right now. [00:37:04] Because he's up to doing new things right now. [00:37:08] So the harvest is not produced by chance. [00:37:11] It's a result of a heart that welcomes the word and tends the soil. [00:37:17] Amen. [00:37:18] Thank you, Jesus. [00:37:22] So let's. Let me, let's. I'm going to just say a prayer for you and then we'll just take a break. Does that sound good? Let's pray together. [00:37:29] Thank you, Lord. [00:37:31] Let's just bow our heads and close our eyes. Helps us to concentrate. [00:37:41] It would be right just to rush through after a word like that of concentrating. And what is God doing? What's the new thing that he's doing? Or there's some trouble in your life that you're resisting and it's that very trouble that he wants us to embrace. That's. It's not failure to embrace your trouble. It's not failure. When failure comes, it doesn't have to be failure. It could be something that God's working in you, but resistance. It's surrendering to what God is doing. [00:38:09] Father, come now and the Holy Spirit come into this room, into our lives. [00:38:15] Solidify this word, Lord. For those of us that have hardness of heart, I think in our relationships, Lord, and our marriage relationships, that there's places that perhaps where we're hardened, places where our hearts aren't open to one another. They're not open. Places where we've just kind of given up. [00:38:33] And that you, Lord, would help us to break up the fallow ground in relationships and in our marriages and with our children. That you would do a new thing among us, in us, when it comes to relationship building. [00:38:50] Create in us, Lord, a new heart, sensitive to your words, ideas, to your thoughts, to your creativity, to what it is that you want us to manifest in this world, that we bring glory to who you are Trouble, Lord, the grace of God would be with those who have hit some times of persecution and trouble. Maybe there's an illness in the family or I know, that's challenged us, or just confusion in the church in some way, or somebody betraying somebody, disloyal, somebody you never expect. [00:39:27] Give grace to that pastor, the pastor's wife, pastor's husband. Lord, give grace in those times of persecution and trouble. [00:39:37] And I pray, Lord, for distraction. I pray for the ADHD pastor, oh, God, that your Holy Spirit be with them, that you give them great focus, that you'd be able to make the shiniest thing, the shiny thing that you want them to focus on, to see. [00:39:56] Lord, people come to know you in their region, in their villages, in their cities, in their towns, Lord, that you would give us break our hearts for the lost and that I know that a broken heart for the lost gives us great focus on reaching them. [00:40:15] So I'd ask you to break. Break our hearts for lost people, that we see our churches filled not with, not, not just with transfer Christians, but with new people who have never known you snatch them out of the devil's grasp. [00:40:29] We ask these things in Jesus name and everyone said Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. [00:40:37] Thank you for joining us on another episode of the well, an Elam Fellowship leadership podcast. [00:40:43] If you like this episode, be sure to like and subscribe and share it with a friend. [00:40:48] We'll see you next week.