JUL 9 2023 | Paul’s Third Missionary Journey S1E6 | The Power of Encouraging Relationships

Sea Change Church · Paul's Third Missionary Journey S1E6 · "The Power of Encouraging Relationships" · July 9, 2023
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

The Book of Acts, chapter 20, verses one through six. When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece where he stayed three months because the Jews made a plot against him. Just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia. He was accompanied by Soter, son of purist from Berea, Aris Starke, and second us from Thessalonica Gaas from Derby Timothy also, and Tikki and Troas from the province of Asia.

These men went on ahead and waited for us at Troas, but we sailed from Philippi after the feast of unleavened bread, and five days later joined the others at Troas where we stayed seven days. This is the word of the Lord. Well, good morning if you have your Bibles open to Acts 21 through six. And we are, uh, following Paul this summer on our little road trip, little summer road trip on the third missionary journey of Paul.

And he's been in Ephesus for the last three weeks with us. He was there, uh, multiple months. We saw what happened in Ephesus, but now he's leaving, he's heading for Greece. He's heading for Macedonia after the Lord had spoken to him on where to go. And, uh, the thing that we're gonna really focus on today, if you have your word open up to or look at verse four, I, why don't you get your pen out?

You can steal one of these La Jolla Christian Fellowship pens. They're super quality. Just steal them. They are for you. Take one of those. And if you would circle a, let's go to verse four. He was accompanied by, he was accompanied by, goes on to give a list of who he was accompanied by. Today's main point is, uh, to really paint a vivid picture landscape for you to say that who you are ac company in life is gonna largely determine your destination and your trajectory.

Who is accompanying you along your journey. For me, when I was 19, I was surrounded by drinking buddies and other types of substance buddies. Uh, by the time I was 25, that had dramatically changed. And I had men and women in my life who said, who you spend your time with matters, who you surround yourself with. And the closest, most intimate decisions of your life, who you journey with, and the things that matter to you most is utterly important.

And I made a decision at that point to kind of do an inventory, to kinda look around and say, Hey, what relationships are going to be beneficial to me? What relationships are gonna keep me sober? What relationships are gonna build into me? What relationships can I build into? And so this word here, accompanied by this, this, uh, phrase matters. And that's what I wanna put before you today.

I really want to challenge you to think through your strategic relationships. This doesn't mean that we don't, that we, you know, we edit out every single person who has need or somebody who's struggling. We don't do that. But I'm talking about those people that really become the cement, the, the, the cauterizing effect in your life and the things that you want to do.

Do you have a handful of friends that you know you can count on that you know that will be there for you, that you know, that you will be there for, and that are on mission with you? About 10 years ago, there was a term in the church called Life on Life. We're living life together. And, uh, that term's kind of out of fashion now.

But that's what I wanna put before you and really challenge you with the idea to take a, uh, a an account, an accounting of who you are surrounding yourself with. And I'm not just talking about your family, I'm talking about people outside of your family. So in verse four, he was accompanied by circle, accompanied by Ralph Waldo Emerson said this, our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. Well, I somewhat agree with him.

I think our chief want is to know God, to fill that God shaped void in our life. And, um, I was looking at statistics this week. This is the number one reason people come to church, is to, uh, have a, an experience, a spiritual experience, to grow in spirituality, their inner self, to to have their soul, to do basically some soul work.

The number two reason was for social, for social connections and spiritual social connections. So I, I, I believe that what he says here is really true. El once again, em, Emerson says, our chief want is someone who will inspire us to become what we know we could be. Inspiration. Inspiration. The word here in the, in the, in the Greek that we're gonna look at today is encouragement.

Two different types of encouragement, but someone who that in it inspires inspiration goes a long way. I know that with my sermons, um, I want to be 50% challenge. We wanna challenge you, right? We wanna challenge you to that next level. There should be about 1% of just uncomfortability with what I say. It should be like, oh man, that's, that's tough. I'm, that's tough to get to that place.

But then the other half has to be in inspiration. You can't just give people constant challenge with no inspiration in their life. And so I'm always trying to balance the call to challenge and the call to exhortation and encouragement and inspiration. And so you see that, and that's one thing I try to do here in the scriptures.

