October 21, 2022 • 12 mins
God doesn’t want us to just exist in this life. He wants us to live exceptional lives. God owns everything and when we commit to serving Him, He gives us access to everything—ALL. That means we can stand on one side of the hill of our blessing and not see the other side because that’s how much God wants to bless us.
That blessing is more than material things. It’s wholeness. I don’t have to have faith and live like a pauper, I can be in good health and live in a great home as well. I can be mentally and financially stable. My faith can feed a hungry person, and the abundance God places in my life can feed and clothe a village.
I’m a King’s kid, and I can live just like I praise, GOOD!
Don’t wait until you get to heaven to enjoy everything that God has for you on Earth.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Welcome to the barbecue.
I am your host,
Naomi K thank you for listening for every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle upon 1000 hills 17 years ago I ran my first half marathon and this experience with the exception of transitioning into a vegetarian lifestyle transformed my thinking on health,
(00:36):
wellness and wholeness.
I was never a short or long distance runner,
although I was pretty fast as a kid and when I was in high school I took up track and field but only in the field events.
I mean I could throw a shot put in a discus far enough that I actually made it to regionals once.
However,
running still wasn't my thing,
which is why running a half marathon was nothing short of a miracle in my life.
(01:01):
This is how it all came about.
I had gotten off work one evening and received a phone call from a family member that a close high school friend of mine had just passed away and the news was so shocking that I had to pull over into a parking lot of a nearby apartment complex to process the information.
A couple days later,
I got up the courage to drive over to my friend's parents house to pay my respects.
(01:25):
And as I mentioned in a previous podcast,
dealing with death is always a challenge for me,
especially if the person who passed away meant a lot to me.
It's just not my cup of tea and not that there's anyone else's but saying I'm sorry to someone who just lost a huge part of their world doesn't resonate the feelings of I care enough for me.
(01:47):
However,
the visit ended up being more comfortable than I imagined the family was holding up pretty well and there was so much peace in the home that evening that I totally forgot about my plan to just say I'm sorry at the door and then tearfully run away as quickly as I came,
God always has a plan for every situation that we go through.
(02:07):
I stayed with the family for a few hours and then I headed on home And Fred Hammonds song,
you are my life gave me comfort on the drive home.
And it also made me have a moment of gratitude because I kept thinking that my friend could have been me.
She and I were the same age and I was just one month shy of my 26th birthday when she passed away.
(02:31):
The both of us were too young for this entire situation,
death and grieve.
And of course there was an entire laundry list of other thoughts ransacking my mind um as well on that ride home.
But nothing outweighed the gratitude I felt towards God at that moment for just being alive.
I pulled into my apartment complex that I lived in at the time and walked over to the mailbox to check the mail.
(02:55):
And there it was a postcard invitation to join TNT to raise and help raise funds for the leukemia and lymphoma society and my friend had just passed away from a form of lymphoma.
I still get chills.
Um,
to this day when I think about how that happened,
I held onto that postcard like it was the last $5.00 I had to my name,
(03:17):
but I still struggled for days as to whether or not to accept the invite or to even go to the meeting to hear more about the opportunity.
Like I said before,
I wasn't a runner and the closest I've ever come to running was the 4 40 warm up and high school track practice.
So 13.2 miles of non stop running seemed like a mission to end my life to me.
(03:39):
But I did it.
I made the call,
went to the meeting and accepted the offer to run and raise funds for the organization.
After I left the meeting,
I went and ate an entire pint of ice cream because I was so freaked out about deciding To run a full half marathon.
I remember nervously laughing through each spoonful of ice cream.
(04:00):
Well a month later I started training and totally shocked myself by running five miles nonstop at a nine minute mile pace each week I ran longer and steadier and my coach actually nicknamed me the cab because I didn't look like I was running fast enough,
but I always managed to finish a marathon pace and ahead of most of all the faster runners on the team as well.
(04:22):
Training lasted about maybe six months.
We ran trails and paths all over the city and the bay area and then race time came,
I boarded a plane with the team on a thursday morning and we all headed out to san Francisco for the first annual Nike women's half marathon.
It was a four day event,
so we had two days to run around the city before the big race day.
(04:44):
On that saturday,
we landed in California and headed off to the hotel to get our room assignments and the hotel that we stayed in was beautiful.
The views were amazing.
It was just top tier luxury and concierge the entire weekend.
It felt like heaven or at least I thought it did until I met Gabriella,
(05:06):
she was this small framed young Romanian woman who had just left her family behind in Romania and came to America a few years prior,
Gabriella came to America to have it all and when she came,
she came with only a few dollars in her pocket and a few words of english in her vocabulary.
