Brave Men S1E5: Getting Unstuck

I'm in Greyvine at the Redie Fine Coffee House. I wanted to share something that happened to me when I felt really stuck. It was a Tuesday morning. I'd taken a really early flight and I was walking from Concours T in the Atlanta Airport to the Atlanta chophouse. It's in the Atrium. I was deep in thought. I'm dodging people. They're laid for flights, but I was thinking. I was thinking deeply, this is what it takes. Sometimes to get where you know you need to go, you just have to do what needs to be done. I was stuck. We had an avalanche of opportunities facing us in our global outreaches and I couldn't seem to sort them out. I was stuck, totally, totally stuck. Now what happened next changed everything and perhaps it could change everything for you also. It's Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. Brave Men starts now. This is Brave Men episode number five, getting unstuck. Getting unstuck. If you ever been in the mountains and followed a trail, usually they're game trails. They're narrow little trails that animals have navigated to get themselves certain places, usually going to water, from water. I was in Montana recently. We were walking through a very narrow little trail. Well, what makes the trail? The trail comes about because the animals go over it again and again and again. And that's what happens when you get stuck. You've gone through the same area again and again and again and it creates ruts. It creates something deep. It creates sides to it. It becomes a place of confinement. I want to talk about how do you get unstuck because what happened to me that Tuesday in Atlanta helped me get unstuck. I want to pass this on to you. If you're listening to this in 2017 and by the way, I'm in a redefined great little coffee place here in Grapevine, Texas. Got our flat whites. David's here with me. Got our flat whites and we're good, right? We're good, amen. But if you're listening to this in 2017, I want you to go to Lion's Roar, 2017.com. That's Lion's Roar, 2017.com. That's the global summit on Christian masculinity. Lion's Roar, this your amazing speakers that will be their tremendous people who will inspire you and encourage you and fill you with a strategy to expand your world and reach your world for Christ by the discipling of men and women in particular focused on men because, of course, David, where are the ones who need the work? So the global summit on Christian masculinity, Lion's Roar, 2017.com. Now if you go to Lion's Roar.com, it's a Buddhist site and I can't be responsible for how you come back in your next life. So Lion's Roar, 2017.com. I was in the Atlanta airport that Tuesday morning because I had contacted a good friend to help me get unstuck. His name is Dr. Sam Chand. You may have read some of his books. I love his most recent book using the Panama Canal as a basis for wisdom on leadership. It's called Bigger, Faster Leadership. And he applied that and the making of the Panama Canal to leadership and in particular leading ministries. Sam and I both understand that all leadership begins with serving others. That really, you are only qualified to lead to the degree you're willing to serve. We sat upstairs in a meeting room and began to whiteboard out our hearts. And I told him this, I said, Sam, I know there's something that I don't know. I just don't know what it is. We spent the day together along with Joanne Webster, our vice president, and my amazing sister. And I got unstuck. I want to mention a couple of things, a couple takeaways. And you may want to write a few of these things down. Number one, I called Sam and emailed him. He was somewhere in a world. He said, maybe in Atlanta in about six weeks, we met. There are people in your world. There are friends in your world who in them resides your destiny. See, your destiny is in the people around you. Look at the life of Jesus Christ. The men around him carried his word, his life, his DNA to generation after generation. See, there's someone that knows what you don't know. Now, they usually don't know that you don't know it. And to you say, hey, I need a hand. You see, friends are life's shock absorber. The Bible says that a true friend is there in difficult times. Jesus and Lazarus, his closest best friend. In fact, he was such a Lazarus was such a close friend that Jesus didn't make him a disciple. He needed somebody to hang out with and just say, man, you would not believe what James and John's mother just said. I mean, I was unbelievable. He needed somebody like that. They were friends. You know the journey they had. I'll talk about it again on another episode, but you need friends in your life and you need to talk to them. Hey, what do you see that I don't see? What am I missing? Number two, that's first you need friends. I called Sam. He helped me. Secondly is this. Jesus said, I am the way the truth in the life. John 146, I am the way the truth in the life. There is no way that I can as a follower of Jesus Christ get myself unstuck apart from the presence of God, apart from the life of Jesus Christ. And so one of the things that Sam and I did in Joanna's, we pushed into a time of prayer. I prayed before. I prayed while I was there. I prayed after. I pushed into times of God. What is it? And as Sam began to walk through some of these things, we began to identify some areas that needed changing. Let me say this to you. Your circumstances right now where you're at. Your circumstances do not dictate God's response to your need. There is not one time where Jesus looked around at his guys and said, guys, I'm baffled. I don't have a clue. I don't know how we're going to get this done. Now one time did he do that? It didn't happen in his life. And when we're close to Christ, we will find the