Starting Over

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Hey, don’t miss today’s podcast. More faith, more life. We’re going to talk about starting over. There is a time to start over and I’m going to tell you how to do it, how I did it, and how it will work for you.

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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. Welcome again to More Faith, More Life, our podcast that we’re excited to talk about today, about starting over. Now, last week on the last podcast we did, we talked about persevering, not starting over, sticking with it. And that perseverance that keep going, not giving up, has to finish its work and that causes us better character. We grow through it, we make through it. We don’t let trials, tribulations, trouble make decisions for us. Our circumstances don’t make the decisions, our spirits do.

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The will of God does what’s right does. And so get that podcast, look it over and it’ll set you up for this one. Because this one we’re going to talk about just the opposite, and that is starting over. And I’ve started over many, many times without getting out of my lane. In other words, I knew since I was 23 years old, 24 years old, that this is what I was going to do. I taught music in school as a music teacher for a couple of years in high school and really loved it, enjoyed it, successful at those things. But when I decided that I was going to go into the ministry, that was my lane for my life. And I’ve never veered out of that lane. So I’m not talking about starting over for me, at least in a completely new occupation, that might be the case in your life, but it doesn’t have to be.

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And a lot of times it’s not. What we really need to do in starting over. But let me talk to you a little bit about starting over, and that is, first of all, starting over is one of the strongest themes of the Bible. You may have not known that, you may have not thought of that, but it is it’s one of the strongest themes because everything in the kingdom of God in your Bible, in my Bible, in the Bible is new.

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Starting over. The love of God, it says, is new every morning, all right? So it’s new. You always have the chance to have newness in your life, in your relationship, in your finances, in your mind, your will, your emotions. You can leave your past, the power there, and there’s lots in the Bible about that. But becoming new, everything’s new, all right? So you got to think in that way. If what you’re doing is not the right direction for your life, it’s not going like it should.

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Like I said, I don’t want you to make decisions based on failures or difficulties. A lot of people I know, being in the church realm world, they throw around church talk and then immediately say, well, maybe it’s not God’s will for you to do that. Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you missed God’s will, maybe so, but you can start over. But it’s not necessarily that you missed God’s will. So you don’t want to just immediately give up when you should keep going.

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So there’s a fine line there that we need to clarify in our own lives, but there comes a time when it’s just not right. You’re not going the right direction. It doesn’t feel right. It’s not working. Of course it’s not working. It doesn’t feel right. You’re off the mark. I guess we could say you’re unhappy. I don’t want to go too far there because we got a pretty unhappy culture. No matter what you give them, they’re still not happy and satisfied. But you know that feeling that something’s off, something’s not right. Now, I never had that feeling in changing my lane, right? This is my lane in the world that I live in and preach in and enjoy and family, church, all that kind of stuff, okay, that’s my lane. But there were many times when I needed to start over to get where I needed to go next.

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So the first time, the big start over that we did, Kathy and I did was when we were teaching school. She was a kindergarten teacher, I was a music teacher. Wonderful school. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Great people, great experience, have nothing but good to say about it, and missed it a little bit because it was just so good. But it was time to go. It was time to move on. I wanted to go into the ministry. Didn’t know what that meant. I’m starting over. I just got my degree in music and graduated a few years before, and now I’m starting over a whole other direction.

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I don’t want to change it, I’m going to try it. And I had no connections, had nothing, so I didn’t know what to do. But head back to where my hometown heading back to my hometown where the family is, and let’s start putting together what we need to do. The family was good because we needed to hang out in their house for a while. We didn’t have a home, so we loaded all of our stuff up. We lived about 2 hours away from hometown, and we loaded up all of our belongings, everything we had. We could get it in one grain truck.

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A farmer gave us, let us use these. Well, he drove it, let us use his truck. We put everything in the grain truck, drove it to my hometown, dumped it off in my sister’s garage, and there we sat. Didn’t know what we were going to do, didn’t know how we’re going to do it. But we knew what we wanted to do. We knew we wanted to be in some kind of ministry. Didn’t know what it was. So there we were, no job, no money, no income, which I’d been there before, too.

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And we prayed and talked and explored. And then it seemed like nothing was happening. And we didn’t have a home. So that was for the entire summer. Okay? We lived in my sister’s bedroom and our junk was in their garage. And that’s all we had. And we wanted to get going. So you just stick with it and believe. And sure enough, Kathy got offered a teaching job about 30, 40 minutes away from where we lived or where we in hometown and a church, my home church, the church I grew up in contacted me and said, we need someone to assist the current pastor, leader, minister.

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He had some health issues, he was getting older. And so they hired me as an assistant, not an associate. I wouldn’t start preaching or anything as an assistant to the pastor. I’m just supposed to assist him, and I did. So I worked there a year and I visited the sick, that kind of stuff. Took meals to people, visited the sick, cleaned up the church bathrooms, just anything to assist. Did that for a year. Kathy taught the year, and then that following year we did it again.