(05:27):
And within a short amount of time,
Gabriella taught herself english spanish,
graduated from junior college with honors and managed to land herself a spot at Harvard University.
The girl was bad.
Well,
oddly enough,
Gabriella and I jelled immediately,
I was high off life and she was high off of accomplishments and we strolled around san Francisco like two old girlfriends,
(05:54):
fresh out of a high school reunion.
I mean Union Square took a beating that day we shopped like crazy and ate at fancy restaurants while we laughed and joked about life and about our families whenever I'm hanging out or spending time with someone that I gel with,
I like to bring up the subject of religion because I like to hear what other people think about God.
(06:18):
So while we were at dinner I waited until a good time to interrupt our girl.
Time to ask Gabriella about her faith.
Her answer surprised me for about an hour.
She talked about what religion meant in her country,
basically.
There wasn't one the closest they were allowed to come to God was a picture of the president on the wall.
(06:41):
They weren't even allowed to pray openly and there was no yearning to meet other saints because the churches were non existent,
however she knew of God and believed in his presence and by the way she described him to me,
she sounded like she knew him better than I did and I considered myself the saved one at the table.
Gabriella's response kind of messed up my little evangelism plan because if she had answered that she didn't know God,
(07:07):
I was going to slip in a little introduction of him to her at dinner.
Well,
our conversation evolved from talking about God to the topic of having it all in this life.
God.
Money houses family,
health prosperity,
any nice thing.
Gabriella came to America to have the chance to have it all.
(07:30):
And me and my false humility.
I thought I had already had it all.
My little basic definition of all was simply being totally in love with God and whatever he desires for me,
that's all I need.
And if everyone else in the world had him,
he'd be all they needed as well.
And there's nothing wrong with that answer because it's true.
(07:51):
However,
it was a trained answer that I learned to rehearse from being in church My whole life,
Gabriella knew what her all was like.
It was the back of her hand and here it was.
I truly couldn't define all at all.
Maybe it was because at that time in my life I had a mediocre expectation of God.
I was just happy to be blessed to have a car,
(08:13):
a roof over my head and a job that paid my bills without having to rely on anyone else.
I never thought about anything more exceptional than that.
Then Gabriella turned the tables on me.
She looked at me and asked me a few questions.
That blew up my shallow religious thinking.
She asked me,
doesn't God own everything and if he owns everything and wants you to be happy,
(08:39):
why are you waiting until you get to heaven to have it all.
Can't you have it all right now?
My mouth felt like it was glued shut.
There's this myth in church that the more poor you are,
the closer you are to God.
That's not true.
And it's not biblical either.
God does not delight in the poverty of his people.
(09:02):
He loves it when you praise him regardless of what circumstance you're in.
But he doesn't take joy.
And you living check to check or hand to mouth,
that's just not who he is.
We got back to the hotel room and that night when I got down to pray,
I was totally lost about what to say to God.
I have been underestimating his power in my life and thinking that I was living my best life because I was so gracious about the little bit that I had listen,
(09:30):
it's okay to want more more is not a sin.
It's an opportunity to be a blessing.
I laid on my back that night with my eyes closed,
letting my heart pour out to God.
And he reminded me of something he said to the Israelites in psalm 50 verses 10 and 11,
it says,
(09:51):
for every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle upon 1000 hills.
I know all the fouls of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are mine in context.
God is pretty much gathering Israel together in this chapter,
setting them straight.
He's reminding them who he is and what he's capable of and how they should worship him as such.
(10:15):
He even goes on to say if I were hungry,
I would not tell the for the world is mine and the fullness there.
Of When I read verse 10,
I wondered why God used the description of cattle upon 1000 hills.
So I researched some images to get a visual of what it looked like.
When you stand on one side of a hill,
(10:37):
you can see the cattle at the top,
but you can't see the other side of the hill.
However,
you know that there are thousands more just like it because God said so In Ephesians three Paul tells the Saints at Ephesus now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that work within us.
(11:02):
I like the way another translation puts it.
God can do anything you know,
far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams and he does it with his spirit deeply and gently within us.
I thought training and running that half marathon was all about continuing my health journey and honoring a friend of mine who had just passed away.
(11:26):
But God sent me all the way to California to meet Gabriella so that he can prophesy through her to tell me that God doesn't just want us to exist in his life.
He wants us to live exceptional lives.
Gabriella was trying to remind me that God owns everything and when we commit to serving him,
(11:46):
he gives us access to everything access to all that means we can stand on one side of the hill of our blessing and not see the other side because that's how much God wants to bless us.
And that blessing is more than material things.
It's wholeness.
I don't have to have faith and live like a pulp.
