Running With Horses

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You can’t miss today’s podcast. It is to help you. We’re talking about how stressed everybody is, but we’re going to prepare you to get better. Feel stronger than you’ve ever felt in your life. Don’t miss it.

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You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life Podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship, artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold, truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

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When I was in my early forty s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

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So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week, it’s time to be and experience more.

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Hello everyone and welcome to another podcast, more Faith, More Life. So glad you could be with us. Very important what we’re going to talk about today. In fact, it’s so important that I did it on my Facebook Live just the last time I did it to talk about this same subject. In fact, I do a Facebook Live every week, Wednesday at twelve noon. And you can catch that later if you want to catch that. So it’s kind of a different angle than this, but today I want to talk about the same subject because it’s so important to me to help express to you what some people are asking me. I want to give you answers, okay? They’re asking me what do you think is happening? Where are we in history, what’s going on in our country?

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And I don’t want to give you that kind of lesson. What I want to do is talk to you about what do you do if you’re concerned about what you see happening in our country, if you’re concerned with the economy, which you should be, inflation, economy, immigration, all the things, crime. And then of course occasionally you’ll hear threats of war, nations rising up against our nation, et cetera. And so we’re not going to talk about those things. We’re going to talk about just you personally, where you might be emotionally in your heart, spiritually, emotionally, and what you need to do to prepare which, what might possibly be happening or coming.

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Okay? So the subject I picked is the same one. I did Facebook Live. It’s called running with horses. I’ve been thinking about this running with horses theme, and it’s a biblical theme from the prophet Jeremiah. I have it here in front of me. Jeremiah, chapter twelve, verse five. Okay? Now, what I want to give you some background is this is a God voice to Jeremiah, who is feeling kind of down about things and upset because he’s looking at the situation and his mind is probably saying what your mind would say in the same situation.

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Know, in life we kind of expect good to happen to good people and bad people, things should go bad, right? Well, in his day that wouldn’t happen that way. He’s good. He’s sent from God. He’s a voice from God. He’s a prophet to Israel. And things are really tough. He’s being persecuted, he’s trying to speak the truth. And instead of people saying thank you, he’s being threatened to be thrown in jail, which he was.

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And then his life is being threatened. And then he looks at other people and he says, something’s wrong here. Why do the wicked, why do the bad people, why do the dishonest corrupt people? They seem to be doing great and he and others may be like him. It’s tough. It’s tough. It shouldn’t be good things should happen to good people, bad things should happen to bad people. And that’s how it was not working in his life.

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All right, so through this whole thing, when he’s sort of complaining to God and spilling his heart out about how he feels, about what he’s supposed to be doing as this speaker for know how they’re treating him, god talks to him and sends him a message. And this is what he says. Very interesting. This is from God to Jeremiah. If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?

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Very, very interesting, this statement. So let’s back up and go to you talk about you, your situation, your friends, maybe husband, wife, whatever, church friends, no friends, whatever. Okay, we’re going to talk about this because it talks about if you’re racing with men, if you’re in a foot race is basically what it says with people. Like you’ve seen races. You know what it is. I like to think of the Boston Marathon because that’s more ordinary people, some really ordinary get in there, some train all year, some ordinary. But know, huge amount of people are going to do this race.

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It’s not like the Olympics where you have just specialty people, okay? So if you’re running with regular people and then the picture is doing regular life, it’s not just talking about actual racing. Maybe we call it some people call it the rat race or whatever, but the race of life, doing life right, going to work, paying bills, buying a car, paying your car payment, utilities, house payment, trying to get along.

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If you’re in a relationship, trying to have a good relationship. You have kids trying to work with the kids, get them through school or whatever, all the stuff that has to do with life. And then on top of that, rising prices. Food is I know is really crazy. I haven’t shopped in years because my schedule, when I traveled so much, I had to have people help me do things like get groceries and things for Kathy and I. But then since then, we’ve slowed down with that a little bit, so we decided to do, as people say, these date nights and stuff. Like, who has time for that? All I do. But we decided, hey, what about this? How about an hour before the store closes, we go and do some grocery shopping, just the two of us. There’s barely anybody in the store, and we kind of just have some fun going through that.

