Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 Austin Powers came out in 1997 and it was about like 1967. Oh man. So if Austin Powers came out today, it would be about 1995. So dude, that hurts me so much. We are. Yeah, we are at that point, bro. We are People need to understand how important Tupac and Biggie are though, man. Like it's not old. The 90s were the greatest time in world history to me. You know what no one was doing in the 90s, man? They were not Anyways, I Yeah, they didn't have phone neck from looking at That's exactly right. You know what [clears throat] they were doing? They were very much present with where they were at and uh yeah, there was no ghosting and like you know just talking like keyboard warriors didn't exist. You got a punch in the face if you were talking about somebody and they found out about it. It's always the good old days, isn't it? Great. No, those people football players actually hit each other in the head and like nobody like there's going to be no consequences for these guys getting destroyed over the middle. It was awesome. It was awesome. Yeah. But, you know, were the guys were the guys literally sitting on the porch right now just going, "It was better in the good old days, man."

1:50 I don't know if I There's There's things that are great about now, but there's also some things that I'm like I just don't get on board with some things, man. And like I think that that's like to me I love Norman Vincent Peale's definition of you're only old when you lose your enthusiasms for life. So, I'm never going to be old because I'm I'm very enthusiastic about life, but there's some things with like this younger generation that I'm like I have to remind myself how dumb I was when I was young. I had a guy send me a DM the PO on He goes, "Did you guys just record all these podcast episodes at once because you wear this? You're wearing the same clothes. He doesn't know you." I'm like, "Dude, you don't know. I mean, I'm getting all these new people, I guess, that don't know don't know I have a uniform." You know, you know what that is, Josh? As as your marketing friend, I'm I love hearing that because it means that you're reaching outside of your circle. But that but the the reason I started wearing uniforms is because I was just so tired of keeping up with trends and I didn't want to become like a guy who's just completely disconnected from, you know, like we knew the guys growing up who wore like the braided belt still and the pleated pants and you know socks with like wing tips with with shorts.

2:54 You know, I'm not going to be that guy. So I'll just develop a uniform. Yeah. So that's timeless. But I've also kind I've also kind of become that guy where it's like I'm not keeping up with these trends anymore. What's this music that these kids are listening to nowadays? I don't get it. I don't understand. Yeah. And I mean there's I mean some of that is your values shift as you go through time because I think what's so interesting is like people want to they everybody has like a blueprint for their life, right? And so like they they I heard Tony Robbins say this once and he's like if you're not if you're not uh if you're not watching this, Nick just winked at me because I think he's signaling that this is the beginning of the actual episode right now. I winked at you cuz I'm about to take us into the topic. I winked you cuz I didn't want people listening to this to know, bro. Okay, we got a lot to learn. By the way, congratulations on being you're you're slightly above average in episode length, but but maybe below average in actual transitions in nuance. Yeah, I mean, come on.

3:45 There's some subtleties to this, dude. I know. I just thought it was uh it was funny. You got You know what? I was going to start laughing when you You'll always get You'll always get some authenticity. I'll get better at noticing the signals. I think that's why people like the catcher with the pitcher right now, but I just said, "Hey, I'm throwing Yeah. Oh, you want the fast ball inside? Fast ball. Got it." Well, I yeah, I did want that, but you know, now let's switch it up. Anyways, you know, you know, though, I actually think that's why people love you is because you're you're is I one of the things I appreciate about you. I know there's no pretense. Like I never have to go like, "Oh, I wonder if Josh really meant that." I don't even know how to do that. But anyway, back to what you're saying. But what I was going to say is so like this Tony Robbins quote cuz cuz Okay, we're talking a little bit about where our our own like kind of preferences as we get older. And I think everybody it's, you know, it's our life journey, right? And I think there's things that like you're in your late 30s, I'm in my early 40s. There's things that are uh have gone the way we thought. And there's probably a lot more that's gone the way we didn't think. There's some things I've been really pleasantly surprised about. Like I I love the age I'm at now. When I was like 21, I would look at people that were my age and be like, "Dude, why don't these people just kill themselves? Because what do they actually do with their lives? All their fun times are behind. Now they're in horrible shape and they just chase after their kids all the time looking miserable." That was like my real thought when I was that age. Now I'm actually that age. I'm like, for not being that way anymore. Well, dude, I was 21. I didn't know a lot.