wisdom that we need. So there's that. Number one, friends. Secondly, Christ has to be the center of it to get unstuck. The issue for most of us is not that there are obstacles because there are obstacles in every single life. The issue is not that there are not obstacles. If you're on a road, my out of friend Tommy Sirotnik. Big Tommy, he said this, he said, if you're on a road on the path of life and there are no obstacles, you're on the wrong path. Here, you're on the wrong road. The fact is the issue for you and I is not that there are obstacles. It's that there's a clear path to a lesser goal. There's a clear path to a place that's not our desire and yet we go there. Why? Because it's easier. We are risk averse as people. Number one, friends. Number two, it's about Jesus. Hang on, let me have a little bit of this flat white, if you don't mind. And if you're in somewhere where you can get one, it's the nectar of the gods, right? God loved people so he gave us coffee. So here's the third thing. Third thing, this is really key. Most often, your first reaction is external. When most often, the issue is internal. My reaction was when I got stuck as I thought, okay, it's because of this, because of this, because of that, because of this, and really what I had to do is look internal. So don't first look external, look internal. The greatest battles you will fight in your life are the battles you fight in your own mind. Those are the biggest fights. For instance, a habit. A rut is a habit that's been exercised over and over. Habits are not broken. They're displaced. Now, we put that in the book, just a bartender. You can find that at christiemensnetwork.com. That's our website christiemensnetwork.com. You can find it bravemen.men.bravemen.men. And again, I want to thank you for joining me on this podcast. But the fact is on habits, going through the same thing over and over, it's you and I know the definition of insanity. It's doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. But what truly happens when you do the same thing over and over is you create a rut and you create that in your own mind. Habits are ruts in your brain. You can't break them. You displace them. It's like how do you move a river from one place to another? You move the channel. So it has to be displaced. There's a myth that in 21 days you can create a new habit. It's not true. You can do it in 8 to 10 days or some habits take 180 days. Nero science and the things that we're learning now about the brain tell us up. So if you want to change something, you got to change some of your habits. Get up earlier. Change what you read. Get into the word of God. So number one, you need friends. Number two, it's all about Jesus. Make him the center. Thirdly, don't just react to external things. Look internal. Fight the battle in your own mind and get large about it and fight it. Fourthly, it's too often what we have is definition issues. So what we do, what we have a tendency to do is define ourselves based on what somebody's told us where we are, what we do with our hands and we define ourselves too small. You see your, where you're headed, your destination. We'll talk about this in a minute. Your destination has a tendency to define you and then you take your definition and you define your destination and your definition when it's too small. You've got to expand, we've got to expand our definition. What you have allowed to define you will determine your destiny. What happens to too many of us is we've let other people define us. Let other people tell us what we can or can't do or what's going to happen in our lives or you really can't do that or you're not good enough for that and then we begin to buy into that or we failed. You had a business that didn't work. You had something that didn't happen right and we constrict ourselves to a smaller definition. Jesus always spoke to men about a larger future. So here's the thing, faith in God always attracts the positive fear, always attracts the negative. Expand your definition, begin to realize what the word of God says and that you're more than a conqueror, you're an overcomer, you're victorious. I want to thank you for being here again. We're at Redefined Coffee House in Grapevine, David Miner myself and having a great flat white and just talking about the things of life that are key and that are concerning to us and this one is getting unstuck. You've got to think of it, David, it's a title of this place, it's redefined. And the fact is we need to redefine who we are and let the word of God do it. Nehemiah had to go from being a slave and a bartender to rebuilding Jerusalem. He did it by redefining his destination and allowing his destination to expand his definition. The opposite of fear because fear attracts the negative and too often we fear what may happen. The opposite of fear is start. The opposite of fear is start. Why? Because decisions create energy. When you make a decision, it creates energy. Something begins to happen. Whether it's negative or positive, it creates an energy. So I'm 23. David said this, he said, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. He didn't say, I'm sitting in the valley of the shadow. He didn't say, in fact, he didn't even call it a valley of death. He says, it's the shadow of death. It's fear. It's believing and expecting death. But he says, I walk through it. The opposite of fear is start. In other words, walk it out. The negative as a follower of Christ, the negative is always a place of transition. The opposite of fear is start. Make a decision. Redefine yourself. And then the next thing is grab that destination. Your destination will help you with your definition. Some people say, well, I can't get there. Well, it's not going to happen. Or others, I've