Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Deal with Rejection and Make a Difference in the World: Guest Interview with Justin McRoberts

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Ever feel burdened down and hopeless with how things are? Want to make a difference but unsure how? Get some encouragement from Justin McRoberts, author of https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58211333-it-is-what-you-make-of-it (It Is What You Make of It), as he talks to https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Pastor Patrick Miller) in this episode. Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/media-feeds/what-is-gods-will-do-you-really-want-to-know-it/ (What is God’s Will?), https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/am-i-really-up-to-the-task-god-my-favorite-verses-isaiah-6-8/ (Am I Really Up to the Task, God?), and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-can-i-leave-a-lasting-impact-on-the-world-you-only-need-ten-minutes/ (How Can I Leave a Lasting Impact on the World?) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit ourhttps://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ ( website) and follow us onhttps://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks ( Facebook),https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ ( Instagram), andhttps://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast ( Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT Podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, Ask TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. Justin, I got to know, why do you hate the phrase it is what it is? Because it is a pathway to stuckness. It gives way too much credit to things for being monolithic and immovable.

And it removes from you and I, the agency that actually makes us look like people who are created in the image of God. There's actually nothing about it that I like. You know, I don't really like that phrase that much either, myself, if we're going to be honest. But I can imagine a lot of people listening to this. You're like, well, hold on. I mean, what's wrong? We're just kind of accepting your circumstances and saying, hey, I can't deal the cards in my life.

So it is what it is. No big deal. Yeah, well, and I get the feeling. I don't think the feeling is wrong. And this is like good basic like pop therapy stuff. Like you're not wrong to have your feelings. You might be wrong about what they mean. Wait, are you telling me my feelings aren't reality right now?

I'm telling you that your feelings are a part of reality and your feelings are an expression within your own soul of your experience of reality. But that doesn't mean that you're not. your interpretation of reality is on point. So in other words, let's take something like systemic racism as an example. It's really easy. In fact, it's probably appropriate that I would look at systemic racism in the United States America and think like, it is what it is.

Like it's monolithic. It seems immovable. It's unchangeable. Like it can feel that way. I understand that it feels that way. The reality of systemic racism is this particular culture and economy is leveraged against people of color because over the course. of years and years and years, decisions have been made by people in power to shape things in a

particular way. It wasn't dropped on the planet or on the country out of the sky as a monolithic reality. No, no, no. It has become this way because it's been shaped this way by people who exercise their agency over time, which is to say it's kind of like that moment in the predator when Schwarzenegger says, if it bleeds, we can kill it. Like in so far as it has been created, be undone. Is that how you go through your life? Your, you're Arnold. If it leaves, I can kill it. I've got to find my best. I got to find my Jesse the Body of Ventura, and I can make it through. But with systemic racism, it's an appropriate feeling to look at it and feel powerless. It is specifically as a white male, like that sense of powerlessness is actually a good feeling

because it's what it feels like, by the way, to have been a person of color in the United States of America for a real long time. So it's appropriate for me to recognize my powerlessness. What I do when I say it is what it is, is I project that onto the reality around me as opposed to confess my own position. It's not immovable. I'm just not strong enough. That's a different confession. In other words, if I say, I don't have the wisdom, the wherewithal, and the power to make

the difference I want to make, that's wiser, that's more Christian, that's more human. If I just say it is what it is, I'm denying my agency, I'm denying my complicitness and I'm removing myself from the actual chain of events. I hate the phrase because it doesn't put me in the position to be humble about the things that I would like to change in the world. So let's take this out of the circumstances of, you know, big, large, worldwide things. Because it's obviously easy in those instances, like you said, to start feeling powerless. And to say, you know, I don't have to take responsibility because what can I do and what have I done. But when I hear people say it is what it is, it's often in their day-to-day life.