5:00 Okay, give me a little bit of grace. You're judging people so harshly. That guy should have killed himself. Like, that's an extreme internal thought. I I the practical application of that was not serious. But I just wondered what people live for. I just thought I was like, "Your life looks so miserable to me. I don't want anything of that." And so, like, I had this real There's no point in you living right. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, "What what's your life even about?" Well, guess what my life was about? Whatever felt fun in the moment. Not a great way to live either. But I didn't realize that at the time. But this is the whole point I'm saying is like so people have this blue I heard Tony Robbins say this. Everybody has a blueprint in life, right? And it's it's it's subtle. They don't have it like laid out like here is my blueprint. But like by and large people think their life is going to go like this. I'm going to get married sometime in my 20s. Probably have some kids. I'll spend like my 30s, 40s, maybe early 50s raising them. They'll move out of the house. I'll then retire. We'll do some stuff that we want to do. We'll travel. We'll then have our grandkids and we'll like ease into death. uh you know and die in our sleep right like and so like you have this blueprint I'm going to have a job and this is how much I'm going to make and we have all these things that are just like this wherever we get this from whether it's from movies the environment we grew up in and what he says is he says if you feel like you're ahead of that blueprint you're happy and if you feel like you're behind man you're like absolutely dissatisfied with life and I think that that's where we see a lot of people is that they're extremely dissatisfied with life because like I thought I'd be married by now I think I'm worth more money I just thought I would have a house I just thought that I would have you know what I mean like and so we just thought that's the anytime you think you think like, man, I didn't think it would be like this. Your blueprint is is uh you're behind on your blueprint and then the question becomes, where'd you get your blueprint from?

6:34 Yeah. I mean, I think you know a lot of people that are probably listening to this have some kind of God consciousness, right? I would hope so. Probably Christians. Yeah. So, one of the one of the aspects of that worldview or philosophy is that you believe that God has a plan for your life, right? All right. So everyone listening to this like, "Oh yeah, that's fundamental." So what that means that you probably you might not realize is that you're assenting to the idea that it's not your plan, right? So it's not my plan for my life. It's God's plan for my life. And I don't really know what that is yet, right? Which is a tough Yeah. Which is a tough thing to navigate, right? Because you go, "What what am I supposed to do?" And I grew up and all, you know, I like I'm just like a question asker. So people would say things like, "God has a plan for your life." I'm like, well, okay, how do I know what that is? Well, you don't really know. You just uh pray and hopefully someday you just figure it out.

7:31 You wait for the burning bush. It's revealed to you, right? Um but like yeah, I mean to use the burning bush example with Moses, what's interesting, so Moses grew up, if you know the story of Moses, he was adopted by Pharaoh and was raised in Pharaoh's household, but he was an Israelite. He kills a guy. He escapes to the desert and then God brings the burning bush. But but in Exodus 3, it's really interesting. This is like the premise of of the idea that I had for this particular podcast is like God doesn't activate you, he redirects you. So I heard a friend of mine, Jeremy Baker, who pastors our Elevate Life Church in Connecticut, say that recently like God doesn't activate you, he redirects you. So um God doesn't get you to work hard, right? you get yourself to work hard and then God says, "Here's what I want you to work hard on." Right? So, like what a lot of people will do is they'll sit around and wait for God to activate them. Like, "Hey God, I'm ready whenever you're ready."

8:27 Yeah. And then God asked this question, you know, that you actually texted me this morning because we were talking about some things that I'm doing and you're like, "Well, we'll just see what happens with what's in your hand." Right. Cuz God goes, "What are you doing with what's in your hand right now?" And I think all of us like, "Dude, I'm in a, you know, I'm in a definite season of my life where I'm like, God, what am I supposed to be doing, man?" Like I don't even you know this doesn't look like I want it to look that doesn't look like I want it. The blueprint was different. Yeah. I mean even if I had and I wouldn't say that I live my life with like I'm like Trump you know in a sense that I have the concepts of a plan. I don't really have a plan. I have like some dots that I'd like to connect at some point in the future but it doesn't seem like those dots are going to connect. Um but then the question God asks is what are you doing with right now? Yeah. Like what are you doing with what's in your hand right now? So with with the story Moses um he says that twice to Moses. The first thing he does to Moses is he the Bible says that Moses was already working.

9:23 Yeah. So he's looking after sheep. So Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro on the far side of the wilderness. So Moses not a great picture. Moses is out there. He's not sitting there waiting for revelation though, right? And I think a lot of people go, "Okay, I'm just gonna I'm just going to try to figure out what my next thing is." Holy people pray about everything. Yeah. So, like if you're not really super spiritual, you'll probably be like, "I just got to figure out what my next thing is." If you're more spiritual, you're going to be like, "I just need to hear a word from the Lord." Right. So, nobody did that. Like all these people, well, let's not say all these people. Let's just start with Moses. Moses went to Midian. What do people in Midian do? Oh, we we are shepherds. Okay, I'll just be a shepherd. This is what I'm supposed to do. And he's on the on the far side of the wilderness, whatever. He's on the dark side of the moon. He's beyond sight.

