Speaker 1: Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick. I'm the pastor of Elevation
Speaker 1: Church and.
Speaker 2: This is our podcast.
Speaker 1: I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope
Speaker 1: this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it
Speaker 1: gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.
Speaker 2: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: God is not against me, but He's in it with me,
Speaker 1: working through me, and fighting for me. And it would
Speaker 1: seem like I would know that at my core and
Speaker 1: never doubt it. But I was driving to the church
Speaker 1: to preach. It has been several months ago. It might
Speaker 1: have been, you know, it might have been a particular
Speaker 1: Sunday where I felt my message was confusing and I
Speaker 1: didn't know if I was going to be able to
Speaker 1: communicate it.
Speaker 2: Maybe I didn't sleep good that night.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I just remember pulling in thinking of
Speaker 1: all the ways it could go wrong. You know you
Speaker 1: do that sometimes, like you're driving up to something. You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna blow it. These pants feel tight, look
Speaker 1: at this, my hair is doing this thing. It could
Speaker 1: be any little dumb thing, and you just start imagining
Speaker 1: all the ways it could go wrong. Well, I was
Speaker 1: doing that about my sermon. And as I pulled into
Speaker 1: the church, I thought, wait a minute, I'm showing up
Speaker 1: today to help people, to give them God's word, to
Speaker 1: share with them what the Lord says the best I
Speaker 1: know how. And it won't be perfect, and I'll miss
Speaker 1: some things, and I'll mispronounce some things, and I'll probably
Speaker 1: make a mess of some of it. But do I
Speaker 1: not believe that God is for what I'm doing today,
Speaker 1: that he wants to help these people more than I do.
Speaker 1: That he wants to lift these people out of the
Speaker 1: pit that they're in more than I do. That he
Speaker 1: wants to give them their next step to fulfill his
Speaker 1: purpose for their life more than I do. And it
Speaker 1: hit me, Stephen, You're showing up like God is opposing you,
Speaker 1: like he wants to trip you, leg sweep you. Why
Speaker 1: do you believe that? And I just said right there
Speaker 1: in my car, God is not against me.
Speaker 2: Now I've said that sung that thought about that.
Speaker 1: It's a core teaching in the scripture that if God
Speaker 1: is for us, who can be against us? But it
Speaker 1: kind of hit that time, and then I thought about
Speaker 1: the consequences. Well, if he's not against me, what is
Speaker 1: he He's in it with me? Yea, working through me
Speaker 1: and fighting for me, and from there I show up
Speaker 1: knowing He's got my back.
Speaker 2: Let's do this now.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people that almost sounds
Speaker 1: like I have an imaginary friend. My imaginary dad can
Speaker 1: beat up your imaginary dad.
Speaker 2: I don't see it that way.
Speaker 1: I really have come to tap into that belief and
Speaker 1: the times that I do operate in confidence the times
Speaker 1: that I don't operate in insecurity and inferiority.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that a little bit practically.
Speaker 1: Let's get it out of the cartoonish realm where we
Speaker 1: sometimes put it, and let's put it in the realm
Speaker 1: of that everyday confidence, walking in the confidence that God
Speaker 1: is not against me, but he's in it with me,
Speaker 1: working through me and fighting for me. Hit me with
Speaker 1: your best stuff on confidence, because you teach this like
Speaker 1: nobody I've ever heard.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think it's cartoony at all. I think
Speaker 3: it's a powerful metaphor because I like to tell people
Speaker 3: loneliness only got you this far.
Speaker 4: When you feel alone.
Speaker 3: In life, how do you act when you feel like
Speaker 3: nobody's got your back? How do you act when you
Speaker 3: feel like no one understands you? How do you act
Speaker 3: those thought patterns of I'm alone, everybody's against me, no
Speaker 3: one's for me. That doesn't inspire your courage. But I
Speaker 3: work with a lot of elite people in the military,
Speaker 3: and they have that phrase of all is one, right,
Speaker 3: that moment where if you're on the battlefield and you're
Speaker 3: by yourself as a lonely warrior, it's terrifying and you
Speaker 3: hunker down, you don't charge. But when you're at the
Speaker 3: line with all the guys, all is one. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a four moment. There's assertiveness to it. It's like we
Speaker 3: got this, and you got to at some point go
Speaker 3: we got this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Because if you're disassociated from your faith, if you're disassociated
Speaker 3: from God, I just believe you're disempowered. And so there's
Speaker 3: got to be that element in your life. You know what,
Speaker 3: loneliness only took me this far. If I don't believe
Speaker 3: he's here, if I don't believe that someone is fighting
Speaker 3: with me, I will continue to procrastinate and to blame
Speaker 3: and be frustrated.