You know, it's just, you know, I would love to go start this business. I would love to go and build this thing. I would love to go fill in the blank, but I can't because I don't have the resources. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. It is what it is. And there's part of me that thinks, well, gosh, that doesn't seem like a totally bad spirit. Maybe you just don't have those things.

And you might not have those things. But if you have the desire to do those things, that's the place you want to start. In other words, like I work with artists and ministers regularly as a coach. And I get it. I hear it all the time. That is what it is. There's only so much I can do. Yes, right now.

Again, the thing that seems monolithic, to start the business as an example, or to start the ministry or to start the podcast or whatever the dream is, to write the book, yeah, that should seem like a massive endeavor. But if I just stop right there and say, it is what it is. It's just too big. I don't really want to get involved. If I don't bring to the table everything I can bring to the table, I never get started and then ever figure out how far I can actually go. Again, it should seem big. It should seem too big for you. that's part of why it feels good to finish it.

Part of why it feels great to get it done is because I never felt like I was going to be able to do that. For folks, I don't know if your listeners pay attention to like workout stuff or like CrossFit or any kind of stuff, but like folks to look out of one of these workouts and like 155 pull-ups in a workout. And part of why it feels great is because like you didn't feel like you could do 155 pull-ups before you got the workout started. I'm much sure I could do one pull-up right now, if we're going to be honest.

But what you do is you do five. and then you do some other stuff and you come back and you another three. And then at the end of like 45 and 90 minutes, you would have done 155. So it is what it is, kills that initial spirit that says, I don't have everything for the moment,

but I'm going to bring everything I have for the moment and then see what happens once I get the ball roll. So what should we replace? It is what it is. I mean, that's in our vernacular. Maybe that's the way that we think. What should we replace that with? It is what I make of it.

In other words, like literally I'm going to the title book. It's the only title I've ever given to anything I actually feel really great about. It was a good title. I like the title. I thought it was good too. I'm a huge fan. It is what I make of it. So then that puts me to a position of asking, what do I have on hand? If I move from, it is what it is to what I make of it? Then the question is, okay, what do I actually have on hand to get started? This is, you know, and I referenced this story in the book a few times. This is the disciples looking at thousands of people who are following Jesus around and recognizing that they have a huge problem on hand that all these people are hungry. Now, I'm going to assume that these guys aren't jerks

and that they really are interested in the people around them actually eating. I think that's true. So it's actually in their hearts to feed these people, which is a good desire and a real problem. But what they do instead is they say like, let's send them away. This is too much. This is what it is. Let's let someone else fix it. What Jesus does is, he turns it back around and he says, why don't you feed them? And they're like, well, we quit our jobs that follows you around the money. Like we literally left, you came and said, leave work and we did. Like, what do you mean? But what Jesus says, you feed them, which then puts them in a position to ask what they have on hand, which even in the moment, they don't feel like is enough.

Regardless, when they bring into Jesus, he does the very first thing that we should always do, which is he gives thanks for what he has on hand, which is a step I can only take. take, if I stop projecting my powerlessness or my limitations onto the world, confess what I have on hand, pay attention to it, and then bring it to the table. This is what I've got. I'm going to be thankful for what I've got, and I'm going to get started. So in the story, obviously, they've got a few loaves and they've got some fish. And I can imagine someone saying, okay, yeah, that that is kind of what I have.

I don't have a lot. But I'm also not Jesus. I can't, you know, snap my fingers and use my miracle powers to explode that into food for 10,000 people. Yes. So the spiritual reality of that in terms of bringing something to God and saying, do more with this that I can possibly imagine is very real and very true and very necessary. At the same time, boy, it's a heck of a thing for folks who have never, ever once in their lives

been worried about the roof over their head or never once in the lives worried how, where their food is going to come from tomorrow or the next day or the next day. Folks who literally are, by statistics, the wealthiest people on the planet by 90%. Like, you don't have to call yourself a 2% or, but you're at least a 10%er. Like, if you live in the United States and you're not on the street, you really actually are, not just the wealthiest people on the planet, but you're among the wealthiest people. So you're telling me I have more than a few loves. I'm telling you that all of us have legitimately, I'm saying anyone, for the most part,

