Episode Transcript
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Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
Other Bleeding Daylight episodes and links to our social media channels are at bleedingdaylight.net.
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Are you a truly joyful person?
How do we find real joy despite the struggles of life?
Today's guest once envied the joy of others, but today helps people discover true joy.
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He's convinced we can all do the same.
Today I'm speaking with John J.
R.
Rennie, a seasoned entrepreneur and the founder of Brushfires Ministry.
After almost 40 years operating a business software company, John felt a calling that steered him toward his true purpose.
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John now dedicates his efforts to helping believers uncover their God-given purpose.
His desire is to guide individuals, families, and ministries toward a fulfilling and joyous life in Christ.
J.
R., thank you for your time today.
Thank you for the invite and being able to talk to your audience.
I'm looking forward to the conversation.
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I suppose that after so many years moving in one particular direction, you must have had a very different conclusion to your working life in mind.
Well, yeah, actually, the year that God was bringing me through going from the corporate world to the ministry was a rough year.
I was not happy when God changed my plan.
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I was quite content thinking that I'd hit 65 and retire and then slowly wind down the company.
It wasn't one of my finer moments when God said, Nope, I got a different plan for you.
So it took a little getting used to.
It seems in one sense that you very much changed direction, and yet we see throughout your business life, God was already shaping you and helping you learn some of the lessons that you would later learn.
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What are some of the lessons that you picked up along the way in that corporate world that actually helped you to transition to the ministry that you're now in?
Well, our ministry is a technology ministry.
All of our assessments are online, all our coaching is done online, the digital workshop videos are all online.
So part of my experience in being able to do that in my corporate life was part of that.
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The other things were just part of being able to build a good team of employees.
I coached soccer for seven years, picking players and putting them in the right position.
All that was built into my DNA.
I just assumed that it was just a learned town and so forth.
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But it's not until you actually start getting into design that you really realize that these things that you have are gifts from God from the beginning.
Now you can use them and exploit them for your selfish purposes, or you can use them as they are intended to help mankind and to be able to serve in the kingdom.
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That's part of the transition in my thinking was differentiating my giftings with what God wants to do and how He used them.
It's an interesting point you pick up there, because as you say, you were already involved in coaching in a sense, coaching a soccer team, but also coaching your work team and finding the right people within your business.
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I'm sure while it was work and often strategically done, there was a natural leaning towards that.
How often do you find that people don't realize that the natural leanings that they have, those things that come somewhat easily to them, are very likely to be the gift that God has given them?
Yeah, that's actually extremely common.
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We presume that our interests are something that we picked up from our parents.
Our abilities are just something that anybody can do, and we really wind up creating quite a bit of division that way.
Like, why aren't you interested in the same thing I'm interested in?
Or, that's easy.
Why can't you do that?
My background in school was math and accounting were things that I gravitated real easily to, and algebra and geometry, they were like a second language.
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That bode well for my programming and being able to do that sort of structured thinking.
Well, when I was raising my son, who is not gifted that way, I know that I expressed frustration with him, and I wish I could take it back, but why can't you get this?
This is simple algebra, this is simple geometry.
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Well, it's simple for me because of the wiring and how God designed me.
It's not simple for my son.
I wish I could go back and go, you know what, you're going to struggle in this particular area, but you've got to get through it for school.
Let's really focus in on the arts because you're good at that, or let's focus in on communication because dude, you know how to talk to people really well.
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Let's work in your giftings, not me thinking that you should be like me.
There is another side to that, in that when people expect us to operate in a certain way, we have certain giftings that we find easily, but there are other things that we see in other people, and we keep wishing we had those, and ignoring the fact that actually we're gifted in a different way that they probably wish they had.
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See, that's the beauty of what we do.
Every child of God is uniquely gifted to accomplish his will, and there are no mistakes, and there are no better gifts or worse gifts.
They are all beautiful as God lays them out.
The thing is that that comparison that you just mentioned is going to lead that person to frustration and just unhappiness, lack of fulfillment.
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But when they do what they were created to do, when their God-given interests, abilities, and values are aligned with God's agenda for their life, the natural outpouring of that is joy and fulfillment.
You find where you function.
You find how you can make a difference.
You find true happiness based upon agreeing with God of what He wants to do through you.
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I want to go back to that time that you mentioned where God derailed your plans of just winding down, retiring.
Because so many times we talk about the way that God has directed us, and I know that there are people thinking, but I never feel that direction.
So how did it come to you?
What form did God's direction take in your life?
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The software company at that point, this was in 2014-15.
