Music
Hello and welcome to another episode of Up Front and Undivided with Luke and Dean'na.
Hi. Hi babe. How's it going?
I am going to do my best to get through this without completely losing my voice.
Yes, because you're sick.
I am a little under the weather, yeah. Yeah. For sure.
But dedication. But dedication because we actually have something that we want to share
and something that's kind of been on our minds for a while now.
So, do you want to jump into it?
We can, yeah. Or did you want to chit chat?
No, I say we just jump into it. Let's just jump into it. See where it goes.
Yeah. Are you having a good day? I am having a good day.
I hope everybody else is having a good day. Yeah.
It is a good day. So, just FYI, forgive me if I sound like I swallowed a frog.
Yes. It's okay. You're a cute little horse.
Aw, thanks babe. Hi little puppy. Don't do that.
Alright, here we go. Yeah.
So, we're going to talk about waiting. Yes.
I was trying to bounce back and forth what to call it.
I don't know, for some reason I want to say what do you do in the waiting room?
Oh, I like that. Yeah. Which we'll be in tomorrow.
We will be. Because you get to take me to the doctor.
Yeah. Good times.
You know, it is what it is, right? That's right.
It is what it is and we just know that I'm fine. I am fine.
Yeah. It just, this periodically happens to me. Yes.
And it's okay. That's right. Because God is good and I'm fine.
I'm healthy. It's all good. But, go ahead.
I was going to say, so while you're resting and recovering, yes, kind of leads to what we're going to talk about.
I like that. What do you do while you're waiting on God?
I love that. Not just while we're sick, not just while we're healing or waiting for our healing.
But, yeah. In all areas of our lives, you know, what do we do? How do we wait?
Yeah. You know, I know we've mentioned that one of our favorite parts of the gifts of the Spirit is patience.
Right. But how do you exercise that?
Yeah. I know that like, one of the verses that always comes to my mind is,
those who wait on the Lord, he renews their strength, right?
And a lot of times people think, well, I'm going to wait.
And so that means you don't do anything. And that's not necessarily what that means.
It's what are you doing in the season of in between?
You know what I mean? It's like we have these peaks and valleys in our lives.
And we always talk about going from glory to glory with God.
But sometimes you've got to go through that valley to make to the other side of the mountaintop.
And it's like, what do you do in the process?
Because if you just sit and you do nothing, there's a pretty good chance you're not going to get anything.
It's, you know, the beautiful thing about God is him being that co-laborer with us and us with him
and just coming alongside of him and him basically saying, I am God and I will give you the ability to do X, Y, Z.
Here's the deal, though. I'm not going to do it all.
Because I want you to join me in this journey.
I want you to go with me and and grow in this process because he knows ultimately what tomorrow holds.
And so if we're not doing what we need to do today, whether that is resting in my case right now
or whether it's I, you know, some of the examples that you gave today, which I absolutely loved.
It's like if you're called to write a book, are you what are you doing?
Well, I haven't quite gotten it yet. No, you need to be writing every day or putting pen to paper, you know, writing down your thoughts.
I'm supposed to I've been called to sing and and travel the country.
OK, are you writing music? Are you are you worshiping every day?
You know, it's it's all these different scenarios of, you know, you don't it doesn't happen overnight.
It's it's not just like I'm going to go be a bodybuilder because we know that ultimately my goal is I'm going to look fantastic come 50.
Right. The older I get, I refuse to get old.
And it's like that is actually a goal in my life.
But it's not going to happen if I just, oh, tomorrow, we're just going to sit or, oh, you know, well, I can fluff off here or whatever.
It's it's the preparation time. It's it's not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
What are what are you doing? Yeah. I mean, in some time, in some ways, it reminds me of sort of in history, you know, I mean, not just biblical history,
but history in general, especially when the armies would fight when the weather was good.
You know, usually the summer months were the months of war and winter was you just you can't you bed down, you can't.
Right. You know, it happened during the Civil War, happened during Roman times, happens throughout history.
So it's that that winter encampment, that that time of we're not fighting for three to four months.
What do you do? Yeah. You know, they the soldiers didn't just sit there around the campfire drinking, eating and having a laugh.
You know, they were they were drilling. They were practicing.
They were making sure their equipment was up to snuff.
You know, back in the day, you know, that was your chance to make sure your armor was still good.
You're, you know, upgrade your armor if possible. Yeah.
So so it was it was all of these things because you knew that as soon as spring summer hit, it's it's back to fight.
It's go time. Yeah. And you can't you can't sit around for three to four months, you know, and do nothing.
Yeah. And then all of a sudden you're going to go fight. Right.
You know, I heard it once, you know, in modern times with, you know, with the army, with the Marines, you know, you're you're always a soldier.
You're always a Marine. Yeah. Regardless of what your job is, you know, if you're a finance clerk, you know, making sure people are getting paid on time.
You're a soldier. Yeah. You're a Marine.
You know, you're you're taught to fight even if you're that's not your normal everyday job. Yeah.
You know, that is what you prepare for. Yeah.
So I think that's what I think of, you know, when people talk about waiting on the Lord. Right.
