Henry Cloud | First Conference 2017

Hey everyone, good evening.

How are you?

I want to tell you again, I've told you the last two nights, but uh how proud I am of you for setting aside this time to come and deepen your relationship with the Lord.

I thought the last two nights were absolutely fantastic with Franklin Graham and Pastor John Hagee.

And then tomorrow night we have Dr.

Robbie Zacharias.

Tonight, though, uh he's only been here one time at Gateway Church before.

That was this summer, so maybe you didn't get to hear him.

But you've probably read one of his books.

He's been on the New York Times best-selling list many, many times.

Uh, he is a psychologist who loves Jesus.

And so I know Henry very well and have met with him several times, and he's helped us consult it.

He's a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, Fortune 50, Fortune 25 companies, and he is making a huge difference in the world today.

So will you please welcome Dr.

Henry Cloud?

Hey guys.

All right, and last time I talked to y'all, I asked you a question I'm gonna ask you again.

How many of you have any issues?

You do?

All right.

Now, how many of you brought that issue with you today?

All right, well, turn to him and say, this guy's a shrink, you need to listen.

All right, we got that out of the way.

You've been wanting to tell him that for a long time.

So, anybody in here got some thought of a way you would like for life to be different or more of something?

What do y'all did?

Come on, be honest.

Who can think of an area of your life that you would like for that area to be different, say in the coming year than it was last year?

Or you would like for more to happen in some particular area?

Okay, that means you got a pulse.

The question is, how does that happen and why does it keep from happening so many times when we want it so badly?

Do you know that a lot of times you hear, well, she doesn't want it bad enough?

Or he doesn't want it bad enough, or they would do it.

Do you know that that that is absolutely 180 degrees opposite of what the research shows?

It's not how bad we want something.

In fact, sometimes how badly we want something is inversely proportional to whether or not it happens.

Did you know that?

Because sometimes when we want something so bad or so badly, but we can't make it happen.

We go into a state the Bible calls hope deferred, and it makes the heart sick, and it actually depresses us, and we get farther away from being able to reach that goal.

So, what we're gonna do here is we're gonna look at one of the most important elements of making this next time period in your life, this next year, or whatever you've decided that is.

How many of you made any resolutions this year?

Or well, 99% of you have already given them up.

But why does that happen?

We're gonna look at it.

We're gonna talk about how things get to be different based on getting one of the biggest obstacles out of the way.

Let me read you a passage of scripture.

You've heard it a million times, so I'm gonna read it again.

You might have remembered in the, gosh, some of you weren't even alive in the 60s when the birds sang this song.

Remember that?

Turn, turn, turn.

It goes like this there's a time to everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.

I want you to listen to these parallels in these verses as we go through this.

It says a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, then a time to uproot what you've planted.

A time to kill, a time to heal, a time to build, and a time to tear down what you've built.

A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and then a time to gather them back up.

A time to search and a time to give up, quit.

A time to keep and a time to throw away, tear and mend and silent and speak and love and hate.

It continues on in these opposites, but if you look through that passage, what it's basically talking about in so much of it is that there is a season in our life in various areas.

There is a season for us to do something, to plant something, to embrace something, to invest in something, to really give it our all.

And then that season changes, however long that season is.

And then it says there's a season to let go of that, to end it.

I wrote a book about this called Necessary Endings.

Necessary Endings.

Why those two words?

Because here is the reality about all of our lives.

Sometimes the biggest enemy of our tomorrow is something we're doing today.

And it must end for us to get there.

So, what we're gonna do is talk a little bit about the anatomy of this thing called endings and seasons.

And the first thing I want you to recognize about it is this that we just saw in the scripture that it's not, it doesn't mean something's wrong.

It means that the season has passed.

It's time to let go of something.

If you want next year to be different, there's probably some stuff, as we're gonna see, that's got to end for it to be different.

Might not have been bad at the time.

It might have had a season, it might have had a reason, but that time's passed.

How many of you have ever seen those um, I think they call them the power team, the strong guys that are going to churches and schools?

And I was telling my daughters about them one time that they would have been probably 12 and 13 at the time.

And I said, girls, they're they're coming to your school.

These guys are so strong.

They can pick up their teacher and lift her up over their head, her head, their heads.

And that that they can take a brick of ice, a block of ice and punch it.

And it and I was, I said, these guys are amazing.

But the one that blows me away is girls, they can take a phone book and rip it in half.