there are some exceptions to this. If you're someone who's going to pick up the book, if you're someone who can get access to this on Amazon.com or hearts and minds, if you're someone who has aware with all to buy a book, if you're probably listening to this podcast, you almost for sure have far more on hand than you think you do. And you've been convinced by a really terrible narrative that you're more limited than you actually are, that you are weaker than you actually are, that you have less agency than you actually do. And part of this is why I do not like the phrase. It is what it is. Because you've got more on hand to use than you've been told by a system that wants you to remain powerless and still. Yeah, I can imagine, again, listeners hearing this and thinking, okay, well, Justin, you're not talking about the prosperity gospel. You're not saying, hey, if you pray hard enough, you believe hard enough, you're going to become rich, you're going to become wealthy. What I really appreciate is you're saying, no, God made all of us as image bearers. And part of his image is this capacity to not just create, but to be productive, to create things that have never been imagined. And that it's part of how we reflect him in our lives. And it doesn't

mean that we're doing, you know, extravagant, huge business. I mean, it's easy. Have you ever heard the phrase hustle porn? Are you familiar with this? Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's like David Goggins and, you know, or Rachel Halls. Like there's a lot of figures out there who kind of, they're like, look, you work hard, you're going to have everything, just do your best.

How are you different than that? I mean, how is this just not the same thing with little Christianese sprinkled on top? That's one reason you might want to read the book because they get a little bit different. Secondly, it's like I really am angling some of this at, well, two elements. and I don't have anything particularly against Rachel or Goggin or whatever, but I'm not particularly interested in the things you accomplish. So one difference is like you want to start a business, start a church, start a podcast, great. I don't really care.

I'm not really interested. Like, that's fine. What I want to get to is like what's in you that you want to do, not because I think the world needs your work because it doesn't. What the world does need is needs a fully formed you because then you look like God. You look like the person that God is shaping you into. You like what you need is to be the person that you are actually designed to and have the capacity to do so that you would inspire others to get out of the same rut. Like that's what I'm actually interested in is the full human flourishing of human lives. So when we talk about looking like God, it is a thumbprint of the divine.

If I want to live into this story, like the story kind of goes like that out of nothingness, God creates a universe. Out of dirt, God creates life. Out of death, God makes a pathway for eternal life, salvation, and connection with the divine. If I want to live into that story, I do not get to say it is what it is. I get to say there's probably more here than I'm giving myself or the world around me credit for, and I should probably dig in with a touch more courage so that I could become the person I'm designed to be. Yeah, one of the things I appreciated in your book was that you clearly see that there's a partnership between humans and God. and that it is what I make of it.

Isn't the statute that says, I can make anything out of nothing. I am God. You know, I can ex and elob my life into, I've got millions of dollars and tons of fans and I'm the coolest best person in the world, right? No one actually has that power.

I don't do manifesting. It's not my, it's not my back. And part of what I get to in the book as well is like, I don't need to manifest new stuff. I do want you to pay attention to what you actually have on him. Like this is the thing. Like,

and if I have an issue, if I have an issue at all, and I don't have an issue with Rachel Hollis as a person per se. I do have an issue with the philosophy of the notion that somehow you need to manifest new stuff. You probably don't. You probably have to look around in your existing relationship, circumstances, and talents and gifts and do something a little more courageous, a little braver, a little more redemptive with what you already have on hand. I don't need to do to manifest new stuff.