10:16 This is you run a gas station on like a freeway in the middle of nowhere. Do your job. You're nothing to nobody anywhere. You're just doing a job and no one cares anything about you. I mean, I think that's the perspective that the Bible's giving us PC. Yeah. And he's working. And he's just doing what he knows to do that day. Yeah. And then God shows up and redirects him, right? So God's like, "Hey, I've got this plan for your life." And Moses is like, "What me?" You know, how I don't I don't understand. I don't really get that. How can I do that? And then God says to Moses, like later on in the story, he's talking about uh he just he's like, "Use use what's in your hand. Use the staff that you have in your hand." On and on. So, what I find like really interesting about that is uh if you're high if you're like highly um action-oriented and highly motivated and highly visionary, you can get frustrated by this blueprint thing.

11:12 Yeah. And go my plan. Like I remember one time a mutual friend of ours who who I'm not going to name because I'll let him tell his own story, but I'll tell the story, but you won't know who he is, but Nick will. So this guy calls me one time and we're in our 20s and he's just sad. He's like depressed. And this guy doesn't get depressed, right? And he goes, "Man, it's just awful." I go, "What?" Like his life's going good. He has good things happening in his life. He's like, "I'm just I'm not a billionaire yet, man." He was dead serious. Dead serious. He's like, "I'm 24. I'm not a billionaire." I was supposed to be a billionaire by this point, right? So I'm like, "Who told you that?" Yeah. like who said that's what you're supposed to do? He's like, "Well, Elon Musk." And starts naming all these names of people who were really successful by the time they were 24 or however old we were. And uh he's like, "It's just awful, man. Just hadn't worked out."

12:07 What did you say? I don't know what to do. I'm like, dude, that's a complete this whole idea of where you think you should be is a complete uh I wouldn't say a complete fiction because this person is very smart and I think absolutely has all the potential within them to be a billionaire and become that and I think they they will become that in life. I believe all that. But who gave you this idea that this should happen by this by this point? Right. And I didn't I wasn't really you know I don't know if I really helped. Yeah, because I didn't really agree with the idea that he should be a billionaire in his 20s because I just said look, if you were going to be a billionaire in your 20s, you'd be one, right? I think that's like a misunderstanding of principles and like and and how like if you look at you're doing all the right things, right? Well, it's like you think you're doing the right things, but like you're doing the right things, but just not to be a billionaire, right? Because there's I mean, you start looking at billionaires, there's patterns to what they did. like these most these guys are starting businesses in their mom's garage at like a young age and they're failing those things or you know you look at your Zuckerbergs and your Elon Musks it's like there's some very typical trends right and and it it usually doesn't come from them working for somebody else well and there's a lot of other factors that go into this I mean there's just so but the factors that go into that really are kind of like these uncontrollables this thing happening at this time this unique key relationship, this point in time in the market, this unique idea. I mean, there's all these different Yeah.

13:35 things. And so, Proverbs 18 says, or Proverbs 16 says, "A man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." I love that scripture. Yeah. Right. So, so what I have to do that I think is a I think is a really deep challenge is I have to activate myself. I have to go what's in front of me right now. Like the Bible says, uh, the book of Zechariah says, "Despise not the day of small beginnings." Yes. I love that scripture. Um, I have whatever feels like a little bit to me, I have to be found faithful with that. You know, the Bible says, "If you're faithful with little things, God will make you ruler over much." I heard Charles Neman say that um most of us will be faithful with big things, but we'll always be ruler over a little . Huh.

14:27 And and the reason why that is is because, you know, it's like there's a guy I knew, he was um all due respect and all that, this guy was like the water boy for our basketball team in high school. And anytime we were in a close game, he would say, "If you guys put me in, I'll hit the shot." Right. Right. Can't make the team though. So, let us register you real quick. Get you a uniform. Yeah. Pop you in. Like I'm not saying water boys are like, you know, bad or whatever or like You're referencing the movie the water boy. Yeah. I mean, he was like the equipment guy. No, I know. But you're referencing like in that movie the water boy comes in. That's kind of where people But it's the idea of um I'm not doing everything I can right now to be great. Right. But if you give me the But if you put me in a moment that demands greatness, then I'll be great. And that's just not how even God works. The way God works is you do the work, you show up, you develop yourself on the back side of the wilderness. I mean, that's the story of Moses. That's the story of David. You know, they they forgot, right? In the story of David, they forgot that he was even there.

15:33 Yeah. So all all 11 sons show up and Samuel's like, "None of these are it." And Jesse's like, "Oh, yeah. We got the other one." You know, so he's So if God, again, back to this thing, like if God has a great plan for your life, and we'll talk about this in like different ways, I think a lot on on the podcast, but if God has a great plan for your life, what can stop it from happening? And what can stop it from happening is me not controlling what I can control pretty well or very well. And what can I control right now? I can control my attitude. I can control my effort and the energy that I put into things. Because I think the premise of that is like I said I mean God doesn't activate you he redirects you in that David was working hard to be faithful at something like you know some people are listening this might not know this but in the ancient world being a shepherd was the lowest quality job that a person could do it was not it was uh you know I I don't know what job would I don't know what jobs exist today that people look at and go those are the lowest lowest level of society. I don't think we approach like work that way anymore.