Speaker 4: So the metaphor is really powerful. It's not cartoonish.
Speaker 2: And when you approach the day of that day.
Speaker 3: You swarm the day you don't like hide on the couch,
Speaker 3: and so I don't think people realize the incredible power
Speaker 3: of there is strength with you, and there is strength
Speaker 3: in you.
Speaker 2: And there's stuff like swarm the day. Yeah, I'm like
Speaker 2: put that on it hood. That's a great phrase. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean swarm the day.
Speaker 3: It's true, you're either caged in your day or you're
Speaker 3: charging the day.
Speaker 2: And we often talk aged or charging. Yeah, you're you're
Speaker 2: in the caged life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the cage life is where you just continually
Speaker 3: your thoughts continually trap you where you're at, or you're
Speaker 3: more open and you're more generative and you have higher agency,
Speaker 3: which means you're charging the day. It doesn't mean you
Speaker 3: you crush every day and every day is perfect. It
Speaker 3: means you're moving forward even if you're a hot mess.
Speaker 3: You're moving forward to even in doubt. You're moving forward
Speaker 3: in strength, even though you know you have weaknesses because
Speaker 3: you're empowered by something higher.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said the part about sometimes you move
Speaker 1: forward messy because that feeling that God is not against me.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really mean the most to me when I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm doing good because I feel Him with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need this mindset. When I don't feel Him with me,
Speaker 1: that's the moment where I believe I don't have to
Speaker 1: feel it for it to be true.
Speaker 2: That's where my faith kicks in.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of times when we're having
Speaker 1: a real proud moment and we feel like, look at me, man,
Speaker 1: I actually like, actually showed up for that I did.
Speaker 1: That God is not against me. So I'm like, of
Speaker 1: course he's not. Who wouldn't want to be on my team? Like, hey, God,
Speaker 1: come work with me. I'm like a first round draft pick.
Speaker 1: And then you hit those moments where you go, if
Speaker 1: I were God, I wouldn't want to be on my team,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to use me. And not only do
Speaker 1: all the Bible heroes have this, but there's one in
Speaker 1: specific that we both love and I use this for
Speaker 1: probably the central character for this mindset in the book,
Speaker 1: and it's Gideon. Yes, and the reason I chose Gideon.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, Brendan, I had a moment writing these
Speaker 1: chapters about Gideon that I will never be able to
Speaker 1: share with anyone because it was so powerful from God
Speaker 1: to me. And I've read the story of Gideon, preached
Speaker 1: the story of Gideon all the way from the Lavigne
Speaker 1: Senior Center, when we had eighty people in the room.
Speaker 1: I'm up there talking about Gideon and his army of
Speaker 1: three hundred and we don't have what we think we need,
Speaker 1: but if we have God, we're a majority.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And yet the personal message of it was when I
Speaker 1: saw Gideon in a wine press threshing wheat, which represents
Speaker 1: us kind of in.
Speaker 2: Hiding in the caged life.
Speaker 1: And so he's caged in this oppression of the Midianites,
Speaker 1: and how they've spent all of these years being subdued
Speaker 1: by these people, and he's come to believe these things
Speaker 1: about himself. I'm the littlest, I'm the least, my tribe
Speaker 1: is the smallest. All of these things that he begins
Speaker 1: to believe. Right, the Angel of the Lord comes and says,
Speaker 1: the Lord is with you, mighty warrior.
Speaker 2: And he says, if the Lord is with us, why
Speaker 2: has all this happened to us?
Speaker 1: And I won't repreach the whole story, but what the
Speaker 1: Lord said to Gideon that was so powerful to me
Speaker 1: was go in the strength you have love that, because
Speaker 1: it hit me in that moment that the strength Gideon
Speaker 1: had was God and he's so focused on I'm the littlest,
Speaker 1: I'm the least, and you may be too.
Speaker 2: I do it all the time, the best singer.
Speaker 1: I'm not the smartest person to take a Bible text apart.
Speaker 1: I'm not really even good with geography, and here I
Speaker 1: am trying to talk about Midian and Gideon and Israel,
Speaker 1: and I can barely find where I live on a map. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: if I stay stuck in that and don't get into
Speaker 1: the mindset God is in it with me, working through me,
Speaker 1: fighting for me, then my strength is always limited to
Speaker 1: my situation. My strength is always limited to my skill set.
