Even though we've been doing this now, we've been in ministry, you know, since the late nineties, there are still those moments where God is still pushing us and teaching us and moving us forward into a area of the pond that we've never seen before in a depth, and it's a lot deeper that we've never been before. Well, hello again, and welcome to the Trim the Wick podcast. I'm, Dan.
And I'm Becky.
And we are excited to be back with you again this week. How you doing, babe?
I'm kind of tired, to be honest.
We are in the dog days of summer, and, we are ending the, long, hot summer here in Florida.
Which for me means the very long, extended hours swim season. Thus the. I'm kind of tired right now. But you know what? It's all right.
00
00 yay.
Thunderstorms and.
Yeah, fun times.
But been kind of a week a little bit around here, hasn't it?
Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing, is life kind of happens. We always want to have the. This is how we plan out the thing. You know, we look at our month and we go, okay, we're going to schedule this. We're going to schedule that. We kind of have our. We want it to plan out this way, and then things just change.
Yeah.
And that's normal.
And life happens, and you gotta adapt.
Right. And one of the things that I know for us, through our life, we've had many changes from moves, across country, multiple times.
Yeah. We sat down and figured it out at one point. I think it was like, in 33 years of marriage, we've lived in 20 different houses or apartments.
Yeah, it's been crazy. Thank God. That has slowed down a lot in the last, ten years where we've had one, house, and we've been very happy to have that slow down. But, yeah, there's just change and things happening and stuff coming at you from all directions is kind of just the way it is.
Yeah, that's life.
The other thing is, is that you're constantly growing, you're constantly changing, you're constantly adapting to what's happening around you. And even in our christian walk, we need to be constantly moving forward. I can remember and some of the times on our Wednesday night services, it was usually a Wednesday night. The pastor would get up and say, hey, can somebody give a testimony of what's going on? And it seemed
like, that was the time. And then someone would step up and they would be like, back 30 years ago or 40 years ago, God did this in my life, or I can remember this.
And it's good to have those waypoints, right? We need to have those Ebenezer stones where we go. If I'm faltering or floundering in my faith, I have this touch point to go back to, to go, I know God said this. I know God did this. And he's the same God then as he is now. And so I can trust. So it's not like it's a bad thing to have those touchstones to go back to. We need those testimonies.
Yeah, but. And they are great because they can be great encouragers, right? Because if you're going through something right now in the present, you can look back and go, this is where I know God came through for me. This is when I trusted him. And it can be a huge encouragement. The negative is, if that's all you have of God working in your life, that can be actually become a negative because now you're not growing.
Right? That's all that God has been to you. Oh, I got this one glimpse of God. I got this one word from God all those low. Those many years ago, right? And yet that's not what we see in scripture of who he wants to be for us, right?
Cause God is, a present now. God. And he wants you to live in the present now. You learn to about what God did in the past. You learn these stories. You learn and reflect on what God did in your life in the past. But it's all so that you live in the moment.
Right? I mean, we've been married, right, for 33 years.
Right?
And if my entire relationship with you is, wow, when I was 16 years old and we were dating, this is who you were to me, and this is who I was to you. And this is what our relationship was when I was 16. Now that I'm 52 and you're 53, if I'm still living in 16 year old me's relationship with you, we've got a problem in our marriage.
Yes, well, and ding, ding. That's kind of a lot of problems and a lot of marriages, because that's actually what happens is one spouse moves forward and the other one keeps falling back and stuff. Sorry about that. You might be hearing the dogs in the background. They kind of woke up a little bit, ornery this morning.
They really did.
And again, that's life. Sometimes the dogs are all happy, and sometimes they just want to be annoying, but, yeah, we see this where you've got to be in the present. You've got to be moving forward. Jesus. You know, if you put your hand to the plow, you can't look back, right? You've got to move forward. And one of the things that, I know for me, some of the slowest times looking back in my life, some of the.
Some of the weakest times in my life, some of the slowest time are times when I was relying on what I'd already learned or what I knew and wasn't growing. And it actually turned into a time, almost of a depression, of not moving forward, of just being in the status quo. And it's so important that we are, continually learning, continually moving forward, because God is the God of now and of the future.
Right.
If we're not moving forward and growing, we're stagnant and we're dying.
Yeah. There are only two options, really.
Yeah.
You're growing or you're dying. And we don't want our relationship with God to die, but we. Sometimes we do. We get complacent.
Yeah, we do.
You know, and we get the noise around us, I think gets louder. And God is a very present God, but we have to be seeking him to find him.
Right.