You know, again, a ship that's not in motion, it's really hard to steer it. It's true.
You know, it's almost impossible. I think it's possible. Yeah.
It's pretty it's not, you know, I mean, I've been on small sailboats, you know, catamarans and small like monohulls.
But and you can sit there and you can wave the rudder all sorts of places. Yeah.
But until you're actually moving. Yeah. That's when you're going to change course.
You know, it's yeah. So that's that's what I think of when I when I hear on that, you know, that we need to wait on the Lord and wait on God's timing.
You know, because again, what are you doing? Yeah, because everything ultimately I like I said, I've I was the one that was raised in church all my life.
And I heard for years we got to wait on God's time. And absolutely.
It's probably within the last decade or so that I've gone from wait on the Lord's timing to God.
You're ultimately in all of this time. It's not even just you know, I mean, it's he's a god of seasons.
I'm pretty certain you've talked about that before. You know, it's just far as like, you know, this might be a different season.
We have our amazing friends that, you know, single friends are like, you know, well, I'm waiting on Mr.
Wright or I'm waiting on Mrs. Wright and I'm waiting on the perfect time and I'm waiting and you know, and it's and what is it? John Gray?
Is that who the Red Lenten Church? When he will have to like put a link on it or something to the YouTube video.
But he says the most beautiful thing and he goes, a man who finds a wife finds a good thing.
And basically he goes on to say not a man that finds a girlfriend that makes him his fiance, that makes him his wife, that blah, blah, blah.
But a man who finds a wife, that means that this woman has already prepared herself to carry herself in such a manner to where she doesn't get to be played with.
She's not. Listen, if you're here to play, I'm not your girl. It's marriage or nothing. This is who I am.
You know, she doesn't shortchange herself. And it's like, how are we carrying ourselves in those times?
You know, whether it's in a single time frame, whether it's in a marriage time frame and you're waiting on that baby or promotion or whatever it is, the breakthrough, our sweet girl.
Right. So there's quite a few of you guys that might know what's going on.
A lot of you may not. Our beautiful girl is going to get an operation in March and our insurance denied us and decided they didn't want to cover it.
They deemed it not medically necessary, but it will absolutely improve the quality of her life and give her life back basically.
And so we said, OK, father, what are you going to do? Ten thousand dollars and some change later. You know, how are you going to do this?
And so it's like, what are we going to do in the midst of it? And you looked me right in the eye and you said it's going to be OK.
That'll provide. And that was December. Yeah. December 28th was our our first initial consultation.
What date? Let's see. Last Sunday, last Sunday, we ended up getting a check.
Yeah. So we can. So this is January. We're not even halfway into January.
God provided all of it completely. And a lot of our friends, family, different people sowed seed into her, invested into her life.
And all I can tell you is in the midst of what we were watching, though, we were already prepared to we're going to buckle down.
We're going to do what we need to do. I'm pulling extra hours. You're pulling extra projects.
We're doing everything that we know to do and trusting God in the midst of it, that while we're doing it, the whole time we're worshipping him in the waiting,
we're praising him through the process where when we get frustrated or when we, you know, looking at our beautiful girl on that drive home
because she's in tears like, Mom, that's 10 grand, you know, and looking at her going, no, God has brought us this far.
He's not going to leave us. And so it's like if we get that concept in every aspect of our lives,
that even in what seems to be a dormant season of whatever it is that we're going through, if it looks like it's God, there is absolutely no way.
We have to remember that there's always a way that God is a god of impossible.
And if he says I needed to do X, Y, Z, know that X, Y, Z is going to help you launch you into that next phase of whatever it is.
So whether you feel like you've been locked down into a waiting, whatever that looks like, God, I'm going to be single the rest of my life.
God, I'm not going to carry a child. God, I'm not going to get that. Whatever, you know, just praise him in the waiting, worship him in the waiting.
Get into his face, get into a scripture, read, read the story one after another, after another about how God would meet people in the midst of the wilderness,
that he's very much in those times where you feel like you're just stuck. But you've got to make sure that you're what are you doing?
What do you need to do to cultivate and keep you moving forward?
Yeah. So, I mean, I'll bring another real world example.
Speaking of waiting and what do we do? Not only what do we do, but how is our attitude while we're waiting?
Years ago, I heard a story. I forget what company it was.
But when you would go in for an interview, there was a mirror, a one way mirror in the waiting room.
And part of the interview process that the applicant wasn't aware of is they would watch you.
And if you had a good attitude while you were waiting, you got to basically move on to the next step.
But if they saw that you had a bad attitude while waiting, you know what? Sorry, you're not the candidate for us.
Wow. So, yeah. I mean, think of the children of Israel, right? While they're going through the wilderness.
Why? What was it? I don't know the exact numbers. Was it supposed to be like 40 days or it was only supposed to be only however long of a trek?
It wasn't a very long trek. I don't remember.
But what turned out to be maybe days or even a couple of months turned into 40 years because they grumbled.
They complained. They, you know, God is literally giving them manna from heaven, food from heaven to feed them.
Well, I think it was before the manna. But even then, as they were leaving Egypt, the Egyptians were basically throwing them gold and silver.
