Kyle Farran, author and missionary, joins us on the podcast today to discuss his book Godly Grit: Unshakable Resilience and Grit for Life and Leadership. Kyle uses his love for God's Word and marvelous story telling to challenge listeners to grow in trust and understanding of God as we pursue a life serving Him.

Dick Foth joins for another session of Back Channel with Foth.

Foreign.

Podcast.

So excited to be here.

Back again today with our friend Dick Foth on another session of Back Channel with Foeth.

And then we're going to jump into our interview with Kyle.

Dick, we're going to welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks a million.

I love our time together.

Me also, very much.

So, Dick, two questions for you.

How have you decided over the years in ministry who to partner with and who not to partner with?

You know, I, I, I was reflecting on this question and my first response to it is what is meant by partner?

But you know, because there are colleagues, there are friends there, that sort of thing.

But I'll just assume that this means somebody that you, that there's collaboration, intensity, I'm throwing my life in that sort of thing.

I think.

I have chosen to partner with people when I can answer this question.

What is one the mission?

What are the giftings?

And how about our values and culture?

And I think this can be used both personally and corporately.

But my experience in partnering is that oftentimes people have the same goals.

Just like Paul and Barnabas.

Same goals.

But how you get from point A to point B is what tends to separate the people.

Interesting.

We can have the same goals, but if our methodology doesn't connect, you see this with people who found movements, they have a goal, they have a way of getting there.

Just, just take any, any founding person, you know, and over time the methodology gets welded to the mission and second generation comes along, said same goal.

We just like to try a little different and it never kind of works out.

Yeah.

And so I choose to partner with people who have common mission and most likely for me, with people whose giftings are different than mine.

Interesting.

I have a.

Because I need the gaps.

They need the gaps in their space filled in.

Had a friend who used to say, dick, why don't just hang out with people who are just like you?

What can they add to your life?

And so I would say the core piece though for me is how do they approach whatever the mission is?

If we have commonality in the approach, then the partnership tends to work.

Wow, Good, good word.

So you're saying the friction comes more.

Not that you don't have the same goal, it's just how you play that go out.

Is that, is that.

Yeah, yeah.

The friction comes in the how, not in the what.

Okay, good, good thing.

And so their second question was, but I think you've addressed some of it, is is it the same for individuals and organizations?

You use the same kind of matrix to, to decide who to Partner with and invest in and organizations.

Yeah, I think so.

I, in, in, in certain situations, I've been invited to be on boards or been invited to do this or that or the other thing.

And the, the, the approach to institutional things is you're looking at the mission statement, you're looking at, you know, who, who's in play, who are the other folk, that sort of thing.

When it's individual, I think the relational door, do we have the capacity to be friends?

Is, are those things in play?

And sometimes when you start walking together, the intent is not to partner, but as you go along, you discover that you really are, quote, together, end quote.

Yeah.

And so the partnership.

Partnership grows out of that.

Yeah.

Good to you.

Good.

Great word, Dick.

Always enjoy our time on Back Channel with folks.

We're going to go ahead and jump into our interview with Kyle and well, there's no time better than now to get started.

So here we go.

Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity podcast.

So excited to be here today with a new friend.

Kyle, I feel like I've gotten to know you after reading your book Godly Grit, hearing your stories and your wisdom and insight.

For those who have not had that opportunity yet, will you share a little bit about yourself before we jump in?

Sure.

My wife and I have served overseas as missionaries for the last 19 years.

We started off in South Africa working with AIDS Hospice Care, Home there, and then transitioning into working with Zulu pastors, train.

And then for the last 11 years, I've been a regional director with Abwe, serving first for three years in East Africa and Tanzania, and then for the last eight years we've been in Western Europe serving, living in Portugal and serving like eight countries in Western Europe as the regional director there.

So it's just a joy to be building into missionaries.

And so we've had the opportunity to serve in a lot of fields, work with a lot of missionaries, and it's just been a real joy to be building into them, but also learning through that process as well.

Good deal and interesting.

The part, for some reason in the book, I don't remember it, the HIV AIDS part.

So our first term we went to Burkina Faso, so I worked at a clinic for women who had HIV to help prevent the transmission from mother to child.

So that was our first two years, two and a half years in admissions.

Awesome.

Yeah, I don't know if they were awesome days.

They were probably the dark night of my soul.

But anyway, I needed to read your book Godly Grit back then, so.

