Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, hello, words
for Change podcast audience.
This is your man, lionel.
Today I want to dive into atheme that will strike at the
heart of what it means to be acreator.
Whether we're a parent, whetherwe're launching a new project,
a new business, or simplyshaping our lives or the life of
others, what we create carriesa piece of who we are and
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reflects our values, ourimagination, our heart, and it
also carries a responsibility,and I want to talk about that
today, with this famous verse,actually, as a quote to create
something is to take part ofyourself and give it to the
world.
What you create will bear yourfingerprints, but also bear your
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responsibility.
But what day is it y'all?
Well, welcome again.
Hey, man, it is what it isNovember the 26th.
Good morning Vietnam.
Happy Thanksgiving, man.
We have a lot going on and it'sa busy week for all of you, and
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I know I only get a few greatrecipes from my wife during this
time of the year and I'mlooking forward to Thanksgiving.
So well, we had a weekend incollege football Alabama.
Yes, alabama, the playoffpowerhouse got humbled by
Oklahoma.
My daughter's alma mater 24 to3 over Alabama was hard to
imagine as well, man, I lovefootball, so you know I have to
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talk about it, but, man, collegefootball is just a gift that
keeps on giving In the news.
Now we shift towards some moreintense international news.
Nato and Ukraine are holding anemergency talk after Russia
fired off hypersonic missiles, amissile called Arsene.
And this thing is super fast,it's 10 times the speed of sound
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and packs six non-nuclearwarheads.
So, wow, that's crazy.
President Putin said it's aretaliation for Ukraine, using
Western-supplied long-rangemissiles.
Issued Long range missiles.
Issued a warning.
Russia has the right is whatPutin said to use weapons
against military facilities inUkraine and against anyone
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helping them.
So guess who supplied thoseweapons?
That's the US.
President Biden decision tosupply Ukraine with anti-person,
anti-landmines is, you know,really controversial in that a
lot of human rights groups aregoing back and saying that he's
going against his previousstance, especially since these
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mines could harm civilians.
Man, and so we are in a toughtime and we covet your prayers
for our nation, our world.
Romans 13 says we should prayfor our leaders and pray for
peaceable work.
Jesus was a God of peace, andit's in these moments when we
feel uncertain that we have tostick to our faith.
It's comforting to know thatJesus is still in charge.
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John 16, 33 says and it remindsus that in this world you will
have trials and troubles, buttake heart, I have overcome the
world.
So, even when conflict andchaos are going awry or seems
imminent, we can hold fast toJesus, we can hold fast to the
gospel, we can hold fast to whatwe believe to be true that can
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help us overcome the brokennessof this world.
His peace is greater than thestorms that we all face.
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Now I want to talk about thepower of creation.
Let me start out with aundeniable truth, and that truth
is creating something ispowerful as exciting.
I love it when I'm able tocreate something that feels like
breathing life into the world.
But that power, as we know, isa double-edged sword.
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Me and my daughters and my wifehad a conversation about the
great book Frankenstein, andVictor Frankenstein book An Act
of Creation is an incrediblepiece of work.
I highly recommend you use it.
Me and my family talked abouthow writers back in the 20th and
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19th century were really reallygood at using metaphor to
describe human personality.
But the moment he sees theimperfection of Frankenstein
we're talking about VictorFrankenstein, who actually
created the creature that becameFrankenstein.
But the moment he sawFrankenstein, he saw his
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imperfections of what he hadmade.
He recoiled.
He absolutely recoiled, okay,and instead of nurturing what he
created, he abandoned what hecreated.
Now I want you to think abouteverything in your life that you
see, that you created.
The fact of where you are rightnow, what you are experiencing
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in your life, the relationshipthat may not be going well, the
business may not be going well,the challenges you face these
are all part of your creation.
And how often do we abandon thethings that we create?
And maybe we don't createmonsters in the lab like Viktor
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Frankl.
But think about therelationships, the projects, the
dreams you've started whenthey've not gone as planned.
I know what it feels like.
I remember planting at churches, many of you know, and even
though it went well for the mostpart, it didn't go as planned.
And what happens when thingsdon't go the way we want?
Well, we have a tendency tobegin cursing those things and
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we get tempted to step back andto criticize and even reject it.