He doesn't generally come with all the clanging cymbals and the noise. And he is a still, small voice. He is invisible to us unless we're looking. You have to look to find him. And sometimes we just get too lazy to do that work.
Yeah, well, and again, we fall back into a status quo situation, to where? Well, it's good enough, you know? And I think that's a. For the believer. I don't believe that that's a statement that we should ever be saying as a believer, that it's, oh, this is just good enough, you know, my life is good enough. It's a. I, don't need to do this, or I don't need to move forward. I don't.
Which is not to say that we shouldn't be content with where we are.
Yeah.
Because we need to be content, but we also need to be walking with the spirit. There's kind of this dichotomy that you hold in your hands when you're walking a spirit filled life of simultaneously going, I am where I am because I've been placed where I am in this point in time for a purpose. But also, I don't ever want to be remaining where I am for the next unforeseeable future, because that means I've stopped growing.
Right.
I've stopped walking. And, you know, over and over again in the scriptures, we hear the life of a believer equated with a walk, equated with a road, equated with a race. These are all things where I. You're going somewhere.
Yep.
And it's okay to stop in the road and rest sometimes, but it is not okay to just stop walking and never complete the journey.
Yeah. And to me, this is where one of those pitfalls of religion, of religious practices and stuff, is that you kind of get into this over and over again of doing the same thing, but it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't push you forward. It just keeps you kind of just kicking your feet in the water. You know, you're just.
It's a merry go round that you're on. Instead of a, you're just doing.
The same thing over and over again. You're praying the same prayer, you're reading the same scripture over and over again. You're doing the same religious practice over and over again. You almost get this. You get a fuzzy because you're doing something, but you're also not growing and you're not moving forward, and you get stagnant.
So we wanted to encourage you, and as we're having this conversation, we were talking about this, and we were kind of like, going, well, let's share some of this stuff that we're doing because we think it's so important that you're growing. We think that's so important that we're growing. We don't want to stay still. We want to continue to be moving forward. And I know that you recently got a book that has been challenging you and encouraging you, and you want to share a little bit about
that book and kind of what you're not. I know you're not through it yet, but you're not.
I'm not. I'm only about halfway. But it's one of those things where the book itself was brought across my radar because of where we are in our walk right now. We are, you know, this year has been a challenging one for us. You know, we've stepped out in some things that God has called us to. Not just beginning this podcast, not just beginning my writing again. You know, you've stepped out of a position that was
better than half of our household income. Yeah, I am continuing in my business as a swim instructor, but that season ends in about a month.
Yeah.
Because, you know, even in Florida, it gets too cold to swim, y'all. I know. Too cold for us natives to swim anyway. Let's put it that way.
Well, we push it as far as we can.
Yeah. We push it through November. but after November, you know, my body needs a break, and all. And so, you know, I'm gonna be taking some time off of swim lessons. And so that's. That's gonna mean a change in my income. And one of the things that the Lord has been speaking very loudly to us is, seek first my kingdom, and all these things will be added to you. And we've lived through times where the income wasn't sufficient for the outgo, and we've lived through times of job loss. And
we've, you know, we've. We've kind of done the okay, I trust you for my income thing, but it has always been in the past. Our level of understanding was, we will trust you with our income because we know that if I needed to tomorrow, I could go out, get a job, be hired, and replace that income quickly.
Yes.
This time God has spoken a very clear word to us, and he has said, no, you will not.
Yeah.
He has told you very clearly you have not drawn a paycheck since March.
Right.
And he has told you very clearly, do not go seek a nine to five or shift work or whatever managerial job, whatever, you know, is within your wheelhouse.
Yeah.
to replace that income. You will not go seek that, because what I have for you is what I want you to learn to walk in.
Right. And that's hard. Let me tell you as a person that, you know, I'm in my fifties now, and I've worked since I was 15 years old, and, you know, it's hard to go, okay, God, I'm not going to use my hands right now.
Yeah, it's been brutal.
It's been a struggle.
Yeah. It really has. And yet, knowing that God has spoken that very, very clearly to us and has put both of us on the same page, there is zero restlessness in me going, why aren't you going out and getting a job? That I can mentally understand where the income's coming from. Don't you see what's coming up? And, y'all, God has provided. We have not missed a bill yet, so we're learning
to trust. And one of the things that he has revealed to us is that even though we were trusting him for our well being and we were trusting him for our financial, and we knew that he could provide up, to this point, we have always maintained an expectation on him. Of providing in a way that we could understand. We can understand that God will provide by providing us another job. We can understand that God will provide by putting it on somebody's heart to write us a
check. We can understand these things.
