Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Life Refresh podcast. My name is Ryan Robinson, and if you are looking for a podcast that is designed to uplift, encourage, and revive your heart, mind and spirit, you're in the right place. Welcome to the journey of becoming the version of you God designed from the foundations of the earth.
[00:00:23] Hello. Welcome to life. Refresh Podcast. As always, this is your host, Ryan Robinson. Excited to be with you. Today we're going to jump right into actually a new series. Today we're going to be talking about really this series called Life to Life. And one of the things that I've found out probably over the time of just living, really, is that many of us have friends that we connect with, but we really don't have friends that we can live life with.
[00:00:56] We all go through seasons and people have probably, if anything, have heard this phrase. It says people are in your life for a reason, season or a lifetime. And as we're going through those particular times in our lives, there are seasons and maybe circumstances by which you find out whether or not the people that are with you celebrate you and love on you in certain times, in certain circumstances that you experience or come in at certain points where others experience you.
[00:01:33] And whether in those times they support you or they just are there.
[00:01:42] They don't have anything good to say, but they don't have anything positive to say. So they're just there.
[00:01:49] And in many cases sometimes we don't know what to do with that. So you're going to hear about three parts of this Life to Life series. The first one we're going to talk about of the glory of life to life. And then the middle, the messy middle of life to life. And then we're going to talk about the grief of living life to life. And again, this is really built on some things we found in scripture.
[00:02:18] And again, as you all know, all the things I talk about are informed by the Bible. So the first thing we're going to talk about is just a general idea of what Jesus really built in his relationship. So many people, if you're not aware, Jesus had twelve disciples, twelve apostles, really, and those twelve were the people that was his crew, that was his gang, if you will. And those individuals literally lived life with him. They all were in many cases not individuals who had been brought up in the traditional church, if you say of that time. They were either businessmen, worked in government, raised taxes, all that kind of stuff. So they weren't like your first draft picks when it came to being with the Son of man. But Jesus knew that these individuals in themselves had characteristics and qualities that were important to building the kingdom of God. But in that twelve, there was a three, peter, James, and John. And Peter, James and John were really close to Peter or excuse me, were really close to Jesus at critical points, at critical points in his ministry and in his life. And one of them, in many cases, in this case, really was the glory part of it. And this is when Jesus is going to the Mount of Transfiguration, and this is literally right after he says and basically foretells his death, burial, and resurrection, he goes into this particular space where his glory has been revealed. So I'm going to read this. We're going to be reading from Mark, chapter nine. And I just pulled out the book. I pulled out the Bible, old school in it.
[00:04:16] It still works.
[00:04:19] And we're going to go to, like I said, Mark, chapter nine. And we're going to just start off at verse one, and we'll read about 13 verses, okay? And this gives a real good indication as to what we're getting at. Again, life to life, the glory part of it. Okay, we're going to start verse two. We'll start verse two. Then. After six days, Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John, and had them up on a high mountain alone by themselves, and he was transfigured before them.
[00:05:01] His garments became shiny, extremely white as snow, such as no launderer on earth could whiten them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, rabbi, is it good for us to be here? It is good for us to be here. Let us make three Sanctuaries. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, for he did not know what to say because they were very afraid.
[00:05:40] Then a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is my beloved Son. Listen to him.
[00:05:51] Suddenly, they looked around, and they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus alone. As they came down the mountain, he warned them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of man had risen from the dead. They kept that statement to themselves, questioning each other, what the timing from the dead meant. And they asked Him, Why do the scribes say that Elijah must first come? And he answered, Elijah indeed comes first to restore all things.
[00:06:39] Yet how is it sorry. Yet how is it written for the Son of man that he should supply everything?
[00:06:52] And he treated him with contempt.
[00:06:59] But I say to you that Elijah has indeed come, and they have done to Him whatever they wished, as it is written of Him.
[00:07:12] That was hard to read for me.
[00:07:15] Oh, my goodness.
[00:07:18] Eyes are getting old, y'all. And Jesus's words in this book are in red, and as you can see, it's orange in the back. But anyway, we got through the Scripture, and if you have time in your free time, read Mark, chapter nine, verse two through 13. Okay, I want to really talk about really two, maybe three things here. The first is everyone.
[00:07:50] When you have good friends, real good friends, good relationships, you shouldn't be afraid to be your true and authentic self with them.
[00:08:08] Now, let me unpack this a little bit.
[00:08:13] Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to a high mountain. At this time, the disciples, the rest of them, the nine, are still at the lower level. So there's only a certain amount of people that can actually come up with you. They're only able to withstand hold so much. So essentially, Jesus picks the people that he knows can handle what they have of. And again, out of nowhere, Jesus is transfigured. He's in white clothes, he is in the glory that God has put on him, that is resting inside of him. And it scares Peter, James, and John. And Peter doesn't know what to do, except he said, we need to build an altar, we need to do all these things. They literally got to see a generational God with the folks that they read about in the Bible, elijah, who was one of the most powerful prophets during his time, and then Moses the deliverer, who delivered the children of Israel from the hands of Pharaoh into the Promised Land and navigated the wilderness.