My 12-year-old looks at me and says, What's a phone book?

Think about that.

What's a phone book?

The next day I fly to New York.

I'm standing in line for a cab at JFK.

There's a lady standing next to me.

I said, So what brings you to New York?

She says, business.

I said, what business is she in?

She goes, phone books.

It's a true story.

I said, Oh, that must be interesting today, you know, with everything having gone digital.

She goes, No, phone books, we still make phone books.

I said, You should talk to my daughter.

Because one, if there was a season for that, right?

But maybe that season is past.

And what I find is even in high-level performers, sometimes we are holding on to old ways and things that we were invested in that might have been good for that season, but it's time to let go, and this is very difficult, as we'll see.

So, as I started to think about this, and I started to think about it, I, you know, I saw it in my work.

The way that I write books is I don't go sit on a rock and get inspired.

I'm I'm a practitioner, you know, I work with people.

And I work with a lot of really high performers and CEO types, and I kept seeing this issue over and over and over and over.

And I don't care who it is or what a high performer they are, everybody has got some area where it's difficult.

They find it difficult to let go of something, to fire somebody, to change a strategy when it's not working, to give up on something, to wave the white flag.

And there are reasons why we're afraid to do these endings, but they're the only way that we're gonna get to the next place.

And I as I was thinking about this, I started to think, okay, I want to write on this topic.

How am I gonna organize this concept?

And as I looked at all, there was not a better example that I could find.

It's in the Bible all the time.

And the answer to that question was something called pruning.

Pruning.

I said, I'm gonna write a book on pruning basically.

So what is pruning?

I asked myself, I didn't really know.

I just knew they did it.

People that grow stuff, I can't grow much, but I kill plants, I don't grow them.

But I went out and I really talked to some experts.

And I went and talked to like real experts that do this well, like, you know, grow roses and stuff.

And I said, How do you do the pruning thing?

And here's what they told me.

You basically prune, not because something is wrong necessarily, but you prune in order for the rose bush to become all that it can be.

And I want to start with that.

When we're talking about ending some things in your life today, it may not be anything wrong, it may not, it may be even a good thing, but if that thing is still in your life, your life is not going to become the life you want it to be in this next year.

As we're gonna see, because it's taking up some space and it's taking some energy and it's taking some resources.

But that's what they told me.

That you start with the idea that pruning is not something you do when something's wrong.

Pruning is something we regularly do as a discipline.

We regularly do it as a discipline, and we do it in three contexts.

And here's what the expert said.

Number one is the rosebush produces more buds than it can feed.

In other words, they're sprouting everywhere, and there are more buds that come out on the rosebush than it can actually feed with the resources of the bush.

And so what the gardener's got to do is the gardener's got to look at all of those, and these are all healthy, they're growing, but he's got to look at them, or she's got to look at them and say, which ones of these are going to become what I really want a rose to look like?

See, so that presupposes something above this pruning.

I didn't leave enough room, but they're pruning towards a vision.

If you want your life to be different next year, it's a pretty good idea to sit down before you start to go be different and figure out what different looks like.

That's a vision, it's a desired future.

See, a lot of times we're like the story in Alice in Wonderland where she comes to the cross of the road and the Cheshire Cat's sitting there, and she goes, Which way do I go?

He goes, Where are you trying to get to?

And she goes, I don't know.

He says, I don't guess it matters much then, does it?

Don't start to organize your life until you've sat down before God and asked, What do I want to look like?

But then once we have a vision of what we know a rose of a life looks like in whatever area you're talking about, then the gardener says that basically we start to prune towards that vision, and all the buds, even though they're healthy, and I'm gonna go into these in specifics in a moment, even though they're healthy, we cut the good ones away so the best ones can have the resources of the vine or of the bush.

That's the first instance.

The second one, well, why don't I do it this way?

Let me just unpack this one first.

So, what does this mean?

What does it look like?

I've got a friend who started a company, or bought a company actually, and it had about 25 million in sales when he bought it.

And within about five years, he had taken it to 500 million, and then a couple years later, as he was approaching a billion, I said, How'd you do this?

Here's what he told me.

He said, When I bought the company, the company, I looked at all of its activities, everything it was doing, and what he said was, and I'll never forget this phrase, he said, the life of the company.

Think about that phrase.

The life of the company, and let's translate that to you.

The life of your life.

He said, was really in about 20% of its activities.

I said, oh, the rest of it was losing money, and he said, and this is the great leader in him.