Very successful, had great clients.
I had an employee that had a problem, and I had to let him go.
Well, I didn't realize until about six months later that I had just lost two-thirds of my income.
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After reinventing the company three times, I just knew I didn't have it in me again to hire new staff and do all that.
At the end of 2015, we experienced our first and greatest loss of real significance.
Going into January 2016, I came to one conclusion.
Either I close down the company and leave all my clients high and dry and let go of my employees, or I stop taking a paycheck.
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Because I'm not sure how long the company can last, I have to stop doing sales presentations.
I have to stop doing software development, all these other things that were no longer part of my agenda.
What God orchestrated was, my entire 2016 was up to Him, because He had wiped my calendar clean of all my responsibilities.
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Now, I would like to say that I took it in stride and I was really spiritual about it.
I wasn't.
I was bitter.
I remember sitting in a chair going, Okay, God, I know you're behind this.
What do you want?
The circumstances weren't because I mistreated my employees or mistreated my customers.
I couldn't point to the circumstances I ran like, Oh, yeah, you deserve this.
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This is what you get for doing that.
It wasn't of that nature.
I knew God was in the midst of it.
As soon as I could finally wrap my head around that and get to a point where I was like, All right, Lord, what do you want?
I'm going to do it.
Just let me know.
It wasn't easy.
It was rough.
I was not happy.
Tell me a little of your faith story to that point, because obviously, you're now in ministry, having come from this corporate background, this business background.
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Where did God figure in all of this in the lead up to this time?
Well, there was various opportunities to lead.
I led men's retreat communities for years.
I did Bible studies.
I did a number of things of that nature, but none of them really resonated with me.
There was a bit of that comparison in my life from the standpoint that I would see other believers having what was clearly joy.
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At first, I was skeptical, and I would really examine their lives, going, Oh, they're just putting on a happy face.
Then I got to know them.
I'm going, No, that's who they really are.
They really love what they're doing.
They're joy-filled.
I'm going, Why don't I have that?
In 2013, I wrote an article called, What is Joy?
I was prompted by listening to the challenges that Paul had being an apostle.
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He was shipwrecked multiple times, beaten with rods and whips and jailed and all these things.
He counted it all joy.
I'm going, How does a human do that?
How do you count it all joy, and your life is a train wreck of pain and shipwreck, actually.
Then the word in my head was, because he's doing what I created him to do.
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It was at that point where I finally was able to ascertain that joy is the intersection of you aligning your personal agenda with God's agenda for your life.
When you say, I'm going to do what it is that God wants me to do, what He created me to do, like Paul did, that's when you experience joy.
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Joy doesn't require you to have happy circumstances.
You can be shipwrecked and be joyful.
You can be imprisoned and write all the epistles.
You can be in all kinds of miserable physical situations and still have faith and count it joy.
We had three children.
I was there when all three of our kids were born.
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You watch your wife going through the pain.
You watch her going through the struggle of nine months of carrying and all the labor pain and so forth.
But at the end of that process, when you put that healthy baby in the mother's arms, joy.
Why?
Because one of the most significant things that that woman will ever do is by bringing that child to life.
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God is the author of life, and she said yes to the inconvenience of being pregnant.
She said yes to the circumstances of not being able to afford a baby.
She said yes to all the situations and brought that child to life, and her agenda and God's agenda intersected.
Well, for us believers, when we say yes to what God created us to do, we have the same opportunity to be able to experience joy as God works through you to accomplish His will.
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It was that comparison of going, I want joy.
I don't know how to get it, but Paul figured it out.
Now I need to figure it out and discover what I was created for.
It's interesting you touched on the point that you had led some men's retreats and done other things within church life.
I guess we all tend to do that kind of thing.
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We look for where are the opportunities, and we may take them on.
As you say, sometimes we're gifted for that and sometimes we're not.
How much do you believe we are sometimes stymied by what we see as these are the options that we seem to be in churches?
I don't think it's with any ill intent.
It's just that churches have programs, and we're given the opportunity.
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You can be part of this team or that team.
We look and we say, well, I'll pick the best one, when actually our calling might be something that is outside what is offered to us on a weekly roster.
I don't want to cast stones at the church, but the church really messes up in this area.
I'm sorry.
They just do.
There's an axiom that 8% of the work is done by 20% of the people, and I would argue that half of that 20% are unhappy about what they're doing.
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The reality is we do not look at our members in our church as parts of the body of Christ, and where do you fit in the body of Christ?
We don't do that.
That's the blueprint that God gave us, and that's what we should be doing, but we don't.
