April 11, 2025 • 19 mins
In a world where success is often celebrated and failure is shunned, the latest episode of Radio Coffee House challenges the conventional narrative by exploring the idea that sometimes, failure is not just a setback but a setup for something greater. Host Clint Armitage delves into a poignant conversation inspired by the insights of Dallas Jenkins, the creator of the hit series "The Chosen."
The episode begins with Clint reflecting on a interview between Dallas Jenkins and Jordan Peterson, where Jenkins shares his journey as a filmmaker. He reveals that his path to success was paved with a significant failure, the release of his film "The Resurrection of Gavin Stone," which bombed spectacularly. This moment of despair led him to question his calling and the very presence of God in his life.
Clint emphasizes a critical takeaway from Jenkins' narrative: just because we experience failure doesn't mean we are abandoned by God. In fact, it may be the very means through which God redirects us towards our true purpose. The conversation takes a deeper turn as Clint draws parallels with biblical stories, particularly the account of Elijah, who faced a God implemented change of direction.
The episode encourages listeners to reflect on their own lives. Have you ever felt like God set you up to fail? Clint shares his personal anecdotes, illustrating how moments of discomfort and confusion can often lead to profound revelations and new paths. He argues that it’s in these moments of desperation that we are most open to God’s guidance.
Listeners are invited to consider their own experiences with failure and to embrace the idea that these moments can be blessings in disguise. Clint’s engaging storytelling, combined with the insights from Jenkins, creates a thought-provoking narrative that resonates with anyone who has faced setbacks.
As the episode wraps up, Clint leaves the audience with a powerful reminder: God may allow our "brooks" to dry up, but it’s often to encourage us to seek new directions and opportunities. This episode is not just about failure; it’s about the potential for growth and the assurance that God is always at work, even in our most challenging times.
Tune in to this enlightening episode of Radio Coffee House to explore how failure can indeed lead to success, and how embracing God’s purpose can transform our lives in unexpected ways.
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🗣️ Quotes from Clint Armitage
"Did God do it on purpose in order to change his direction?"
"Sometimes we need to fail in order to win."
"We have to stop holding on to what we believe is our path and our way."
---
🗣️ Quotes from Dallas Jenkins
"It was birthed from failure."
"Just because you're at a place of hunger and desperation doesn't necessarily mean that God's not in it."
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to another edition of the Radio Coffeeh House
show, where Jesus meets coffee meets talk
radio. And the next one starts right
now.
Well, hello, everybody. Clint Armitage with their Radio
Coffee House. Another episode coming at
you, and this one is
(00:24):
about God, and if he did it
to you on purpose. All right, what do I mean by that?
Well, I caught an interview of
Jordan Peterson interviewing Dallas Jenkins,
the creator of the chosen TV show, and
they go into the show and all that.
But what I really want to focus on is where
(00:44):
Dallas Jenkins talks about how God
set him up for it. And he didn't set him
up by giving him success after success after
success. He gave him a huge
failure that set him up for
success. And so that's where
we have to question, like, wait a minute, did God do this on
purpose in order to do that? Which was a
(01:06):
blessing in disguise. Right? So
that's what this episode is about. We're going to be talking about
God's purposes, God's calling.
They actually go into this dialogue back and forth throughout
the, uh, show. So you can't really get a full
story from Dallas regarding
his background and this point that I'm trying to
make. So I just took a portion of that interview,
(01:28):
and then I'm going to add on to it. But when you listen to
the audio clip, you're going to hear a little bit of the backstory
and the setup for if God does things
on purpose to make you fail in order
that you could win. Interesting thought, isn't it? Did God
do it on purpose? Hmm. Well, let's check out what
he has to say.
(01:53):
You start at the beginning of the vision
for the series and the ambition for the series, and
just tell the story, because lots of people who are.
Who are, uh, engaged in this
podcast won't know it.
