Episode Transcript
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Music.
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Back here to the Seeds of Change podcast. I am your host, Mark A.
Turnipseed. It's getting smoking hot down here, hot as blazes down in South
Florida, but I'm still loving every minute.
You know, I walk around, I walk outside with my shirt off every single time.
Almost every single time that I go for a walk, I have to take my shirt off.
And then I complain a little bit about it, that I have to take my shirt off because it's so hot.
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And then I realize that I get to take my shirt off because it's so hot.
There's really no complaints that I have, except the complaints that I create
on the course of my journey and throughout this life.
And isn't that so very, just exactly what life really is?
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It's like consistently putting myself into these states of almost misery and
hell based on my mindset, recognizing that or thinking that,
you know, I'm not happy where I am. I want more of this.
You know, I need to be at another place. Grass is always greener type thing.
When all we have to do is shift our perspective back into gratitude.
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Man, this weekend was really easy for me to slip back into gratitude.
And the reason is, the reason is, is because I've developed this new,
well, I can't say it's new. I feel like I go through it kind of almost seasonally, right?
It's like a heightened spiritual encounter.
It's like this place where I get to where I feel like I'm on the wings of angels almost.
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It feels like the storybooks, right, where they say God is near.
That's what it feels like at this exact juncture of my life.
And so it's easy when I'm in these spaces to say, say, okay,
here is my all God. Here is me.
Here is me. Take all of me. Take my story.
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Take my writing. Take everything that I do and have it for your glory, right?
But it's not always that case.
I go through the phases, and then the feeling will drop away.
The feeling of God being near or right may drop away.
And when that feeling drops away, I have to keep on showing up because the prior
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time when that feeling was there, I had made a commitment to start doing a podcast,
to start preaching His Word, to start preaching what happened to me,
what has helped rise me out of my depression, my anxieties, my addictions,
what has helped me to rise out of that.
I now have to share that with the world, and that is my mission.
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That's not only my mission, right?
It was handed to me. It's like my responsibility.
I went through many near-death experiences, overdoses, and stuff that would...
It just warrants the fact that I am a miracle, right?
I am a miracle, and I deserve a life of a miracle.
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And everybody out there is that same thing, right?
All of us, we all deserve the life of our dreams because we are our miracles.
Now, for some reason, God always placed on my heart a dream,
a dream to be on stage, a dream to speech, a dream to act, a dream to sing.
I can't sing yet, but I'm working on it, right? For some reason,
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God always put that into my heart as something that I would dream about and
something that I would always kind of aspire to.
And so I see now how, like, I never saw myself, you know, writing a book.
I never saw myself speaking really per se about, you know, human problems.
Instead, I actually saw myself more as being like a Jim Morrison when I was younger, right?
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And so that dream kind of shifts and molds based on, you know,
what we're finding as our purpose.
And as I start to recognize that I have a purpose that goes,
you know, beyond just kind of like enjoyment, and it goes further than,
you know, entertainment, and it goes into some other aspect.
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And that's just the way that God kind of evolves and changes and makes things
better, you know, depending on who you are and depending on where you are going to go.
Now, I wanted to talk today about this scripture that really hit on me.
This scripture that really hit on me today, this morning.
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So when I'm going through a time where I feel like, you know,
I'm really close to God, I'm praying to God, I'm praying like every single morning,
every single night, and I feel His presence, I feel like He's speaking directly to me.
You know, when I start to recognize in my heart, hey, like I had this feeling.
This is an example of how God will speak to me, right?
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This feeling of this person just needing a friendly smile, you know,
or needing a hello at the gym.
And I'll go and I'll share my positive energy with them, and then they'll come
back to me a couple of minutes later and say, thank you.
Thanks for coming up because I was feeling down today.
And that's an example of of how God can speak to you and to me, right?
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And so while I'm feeling this closeness, it's easy to then pray,
it's easy to do devotionals, and then sometimes it gets a little bit more challenging.
But right now, it's really good, and it's really easy to stay into my devotional.
So first thing in the morning, woke up, ran downstairs, excited to put on my
pot of coffee, and sat down and started reading, and the chapter that I was reading was Mark 5 and 6.
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But in Mark 6, I was really blown away, because here in Mark 6 is Jesus after
His sermons have begun, right? His mission has begun.
And He is becoming known all across the land as being one of the greatest miracle workers, right?
He is coming across to the inner circles of these different cities as being
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Jesus from Nazareth is now the Son of Man.
He is the Son of Man, and He is here to save everybody from their sins, right?
In this moment, like, He's getting some serious—like, that's much bigger than
the gossip that even Taylor Swift gets, right?
That's much bigger. and he's walking around in his robes and stuff.
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Now, this is a man who is a human, right? He just began his missions.
He grew up as a human. Same problems, same issues, same everything,
but once he got put on his purpose, once he got put on his mission, all that changed.
That's called the transfiguration of Christ. That's when Christ became Jesus Christ.
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That's He jumped out on his mission, and now he's the son of God walking around
saving people, healing people, driving out demons, like doing all of this stuff,
and people are starting to speculate, but others are starting to follow.
