: Welcome to the Aggressive Life. This month, we're going to be replaying some of my most aggressive live talks from the past year that have been captured one way or another. These are things that we've never played on the podcast before. They're things that when I did these talks, I wasn't thinking they were ever going to get on a podcast. But we thought, yeah, this could be helpful and maybe give our listeners, our community, a rare opportunity. to get on the ground floor of some of the new content that I've been sharing recently. To get started, we're going to go behind the curtain for a training event I did for the staff at Crossroads Church, a church I started and led. That is my day job as senior pastor. I get to lead, encourage, and challenge 350 plus staff. Oh, Dyrd, every time I say that, 350, really? Yeah. Really? Oh, gosh. Yeah. It's so stressful. It is stressful. I told you that was one of my worst days, one of my worst things I used to do as a pastor. And you'd walk out and see all those cars? Right. Walk out. I thought it'd be awesome to have a bunch of staff members. I thought that meant that they'd do stuff you didn't want to do. That isn't necessarily the case. And what is the case is you feel responsibility for those folks. And so it just closed my eyes. And I walked in my car at lunch because all those cars, and at that point, the cars were only, I think, 10 of them or something like that. That represented 10 families I got to take care of. There's a lot more cars now. That's why, yeah. Yeah, there is. So that's what I mean. I love all those folks. It's a burden of leadership. Anyway, in a recent talk, I tried to help those folks cast some vision for them. I taught recently about the dangers of burnout, how to use your summer to get recharged. And here it is. It's July. We're about halfway through the summer at this point. And if you've got time to take off, take it. Make it. happen as a society, we are burning out. We're looking a lot like David, King David did at the end of his life. He starts out as Israel's greatest king, but he has a colossal collapse because he lets himself get buried by emotions, by duty, and actually by passivity. He needed to be on his game and have fun at the right time, not at the wrong time, and not the wrong kind of fun. Fun isn't frivolous. in its DNA, it's a reset and can be a reset that we all need. So use this Summerwell. And I want to use that as a springboard to dive into David's life in a short Q&A afterwards with some practical advice on how to avoid burnout and keep running. Let's get to it. Boy, that was special, wasn't it? Man, that was good. All right. So here's what we're doing today. Uh, I'm going to, I'm going to ramble a meander about a number of different things. And I hope it's helpful for you. That's what's happening today. This is my last staff training for the summer. I am, well, I guess the summer goes into August, so I'll be around in August, but I am doing something I haven't done for two to three years. I am doing a traditional summer break. So this is kind of my final address. I want to give you some things to chew on and think about over the summer. And we're also going to have a little Q&A. If you've got a question, text Jen Sperry. Text Jen Sperry. And she's going to put it up on the screen. And text your name. So we'll say who you are, and then we'll do the question. If anything I say, I like to ask more about that. I find again and again and again, I go back to the life of David as a source of inspiration to me. I just find there's first of all, so much material and data in there. And to first Samuel, all of second Samuel in Chronicles, first and second Chronicles, there's just a lot of stuff there. And every time I look at him, there's another angle, which I see things that are really inspiring to me. And depending on the season of life that I'm in or the thing I'm dealing with, I'll see some things that I hadn't seen before, or some things will be more stimulating to me than others had been. David starts off his life, he starts off on a tear. He's not respected by virtually anybody. If you know the story, Samuel knows that he's to be the next king. At least he knows he's supposed to come to the house of Jesse. So Samuel the prophet goes to the house of Jesse and sees this one big guy who's Jesse's son says, he must be the guy, that's the guy. God says, no, not that one. He sees another guy, looks pretty impressive. That must be the guy. No, not that's the guy. He goes all the way down through all the sons and God doesn't tell him that any of these are supposed to be the future king of Israel and yet he's been told, Jesse's sons, that's the one. And so he just says to Jesse, is this all of your sons? And Jesse says, well, there's one, he's keeping pasture, he's watching the sheep. So let me see that one. He sees him as like, ding, this is the one. This is the one. And that's that famous verse that the man looks on the outside, but the Lord looks at the heart. You never know what God's going to do in and through you. It's not based on your bench press or your academic history or any of your clear skin. It's purely based on what's going on inside. Now, the interesting thing about that is you dig into that and you interact with rabbis