We have these programs and we have these agendas and this thing that we saw, this church conference and so forth, none of which may be exactly or even close to what God wants to do through that church.
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If every time a church happened and all the men showed up with hammers and two-by-fours and roofing tile and drywall, and the pastor continued to go, okay guys, let's go out there and build that car today.
No!
God clearly has given you an entire church filled with carpenters.
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Build a house!
Take an inventory of what God has given you as resources—that's what our assessment program does—and look at that and say, all right, what does God want to do with us?
Well, allow these people to have the gift of teaching.
We're not talking about teaching math, we're talking about teaching the Word of God.
Maybe we should create a program where we can help educate them.
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Maybe some of these guys should actually be going to seminary.
Let's look at what it is that God has given us as resources in the body of Christ in our own personal church and start investing in those lives.
Here's the thing.
The church is supposed to be creating disciples.
We're not doing a good job of that because we're not all busy doing our God-given responsibility.
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We were all made for a purpose, and we were all intended to be used by God for His glory to accomplish His will.
Let's take the time to actually figure out what it is that God wants to do through His people and align our agenda, our wills, with God's intention.
What I love about this is that there are many programs, there are many ways in which we can try and work out through various methods what our gifting is, but there's generally not a way to express that.
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Oftentimes in Scripture, we're spoken to corporately.
God will speak to a nation or a group of people.
What you're talking about here is saying, okay, how do we find out what is the purpose?
Not just individually, we need to know where we fit, but also corporately.
What has God planned for this particular expression of the body of Christ in this particular church?
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How important is that?
I think that would be extremely impactful, not only in the lives of the people participating in that.
Here's the thing.
You go to a church, and my experience was you see a small percentage of people that are really joy-filled and actually doing what God created them to do.
The worship leader, if he or she is good.
The pastor, if they are good.
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You see this small segment of people that are working out their purposes and where they fit in the body of Christ.
Imagine what would happen if that 80-20 maximum was turned on its head, and 80% of the people were actually involved in ministry.
They were experiencing that same joy in doing what it is that they're doing, and they can't stop talking about their ministry, and they can't stop giving the testimonies about this life being changed, and this person being led to the Lord, and this person going on to college to become a pastor.
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What impact would that group of people have on this community?
What kind of impact would that have on its county, in its state, in its nation?
We have never seen a church on fire like the Acts Church was.
We can.
We've got the blueprint.
God wants to work through His children.
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We just need to get out of our own way and start saying yes to what He wants to do through us.
You've mentioned a number of times this lack of joy that can exist in the life of a believer, and some people just try and suck it up and pretend, no, no, I'm joyful.
I really am.
Yet, for yourself, you came to that moment when you were having this little bit of a crisis with the company and then, God, what next, where you discovered what it means to have that joy.
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Tell me about that aha moment for you.
Well, there's been a number of them with regards to this.
One of the ones that comes to mind is part of our process is coming up with Purpose Team.
We have what's called a design discovery meeting.
There was a man that I met through this process.
I was trying to help him and his wife discover their purpose statement and do all that, and he was really not on board.
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He was very skeptical, and he was ignoring all the guidance I was giving him.
Anyway, we were in the middle of doing his purpose statement, and I had my back to him, and I was writing down the results that my wife was gleaning from him in the question and answer part that she was leading.
I'm writing down all these answers, and then all of a sudden, in the midst of that, I've got my back to them.
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All of a sudden, my throat starts tightening up, and I feel this emotion of sorrow just wave over me like my dog just got run over or something like that.
I was just really sad, and to the point where you can't talk when you're going to cry.
I was on the verge of that.
I'm going, holy cow, what's going on?
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This is really weird.
Why am I experiencing that?
Nothing had been said.
Then the Holy Spirit speaks to me and goes, this is what he feels every day.
I turned around, and I looked at the man, and I go, you've been hurt really deeply, haven't you?
Now, this is the guy who was in his early 70s, and he looks at me, and he goes, JR, I was never good enough for my father.
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Now, that's a burden that he'd been carrying for well over 60 some years.
He and I never talked about his father.
I don't know anything about his life.
The Holy Spirit poured that into me so that I could reach into him and go, no, God's got something better for you.
God's got something better for you, and we're going to get to it, and you're going to be able to experience it, and we did.
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I look at moments like that, and I go, partnering with God, well, first of all, blow your mind, because there will be things that will happen that you won't understand.
But partnering with God gives you power and authority that you never realized was possible and will allow you to impact your world in ways that you could never have imagined.