So long, long time ago.

So.

So, Kyle, we're going to do this in two parts.

As I shared, I read your book and thought, man, it would be love to have two interviews.

So this be part one of part two for those listening in and then we'll, we'll jump into the part two in a little bit.

So first off, your book, Godly Grit.

So what do you mean exactly by godly grit?

So I say godly grit is kind of the long term combination of combining discipline, strength, courage, resilience and grit just kind of all tied into that.

So little illustration of that would be if you're imagining yourself climbing a mountain.

Discipline is what pushes you to train every day to get ready for that.

Strength is what would enable you to actually make that climb.

Courage is what helps you face the fear of falling off a cliff.

And resilience, you know, if you do fall, resilience is what gets you back up after you fall.

And grit is what keeps you going until you get to the summit.

And godly grit is kind of the combination of all those things.

And I think a key difference though, when you look at, you know, there's a lot of great books out there on grit and resilience that aren't grit books.

There's, there's some really good books out there.

I think the key difference between godly grit and maybe say worldly grip is where's your source of strength?

Is your source of strength inside of you?

Do you look inside of you for that, that source of strength?

Or do you look to your creator and that is really where the differential is.

You can learn a lot of great principles, but if your source of strength is in the wrong area, it's going to fail you in those hard, difficult times.

Or the alternative is it's going to point the glory to yourself instead of to God.

And if our goal as workers of the gospel is to give God the glory, then our source of our grit and the resilience is absolutely essential.

If we're putting our source of strength in the wrong area, it glorifies ourself or our strategy or something else outside of God.

And so that's a key differential between worldly grit and godly grit.

Wow, Kyle, obviously you shared about your service and your family service overseas as missionaries.

So what are some reasons you feel that godly grit is so vital for a missionary?

Yeah.

Serving around the world.

Well, as you have undoubtedly experienced, the task that God's called us to is bigger than we can accomplish by ourself And God's path also involves challenges.

When you look at the narrative of Scripture and all the different people in there, and we read through the Bible, man, I want to be like David or I want to be like Moses and.

But we often forget that they endured a ton of challenges.

And that's.

And that's what God used to be able to reveal his glory.

And if we want to make God look great, we.

We need that resilience and grit to be able to.

To push through those challenges by his strength.

Because doing that, it makes God look great.

Yeah, just a little illustration of this.

When I was writing the book, I started writing it actually out in the ruins of an old fortress in Portugal.

And one day as I was sitting there, I just got thinking, you know, these, these walls of a fortress, whether they be strong walls or knocking out knock down walls, they don't actually make me any stronger.

They, they're just.

I'm just, I'm still Kyle inside these walls of a fortress.

But if, if we had been there, when there, those walls were getting attacked by Napoleon, and if there was a soldier fortress and he was just shaking like a leaf and we were the new soldiers, we would be looking at him like, dude, this guy is.

This guy's terrified.

He must know something about these walls that we don't know.

These walls must not be strong enough to repel this attack.

In the same way, God is our fortress.

If we as God's servants are shaking like a leaf in fear and trembling at the different circumstances and challenges that come up against us, it makes our fortress look really.

Yeah,.

Really small.

It makes God look really small.

Claim the greatness of our God.

If we are going up against these challenges and we're making God look small, that's not allowing us to be able to point others to him and show his greatness in the best possible way.

Wow.

Good word.

I've been doing a deep dive in reading books about pioneers.

And so I love you talk about the grit that it takes and the realities of what we do in missionary life.

My wife and I were talking the other night.

The realities of being a pioneer, the things that as you talked about, you have to have that thing to move through it.

But if you can't always necessarily have the comforts to make the all you can't have the cake and eat it too.

So I like the cake of seeing the wild animals, seeing the untouched places.

But I don't think I'd want to sleep and not take a bath and not brush my teeth and be worried for my life and all the other parts that go with it.

So anyway, talking about it, it made me think of those realities of being on the field that go with it and just the importance of the spiritual realities of being there and needing that godly grit.

As you pointed out, not just grit in a secular format, but of.

Of getting our source and strength from.

From God.

So you asked the question that centers around the concept that our recurrent thoughts reveal our heart's treasures in what ways?

What we love, our heart dwells on that.

And you know, the things that we think about, we talk about those things in our mind serves the things that we love the most.

And if God is truly our treasure, then he's gonna be what we treasure spending time with.

He's gonna be what we.