Now, in this chapter, he ends up going to his hometown of Nazareth,
and it was the first time back into his hometown, and everybody there was speculating.
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And they were speculating so much.
This is one thing that really got me in this verse. They were speculating so
much that the Bible says that his miracles could not even be performed because of their disbelief.
And I just sat there and kind of scratched my head. I was like,
well, why does their disbelief decrease Jesus Christ's ability to do miracles?
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Why does somebody else's disbelief decrease actual God's presence, right?
So are we really able to limit ourselves?
Are we really able to, you know, we're praying to God, we're wanting these miracles.
We're needing these miracles. If we don't have them, we're perishing, right?
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There are life situations like that.
And is it a case that it's actually our disbelief that's preventing the miracles
from being happening, right?
And we got to go back, because if we continue to read on in this,
he then says that in your hometown, it's really hard for people to recognize your miracles.
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For people to recognize who you are, for friends and family, he says.
So what are we supposed to do with that? I know that I've felt that, right?
I've felt that. I can feel hugely discouraged by being with my family and my close friends.
I can feel hugely discouraged because you know what? They know the past me.
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They know the past me, and then they'll take their memories of me and reflect them back to me, right?
And that's probably something similar to what Jesus was going through.
That is a state of resistance that we put other people through, right?
We resist who they are presenting as, we resist who they've evolved into,
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and try to fit them into the box of what we remember them as.
And in doing so, we actually literally block the miracle of experience experience with that individual.
We block the gifts that they could bestow on us.
We block the relationship from being able to be as good of a relationship as it can be.
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Now, I'm not talking about trying to heal somebody here. I'm talking about trying
to overcome a relationship barrier.
I'm talking about how you can get closer to your friends, how you can get closer
to your family by stop visioning how they used to be and start visioning them how they are.
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And how are they exactly, Mark? You might ask, how are they?
How am I supposed to vision them? You're supposed to vision them as sons of
God, because after Jesus died, He said, now I reside within you.
I'm in each and every single one of you. And that means your neighbor,
your neighbor who's a little asshole, yes, that neighbor, you need to be able
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to vision that neighbor as God sees him, because that's what Jesus did.
We vision as God sees him, and then the miracle of that person can come forth.
The miracle of that person can come forth and bless you, but the miracle of
that person can also come forth and bless them.
And that miracle of that person can come forth and bless the entire neighborhood and the entire world,
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all because you shifted your perspective and you stopped seeing the person for
how you wanted to see them based off of some bull crap that they might have
done in the past, and you started to see them for the miracle of who they are now.
You see them for the miracle of who they are as a purpose-driven man or woman
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or even child of God, right?
You're starting to view people in this sort of light, and then they become empowered.
This is how we empower our nation, everybody.
This is how we go about transforming our communities.
This is how we how we transform from hate and we completely change it into love
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by viewing other people that way.
Not by going around and saying, you need to view me this way.
No, Jesus didn't run into Nazareth and say, you need to start viewing me.
You need to start viewing me for who I am.
He didn't do that. Rather, he actually said, when somebody doesn't accept you
for who you are, take off your shoes, wipe the dust from your feet,
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and leave them to their fate.
That's exactly what He said to His disciples after this encounter in Nazareth.
Now, y'all, that's what we need to do. That's what we need to do to our neighbors.
We need to walk around, and we need to have compassion and love for them.
We need to have understanding.
We need to be there, willing to engage in the miracle, should they turn around
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and start believing and start seeing you for who you really are.
And yes, you really are a miracle.
And yes, you can really transform life around you, people's lives.
You can make your life better. You can make your friends' and family's life better.
You can make your whole entire community better. If you dream big enough,
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you can make this world better.
And God has those dreams within you if you begin to see yourself as a budding seed with purpose.
See yourself as a seed of purpose, because that's when the transfiguration of
Christ happened. That's when He went on His mission.
That's when He went on His message. And that's when anybody,
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including Taylor Swift, ended up in their potential.
It's because they went out with a purpose and a message and a mission,
and they believed it and they saw it.
And no matter what, they went around, friends and family who might have tried
to pull them back, they saw who they really were.
They saw the vision that God had put inside of their hearts about who they were,
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and they went after it, no matter what anybody said.
And that is a Jesus-type behavior. So way to go, Taylor Swift.
That's a very, very Jesus-type behavior.
And I am extremely proud to say that I am learning that type of behavior, too.
And I think that it's something that is really going to help believers or non-believers,
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but especially believers, because it's going to help you to dive into your purpose.
And when we dive into our purpose, it makes it easier during times when God
is not there to continue to show up and to continue to give it our best.
So anyway, that's been Seeds of Change, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed this message today.
I am Mark A. Turnipseed. If you'd like to support this podcast,
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head on over to the Patreon website where you can throw in a little bit of cash
or add a little subscription to help me on a monthly basis.
I would really appreciate this. And I love you all. Y'all have a wonderful, wonderful week.
All right. Talk later. Over and out. Peace.