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Well, one of my lessons I learned doing that for we’ve done it a few times in the last month is how expensive everything is. I had no idea. And I’ve watching people in the checkout counters lines, struggling, they’re putting stuff up, and I can see nervousness. And then when they find out the cost, how they kind of grimace, like, oh, man, I didn’t know I need all these things, but I don’t really know if I can afford to buy them. But they do anyway, usually because they just slap their credit card in there and I don’t know what they’re thinking.

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By the way, I might mention to you, Kathy and I use credit cards, too, because it’s so convenient. But we pay ours every month. Like we’re only spending our money. It’s only a convenience. It’s only a delayed payment during that month because we already know we’re going to pay it. We’re not going to carry it and have somebody else and have to pay somebody else interest. Okay, but anyway, so I can tell it’s getting tough, and so I’m noticing it, and I may have told you this story, I’m not sure I did, but a few weeks ago I was checking out the groceries and all that, and we paid ours, and it was more than I expected, but oh, well.

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And the lady helping us check out said, you know, there was a girl right before you, and she was around another person, and they had a grocery bill. The person in front of her paid $500 for groceries. The girl behind her, who she’s talking about, made a reference and said, wow, I wish I could afford to buy $500 worth of groceries. And of course, she couldn’t. It was way out of her league. And I thought about that, the stress that people have and the needs that they have and how they’re trying to make that okay. So grocery prices, I think, depending when you hear this, I think gas prices are going to go up everything.

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If you’re glad how much? Maybe you got an electric car. Isn’t that another story? But gas prices have not risen as much as they were supposed to or predicted. The reason is we’re spending our reserves. We’re using our reserve oil that is used. We have for emergencies, for wars, for natural disasters, to send out the National Guard or whatever. And now we’re using our reserves. So in other words, your gas prices are lower than they’re going to be because we’re spending our savings account, so to speak.

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And when our savings account is gone, what do we do? We have no savings left. So we’re spending our savings account in oil. That’s why. But eventually, it looks like it’s going to go up. Okay, we’re talking food prices, gasoline prices in our city, here in Kansas City. Everybody’s pretty nervous about what? Our utility bills, they’re making adjustments, this new way of doing things. And you can choose a plan and all that, and wow, the amount of utilities that our church pays is sky high.

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I mean, thousands and way more than you probably would even guess a month, every month. And so there’s a lot of stress in that, doing that, that have people just life doing life. Okay. Now, at the same time, while we’re doing this and prices are going up and difficulty things, and then the stress of just keeping a home and relationships, trying to stay happily married, all those kinds of things, or friendships and keep your job, stay good with the boss or whatever, all those types of things.

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On top of that, what else do we have? We’ve got $100 phone in our hand. I don’t know, sign. Is your phone worth $100? Is it a little more? Yeah. So we got expensive phones in our hands. We have subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu and Smart TVs. So we have that. We’re keeping up with all the movies. We have a lot of entertainment. We got on our phone. We got all the things that we need to reach. And then while Zion’s sitting here helping me, he’s got his headphones on. He’s got his phone in his hand. But guess what else? He’s got a laptop in his lap, too, that I didn’t know was a nice laptop, kind of expensive laptop.

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Because he’s got to have the ability to do these programs. So we got all these tech stuff around us to keep us happy, to have what most of the rest of the world does not have. All the Internet, all the social medias, all the just watching stuff, stuff, all that’s going on. So we got all this entertainment, and folks are still going out to eat. I know the restaurants are packed around here. The one side of it is things are getting worse. Immigration, inflation, prices, threats of wars. And that dealing with that.

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Trying to keep our relationships and our family and just our lives in order. But at the same time, we have this indulgence in food and entertainment just all the time. We’re entertaining ourselves all the time. And so put that all together. Then it should be this way. Yes, we have some prices and situations in the world, but we’re so entertained. We’re so blessed. We have more than anybody else in the world.

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Okay, that should balance itself out. All right. Now, let’s get down to what this means when God talks to Jeremiah and know if you’re running with men or doing a foot race and you’re worn out. And that’s my point. We’re dealing with people stressed, worn out. And maybe this isn’t you. But if it’s not you, you know who I’m talking about. It might be your spouse it might be your kids Kids are really stressed today.

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They have all this same entertainment. Can you imagine the stress? You want to be a good kid. All right, and let’s go back some years, 40 years ago or whatever, and you wanted to be a good kid, then you just basically didn’t steal something, didn’t lie, didn’t hit somebody, stuff like that. Today, though, if you want to be a good kid, you are faced with all kinds of adult entertainment violence, violent games, and it’s all right there for you, no matter your age.