What we go after and he's gonna be the pursuit of our heart.

And so that it can be insightful for us to look at or evaluate what is it that our mind defaults to?

What does our mind go to to think about?

And that usually reveals what our heart truly is treasuring.

And for those serving overseas as missionaries, is there ways that they can maybe get in a place where their heart's defaulting on other things?

Because you would think missionaries, their default's always going to be on God and the Holy Spirit and the strength and power and the Bible and your missions experience.

Has there been times maybe, or maybe you've encountered somebody else that maybe.

And I could say for me, I know that that's not.

My recurrent thoughts have not always been on God, the Holy Spirit.

Some of it have been on other things.

Any thoughts on that and how does that impact us?

Well, it totally does.

And I think you, you kind of touched on the comfort factor.

There is.

I think that's one of our.

One of our defaults is often comfort and thinking about or dreaming about comfort because you don't always have comfort in missions.

And so the grass can always maybe be greener on the other side.

And so I think there is missionaries or others in ministry.

There are things that we may set aside the pursuit of, whether it be, you know, a nice house, etc.

Etc.

That we may just we in, but our mind may still be going in those directions or talking about.

It'd be nice if I do this.

I think Another area that we could use as a.

As a kind of a little red flag that.

And I'm sure you.

Since you've been around missions for a long time, you.

You've observed this is those little side comments that, like, oh, it'd be nice to do that.

It'd be nice to have that.

Those are oftentimes revealing our heart of what.

What we really want.

And a lot of times we'll mask it under a guise of spirituality.

Like, well, I've given up that.

But in reality, sometimes there is a heart that desires that and that needs to be.

We need to really put that before the Lord and say, hey, you know, this is a struggle there.

Yeah.

And to be able to lay that before the Lord and just be aware of that when it's happening.

A great book by Eric Raymond, I believe, called Chasing Contentment.

Just a.

Just a good look at our hearts to just to evaluate where is our heart being content, Is it truly content?

And where God has us.

Another area that might even just be in looking at.

In comparison of other people's ministries, other people's ministry may be bigger than ours.

Your heart may not be as big as we had hoped it would be.

And be reminded that, you know, the field God has put us in, our area of influence that God has given to us is the area that he's given to us right now.

Yeah.

And are we content with that?

Are we content with Christ in that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think one of the things, for me personally and for.

Yeah, I'll just speak for me personally when I start thinking about finances or listen, we all have to eat.

We all have to do all those things.

But it's a signal to me that, you know, I mean, if.

If money and thoughts of that or, you know, if I was being a nurse practitioner in the United States, I'd be making lots of money.

I'm not making lots of money doing this.

It's a.

It's a superficial problem that it's coming to the surface, but it's also pointing to a deeper heart problem of what's going on in my life.

Right.

Because, you know, we didn't sign up this to make money.

Right.

It was.

We didn't sign up this for worldly goods.

We didn't sign up this to.

For status or a platform.

We signed up this to plant the.

Plant the church and to share the love of Jesus Christ wherever we're at.

So in my personal life, when those things start bubbling up, it's a.

It's a. I've just become Aware that, you know, there's, there's other things going on.

And as you talked about the greener grass, what I had to realize earlier on and still have to remind myself, wherever that that grass is, I'm still going to be there.

So if what's going on is the challenge that's in Aaron Santa Meyer, I can go to different grass.

I'm still going to be there and probably, there's probably going to still be problems because I've not allowed God to do the work in me.

And so changing fields, changing grass, that might be good, but I'm still going to be there and I gotta, I need God to do that work.

Does that make any sense at all?

Kyle?

We still take ourselves with us everywhere we go.

We do have to many times the challenges that God puts us in.

We need to be asking ourselves, what does he want us to get out of this challenge?

Not just how does he want to, how do we get through this challenge?

Because if we get through it, but we don't get out of it what we were supposed to, odds are we're probably right back in a very similar challenge soon.

Because God wants to teach us and grow us through those things.

Yeah.

So we really need to.

Yeah.

Just to latch onto that and see what is he.

What does he really want me to.

Get out of this in a Godly group way?

Kyle, is there certain questions you ask?

Do you ask God, what are you trying to get me out of?

What.

Because you shared several stories and great stories in the book.

Do you intentionally say, God, what are you trying to get, what do you need to get out of me in this?

Or what are you trying to show?

Or somebody that's in a situation like that today.

Any words of encouragement or wisdom for him?