Really good stuff has been manifested. You just don't see it that way because you've been convinced, again, by a horrible narrative that you are not enough, that you don't have enough, that this is good. as it gets, you're stuck in this place, and if God cared about you, he'd do better than he or they did like that. That's a garbage narrative. Then I want to shake us out. No, that makes a lot of sense. And again, another thing I appreciate it is that seeking out or asking God, what's the potentiality that you want me to draw out of creation is not just huge, big, world-changing things. The potentiality might be being the best dad that I can be. It might be being the best friend that I can be. It's not always these huge, magnificent ideas and dreams. In fact, I think sometimes the potentiality

God is calling us to is often far smaller than we want it to be with the irony that if we leaned into it, we'd discover it's far bigger than we ever imagined. Yeah. And again, part of the stories you and I talked about a little bit offline was, you know, what it looked like for me to be a good dad. Like my son got a Lego kit. We ordered a Lego kit. This is a story that's in the book. Once in a while, I go, we'll send a kit without all the necessary bricks. And we got one of those kits. And so we got to a place in the building process in which, like, we were legit stuck. And for a moment, we had to, like, take a break because it was a bummer.

This is not going to look the way, you know, it's not going to look the way it does in the box. And then after a moment, what I wanted to do is not just, like, let sadness take over. Like, give sadness its moment. Otherwise, it will come back and stang you later. But then I started digging around old bricks and started adding old bricks to this thing. And then we had to change things up. And then my son joined in because I wanted to bear witness to my kid. Like, hey, you know what?

Most of the time, the plan does not actually go 100% correctly. This is what life looks like. So the story literally is about me being a good dad and saying like, we're going to build this thing. At the end, we had this thing that was not the rally racer that we had bought. It was this truckish spaceship type thing. That sounds way cooler. It was way cooler. And it felt more like us.

And there was like our actual fingerprints and our creative energies are there. Like we still have the thing and it's still set up because it's actually that special. Those moments, like those last for a kid. And so it is. It's a story. These are stories not about how do you build your business. Hey, that's what's in you. Great.

Go. And I'm awesome. I hope you go build your business. But if you just want to be like a phenomenal neighbor, let's just do that. Because boy, how much better would the world be if we redirected random energy towards all these dreams we don't really have to like just loving the people that are 400 feet from our front door? That's what you have. You've got that on hand. Make something of it.

I think everybody would do well to take that advice and just ask the question, what's on hand? You know, what are the relationships that I have? What are the resources that I have? And what's God calling me to make of that? Not like you said, to manifest something new or to demand that something new be brought to me, but to say, no, this is what I have. have this is what God's given me. What can I do with it? Yeah. So the tail end of the book is a story that sort of the digs into the maybe the sort of the root ethos of the why here of the book. About a mile from where I'm sitting right now, a mile and a half, there's a park, these two parks

that are connected by a trail system. And I jog the trail system regularly. When it rains, there are a couple places, one in particular where the water rises and I can't clear it. It's a problem. And I just got used to getting to up to that problem. And then I would either decide to get my wet and go home with sloppy feet or I would just turn around, which is what I would do most of the time. I was just turn around. He likes to run with sloppy feet. Yeah, I don't. So I would turn around and go home. One of these moments, like a couple of days after rain, I knew I was coming up to the point of the trail. And I thought I was going to turn around. But somebody had built a bridge. Like somebody had come along. And this is not like right off the road. This point in the tree.

trail is like, I don't know, three quarters of a mile, maybe a mile off the road. And so someone had like dragged wood and nails and tools and they had built the bridge, like seven and a half feet across this nice arch with a railing. It was gorgeous. I was like, I was thrilled at this. So I ran across the bridge and went home to my wife. Like someone built a bridge. A couple of days later, we go out and the bridge is gone. And the bridge is gone because someone house had come and destroyed it, which like, I mean, there's a whole other part of this story. It's why do people tear things down? Yeah.

You don't really get to answer to that question, which I'll get to at the end of the story. So it was destroyed, it was gone. My wife and I really bummed. A few, like it was a week and a half later after another rain. I'm coming up at the same spot. And I figure, like, I'm going to have to turn around because the first bridge is gone.