Yeah.
This time we're in a place where God has gone. No, you're gonna be blind.
Yeah.
About how provision is going to come and you're going to have to accept that the possibility is the provision won't come in a way that you do understand. My provision for where I'm walking you may cause you to lose some things.
Yeah.
And ah, we have had to wrestle with being okay with that. Yeah.
well and that's the hard part of this process of moving forward.
Yeah.
Is that you have to trust what God's doing.
Yeah.
And you've got to be able to take the situation, the circumstance and what you're going through and where you're at and not put it up against the world standard. And not go, what am I going to do about how I did this in the past and how I did, I dealt with this in the past. How did I get my breakthrough in the past, right. And go, okay, God, I'm yours, I trust you. I trust you. And this is that increasing of faith. This is that m moving forward.
And even though we've been doing this now, we've been in ministry since the late nineties, there are still those moments where God is still pushing us and teaching us and moving us forward into a area of the pond that we've never seen before and a depth and it's a lot deeper that we've never been before.
And what he revealed to us in this case over these past few months as y'all, there have been points when we've been scared and we're like how much longer are we gonna be able to do this? And he's like, no, no, no. I'm the God of today. Tomorrow's worries are sufficient unto themselves. I'm the God of today. So you don't worry about, right. what's going to happen next. You live in trust right now, here today.
And one of the things he's revealed to us is that those passages where he says don't worry about what you're going to eat or what you're going to drink or how you're going to clothe yourselves. Because I'm your father. And I know that you have need of these things. You seek first my kingdom. And he's revealed to us that to a level, we were only willing to seek his kingdom insofar as we understood it.
Right.
And the rest of it we were trusting on the financial world in which we live. Right. And in the world's resources that if I could prove to you that I had enough of the world's resources, then I was okay to trust you, goddess. And he has stripped us of that idol over and over again. He has proven to us that, listen, you didn't see it, but you were in many ways worshiping what the scripture calls mammon. You know, you can only serve one of two masters.
You cannot serve money. The financial realm, what you understand of the resources of this world and still serve me.
Right.
So he has really caused repentance in our lives over that in the past few months and has stripped us of relying on that to the point that now, our kids are laughing at us because anytime that we make a necessary purchase knowing that the bank account is what the bank account is, and there are things that are probably going to come due next month that the bank account right now will not support. And we look at each other, we chuckle and we go, well, but we need to eat today. And so it's just
money. it's just money. It is no longer the God that we serve.
Right.
We understand more of the God that we do serve. And so that kind of brings us to this book that as we've been going through this process and he's been highlighting scriptures that he has called us to a deeper faith in. I ran across this book. it's by Brennan Manning. And the title of it is ruthless trust.
And interesting title.
It's an interesting title with where we are, like you mentioned, I'm not all the way through it yet. It's not one of those fast read books. It's a.
It's a chewing the cud book.
It's a chewing the cud book and going, okay, is my faith such that I really trust the God that I say that I trust? Do I trust him with my wellbeing? Do I trust him with my life? Do I trust him when it looks like he's not going to give me the resources that I understand when he chooses to provide in a way that looks like loss to me, but in the kingdom is
gain? Am I going to trust the character that he has revealed of himself, that he is good, that he is righteous, that he is holy and that he does love, that the very foundation of who he is, is God, is love.
And therefore I can trust him. And so reading through this book has been, Has helped me process some of the stuff that God has been saying to me through his word and through my time with him and some of the things that he's been saying to us through our conversations as we've been going, hey, I was praying over this, or, hey, I was driving down the road, and God just, like, really
whacked me in the head with this. You know, we've been having a lot of conversations about what it is to really trust God beyond what you can see. Yeah.
Ah. and one of the things for me is that, it has opened my eyes to how big God is. Because, see, when you always filtering who God is through what you've done in the past or what you've experienced or I what you're seeing, you actually shrink God into what that vision can actually see.
Yeah.
And when you start getting stripped down and you start seeing things and you start having your eyes open, you start learning things that are bigger than what you originally could see, you start seeing how much bigger God is than that.
Right.
And for me, one of the biggest things that. One of the biggest things is that I've seen is that I'm seeing how much bigger God is and how much bigger God is in my life.
It changes when. When your vision of him gets bigger, it changes your perspective of who you can be, doesn't it?