Yeah, no, I'm.

I always am asking that.

I think there is a section there where I do have a list of a few different questions in there just for people to think through as they're going through, as they're facing challenges of what is it that God wants us to get out of that?

I was just going through another book called Deciding by Terry Walling and he has a four part question in there.

Just thinking through, like, you know, what's right, what's wrong, what needs to change.

And there's one, but I can't remember what the other one was.

But just.

Yeah, just.

I think the key thing of stepping into challenges though is first that step of asking God, Lord, what do you want me to get out of this?

Yeah, how do you, what do you want to reveal about yourself through this?

What do you want to reveal about myself through this?

And both of those things are really key for us to be able to grow and to develop.

And when you look at the different leaders that God has used throughout history, Moses spent 40 years in desert, Joseph spent some time in prison.

David was in the caves and running.

God uses those difficulties and challenges to develop us and grow us.

He doesn't just move us from the, the shepherd boy to the king.

Like we have to grow and develop, and he uses those challenges to develop us.

We can't miss that.

We need, we need that time to grow and develop.

Just like physically, like, if we're going to get stronger, you need to spend time in the gym or doing exercise.

It takes time to develop it, and we, we need that time.

That's how God has created our physical bodies as well as our spiritual bodies.

For sure.

Kyle, one of the things that becomes very obvious reading your book and your writings is that scripture is paramount to you and specifically in developing godly grit.

Can you share how scripture in its application has helped you have godly grit as you served as a missionary?

Scripture truly is like the bedrock of great resilience, endurance, spiritually.

I think going through Bible school, you learn, you, you learn all this head knowledge.

But when you're put to the test, that's when it gets driven into your heart.

It becomes the absolute bedrock of your life.

Your understanding of the sovereignty of God is not just an academic theory.

When you're trusting your life in the hands of God and when you're stepping out into situations that are dangerous.

But you know, that's where God's called you.

And that's when you truly, truly come to understand and embrace the sovereignty of God.

Not just, not just intellectually, but your whole being has to embrace that.

And that is, I think, where, yeah, the scripture just gets driven down into the foundation of your soul at that point.

Yeah, sovereignty.

Yeah, sorry.

Sovereignty of God.

Kyle, when you, when you share that somebody's listening in, they're wondering exactly what you, what, what do you, can you share just a little deeper about that?

Yeah.

The sovereignty of God is just the truth that God is in control of all things.

There's nothing that comes to pass that doesn't.

He hasn't planned.

And there's nothing outside of that plan.

And that will of God.

And for us, as we trust in that, how that affects us is that we can know that nothing gets to us.

It doesn't pass through the hands of God.

Yeah.

And that can Be.

That can be a difficult thing to swallow.

And I, I try to unpack it a little bit in there, but primarily just using some scripture there because it is.

I know it's a difficult one that people do wrestle with.

You know, we were going to work with AIDS patients and just wrestling with all the different things that, that happened in conjunction with that.

But if we truly wrestle with that and come to grips with, hey, you know what, God is in control of it because otherwise we're just kind of.

Otherwise man's in control.

If we don't truly believe in sovereignty of God should really peel back the layers of what we were saying.

At the end of the day, if, if God's not in control, then the will of man is in control.

And that we're the ones really controlling the universe.

And that I don't see that in scripture says that our guys in the heavens, he does whatever he pleases.

You know, so many, so many passages there.

But as we understand that it is a beautiful, beautiful thing to rest in the sovereignty of God because that's where our true hope is, is because it's not that we're in control, it's that he is.

And he is a, not only a sovereign God, but a good God.

And I think that is really where some people struggle with or lean too far towards the sovereignty of God and miss the goodness of God and that balance there that, you know, if God were just sovereign but not good, we'd be in a world of trouble.

But because he is sovereign and good, we can rest in that.

And that's where we can find it.

You know, we can't necessarily see the end, but he can't.

He knows what the end is, and it's a good end.

It's a good plan, and we can trust him in that.

And so that's where we can rest in the sovereignty, because we know he's also good.

He is me working it for our good.

And that's where our peace comes from in that, that balance of sovereignty and goodness.

Yeah, good word.

I makes me think of a conversation I was having with a friend one day.

And it was basically, we're talking about God's sovereignty and obedience.

And he challenged me.

He said, you know, he said, it's Aaron, it's like you're asking one of your kids to, to do something and them asking you the reasons why.