He said, no, it was all profitable.

It was all profitable.

He said, but the life of the company was in about 20% of its activities.

So he said, I call the management team together and I said, look, next January, I want all of this stuff gone.

Because we're gonna focus on this because that's where our future is.

And he said, that's how we grew.

That's exactly how Rosebush grows.

That's why they look so awful after they've been pruned.

But he said, I want all of our people and all of our resources to be moved to focus on here so we can build the future that we want.

See, none of these things were bad, they were all profitable.

But if you look at your calendar, what you'll find is that there's some good stuff in there.

But as long as it's there, as long as you're still on 14 different committees, now stop preaching and going to meddling, right?

Or you're playing 18,000 different sports, or whatever it is, you can't focus on the area, the one or two areas where God has called you to build in this next year, or in this next season.

And you know, we have seasons of life.

And a lot of times, now I'm really gonna get some hate mail from some guys after I say this.

Please, I promise you, I'm on your side.

Okay.

Um, there are seasons of life where some things don't fit that season if we're really gonna focus on something.

Now, here's where I'm gonna get the hate mail.

So I'm a golfer and pretty serious about it.

And um I played a lot, and then we had kids, and when the girls were kind of old enough to be conscious, you know, there's some point where they turn into like people, kind of.

And at that point, I just realized, you know, if I'm gonna really be the dad I want to be with everything else I'm doing and my travel and all that stuff, this is not the season to try to be playing highly competitive golf.

Can't be both.

I couldn't give it the time, and I couldn't give them the time.

And so when they were little, I just sort of gave it up for quite a while.

That's why I said I'm gonna get the hate mail, because a bunch of you, one of you is turning to the other and goes, see, I told you, you couldn't.

That's not the right answer for everybody.

It's just the way it went with my formula and my life and my travel and all of that.

But I came to this point where I realized that in this season, I can't do both well.

So something's gotta be clipped.

Now I'm not gonna go through a thousand examples of this, but I want you to look at some of the areas of your life.

You know, you and your marriage, for example, you as a couple, you're probably involved in a lot of stuff that may be shallow, but there are some key relationships that you need that time and energy to go deep in.

I remember my wife and I were going out to dinner one night, we're getting ready with this couple, and I turned to her and said, Why aren't we going out with them?

They were friends.

She goes, What do you mean?

I said, Why are we going out with them?

Why do we spend time with them?

She goes, I thought you wanted to.

I said, Not really.

She said, Well I don't either.

I said, Why are we doing this?

We started talking about it.

And you know what?

There was a time when it really fit and and a lot of it made a lot of sense, but then we started going in different directions.

Our values were different than theirs, a bunch of other stuff.

They weren't bad people at all.

It's just, but you know what?

We needed that time because there were some other couples, some other couples that were the ones that had the capacity to go deep.

And for other reasons, there was a call to go deep, but we couldn't go there until we did some pruning.

So it's none of this, in the first instance here, none of these buds are bad.

I just want you to ask yourself if you are truly going to get to the vision of what it is you're trying to build in your business or in your personal life, literally, it can't happen without some things going away that are taking up some of that big pile of resources of time and energy, even good things.

So what's next?

Well, the gardeners told me not all buds or not all branches are good.

Some of them are sick and they're not gonna get well.

And we, you know, put a bunch of medicine on them.

I I come from California now.

I was born in Mississippi, I moved to California, my father said, Well, that makes sense.

The world's tilted and all the nuts rolled to California.

But in California, if you know, if the rose bush is, if it's sick and not getting well, they just blow a little medicinal marijuana on it, they give it some fertilizer, whatever we can do.

The point is you don't just clip people from your life or give up on things that aren't working.

That's not the point.

But the point is there are some relationships and there are some things that we're invested in.

That sometimes there has to be a pruning.

Not because we don't want it to turn around, but many times because whatever it is that's sick and not getting well, that's an equal sign with a no.

Not getting well, whatever is sick that it's resisting the growth or it doesn't want to participate.

And the ways that we might be able to help it, they're not playing the game.

It could be a family member.

At some point, and this is what I can tell you as a psychologist, many times that's when the point of growth begins for the person.

Is after they've been told by somebody, look, I'm done helping.

Helping's not helping.

But sometimes it's very difficult for us to wave the white flag on some area of life that's not working.

It could be a product line in business because we get attached, right?

Think about this.

Remember when GM went through bankruptcy?