16:40 Uh there's certain I mean I think if you said I'm I'm a janitor, I don't think anybody goes like oh wow like that's you're really crushing it. Yeah, but we don't like ostracize janitors from society. So like shepherds were they were ostracized from society. It's like don't come in here. You can't I mean I guess if if uh you know a person was like really dirty and they tried to come into a business or something but like I I can't think of even a modern example because shepherds were so ostracized from society was such a low-level task and a low-level job that to go be a shepherd was a huge insult. It was just a massive insult to a person's ego and their identity and who they were. So David goes and he does the job to the best of his ability. Yeah. Kills the lion. He kills the bear. You know, we don't know when that happened in the story. We don't know if it happened before he got anointed to be king or or after. Yeah. But then God anoints him to be king and then he sends him right back out to the field.

17:36 Right. So, what does that say to me? There's potential. I could have all these like, you know, again, if you're on the spiritual side, I could have all these words from God about how God's going to use me, how great I am, but then my life cannot look that way even though I have all these like promises and even if I'm anointed. Yeah. Hey man, cool. You just got an honor to be the next king of Israel. We don't know when that's going to happen. Go back out and do your job. Yeah. I I think one of the hardest things though is I think so you you talking about our mutual friend who gave you that phone call and I said it's probably a lack of understanding of principles or models, but I think that that that we all lack awareness to a certain extent, right? And some more obviously than others. And what always interests me about the way God works is what we think is happening as opposed to what's going on in the background. Like the whole of Jesus ministry was, "Hey, we think we finally found the Messiah who's going to restore the kingdom to Israel, right? He's going to be a a you know, not a warlord, but you know, he's going to be a like a a warrior. He's going to come in and like just beat down the Romans and give us back our land."

18:37 Oh, no. No. I'm actually establishing a spiritual kingdom, and the land that you think I'm going to get for you, you're going to kill me on it. Wait, what? And actually, that's going to be how my kingdom advances way beyond these walls and fulfills everything. Okay, that doesn't make any sense. Moses, what do you think his thought process was of like, man, I wonder how many times he was he was har was tending those sheep and he thought, man, if I hadn't killed that guy, I could be in a palace right now. You know what I mean? I mean, yeah. I think I think um like personally I resonate a lot with Moses because I think throughout my life I've struggled with like insecurity. Yeah. You know, um and I I probably still I mean it it probably I probably still do, you know. I think um I'm very I I can be very self-deprecating and a lot of that sometimes is like this ego reversal of no one can say anything worse about me than I'm going to say about myself. So I resonated a lot with Moses because I think Moses struggled with uh insecurity and feeling like he couldn't do he couldn't do it right you know.

19:31 Well yeah 100% he told God five times get somebody else can't talk I can't do this. I can't do that. I'm not the guy. I'm not the guy. God's like dude you're the guy. I'm trying to make you the guy. You don't want to be the guy. Okay. Okay, so now I'm going to bring your brother in. All these different, you know, things. Um, so that's one side. One side of the spectrum is more like probably the side I'm naturally on, which is I don't have any of the talents. I don't have any of the skills. I don't have any of the abilities. People don't believe in me. Blah blah blah. Um, the other side of that is kind of what you're talking about, and that's thinking that you have all these things, right? And then it's just it's just not going to happen. Yeah, it's just not happening either way. The approach to that is I think having this understanding that God doesn't, you know, God doesn't activate you like you're a machine that needs to be turned on.

20:24 Yeah. He works more like a compass. So, however hard you're running in a certain direction and wherever direction that you're going, God will redirect the direction that you're going, but he's not going to make you he's not going to activate this thing within you of like going working harder. Yeah. You know, so what a lot of people will do for different reasons, like you have people that are more on the more on this, they don't struggle with like the insecurity dynamic like I'm talking about and so they'll go, "Oh, all of this doesn't even matter. I'm not going to do it anymore." Right? because nobody notices, nobody sees. The people that are like on the insecurity side, they're like, "I'm not even going to get started because I just think I'm so bad at all this stuff and it just doesn't matter and my life is useless and I don't even know what I'm good at." And all all the roads that people like that go down. And um it's it's you know, man, I think it's what I'm going to say is like really easy to understand, but it's so hard to kind of assent to that um all God's given me to do is what today is, right?

21:31 You know, and I can spend a lot of time thinking about the future. I can think about what I want. I can think about my dreams. I can think about whether or not I'm gifted or talented or whatever that dynamic is. But that's not even the question that God's asking me. The question that God's asking me is what are you going to do right now? Yeah. With today and are you gonna make today count? Are you going to give your best like right now in this moment at what you're doing? And if you're going to do that now, then you're going to do that in the future. And um we have different reasons for not becoming the hard worker in that scenario. Right. Right. And um but the main question is uh how hard am I willing to work at stuff that I that I see as a little thing, right? You know, because it's hard to be faithful in little things. It's easier to be faithful in big things. Yeah. You know, it's like if you make me responsible for, you know, uh, if you hand me the responsibility for a Fortune 500 company, I'm probably I'm probably going to consider my decisions and go, wow, this is the weight of the weight of responsibility, uh, if you hand me the responsibility of me just doing like to use your janitor example, hey, I'm you're going to clean a hallway today.