(12:07):
Er I can be in good health and live in a great home as well.
I can be mentally stable and financially stable.
My faith can feed a hungry person and the abundance that God places in my life can feed and clothe the village.
I am a king's child and I can live just like I praise good.
(12:29):
Don't wait until you get to heaven to enjoy everything that God has for you here on earth.
Thank you for listening.
Welcome to the barbecue.
I am your host,
Naomi K thank you for listening for every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle upon 1000 hills 17 years ago I ran my first half marathon and this experience with the exception of transitioning into a vegetarian lifestyle transformed my thinking on health,
(00:36):
wellness and wholeness.
I was never a short or long distance runner,
although I was pretty fast as a kid and when I was in high school I took up track and field but only in the field events.
I mean I could throw a shot put in a discus far enough that I actually made it to regionals once.
However,
running still wasn't my thing,
which is why running a half marathon was nothing short of a miracle in my life.
(01:01):
This is how it all came about.
I had gotten off work one evening and received a phone call from a family member that a close high school friend of mine had just passed away and the news was so shocking that I had to pull over into a parking lot of a nearby apartment complex to process the information.
A couple days later,
I got up the courage to drive over to my friend's parents house to pay my respects.
(01:25):
And as I mentioned in a previous podcast,
dealing with death is always a challenge for me,
especially if the person who passed away meant a lot to me.
It's just not my cup of tea and not that there's anyone else's but saying I'm sorry to someone who just lost a huge part of their world doesn't resonate the feelings of I care enough for me.
(01:47):
However,
the visit ended up being more comfortable than I imagined the family was holding up pretty well and there was so much peace in the home that evening that I totally forgot about my plan to just say I'm sorry at the door and then tearfully run away as quickly as I came,
God always has a plan for every situation that we go through.
(02:07):
I stayed with the family for a few hours and then I headed on home And Fred Hammonds song,
you are my life gave me comfort on the drive home.
And it also made me have a moment of gratitude because I kept thinking that my friend could have been me.
She and I were the same age and I was just one month shy of my 26th birthday when she passed away.
(02:31):
The both of us were too young for this entire situation,
death and grieve.
And of course there was an entire laundry list of other thoughts ransacking my mind um as well on that ride home.
But nothing outweighed the gratitude I felt towards God at that moment for just being alive.
I pulled into my apartment complex that I lived in at the time and walked over to the mailbox to check the mail.
(02:55):
And there it was a postcard invitation to join TNT to raise and help raise funds for the leukemia and lymphoma society and my friend had just passed away from a form of lymphoma.
I still get chills.
Um,
to this day when I think about how that happened,
I held onto that postcard like it was the last $5.00 I had to my name,
(03:17):
but I still struggled for days as to whether or not to accept the invite or to even go to the meeting to hear more about the opportunity.
Like I said before,
I wasn't a runner and the closest I've ever come to running was the 4 40 warm up and high school track practice.
So 13.2 miles of non stop running seemed like a mission to end my life to me.
(03:39):
But I did it.
I made the call,
went to the meeting and accepted the offer to run and raise funds for the organization.
After I left the meeting,
I went and ate an entire pint of ice cream because I was so freaked out about deciding To run a full half marathon.
I remember nervously laughing through each spoonful of ice cream.
(04:00):
Well a month later I started training and totally shocked myself by running five miles nonstop at a nine minute mile pace each week I ran longer and steadier and my coach actually nicknamed me the cab because I didn't look like I was running fast enough,
but I always managed to finish a marathon pace and ahead of most of all the faster runners on the team as well.
(04:22):
Training lasted about maybe six months.
We ran trails and paths all over the city and the bay area and then race time came,
I boarded a plane with the team on a thursday morning and we all headed out to san Francisco for the first annual Nike women's half marathon.
It was a four day event,
so we had two days to run around the city before the big race day.
(04:44):
On that saturday,
we landed in California and headed off to the hotel to get our room assignments and the hotel that we stayed in was beautiful.
The views were amazing.
It was just top tier luxury and concierge the entire weekend.
It felt like heaven or at least I thought it did until I met Gabriella,
(05:06):
she was this small framed young Romanian woman who had just left her family behind in Romania and came to America a few years prior,
Gabriella came to America to have it all and when she came,
she came with only a few dollars in her pocket and a few words of english in her vocabulary.
(05:27):
And within a short amount of time,
Gabriella taught herself english spanish,
graduated from junior college with honors and managed to land herself a spot at Harvard University.
The girl was bad.
Well,
oddly enough,
Gabriella and I jelled immediately,
I was high off life and she was high off of accomplishments and we strolled around san Francisco like two old girlfriends,
(05:54):
fresh out of a high school reunion.