And they want to understand.

He said, really?

Then once they understand, logically, it's their desire, they're not being obedient to what you ask them to do.

And it really made me think, challenged when God's asked me to in his sovereignty and to be obedient to him.

If I don't understand it logically as a human, I don't understand.

But am I still willing to trust him and move forward in that?

So the practical example I think really helped me and made me realize there's been several instances in my life that, that I wanted to be in control.

I said I was following God's will, but I needed to understand it, have it all worked out and really I was following Aaron's, Aaron's logical understanding of the situation rather than trusting, as you pointed out, a good God and that we have a faithful father that is good that, and that we can definitely trust, trust in him.

Well said.

Kyle.

You write that problems force us to find our joy in God's presence rather than the absence of problems.

So finding joy in God's presence rather than the absence of problems, how does that speak to the life of a missionary?

And how's it been something that's been a guiding principle for you?

I think you've probably experienced this.

That challenge either remove or shake our foundations.

When we're put into a challenge, everything's kind of shook up.

And what happens is it reveals that what we were putting our hopes in, our comfort or whatever else, it reveals that those aren't satisfying or sufficient.

God alone can satisfy us and sustain us.

And without those problems though, we might continue on for year after year after year being built on a shaky foundation.

So one of the most loving things God can actually do is to shake that foundation to help us see, oh wait, this, this actually isn't as solid foundation that we thought it was.

Just like an earthquake might reveal that, you know, you get a tremor and you start getting cracks in the building.

That's better than having a nine point earthquake and taking the whole building down.

So we need those things to, to be able to reveal where our, our problems might be and then we can then shift our focus to be able to say, okay, now I want to rebuild on my joy in God.

One year we had just numerous things that got piled on us and we were, it just had overextended ourselves and getting things done then, you know, accomplishing things.

But we couldn't find our joy in that because we weren't getting, we weren't getting everything in and we were just overloaded.

And that season though truly pushed us to turn our full hope in God because we weren't able to find our joy and our strength and those Things that maybe we had founded him before.

And so when he shakes those foundations, the only thing that's left is what's solid and what's unshakable.

And so we need those times, those problems, to force us to put our joy and our trust in Him.

Not just the absence of problems, but we find that even in the midst of problems, we can still have that joy and that strength because it's.

It's not based on a shakeable foundation.

There was a.

A waterfall that my wife and I had gone to on vacation one time.

And there were some trees that were growing out of the side of the cliff there.

And as I was looking kind of closely at there, I saw that the roots actually went way back, wrapping around all these rocks.

And anytime there was, if there was ever a storm that came through there, those trees, I mean, they weren't going anywhere because they were rooted to an unshakable foundation.

Now, the other trees that were on the side of the hill there, they may have been washed away, but those trees weren't going anywhere.

And our life is like that.

When we are able to be built on an unshakable foundation, we're not going anywhere because our security and our foundation isn't based on circumstances that change.

It's based on something that doesn't move.

Yeah.

And that's their real joy of being able to find that joy in God having an unshakable joy.

What's not based on our circumstances, it's because it's based on something that doesn't move.

For sure.

Kyle, is that what you mean by strategic dependence?

You talk, you write about strategic dependence and the importance of that, to have godly grit.

Is that strategic dependence?

More thoughts on that.

So strategic dependence, I kind of see that as building reliance on God's power into our plans.

So when we're making strategies, when we're planning for things, in other words, strategic dependence would be.

I don't think God calls us to just shoot from the hip, you know, just.

Just go out there and every day just kind of go out there and do whatever.

I believe that it's okay for us and wise of us to pray and to seek wisdom and to prayerfully think through and use the cognitive abilities God's given to us.

But at the same time, it's very, very easy for us to look at something that's gone well and take that and say, okay, let's reverse engineer that and then do it exactly again.

And then what's going to happen is we're going to Be trusting in our plan or in our strategy for success, not in God.

And strategic dependence would be saying, okay, let's use wisdom, let's be as wise as we can.

But.

See that success is only dependent on God coming through and working.

And sometimes that means stepping out into plans that are bigger than we can succeed in.

So an example of this, when we were starting our care home in South Africa, we had a couple different options.

We were praying about.

We were praying about starting a home based care where we would go out into the communities and work with patients in their homes, or starting a care home where patients would come and we would care for them there.

And the home based care, there's nothing wrong with that.

But for me it was like, oh yeah, we can do that, we can start that next week.