You can easily grow a church, a huge church with just giving inspiration. There are some people that just wanna be told beautiful, fluffy things that tickle their ears. And you can grow a church. There's people that are looking for that. And you can also grow it with just a challenge, constant challenge or constantly clubbing people over the head with, with what the Bible says they need to do to get a little bit better.

You can grow churches cuz some people are just looking for a parent. They're looking to be told what to do, other to do. And other people just want, they just want a hug. They just wanna be sent in the right direction. And finding that balance is something that Paul did and something that Jesus did. I would say after Christ, Paul's greatest asset was the encouraging relationships.

He surrounded himself, his greatest asset. His greatest asset wasn't a home, it wasn't his income, it wasn't his books. His understanding of, of scripture other than Christ. The God had the Holy Spirit other than his relationship with God. If you follow the life of Paul, you will see that Paul was a people person. It's easy to look at Paul and be like, oh, he is always doing this.

And because he has some hard letters, right? He says some hard things. But if you look, it is, it is impossible to miss the facts that he was a people person. If you look at his relationship, we're gonna look at that today and say perhaps the, his greatest asset was the encouraging relationships he surrounded himself with. So two points today, they're gonna help you.

They're gonna help you define who you want to be and who you want to be with, and who you want to partner with in life to get to that place where God has called you. First one is understanding, encouragement. We've gotta understand encouragement. We wanna be in encouraging relationships, right? We wanna be an inspiring relationships. You wanna look at your friend, you wanna look at the people you surround yourself with and say, I want to be like that. You know, I want to be like that person.

There's something that they bring to the table that I want to be like, and they inspire me to something, something greater, to something better, to a higher calling. You want to be around people that inspire you. I will say as a, as a father or a mother, that who you surround yourself with outside of your family is greatly going to affect the raising of your family, who you spend time with, how they challenge you. Looking at the ways that they live their life, looking at the ways that, that they raise their children is going to greatly affect what happens within the four walls of your home.

It's gonna affect the way what happens in your business. It's incredibly, uh, important. So the first one is understanding, encouragement. We're gonna look at that. What does encouragement actually mean? Think it's different than the English word, makes it look. And then second is investing in relationships. Relationships are an investment.

Relationships just don't happen. You can have buddies, you can have friends, people you pal around with, but a relationship is something you need to invest with. I heard someone once say that you never know if a relationship is solid until you make it through your first conflict. That conflict, not that you're looking for conflict, not that you're looking for chaos, but if you can make it through a conflict and then you are able to sustain it creates perseverance in that relationship.

And you know that when the chips are down, that person will be there because when they were offended or whatever the issue was that happened, you were able to work it out and they came to the table to be there and meet you in that place. So the first one is understanding, encouragement, and the next one is investing in relationships.

And it is an investment that pays off. All right? Understanding relationships. Go to verse one, encouragement, excuse me, verse one. Now remember, there had been a, there had been a, a ruckus because of Paul and the, and the, the, the people who had, um, created a riot in order, uh, because the Paul had spoken, not against, but against the idols that were being, um, sold. And all the craftsmen, Demetrius we talked about that had gotten upset and they'd had a riot. Well, the riot's over now, um, Paul's getting ready to move on. It says, when the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and after encouraging them circle, encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia, he traveled through the area, speaking many words of what? Encouragement to the people.

So we're seeing a bookend. He leaves somewhere with encouragement. And when he arrives to the next place, it's encouraging, it's encouragement. Are you a person of encouragement? Are you a person that brings people to the next level of their understanding of who God has called them to be or what they can be or, or, or leaning into their life to believe in someone?

Don't you love people who believe in you? Have you ever had that coach that believes in you, that coach, and they're not just talking, you know, flattery, I'm not looking for flattery, but someone who is giving literal words of inspiration to say that you can be more than this. Whether it be Pastor Golden Gordon, culture in my life, or Jimmy Johnson, pastor Jimmy Johnson, or all the different people you know, that saw me when I was probably at my worst and who believed in me and continued to call me to something greater than myself, to God himself, to say, you can be this. You can do this. You can go to that next level.

Don't you love someone who believes in you? Do you want to be the kind of person that believes in people? Are you a naysayer? I was with my daughter yesterday and we were out, um, getting some advice on a little project we were doing, and I brought something up to the person and the person like said, no, you don't really wanna, that's na. And kind of went up, you know, kind of put it down a little bit. And I said, well, what about this?