from different rabbinical schools of thought. There's a theory that the reason why Jesse didn't bring him out initially was that Jesse wasn't sure that he was his son or not. He was wondering if his wife had an affair, and he treated David like a bastard. He treated him like an orphan. That's a number of rabbinical schools of thought believe that was happening. So at the beginning of his life, David is underestimated. He feels alone, he feels orphaned, he feels like he's on his own, and yet God gives him this amazing opportunity to lead the nation of Israel, and you know the story of the whole Goliath. He goes and he takes down Goliath, and I'm not gonna go all through his life here, but you know, it's an amazing start. of his public life. And then, and then, the wheels come off. In 2 Samuel, in 2 Samuel chapter 10, we see that he has an affair with Bathsheba. I'm not gonna do a deep dive on any of these stories because you might have heard these before, had somebody preach them, or might have even heard me preach them, but I'll do a little deeper dive on something else that we don't talk all that much about. He has an affair with Bathsheba, and after that, his life is just not the same. And it's not the same. Because God chooses to judge him for the rest of his life for his adulterous affair. That's not why it is. It's the way it is because he can't get over it and he can't recapture the idealism and the energy of his youth. God judges him, takes his son, he weeps and he asks God not to take his son. God does take his son from Bathsheba and he goes to the house of the Lord and he worships and then once the son is taken, He comes out and he says, you know, I prayed and I worshiped, asked God not to do it, but he has done it and now I'm going to get over it and move on with his life. Unfortunately, he doesn't really get over it and move on with his life. And I find this part of his life something that we just don't talk about too much, but something I identify with much, much more right now. I was mentoring on the phone just when I came in here today a pastor who I met on a retreat. Just a great, great dude. And we were just talking about where he is with this church and what's happening with this church and all that stuff. This comes on the back side of interacting with the church yesterday that was a mentor of our church from afar. They stimulated us, they gave us resources, they gave us ideas, they were very generous. We used to take volunteers up to this church and hang out with this church and just be inspired, like wow, maybe one day. the church were part of, crossroads could have this kind of fruit and this kind of impact. And over the years, it's just been dwindling down and down and down and down and down. In fact, now it's just in a free fall and it's just not ending well. The founding and senior pastor just is out of gas entirely. Before COVID, they were running 12,000 people. Now there are 3,000 people. And he's just tired and worn out and he's making just a lot of bad decisions. His successor is somebody who looks older and acts older than him. Just tough stuff. So I was talking with one of their founders about this as well yesterday. And this metaphor I'm playing around with my mind is coming to me with leadership in a church. Probably leadership anyway, anytime. Leadership with you and your life as well, by the way. As I said, I wanna be a four season leader. What's a four season leader? Well, in my context, four seasons, the first season was you start a church, you figure it out. You do all the research, all the learning you can. You start the church. And I did a lot of learning and research on that. And we had a lot of people build into us. And it worked, it happened. The second season is the massive, massive growth season. That's the season where, okay, things are happening. How do we stay up with the growth? How do we stimulate growth? Is there a multi-site? What's the structure of staff? What kind of staff people do you need? What kind of ministries do we need? How do we take advantage of opportunities? A lot of seminars out there, a lot of coaching on that. People love those seminars. That's the second season. Then the third season is a season that no one likes. It's the season of plateau or the season of decline. I mean, nothing can go for 25 years or 30 years or 50 years or 60 years, nothing. A marriage, a family, a business, a church, a country, nothing can go for any length of time without leveling off and maybe even declining. And that's when, that's just a crappy season. And you know, no one puts those seminars on because no one wants to go to those seminars. You don't want to go to those. And when that happens in church circles and my circles, one of two things happens. The person who's been there for a while just moves on, moves on and retires. That normally doesn't happen though, because you move on and retire when you're 70. What happens is that happens when you're 45 or something like that, or 50. So then what happens instead is you just coast. You coast. And you just keep squeezing the same piece of fruit, hoping there's enough juice that comes out to keep you motivated and pay the bills. And you just hit it into autopilot. And there's not a freshness of the Holy Spirit. You're not