That didn't.

Because I could see how all those resources were available to us.

The care home that was huge.

We had to go back and raise a ton of money.

We had to raise continuing operating expenses, we had to train workers, we had to do all kinds of stuff.

And there was so much there.

But I really, as we prayed about that, really felt like, you know what, Kyle, will you trust me enough to step into that?

And it was a step of faith that if God didn't come through, it would have been an epic fail because I couldn't do it by myself.

And so there was a gap between our work and what needed to be accomplished.

That the only thing that can fill that gap, God in prayer, that's the only thing that can fill that.

And so strategic dependence is building into our plans, saying, lord, I'm stepping out in faith here and I'm going to do all I can here, but there's a limit to what I can do.

And I'm trusting that you're going to fill in that gap and that you're going to come through and work in a way that you receive the glory.

Because at the end of the day then it's clear to us, to everyone else whose power accomplished the plan, it wasn't ours, it was God's.

And that's what I call strategic dependence there.

Just building that into our plans.

Love it.

And love the intentionality of it.

Yeah.

And just in placing primacy on the importance of that, love it.

You talk about finding peace in the one who controls the plans rather than finding peace and understanding the plans.

So finding the peace in the one who controls plans rather than understanding the plans.

Any more thoughts on that?

One illustration I share a lot is when we were in South Africa, we Would off.

We lived about an hour from the game park and we would do self drives to the game park.

And one day we came up over a ridge in our 4x4 and about 40 yards away, there was a black rhino.

Now, black rhinos, they just perpetually wake up on the wrong side of the bed.

And this one was true to form, looked up, must have said to himself, car charge.

And he took off in a dead sprint for us.

Now, the first thing that came to my mind, I ride motorcycle.

And about a couple years before that, I read a book on motorcycle safety.

And it said when a dog chases a motorcycle, you don't actually speed up, you actually slow down and you draw that dog in and when you look, because what will happen is if it has space, the dog will adjust to be able to meet you wherever you're going to be at.

It'll have time to triangulate on your position.

So you slow down and you draw the dog into the last second and then you hit the gas.

And the dog doesn't have time to readjust.

So I thought to myself, well, all right, 30 pound dog, 3,000 pound rhino, it's the same trigonometry, this should work.

And so I just start putzing along now I'm just drawing this thing in.

30 Yards out, 20 yards out.

He is now, he's really trucking now.

And my family, though, my family's in the car and they are freaking out.

My kids are like jumping over seats, getting to the far side of the vehicle.

My wife's hitting me on the arm, yelling at me to go, go, go, go, go.

All I have time to say is, I've got this.

And I just keep putzing along.

About 10 yards out, I hit the gas and this rhino, it misses us by just a few yards.

It slides past us and rolls down the hill because it's trying to chase, come after us, misses us.

Now, in that situation, I had a little bit of knowledge.

But in our lives, God has infinitely more knowledge.

He wants us to trust his plan, but he doesn't always reveal to us or take time to explain to us what his updated plan is.

Because so many times we have an idea of what we think is going to go on.

But when God changes that, that's when fear starts to rise and we start getting fearful or concerned that God's not going to be doing our will is essentially what we're fearful of.

And finding that peace in the one who controls the plans is so different than finding peace in knowing what the plane is.

Because we don't always have to know what the plan is.

Having peace in God, in a person is different than finding peace in the plan because then plans can change, but our foundation hasn't.

If we only find peace in the plan, every time it changes, we're going to hit the panic button and we're going to be trying to call a powwow with the Trinity to be able to talk this through.

But God wants us to trust him as a person.

Yeah.

And that's, that's really where we can find true peace.

And the life of a missionary is, if it's anything, it's.

It's change.

Right.

And it's plans changing.

I think, you know, the, the people that listening to this podcast, they, they have their own story.

Everyone has a story that I thought I was going to hear and we're going to do this and ended up doing that.

I thought I was going to, you know, whatever, send my kids to this school.

That didn't work.

They ended up having to go to this school or I serving as a single and thought it was going to go this way only for my.

It to go differently than I thought.

I thought whatever.

So I think, man, that point, this points to it and it points back to godly grit.

Right.

Because if we don't, if we don't have that peace in the one who controls the plan, it's real, real hard to have godly grit because we want to bail until we understand.

Right.

And that stick to it.

Is that courage.

The things you've delineated there, I just think is super, is super, super important.