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One of the things I love about what you do is not just that you are helping people discover a purpose, a direction, a joy in life that is actually a joy in God, but you're then saying, okay, you know where you're headed.
Go back and do that for your friends.
Go back and do that for your family, for other people at church.
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How important is it that we are not only finding out things about ourselves, but that we are then equipped to go and minister to others?
I would say one of the most confirming aspects of are you in the right ministry is, is this something that God has led you through, and you have achieved victory over that setback or whatever it was?
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Quite likely that is the same sort of people that you are to minister to.
So, in my example, that frustration of not being able to experience joy when I saw it in others, that's exactly what I'm doing.
I'm telling people, if you want to really experience joy, do what God created you to do.
Do that.
If you have been able to endure the process and the terrible trauma of losing a child, guess who you are supposed to minister to?
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Because God got you through that.
There are people that are going to get divorced because they lost a child because it destroys their entire life.
You can look at them and they can see in your eye the integrity and the pain and the hope that is in your eyes that you want to be able to share with them, to be able to overcome this problem.
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Have you had success over addiction?
Guess what?
Quite likely you're going to work with people that have had addiction problems.
Whatever God's brought you through, the way I talk to people is, listen, I'm three or four steps down this road about experiencing joy and about living out purpose than you are.
Follow me until our paths separate and God has you on what He wants you to do.
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One of the best examples or descriptions of what a Christian is, a Christian is one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.
I found purpose and joy by doing what it is that God created me to do, and in so doing, discover what I was created to do so that I could help others experience the same.
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When did you decide to turn this discovery that you had made in your search for, okay, God, what next?
Why have you brought me here into a ministry that helped other people?
How did that come about?
It was about May of 2017.
I had been going through this personality assessment training, which was a knack of God in the first place, because when I was asked to do it, I told the guy, no, there's no way.
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I had no interest in it, and I felt this prompting that God said, do it.
I'm going, God, come on.
I'm not taking a paycheck now for about 10 months.
I've cut all expenses in my company so that I could keep the thing afloat, and now you want me to spend $1,200 for me to do this?
That doesn't make any sense.
Do it.
Fine.
So, I signed up and I did it.
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One of the key things is to create a purpose statement, which is a byproduct of your interests, abilities, and values and the other assessment results that we work with.
Mine was and is, I must strategically lead a gifted team to embrace the power of their God-given design for long-term positive results.
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So, I'm pulling all these epiphanies, these
experiences, these revelations together one day in May, and I go, well, if you believe that joy
is doing what God created you to do, i.e., what happened with Paul, and as a son of the Most High
God, you are called to be obedient to his leading, and your purpose statement, now that you know it,
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is to build a team and to teach others to embrace the power of their God-given design,
what are you going to do about it?
At that point in time, I'm going, well, these assessments have always been used in the secular world for corporate training.
I guess I've got to bring it to the church, and I'm going to have to write the curriculum to be able to convey that message to the church.
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So, I started off doing just that.
By the way, at that moment when I said yes to God in that area, the ministry's name was given to me.
I would love to say that I thought of it because it's a cool name, but God simply said, and you're going to call Brushfire's Ministry.
Now, there wasn't this voice in my head, but the words came out of my head, and I can't attribute it to anything that I did intentionally other than be obedient to his call.
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So, then I'm like, all right, I've never written curriculum for a church program.
How am I supposed to do this?
I'm a corporate programmer.
Give me a financial statement.
I can deal with that, or write a manufacturing package.
I can do that.
So, I pulled out some old files of messages that I had given at men's retreats or at church or poetry that I had written or short stories that I wrote or devotionals at the time that I read that really spoke to me, and I took a photocopy because I just did.
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Or that article, like what is joy that I wrote in 2013.
And I started looking at this.
I go, he's been writing this curriculum through me for 20 plus years.
Everything that I need for this curriculum is already gathered in this folder.
And so, I just started putting things in piles.
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Oh, this is identity.
Oh, this is purpose.
Oh, this is service.
Oh, this is worship and praise.
Bam, bam, bam.
And before I knew it, in about four or six months, I had a cohesive eight-session program.
There was one last minute thing though.
I personally attest men's groups that do book studies because they rarely pay attention to the book or read the book or whatever.
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And for a short period of time, I was part of this one study.
And they brought up this one book by Bob Hassan and Danny Silk called The Business of Honor.
I got to chapter five where they're talking about the orphan child identity.
And I'm going, oh, this has got to be part of it.
So, at the last minute in December and January, I'm adding two more chapters to this curriculum to be able to accommodate that.
