Now, let's lean into the message together.

How's everyone doing? [cheering] I love Vous Church.

[cheering] I love your pastors.

Can we put our hands together for Pastor Rich? [cheering] [clapping] Pastor DC.

Can we put our hands together for the entire Vous team? [cheering] [clapping] Every location that's leaning in right now, everyone online, what an honor and a privilege to be back with family, and I'm excited about the Word of God today.

So I want you to grab your Word.

Keep standing with me for a moment.

[gentle music]

Now, let's lean into the message together.

How's everyone doing? I love VU Church.

I love your pastors.

Can we put our hands together for Pastor Rich? Pastor DC? Can we put our hands together for the entire VU team? Every location that's leaning in right now, everyone online, what an honor and a privilege to be back with family.

And I'm excited about the word of God today.

So I want you to grab your word, keep standing with me for a moment.

I want you to turn to Psalms 23, Psalms 23.

fear.

Right

... oh, man, the last five years has revealed so much to both me and Jen in who people thought that we were and what people thought that we were stewarding and what people thought that we took or what people thought that we had so-called stolen.

We discovered a lot about relationships in that season.

But man, I'm telling you, when you recall and when you think back and when you reflect, are the people that are most important to me still in my life? And the answer is yes, then it does not matter.

the noise.

It can be very difficult, but you hit the right amount of pain, it does not matter what people think about you.

A- and n- and point in case, I remember I had this liver infection some years ago, and man, my side was on fire.

And I went to the hospital.

Mm-hmm.

And just rebelled, became a professional sinner, a hellion.

Went to the streets and, um, did a lot of things I'm not proud of and don't highlight and boast in, but it, it, it brought me to a place where I could go no lower.

And, um, after years in the streets, at 16 years old, my mom, uh, leaving the hospital, was like, "You got one of two options.

Either you're gonna get shot and killed in the street, or you're gonna go to prison, or you can turn your life around and you could become who we know you to be." Didn't listen.

Ended up getting shot.

And after that, I still had an affinity for the streets, but I knew i- there's no way for me to have endurance, longevity.

Hmm

Explain what you mean there.

Yeah.

So for all of us, I truly pray that we live our lives full and we die empty and we empty our lives every single day.

into the lives of other people around us.

Paul says something so powerful.

He says, my life is like a cup.

And at the end of his life, he says, I offer my life up and I want to be poured out into the very last drop.

And But how do you know, to the person listening today, if what they're dealing with is an enemy attack or a loving father's intervention on their lives for good purposes?

... all these hard things that you have to deal with in life." Give us a little bit of your backstory.

Yeah.

So, a, a lot of times when authors write a book, they write it from the perspective of these are the things that I have overcome and have learned from these things, or these are the challenges that I faced some time ago, and these are the wisdom tools and kinda the knowledge and information I've learned from it.

I wanted to take a different approach with this book an- and really write from the middle of a season of pain and hardship and difficulty that I'm in right now, and so it is a real-time journal of how, uh, really God is walking with me hand-in-hand, uh, through a very difficult season.

And I believe, you know, for our listeners, if we're being honest with ourself, it's not the one thing that really throws us off of our, uh, trodden and, and, and mapped out journey.

It's the compounding of one thing after another that kinda stops us in our tracks, and we begin to question and wonder, "Okay, is it something I'm doing? Is it something that someone else is doing to me? What in the world is kinda going on?" And I've just learned kinda going through this process and kind of, uh, navigating and stewarding this pain well, oftentimes we don't get disappointed by what happens to us.

We get disappointed by what we expected not to happen to us.

His life illustrates the power of the pivot both on and off the court." Have you had pivots?

Unpack that.

Yeah, I think so often we lean into the one thing that can't go with us into eternity.

And what I mean by that is our spirit will go, our soul will go, but this flesh that we have, it won't enter into eternity with us.

But we spend the majority of our lives catering to it, making sure that it's comfortable, making sure that things are convenient.

We have this kind of have it your way mentality as it pertains to our flesh when in fact it should be the opposite way.

We should steward our lives from a place of godly conviction, from a place of discipline, a place of supernatural and significant sacrifice so that we understand this flesh is not our God.

This flesh does not lead us.

Would you say the reason some can endure some of these things and come out the other side with just pure faith is because of how they've managed the maybe lesser things in their past?

Unpack that.

Yeah, I think so often we lean into the one thing that can't go with us into eternity.

And what I mean by that is our spirit will go, our soul will go, but this flesh that we have, it won't enter into eternity with us.

But we spend the majority of our lives catering to it, making sure that it's comfortable, making sure that things are convenient.

We have this kind of have it your way mentality as it pertains to our flesh, when in fact, it should be the opposite way.

We should steward our lives from a place of godly conviction, from a place of discipline, a place of supernatural and significant sacrifice so that we understand this flesh is not our God.

This flesh does not lead us.

Would you say the reason some can endure some of these things and come out the other side with just pure faith is because of how they've managed the maybe lesser things in their past?