Last question on the, the part one of this, of our, our discussion on your book.

I might ask one or two more questions, but the, the, the one I think is going to be one of the last ones is how can our attempt to show strength and control limit others from seeing God's power or his power?

So how can our attempts to show strength and control.

We got it all together.

We can do all this, limit others from seeing God's power.

We touched a little bit on this at the beginning.

But if our strategy, our plan, or our wisdom, our strength is, is what people remember about us, then we're the focus, not God.

And so we actually get in the way of God's plan to glorify himself when we take the spotlight away from God.

In my first book, talk a little bit about photobombing God and we're trying to get into, in front of the picture when God says that he is doing all things for his glory and we're trying to jump in front of that.

It goes against God's very purpose of what he's trying to accomplish.

He is trying to make much of his name and reveal his glory because he's worthy of that.

We're not.

And when we do things to get in the way of that, it detracts the attention.

It takes the.

Takes the focus off of that.

And so sometimes when we're trying to show our strength or we're trying to show that we're in control, that's the same thing.

We're pulling that attention to ourselves to be seen for our strength or for our.

Our greatness or whatever component of that, our lives, that we're trying to do.

And if we think about this in terms of spiritual leadership, as leaders, we're trying to point people to Christ, not ourselves.

And so success is measured in our dependence on him, not in people's applause to us.

We're trying to get people to trust in Him.

And so part of leadership, even is walking through challenges in a way that shows other people God can be trusted.

Yeah.

And sometimes God's going to put us through some really deep waters because other people are watching us to see how do we walk through challenges?

Do we walk through them in a way that we are confident that we're not afraid?

Do we make God look great?

When you think about Moses at the Red Sea when Israelites were just panicking and Moses says, be calm and see the salvation of the Lord.

Yeah.

That's why Moses was the leader.

He wasn't just leading people to a destination.

He was leading people to trust God.

He was leading them to a relationship with the Creator and to.

And to worship Him.

And so as leaders were, our role is a worship leader, not necessarily up on a stage, but we are leading people to worship God.

Yeah.

And they're not.

They're not following us.

We're.

We're just the.

We're the first followers.

We're following God and other people are following us, but we're following him in a way to.

To worship him, and that's what we want other people to do.

And so however we go through our life and our ministry, we're wanting other people to walk away from their time with us saying, wow, they serve an awesome God, and that's really what we want to lead them to.

Yeah.

Good word, Kyle.

Last question, then we're going to ask you to pray for us.

Godly grit.

Is it something do you have or don't have?

Is it something you develop over time?

Thoughts on that, and then.

Then I'm going to ask you to pray.

I've exercised for 30 some years, and I've read a ton of books on exercise, but you don't actually get any stronger by reading a book about exercise.

You actually have to go and do the work.

And godly grit is the same thing.

It is.

It's spiritual strength that.

It's a process that God has to work in us.

And, you know, I wrote this book, I still read this book because this is literally my journal.

So I go back to this book all the time.

Because you learn something on one level and God hits you with another challenge, and you.

You have to learn it at a deeper level.

It's kind of like, you know, if you're going with the illustration of the exercise, you know, if you can bench press 200 pounds, throwing an extra 25 pounds in there totally changes the exercise.

You know, it's the same exercise, but it's harder.

And in our lives, God has puts us through challenges in a deeper and deeper way.

He takes us to a deeper and deeper place with him that grows our spiritual strength and our godly grit, our resilience and grit in him as we go through those.

Those different challenges.

And it's.

It's hard.

Yeah, but it does.

That's what we need to grow our spiritual strength.

Love it.

Love it.

Kyle, will you pray for us and just pray that God will use part one of our conversation just to encourage those who are listening in and.

Yeah.

Will you pray for us now?

Yeah, absolutely.

Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you for just what a good God you are and for what a sovereign God you are, that we can trust you and rely on you.

And Lord, I know that many of those listening today, they may be going through some really, really difficult things.

I just pray that you would be near them right now and that you would comfort them, but that you would also just be growing their faith through this time and helping them to.

To draw their strength from you and that reliance that they can have on you.

And as they do that, I just pray that you would allow their lives to point other people to your greatness.

Not that they are strong in and of themselves, but that you are strong.

That you give that strength to us as your servants as we take time to wait upon you.

That strength will rise as we wait upon you.

And we just thank you for that.

Lord, let me pray these things in your son's name.

Amen.

Amen.