Exactly. And so leaning on this understanding of how God is using me and how God is expanding me and being bigger in my life, because I'm seeing the potential of who he is and having that vision. You know, when we made trim the wick, we had a vision of, we wanted to kind of do some work in Kenya, and we wanted to help churches and minister to people. But it, was a big vision for just two people,
whatever. But now, over the last six months, where God has kind of taken us through this journey and we've been growing and we've been stripping away things and we've been, having to cry out and go, okay, God, what are we gonna do now? Where are we going now? Now we're starting to see a vision that is ten times, 20 times more than what we had six months ago.
Because six months ago, again, to a degree, we thought the vision depended on who we perceived ourselves to be.
Yes.
Instead of who God was going to be through us. And it's a completely different view of yourself, and it's a completely different view of the people that are around you. Yeah. when you begin to grasp that God is bigger,
than you ever realized he was. Even though you've been walking with him for years, when he shows you more of himself and when you allow yourself to accept more of him, you realize that you can be more than you perceived yourself to be, because you begin to get his view of what he can do with you. And then your view of others begins to change too. You see the graces of God in their lives. You see the potential that God has put in them, and it becomes your heart to draw that out of them.
Yes. Yeah. And the ideas that we had six months ago, eight months ago, even a year ago, when this whole thing of Trim the wick was coming about where we are right now and what we're seeing and what God's doing and how the pieces are coming together and how we're walking into it is so much more than what we even saw just.
A few months ago, which is funny, because to others right now, it probably looks like less.
Yeah.
Because previously we had been able to do some financial support of our partners in Kenya. Right now, that's not happening. Yeah, but man, he's deepening relationships.
Yes.
And so it's not when you begin to surrender to God's vision instead of your limited one, you begin to see his heart for what matters, too. He's taken away not only from our lives here in the States, but from our worldwide contact right now. He's taken away reliance on financial money that we understand. And he's going in to know, my kingdom looks like this. My kingdom looks like connection. My kingdom looks like prayer for one another. My kingdom looks like encouraging one
another in righteousness. My kingdom, you know, seek my kingdom and the other stuff that's gonna take care of itself.
Yeah. So that, you know, that's a great place to kind of stop for today. Cause that's really the crux of what we're trying to say. I'm trying to, I'm thinking as we're talking and we're kinda, you know, as Becky and I do these podcasts, sometimes we have a real, you know, set thing that we wanna go and direction that we wanna go, and sometimes we just kinda let the spirit speak. And today we were kind of like going, we're just
gonna let spirit speak. We wanna share kind of what's going on in our life and what God's doing. But, you know, thinking of a title, you know, for this episode, you know, it really is, you know, seek the kingdom first, seek him first, and then everything else will be added to you and to seek him first is a constant moving forward. It's a constant growing. It's a constant taking where you are right now, going, okay, God, where's my manna for tomorrow? Or where's my m. Not even.
Not even tomorrow.
Yeah, where's my manna for today? What do I need to learn today to draw me closer to the kingdom? We want to just pass, that along to you guys. We hope that this was something that encourages you. If you're not growing, if you feel like Christianity, it's becoming a religious thing. It's just a merry go round, and you don't feel like you're moving forward, we want to encourage you. Number one, seek him
first. Pray and say, God, open my eyes to some of the things that you want me to see right now so that I can walk in them. But I encourage you. Pick up a book. We've got a couple books that I guess what we'll do is, in our notes, we'll put down at the bottom to kind of encourage you, to kind of help move you forward, to grow and stuff. We don't, and I guess we'll endorse his book, but we don't have anything.
yeah, there's no affiliation.
There's no affiliation.
These are just books that will have made a difference in our lives.
We'll put those in the comments or in the, description below with this podcast. But, our prayers for that you are constantly moving forward, that you are constantly growing, and that you are seeing the bigger picture that God has for you and the bigger picture that God's going to produce in you. Because I think that's the thing that is amazing, is that we're seeing a bigger picture of God right now than we have in a long time. But we're also seeing our part in that, and it's exciting, and that
is super exciting. So thank you guys so much for listening and being a part. Hey, if you're enjoying this podcast, please, like, subscribe, let people know, share. you know, it's a big encouragement to us. But you know what? We're doing this because we want to help people and encourage people. So the more people that listen and hear, obviously, that that happens. also, if you want to learn more about what Becky and I are doing, you can go to our website at Matthew two five seven.com and
learn about what we're doing. Support our ministry, support our podcast. Everything is on that website. You can also listen to episodes, and the blog is there that Becky writes. It's all kinds of stuff, so we want to encourage you with that as well. All right. Well, I guess that's it for this week.
I guess so.
We'll see you next week. Okay.
Love y'all.
Love you. Bye.