22:45 Is my approach going to be the same? Yeah. You know, because nobody might notice. I might not get mentioned anywhere, but that's what the book of Colossians says is do everything you do is unto God. Yeah. I think I think though what's what's interesting is underneath here is and this is what I think people struggle with if you're a follower of Jesus is is the how do you balance what's God's responsibility and what's yours because if you believe that purpose is God's responsibility then you don't have to worry about how it's going to happen. You just trust, right? It's that story of the janitor. Uh, I can't remember who was that, you know, he was walking, somebody was walking through NASA and said, "Hey, what do you do here?" And he said, "We put men on the moon." Yeah. I'm helping to put a man on the moon. I love that story so much because that's a guy who's like who has a different understanding of like I'm playing a part. It doesn't matter if it's like the the the spectacular part or the part that no one notices, it's a part. And and you have to like I think you you would ask yourself what's your belief about where purpose comes from? And you know, what do you believe purpose is?

23:42 Because I think for a lot of people purpose is like I'm pursuing my passion. I feel very fulfilled. I you know every when you when you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. Well, you still got to pay taxes. You love that. No, I hate that. Okay. So, you know what I mean? And I'm using that as like kind of I'm being a little bit facetious there, but like it it's a real thing. Like you you're there's going to be grinded out parts no matter how much you love what you do. And to me, I don't think purpose is just doing what you're passionate about. Personally, I think, you know, we I could go into a long diatribe uh based on what Garrett and I do a lot on the podcast. I've talked about purpose being what's in your heart, what's in your hand. And I'm not going to do that here because I want to you can listen to the impossible. There you go. And I want to keep pursuing down this thought process. But that's a that's a really interesting thing to start to say like whose job is purpose? Because like what I always say to people is to me the purpose blueprint is is uh is Proverbs 3:5 and 6. It's trust in the Lord with all your heart. Okay? I'm going to trust God. He's got a plan for my life. He's got a purpose.

24:35 Lean not on your understanding. This is where most people will fall down. Means you have no certainty. But what if this? But how's he gonna don't have understanding in all your ways? Submit to him. This is what you're saying. Okay, I'm going to be faithful in everything that's happened. And then what happens? He'll direct your paths. And it's like you said, it's so simple, but man, it's not easy because we have this we we have this need for certainty. We have this need to kind of like know that it's all going to work out and like we you know, we have we're so fearful. There's so many things that come into that. Yeah. I think that um it's an interesting question. It's like are most people inactive or they just misdirected? You know, a lot of a lot of people I think maybe people are it's probably better, you know, it's probably better to work really hard on something than it is to just sit still. I don't I don't know if God calls people that are sitting still.

25:28 Dude, my my pastor I like my pastor when I was young, pastor, his name is Pastor Mark Muy. Uh he there's a couple sayings that I take with me and one of the ones he said is it's a lot easier to turn a car turn the wheels of a car that's already moving. Yeah. And I just, you know, he probably said 4,000 things to me during my time, you know, and that one always stuck with me. And and yeah, like I like Dwight Eisenhower said, you can't uh it's can't push a string, right? So you can't, you know, the the only way a string works is if there's tension, right? So you can't push a string, you know? And that's how a lot of people live their life is they're like um God's they think God's going to push the string. Yeah. You have to pull the string. Like there has to be a a person pulling on the other side. And u I think there's a lot of reasons not to like when you're talking about purpose and meaning you know Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning. This is one of my kind of personal big things. He basically says that the meaning and purpose of your life is not a question that you answer. It's a question or it's not a question that you ask. It's a question that you answer.

26:30 So you don't get to ask the question. You think that uh you think that you're asking the question in life like what's the meaning of my life and how can I find work that's purposeful? Yeah. That's that's not this is the question that life asks out of you is what's the meaning of your life, right? What does your life mean? So like the janitor at NASA, the reason why that's such a great story is because he decided what the purpose was behind his work, not the work deciding the purpose for him. Yeah. and you decide what the meaning of your life is to your friendships. You decide what the meaning of your life is to your kids, to your marriage, to whatever it is that you're a part of. Um, and I can decide that my life means whatever it means. I mean, a lot of people have um a great example of this to me is a lot of people have a dad or had a dad who just saw themselves as a provider. Yeah. 100%. So, I'm not there to provide emotional security. I'm not there to like build a relationship with them. I'm not there to help you realize your potential and help you become who God's called you to become. If I'm your dad, what I'm supposed to do is make sure you have enough money to eat and there's food on the table and you have clothes to wear.