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I resigned from the church, she resigned from the school. We had absolutely no jobs, and we were going to start a ministry. Now we had done ministry stuff, being musical, I could do musical stuff. So we were singing and talking about God and going places as much as we could. But it was getting too difficult. Kathy had to Sunday night was a big night. Sunday is a big day. And then she had to get up early, early Monday morning and get to school, which is 40 minutes away. Plus it started early.

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So after a year of that, for both of us. We can’t keep doing this. We’re going to have to go one way or the other. Well, we know what way we’re going to go. So we resigned again, we had no jobs. We did get duplex. We lived we got a place to live because we had some salary. We didn’t get paid very much that year, but we had enough money to live in that. So our journey began. Our house. The city was struck by EF four tornado.

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It hit our duplex too, which we didn’t know and we rented. But it got judgment, came from the corps of engineers. You can’t live in it and you can’t live there anymore. And they moved us out. It’s been so we had no place to go. And that’s when some people said there’s a house out here in the country, in a town called Smithton and it’s just being finished and you could qualify. They want young couples.

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So it was very easy. So we moved into a brand new house. Wasn’t fancy like that because it was just a house, but it was brand new. And there we were. Now we’re in a town of 532 people. We’re still traveling. We’re ministering around the country, churches everywhere and making it okay. And then in 1984, then they offered us the the town offered us this rundown church building and we thought we were going to move to Chicago and take a big church.

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Great opportunity. Long story though, we’ve told that one before, but we didn’t. And we took this country, old beat up old country church with no people, no money, been locked up for four years. Stinky old thing, paint falling off of it. Everything was a wreck. But they donated it to us because nobody wanted it and it was just sitting there. So they said, well, the people who owned it, tenants before and all the religious people and whatever denomination it was gave it to me. And not to me, but to our religious corporation that we had gave it like a church corporation.

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And so we started church. We started over again, not knowing where it would lead to. We spent years there and Bobby was going to school there and we met Brooke there. As you know, Brooke’s story came into our lives and began to live with us and visit us and went to school on and on. And pretty soon, in 1996, huge breakthrough, spiritual breakthrough that attracted world attention in that little town of 532 people.

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Newsweek magazine came time came networks, Christian networks, non-Christian networks, wall Street I don’t know about. I can’t remember if we were in the Wall Street Journal, I say that I’d have to check. But san Francisco Chronicle? Of course. Kansas City paper. St. Louis paper, Dallas papers, you know everywhere. And I was launched then from nobody into a huge national and international ministry. That what we were doing before, traveling around.

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Just couldn’t compare. But that starting over from that grain truck led to a world ministry that took me, that attracted people from all over the world, but took me all over the world. And people paid for it. They paid for me to go. They bought the tickets, they bought airlines, they bought hotels, rooms, furnished us with cars, welcomed us, fed us. And we were traveling all over the world plus all over the country, plus having this hub where people were coming to see us.

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And that started with a grain truck. It was hard. We didn’t have an income. Then that started again when we left the church that I worked at my home church for a year, and Kathy left her teaching job, which she did a year. She taught first grade. Then we had nothing again, started over, found our way, trusted God and felt like, you know, he’s on our side. This is a gospel of starting over. This is, you can start over.

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You can do it. He will help you. It’s okay. The reason we started over was for forward movement. We weren’t backing up. We weren’t quitting, anything like that. It was we wanted to move forward. We wanted to do more, and we had to start over in sections of our lives, including the grain truck. And then leaving the church, she left the school. We ended up buying a Greyhound bus, traveled the country, and then we ended that when it was time to get involved in local. So the church in Chicago was offered to us. This country church with no people was offered to us.

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And so we quit traveling, sold the bus, quit traveling, bought some recording equipment, and began to take up songwriting again and writing songs for our church, sometimes just for us to have fun and sing in church. And we did that until that broke open, as I said, in 96, and took us. And then, guess what? Then, as I mentioned in the last podcast, we came to the point where something needed to start over.

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I went to Singapore, spent a lot of time, several lots of services in Singapore. That’s a long flight. That’s the end of the world type almost flight. Okay. And to getting there and back. And we got okay. So it was wonderful. It was big, big crowds, big success. And when I got back, I went to the country church. We had these railroad tracks, and there’s that now, this still pretty bad looking. It looks better. We did add a gymnasium on. So we were meeting in the gymnasium now for the crowds, and then we had the old sanctuary for overflow, et cetera, et cetera.

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But anyway, after the big thing in Singapore, coming back, crossing that old country church, pulling up to it, but I did. I walked into it. I went in the gymnasium where we were having our that was kind of our church now. As soon as I walked in, that door. Even after going, even just crossing the railroad tracks into the town, something is not right. It doesn’t feel right. I never even crossed my mind.

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But suddenly it felt like I was in the wrong place. I’m in the wrong place. So at that time, I think it was spring, I began to form what we’re going to do. And by fall, by the end of summer and fall, I announced I’m moving. And Kathy’s parents lived in Kansas City. A lot of people from Kansas City drove to Smithton. There were contacts. It seemed like that’s the place we should go. I didn’t know at the time, Kathy’s parents had been praying for 20 years for us to move to Kansas City.