hearing new things from God. You're not acting on new bold things from God. You're just kind of going along. And I'm talking this from an organizational standpoint, but this is also the way it is in your life. You start something in your life, you start to grow. And then like, it's not working so much. It starts to plateau. So what do you do? You get a divorce or you just fall into habits. You just fall into habits with your marriage that is all gonna be joy, but you can at least say, we never got divorced. You start off physically with your life, you start some habits, you start taking off, and then all of a sudden, you just get older, your metabolism slows down, you don't have motivation, and you just like, you just start creeping, you just start creeping, creeping down, you just give up, say whatever, whatever it is, I'm just old, and you just give up. So that's the third season. The third season is however you deal with the stuff that you're dealing with and the stuff that seems to be degrading in your life, the stuff that seems to not be going well. What's your response to that? Are you prepared for that? Do you know how to get out of that? And then the fourth season is finally graduation. The fourth season is when you die. The fourth season is when I retire from Crossroads, whenever that is, 65, 75, whatever. And so I was telling this younger pastor today, I said, I want to be a fourth season leader. All four seasons. I'm in the third season right now. I've been unequipped for the third season, but I'm in the third season. And by God's grace, in the third season, our third season is really going really, really well. Our growth numbers last year to this year are insane. Way to go, folks. You guys have been working your noogies off and doing great, great work. And it's not just people who are coming back to Crossroads from two years ago. It's new folks. It's just really, really encouraging. Now. All that, that's all background to David and why this is kind of interesting to me. After, after he has that adulterous affair with Bathsheba, I just go through the next several chapters of Second Samuel, and let's just talk about how the wheels come off his life and what just doesn't go well. Okay, one, his son rapes his daughter. where his son rapes his stepdaughter, or his son rapes his stepsister rather, Amnon and Tamar. And then to make it really, really worse, David seems to not have the energy to deal with it. So he just, whatever, I'm not dealing with it. I'm in recovery mode. I'm just not dealing with it. And so one of his sons, Absalom, he decides to deal with it. And how does he deal with it? He kills Amnon. He kills him. And then David doesn't have the ability to deal with that. doesn't have the ability to deal with Absalom, his son. And so his son and him are disenfranchised, they're separate from one another. And David misses his son as every dad, every parent misses their child when they're estranged. And so David has him restored to the kingdom. David brings him back. But when he brings Absalom back into the kingdom, he refuses to have any words of rebuke to Absalom, any words of warning to Absalom. And so Absalom sets up a coup. He sets, because he realized his dad is tired. His dad just isn't on point. And again, I identify this because when you're in plateau mode or you're not building something, you just get tired, like, I don't wanna deal with that, I don't wanna deal with that. So he parks himself. outside the gate where people would come to the king and into the king's systems to settle disputes. He parks himself outside the gate and just makes himself look good, which he's a really good looking guy. Got this massive hair. He's got to cut it off every year because it's so heavy and thick. And he just ingratiates himself the people of Israel. Well, you know, if I was king, I tell you, I could take you. Oh gosh. I'd love to take care of your problem. I would jump in your problem right now. He engraved it. It was like, man, gosh, this young guy, Absalom, he's got some energy. He's actually got something on the ball. So Absalom plots a rebellion because his dad is just asleep at the wheel. He's phoning it in. He plots a rebellion and that's exactly what happens. David and all of his right-hand guys, they got to leave. Absalom. Absalom is an incredibly sick and twisted dude. I'll just read for you what he does. This comes from the book of 2 Samuel chapter 16. Once he gets in the city, his buddies say, here's what you need to do. Here's the counsel to him, and he does it. Have sex with your father's secondary wives, because David could have multiple wives. God never endorsed that. God never told him to do that, but David just kind of followed the protocols of the day, and he had that. He had multiple wives. Have sex with your father's secondary wives. to take care of the palace. See, if he does this, he has another foothold, like I'm the guy here. Like my dad's wives, I have him. Gets worse. Ahithophel told Absalom, then all Israel will hear that you have alienated yourself from your father, and everyone who supports you will be encouraged. So they set up a tent for Absalom on the roof, and he had sex with his father's secondary wives in plain sight before all Israel. You haven't heard that sermon