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And they have to make the decision. Am I going to watch it? Am I going to do it? Am I going to participate? And maybe they’re six, seven, 8910 or whatever. Teenager whatever. They have to make that decision. They’re basically making adult decisions on who am I going to be? What’s my life going to be. What am I going to watch without any help? Because they don’t tell their parents or their teachers or whatever.

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They just do it and it’s right there. And so then they do it. They watch it, they play it. Whatever. And what happens after that? Well, they want to be a good person, and now they feel bad about themselves. They feel guilt. Okay, well, if we were back 40 years, we wouldn’t have those things going on. Or if we had the relationships that we should have, then parents and friends would be monitoring that, and the parents would say, no, you don’t make those decisions. I do. And it may seem like maybe you should let the kid have a little more rope, but do you understand the stress of having to make those decisions? The same decisions you make?

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Decide. Are you going to go to an adult site? Are you going to watch an adult movie. Are you going to watch this violent movie? Or whatever. These Halloween shows or whatever. And you have to make those decisions. And when you do, you may say, I shouldn’t have watched that. But you’re an adult. Imagine being a kid and feeling the same way, not having the emotional strength that you have. So the whole point of it is we are dealing with a worn out society.

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I deal in the church world. I deal with watching other churches. I listen to other people’s sermons a little bit, and I notice that the sermons that are going out almost 100% today are talking and have the attitude of, I’m helping broken down people. I know you’re all broken down. I know you’re hurting. I know you’re discouraged. I know you don’t feel loved. I know you feel you don’t have any value, and I know you feel guilty. I know you need to be forgiven.

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And this is how the sermons are going. And then not we those are not the type of things I preach because I like to preach to people like they’re winners and tell them, you don’t need to be fallen for all this stuff. You’re stronger than that. You’re better than that, and God’s got a strength to make you stronger than all the things everybody else is dealing with. Okay? That’s beside the point, isn’t it?

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But the main point is our society is stressed, angry. Have you watched there sometimes I’ll look up something on YouTube or whatever, trying to find something, and all these other videos come up and they pop up and you’re like, oh, I don’t know. And it’s these angry people with shopping carts, fighting in the parking lots, shoving them into carts, not allowing people they didn’t like how somebody parked their car, and so they won’t let them leave, and they’re going to call the police. Like angry people just about agitated about so many different things.

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But anyway, the point being is we are a culture that’s pretty worn right now. We may be worn by too much politics, too much fighting back and forth, Republicans and Democrats, and then our kids schools. What about our kids schools? What are they teaching in school? The list goes on and on. But we can just say this. People are stressed, worn out. And if I want to cause people to take a step up and for instance, try to put God in your life, okay?

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Try to put prayer in your life. Focus on God more, give him more attention, and if possible, get into a church, especially Bible preaching church, okay? Those are all good things that I advise people to do and try to help people. But get this, lots of times they look at me and say, I’d like to, but man, I’m so worn now. I’m so stressed now. I don’t hardly have any time. I have no time to add anything else.

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I don’t really think that’s true because they have time to watch Netflix or movies or go to sports or whatever, but that doesn’t matter what I think, it matters what they think. And they see themselves as unable to add anything else to life. They’re hanging on paycheck to paycheck, trying to make things work, trying to keep the kids in order. You get the picture, right? So here’s the thing God says to Jeremiah, because he’s kind of upset about some things.

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If you’re in this foot race and it’s the one that everybody runs with, men, women, it’s the foot race of everyday life, everybody’s running it. We got to right? And if you’re running that and you are worn out because trying to live everyday life just stuff that everybody has to do, and you are worn out, stressed out, angered out, whatever, then he adds this. How can you compete with what what’s God talking about?

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He’s telling Jeremiah something. He says, look, you’re stressed now, but guess what? Things are actually Jeremiah doesn’t want to hear this, okay? So he’s wanting to hear some sympathy from god gets no sympathy. He says, look, you’re worn out on this level. Let me tell you, it’s going to get worse. God just told by that the horses represent worse times, harder times, and you’re going to have to run with them if you’re going to keep up. You’re going to have to learn to run with a horse against a horse.