Why did it take, think about this.

Why did it, you got the smartest executives, car executives in the world sitting up there in Detroit back then.

Why did it take a bankruptcy judge to shut down Pontiac?

This brand had not made a profit in four decades.

Now explain that to me.

An attorney, a lawyer, a judge.

You say, Why are y'all doing this?

Well, that's gone.

I'll tell you why.

Because we are.

Slow to create necessary endings for a variety of reasons, which I'll get to in a moment.

But I want you to think about some of this stuff.

It could be relationships.

Family came to see me one time, mom and a dad, and two of their adult children, young man and young woman.

Adult children, you know what that is, right?

They were little like.

It's kind of an oxymoron, adult children were.

You know what that is?

Words don't go together?

Like Microsoft Works that you that, you know.

So you see parents in there.

Sorry, Microsoft, I actually do use your stuff as well.

Um where in the world was I?

Two adult children with their parents.

And so they sit down and I said, How can you help?

And the father says, Well, I want you to fix my son.

Now you know you're in trouble when it starts like that, right?

So I turned to the young man and I said, So what's wrong with you?

And he said, Well, it's not me, it's my brother.

I said, Where's your brother?

The father said, Well, he didn't want to come.

I said, Well, why not?

And the father says, Because he doesn't think he has any problems.

I said, Maybe he doesn't.

He said, Oh, yes, he does.

I said, Well, maybe he doesn't.

I mean, after all, he didn't come.

He said, Oh, yes, he does.

He's got a lot of problems.

I said, Well, maybe he says he's and he started getting a little mad at me.

So I said, okay, tell me about his problems.

He said, Well, the first one is he's flunked out of three colleges.

I stopped for a second.

I said, How do you do that?

Now think about it.

How do you flunk out of three colleges?

I mean, I know how to flunk out of one, but how do you get in the second one?

So I asked the father, how how do you do this?

How do you get in the second school?

And he goes, Well, I'm on the board and I got him in.

In fact, he didn't have the grades to get in the first one, he said, but I'm on the board of that one too, and I got him in that one.

Because I like to help.

And then he flunked out of the second one, and he said, The thing about it is the second one, you know, the first one he flunked out because he was partying in the dorm.

So I bought him a nice condo off campus in that second college.

And put so all that partying wouldn't interrupt.

And and and and he was taking, you know, I didn't I wanted to have plenty of time to study, so I gave him plenty of money to make sure that he didn't have, you know, be detract distracted from studies.

And he flunked out again.

I said, kids.

But then you saw a little window in the father's heart.

He said, But the thing that bothers me most is he's 23 years old.

And he doesn't even have a major picked out in college.

He said, when I was 23, I'd started three companies.

He hasn't even chosen a major.

I said, what other problems does he have?

He said, we know he's got a drug problem.

I said, well, that can be serious.

What's he on?

He said, well, we know he's been smoking dope since he was about 15.

Did the math, 15, 23.

I said, okay, so he's mellow, so what else is happening?

And then he says, Well, I'm really, really concerned that he just doesn't have a direction and a passion to do something significant.

I said, Where is he today?

He said, He's didn't want to come.

I said, I know he didn't want to come, but if we went on find my phone, where would we find him?

He said, he's in Vail.

I said, Colorado?

We were in LA.

I said, Colorado?

And he said, yeah.

I said, what's he doing in Vail?

The father says he's skiing.

I thought for a second, I said, well, you know what, I'm sorry, but I don't think I can help your son.

He said, why not?

I said, because I'm a psychologist and I help people with problems.

And frankly, I agree with him.

He doesn't have any.

Now, at this point, the father looks at me, sort of like my German Shepherd will, and she didn't, some didn't make sense.

So, what do you mean I'm not a problem?

He's got a drug problem, he's got, I said, sir, no, he doesn't no, he doesn't.

I said, he doesn't have he goes, yes, he's flunked out.

He starts just, I said, sir, the man is in veil skiing, he has a brand new home, totally paid for, he has plenty of money, and he's on vacation.

Does that sound like someone with problems to you?

He said, but but I said, I'm sorry, I can't help him.

He didn't have any problem, he doesn't have any problems.

I'm a psychologist, I help people with the problems, he doesn't have any.

I can't help him.

I'm sorry.

I said, but you on the other hand, I can help you.

He said, what are you talking about?

I said, because you got a lot of problems.

He goes, what what problems are I?