Speaker 1: The moment that I realize go in the strength you
Speaker 1: have is a command to tap into God himself, then
Speaker 1: it becomes unlimited what God can do through me. Why
Speaker 1: I put three different things behind God is not against me?
Speaker 1: Is it isn't just God is not against me so
Speaker 1: I can buy a Lamborghini. Now. He wants to work
Speaker 1: through me for others, for something bigger than me. He's
Speaker 1: fighting for me, not just fighting against the people I
Speaker 1: don't like because I don't like them. He's fighting for
Speaker 1: his purposes. He's fighting the make sure that I can
Speaker 1: do everything I need to do, and he's in it
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 2: Even before I change.
Speaker 1: He calls me strong and courageous when I don't feel
Speaker 1: like I am. Yes, So let's talk about separating your
Speaker 1: confidence from your feelings, because that can be so dangerous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I imagine when you think about Gideon, you imagine
Speaker 3: him in this wine press, and I'll give you this
Speaker 3: framework for what's going on in his head.
Speaker 4: Maybe because we trap ourselves a lot.
Speaker 3: And I always use this metaphor, we zap our success,
Speaker 3: which means it's just an acronym, zap we zap our success.
Speaker 2: And you'll notice your thoughts to do this.
Speaker 3: You have momentum, you feel good, and then zap it
Speaker 3: disappears because you're like, what happened to my confidence?
Speaker 2: What's wrong with me?
Speaker 3: What happens with zap is zap z sent for zoom.
Speaker 3: We zoom in to a problem, and we catastrophize. We
Speaker 3: zoom in and we worry if I take action, I'll
Speaker 3: be ruined, I'll be rejected, i won't be able to
Speaker 3: hand the responsibility, or I'll regret it. So I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna stay right here in this winepress, because if I
Speaker 3: go out there, I'm gonna get killed.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna slow you down and give us the four
Speaker 1: rs again because I think those are very big.
Speaker 2: Will you do them again? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Are four primary big fears that prevent action. The first
Speaker 3: one is ruin, which we just believe if I do
Speaker 3: something that's going to ruin my reputation, that's going to
Speaker 3: ruin my opportunities, that's going to ruin my ability to
Speaker 3: get ahead. Then we go, oh, well, I'm worried if
Speaker 3: I take action, people will reject me. I'll be ostracized,
Speaker 3: I'll be abandoned. They won't understand. Then we fear responsibility,
Speaker 3: which is the one most people forget. It's like we're
Speaker 3: scared of more responsibility. If you get that responsibility, I'm
Speaker 3: not to be able to handle it. I don't know
Speaker 3: if myself. I mean, I'll burn out, I'll freak out.
Speaker 3: I'll have too much anxiety and stress. I don't want
Speaker 3: the responsibilities. It's too much to bear. And then we
Speaker 3: fear a regret. Well, if I do take action and
Speaker 3: it doesn't go well, I'll always regret I made that
Speaker 3: decision to trust her. I'll always regret I made that
Speaker 3: decision to try that thing. I'll always regret and that's
Speaker 3: the form of catastrophizing that we have in a problem.
Speaker 3: We just zoom in. Oh my gosh, there's gonna be ruined,
Speaker 3: there's gonna be rejection. I can't handle it, and I'll
Speaker 3: regret it forever. Why would you take action after that?
Speaker 3: And then a is we attach ourself to it. This
Speaker 3: problem is me. This circumstance that I don't like is me.
Speaker 3: I'm the problem. I'm the same. We make our psychology
Speaker 3: the same as the problem, and we forget that our
Speaker 3: personhood is bigger than the problem, and that the problem
Speaker 3: is not permanent. The problem is placed there to challenge
Speaker 3: us to rise above it. And then the p what
Speaker 3: we do is so we've zoomed in and catastrophized. We've
Speaker 3: attached ourselves to it, so we feel insecure, and now
Speaker 3: we procrastinate or we pause or we punish.
Speaker 4: What that means is we say, oh, well, I just.
Speaker 3: Want to do it, because you know, we start telling
Speaker 3: ourselves all these stories about why we're procrastinating, Well, I
Speaker 3: don't have enough resources, or this is going on or
Speaker 3: that's going on.
Speaker 4: Then we punish ourselves.
Speaker 3: It's weird, like we're scared because we've catastrophised and we
Speaker 3: don't feel enough. So now we do all these weird
Speaker 3: things to punish ourselves. We overeat, we get addicted, We
Speaker 3: turn to video games all day long.