It was birthed from failure. So
for coming up on 20
years leading up to 2017, uh, I've been a
(02:14):
filmmaker for that long. I've made several films with varying
degrees of success, but all independent outside
of the studio system. That's what. When you hear the term indie film or independent
film, it means not financed by the. By the studios. And I
had varying degrees of success, but I was very eager to make a
film that was, uh, either financed
or affirmed or endorsed by Hollywood. And I finally got a chance to
(02:34):
do that in, uh, 2016. It released
in 2017. So January 20,
2017, turned out to be the lowest
moment of my life, or at least my career, because
the film that I had gotten a chance to make, released in
theaters around the country with several big
Hollywood studios attached and working on it. And it completely
(02:54):
failed. And that was which film was called the Resurrection of Gavin
Stone. And the fact that you haven't heard of it is part of the reason
why it didn't do very well. So, uh, what
happens is on a Friday afternoon,
um, a math equation takes place. The numbers
come in from the east coast and you
can then decipher how a movie'gonna do that day,
how it'snna do that weekend, and most often how it's gonna
(03:17):
do for the life of it. And within a couple hours I
went from being a filmmaker who had a very bright future to a
filmmaker with no future because the movie bombed.
Uh, the other stories that we were hoping to tell with these
companies, the companies said no, never mind,
um, parent. Clearly we don't understand this
audience, this approach, the
kind of faith based filmmaking. And
(03:39):
so, uh, out of that,
um, I was home alone with my wife
Amanda and we were crying
and praying and confused because
you hear all the time, God's not the author of failure.
And so when you fail, you must assume
that the calling that you thought you'd received to do
(03:59):
this work must not have been a true calling. You
know, anytime we feel called to something,
it's hard to decipher sometimes. Whether it's a calling from
adappttation or a temptation or just
a desire, a fleshly desire. And sometimes it's a fleshly desire and
it's okay. It's uh, when we choose
what we're going toa eat for dinner tonight, I don't wait for God to reveal
(04:20):
it to me. I just have a desire for something and it's fine.
But I had spent, you know, two years of my life
developing this story and seeing so many moments
throughout that where doors were opening and God
clearly seemed to be present. And so then when it failed, I thought, I
guess I was wrong. I guess God wasn't present
and or wasn't calling me to this. And so in
the midst of my devastation,
(04:43):
um, Amanda came to me and
said, I feel very strongly and clearly
like God is putting it on my heart. Open the story. The feeding of
the 5,000 in the Gospels. I don't know why, I
just know that that's what we're supposed to do. So
we open the Bible to the feeding of the 5,000. A
story I've heard many times before. I've been a believer as long as I
(05:03):
can remember. So what about that
story was for us? Well, the
thing that we noticed in that story Was that,
uh, Jesus had been preaching for several days. The disciples
come to him and they say, master, the people are
hungry. We need to send them home to get food.
And what I hadn't noticed before in this story was that Jesus didn't
(05:24):
say, oh, good point. Um, I hadn't
realized that we should get this taken care of.
He already knew it. In fact, it was his fault. They were
hungry. They been. He'd been talking for two days, two, three
days. And his response was, oh, no, we can't send them
home because they're so hungry, they'll faint along the
way. So we realized in that
moment, just because you're at a place of hunger
(05:47):
and desperation doesn't necessarily mean that God's not in
it. And in fact, it may mean he is in it,
depending on your theology. He either allowed it or he caused
it. But being brought to that place of hunger
and desperation doesn't necessarily mean that,
uh, that you'been abandoned, right?
Or even necessarily that you were wrong.
(06:08):
Why did God tell the Israelites to camp out at the edge of
the Red Sea in advance of the Israelites
being pursued by the Egyptians? He said, go
to the edge of the Red Sea and camp out. He put them in this
place where they had no place to go.
When the Egyptians came and pursued
them, they had no escape.
(06:28):
And he put them there on purpose. And he says three times in
a span of several verses, so that I will get
glory.
Okay, great insight by Dallas
there. So what's your thoughts on that?
Have you ever been in a position where God has put you
in a place where you felt like you have
failed? I know I have many
(06:48):
times where I swore I was
following God's lead on something. I swore
I was following his lead on something. And then I
fail going through with it. Or I put myself
out there, or I risk something and I
fail, or it doesn't work out, or the door
closes. There are some times where
I really felt like God was in it, like
(07:11):
he had to be in it. The things that
happened and the circumstances that came up and the
way things worked out. There is no
possible way he is not in this at all.
And then the door closes and it all shuts down.
And I think, what the heck did I do wrong?