I said, you got a drug problem, you got a flunk out of school problem, you got he said, no, that's not me, that's my I said, your son's in Vale skiing.

You are in a psychiatric hospital.

Now you tell me, who comes to psychiatric hospitals?

I would say people with problems.

He goes to my chat, I said, you're here.

See, you own these problems.

They're not his, they're yours.

But I can help you.

I can't help him because he doesn't have any problems, but I can help you because you got a lot of problems.

And here's how I'm gonna help you help him.

I'm gonna teach you how to help him to have some problems.

And see, sometimes we do everything we can, and God does the same thing.

And he'll send a prophet, or he'll go have a friend like Nathan, go talk to somebody, or he'll do this, or one time he spoke out of a donkey.

I mean, he does a lot of things to try to get to people.

And then he turns up the heat.

He might throw in an earthquake here and there.

But at some point what he says is, I've done all that I can do.

And the Bible actually says that when Jesus came and died for us, and some some people say, Well, how come, how come God would would, you know, how come God would ever, a loving God ever let somebody be lost and and be in hell?

And the answer is He doesn't.

He doesn't.

He said, but I've done all I can do.

Now if they want to come, they can come.

I can't, there's no more to give.

I've given my life, that's all, that's everything.

Now, not that you, any of you have ever, you know, died for people's sins, but you do know the pain sometimes of dying, trying to get them to get on board.

And at some point, there's some point where they're not going to, and that's a hard, necessary ending.

Now, sometimes it means that we have to separate from somebody, but sometimes what it means is there's got to be an ending to the way that I've been trying to help you.

That's what that father needed to say to that son.

And some of you for next year, as you're looking at your next season or whatever it is, there are some employees or there are some friends or there's some extended family members or whatever it is.

And you have been pouring time and energy and worry into someone that hasn't even signed up for the committee.

You want it more than they do.

And sometimes, as Ecclesiastes tells us, there's a time to search.

You know, we can look for the answer.

There's a time to embrace, then there's a time to give up searching and give up embracing.

You know, we're talking about these patterns in in ending stuff, and sometimes when people think of ending things, they only think of stopping something, right?

I'm I'm I'm doing something, I gotta stop doing that.

Well, you know, and I don't want to let the rest of you off the hook, right?

Because some of you aren't doing anything you need to stop about this getting in the way of your life.

Some of you are not doing anything.

Right?

There's something you want, you're not doing anything, and that's what's gotta be an ending to.

There's gotta, you gotta stop stopping.

I love that phrase.

I I've I've heard it somewhere.

If you're tired of starting over, stop quitting.

But see, sometimes it's not just quitting, we don't even ever start.

And tomorrow is out there, and what has got to end, a necessary ending in your life that's got to come, is the end.

You put an end to saying no because of fear.

And that's gotta end.

And sometimes we dress up our fears in God talk.

I remember I was at a dinner one night for an event like this, and a woman said, Yeah, I'm, you know, everybody's talking about their lives.

She said, I at this point in my life, I didn't think I'm doing I'd be doing what I was doing now.

She said, I thought I'd be married and have kids by now.

She was 32.

And everybody said, Yeah, you know, life.

And then she said something interesting.

She said, but God hasn't chosen that for me.

My ears perked up.

I said, What?

She said, I thought I'd be married and have kids by now, but God hasn't chosen that for me.

I said, What do you mean God hasn't chosen that for you?

She said, Well, that's what God does.

I said, What do you mean that's what God does?

She said, Well, he chooses, you know, whom you're gonna marry and when you, you know, and and God hasn't chosen that for me yet.

Now I knew her.

First of all, my first thought was, why would he do that to anyone?

Some of you will get that.

I mean, I wouldn't want to be the guy that God chose for her, is what I was saying.

Because basic, I mean, now some of you are really.

She had some issues.

She's blaming this on God.

But there were reasons why nobody was signing up for that deal.

And see, we dress it up in spiritual talk.

I said, you remind me of a lady that called in a radio program one time and said, You're talking about people ought to be, you know, dating and and and and pursuing, you know, dating and blah, blah, blah.

She said, Well, that's just not Christian.

I said, What are you talking about?

She said, Because that's not how God does it.

I said, What do you mean?

She said, that's not the biblical way of finding a mate.

To wait on God to the way God says it is you're supposed to wait on wait on God to bring them.

He brought Eve to Adam.

I said, Well, not exactly, but he ripped his gut out, is what he meant.