Speaker 4: Nothing against video against but all day long, you know.
Speaker 3: We go into social media and we scroll because we're
Speaker 3: uncomfortable and we're doing these behaviors that are not moving
Speaker 3: anything forward. And like we talked about previous sessions, you
Speaker 3: have to learn to flip that thing. Instead of zooming
Speaker 3: in and catastrophizing, we zoom in.
Speaker 4: We ask what if?
Speaker 3: What if God actually has my back here and I
Speaker 3: am being challenged to grow into more of his glory.
Speaker 3: What if instead of you know, attaching myself to it,
Speaker 3: I attach spirit to it. Instead of taking it personally,
Speaker 3: what if I recognize it's part of the world and
Speaker 3: it's part of a plan that I don't understand, And
Speaker 3: instead of pausing, then I kind of power up in
Speaker 3: his faith and I power up and I go, Okay,
Speaker 3: I know that I have been given these tools. I've
Speaker 3: been given his faith, his words, And he said, did
Speaker 3: I not command you? And so he's saying, did I
Speaker 3: not command you? This is in front of your life.
Speaker 3: You didn't want it there, but I put it there, yeah,
Speaker 3: and then you have to go, oh, and it gives
Speaker 3: you a different edge. And this is what you always
Speaker 3: have to realize when you're facing a problem in life,
Speaker 3: and when you're thinking about this, you know, is God
Speaker 3: fighting for me or not? If you believe God is
Speaker 3: fighting for you, have an edge, just like when you
Speaker 3: were sitting in the car wondering are my pants too tight?
Speaker 3: Am I going to do a good job in the
Speaker 3: sermon today? What's happening there is You're going to insecurity?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I always want you to hear it's like, am
Speaker 3: I feeling insecure about something? Or do I feel the edge?
Speaker 3: The edge is like a forward lean. It's a confidence.
Speaker 3: And the funny thing, it's the same it's the same acronym.
Speaker 2: It's still ZAP.
Speaker 4: But now I'm I'm zooming into the opportunity.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, this is what I wanted you to get.
Speaker 1: This level of We're talking about ancient warrior in a
Speaker 1: wine press. It takes some jars and read Judge A
Speaker 1: six and he goes and defeats Midianites. I'm really really
Speaker 1: just trying to pay this rent, bro, Like I'm really
Speaker 1: really just trying to get my kid back off drugs
Speaker 1: and doing good in school. Like I'm really just trying
Speaker 1: to recover from this miscarriage.
Speaker 2: I don't I like the story. I believe that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I believe it.
Speaker 1: But how we always used to say Holly's thing was hallelujah? Now,
Speaker 1: how like praise the Lord He's with me? Now?
Speaker 2: How do I have him with me?
Speaker 1: Because I can't see him, I can't always feel him.
Speaker 2: This is a tool, Zach.
Speaker 1: It's a tool for me to know what's happening when
Speaker 1: I'm shrinking myself, because I used to think that when
Speaker 1: I shrink myself that magnifies God. You know, I grew
Speaker 1: up in a great little Methodist church, and I went
Speaker 1: to a Baptist church to learn how to do ministry,
Speaker 1: and then I went to seminary, and none of.
Speaker 2: My professors taught me this.
Speaker 1: They all taught me well, I'm sure that the things
Speaker 1: they said were good. But somehow I got the message
Speaker 1: that in order for God to be great, I almost
Speaker 1: had to make myself little and less. And my feeling
Speaker 1: about that has changed over the years. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what it is. It's not that, oh I think
Speaker 1: I can do it without God. Because I know now
Speaker 1: more than ever, if he doesn't show up, I'm done.
Speaker 1: Is that I realized that the children that God has
Speaker 1: given me to raise, Elijah, Graham and Abbey, the woman
Speaker 1: that God has given me to love Holly, the.
Speaker 2: Church that God has pastor.
Speaker 1: They don't need me in the wine press of all
Speaker 1: my reasons why I'm not good enough.
Speaker 2: And the same is true.
Speaker 1: Of the people in your life when you think, oh,
Speaker 1: beating up on myself is kind of like giving God
Speaker 1: glory because I know that He's holy and I'm not holy.
Speaker 2: But didn't he make you holy? Isn't that why Jesus died?
Speaker 2: If you want to zoom zoom into the.
Speaker 1: Cross and see how he paid the price for you,
Speaker 1: Now zoom back out from that.