But here's the thing the act ofcreation doesn't end when the
thing is made.
That's a powerful point.
It's a powerful statement forus to think about.
That's just the beginning.
In Luke 14, jesus asks us towhat?
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Count the cost?
I want you to think about thisscripture verse.
It's a verse that I use often,at least that I think about for
my own life.
He said count the cost beforebuilding anything.
It's financial planning.
It's a profound reminder thatcreation requires follow through
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.
You just can't create something, but there's nurturing.
That has to happen.
And this is what happened, orwhat the author in the book
Frankenstein realized that youjust can't build something but
you have to nurture it.
You can't just create somethingto nurture it.
Building something a tower, afamily, a ministry then it
requires more than a blueprint.
Watch this y'all.
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It requires commitment.
Now, this is something you'regoing to have to think about.
Okay, this is whereaccountability comes in.
If we're honest, it's easy toblame the things we created, the
things that we create, whenthey fall short of what we
expected and we haven't nurturedit.
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We nurtured it the way weneeded to or we failed to
nurture it.
Right like victor franco blamedhis creation, frankenstein, for
everything he had done, but heabandoned the creation, he
abandoned the creature.
He abandoned frankenstein athis most vulnerable moment.
Now we're going to encourageyou again to go check out the
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story.
You can go online and get thecliff notes, but it's a powerful
story.
I really would love for you toread it to get a better
understanding of this verypowerful analogy about the
things that we create requiringnurturing.
Okay, so accountability startswith asking what have I created?
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How have I cared for the thingsI created?
When the Lord hit me with thatman, I was like Right.
So now we talk about nurturingwhat we create.
One of the most important things, or the most poignant moments
in Frankenstein is when thecreature, despite being rejected
and reviled, he had an innatelonging for connection.
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Right.
So Frankenstein, according tothe book, watched families in
secret and learned language andkindness.
And because of what he learnedby observation, this is the
creature Frankenstein.
He wanted to belong, right.
He wanted to belong right.
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He wanted to belong right.
Think about God as the creator,psalms 145.9, says the Lord is
good to all.
He has compassion on all he hasmade.
Has not the Lord had compassionon you and I?
Right, god has walked us.
God didn't just create us,right, but there's compassion
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that goes along with us.
God is gracious to us.
So compassion is the foundationof how God nurtures us and how
parents nurture kids and boy.
Do I have a story about thatone as well?
Yeah, I'll be honest with you,in some instances I'm not too
proud about that.
I had definitely been a part ofcreating and have it nurtured
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the way that I should have.
It's about understanding theneeds and the struggles of what
we brought into existence in theworld allows us to see beyond
imperfections to the potentialof what we have created and what
it can be.
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Ok, so what about acceptance?
Ok, so when we think aboutaccountability, the things that
we created, and then compassion,we have to nurture those things
.
Now let's talk about acceptance.
We have to nurture those things.
Now let's talk about acceptance.
This is a very, very, perhapsthe hardest part of creating,
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because it means letting go ofexpectation.
Acceptance doesn't mean that weare passive.
It means that we embrace thereality of what we created and
we begin working with it.
Jeremiah 18, 6 describes God asthe potter and us as the clay.
A potter doesn't throw away theclay when it is done, when it
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doesn't turn out in perfection.
I don't know if you ever workedwith a pottering wheel, but my
wife and I have.
It's pretty cool when you workwith it right.
God says he's the pot part andwe are the clay.
God's model accepts and notignores us not ignoring our
flaws but engages them andshapes us with passion, mercy
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and grace.
So for us, we may look at ourchild, who doesn't follow the
path that we imagine, or we aredon't want to stick with a
project that feels messy andimperfect, or it's about
lowering our standards.
It's not about that.
It's not about lowering ourstandards.
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It's about seeing the value inthe things that we created.
Okay, so this is a powerfulmetaphor for us to understand as
we go into this Thanksgivingweek.
Some of us are going to havefamily over who we haven't seen
in a long time, and there willbe conversations there.
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I don't know about you, butmore conversations pop up and
sometimes it gets really messy.
But guess what?
That's the creation.
Some of that experiences may bepart of what we have
participated in or what wecreated, maybe reconnecting with
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relatives we haven't seen in along time.