But he brought the man, and I'll never forget this.

She says, God always brings brings the woman to the man.

I said, Are you kidding me?

If you're gonna do it the biblical way, have a war and capture a bunch of them.

Or go work for some guy for seven years and then he slips you the wrong one.

Don't tell me this is the biblical way.

She said, Well, I know that God loves me enough.

He's gonna bring my husband to my into my life.

And I'm I have enough faith in my Lord to bring him into my life.

I said, Well, I have faith in God to bring stuff into our lives too.

But what are you doing?

She said, I'm trusting in the Lord.

I said, but what are you doing?

She said, I'm trusting in the Lord to bring him.

I said, but what are you doing?

She said, I'm trusting in the I said, do you have to do anything?

Do you have to go outside?

She literally said this.

She said, I trust my Lord so much that I believe, no, I don't have to live.

My God could bring him to my front door.

She said that.

Sounds so spiritual.

I said, Lady, if you don't want to marry the FedEx guy, or Jehovah's Witness, you better go in the door.

You got to leave the house.

And see, sometimes the ways we're trying to get somewhere are not going to work.

And they got to be pruned.

Is it just that method's not, you know, I grew up in the South and we did a lot of hunting.

It's good to be back in the South.

And you know, we would have dogs and take them hunting, and you got to figure out which dogs are good and which ones aren't going to make it.

And you train them, but some there is a dog, and some of you people know this.

There is a dog that at some point you say, that dog just ain't gonna hunt.

You can't teach a pig to sing, it frustrates the pig, the music is bad.

Sometimes it's just not gonna happen, and we need to change course.

And sometimes that means if we've been too passive waiting on God to do something, maybe God's waiting on us.

And then the third area where they prune is when things are dead and just taking up space.

Dead and taking up space.

Some of these branches, they're dead.

And they're just taking up space.

And sometimes they're not causing us any problems, but they're taking up space.

So we gotta do that.

But here's the deal.

Why don't we do this?

Why don't we just do this?

Well, basically, it's because we have spiritual sicknesses inside of us.

You have any we got any hoarders in here?

Any hoarders?

Okay.

Only two of you raise your hand.

You know why only two raise your hand?

Because the rest of you hoarders?

Because you're in denial.

You are.

Hoarders are always in denial.

How many of you, how many of you are codependent?

People will admit to that, right?

A codependent is the person that right before they die, someone else's life flashes before their eyes.

Because they're always helping everybody else.

Well, if you're codependent and really, you know, like you're OCD and codependent, you're real organized, you've got a hoarder friend, and I guarantee you you've done this.

You volunteered, hadn't you?

Let me come get you organized.

And you go over on a Saturday morning, you go to their house, and you say, All right, let's get started.

And you go in this garage.

Well, you can't get in the garage, but if you could, and you're looking at this and you're just like a mule-eating briars.

I mean, you are so happy, you got all this mess to organize, and you go in there and you say, Okay, let's start with this.

And you pick this thing up, and you say, So, when was the last time you used this?

And she goes, 20 years ago?

You just go, Oh, good, we can throw it.

No! You say, Why not?

They have electric ones now.

You're holding this old thing, and she goes, Don't, no, no, don't throw that away.

And you say to the hoarder, but why not?

Why don't why don't you throw it away?

What does the hoarder say back?

Because I might need that.

Really?

Really?

You haven't used it in 20 years.

See, I might need that.

Where does that come from?

That's when we, that's one of the deepest spiritual sicknesses that we can have.

And some people's backgrounds train them in that sickness.

When they were little and they needed something, the outside world did not have it for them.

They needed approval or they needed encouragement, or they needed sustenance, or they needed emotional support.

And that outside world that they grew up in, it did not have it.

And they learned, I've got to be the source of everything for me.

So I can't let go of anything.

I gotta hold on to it.

It's like in the parable of the talents, where we're the one that didn't have much.

They had to hold on to the little that they have.

You know what the Bible says?

The Bible says the only way to have a small life is for you to be the creator of your life.

If we're the source of where everything's gonna come from, we are in a lot of trouble.

But see, when we can let go of whatever it is we think we're getting security from, and like Peter, step out of that boat.

See, God has a story, and that story is he always calls somebody from where they are to more and different and better.

But we gotta let go of where we were.

No, you won't, because you have a God, you have a father who's out there that this time around, he will provide what you need to get where he wants you to go.