Or I think, why would God do
that? Why would he set me up to
(07:34):
fail? Then you start doubting yourself,
like, did I do something wrong? Okay, he told me to do this,
this, and this. Did I do it? Did I do it
exactly the way he told me? You start
rehashing what you did in
order to find out. Wait a minute. Uh, did I hear God
wrong or did God actually fail me? No,
he doesn't fail. So I had to have done something
(07:56):
wrong. I must have taken the left turn when he said take
a right turn. I must have not did something he told me to
do. And you start questioning yourself, and you
start going over things, rehashing things over and over in
your head, and you can go a little nuts. I know I have in
the past trying to retrace my steps to find
out what I did wrong. I had to have done something wrong. I had
(08:16):
to have. But that's before I started
realizing that sometimes we need to
fail in order to win.
I also realized that in order for
God to redirect us, he gives
us problems, right? We think we're on this
right path. And God's like, yeah,
you're on the right path for now. But then we get comfortable,
(08:39):
right? Or we think, okay, no, God's telling me this. And
we get into something and we get used to something, and then
he changes it. And how does he change it with problems?
Why? Because we never change things
ourselves when we don't have motivation to
do it. And most of the time, our motivation
comes from being uncomfortable. We don't
move when we're not uncomfortable. When we're
(09:01):
comfortable, we sit and stay and
enjoy, right? It's like your favorite couch,
your favorite chair. Guys usually have a favorite
chair. And when we're sitting in that chair, man, don't bother me. I don't
want to move from this position. I remember when I used to
take naps in hammocks. I used to love sleeping
in hammocks because I loved the position. I mean, just
(09:22):
the. The wrapping of the hammock, laying
down and just suspended in air,
man. So comfortable to take a nap. I didn't want
anybody to bother me during that time because I
enjoyed it. And I would have stayed there the
whole time, all day if I could. But no,
I have responsibilities. I can't stay in a hammock and
sleep there forever. So I had to do something. I had to get
(09:44):
up. And that's the way we are sometimes. We get complacent,
or we're trusting in something that
either God has led us to given us or
provided. And then now he's taking it away. Or we think
he's leading us in a certain direction, and then he just changes the
direction. Or a problem comes and we change the
direction. Have you ever thought about why you do that?
Why we think like that why that happens? It's
(10:07):
because, uh, God is trying to redirect us.
Sometimes he'll take us in a certain direction to
get us to a certain point, and then he
changes the direction. But we won't
know that. We won't even think about it until we're
uncomfortable or something happens to
us, a problem arises, then we start
thinking, then we start opening up our minds, and then we start talking to
(10:29):
God about it. Oh, Lord, what's going on here? There's this huge problem.
I can't take care of it. You to do, um. What am I supposed to
do? I don't know what to do. That's when we start opening
ourselves up to God's leading in a different direction.
Because if you didn't do that, we would stay down that same
comfortable content path until the end.
I remember I worked this one unit, my job for
(10:50):
only a few years, but, man, I told myself, I'm gonna
retire in this position. I'm gonna retire in this job. And
I was prepared to literally go
another 10 years in that job without getting
promoted because I enjoyed the job so much. But the
problem was I was getting so complacent about the position
itself that I was willing to not get
promoted, not make more money,
(11:13):
not advance my career just because I was
so satisfied. But I don't think God wanted that for
me. And so something happened to change it,
and it was uncomfortable. The unit got cut.
Budget cuts happen, and they cut that
unit. All my buddies in the unit, we got
transferred out administratively transferred. Then I
(11:33):
got transferred to a unit that I hated.
Oh, uh, man, I hated that unit.
But that's when I started opening myself up to
God and asking him, lord, what do you want me to do?
What's happening now?
I don't like this. Can I do something different?
And my heart and mind started to open to
God and started to plead with him and
(11:54):
ask him where he wanted me to go.