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Never told me that till afterwards. Now we’re going to shut down the church. It’s got huge crowds. People are lining up every day, five days a week, lining up just to get in, and I’m going to close it. Yeah. People thought I’d gone out of my mind. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t make a money decision. It wasn’t a fear decision it wasn’t anger decision or failure. It was in the biggest success of my life.

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And I said, this is not right. We need to start over. So we had our last service there that year, 1999, thanksgiving, 1999. By the next few weeks, people were moving to Kansas City and we got a church building, as I mentioned, the last podcast from a church, and we’re going to move in. And all was wonderful. And then they pulled the rug out, they didn’t work. They weren’t going to let us move in. They ended up never making a penny off of the building. It ended up getting torn down.

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But we had no place to go. We’re starting over with nothing. And as I said before, now the pull was, well, just go back, the church is empty. Just sitting there like it was before, just go back and you can be a success again. Just start. The people will line up, the story will continue. I couldn’t, I couldn’t. It wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. Something’s wrong. I need to start over. So we did, and we ended up buying land in Kansas City without a building.

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Put up a tent through hot summer, cold winter, six months worth of weather, but we got enough shell of a building up that we could get in by January of that year. And so January of 2021, we were in a shell enough city let us in to start having church here on our own property, in our own building in Kansas City. I still had a lot of notoriety, but years passed by until guess what? 2008, another breakthrough in the spirit got attention from the world again.

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And this time television network, day star television Network decided to sponsor us and air our services live all over the world, 200 countries over, close to or over, I don’t remember, 200 countries live at their expense. They sent a satellite dish, the old big ones. They still use those sometimes some places, but they sent big satellite dish. They drove it down here and left it on our property. They flew in an engineer from their ministry every week to run the thing, help us run it.

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And we were live all over the world, in homes, everywhere. It was huge, a much huger success than when we were in Smithton. Smithton was the biggest success in my life until this one, until we started over. That went on for three years. Again, huge. Traveled the world again, people came from all over. They lined up even bigger because we have a much our building is four times the size, at least, maybe six times. I don’t know how many bigger.

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I don’t know. Zion, this is what I was told if I refer to Zion producer, I was told that the entire church of Smithton that we had would fit on our current stage in our current church. Yeah. I don’t know if they meant the old little sanctuary or the little auditorium. I don’t know which part. But that was the story. And that’s how much we had grown. So the crowds couldn’t compare. People came and we packed them in still and traveled the world, written about, wrote books, made headlines.

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It was just huge. And that went on for three years until we ended up then I ended up making a film, which I just did because I wanted to. And we continue on. And now we’re at a new chapter in our own lives, in our ministry, because the world has changed. It’s not a very happy place. Our country is not a happy place. People are nervous, some are scared, some are struggling. I think the economy, inflation, and I believe there’s war on the horizon because those nations know that we’re in a weakened position.

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On and on that goes. And now I’m stepping forth and being asked to step forth to speak spiritual things into our nation and into the people because there are political voices, there’s technical voices, there’s all that. There’s people on the Internet who have billionaires, as you know, and all that’s growing and AI and all that kind of stuff. But think about it. Who is speaking spiritual things to our nation? Who do you think of?

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Who’s got the corner? Who’s got the wisdom? And I don’t know if I’ll be able to I don’t know how big it’ll be. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll still be just semi known and do it. But I’m starting over now. The church is still going. It’s going great. Got a great staff. If you’re in the area, come, or if you live in this area, you ought to come and check it out. It is fantastic. It is not just a church service. It is an experience.

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And you experience the living God. It’s just there and we want to increase the there. But I got a great staff, great musicians, great people, a wonderful church with a lot of enthusiasm and energy, and I love that. So now I can start over, so to speak, and turn my attention. So I’m finishing a book, right, even today, and another book is going to be out in a year to start this message, and I’m going to go speak somewhere, which I’ll tell you about later.

0:20:38

Really important meeting in the political realm, which I’ll tell about later. I’m starting over again in some ways, and I thought maybe a lot of my colleagues have quit and retired. But now I get to start over. You know why? Because this is the kingdom of God. You can start over. You get a fresh start. You may have to go through some challenges. You may hit a few low places, which I did. We didn’t have the income. We had an old rundown church. It was kind of an embarrassment.

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But look what happened by starting over. So I don’t want you to start over because you’re giving up. I want you to go as far as you can until you finally say something’s not right. We’ve done everything we know to do. We’ve done everything right that we know to do. If you don’t do everything right and it fails, well, okay, it was your fault. But if you’ve done everything right, you’ve been honest, you’ve been hardworking, you’ve been prayerful. I hope you’ve let God be a part of your vision, part of your mission.

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You’ve been generous to God. You’ve give your money to him. Give some money. Be a tither. If you can give offerings, support God’s way and pull him into what you’re doing. If you’ve done all that and just something doesn’t seem right, consider starting over, and God will back you up, because this is the kingdom of fresh, new beginnings. It’s the starting over world of God, which is new every morning.

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All right? I hope that’s encouraging to you today. Thanks for listening. Until next time. Bye.