I mean Union Square took a beating that day we shopped like crazy and ate at fancy restaurants while we laughed and joked about life and about our families whenever I'm hanging out or spending time with someone that I gel with,
I like to bring up the subject of religion because I like to hear what other people think about God.
(06:18):
So while we were at dinner I waited until a good time to interrupt our girl.
Time to ask Gabriella about her faith.
Her answer surprised me for about an hour.
She talked about what religion meant in her country,
basically.
There wasn't one the closest they were allowed to come to God was a picture of the president on the wall.
(06:41):
They weren't even allowed to pray openly and there was no yearning to meet other saints because the churches were non existent,
however she knew of God and believed in his presence and by the way she described him to me,
she sounded like she knew him better than I did and I considered myself the saved one at the table.
Gabriella's response kind of messed up my little evangelism plan because if she had answered that she didn't know God,
(07:07):
I was going to slip in a little introduction of him to her at dinner.
Well,
our conversation evolved from talking about God to the topic of having it all in this life.
God.
Money houses family,
health prosperity,
any nice thing.
Gabriella came to America to have the chance to have it all.
(07:30):
And me and my false humility.
I thought I had already had it all.
My little basic definition of all was simply being totally in love with God and whatever he desires for me,
that's all I need.
And if everyone else in the world had him,
he'd be all they needed as well.
And there's nothing wrong with that answer because it's true.
(07:51):
However,
it was a trained answer that I learned to rehearse from being in church My whole life,
Gabriella knew what her all was like.
It was the back of her hand and here it was.
I truly couldn't define all at all.
Maybe it was because at that time in my life I had a mediocre expectation of God.
I was just happy to be blessed to have a car,
(08:13):
a roof over my head and a job that paid my bills without having to rely on anyone else.
I never thought about anything more exceptional than that.
Then Gabriella turned the tables on me.
She looked at me and asked me a few questions.
That blew up my shallow religious thinking.
She asked me,
doesn't God own everything and if he owns everything and wants you to be happy,
(08:39):
why are you waiting until you get to heaven to have it all.
Can't you have it all right now?
My mouth felt like it was glued shut.
There's this myth in church that the more poor you are,
the closer you are to God.
That's not true.
And it's not biblical either.
God does not delight in the poverty of his people.
(09:02):
He loves it when you praise him regardless of what circumstance you're in.
But he doesn't take joy.
And you living check to check or hand to mouth,
that's just not who he is.
We got back to the hotel room and that night when I got down to pray,
I was totally lost about what to say to God.
I have been underestimating his power in my life and thinking that I was living my best life because I was so gracious about the little bit that I had listen,
(09:30):
it's okay to want more more is not a sin.
It's an opportunity to be a blessing.
I laid on my back that night with my eyes closed,
letting my heart pour out to God.
And he reminded me of something he said to the Israelites in psalm 50 verses 10 and 11,
it says,
(09:51):
for every beast of the forest is mine and the cattle upon 1000 hills.
I know all the fouls of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are mine in context.
God is pretty much gathering Israel together in this chapter,
setting them straight.
He's reminding them who he is and what he's capable of and how they should worship him as such.
(10:15):
He even goes on to say if I were hungry,
I would not tell the for the world is mine and the fullness there.
Of When I read verse 10,
I wondered why God used the description of cattle upon 1000 hills.
So I researched some images to get a visual of what it looked like.
When you stand on one side of a hill,
(10:37):
you can see the cattle at the top,
but you can't see the other side of the hill.
However,
you know that there are thousands more just like it because God said so In Ephesians three Paul tells the Saints at Ephesus now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that work within us.
(11:02):
I like the way another translation puts it.
God can do anything you know,
far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams and he does it with his spirit deeply and gently within us.
I thought training and running that half marathon was all about continuing my health journey and honoring a friend of mine who had just passed away.
(11:26):
But God sent me all the way to California to meet Gabriella so that he can prophesy through her to tell me that God doesn't just want us to exist in his life.
He wants us to live exceptional lives.
Gabriella was trying to remind me that God owns everything and when we commit to serving him,
(11:46):
he gives us access to everything access to all that means we can stand on one side of the hill of our blessing and not see the other side because that's how much God wants to bless us.
And that blessing is more than material things.
It's wholeness.
I don't have to have faith and live like a pulp.
(12:07):
Er I can be in good health and live in a great home as well.
I can be mentally stable and financially stable.
My faith can feed a hungry person and the abundance that God places in my life can feed and clothe the village.
I am a king's child and I can live just like I praise good.
(12:29):
Don't wait until you get to heaven to enjoy everything that God has for you here on earth.
Thank you for listening.
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