That's the only way I would have left that unit
was if that unit got cut. Cause there's no way I would have ve done
it on my own. Only when the problem came where it
got cut, I had no choice in it. And then I got transferred to a
unit that I despised. Not the people
or anything, it's just the work was not my
(12:15):
cup of tea. The type of work just was not for me. And I knew
it. And I knew I wasn't good at it, and I didn't like it at
all. And so after that, I was clawing my way, I was
Trying to get out. Why? Because I didn't like it. I was
uncomfortable. And so I opened myself up to God. And
within three months I was able to get another position,
which I enjoyed. I loved after that. But that's what it
(12:35):
takes. Sometimes it just takes us being
put in a position where something happens to
change our direction. And that could be God, like Dallas
Jenkins was talking about. He failed. But
it helped him open up his mind to what God was
trying to do and tried to say to him. And that only
would have happened if that was a failure, which it
was. That project was a failure. If it was a
(12:58):
success, he would have never been thinking. He would have been on that
same path, going down the same road, and then he would
have never moved forward with what God wanted
him to do. He wanted him to put together and create
the Chosen. And it's a huge success, and he's so
good at it. But he had never thought
about doing it to that extent
(13:18):
until he thought he failed. So, yeah,
God did that on purpose in order to change his
direction. And it reminds me of, uh, Elijah when he
announces that great drought to King Ahab. So
Ahab doesn't like Elijah because Elijah always comes with
bad news for ha. Ah. Because Ahab does not follow
the Lord at all. Horrible king and his wife
Jezebel. Horrible queen. So anyways, Elijah
(13:40):
is announcing this great drought that's go goingna
happen. And he goes up to Ahab and he says
in, uh, chapter 17 of 1 Kings, he
says, as the Lord, the God of Israel lives,
whom I serve, they will be neither do nor
reign in the next few years, except at
my word. So he gives them this prophecy, right? And then
(14:00):
it says in verse two, it says, then the word of the Lord came
to Elijah. Leave here, turn eastward and
hide in the Carth Ravine east of the
Jordan. You will drink from the brook. And I have directed
the ravens to supply food there. So he did
what the Lord had told him. He went to the Keth ravine
east of the Jordan and stayed there. The ravens brought
(14:21):
him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat
in the evening, and he drank from the brook. This
is where I want to focus in on when God
does things on purpose. Because, see, God led
Elijah to that brook, and he also told the
ravens to provide food for him. He told the ravens to bring
bread and meat twice a day for Elijah, and
then for drink, he just had the brook that was
(14:44):
down there. And that's why the Lord told him to go to the brook. But look at what
happens in verse 7, here it says this. Somet
time later the brook dried up because
there had been no rain in the land. Then the word
of the Lord came to him. Go at once to
Zerphath in the region of Sidon,
and stay there. I have directed a widow
there to supply you with food. So he went to
(15:06):
Zerphath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was
there gathering sticks. He called her and asked, would you bring me a little
water in a jar so I may have a drink, as uh, she was going to go get
it called and bring me please a piece
of bread as surely as the Lord your God lives. She
replied, I don't have any bread, only a handful of
flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug.
(15:26):
I am gathering a few sticks to take home, make a meal for
myself and my son, that we may eat it and
die. Elijah said to her, don't be afraid. Go
home and do as what you have said. But first make a small loaf of
bread for me from what you have and bring it to me.
And then make some for yourself and your son. For this is what the
Lord, the God of Israel says. The jar of
(15:46):
flour will not be used up and the jug of oil
will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on
the land. And she does this. And then God
blesses this lady through
Elijah. So she went away and did as
Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for
Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar
of flour was not used up and the jug of oil
(16:08):
did not run dry in keeping with the word of the Lord. Spokeen to
Elijah. So see, God answered the woman's prayer,
helped the woman because she was gonna eat and die. She was
ready to die. That's her mentality at that time.
But what happened? God used Elijah to
meet up with her. It was a God appointed meeting
for Elijah to meet with this lady. But Elisha
(16:29):
would have never met with her and miracles would have never
happened between them. And she would not have seen the
Lord's provision for her and her family.
Unless Elijah showed up. And there
was no way he would have shown up if he would have
stayed at the brook, if the ravens kept on bringing
him meat and bread every day. And that brook was still
(16:49):
flowing and he still got his hydration from
the water in the brook, he wouldn't have to leave. But it
wasn't God's plan. But God did tell him
to go there in the first place, and he provided
for him. But then he dried up
the brook. And sometimes we need
our brook dried up so that we will open ourselves up
(17:10):
to God so he can speak to us, so that we can go and
head another. In another direction, another direction that
he wants to us to go in so that we can bless someone
else. Remember, it's all about the gospel. It's all
about the good news. It's all about going out and
speaking to people, experiencing things with
people so that God gets the glory. You see,
(17:30):
that's what it's about. We can't stay focused on
ourselves. We can't stay in our
own little bubble, in our own little world.
