Welcome to the Boundless Bible. My name is David Shapiro. Hey, I'm Javi Marquez. And I'm Jason Holloway. Hi, and welcome to the Boundless Bible. I'm really excited to be solo with you today. There was something that I heard, and I just wanted to do a quick episode on this. And this was the other day, somebody had just accepted Christ, and they said, Listen, you know, since I accepted Christ, my my life is still chaotic. And I asked them, you know, what do you mean by chaotic? Do you mean that you're still going through trials or the things are a little bit wild and undisciplined in your life? And I thought it was really important to actually discuss both of those things. So, first, I think if you've just accepted Christ, first of all, it really is the greatest decision you could ever make. And congratulations. But more than that, sometimes people accept Christ and they hear that, you know, things are going to get great, they're going to get better, they're going to be amazing. Now that you accept Christ, everything is just kind of going to flow well. And that couldn't be further from the truth. It doesn't mean that things are going to be chaotic, but let me just kind of explain a little bit about what that chaos looks like and when you accept Christ, what those trials could be. And I think about different trials in my own life and where I thought it would turn out. And, you know, one of the things I look at is, you know, I was dyslexic growing up and I felt really insecure in school. I couldn't read. It flowed just into everything in my life. I became very self-conscious of things. And it was, you know, true torture. I mean, just throughout my entire life, not feeling like I belonged anywhere, not feeling comfortable in my own skin. And it was something that I think at the time I realized, you know, at the time I thought, this is terrible. I don't think of anything worse than this. And at the time, they didn't realize it wasn't called dyslexia years ago. It was just that I was slow. I wasn't smart enough. And that's what I carried with me. And it was only later in life when I accepted Christ that I start to understand that, you know, this is the way God made me. And he he put me in a position where I wanted to learn differently and better. And I wanted to read his word. And I was able to actually get through the entire Bible comfortably and learning and understanding things. And this was a really cool thing. This now put so much emphasis on the moment I accepted God to go, hey, I couldn't understand this before. Now I can understand it afterwards. This is a God thing. It was pointing towards Christ. So those are one of those things that happened in my life where, you know, if I didn't go through the trial, I wouldn't have seen the, you know, the revival of my brain, the success that I felt for it. And then I start to think about other biblical characters. And this is not something that isn't just unique to you or me. If you look at somebody like Moses, you know, we look at the story, and again, this happened, you know, thousands of years ago. We just assume that this is a person who, look, they had God, they went through some things, you know, they were fine. But if we really take a moment and think about it, so Moses killed somebody and fled. He was terrified. So he ran away from Egypt because he thought he was going to be killed by the Pharaoh. Listen, I don't know about you, but you know, if I owe a bill collector and I try to hide from them, I have some stress built around it. I can't imagine killing somebody, the pharaoh wanting to take my life for that, me fleeing and what that would have felt like. So now he's in the desert, he's fleeing. Probably anybody he passes, he's looking at to see if they recognize him or, you know, this is this is pure torture. If you think about people who commit crimes, a lot of times they go and turn themselves in, not because they feel bad, but because the run from the law is really hard. It's really torturous. So Moses is going through this. And then he is somebody who does not know, you know, the God of the Jews, God of the Israelites, meets him on a mountaintop with a burning bush that didn't consume the bush, was sent back to Egypt, fought, you know, the the hardened heart of Pharaoh, and tried to convince his people of who he was and sent by God. I mean, the story goes on and on and on. You you've probably heard the story, but when you start to think about how frustrated, how scared, how many emotions Moses must have gone through, this was not meant to torture him. It was meant to prepare him. And a lot of times when we go through these tough times, it's for preparation. Even when we accept it, at this point, Moses accepted Yahweh. He went back on this mission. It doesn't mean that he's free from all of these issues. What it means is he has God walking with him while he goes through it. He'll always have him there. So I think it's really important that when somebody first accepts Christ and they say, listen, this doesn't feel the way I thought it would feel. I get it. I understand what you're saying. But the expectation might have been a little bit off. When you start to read the Bible and you start to look at these characters in the Bible, you start to realize that all of them have had some sort of expectation that was not met, but it's always met by God. It's always met with the security of God, the wing and hedge of protection over you. And I think that that's really important for us to look forward to when we accept Christ. The other thing that happens is the other side of chaos, which is the undisciplined side and the mess. And with this one, if that's you, if you feel like you're