But there's a second bridge. This person had come back and built another bridge. And in fact, they used broken pieces from the first bridge in order to build the second bridge. As if to say like, hey, I saw you. I know you tear it down, but I'm more invested in building something beautiful than you are in tearing it down. So keep it up and I'll be back. And sure enough, about two weeks later, that second bridge was gone.

And when I got to that spot this time, I didn't see pieces and shards. I looked up the creek and that bridge had been knocked over and dragged like 400 feet up the creek. the watered, you know, worked its way around it. So it's not this big, sloppy, just disgusting mess. At which point, and this is the ethos of the book, at which point I had a decision to make, I'm no longer just a witness to the story of good and evil. I'm no longer a witness, just a witness to the story of creation and fall and redemption. Like, I'm in it. I'm invested. So do I actually want to get literally my feet wet get involved and so i got into the slog and the gross and the mud and i hiked up and i grabbed this bridge and it was heavy and it took like 45 minutes at least to drag this

back to where it was supposed to be and it took another 15 minutes to get up right and prep like it took forever but that moment where i'm bearing witness like i see like at some point i have to make i get to make the decision and if i want to say that i'm following christ and i'll find I want to say that I'm made in the likeness of God, I don't get to just watch the battle between good and evil. I don't just get to watch things fall apart. And if I get frustrated, which I should, that people tear things down and things fall apart, if I'm frustrated about that, then the choice I have is to say, I'm not a bridge builder. I'm not an architect.

But what I do have is I've got some time and I've got some energy. So I'm going to give this thing the best I've got right now. and then enter into that story that says Christ is holding all things together and make all things right. So I'm going to give the best I've got to a story in which I don't want to give in to the relentless tide of the undoing of things.

I want to make, I want to create, and I want to do with everything I've got on hand so that I'm part of this story and live that glorious life I'm designed to live. Yeah, I think you hit a nail on the head, which is it is so easy to see a problem, whether it's a big problem or a sunken bridge, and to give up, to give up because you've hit a roadblock,

to give up because maybe you've failed, to give up because I don't know how to fix this, and it's not my responsibility. So I need to move on. How do we respond to rejection? How do we respond to failure when we're trying to, you know, make what we can of it? Yeah, so rejection or failure are really great parts of any human process. Figuring out my limitations, like where they actually are, I hope you get there. Most of us don't.

So I'll say this first. Most of us actually don't get to our actual limitations. Most of us quit long before. We don't know if we can land the jump so we didn't even try. We don't know if we can build the thing so we don't apply ourselves. It's actually a wonderful feeling to get to the end of yourself and realize like, I actually put everything I have into this. And this is as far as I can take it. That's actually a really good feeling. It's not as scary a feeling as we think it is, which is what keeps us from trying.

So a couple quick stories. The one is, this is from a few years ago, I was taking what was called the C-Best. It's the California proficiency test so that I could teach. And I got to the math portion of the test, and I'm not a math person at all. And I knew that I didn't have, like, this is talking about limitation. Like, I knew I didn't have the answers to almost every question in here. It was like, it was anything over 10, I'm out. So. We share that in common.

And so I, but I didn't quit on the test. And I couldn't just sit there forever and try to figure it out because it was a time test. So I literally did the thing, man. I took the pencil and I went right down the middle of the sheet and it's C, C, C, C, C, C, for like 45 questions. No joke, 45 questions. First of all, because if I don't finish, I don't get a grade and I don't find out how well I did, right? Like, I have to actually push all those through to find out like how well that I actually do. And I did actually pass the test.

Second of all, because it was, again, it's a confession on my limitation. I did really, really, I got to know that I must have done so well on the essay portion of the test that it didn't matter that like, I don't know the difference sometimes between four and eight. So I like when at the point of my limitations, when I get the negativity, when I get the like the no, paying attention to that, like getting that point allows me to look back and figure out where all my yeses are. It's one of the ways I figure out how strong I am in places is figure out how weak I am in other places. So I have to get to that limitation. That's the first part. The second one is there's a story in this book that's specifically about folks getting a no and I was sitting with a bunch of artists on a panel who were talking about getting rejected from like galleries or magazines.