And there was like four or five of 'em and we walked away and I was thinking, did I, did I read that wrong? But that just didn't feel super encouraging right there. And my daughter's like, negative Nancy. And I was like, yeah, negative Nancy. Like, I don't mind a little realism, but if you're trying to sell me a product, I need something a little bit beyond negative. Nancy.

The thing is just being someone who speaks in and actually can see the truth and doesn't just speak flattery, I'm not encouragement, is not flattery. It can be a little bit of it, but flattery is just for the sake of saying, Hey, you know, you're the, you're amazing. You just kind of speak these fluffy words over them. Encouragement is different.

Encouragement has teeth, encouragement has challenge in it, and it calls people beyond. So let's look at that first word. It says, after encouraging, we said that this is book ended. After encouraging them, um, the word we're gonna look at is a pa me ame. Uh, and then the second word, if you go keep, continue on through that verse.

It says on the, when he bookended it, that it speaking, after he got to that area, he traveled through that area. In verse two, he spoke many words of encouragement to the people. And the word there is peral. Now, the first thing I wanna talk is about the English definition first before we look at this Greek definition, because there is a massive difference between how we as Americans or Western civilization, people understand the English word encouragement versus this Greek word. This Greek, these two Greek words really lean in where the English word speaks from afar. Lemme share what I mean by that.

Here's the English version to urge by strong, often stirring argument admonition advice or appeal. Advice or appeal. So imagine this, the, the, the person that you're encouraging is here and you're standing off to the side and you are encouraging them. You can do it. Let's go. You are in the stands. You were saying all those important things. And that's great.

That can be really, really encouraging. But the Greek word is the next level. Let's look at the word the, the two words. First is apa. Um, asai, it means to draw to oneself or to embrace you In the Greek word asai, you are no longer when you're encouraging, you are not just standing from afar, but it's actual, the literal metaphor that you have brought them in and embraced them to partner with them in the encouragement. Now, you'll see this in the next word.

The next word you'll see when he encourages the people peral, is to call by one side to treat. So as opposed to just, Hey, you can do it. You're amazing. It's, you are amazing. Let's enter in and do this together. Let me be a part of what you are doing. Let's partner together. Isn't encouragement the best when it isn't just words from afar, but when someone you know, you care for steps in, they work with you, they care for you. If you're digging a hole, it isn't just, hey, dig that hole, you're doing amazing. But it's like, hey, let me get a shovel.

You see what these two Greek words do, esp, zaomi, and peral is, Paul was actually saying, I want to encourage you in the faith, but I wanna live the faith with you. I want to suffer through, through the hardships that you suffer through. Not just be from afar. I wanna pray and lean in and partner with you in prayer. I want to become part of the solution that this encouragement is speaking to.

That is so different than just giving words of encouragement. And this is the relationship that we're looking for when we're looking to look to, to discern the relationships in our lives that are encouraging to us and that we are being encouraging to others. Are they the type of relationships where you are in partnership with the encouragement as opposed to just speaking from afar and tapping out?

And so those are two words. There's a few things that cement, there are a few things that cement the bonds of relationship, like encouragement. I did some research on encouragement and I was trying to find what encouragement does in a family, in a business, in relationships. And I came up with eight core principles. I looked at a bunch of different websites and I came up with eight core principles. And the first thing is it boosts confidence. Really important.

It's motivational and inspirational. Inspiration is hope. Inspiration is hope. And hope is life. It is motivational, it's inspirational. It improves relationships. When you know someone is encouraging you, especially if they're the kind of people that are, let me get a shovel and not only encourage you, but let me help you, let me be a part of that. It's motivational to improve relationships.

It helps with people's emotional wellbeing, personal growth and development. But they're my two favorite. They're my two favorite. Say the best for last is that first of all, they strengthen your resilience. When someone is encouraging you, when someone comes and partners with you on something and helps you to the finish line on that thing, it actually creates perseverance and resilience.

We live in a tap out world. If you don't know that terminology, it's in fighting in um, ultimate fighting or in in some kind of wrestling or, uh, where a person can tap the mat three times and it means the other person that the fight is over and you give up and you submit. We are living in a culture that encourages tapping out and discourages resilience and perseverance and re resilience and perseverance. The scripture says leads to what? Proven character.