27:34 Yeah. And that's a person deciding what their meaning is. And the and the kids that grow up in homes like that struggle with that because in their mind, their dad was a lot more meaningful than that. Yeah. But in his mind, he didn't have any meaning beyond that. Yeah. And and guys that are like that, as soon as they're no longer the provider, they struggle with the relationship with their kids because that's the only meaning that the relationship with their kids had. It's a good example. And the meaning in the work is what I decide it means. The meaning in my life is ultimately what I decide that it means. And the challenge of that is for me at least, if I'm going to if if I believe God's got a plan for my life, then what the Bible tells me to do is work work as hard as I can with all my might because I'm I'm doing this ultimately for God.

28:27 Yeah. And so it's not like I don't think for me it's not like God will withhold your destiny from you, but you can go as fast as you want to go getting there in terms of or you can work as hard as you want in terms of getting there. Yeah. Like there's a story um in the Bible about uh it's a whole long thing, but the the um it was dry in a desert and God was going to make it rain and he said, "Go out and and dig ditches. go out and dig wells because it's going to rain. And they decided how many God decided he was going to make it rain. They decided how many ditches they dug. They decided how many wells they dug. There's a there's another story about uh I think it was Elisha, right? Going to a king and saying tap the arrows on the ground. Yes. And he tapped it what, three times? And then he said, "Oh man, if you would have tapped it five times, yeah. God would have utterly destroyed your enemies enemies, but now he's just going to give you peace in your lifetime."

29:24 Yeah. And so there's there's all of this really interesting perspective that is interesting all throughout scripture that says God will meet you at the level of your effort. Yeah. And God will meet you at the level of your work and at the level of your determination. And that doesn't mean that every vision that you have, God's just going to make it happen or it's just going to the universe the universe is just going to manifest that. But what it means is is that if you give a 100% at what you're doing right now, what will happen is not it's not like one day you'll step into your calling. What'll happen is you'll get act you'll get redirected at some point to where everything is heading in the direction of purpose and meaning because like people go well um you don't have kids yet.

30:15 Right. Right. So so if you don't have kids or if you're not married well how do I find meaning and purpose in my life? What does your life mean to people? What does your life mean to the people in your life? What does your life mean to your friends? What does your life mean to people that are close to you? When you have kids, your life can become more meaningful because you've already practiced right operating and doing things with meaning and purpose. And I think most people, like you're saying, never really think about that. Yeah. They wait for, and this is back to controllables and uncontrollables. Activation is something external makes me move, right? So something external sparks movement in me. Redirection is I'm already moving and I just get aligned. Right. Yeah, that's good. So I just start moving in the right direction, but I'm already moving. Right. And you know what was it that your pastor said, it's easier to turn a car that's Yeah. It's easy to turn the wheels of a car that's already moving.

31:07 Yeah. So like Ecclesiastes says, whatever your hand finds to do, Yeah. do with all your might. And for so many reasons, people just go, I'm not, you know, if this isn't meaningful, like you're saying, if this isn't meaningful work for me or if I don't if I don't see purpose in this or if I don't feel purpose in this, I'm not going to do it. Those and then there's this, for me at least, there's this insecurity element of none of this matters. Right? There's it's such an unlock though whenever you can be the kind of person that you find a way to make things purposeful. That was my biggest lesson uh from from just depression was going what from what I call from being outside inside to inside to outside meaning you can self-generate because when I was depressed yeah you can develop intrinsic motivation. Yeah. When I was depressed, everything was just like, man, if this would happen or if this would change. I was so focused on external things. And so, like, my all my days were terrible, but my better days were like Saturday because I would wake up and I'd play soccer, which I I enjoyed. And then I would usually have a gig in the evening and I knew I was going to get I was going to get hammered at the gig. And I'm being I'm being dead serious.

32:16 This is the purpose of my life. No, no, there was no question of purpose. It was 100% like these things make me feel good. M and that's and that's kind of what alcohol and drugs and all these things are like if you don't know how to like I cuz I used to have this thought process before I became a drinker. I was like man I'm I'm like I don't need all that stuff to have fun. That's what I would say in high school cuz people like oh surface you want to do I'm like no I like I would kind of like no I don't need that stuff to have fun. And then I became one of those people who's like I need this to have fun. And when you're drinking you know what you want to do you want to drink at all these different things like hey we're going to go to a concert. You know it would make this even better if we were drunk. Hey we're going to watch a game. you know, it would be even better. Yeah. And like so pretty soon you become the kind of person, what do you do for fun? I just drink. You're the most boring person in the world. I didn't realize I was becoming that. But but I had because we're having friends over. We're drinking. Well, it's guaranteed. Yeah. It's guarant like you don't ever have to wonder. I wonder if I'll get drunk this time. It works every time. And that and so people it gives you some certainty in a really twisted way. And so I what I found is that when you can tap in and this is some of the things I'm teaching my kids now who are, you know, a lot younger, especially my 12-year-old, like she's learning this because I'll say she the other day she said to me, she said, "You you tell me to you tell me to to just that to to have a positive attitude. Like I can just stop." It's like, "I can stop feeling this way." I'm like, "You can, right?" But she hasn't learned it yet. But it's like when you start to learn to take hold of your thoughts and you and really what it is is it's what you're focused on from a very simple standpoint. This is what I had to I learned from having a kid. I'm like, I need to be able to coach her through this and and to give her the big picture. Like, well, you need to control your thought. Like, she's not there yet.