[00:09:32] These are pivotal people where you start seeing these connections and they're just having a conversation with Jesus. And Jesus changes from his earthly garb into a glorious garb by which they said, no one on earth could have made his clothes that white.
[00:09:49] So clearly this is something that's happening and they are engulfed in this moment of glory. And sometimes you can't bring certain people with you to your glory moment. Many of us, and even me at sometimes, have been in relationships where we felt that we've had to throttle ourselves back because we might have thought that we might make our friends feel insecure, we might scare our friends away, we might be able to not be ourselves with them. And unfortunately, in many cases, we've called that friendship.
[00:10:33] If you're not able to be 100% you, authentically you. That's a problem. Now, granted, Jesus spent more time with them. We're in chapter nine, y'all, not in chapter one, when he's really first calling these guys. So he's known God. Jesus, being both human and man, knew exactly who he was dealing with.
[00:10:57] But we as humans don't necessarily know that, right? So we have to be mindful that we can't just take the whole twelve with us. There's going to be a few people, at least three in Jesus's case. And maybe for you, it might be one, it might be two that have the capability to understand the inner workings of who you are as a person.
[00:11:22] There's things in you that could offend somebody, could make somebody feel small. But the thing is, you want people that will want you to be your 100% authentic self. They want you to do what you do when you do it. And when you do it, you do it well. You kill it. You do everything that you have been designed to do and they celebrate you while you do it.
[00:11:52] You might have to run that back because I can't say that one again. But you want people to celebrate you when you're doing your best.
[00:12:00] And those are the kind of relationships that when you're doing life to life, you have to have at least one person rooting you on to be everything you are called to be and not be jealous of it.
[00:12:17] I'm going to say that again and not be jealous of it at all.
[00:12:23] Okay, I will say this. Peter was scared. So the first thing he says, like, we need to build something. We need to build something because I don't know what to do.
[00:12:35] This is a glorious moment and the first thing he thinks about doing is building something to memorialize the moment. He didn't say, can we talk to Moses? Can we talk to Elijah? I just want to start building something here because I got to figure out how I can encapsulize capture this moment. And essentially they, you know, God in his all magnificence and glory, just like I'm going to just cover this up for a minute. So these guys don't know what they talking about. They don't know how to handle themselves when this glory comes. But this is the key, though. I'm going to go back to verses.
[00:13:19] Let's see, verse nine. I think this is the key. And this is step two. As they came down the mountain, he, meaning Jesus, warned them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of man had risen from the dead. Now, this is the thing, and most of us, and I actually forgot this, that Jesus revealed his glory to Peter, James and John long before he had died and was risen from the dead. So they got a sneak peek. And when the women, when Jesus was crucified went to go and let Peter and John and the rest of the disciples know that Jesus was no longer there in the temple or in his tomb this was actually the second time that they had gone to recognize and put together that the glory they experienced in one season was what resurrected Jesus in the next.
[00:14:29] Okay, so they got a sneak peek of who Jesus really is before everything took place. And this is the thing. He trusted them. And this is number two. He trusted them with the most glorious piece of himself and trusted them not to say a word.
[00:14:58] He was able to trust them to keep a confidence.
[00:15:03] And it says now, even amongst themselves, it says this too. They kept that statement to themselves, questioning each other, what the rising from the dead meant. Okay, so the thing is, they had questions. That doesn't mean you don't have questions, but at least they kept it amongst the group that experienced it the most, because this is the thing. Not everyone is going to understand everything you've gone through, your experiences you can't share with everyone, unfortunately, those experiences that you share. Because the thing is, if you share something, they might think you're crazy.
[00:15:49] They might think you crazy. All I heard.
[00:15:54] I'll use Jay Z for an example. I know this has a Christian Spin podcast, but I'm gonna use Jay Z for a minute.
[00:16:05] It's crazy until somebody does it. Now, Jay Z is considered one take. Ho. That's what they call him back when he's getting started. And the reason why they called him that is because he would do everything to memorize his verse so that he would be one take. Because if he had to take multiple takes, an engineer would have to cut up the tape, like actual tape. Google it if you haven't seen it, actual tape, and cut the refrain, the verse, bur them together or stick them together, and then put the bridge together and then do all the kinds of stuff. So he didn't want the engineers to do any additional work. He just wanted them to take what he did and be done. Okay, so most hip hop artists weren't able to do it at that time. This is why Jay Z is probably one of the most brilliant hip hop artists and just individual business people of all time. Because he's able to take and have command of the English language, not English, English language, so much so that he can take one moment, take a verse and use the words and do it in one take. Okay, now, sounds crazy, but most people were like, you're not going to be one take person. People didn't know that that was that kind of guy. Only his inner circle really knew that that was how he was, right? In his early days, there's only a small group of people that Jay Z hung around that knew that that was the kind of individual that he was.