And then it goes on to say and proven character leads to what hope You see, this is based on hope. It is leaning into somebody. It is caring for someone. It is speaking those words to change your perspective. And maybe you need to change your perspective. Maybe you need some encouragement. Maybe you need to be the person who changes from being that person who sees the negative consequences on a regular basis. Not that you don't have wisdom, but being a person that speaks life.

I wanna be in relationships with people that speak life over me. I wanna be in relationship with people who give encouragement and joy in families that speak life over their children, that husbands that speak life over their wives and wives that speak life over their husband, that speak encouragement. Do you encourage your spouse?

Do you encourage your children? Do you encourage your friendships? Do you encourage your business people? I want to be an in inspiration and a person who encourages this builds relationship. And then the final one that of the eight was the ripple effect. The ripple effect. I regularly talk to the staff and the volunteers as we show up here on Sunday morning before you get here and have our meeting. We want to encourage people.

We want to inspire people because then we can create this culture of inspiration that comes not just from coming up with some, you know, um, idea out of our own head, but we believe that God is hope. And when we encourage, we are encouraging people to lean into the spirit. That we believe that the end of all of our encouragement, the anchor of everything we say is based in the reality and the anchor of God.

That when you speak it isn't just words, but it's actually we are giving God to people on a silver platter of encouragement and inspiration. So that's understanding, encouragement, that's understanding. The second thing we're looking at today is investing in relationships. I read an interesting quote this week. It said, you are most likely, now this might be true, it might not be true.

You are most likely the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Show me your friends and I'll show you your future. I chewed on that for a while. I thought, is that true? Well, I don't know if it's completely true. It's kind of hard to to discern that exact quote. But I know this, that I was a lot like my friends when I was 17 and 19.

And I'm a lot different because of the friends. And if you look at the friends I have when I was 17 and 19 compared to the friends I have at 53 and that I had at 27, many of these have been lifelong friends. Cause I made a decision in college at 20 years old that I wanted to find. And if this was out of, um, um, I think it was John Maxwell's book, he said, you wanna fly with eagles and you might not like that terminology, but he said, you wanna look for eagles and you wanna fly higher, you wanna find some eagles? He said, go find eagles. So this is 1990, you know, like business, church language, right? But I just knew, I knew who the eagles were, I knew who they were and I wanted to be among them, not for pride or anything else. I wanted to follow Jesus.

I wanted to be different than I had been. I didn't want my friendship group to look the same way at 60 as it looked when I was 19. And I see that a lot. Some people, they just get with the pigeons. With the pigeons. You know, at 18, just, you know, just, just going through the trash. 63 years old, still with the pigeons, you know what I mean? I didn't wanna be with the pigeons. God bless the pigeons.

God made the pigeons, the pigeons can, well, I would just leave it at pigeons. I just knew that I wanted that you were most likely. It said the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Show me your friends and I'll show you the future. Go to verse four. Verse four talks about this relational network. We looked at the two words of encouragement in the scripture here and how to change our understanding of, of that. Now, verse four says this, he was accompanied by, we circled, accompanied by, because I want you to walk outta here to say, who's accompanying me by Soter son, A purist from Berea. And there was a beautiful church in Berea.

You can um, you can um, see the culture that comes outta that place. Aus and Sdu from Thessalonica, those are some big church cities. There's some culture happening there. Gaius from Derby in the Bible. And Timothy, we know Timothy also and Ticus and MOUs from the province of Asia. I would say we, we tend to undervalue Paul's relational network.

We tend to see Paul as this archetypal, you know, um, bishop, so to speak, an apostle that is above all else. And he's at the tip of the spear. And God might have called him to that. He was definitely a leader at the tip of the spear in regard to bringing the love of Christ and the message of Christ through Asia. He was definitely that.

But if you were to ask Paul, Paul would tell you, I never could have done it on my own and without the people. You, as you read through the scripture, you'll see this especially in the book of Acts without the people that Paul mentions on a regular basis. Um, he who went out when he, after he was stoned and brought, picked up the stones cuz you remember when you were stoned to death, they believed that they, Paul was stoned to death, uh, that he died, went to the third heaven and came back.

Remember his friends came and prayed for him and he came back. It doesn't say he came back to life, but we kind of think that's what happened. Nonetheless, he was stoned and they would put the stones three feet high. So they made, they made sure they did a really good job, right? His friends came out and took the stones off him.