33:48 But what are you focusing on? Very, very simple thing, but you're focusing on what you don't have. You're focused on all the external things. And so, it's like, what are you grateful for? What a great simple shift for anybody to have. What are you grateful for, man? You know what? Like, I got I'm I'm healthy. Like, there's so many things for me. I'm alive, man. I live in America. There's a million things. I have, you know, in in your daughter's case, both my parents love me. Yeah. There's I mean there's so many things like my dad said my dad said growing up he said this to me a lot because I had problems with ingratitude but it's impossible it's impossible to be grateful and negative at the same time. You can't do it for sure. And uh wherever you know the word attitude it's used in aviation because it's the direction that the nose of a plane is pointing. So if your attitudes pointed it it points multiple directions but if your attitude's pointed up you're going up. If your attitude's down you're going down. And so people go, well, like a lot of people, they think attitude is emotion. So they think, well, I can't just control my emotions like that.

34:44 There's and if you read psychology, there's there's multiple sides of this issue. Like some psychologists say you're in control of your emotions at all times. Some psychologists say, "Well, you have a lizard brain and you really can't control how you feel, right? For me personally, like what I always say is I like a challenge, so I'll go ahead and decide that I can't control my emotions." Okay? And attitude is what I do with my emotions. Right. So that doesn't excuse. So me getting angry. It's one thing to get angry. It's another thing to punch a hole in the wall. Right. Yeah. Um it's it's one thing to get sad. It's another thing to just in your mind go nothing matters and now my life is meaningless and you know I had a bad day today so everything in my life's just going to fall apart. One of those things maybe you can't control. Like you can't control whether or not. And I think that's really hard to to live. It's hard to teach people that, you know, you can't control what happened to you today, but you can always control your response. And that's that's again what Viktor Frankl said in Man Search for Meaning is we have the ability to control our response in any given set of circumstances.

35:46 And when you're talking about attitude, what you're ultimately talking about is for me is what what's my response to my emotion that I feel. So yeah, this made me sad or made me upset or I got frustrated. What am I going to do with that feeling? And am I gonna am I gonna fixate on it, which is what a lot of people do? Am I going to ruminate now? Yeah. Just hang out there. Like we had a deal with Charlie, who's our 8-year-old, the other day where a girl at school had uh called her a liar and she wasn't lying about something. Yeah. Right. So, she comes home all day, like she's eight, but she comes home, it's like all day she's been sad about this girl calling her a liar because she's not a liar. And so, I sit down with Charlie and I'm like, "You know what? You can't control Charlie. You can't control whether or not someone calls you a name, whether or not someone calls you a liar. What you can control is what you decide to do about it. 100%. What you can control is your response to it. What you can control is what you decide to think about yourself based on what another person says. And that'll be, you know, another thing my dad always says is these aren't the only things we're going to talk about, but these are things we'll always talk about. Yeah. Because you can't to me you can't ever talk about this stuff enough because it's so hard.

36:58 Yeah. It's easy to talk about a principle or a concept like having a good attitude. It's hard to have one, right? So it's simple but it's not easy. Yeah. And we have to always be in rooms and environments that are reinforcing these things in us. Yeah. because it can be. So, you know, we live in a culture and we live in a world that the force of average is strong and most people are just tossed to and fro by the by the wind and the waves of life. Y and you can't really be great fully just by yourself on your own, but you have to decide to do the work, right? So, a person has to get to that point in their life, you know, that you're you're navigating hope through. like you have to get to the point where you're you have the internal fortitude to make the decision to not go down this road which is so hard and that but this is so it's interesting to me that we've ended up back at this really micro point and I hope this is helpful for people because I want to remind people we were saying does God activate you or does he just redirect you what we're saying is that he redirects you meaning you should already be doing you know being a good steward and being 100% in well and a lot of people like well you know I don't I don't like my job I don't think it's has purpose I don't think insert whatever you don't like and what we're saying is that you have to come back to the very small detail of what are you focusing on because what you're focusing on will determine where you're going. So are you focusing on like are you choosing to focus on positive or you choosing to only focus on negatives and like once again this is a belief that there's I personally believe that there's always good that you can find in every situation. It may not present itself because you can think of some horrific things that happen. So it may not present itself in that moment but I believe that when you look back that you can always be like man if that hadn't happened I wouldn't have done this. It's like you get to choose how you respond in the moment.