That's not how God does it. That's not
what God wants us to do. He wants us to take
part in what he's doing. And what is he
doing? He's telling the whole world about
himself. And he says, hey, you want to play? You want to
(17:52):
participate? All we have to do is say yes. Let me
know what you need me to do. Let me know what you need me to say. Let
me know where you need me to go. We have to take those
steps. But sometimes we're stubborn. We'll pray,
lord, use me. Lord, help me
to speak to people about you. And then we
get all irritated when he does something in order to get
(18:12):
us to move because there's change and it
disrupts our life sometimes. He's going to
dry up that brook. We have to understand that
if we are truly here to serve him, to
glorify him, we need to be prepared
to do what he wants us to do when he wants us
to do it. Because on the other side, there's a blessing. Just
(18:32):
like with Dallas Jenkins. He was called to make
this movie. He felt like that was his purpose, and then he
failed. But that was God that set that up and
then that opened him up to follow
God's direction in another path, on another path.
And now he's doing what God wants him to do.
Now God may shut it down again. God may
shut things down that look like it is so
(18:54):
productive, but then go, nope, somewhere else.
That's his call. That's his choice. We
have to stop holding on to what we believe is
our path and our way. It's
all about God and his way. Surrender
to him. My name is Clint Armitage. This is the
Radio Coffeeh House. Thanks for coming back. And
(19:15):
until next time, stay safe and God bless.
Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Radio Coffeeh
House show where we're all about Jesus, Coffee
and radio. We'll see you next time.
Welcome to another edition of the Radio Coffeeh House
show, where Jesus meets coffee meets talk
radio. And the next one starts right
now.
Well, hello, everybody. Clint Armitage with their Radio
Coffee House. Another episode coming at
you, and this one is
(00:24):
about God, and if he did it
to you on purpose. All right, what do I mean by that?
Well, I caught an interview of
Jordan Peterson interviewing Dallas Jenkins,
the creator of the chosen TV show, and
they go into the show and all that.
But what I really want to focus on is where
(00:44):
Dallas Jenkins talks about how God
set him up for it. And he didn't set him
up by giving him success after success after
success. He gave him a huge
failure that set him up for
success. And so that's where
we have to question, like, wait a minute, did God do this on
purpose in order to do that? Which was a
(01:06):
blessing in disguise. Right? So
that's what this episode is about. We're going to be talking about
God's purposes, God's calling.
They actually go into this dialogue back and forth throughout
the, uh, show. So you can't really get a full
story from Dallas regarding
his background and this point that I'm trying to
make. So I just took a portion of that interview,
(01:28):
and then I'm going to add on to it. But when you listen to
the audio clip, you're going to hear a little bit of the backstory
and the setup for if God does things
on purpose to make you fail in order
that you could win. Interesting thought, isn't it? Did God
do it on purpose? Hmm. Well, let's check out what
he has to say.
(01:53):
You start at the beginning of the vision
for the series and the ambition for the series, and
just tell the story, because lots of people who are.
Who are, uh, engaged in this
podcast won't know it.
It was birthed from failure. So
for coming up on 20
years leading up to 2017, uh, I've been a
(02:14):
filmmaker for that long. I've made several films with varying
degrees of success, but all independent outside
of the studio system. That's what. When you hear the term indie film or independent
film, it means not financed by the. By the studios. And I
had varying degrees of success, but I was very eager to make a
film that was, uh, either financed
or affirmed or endorsed by Hollywood. And I finally got a chance to
(02:34):
do that in, uh, 2016. It released
in 2017. So January 20,
2017, turned out to be the lowest
moment of my life, or at least my career, because
the film that I had gotten a chance to make, released in
theaters around the country with several big
Hollywood studios attached and working on it. And it completely
(02:54):
failed. And that was which film was called the Resurrection of Gavin
Stone. And the fact that you haven't heard of it is part of the reason
why it didn't do very well. So, uh, what
happens is on a Friday afternoon,
um, a math equation takes place. The numbers
come in from the east coast and you
can then decipher how a movie'gonna do that day,
how it'snna do that weekend, and most often how it's gonna
(03:17):
do for the life of it. And within a couple hours I
went from being a filmmaker who had a very bright future to a
filmmaker with no future because the movie bombed.
Uh, the other stories that we were hoping to tell with these
companies, the companies said no, never mind,
um, parent. Clearly we don't understand this
audience, this approach, the
kind of faith based filmmaking. And
(03:39):
so, uh, out of that,
um, I was home alone with my wife
Amanda and we were crying
and praying and confused because
you hear all the time, God's not the author of failure.