Then they prayed over him and he got back up and he ran away. No, he went back into the city, which is so gnarly of Paul. Paul wouldn't have probably maybe finished up the rest of his ministry if he didn't have some people that would come out and pull the stones off their body and pray for him. He had people that would go and, and prep things.

He had people that would visit him in prison. He would write to, he had people that would take over churches. He would have a work and he'd leave these people in charge. The ministry of the gospel would not have happened if it was just Paul's Superman. Paul was not Superman. He was closer to Frodo. He was closer to having a fellowship of the ring, a fellowship of people who surrounded him that went to partner to make the world a different place.

It wouldn't have happened without the people that were going with him. We have to see that, that's why our church community is so important. This is why having, I would say of as part of that five or 12 that you surround yourself with outside of the, the, um, your, your family, I would have some people from this church. I would find some people that you can create the network with.

And so we see Paul here, he was accompanied by, I put like north and South Paul had two guiding poles in his life. Jesus and others. That's the greatest commandment, right? Love the Lord your God is yourself. And excuse me, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love. Your what your neighbor is yourself. And that's speaking about relationships.

Paul had two things that he cared about. Really only two things. One, Jesus and his gospel. That was number one. And number two was relationships. It didn't talk about having a nice chariot. You never talk about Paul fitting out and pimping out his chariot. You know what I mean? Like, he was never like looking for a new house.

He was never, you know, he was tent making. He really, as you, as you read the, the New Testament, there was two things that mattered to him, Jesus and others. It. We can see that here as we, as we look at this in, in, uh, Paul's 13 New Testament books. So we believe that Paul wrote 13 of the New Testament books. He mentions 88 people in his greetings alone in those 13 books.

If you read through his greetings, he's just greeting people all over the place. At one point, he even greetings somebody in Rome who is a believer, who is living in the house of Caesar, means the Christians had infiltrated to the highest part of society. He's greeting these people all over the world. He's making relationships.

The majority of his time was correspondence. The majority of his time was pouring out and being poured into. He never, you know, put his authority except if it was for Christ. And to preach the gospel above people. He came alongside people's shoulder to shoulder. That's what he wanted. He wanted to be with people and he wanted to change the world. Um, Aus who is mentioned in this passage is described as a traveling companion and a fellow missionary of Paul.

He accompanied Paul on his journey as he was present during Paul's imp and also was present during his imprisonment in Rome. That's Colossians four 10. And it'll also be found in FileMan 1 24 where he's mentioned these three times. Aus man, we all need an Aus, right? Chips are down falsely accused. You're in prison. Remember it was cold.

Remember Paul wrote, just bring me a jacket. Think about it. He, it was cold in those prisons, cold in the winter. He said, just bring me a jacket. Maybe it was Aus that he was riding to who traveled hundreds of miles. Maybe it was him, maybe it wasn't hundreds of miles. One of his friends did to bring him a jacket and some scrolls.

He said, bring me some scrolls. Bring me some of my books and bring and, and and, and give a, a coat just to keep myself warm and I can stay in this jail for a long time. We need an do you have an aus you have an Aus in your life. God can develop that. If we begin to pray and ask God or become that person ourselves. Are you an aus?

Are you a person that makes it different in other people's lives? You have to be surrounded by eagles. And what I mean by eagles is people aren't better than other people. Everyone starts from the ground and then we decide how high we wanna fly. You see, everyone starts from the ground and then we decide how high we want to fly.

And I'll tell you what, when I looked up above me when I was 19 years old, I saw some people soaring. I saw some people where they were getting views of vistas from a, from an altitude that I couldn't even comprehend until somebody said, Hey, you can fly, you can get to that place. Let me fly with you. And we began to do that. And my life began to change dramatically.

Thank God I'm not the same 53 year old, 19 year old that I was. And it happens all the time. I can't tell you how many 60 year old, 17 year olds I meet. They just, you, you hit a plateau and you stop growing. Your friends will challenge you to grow more and more and more. Coming into an, into a landing. Here I says this, we tend to overvalue the building of homes, wealth and career while failing to fashion the most crucial and meaningful component of truly living relationships. Say that again.

