00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 5 82 of the inspired Stewardship podcast. I'm Joel Hall Baker, teacher, speaker and author of Inverted Leadership. I challenge you to invest in yourself, investing others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to lead through confident humility is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott made her. You know,
00:00:42 it's funny, but one of the things I've been saying of late, I'm a home body. I'm somebody who really actually would prefer to be home about 80 or 90% of the time. But now that I'm living in a situation where I've been told, I cannot leave now, all of a sudden I want to go out. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time,
00:01:12 your talent and your treasures for your true calling in. The inspired Searchie podcast will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in todays spiritually foundation episode about investing in others.
00:01:38 I talk with you about why the Palm's and the Passion are both important, how we are not promised an easy life as a Christian,
00:01:46 and why recognizing that both joy and pain are important helps us to recognize the joys that we do have.
00:01:55 So when I'm recording, this is shortly before Holy Week or the week of Easter is coming on the Christian calendar,
00:02:04 and I was helping my pastor prepare for the coming Sunday worship, which is a Palm Sunday or passion Sunday,
00:02:14 at least in our church. And interestingly, each of these used to be their own holiday. We usedto celebrate passion and celebrate Palm Sunday differently in the Christian calendar and now,
00:02:26 at least in the Methodist Church, which I'm a member of. We've combined those into the palm and Passion Sunday in many churches,
00:02:34 and it got me thinking about what these things mean. You know, the Palm Sunday, the celebration of the palms is this triumphant celebration of Jesus coming to Jerusalem that the crowds out yelling,
00:02:48 waving palms on the air, placing cloaks down on the ground so that the the Coulter donkey that he rides in on doesn't have to touch the ground celebrating the return of a king in a way,
00:03:01 now celebrating it with some irony in some contradiction between this arrival and, like the arrival of the Romans,
00:03:10 Caesar's but still celebrating the success and the return of the Jewish king, a messiah. Christ, all of these things they're tied up in this.
00:03:23 The Palm Sunday celebration is one of joy. It's one of lifting up. It's one of saying, Wow!
00:03:30 The hosannas have returned. The praise is returned. It is a signal of joy. And then it's followed almost immediately by the passion,
00:03:43 the death of Christ on the cross that the ending of Christ earthly life it's a time of darkness is a time of sadness.
00:03:55 It's a time of morning. It's a time where it feels like the world is ending and everything is crushing in upon us.
00:04:04 And it is the end of the triumph in the journey, and it got me thinking about how you know,
00:04:11 as a Christian, one of the things that I have seen is Sometimes people think that as they turn toe to Christ that it will make everything easy.
00:04:20 I mean, it even says, You know, follow me and your burden will be light in the Bible.
00:04:25 But light here doesn't mean easy light simply means that if you're making these decisions, if you're following Christ than things that used to be hard become easy things about decisions,
00:04:40 things about, how do you treat people things about the choices you make become easy because following Christ means emulating Christ.
00:04:48 And that example is an example that we can see in front of us and begin to make choices that maybe before choosing between serving ourselves and serving others would have been hard now become clear that we are to serve others and to build relationship first.
00:05:06 But we're not promised a simple life in terms of no problems were not promised a life of endless joy.
00:05:13 We're not promised that we don't have to face the darkness. We're not promised that we will have a life of nothing but Palm's and we can ignore the passion.
00:05:25 We're not promised that the truth is that the the joys of our life will outweigh even the the sadness in our life.
00:05:37 Instead, we're simply promised a life where we can follow Christ. And at the hard times when the chaos is going on,
00:05:47 we can still turn to Christ. And at the e easy times, when everything is going our way,
00:05:53 we can still turn to Christ and that it's equally important toe look to Christ. In both of those cases,
00:06:00 toe, look to Christ when things were going well and looked to Christ. When things are going poorly,
00:06:07 see, it's out of this recognition of joy that we can. We can see things as being given to us as blessings being poured out upon us by God.
00:06:21 And it is out of the moments of pain that we can even recognize the joy. You know, it's funny,
00:06:30 but one of the things I've been saying of late, I'm a home body. I'm somebody who really actually would prefer to be home about 80 or 90% of the time.
00:06:39 But now that I'm living in a situation where I've been told, I cannot leave now, all of a sudden I want to go out now.
00:06:46 I'm like, Oh, I miss going to the movies. I miss going to my friend's house. I miss just driving down to the store and picking up a gallon of ice cream or a gallon of milk.
00:06:55 I drive. You know, I just I miss all of these sorts of things that were so normal that I didn't even see them as blessings.
00:07:06 I miss going to a meeting once a week with other adults and sitting around and breaking bread and being able to shake their hand and look them in the eye.
00:07:15 Give him a pat on the back or a hugger on the shoulder and look at them and recognize them as other Children of God.
00:07:24 I miss being able to pray together and worship. You know, I've been doing a lot of the work with the pastor to try to get things online and do all of these things,
00:07:33 and I miss being able to celebrate the breaking of the bread. And yet, part of the reason that I'm now able to recognize those things that had become so normal as tremendous blessings is because of the dark times were going through.
00:07:54 And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying, you know. Oh, celebrate suffering because suffering is a good thing.
00:08:00 It's it's not good. I wish we could have Ah ah, life without any pain at all. But that's not what we're promised.
00:08:07 And maybe maybe we can take something from this and remember and learn and refocus and recognize the tremendous blessings that we've been giving.
00:08:18 And we can use them as an opportunity as we come out the other side to build a foundation and not just return to normal,
00:08:27 but actually return and go beyond what normal waas and maybe even make it better. Instead, thanks for listening.
00:08:39 Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen.
00:08:53 But act on what you've heard and find a way toe live your calling. If you enjoy this episode,
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00:09:28 your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact world way