Speaker 2: Who would he die for? That he would not fight for?
Speaker 1: So now I know that any situation I find myself in,
Speaker 1: I already have evidence. I don't need another evidence. I
Speaker 1: already have evidence because I believe God sent his son
Speaker 1: to die for me. And that may not be your belief.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm just telling you where my confidence is.
Speaker 1: It's in the Cross. It's in the fact that after
Speaker 1: he died he rose again. So now if he went
Speaker 1: down into the grave for me. What situation will he
Speaker 1: not get in with me?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 1: You're telling me God won't be with me through a
Speaker 1: divorce when he went to the grave. You're telling me
Speaker 1: God won't be with me through a bankruptcy when he
Speaker 1: went to the grave. You're telling me God won't get
Speaker 1: in the middle of my insecurity and the trauma that
Speaker 1: I went through and helped me heal through that and
Speaker 1: then turn around and work through me so I can
Speaker 1: be a healer of others, so we can give glory
Speaker 1: to God together. That's what he's all about. That's what
Speaker 1: I mean. He's in it with me. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1: He's working through me. That's what I mean. He's fighting
Speaker 1: for me. But you don't see any of that if
Speaker 1: you're zap. I listen to acronyms like most people eat candy.
Speaker 2: I'm like hogging into the acronym and we just.
Speaker 1: Did so much and it's all going to be right
Speaker 1: here for you to go back and revisit and go
Speaker 1: what was that? Or again, what am I doing right now?
Speaker 1: Which one am I at right now? Or when I'm attaching,
Speaker 1: I'm attaching what if you'll go through it slowly, and
Speaker 1: I want to encourage you go back through this masterclass,
Speaker 1: go back through the ones that you haven't watched yet,
Speaker 1: get into this truth, and get this truth into you
Speaker 1: because it gives you a way to tap into the
Speaker 1: strength that you have. You have no idea what resource
Speaker 1: is available to you through your relationship with God when
Speaker 1: you are accomplishing His purpose. Now, I want to bring
Speaker 1: up another thing that might be a little difficult to
Speaker 1: talk about. Maybe if I feel like God is against me,
Speaker 1: it's because I'm going in the wrong direction. There will
Speaker 1: be times in my life where I'll feel like, man,
Speaker 1: God is against me, and it may just be He's
Speaker 1: closing a door to something because it's what I want,
Speaker 1: not what he wants. And we have to be so
Speaker 1: careful in those moments not to mistake the circumstances that
Speaker 1: are not favorable for the absence of God. I've always
Speaker 1: liked to say that the presence of problems doesn't prove
Speaker 1: the absence of God, right, And so now we want
Speaker 1: to get into what I call non circumstantial confidence, where
Speaker 1: we can just know that this is always true, God
Speaker 1: is in it with me.
Speaker 2: What's it fill in the boything?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think it's so important because you mentioned
Speaker 3: earlier about how some people you know, minimize themselves or
Speaker 3: shrink themselves. And you know, a lot of my audience
Speaker 3: have never heard me speak a whole lot about my faith.
Speaker 3: Have been telling my car accident story where I found
Speaker 3: my connection with God. But I often have to tell
Speaker 3: my friends of faith there's a difference between being receptive
Speaker 3: of his word and the idea that he might be
Speaker 3: powerful and responsibility. You can be recept you can be receptive,
Speaker 3: or it can be responsible. And I think you have
Speaker 3: to know there's a spectrum there right. Some people are
Speaker 3: very receptive, but they're very passive, and some other people
Speaker 3: are receptive, but their response and what I always got
Speaker 3: from Gideon, and this was a turning point, I think
Speaker 3: in our friendship, at least for me, when you told
Speaker 3: me the story of Gideon. The way you explained it
Speaker 3: to me was that you know, no matter what's going
Speaker 3: on around you, it still do not be afraid, be
Speaker 3: bold and courageous, yeah, and go in. The strength that
Speaker 3: you have was so huge to me that I started
Speaker 3: shouting to my audiences last year, I'm all put their hands.
Speaker 2: Up, I'm here, I'm ready, I go in strength. I
Speaker 2: love that.
Speaker 3: And this is after we've acknowledged all the suffering and
Speaker 3: all the challenges and all the difficulties we have, we
Speaker 3: can still say I'm here, I'm ready, I go in strength.
Speaker 3: And I really believe that the huge shift is when
Speaker 3: we say I'll go and strength forward.
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us.
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Speaker 2: Thanks again for listening. God bless you