We tend to overvalue the building of our homes, our wealth, our career, while failing to fashion because they need to be fashioned. The most crucial and me meaningful component of truly living relationships. Relationships are what truly make us alive. My, my family and I, we like to travel, we like to go places, do and travel and see things. That's been our, our value.

We sell drive a 2002 Toyota Tacoma so we can travel. And that's our thing. That's our value. And sometimes I've gone back to places where they're not with me. I don't really wanna be there no matter how amazing it is, no matter how good the view is, no matter how great the Airbnb is or whatever I am. If my kids aren't with me, if my family isn't with me, I really don't want to be there. Why?

Because the relationship is what makes it meaningful. Granted, it has a meaning on its own, but it's more meaningful when you experience it together and you see that and we work together. Three practical takeaways. Number one, pray for and develop the gift of encouragement. Pray for and develop the gift of encouragement. You want to ask you, you want to ask God. This is a gift. Encouragement is a gift from God.

Spiritual encouragement is a spiritual gift from God that he will give you. It says that he gives gift to those that are, go after it. If you sow seeds, he, he will give more and more lean into encouragement. Become an encourager. Just, you know, make a plan for encouragement with your family. And it might start out as platitudes to start because you don't know how to do it.

But more and more you will become that person that when you walk into a room, the room lights up. Those are the people that make a difference when they walk in. So one, pray for and develop the gift of encouragement. Few things will grow. Your business will grow. Your staff will grow your family. Like inspiration and encouragement. That is true when you step in. Number two, choose a group of people to cultivate relationships with.

Relationships need to be cultivated just like a crop. Relationships are difficult, relationships are hard. They don't just happen. Relationships are something that we want to find some people and begin to pour in with, you know, letters or whatever it is. I remember my brother was really good at relationships. He's still good at relationships. And he would have a letter writing day.

This is in the nineties and he'd have a weekend, actually he had a hundred friends or so in his network. And I remember one time he would write these handwritten letters. I believe it was a hundred. He wrote or close to it in a weekend. He wrote a hand, a hundred handwritten notes. And then he got the wax stamp cuz it's super cool, right?

And so he would do the wax stamp and he'd put his, you know, initials on it with a wax stamp and he'd send a letter to somebody. And I thought, I'll never do that. But that is amazing. You know, it's definitely, you know, but I'm like, that's an investment. What's that? What I mean? Even today, like I, I think we're going back to the whole letter thing. I'm, I've been considering going back to like a paper newsletter sent to your house as opposed to an email.

I'll just send you a paper thing in the mail like I used to get in the eighties. I mean, that's an investment people love to be invested in. Use your money. Take someone out to eat, pay for the meal, buy coffee, send them some invest. How much do we invest in? How much stuff have we bought on Amazon for ourselves? It's sitting in a closet where we can invest in other people, cultivate a relationship with encouragement. Say, Hey, can we, can we meet to pray? Can we go out to eat, invest, cultivate.

So the first thing is pray Next is cultivate. And the last one is this. Partner with those people. Partner with those people to do something meaningful in a value. The people that are closest to you will oftentimes, if they are high flyers, want to do something to make God's creation and world a better place. Find other families that are like you and invest into your school.

Find other business people that are like you and invest into your community. Find people like yourself to partner with, to be part of a small group with. That's why we do our small groups here. And once you find that group of people, that's my people and we're gonna change the world together. You see this was the difference between drinking buddies that I had and friends that I found in college that wanted to make the world a better place and change God's world. You see, when I got with these people, we started planning things cuz we cared about creations.

So if you see all the palm trees as you're go into ob, my friends and I from Point Loma Nazarene planted those plants. As you drive into OB off of, uh, over the the bay, you'll see all those trees. We spent a whole day partnering to do that cuz we cared about God's creation. They began to go to AIDS hospices with me and we'd go and paint the walls at the AIDS hospices and different places.

I was 19 and I saw these guys and they were flying so high and I finally said, I want to be like that. We began to change the world together. It's so easy just to go back to your own little self. What new thing can I get on Amazon? What app can you know, distract me? How much YouTube can I watch? It's so easy to get into that.

I just need a little break from the kids, you know, or whatever it else to find a group of people that inspire you, that you can inspire and fly with them to change the world. So two things is pray, cultivate, and partner. That's how we do it. Let's stand if you would.