38:43 Yeah. Um, Epictetus, Epictetus talked about this. He talked about he said, "Don't don't want for things to happen as you wish. Want for things to happen as they're happening and then your life will flow well." Right? So, when I go through stuff I don't like or stuff that's really challenging or things that, you know, I'm doing work that I hate or what whatever whatever the relationship to the thing is. Shout out to your employer. Love you, Dad. Um, let's hope he doesn't listen to this. No, my my question is what if I wanted this to happen, right? Like what what would be if I what if and it's just a thought exercise. Yeah. You know, and there's nothing wrong with having a thought exercise. So, when you're going through something you don't like or experiencing things that are not preferable to you, what if I wanted that to happen? What would I see? And and where would the opportunities be? And I would say having working really hard to develop that thought process has really helped me in life because I've navigated through some pretty difficult circumstances and gone, "Wow, man. I actually I'm better cuz that yeah, I'm in a better place. I'm enjoying my life a lot more.

39:52 I feel more fulfilled." Cuz I think too there's this whole other thing that people confuse comfort with their calling. Oh man. Yeah. So they think like you're like you're, you know, all the stuff you were pursuing when you're in that deal is I just want to be comfortable, man. I just want to feel good. Just want to be happy, man. Just want to be happy. I just want to feel good about myself. And what God wants to do is put you in a place where you're adding value and creating meaning. And a lot of times that's very uncomfortable and it's a lot of hard work. Yeah. And it's it's you know for for me like doing this uh writing all these things that I'm doing are not things I'm comfortable with. Yeah. like being a speaker. Uh it's it's an energy demand way more than it produces energy for me. But I feel fulfilled when I do it. And I know it's what God's called me to do. Yeah.

40:42 So I have to constantly I have a very you know a lot of people like you were saying that a second ago, like people go, "Well, I just I just want to do something that uh makes me feel like I'm living in my purpose and living in my meaning." Like if if I was going to be honest with myself, the purpose for my life would be for me to be comfortable. Yeah. Like what I want is no demands on me, absolute freedom, no one tells me what to do. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. Right. That's at least for me personally my definition. Does life work that way? Not if I want to have a good one. Once you get past four, it doesn't. Yeah. So, so there's all this stuff like and two like I think there's this dynamic of God re redirecting you because there's all this stuff that God wants you to do that you might not necessarily want to do that's hard work but it's also why God put you on the earth for sure and it's not about like for me it's not that I hate these things but I never would have seen myself traveling speaking um preaching and giving messages all the time and talking to all these different groups of people because I'm an introverted person. I don't really like talking, but I feel fulfilled like whenever I'm stepping into that, I see the impact that it makes and I feel fulfilled in doing that. I never would have seen myself as a writer. I never would have seen myself as a communicator on any level, but that's how God wanted to use me. So, I was working hard. So, in my life, in my own story, I was working hard. I was doing all this creative work. I was doing all this creative stuff. And then the way I stepped into doing what I'm even doing now is when I was in my early 20s, we didn't have a youth pastor at our church. And we were in a meeting and it was like, "Well, what are we going to do? We don't have a youth guy." And I said, "Well, you know, I I don't know if I'd be a good youth guy, but I'll try. I'll step in there.

42:32 I'll try to do it." And I was a horrible youth pastor. I mean, I took our I took our youth from 400 to 50 in like 3 months. It was amazing. I'm a reverse I'm a reverse growth engineer. It's amazing. Yeah. Whatever. It's not like growth hacking. It's like a growth virus. Shrink hacking. Yeah. Shrink hacking. You're a shrink hacker. But so I said yes to that. I was already working hard. There was like this redirection. But it was in a space that I didn't even want to go. But there was a need there. Yeah. So I decided, hey, I'm going to serve this need. Well, here I am probably It was probably 15 years ago that I did that. Here I am 15 years later. the primary things I do in my life. If you would have told me at 23, Josh, this is what you're going to do with your life, I'd have been like, oh man, heck no. I'll never do that. I don't ever want to be that guy. But then those are the primary things I'm doing in my life. And yeah, they're a lot of work for me, but I'm great with work. Yeah. I've I've developed like this ability to work hard.

43:24 So, I'll work hard and I'll watch God do what he does through my life. That's not necessarily always comfortable for me. In fact, it's it's never really comfortable. But what I see is I I I the only way I can describe this is when I'm in that space, I'm like, I know 100% this is exactly why God put me on the earth. And it doesn't feel comfortable. It's not great for my humanity, all that, but I'm like, this is exactly where I need to be, and I'm doing exactly what I need to do. And the only reason why I feel like I got there was because I decided to just work really hard at whatever it is that was right in front of me. Thank you for listening to The Dialog. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe. And also, if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak, and write, you can go to joshuacraft.com. Or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.