And so when you fail, you must assume
that the calling that you thought you'd received to do
(03:59):
this work must not have been a true calling. You
know, anytime we feel called to something,
it's hard to decipher sometimes. Whether it's a calling from
adappttation or a temptation or just
a desire, a fleshly desire. And sometimes it's a fleshly desire and
it's okay. It's uh, when we choose
what we're going toa eat for dinner tonight, I don't wait for God to reveal
(04:20):
it to me. I just have a desire for something and it's fine.
But I had spent, you know, two years of my life
developing this story and seeing so many moments
throughout that where doors were opening and God
clearly seemed to be present. And so then when it failed, I thought, I
guess I was wrong. I guess God wasn't present
and or wasn't calling me to this. And so in
the midst of my devastation,
(04:43):
um, Amanda came to me and
said, I feel very strongly and clearly
like God is putting it on my heart. Open the story. The feeding of
the 5,000 in the Gospels. I don't know why, I
just know that that's what we're supposed to do. So
we open the Bible to the feeding of the 5,000. A
story I've heard many times before. I've been a believer as long as I
(05:03):
can remember. So what about that
story was for us? Well, the
thing that we noticed in that story Was that,
uh, Jesus had been preaching for several days. The disciples
come to him and they say, master, the people are
hungry. We need to send them home to get food.
And what I hadn't noticed before in this story was that Jesus didn't
(05:24):
say, oh, good point. Um, I hadn't
realized that we should get this taken care of.
He already knew it. In fact, it was his fault. They were
hungry. They been. He'd been talking for two days, two, three
days. And his response was, oh, no, we can't send them
home because they're so hungry, they'll faint along the
way. So we realized in that
moment, just because you're at a place of hunger
(05:47):
and desperation doesn't necessarily mean that God's not in
it. And in fact, it may mean he is in it,
depending on your theology. He either allowed it or he caused
it. But being brought to that place of hunger
and desperation doesn't necessarily mean that,
uh, that you'been abandoned, right?
Or even necessarily that you were wrong.
(06:08):
Why did God tell the Israelites to camp out at the edge of
the Red Sea in advance of the Israelites
being pursued by the Egyptians? He said, go
to the edge of the Red Sea and camp out. He put them in this
place where they had no place to go.
When the Egyptians came and pursued
them, they had no escape.
(06:28):
And he put them there on purpose. And he says three times in
a span of several verses, so that I will get
glory.
Okay, great insight by Dallas
there. So what's your thoughts on that?
Have you ever been in a position where God has put you
in a place where you felt like you have
failed? I know I have many
(06:48):
times where I swore I was
following God's lead on something. I swore
I was following his lead on something. And then I
fail going through with it. Or I put myself
out there, or I risk something and I
fail, or it doesn't work out, or the door
closes. There are some times where
I really felt like God was in it, like
(07:11):
he had to be in it. The things that
happened and the circumstances that came up and the
way things worked out. There is no
possible way he is not in this at all.
And then the door closes and it all shuts down.
And I think, what the heck did I do wrong?
Or I think, why would God do
that? Why would he set me up to
(07:34):
fail? Then you start doubting yourself,
like, did I do something wrong? Okay, he told me to do this,
this, and this. Did I do it? Did I do it
exactly the way he told me? You start
rehashing what you did in
order to find out. Wait a minute. Uh, did I hear God
wrong or did God actually fail me? No,
he doesn't fail. So I had to have done something
(07:56):
wrong. I must have taken the left turn when he said take
a right turn. I must have not did something he told me to
do. And you start questioning yourself, and you
start going over things, rehashing things over and over in
your head, and you can go a little nuts. I know I have in
the past trying to retrace my steps to find
out what I did wrong. I had to have done something wrong. I had
(08:16):
to have. But that's before I started
realizing that sometimes we need to
fail in order to win.
I also realized that in order for
God to redirect us, he gives
us problems, right? We think we're on this
right path. And God's like, yeah,
you're on the right path for now. But then we get comfortable,
(08:39):
right? Or we think, okay, no, God's telling me this. And
we get into something and we get used to something, and then
he changes it. And how does he change it with problems?