And everyone had these stories about how like, and literally there were people talking about like the Atlantic and the New Yorker. And they're and these are like 18 and 24 year old kids. I'm like, well, you know, the New Yorker doesn't really get it. I was like, really. Is that what happened? The New Yorker doesn't get it or the Met doesn't really want, you know, actually what's going on or like this massive gallery in downtown San Francisco doesn't really get what's going on with street art. And it was all, again, it was all projection. It was all like, this is what's wrong with the world

and why I'm not accepted. And then one of the folks in the room, who wasn't me, stood up and asked a question of the panel, and she said, have you ever thought about asking why it is you were rejected? And no one wanted to. Because she said, maybe it's just your work's not good enough yet, but you might learn some lessons from the editors to the New Yorker. when we come to points of rejection, that can be a wonderful entrance and learning lesson into like,

what do I need to do? How do I need to be reshaped? How do I need to like apply myself differently? Again, what do I make with what I have on hand? What do I make of this? Do you make of your rejection? There's almost always something to do with that feeling. There's almost always something to do with the information you were passed by someone said, this is not good enough. Okay, great. Let's find out why. that you can improve. As I read your book, I was thinking a lot about the, what I like to call the talent and training paradigms. Because in the West, we have a tendency to see people as being talented, you know, so we have this idea that if you meet a great artist or a great business leader, someone who's been successful, it's because they have this internal genius that they've

activated and acted upon and they just lucked out, you know? Life gave them good cards. And then in the East, there's a different pattern of thought, which is more the training mentality, which is, no, you have to develop skills. If you want to be intelligent, you have to work hard to be intelligent. If you want to be a great musician, you have to work hard to be a musician. And it seems like obviously you can emphasize one too much and one too little. But as I read your book, I thought, you know, the training paradigm really does get closer to the mark. When I hit those limits, I really do have to stop and say, yeah, maybe I just need more training. Maybe I just need to work to develop. Yeah. I mean, the difference between good and great athletes is entirely about

practice. I mean, yes, LeBron James is actually that talented. But that's, that's a lot of That dude works every day harder than everybody. That's the real difference. The real difference between LeBron and everyone else is he actually worked harder. It's why he's healthier. It's why he's injured less. And it's why he is as great as he is. Yes, he's that talented.

But he works harder than you too. That's the thing about everyone. My buddy Masaki Liu is a producer, this other story from the book, my buddy Masaki Liu taught he used to say when he was producing records for like young artists or new artists. And they would ask him like, hey, you know, what do you think our chances are? And he would say this thing. He said, well, you know, if you keep at it and, you know, you stick together and you stay focused,

you're going to be around for a long time, which is like a really interesting dodge. Like he didn't answer the question because he didn't want to answer the question. But he didn't, he didn't want to say, yes, your talent means you'll be here long term because you just pointed out. That's not how it works. there are less talented people who are still doing things that you want to be doing, they just worked harder. Yeah.

There are really, really talented people who aren't doing anything remotely like what they should be doing with their time because they don't want to put the work in. So if someone's listening to this and they're saying, okay, I want to think through what is the potentiality that God's given me in my life? Where is he calling me to make something out of what I have on hand? How do they do that? What's their next step? Make a big list of things that are.

remotely interesting to you, things that you're interested in, things you really care about. Make a couple lists. What do you really care about? Societyally, what do you care about culturally? What do you care about in the context of religion and business? Like, what stokes your heart? What actually moves you, inspires you? And what things do you like doing? Like with your hands, what kind of like execution of your own talents and gifts and strengths? Make a list. And then try all of it. Just start trying. Just start trying. And you'll be really. And you'll be wrong a bunch and then it'll feel really good to be like, oh, okay, that was fun. I don't want to do that at all, though. Like, not really. That's a really good feeling. Do you be like, oh, there's one I can check off the list.