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Impossible. Yeah, but a great picture of the upping, the Annie of what’s going to happen. And that’s what I’m saying to you now in this world, okay? I’m saying to you to this world, that’s what’s going to happen, okay? In my opinion, if we’re worn out now on this level, okay, so we are worn out. I’m not saying you’re not or it’s difficult or you’re stressed or whatever, which a lot of people are. Okay, I get it. But if that’s the case on this level, what if things get worse?

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What are you going to do? How are we going to handle it if things get worse, if you’re barely making it now, hanging on, doing okay, maybe some of you, but others not. So okay, then if we’re angry, getting divorced, we’re so angry, we’re so mad at everybody, and we can’t live with anybody and all that, what are you going to do if the horses come? And I think what God’s saying to us, to Jeremiah and to us is, listen, there are galloping horses, strong horses on the horizon that are going to be turned loose, the gate’s going to open, the buzzer’s going to sound, and galloping horses are going to race in. You need to be ready for that.

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Maybe it won’t happen. We could turn this around. We could have a spiritual Renaissance renewal that strengthens us in our spirit, that causes a spiritual revival across our country where everybody comes up in the strength of the Lord. Everybody starts getting along better because we’ve had changes in our heart relationship. Everybody’s getting changed, everybody’s getting better. It’s happened. It happens. It happens.

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There’s historical time in our country that has happened across across the country. Something, a God thing swept our country, and everything got better. When banks were closing in 1857, banks were closing, trains were not running. It was horrible. People were losing their jobs. They were concerned about the Civil War, emancipation, the Dred Scott issue, all that was going on very, very stressed, and suddenly a god hunger came across and everybody began to pray and meet for prayer, and everything got better. 1857, and eventually elected Abraham Lincoln.

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Who is he? Where did he come from? And the Republican National Convention we call the GOP Grand Old Party started way back then because of a revival that started in 1857 that I’m telling you, it swept coast to coast. All right, that could happen. Let’s pray it does. Let’s hope it does. That’s my job, to tell people it can happen. But if we don’t get that, then there are horses on the horizon. Could it be a world war, the threat of war, economy?

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There are people right now trying to change it so the dollar has no strength over to other currencies, blah, blah, blah, on and on it goes. The plan, though, of other nations is to make things worse for us because they want what we have or what you have. So what God is trying to do to prepare Jeremiah, prepare me and you, is if things get worse, it could get worse. If you’re struggling now, how are you going to make it then?

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Okay, so what we need to do now is we need to prepare now while we have the ability. While it’s not as bad it may seem bad, but it’s not as bad while we have the ability. We still got our phones, we still got our entertainment. Set some of that aside and give God some time. Get a god time. Talk to him, be honest with him. I would get into a good make sure they church, make sure they preach the Bible. Not Sigmund Freud, not therapy, not group therapy.

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Our whole goal is to let you make friends. You can make friends any place. The goal get to church. Their goal is that you meet God and you walk with God and you get God activity in your life. And it really, really is possible. That’s why I say more faith. Get more faith. That what I’m saying is true. You can get god activity. There are people that know how. I know how. I can help you get it. Listen more to everything I’m teaching. Go to our website and see if there’s any other teaching you can go to. Revive church, KC.

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Get all the teachings, all the sermons, because our sermons are not like other sermons. They’re really getting the Bible, God’s opinion on things. And you will get stronger. You will get mightier while we’re running with men, so you will be ready. If the horses galloping horses, meant to harm, meant to steal, meant to destroy, meant to take what we have away, you’ll be ready for anything. And that’s what God does, if you’ll understand what I’m saying. God creates a people strong enough to be ready for anything.

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If we get into his ways, we listen to him. Just get interested. Just get interested in God things and it’ll change everything. Your life will change and you’ll be ready for anything. So every good thing, God wants you to do well so you are prepared for everything, good and bad. And that’s what God does. All right? So that’s why I’m saying today I want you to get more faith because it’ll produce more life.

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But also I want you to know you need to do this now while we’re still in a foot race with people regularly. It may be stressful, whatever, but when you go to the gas pump but the horses have not been unleashed yet. Maybe they won’t be, but if they are, you will be ready for anything. All right? I’m hoping you get that today. Be sure and check out what you can. You may have already heard mentioned. We got some books you at More Faith, More life you need to check out.

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And just get this word. Continue to support, tell your friends, catch it every week. You’re going to hear things right here on More Faith, more life that you may not hear anywhere else. Thanks for joining us today. Bye.