And if you think I might need that, and that's what's holding you back, the last thing you need is that.

And what you need is what's so hard for us to do, is to say, okay, God, I surrender it.

Let go of it, even though I might need it.

And I trust that you are a God that if you're calling me in this direction, you will provide for me what I need.

But we hold on.

And the second thing that happens, you walk around the scroll and you go over here and you pick up this thing, you go, what is that?

And the hoarder says, That's Johnny's first poopy diaper.

You going, you saved it?

She goes, he was so cute then.

Said, oh my gosh, let's throw this.

No.

She's emotionally attached to the past.

Sometimes we get stuck in high school.

Can't tell you, I mean, companies.

I've been into an executive team, and they're in all these arguments, and there's always somebody there.

Well, when we were, when I was at, and names, they're stuck at the old company.

So you'll tell them, well, if you liked it so much, go back there.

Or we get stuck, we get emotionally attached to something because we're afraid of the grief that's involved in letting go.

And here's Jesus' warning to all of us.

It's a little speed bump of a verse in the New Testament.

We just race over it.

He said, Remember Lot's wife.

Remember Lot's wife.

Remember Lot's wife?

See, they were in a dead place called Sodom and Gomorrah.

It was way past sick and not gonna get well.

There was death going on there.

And God comes to him and says, Come on, I'm gonna pull you out of there.

And wherever you are right now, if you're feeling like there's not life in this, God wants to pull you out of that non life state.

It doesn't mean necessarily out of even where you are in a business or in a relationship or whatever it is, it may, but it does mean.

That he doesn't have dead children walking around.

And if we're stuck in dead, that's not what he wants.

And Jesus said, Remember Lot's wife.

So what happened was God went to Sodom and Gomorrah and said, Come on, take you to a better place.

But then he said, Don't look back.

Don't look back.

So they took off.

They got halfway across the desert.

And Lot's wife, but those diapers, he was so cute.

And those diapers.

Or whoever it is.

She couldn't let go and she turned to salt.

That's what the Bible says.

She's still out there somewhere in the desert.

What is it you can't let go of?

I'll end with this.

There's an old man sitting on a porch, not on a porch, on a bench in a park.

Young man came, sat next to him, all dressed up in his new suit and was reading the Wall Street Journal, looked like a fine young man.

And the old man says, you know, starts to say something, he doesn't, and he goes back to, you know, and just reading his book.

A little while, the young man says to the old man, so excuse me, sir, but what time is it?

Old man turned and looked at him.

Looked back, doesn't say anything.

Young man goes, What's sir?

Excuse me, what time is it?

Old man looks at him and goes, turns back, doesn't say.

This goes on like three or four times.

Finally, the young man's exasperated.

He goes, Sir, I just got to ask you, why won't you tell me what time it is?

The old man put his book down and he said, All right, I'll tell you why.

He said, I saw you when you came up here.

You look like a fine young man.

You're reading the Wall Street Journal.

Looks like you're interested in business.

You got a nice suit on, you're up, you're out, you're out there.

I know you're probably going to work.

I'd probably, you know, if I if I told you what time it was, we'd start talking.

If we started talking, we'd become friends.

If we became friends, I'd probably like you and invite you over to our house for dinner.

If you came over to our house for dinner, you'd meet my daughter.

She's about your age.

And she's beautiful.

And then y'all would probably go out on a date and then you'd get married.

And I'll be dead gun if my daughter is marrying a man that doesn't own a watch.

I'm not gonna let that.

See, he was sitting there.

The point is, he played the movie forward.

He looked down the line.

I want you to take what you're involved in and giving your time and energy to now in these categories.

And I want you to look at 12 months from now, two years from now, three years from now, and ask yourself: if I don't prune these things, do I want to still be having this issue or this where I am or whatever it is three years from now?

Because if there's not a necessary ending, you won't have the space for God to put it in.

And remember, faith requires stepping into a vacuum.

Faith is a conviction, the Bible says, of things hoped for but unseen.

So it doesn't take a lot of faith to step out and take something we know.

We gotta step into what feels like a vacuum.

And if we create that, God will fill it up.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you that you call us to a better and a bigger way of life with you.

But God, we confess to you that sometimes it's hard, like Peter, to get out of the boat.

It's hard to let go.

And I just ask you to help us, first of all, with the vision of what our life should look like, and also provide us with the strength and the courage to, in faith, step into that vacuum as we let go of some things that we need to surrender.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.