before, have you? And he says, in plain sight, like everyone's seeing him getting it on with his dad's wives. Eesh, problems. And David does nothing. It's not just his son. He's also got all these emotional things that are hitting him from all different kind of angles. He has this guy, Jonathan, his best friend. He makes a covenant with him that even though Jonathan is due to the throne, Jonathan is going to give David the throne, say, no, you're the guy. Not me when Saul dies, my dad dies, you're the guy. And David makes a covenant with them to not wipe out all of his lineage. Because Absalom, that's what he's doing. You either wipe out the lineage or you claim it as your own, which is why he had sex with David's secondary wives. So he makes this commitment. They'll do that. And David, when Jonathan dies and David comes into power, he uses all his power and authority to say, are there any descendants left of Jonathan's? And he finds one. His name is Mephibosheth. He is a cripple. His feet are jacked up. He can't walk around. And he gets summoned to David and he's like, Oh no, I'm getting killed here. I've ran away because now he's just trying to clean the house. Like every King does. And when David sees him, he doesn't know. I want to restore you to your owner, restore you and you're always welcome at my table and he gives them land. And it's, it's really a beautiful thing. This guy that he saved and he gave amazing mercy to this guy chooses Absalom side. This guy goes with Absalom. The level of abandonment and the level of rejection that is there, at least it looks that way. Later on, this guy's servant, Zeba, is gonna say, well, no, it was me who was faithful, not Absalom. Absalom's gonna say, no, you're misinterpreting stuff. It was Zeba that was unfaithful, not me. That's another thing that's gonna get into in just a moment. But David is just, he's worn out emotionally. He's just crushed. He's worn out. In fact, he's worn out so much emotionally that in the end, when he's dealing with Absalom and Zeba, they come to him and give different stories. Zeba goes, David says, okay, whatever, you guys figure it out amongst yourselves. You guys figure it out. We'll just split everything, 50-50. David is so worn out, he can't figure out justice. He's so worn out, he can't hear the other side of the story. By the way, This is why we're so divided in our country today, is we're all, everyone's so worn out, they can't hear somebody, they don't have the energy to hear somebody who has a different opinion. just no I just can't I can't I don't have I don't have time for it I don't have time for it Gosh, I'm going long. All right, let's close in prayer. I don't have, I'm running out of time here. All right, let's close in prayer. Amen. No, I'm not done. I'm just kidding. You're supposed to go, no, Brian, keep giving us the, keep giving us the unfiltered word of God, as you're supposed to be saying right now. How many of us went through, we did it a number of years ago, Donald Miller's story life, what was it called? Story brand. You remember the whole thing about the brain is set up to conserve calories? That was the main thing. Our brains. are built to conserve calories. Our brains, when I'm studying for a talk or studying in school, I get hungry then because I'm burning calories. When I'm working out, I just get thirsty. Our brain consumes calories. And our brain is wired to not consume calories because the more calories we consume, the quicker we die when there's a food shortage. So Donald Miller's whole thing is, The simplest message always wins because the brain does not want to spend time thinking through complex issues because the brain wants to conserve calories. When you are emotionally at the end of your rope, when you are worn out, when you've lost the plot, you don't want to think. You don't want to see the other side of the story. You don't want to think about complex things. You're just like, oh, whatever. Whatever. Whatever happens. is conserving, it's trying to save you. It doesn't mean it's right, it just means that's what happens, that's what we're fighting against. And so this is David, like from Bathsheba all the way through, he's just in calorie conservation mode. He's just, I can't, I can't deal, I can't deal, I can't handle, I can't deal, I can't handle. Absalom gets killed, and David is given instructions not to kill Absalom, but in the heat of war, Absalom gets killed anyway. And David's general, Joab, who is his sister's son, comes in and Joab and his sister's house has been trying to stick up for him. By the way, in this context as well, David one time he's marching and he's got this woman, what's her name? I always forget her name, Shimei. She curses David. She says this, Zerui's son, she curses him. She's calling cursed out as him and his soldier walking by and Zerui's son said to King, Why should this dead dog curse my master, the king? Let me go over and cut his head off. But the king said, my problems aren't yours, you sons of Zeruiah. If he's cursing because the Lord told him to curse David, then who is it to question, why are you doing this? The Lord has not told Shema to curse the anointed one of Israel. He's not told him that. But when you're low on energy, You're emotionally in the