And then all of a sudden, theysee us and they haven't seen us
in a while.
Old stories from the past comeup and it hurts, bubble to the
surface and guess what?
That's a part of our creation,okay, and we have to be able to
accept the fact that perhaps itis not the way I want it to be.
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Perhaps this situation, thisbusiness, this relationship is
not turning out and then takingresponsibility for that, that's
tough.
It is really really tough.
I remember when I had to changemy leadership team at one of my
church organizations right, Ihad to sit back and take
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responsibility.
At the beginning y'all I didn'tsee it, I didn't quite
understand what went wrong,until after reflecting, like
they say, sometimes we get youknow, hindsight is 20-20.
And realize that you know whatI had the right motive, but what
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happened was totally myresponsibility as the leader, as
the leader, and I rememberseeing lives destroyed at the
end not because of anything Ihad did directly, because I
think my leadership needed to behoned more, and I saw people
get divorced.
I saw people who just becameresentful with ministry.
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I saw people who really didn'tgrow up into spiritual maturity
but were put on a stage andreally didn't understand what
they were getting into.
Right, and it really wasn'ttheir fault.
They had some part to play init.
But ultimately, as the leader,I had to take responsibility,
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accepting the fact that this wassomething I created.
It doesn't mean that peopledon't have the power to make
their own decisions.
What it means is that what wesee in our lives right now, at
this moment, at this time, thatwe don't necessarily like, is
very much a part of our creation.
So the principles ofaccountability and compassion
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and acceptance apply not only toour personal lives, but to the
world, to our world.
We think about technology.
We think about social media.
We think about our environment.
Think about what's going on inour United States of America
today.
If you're an American citizen,listen to this.
We are in turmoil and we havecreated.
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We have to take responsibilityfor that.
We often create withoutconsidering the cost.
When things go wrong, whentechnology isolates or the
environment suffers or theenvironment suffers or we have
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some political upheaval, right,we blame people instead of
reflecting on our ownresponsibility in the things
that we created.
So I want you to think about thethings you've created in your
life right now.
Think about family as weapproach Thanksgiving.
Think about your career.
Think about a new dream.
Maybe it's something as simpleas a habit or relationship.
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Whatever it is.
Take a moment to reflect andask yourself these questions Are
you holding yourselfaccountable for how you nurtured
it?
Are you holding yourselfaccountable for how you nurtured
it?
Are you holding yourselfaccountable for how you nurtured
it?
Are you approaching it withcompassion, even when it's
challenging to you?
Are you willing to accept itfor what it is, while still
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helping it to grow?
Here's the good news we don'thave to do this alone.
God modeled it for us everysingle day.
His love for us is theblueprint for how we can love
and care for the things wecreated.
So I want you to think aboutthis topic as you move into
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Thanksgiving, as you engage withfamily members and as you
decide to show forgiveness, tobe compassionate, to take
responsibility, to beaccountable.
Right as God is to us, to beloving still yet and still, as
the Lord has been loving towardus, we demonstrate that to the
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situation, to the environment,to the people we encounter.
Now I'll leave you with thisCreation isn't just about making
something.
It's about stewarding it.
Think about that.
Creation is not just aboutmaking something.
It's about stewarding it.
When we engage with ourcreation, our family, our ideas,
our community, and we maintainaccountability, we hold on to
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compassion, we are willing totake responsibility, we reflect
the heart of God when we dothese things, and in doing so we
bring redemption to the worldand even ourselves, because we
can learn a lot through thethings we suffer.
Hey, y'all, thank you forjoining the Words for Change
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podcast.
Once again, happy Thanksgiving.
I hope this episode resonatedwith you.
I love to hear your thoughts,ok, so please, you can click the
link in the description thatsays send me a message, let me
know if this resonated with you.
And hey, I hope you guys enjoyyour turkey.
I know I'm going to enjoy somefried chicken, collard greens
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and some dressing that my wifemakes.
So until next time, hey, let'sgo out into the world and take
care of the things that we'vecreated, that God has entrusted
to us, and I look forward toseeing y'all in the next two
weeks.
Take care, salute, and I'lltalk to you soon.
Be well, peace.