Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:09 Welcome to the life refresh podcast. I am your host Brian Robinson and I'm so glad that you decided to tune in to the podcast today. This podcast is designed for those who are looking to refresh and renew all aspects of their life and receive a life that only God can get. My hope is that through this podcast you are receiving exactly what you've been
Speaker 2 00:57 welcome to the live refresh podcast. This is Ryan, just so glad that you're able to join in on the first of many podcasts to come. Again, I'm really excited about sharing some of the things that I've learned. My hope is again, that everyone can have their life renewed and refreshed by these words. I think some of the time we discount our experiences and forget this, someone else might need them. And this day and age with the level of technology, social media, all of the tools at our disposal, I think it'd be best to serve others by sharing the things that we've learned so that they can bypass and actually avoid some of the things and steps that many of us have, uh, fallen into in the past. So again, this is my, uh, a piece of my ministry so to speak. So, um, I want to start off with a quote and it says perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Speaker 2 02:09 A few months ago in the summer, my wife and I attended a family union trip in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I've been there years before, but this time I was looking to do a little bit more adventuring. One of the family members suggest going tree top, zip lining, which first of all, I've never zip lined before, let alone done tree top zip lining. So after prayerful consideration, I decided to go along for the trip. The closer that we got to the location, the more nervously excited I became about the experience during the check in time. You couldn't take any extra baggage with you. So my backpack had to stay in the and only your necessities, like your phone for photos and a wallet were necessary. You go through Hills, through mud, through a with a four Wheeler to get to a particular post. And then once you get to the post, you have to climb up the stairs to get above the trees to get above all the noise.
Speaker 2 03:24 And when we finally got to the top of our first tree post, I saw the most amazing view of the Rocky mountains and the Appalachian mountains. Now, unfortunately, I couldn't just stay at the post in order to make progress to other points of view. I had to zip line over tree tops to the next post. Literally a line between one post and the next. What it was my turn, I stood at the edge of the platform looking down at far, looking down at how far it is, but also looking forward with nervousness to the next destination with a deep breath. I went forward holding tightly to the zip line handle until I reached the post that was ahead of me. This was one of the most exhilarating but most eye opening experiences that I will always keep with me. At that moment I experienced what refreshing feels like.
Speaker 2 04:39 Now, you may say zip lining is not a big deal or it's not an experience worth reflecting on, but honestly I would argue otherwise. I would say our lives at some point go along with this analogy. At some point in our lives, we will come to the edge of a transition. We will see what the next destination or next chapter of our lives looks like and we have struggled, gone through the mud, gone through the Merck, gone through the noise to get to the point where we're able to go to the next step. But some of us have lived our lives at the edge and have not made the jump. The only thing that's keeping us from getting to the next level and stage of our life is letting go is just that simple. But this is where the problem lies. We have difficulty trusting things that seem simple. It is as if solving complex problems requires careful thought from us and validates the fact that yeah, it's legit. Let me help you with an example. If you look at your closet now, you may find a few complexities. If your closet is organized, especially after the holidays, more power to you, but for the rest of us, we may find a mess.
Speaker 2 06:23 Complexity is easy to obtain, but simplicity is difficult to acquire. It isn't just removing things from your life just because you can cause that's easy. You can throw away junk, call it junk, and then a few weeks later, find out that the very thing you needed is the very thing you throw away. It isn't just an aesthetic that looks clean and looks sterile. Simplicity is a calculated series of thoughtful reductions that makes an experience easier. Destinations clear. I'm not talking about minimalism or reducing your life to just the bare minimums. I'm talking about keeping things in your life that matter. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful consideration. It is creating space in your life so that you can see the environment, your relationships, your gifting, your spirit, all of those things in your life. The older that I have gotten, I'm learning that very few things matter in life. Everything else is just noise. So going back to my zip lining experience, had I not made the jump, had I not risked my uncomfortable feeling in my gut to not to just be comfortable and stay on the post, I would not have experienced one of the most beautiful landscapes that God has designed. I'm sure there's many.
Speaker 2 08:32 But in order to experience something, you have to do things that you have never done before. And in the next series of podcasts, I'm going to go through some specific areas in our lives that actually need to be refreshed first before we can actually experience some external things in our life. The external things come when we make internal changes in our lives. So the first thing we have to start with is start with ourselves. Getting to understand who we are, getting to understand what matters to us because in order to reduce and create a more open and simple life, not just a life that has space to fill in more things, but a life that has space for you to enjoy and focus on the things that matter in your life. You have to find out, first of all, what you value. And that in itself is where we have the first challenge. Are we accepting a story that someone else have given, has given us? It takes a little bit of time for us to work through this, but I'm hoping that you'll be able to tune into our next podcast to get some of the tools that you need to open up a life that is filled with hope,
Speaker 0 10:03 life renewal and refreshing. I hope this was encouraging to you. Make sure that you share this and leave a comment on any of the podcast platforms that you use. Take the time to refresh your life, refresh the life of others around you. Tune in next week we'll have a brand new podcast and you don't want to miss what we have in store.