undisciplined and you're in this mess, you're in great company. Again, there are so many people in the Bible who went through this. When we when I think about it, Job. Job went through an absolute mess of his life, was undisciplined, had to learn about being disciplined, and actually God himself disciplined him at the end until he's finally got it. I think about somebody like Joseph or Peter, Peter who had to be rebuked by God again. This is now God coming back and rebuking him and telling him, hey, you're not understanding this. I think about somebody like Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve's undiscipline got them kicked out of Eden. They, they were, you know, had a simple task. Hey, your task is don't eat of this fruit, and they ate of it. So right now, if you're feeling undisciplined, if you say, hey, look, I just accepted Christ. I'm still struggling with this sin. I'm not reading my Bible. I'm not praying. I'm not doing the things I feel like I should be doing. Again, you're in great company. One of the stories that I love that really hits me is Paul, who was Saul at first. And, you know, he was struck with blindness on the way to Damascus. He was doing the wrong thing. He was undisciplined. And God used that in his life to become the Apostle Paul, the one that almost every Christian knows about, the one who wrote most of the New Testament. I mean, this, you want to talk about a conversion. This is somebody who truly went from chaotic and undisciplined life to somebody who truly professed the word of God. So again, if you're that person and you feel like, hey, listen, I am, you know, I'm struggling. I accepted Christ, but I don't think I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. You're in great company. You know, one of the few things that I always think about is when somebody accepts Christ, they have this, they're just filled with emotion. They're filled with this wonderful, great emotion, similar to when the first time you get baptized, if you're baptized and you remember that moment, man, it's just something about coming out of that water. It is truly a spiritual event, but there's something that happens inside of your heart and your mind, and you just want to hold on to that moment forever. And it's so special. And I think what ends up happening is as we go through things in life, we forget about some of those feelings. We get stuck on what we're going through. We get stuck on the trial that we might be in the middle of. We get stuck on the chaos of life. And we start to forget about some of those really great moments. Some of the best being accepting Christ for the first time or being baptized. The birth of my children is another one, my wedding day is another one. I mean, they're just these moments that you try to hang on to, but you you kind of let them slip in these moments and you focus really heavily on the trial. And, you know, that's something where if we can move the needle just a little bit, if we can wake up every day, thank God, put him in the forefront of our mind just a little bit every day. Next time we go through that trial, it might be a little bit easier just to remember that the God who created everything is literally walking next to us through that trial. I know we want him to take it away. I know that we want him to just scoop, scoop down and save us from that moment. But that moment, that test truly does become your testify, your testimony. That that test becomes your testimony, but more than that, it shapes you, it molds you. It's such a great thing to know that you know, the the God who creates, the God who literally, when you think about him being Jesus and coming here as in the flesh, what job did he choose? He could have chosen anything in the world, and what he chose was whether you believe he's a carpenter or a stonemason, there's there's some conflict on that. But either way, he was somebody who came down and created. That's in God's nature to create. So he has created you wonderfully and beautifully to go ahead and to live life, and he wants you to have a loving, wonderful, amazing life, but that doesn't mean it's going to be free from child. So the the creator of everything who came down as a creator created you. Take a moment and realize that he's right next to you. He's helping you through these moments. He wants you to have this relationship with him where you feel confident enough to cry out to him, but to know that he's got you no matter what. And I think sometimes we forget about those moments. And I understand, I get it. It happens to me also. It happens to all of us, it happened to every character in the Bible. You can rest assured that you're not the only one. But when that storm passes in your brain, not the storm of life, not the trial you're going through, when that storm, that moment in your brain goes away, just remember the one who formed you, who knit you in the womb, who knit you in your mother's womb. And remember that. He knit you. It wasn't quick, it wasn't something he just breathed in, spoke out, and boom, you're there. Knitting takes a long time. He knit you string by string by string inside of your mother's womb because he cares. So while you're going through a trial, while you're going through chaos, while you're going through undiscipline, he's there and he cares. He just wants to share in this moment relationally with you. I hope this encourages you today. And I'm looking forward to my my two co-hosts coming back next week. But if you have questions, if you have concerns, if you have a thought, definitely write in, let us know. We're really interested. We love to respond to those. 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