doldrums. You're going down, down. You're like, well, maybe it's true. Maybe there's truth in everything somebody says. David is just not there. He hasn't been there for long. For years, he hasn't been there. His son dies, and here's, as he's moping around, oh no. So it's endless pity party for himself. Oh no, oh, I lost my son way back when I got out. Oh, oh, Absalom doesn't like me, oh. Oh, I've lost the kingdom. Oh, everyone's a, oh, my wives are getting screwed and playing side by side, oh, the guy I've shown mercy to and blessed to be like, it would be like your compassion child, your compassion child dissing you and abandoning you. Oh, my compassion child, Meshvib'shev, he's going, oh, Absalom, he's got a rebellion and oh, he's dead. He's just this endless cycle of downward passivity. Goes down, down. And Joab grabs him by the repels, dude, what are you thinking? Joab was told that the king was crying and mourning Absalom. He's crying and mourning the guy who's tried to kill him. Yes, there's a bond there, but my gosh, he's gotta try to kill you and he screwed all your wives. You're crying and mourning, acting like a weenie boy. So the victory that day was turned into mourning for all the king was grieving for his son. So that day, the troops crept back into the city like soldiers creeped back ashamed after they fled from battle. They reclaimed the kingdom. They did the right thing. God didn't want Absalom to be the king, but now they creep back. Now David's emoting and his emoting is filtered to everybody else. Now everybody else is emoting and they're mourning back. This was happening right now in our culture. Like we all, oh, it's so hard. It's so hard, difficult. Oh, what about, oh, and that, oh. And the people around us, people around us are like, oh, you're right. Oh, it is hard. It's so difficult. I just need to, I just. The king cowered his face and cried out in loud voice, Oh my son Absalom, oh Absalom, my son, my son, who took my kingdom, screwed my wives and tried to kill me. Of course, he's forgotten all that stuff, right? Joab, Joab comes to him, comes to the king inside and says, You've humiliated all your servants who have saved your life today. Not to mention the lives of your sons, your daughters, your wives, your secondary wives, by loving those who hate you and by hating those who love you. Yes, we're supposed to love those who hate us. That's a Jesus idea. That's not what he's talking about here. He's talking about you're taking the side of the oppressors who have hurt everybody around you and you're sticking up for all the people. who have hurt all the innocent people around you. Today, you have announced that the commanders and their soldiers are nothing to you. Because I know that if Absalom were alive today and the rest of us dead, that would be perfectly fine with you. Now get up, get out, and encourage your followers. I swear to the Lord that if you don't go out there, not one of them will stick with you tonight, and that will be more trouble for you. than all the trouble you faced from your youth until now. So David has got enough spiritual wisdom left to listen to his friend, do the right thing, and kind of breathe encouragement into people. I identify that story so much because that story's been on my mind the last period of time. I felt a temptation just being in the never downward cycle of woe is me, emotionalism, just get all emo, things are high. I felt that, I felt that temptation. Sometimes I haven't felt that temptation. I've succumbed to that temptation. That seems like it's a, our culture puts that up as a godly attribute. So coming to your emotions and being down is not a godly thing. There is such a lament in the Psalms, it's a lament that says life sucks. This weekend I'm gonna talk about the imprecatory Psalms. There's such a thing as venting to God anger, people, that's good, that's good, that's true, that's true. And then the Psalm ends and you go to the next Psalm. And then that season of your life ends and you go to the next thing, instead of just stuck in this like downward thing of going down and down and down. I'm gonna give a version of this talk tonight. I've got a buddy I've discipled and he's in my group and he started his own men's group and I'm going over to speak to his men's group tonight and I said, what do you want me to talk about? He said, anything with these guys just with passivity. They just all feel like victims. They just, they just. get into this downward cycle and like, and it goes on and on and on, just this passivity thing. And I said, I got it. Yeah, I got the good message for them. So I'm looking forward to talk to those guys tonight. And I think this is a message that I would just have for all of us. I got clued into this stuff a while ago and I've been fighting it. And I've been doing pretty well. I've been doing pretty well on the whole. But I just wanted to articulate for you a little bit about what my journey has been and how I want to preach to myself when I do this and also for you all as well. There's a spirit of this age that's actually upon our church and upon you. The world that we live in gives us its stuff 24 seven and its stuff is to be like a victim, stay deep in your emotions, stay where you are. Somebody else did this to