had guys sit down with me at a cup of coffee like this and say, I don't even know what my destination is. I don't have any goals. I don't have any dreams. Well, you know what, Jesus gave us some to start with. He said, love God, love people. Most of us will find our destination on the way to help somebody else. If you will go down right now and help somebody in a flood or a fire or somebody who's been through an issue or a problem, go help them. Love God, love people. And in that helping them going there, you'll find your place of destination. Why? Because a parked car cannot be steered. Oh, I need God's direction. Well, you're parked. You don't need direction. You need some gas in the tank. You need a spark. You know, some of us have a destination. It's actually not the right one. That's why we need friends. I had so many different things that we were looking at, so many different opportunities, so many different goals. I had to, we had to clarify it, begin to strip away the things that didn't belong and create the right destination. When we created the right destination, we were able then to look back and say, now, how do we get there? You know, you might have the wrong destination. That's why you need friends. That's why you need to pray over. You might have picked out the wrong thing. Let me put it this way. If you're, if you're 38 years old right now and you're thinking you could still be in the NBA as an all pro basketball player, you've probably picked the wrong destination. So, you know, we've got to get realistic. We've got to get honest about this with ourselves. We've got to adjust ourselves. You got to bracket it and had a young man that said, I want to be, you know, I'm not sure what I want to be. I got two or three things. I said, well, then do the first one. How old are you? 24? Well, then do the first one. He did it for a year. Came back, we got together. You said, yeah, I didn't like that. Well, then do the second one. While he was doing the second one, he started working on the third one and he loved that. It was a totally different industry. And today he's a vice president of a bank and that was the end. He thought he wanted to be a carpenter and he still loves the outdoors and the loves that. But my goodness, he loves what he's doing in that industry. So he bracketed it. In other words, when you're firing at a target, or a friend named Will, who's a long distance champion shooting, and when he looks at a target, he fires at it and then adjusts in order to hit the target. So you may need to adjust either the destination or the way you're trying to get there. And then the last one is this. And this is tough for some people. Now just give it to you straight up. You're going to have to work. W-O-R-K. You're going to have to work. If you want to get somewhere, you're going to have to work to get there. One of the things I have found in particular, people who are Christians will do David, is we'll say, well, you know, I'm praying for this, I'm praying for that. So I go, well, what are you doing in order to get there? Well, you know, we're just believing that's going to happen. This is going to happen. You know, if you want to be a great guitarist, you have to start now in order to be good 10 years from now. I had a friend, in fact, I just saw him on Facebook. He was in Africa for the last year as a medical missionary. But 37 years ago, we were sitting in a room in Concord, California. And he said, well, I'd like to be a doctor, but you know what? By the time I go through all the schooling and all the different stuff, I'm going to be 32 years old. And for us that back then, that was the end of the world. So I'll be 32 years old. Man, if I go through all that. So a friend of mine in the other room, Jeff, he yelled out, he said, well, how old will you be 10 years from now? If you don't do it, so still be 32. So he went ahead and did it. He went to school, went and did what he had to do. And he's been a medical guy. I've been working in a hospital doing the emergency room stuff. Oh, our doctor. Now the last year he's been in Africa, being a medical missionary. How amazing is that? You know, but he had to take that 10 years, so it's called work. I know quite often we talk about, you need to have character in your life, and that's true. The character is the foundation for talent. But if you only work on your character and never work on your talent, you can have a lot of character and be inside a cave. You can have a lot of character and be somewhere not getting anything done. You're going to have to add to your care, add to your faith works, add to your faith and character talent. Work on it, work at it. It's going to take some work. It's not always going to be easy. It's going to take some effort. Sometimes we do the easiest thing and it's not the best thing. I hope that's helped you about getting unstuck. Brave men dot men. Brave men dot men. You'll find us there or Christian men's network dot com. And then Paul Lewis Cole dot com is my website Paul L O U I S Paul Lewis Cole dot com. Well, thank you for joining us. You know what I'd like to do right now. I'm sitting here in a coffee shop. I'm reading fine here in Gravon. But I'd like to pray for you right now. I just like to pray. Father, I pray in the name of Jesus. For my friend right now, I pray for wisdom. Get unstuck. I pray for the energy to work. I pray for the direction and inspiration to move to redefine, to make new destinations, to find a clear path to the right dream. Father, I pray that now in the name of Jesus. Amen. Hey, it's going to be a great day. God bless. You've just experienced Brave men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Global Fatherhood Initiative. Connect with Paul like Brave men dot men. That's Brave men dot men.