[00:17:54] And then fast forward 1015 years later, we all get caught up to what he was always and has always been doing, right? So the thing is, we always in Jesus's case, we were able peter, James, and John were able to get a glimpse of who he was going to be long before the resurrection, long before miracles, long before he did everything that he was sent on this Earth to do.
[00:18:29] But he only showed his true self to a few people. And you have to be cautious, unfortunately, with who you share your greatness with.
[00:18:43] And again, it's okay. Not every friend is going to be at that same level.
[00:18:51] But if I can't celebrate you in the greatness that you are and what you're able to do, what you're capable to accomplish, then we probably are more so associates than we are good friends. Or at least you're not in my core group of people because I don't have any room or need any space for jealousy to take root in my relationships. I need someone to be there rooting for me. So you probably need someone rooting for you when you are at your lowest moments, when you're struggling, and when you have no one to go to. At least you have one person that'll give you an amen, so to speak, right? So you can only have a few people in this group that can celebrate your glory. There's only a few people that you can trust to reveal that.
[00:19:45] And the third part of it is you only have a few that you can trust to conceal it and protect it until it's time.
[00:19:53] I really, truly believe that, especially in this season of relationships, we need to understand and not just romantic relationships, let me get that clear, because that's a whole different thing. That's a whole different podcast lesson. But I want us to understand this.
[00:20:13] I want us to understand this. Relationships, the deep ones, require this level of transparency.
[00:20:23] I gave it in three phases here the glory, the messy middle, and the grief. These are literally all parts of people's lives.
[00:20:36] And the thing is, the glory is usually the part that people want to show.
[00:20:42] People typically show up at the glory part. You know, someone that makes it, quote, unquote, makes it to the league or makes it to gosh.
[00:20:55] They're on a New York Times best selling book. Whatever. They start getting the accolades, they start getting recognized for their creativity. They're in the newspaper, they're doing all kinds of things. Yes, I get it, and it's cool that you know them.
[00:21:11] But the thing is, you have to recognize that everyone is now starting to be around because they're new, they're accomplished, they're in the NFL, they're in the NBA. They have done the things that people typically are looking for that garner the attention that success brings them. And it's just not real. It's just not real. And the thing is, as soon as you're no longer the person who is the New York Times bestselling author, your number one draft pick, but you're not performing well, all those things, soon as that happens, people typically move on to the next thing. That's why it's so important and critical that when you have people that are around you in your relationships, that they are there to be with you in the glory moments. And this is the thing, y'all.
[00:22:13] After Jesus had his transfiguration, he transformed back to what they already knew. Jesus was like regular walking down the street jesus, he went from superfly white, brand new, clean, couldn't see a speck of dirt on him, to what they came up with when they were coming up the mountain. The regular Jesus, I don't know if they can have a regular Jesus, but Jesus that was regularly dressed and having the human experience.
[00:22:52] So they got a glimpse of greatness but Jesus knew. And really, as we're going through the examples of Jesus and his ability to create relationships, not only do we get leadership examples from Him, but we get relational examples from him as well.
[00:23:10] That when you have friends, you got to be able to trust them with your glory.
[00:23:21] Know, I'm reminded as I was preparing for this podcast about the song that Drake wrote, started from the bottom. Now we're here, right?
[00:23:33] I don't know why that song stuck in my head, but it always reminds me that when people and hear he talks about this a lot in his music, but he always honors the people that were there with him. Same thing with LeBron James. He does that his day ones.
[00:23:56] So the thing is, most people are those folks aren't surprised about the greatness that was revealed to everyone else later in their lives, but they did care for the individual himself. Themselves. Herself.
[00:24:15] So I want you to be reminded that when you're life to life with someone, be there to celebrate their glory and greatness.
[00:24:28] And do your best to celebrate them authentically.
[00:24:33] But also make sure that the folks that are around you celebrate you authentically as well. That they cheer you on when you're doing your thing.
[00:24:45] That they're there for you to not find a way to get theirs in, that you can get me this contact or talk to somebody.
[00:24:56] And then number three, that they can conceal it, they could hold it, they can protect it until it's really time for that greatness that you have in you to be revealed to the rest of the world.
[00:25:12] Again, I think this is an amazing podcast. You usually start off with the other side right when you're down, but it's easy for people to come up to you and holler at you when you're doing great.
[00:25:27] But unfortunately, you can only preview glory with a few people.
[00:25:33] So take some time to examine who are your Peter, James's and John's?
[00:25:39] Have they been there for you? When you are doing what you do and you doing it well, and they just like, go boy. Go girl. Do what you do. I'm here for it. Do you have any of those in your life?
[00:25:54] And if you do, God bless it, keep it, nurture it. But if you don't, evaluate, are they really there for me?
[00:26:05] And evaluate if you are being the kind of friend that you want in your life. All right, so we're going to close on this one. The next one we're going to talk about is the messy middle of life to life. The messy middle. You don't want to miss it. Keep it locked here, subscribe share with someone and we'll catch you in the next one. Peace.