Why? Because we never change things
ourselves when we don't have motivation to
do it. And most of the time, our motivation
comes from being uncomfortable. We don't
move when we're not uncomfortable. When we're
(09:01):
comfortable, we sit and stay and
enjoy, right? It's like your favorite couch,
your favorite chair. Guys usually have a favorite
chair. And when we're sitting in that chair, man, don't bother me. I don't
want to move from this position. I remember when I used to
take naps in hammocks. I used to love sleeping
in hammocks because I loved the position. I mean, just
(09:22):
the. The wrapping of the hammock, laying
down and just suspended in air,
man. So comfortable to take a nap. I didn't want
anybody to bother me during that time because I
enjoyed it. And I would have stayed there the
whole time, all day if I could. But no,
I have responsibilities. I can't stay in a hammock and
sleep there forever. So I had to do something. I had to get
(09:44):
up. And that's the way we are sometimes. We get complacent,
or we're trusting in something that
either God has led us to given us or
provided. And then now he's taking it away. Or we think
he's leading us in a certain direction, and then he just changes the
direction. Or a problem comes and we change the
direction. Have you ever thought about why you do that?
Why we think like that why that happens? It's
(10:07):
because, uh, God is trying to redirect us.
Sometimes he'll take us in a certain direction to
get us to a certain point, and then he
changes the direction. But we won't
know that. We won't even think about it until we're
uncomfortable or something happens to
us, a problem arises, then we start
thinking, then we start opening up our minds, and then we start talking to
(10:29):
God about it. Oh, Lord, what's going on here? There's this huge problem.
I can't take care of it. You to do, um. What am I supposed to
do? I don't know what to do. That's when we start opening
ourselves up to God's leading in a different direction.
Because if you didn't do that, we would stay down that same
comfortable content path until the end.
I remember I worked this one unit, my job for
(10:50):
only a few years, but, man, I told myself, I'm gonna
retire in this position. I'm gonna retire in this job. And
I was prepared to literally go
another 10 years in that job without getting
promoted because I enjoyed the job so much. But the
problem was I was getting so complacent about the position
itself that I was willing to not get
promoted, not make more money,
(11:13):
not advance my career just because I was
so satisfied. But I don't think God wanted that for
me. And so something happened to change it,
and it was uncomfortable. The unit got cut.
Budget cuts happen, and they cut that
unit. All my buddies in the unit, we got
transferred out administratively transferred. Then I
(11:33):
got transferred to a unit that I hated.
Oh, uh, man, I hated that unit.
But that's when I started opening myself up to
God and asking him, lord, what do you want me to do?
What's happening now?
I don't like this. Can I do something different?
And my heart and mind started to open to
God and started to plead with him and
(11:54):
ask him where he wanted me to go.
That's the only way I would have left that unit
was if that unit got cut. Cause there's no way I would have ve done
it on my own. Only when the problem came where it
got cut, I had no choice in it. And then I got transferred to a
unit that I despised. Not the people
or anything, it's just the work was not my
(12:15):
cup of tea. The type of work just was not for me. And I knew
it. And I knew I wasn't good at it, and I didn't like it at
all. And so after that, I was clawing my way, I was
Trying to get out. Why? Because I didn't like it. I was
uncomfortable. And so I opened myself up to God. And
within three months I was able to get another position,
which I enjoyed. I loved after that. But that's what it
(12:35):
takes. Sometimes it just takes us being
put in a position where something happens to
change our direction. And that could be God, like Dallas
Jenkins was talking about. He failed. But
it helped him open up his mind to what God was
trying to do and tried to say to him. And that only
would have happened if that was a failure, which it
was. That project was a failure. If it was a
(12:58):
success, he would have never been thinking. He would have been on that
same path, going down the same road, and then he would
have never moved forward with what God wanted
him to do. He wanted him to put together and create
the Chosen. And it's a huge success, and he's so
good at it. But he had never thought
about doing it to that extent
(13:18):
until he thought he failed. So, yeah,
God did that on purpose in order to change his
direction. And it reminds me of, uh, Elijah when he
announces that great drought to King Ahab. So
Ahab doesn't like Elijah because Elijah always comes with
bad news for ha. Ah. Because Ahab does not follow
the Lord at all. Horrible king and his wife
Jezebel. Horrible queen. So anyways, Elijah
(13:40):
is announcing this great drought that's go goingna
happen. And he goes up to Ahab and he says
in, uh, chapter 17 of 1 Kings, he
says, as the Lord, the God of Israel lives,
whom I serve, they will be neither do nor
reign in the next few years, except at
my word. So he gives them this prophecy, right? And then
(14:00):
it says in verse two, it says, then the word of the Lord came
to Elijah. Leave here, turn eastward and
hide in the Carth Ravine east of the
Jordan. You will drink from the brook. And I have directed
the ravens to supply food there. So he did
what the Lord had told him. He went to the Keth ravine
east of the Jordan and stayed there. The ravens brought
(14:21):
him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat
in the evening, and he drank from the brook. This
is where I want to focus in on when God
does things on purpose. Because, see, God led
Elijah to that brook, and he also told the
ravens to provide food for him. He told the ravens to bring
bread and meat twice a day for Elijah, and
then for drink, he just had the brook that was
(14:44):
down there. And that's why the Lord told him to go to the brook. But look at what
happens in verse 7, here it says this. Somet
time later the brook dried up because
there had been no rain in the land. Then the word
of the Lord came to him. Go at once to
Zerphath in the region of Sidon,
and stay there. I have directed a widow
there to supply you with food. So he went to
(15:06):
Zerphath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was
there gathering sticks. He called her and asked, would you bring me a little
water in a jar so I may have a drink, as uh, she was going to go get
it called and bring me please a piece
of bread as surely as the Lord your God lives. She
replied, I don't have any bread, only a handful of
flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug.