you, life is hard. Oh no, let's just stay in the mud and let's. Let's just kind of wallow in it and let's find other people to validate why I feel the way I do. That's the way of the world. That's not the way of Jesus. That's not the way of his people. That's not the way of the church. So I'm preaching to myself, but I'm also hoping if there's anything that I'm saying here that helps you, good, because the evil one would love for you to go the way of the back end of David's life. And to David's credit, He made sure that this got in the book of 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles. I mean, it is the king that ensures what is written in the official record. It's not like the National Enquirer was watching this and then writing this down and then it was going away. The only documents we have from antiquity that are preserved are the ones that the kings had their writers write and preserve. David was behind this. This isn't a smear job on him. At the end of his life, he's making sure things go down right. Aryeh, the crack guy from Jerusalem, clued me into this years ago. I was like, oh, that really helps. It really helps. It's like David is sending a message to all of us, don't be like I was in the last quarter of my life. And in fact, my last thing that I do, the last thing I do is I wanna make sure I get the record right. And I'm gonna make sure that you can see Don't learn from my last quarter of my life. Today's episode is brought to you by AG1. I gave AG1 a try because I was feeling a bit sluggish, not confident I was getting all the nutrients that I felt that I needed. And I thought maybe this is an easy solution. So I drink AG1 in the morning. I love doing the morning. I do it on an empty stomach. It forces me to get 12 ounces of water into my system. I love doing something proactive and aggressive to make me feel better and at least give me peace of mind. AG1 is designed with this kind of ease in mind so you can live healthier and better without having to complicate your routine. Each scoop has 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food sourced ingredients of the highest quality. If you want to take ownership of your health, try AG1. and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. So go to drinkag1.com slash aggressive life. That's drinkag1.com slash aggressive life to take control of your health. Check it out. All right, let's do some questions. JPS, we got any questions here? Just shout them out. If we don't have any, that's fine. OK, just read them to me. You're going to need a microphone, 2.5. It's on? OK. Turn up her volume, please. Very high. Shut up. First question, can you clearly name the fourth season that you talked? about being a four season leader. And then. Yeah, fourth season is retirement and the handoff. So the first season is starting, second season is growing, third season is getting out of plateau or decline. And the fourth season is, OK, my season here is done. I hand the baton off to somebody else. Or whatever your problem is, that season, OK, I'm up. My spouse dies. Four seasons, I was good throughout the whole thing. My spouse dies. Now I'm a widow, a widower. What do I do now? Or whatever. That's when you exit gracefully. you exit in a godly way. Great. What are some tools or coping skills in the plateau or decline season? And what is your advice on getting out of a season of being tired and passive? That's a good talk. I should think about this. So I'll just talk a thing off the top of my head. First of all, first of all, the first thing to do is give yourself grace. Give yourself grace. The apostle Paul in Corinthians, where exactly is it in Don and Corinthians? The apostle Paul goes through all his hardships. He says, I've been beaten, I've been shit wrecked, I've been this, I've been that and all that. And then at the very, very end, and I. bear daily my concern for all the churches. It's like he leaves the worst for last. It's like all this physical stuff, man, this emotional stuff of dealing with the stuff of the churches, ugh, that got me. So if you're in ministry and you're feeling like weight and you're feeling, hey man, that's part of what happens. So give yourself grace. Not part of what happens, so suck it up necessarily, but first, give yourself grace. You're dealing with the souls of people. You're dealing with real world problems. You're dealing with a lot of stuff. So the first thing if you're this guy, okay, I'm not crazy. Other people have been here. I need to give myself some grace on this. The second thing I would say is understand the most important work God is doing is the work in you. You've got to look at your emotional down spiral is as critical of an issue as world hunger. You are God's son, you're God's daughter. And you've got to look at it that way. I guess I've got to deal with it. No, God wants you to deal with it. You're His love child. The third thing I would say is you have to repent. Repent. Whether you feel like it or not, you have to repent. That means you say, this isn't right, here's my mistakes. Josh, how much time we have? Four minutes. I went to a pastor's retreat, I went to a pastor's retreat with Compassion International, and we were at this ridiculous, ridiculous retreat center that a church owns. It