I've been paralyzed with this notion. Like, I don't know. There are two parts of this that I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be doing. Like, well, try some stuff out and figure it out. And it takes some time. Again, we've been really poorly trained by our culture here in the West that passion work is stuff that special people do, first and foremost, or that passion work is stuff that you get to do when you're done with all your responsibilities. I don't know where anyone got that, but it's not true. Like there's nothing in the Bible that's like, hey, y'all, get your responsibilities done and then go do the stuff that's in your heart. Like, no, homie, don't live that way. Like, what's in your heart? Let's make space and time for it.

like figure out who you are. And then the other part of it is this in terms of like not knowing what it is you're supposed to. Maybe there isn't as supposed to. Maybe there's just like what do you want to do. And maybe we were just not used to answering that question. We're always specifically as religious people stuck on what we're supposed to be doing. And I just don't hear God in that. Like I don't hear God in the voice that says you're confused and frustrated and it's unclear how you're supposed to be using your time and your energy. But you know, get out there. I've given you some clues, probably not enough, but like take the leap of faith and hope you figure it out and you don't get it wrong. Like that just doesn't sound like a loving God to me.

What sounds like a loving God to me is more like, I like who you are. I like your gifts, your talents. I like the way you're shaped. What do you want to do? I'll go with you. Let's figure it out. Yeah, we're also, I think, in an interesting time culturally. You know, we have about eight million fewer workers working in the workforce since before the pandemic, despite the fact that there's actually now millions of jobs that are open. And I think we're in this bizarre crisis as a community where we're trying to figure out, both on the one hand, how to not make work into an idol that defines me as my identity. And then on the other side, maybe almost a disinterest in work that we've given up on finding any value in work. And obviously, God designed us to be

workers. He designed us to have a purpose. And that passion work, like you said, it could be so many different things. It's not just, you know, social justice work. It's not just, it might be in any field you can imagine. But it seems like this is a message that we really need to hear today and that people, I hope, will take home. I liked your book because, again, I've read a lot of books like this, and I didn't leave feeling discouraged. I didn't leave feeling like I was sitting under a pile of your accomplishments. And wow, what a failure I am, because I haven't achieved these things. And you've done some really great things. That's my point is to say that you haven't done great things.

My simple point is to say, I think that's the right place to be, achieving that potentiality that whatever God's calling you to do in your life, whatever he's given you the grace to do, that you know what? That's something not just anyone can do, but anyone can do anywhere with what they have on hand. And it might be small, but it's not small in God's eyes. And it's really worthy. So if you'd just do me a favor, I love to ask our guest to pray for people who are listening

to the podcast. If you'd pray for them, pray for their work, pray for their calling, pray for them to not just have a it is what it is attitude. Yeah. Spirit of Christ grant these beloved sisters and brothers of mine, the courage to see themselves more the way you do. And that when it comes to how they spend their time, their energy is their efforts,

when it comes to work and the work of their lives, this can be a really terrifying time for a lot of us because a lot was taken away that we didn't think could have been. But grant us the wisdom and the courage to first recognize, yeah, it can be. everything can be taken away. Everything can and does eventually go away. And then maybe the safest bet is to actually bet on Christ in us, the hope of glory. Maybe that's the safest bet. Maybe the safest bet is not to find the secure job and to bend our lives around that which provides us with that temporary

security of being able to pay for the life that we've already designed. Maybe the safest bet is to actually dig in and figure out who we are supposed to be, who we're becoming in you. that we are the safest bet, and we're actually what you bet on as well. Maybe find the courage and the wisdom to step into that, to make more with what we've been given and look like you as we do. Amen. Thanks so much for being on the show with us today. Justin, it's been a pleasure talking to you. And if you're listening, I would encourage you to go out and grab a copy of Justin's new book.

It is what you make of it. You can find it pretty much everywhere, but we will, as always, have a link in the show notes. Thanks, man. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually.

If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.