Please take all of our wealth. Go away.
So it's like what could have, I mean, that's a life lesson. What could cost you time, you know, is all about your attitude.
You know, it's like even if your circumstance doesn't change, we say this to our kids all the time, you know, your circumstance may never change,
but your attitude in that circumstance actually changes it.
That you actually change the trajectory at that point of where this could go.
You could either walk with a bad attitude or you can walk into this with a good attitude and be like, you know what? Yep, this sucks.
But God, you're even in the suck. That's right. I trust you.
I trust you that you're going to work out every kink and every junk and all of this stuff, whatever it is that I need to purge through.
Because I mean, ultimately, it's you're that baptized under fire. He's just, you know, I'm going to I'm going to refine you.
I I there's stuff over here that you don't need anymore in order for you to launch into this.
It's, you know, the parable where it talks about the camel that goes through the eye of the needle.
And I think Pastor Tom Trout actually did a study on it one day and was telling about it.
And he says, do you realize when they say that you can't, you know, it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle.
It's actually the eye of the needle was like the doorway in order to.
But it would have to lower itself, basically scoot on its knees and make sure it had all of its baggage off of it before it could enter in to the next thing.
And it's like when we wait, are we doing it with a humble, teachable heart? Are we doing it where we're letting go of the past?
We're letting go of the the circumstances even that might want to try to hold us bound so that way we can be set free in, you know.
So it's just waiting is good. It is. It is.
And here I'll throw a twist at you. OK, in addition to us waiting on God, think of.
God, the waiting of God, not waiting on God, but waiting of God. OK, because how many times has has it been, you know, God's called us to do this.
God's told us to do that. Yeah. You know, Luke, Dana, you guys need to do a podcast.
I mean, how long was that on our hearts and and really pressing on our spirit?
And we're like, no, we'll do it. No, not us. We're not. It's just us. We're not qualified.
You know, we're we just you know, we got nothing. Nobody wants to listen to us. Yeah.
You know, and but it's one of those things that not only is it times that we need to wait on, you know, what do we do while we're waiting on God's move?
But what happens when God is waiting for us to move? Yeah.
You know, because I've heard story after story of, you know, people that I felt like I was moved.
I felt like I was moved to do this, but I didn't. And then all of a sudden this other person got called and they ran with what I thought was supposed to be mine.
Yeah. You know, I was called to do this. I said no. So then this person took it and ran with it.
And I feel like I missed my calling because I sat and waited. Yeah. You know, so it's it is.
It's God will wait on us to kind of stop being boneheads. Yeah. Yeah. To a certain point. Yeah.
You know, you know, so I because I have no doubt that if we would have just sat and said no and not done this, you know, somebody else would have.
Oh, sure. You know, I'd like to think that somebody else would be coming out with with good knowledge and say, hey, let's let's do this.
Let's talk about this. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that. Yeah. And the other thing about kind of the twisted right back around again,
when you were saying that, as far as God waiting on us, because he's such a good father. Yeah.
It's like us with our children, our daughters driving and or, you know, she wants to go here.
She wants to go there. And it's not yet. Or maybe another time.
Or let's hold on to that for just a second. You don't need to know that. Or you don't need to go there.
You know, and it's so it's like when you stand in a position or you stand into a new place and this is for us and it's for those that are listening,
just maybe take a step back from it and ask, you know, what am I doing in the waiting?
What are you wanting to show me, God? And what do I need to let go of in order for me to move forward?
And, you know, because ultimately he he doesn't want to do anything that's going to cause destruction.
He's he's not out for our demise. He wants to give us a hope and a good future.
And so sometimes the waiting is is it's not a no. It's not yet.
Or give me just a little bit more time. And so, you know, just take away today, you know, not just sitting and waiting, but preparing.
I think that's just what is your preparation stance at this point? Right. Yeah, that's good. I like that.
I like that kind of the again, that adjustment of mindset. Yeah.
You know, not just sitting and waiting, but what are you preparing for? Yeah. How are you preparing? Yeah.
You know, because if you want to be married, OK, so what does that look like? Right.
You know, you want to have children. What does that look like? You want to have a strong, solid business.
What does that look like? You know, start putting pen to paper, start asking God hard questions, start asking yourself hard questions,
and then see where he takes you from there. That's right.
And just don't forget to worship and praise him in the midst of it. Yeah, because he has nothing but good for you.
And, you know, and if you are having that that question, you know, don't be afraid to, you know, search out God and say,
what are you talking about? Why? I mean, really? Right. You're tapping me for this. Right. Right.
You know, he'll come back and say, yes, I don't make mistakes. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.
So reach into that reach into that attitude, that process of preparation. Yeah. And how are you doing it?
What is your attitude of preparation look like? What is your process of preparation look like? Yeah.
So, yeah, I think that's what we got to say. I love it. Yeah.
So, y'all, thanks for listening again. Again, follow us wherever you can find podcasts.
Again, we're growing. We're doing. I would love to connect with we would we would love to connect with all of our listeners wherever you can find us, social media and all that.
So have a great week. Be well. Sorry. Enjoy the journey. See you next week. Bye.