used to be Calvin Coolidge's Camp David. And then it became one of the most elite hunting cabin places in the country called Cabin Bluff. And then an environmental agency bought it and put a bunch of deeds and restrictions on it. And it's an unbelievable place. And this church uses the heck out of it. They have retreats there with people, volunteers, on and on and on. And as I was sitting there in that environment, I said, I need to really repent. I need to repent. In fact, God was working on me. I said, okay, I'm out of the fog of my emotions. or I'm getting out of the fog of my emotions, I need to look at things and repent. One was, I repented, I said, God, I had too small a vision, we bought Basecamp. There was another property that we could have bought, and we could have made a plate for, but it was a much, much nicer property with some really, really expensive structures on it. And I thought, I'm gonna get some blow back if we do that. I'm gonna have to defend why Crossroads would buy some really sweet ass property like that. And God, I just need to repent. Because if that was an extra million or $2 million, whatever it was, it was worth it. And I caved to what I was afraid public pressure would be. I'm sorry. And then what is repentance? It's not just when you recognize your fault, it's when you actually do something about it. So, I promptly contacted that organization, said, can we buy you? And I came back and promptly told staff and I told people with me, like, look, we're either going to find a better place to do what it needs to do and we're going to sell what we have or we're going to start building stuff on our property so that we can use it for things more than tents. You know, I like tents. I like tents. I'm not saying man camp is all of a sudden going to be a retreat center, but I'm going like there's some flexibility that we need to have that we don't have. That's repenting. You have to, when you wreck, you have to repent. You have to go, I'm in a pity party where everything's about me right now. My emotions are ruling me, the Spirit of God's not ruling me, so I gotta find out what it is I need to repent about, and then I repent about it. Next step, I would say, is you have close friends that know all this stuff, really close friends, and you have life-giving hobbies. Because when we don't have life-giving hobbies, nothing's distracting us from all of our crap. And then we're just in our own little thing and just staring at Netflix and just getting worse and worse and worse. And then the final one is just the basic blocking, tackling and following Christ. My Bible, my praying, that kind of stuff. It's 10 31. Let me see if my schedule is after this. You have time. All right, we'll keep going here. I just said, Grace, if you guys got something you gotta go, Peg's gotta go or she's bored by me, she can take off. If you got something you gotta go, you can go and take off, it's cool, it's all good. But if you wanna stay a few more minutes, we'll stay. Go ahead. Love the teaching this morning. What is the tagline for our summer charge? How would you like to apply the teaching? Well, I don't know who this applies to. This doesn't apply to everybody, for sure. But it did apply to me. Repent and reverse your downward emotive spiral. Repent and reverse your downward emotive spiral. And that's culture, by the way. We can't expect culture or the people in our church to go anywhere that we're not first going. That's always a call of a leader. Leaders always trying to be a step ahead. God's teaching me or doing something to me, and probably is gonna do something with other folks. So I think that's, if we can be leading our people that way and having that kind of life and that joy, that would be great. It was in the Psalm this morning in the app, Psalm 4. It talks about... wine and grain not defining my joy. And that's what our world does. Grain as in my wealth, oh no, oh no, economy's going down, I can't be joyful, or wine, I gotta get wasted, the number of people just as normal habit of practice, they can't imagine how you have fun without alcohol, can't imagine how you'd have a Friday, Saturday night without catching a buzz. That's the way our culture gets joy, wine and grain. And the psalmist says, no, it's the joy of the Lord. It's depending on you, it's getting that from you. We all need to get back in that space. Love you all very much. Care for you all very much. And I want the best for you. And I share this with you so you can understand me a little bit and some of the decisions I'm making. And so you can maybe take some cues and apply any of this stuff to your life to make it better. Take care of yourself this summer. Find a way to fill your tank. Find a way to get out of your downward spiral if you're in one, or at least take time to figure that out. because we're going to run this next year. It's going to be a lot of fun. It really is. Good stuff is ahead for us. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes and live events over at bryantome.com. Pre-orders for my new books, a repackaged edition of The Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man Tactical Guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps. Get this show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.