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Short of that, virtually everything that was part of the core curriculum was written literally before I said yes to God by me, which is really weird.
There must be so many stories of people who have maybe reluctantly, as you were when you first jumped into the whole idea of looking at where is my purpose, that have taken your course with maybe the same kind of attitude and yet have come through saying, hey, I've discovered something about myself.
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I've discovered a lot about God and I'm able to be more joyful in His presence.
Maybe you can share a story or two of those people that have actually found purpose as you've been a guide for them.
In addition to purpose, our ministry also addresses relationship conflict.
The story that comes to mind is more in line with that because each one of our designs has a natural opposite that we will rub the wrong way, or we will just not connect with certain people because they are wired differently than us.
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The enemy exploits this and creates division and disunity in families and churches and communities and so forth.
We were doing one of these sessions and 90% of the people that come into our program, Rodney, I don't know.
I have no personal relationship with them.
They heard it from a friend or a friend.
This nice young couple comes in, always on time, sits up front smiling and so forth.
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We were towards the very end of the eight-week session and we did his design, the husband's design.
The wife was the advisor watching all this going on.
Come up with his purpose statement and he agreed with it and went with it.
I'm thinking, cool.
I get a text from her like three days later and she goes, I really want to thank you what you did for my husband.
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It's allowed me to see him with new eyes.
By the way, we've been separated for over a year and your class has brought us closer together than anything else has in this year.
About two weeks later, we did her purpose statement and about two weeks after that, they moved back in together.
There's so much about our design that we don't understand about how we can rub people the wrong way, how we can make judgments about them.
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If we simply took the time to understand them based upon that God doesn't make mistakes and they're perfect as God created them to be, the behavior might not be perfect and we can address the behavior issues, but just because they don't think like you, act like you, or respond like you does not mean that they aren't perfect in God's hands.
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That understanding is so liberating in relationships and in building teams and is a way to really further the kingdom.
That in itself, obviously the purpose is even more important than that, but we can't oftentimes accomplish what God wants us to accomplish.
If we're constantly bickering with our family members or spouses or church members, we'll never get any traction.
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Some of that personal stuff has got to get addressed before God can start working out His purposes through you.
When we discover that we do have a purpose and a purpose within the community of believers that we're with, it must be enormously freeing for so many people.
My wife accuses me that I try to make people cry during the design discovery meeting.
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I don't, but most people are living a lie as far as the rest of the world sees.
They're an Instagram image of perfection.
They drive a nice car and their house is completely trashed inside and they're about to lose their job.
We have all the stuff going on where we have these facades.
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The thing about our assessments is that they're psychometric, which means they don't change over time.
Your design that God gave you is consistent throughout all your life.
When a person can take away that facade and be seen for who God created them to be.
I remember one beautiful young lady.
We always presume that beautiful people have an advantage and that their life is always perfect.
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She looks at me and she goes, you mean I'm not weird?
Another young lady, finally somebody who gets me.
There are three core human needs that we all need to belong.
We belong simply because we are children of the Most High God.
We all have a competency that there's something about us that is beneficial to the rest of the community.
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And then worthiness.
We have value regardless of what we do or what we can provide or our wealth or whatever.
All three of those things are missing in most people's lives.
They don't feel like they belong.
They feel like they've got nothing to contribute and they look at their self-worth as being penniless because they don't measure up to whoever's they're comparison themselves to.
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When you walk in your God-given purpose, you know that you belong because his power is working through you and you cannot do his work without being a born again son or daughter of the Most High God.
You know that you're competent because all of a sudden God's doing things through you that are blowing your mind, like my experience, and you know that you are worthy because he loves you.
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Psalm 139 goes, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
God is speaking this through David, fearfully, with awe and great respect, wonderful, unique, set apart.
Those are the attributes that God talks about his children.
The creator of the entire universe looks at each one of his children fearfully and wonderfully made.
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We belong, we're worthy, and we have something to contribute, and we just need to get on with the business.
I know that the things you've been speaking about have really struck a chord with some people that are listening right now.
If people want to get in touch with you or find out more, where should they go?
Brushfires-digital.com is our site.
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All of our products are available online, so anywhere in the English-speaking world.
We are perfect for a small group.
We are perfect for a couples group, a couple study, and certainly with churches.
I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net.
JR, it's been a delight to speak to you.
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Thank you so much for spending time with us, but also for what you're doing.
It's been great to have you on Bleeding Daylight today.
It's been a real pleasure, Rodney.
Thank you so much.