(15:26):
I am gathering a few sticks to take home, make a meal for
myself and my son, that we may eat it and
die. Elijah said to her, don't be afraid. Go
home and do as what you have said. But first make a small loaf of
bread for me from what you have and bring it to me.
And then make some for yourself and your son. For this is what the
Lord, the God of Israel says. The jar of
(15:46):
flour will not be used up and the jug of oil
will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on
the land. And she does this. And then God
blesses this lady through
Elijah. So she went away and did as
Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for
Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar
of flour was not used up and the jug of oil
(16:08):
did not run dry in keeping with the word of the Lord. Spokeen to
Elijah. So see, God answered the woman's prayer,
helped the woman because she was gonna eat and die. She was
ready to die. That's her mentality at that time.
But what happened? God used Elijah to
meet up with her. It was a God appointed meeting
for Elijah to meet with this lady. But Elisha
(16:29):
would have never met with her and miracles would have never
happened between them. And she would not have seen the
Lord's provision for her and her family.
Unless Elijah showed up. And there
was no way he would have shown up if he would have
stayed at the brook, if the ravens kept on bringing
him meat and bread every day. And that brook was still
(16:49):
flowing and he still got his hydration from
the water in the brook, he wouldn't have to leave. But it
wasn't God's plan. But God did tell him
to go there in the first place, and he provided
for him. But then he dried up
the brook. And sometimes we need
our brook dried up so that we will open ourselves up
(17:10):
to God so he can speak to us, so that we can go and
head another. In another direction, another direction that
he wants to us to go in so that we can bless someone
else. Remember, it's all about the gospel. It's all
about the good news. It's all about going out and
speaking to people, experiencing things with
people so that God gets the glory. You see,
(17:30):
that's what it's about. We can't stay focused on
ourselves. We can't stay in our
own little bubble, in our own little world.
That's not how God does it. That's not
what God wants us to do. He wants us to take
part in what he's doing. And what is he
doing? He's telling the whole world about
himself. And he says, hey, you want to play? You want to
(17:52):
participate? All we have to do is say yes. Let me
know what you need me to do. Let me know what you need me to say. Let
me know where you need me to go. We have to take those
steps. But sometimes we're stubborn. We'll pray,
lord, use me. Lord, help me
to speak to people about you. And then we
get all irritated when he does something in order to get
(18:12):
us to move because there's change and it
disrupts our life sometimes. He's going to
dry up that brook. We have to understand that
if we are truly here to serve him, to
glorify him, we need to be prepared
to do what he wants us to do when he wants us
to do it. Because on the other side, there's a blessing. Just
(18:32):
like with Dallas Jenkins. He was called to make
this movie. He felt like that was his purpose, and then he
failed. But that was God that set that up and
then that opened him up to follow
God's direction in another path, on another path.
And now he's doing what God wants him to do.
Now God may shut it down again. God may
shut things down that look like it is so
(18:54):
productive, but then go, nope, somewhere else.
That's his call. That's his choice. We
have to stop holding on to what we believe is
our path and our way. It's
all about God and his way. Surrender
to him. My name is Clint Armitage. This is the
Radio Coffeeh House. Thanks for coming back. And
(19:15):
until next time, stay safe and God bless.
Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Radio Coffeeh
House show where we're all about Jesus, Coffee
and radio. We'll see you next time.
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