Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You.
[00:00:02] Hello. In this podcast, we're going to talk about the thing that many of us actually ignore. It's the foundational piece to getting started.
[00:00:13] It's the foundation for us even becoming who we have become.
[00:00:19] Listen to the podcast and we'll get right into it.
[00:00:44] Welcome to Life Refresh podcast. You know who it is. It's Ryan Robinson. Excited and delighted to be with you yet again. If you haven't tell somebody about this podcast, share it with someone. If you're finding value in it, if you are getting built up by it, if you are enjoying it, whatever the reason is that you're tuning in, share it with somebody. Believe that God will bless you in this podcast. So this is the biggest thing that most of us forget when we're getting anything started and is the power of potential.
[00:01:24] But potential, here's the key. Starts small.
[00:01:31] And all of us hate starting small.
[00:01:35] I don't know about you, but I hated starting with one thing and then expecting it to become a huge success over time. I started. We all at one point were children, we were all babies, but we all had the potential to grow into an adult. And if you're listening to this podcast or you're on your way to becoming an adult, congratulations. The potential of you to grow into a human being is being realized. So I want to explain that all of us don't experience the potential or we actually don't see it, or don't want to see it because it starts out small.
[00:02:17] I'm going to use some bible here to expound upon this topic here. But there is a book in the Old Testament is really small. It is considered what we call a minor prophet, which means it just doesn't mean it's less significant. It just says the book is smaller in Zechariah, chapter four, verse ten. And it says this, do not despise the day of small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel's hand. The seven lamps represent the eyes of the Lord which search all around the world.
[00:03:00] Now this is the key, y'all. God knows the beginning from the end. So when you decide to start something, when there's something that is in your heart, when it is something that you have a desire to do, seeing that begin means that there's going to be an ending. And because God is all knowing, all powerful, he has the ability to know that if it begins, it's going to have to end. And that means that my purpose and what I have put in this person will be realized at some point. And it's the enemy's job in many cases to make sure or try to or attempt to keep what started from growing and becoming its full potential. Okay. It is something that all of us, in many cases, if we have started on something and we have stopped on something, I'm raising my hand for that.
[00:03:57] You still began. The enemy will do everything that he can to stop you, whatever you want to call it. Resistance, challenges.
[00:04:09] There is a force in the world, and I believe it's the enemy of our soul that is trying to keep us from becoming everything that God has designed us to be, which is the point of being refreshed in the first place, to realize the potential that God has placed in you for a particular problem that only you can solve in this earth.
[00:04:32] Okay? That is the whole purpose. If you had millions of dollars but no fulfillment, what kind of life is that?
[00:04:41] You spent all your life making millions of dollars, but are unhappy, don't have joy, not looking forward to the next day, that you can create something that is beneficial to people and serve people well all around you. At the end of the day, what kind of life did you live?
[00:04:59] You just lived for a dollar.
[00:05:02] And is that the cost of your life?
[00:05:05] That made me itch?
[00:05:08] Is that what you're willing to pay? You're willing to exchange purpose for currency or lack of fulfillment for that?
[00:05:19] But when you are starting to operate in what God has called you to do and operate in that way, God is pleased because he sees something that we don't see. And generally, it is something small.
[00:05:36] The human body and everything in this earth is made up of things that we can't see, particularly on a subatomic level. Yeah, a great movie. I'm not a Marvel fan, but I like Marvel movies. And there is what we call the Ant Man. I think Paul Rudd plays him, and he is one of the few characters that can shrink down to a quantum level at this point to see things that the human eye cannot see. And he's able to experience the things that we experience on a natural level in a completely different perspective. So if it's an ant that's walking around, the ant actually has more volume and more size. Why? Because he's small, but he has the potential to become huge and great and tall and grand and kick things over buildings and knock cars over like they're hot wheels and stuff.
[00:06:43] But that gives a whole different perspective. But there's things to the eye that you can't see, but God can see. He can see the atoms in our body. He can see our digestive system, he can see our cardiovascular system, things that we just can't see with the human eye that we need an instrument to see, not in ourselves and others.
[00:07:04] He has that ability. So when he sees something begin, he is seeing his will and purpose being carried out in the earth.
[00:07:15] There's another thing here that I want to expound upon, and it's the fact that we discount the small stuff.
[00:07:25] And there's a saying that says, don't sweat the small stuff.
[00:07:30] I don't know where that came from. I should have looked that up, but I don't know where don't sweat the small stuff came from, because the small stuff matters.
[00:07:41] It may not matter to everybody else, but it matters to you and it matters to God. Why? Because you started, you began something.
[00:07:52] You had enough faith. Here it is to start something. You had something that you believed in enough to just start.
[00:08:03] And all of us discount starting.
[00:08:10] It's just something we discount. I don't know where that came from. I don't know why we as a culture discount small stuff.
[00:08:20] Eventually those things become big.
[00:08:23] Eventually your children start off as babies and they become, know, small. Dreams become massive buildings and businesses. Because it only started as one. It started somewhere.
[00:08:43] Apple started in a garage. So did Amazon. And all of these businesses that we call mega cat businesses in Wall street or the darlings of Wall street are at one point started small, and no one believed that they would be as big as they are now if Steve Jobs was alive. I don't know if he. I think he probably maybe had an idea, but he probably wouldn't have experienced this kind of stuff. In this day and age, several years since his passing, I don't know if anyone is able to look further down the pipeline of eternity or time and say, oh, yeah, this is going to turn out to be what it is. If you were a bet, man, you'd bet like, back to the future and just say, like, oh, yeah, I know it's going to turn out to be what it ends up being. No, we don't have that capability, but God does.
[00:09:43] And we have to believe in what we have been given enough to operate on that particular unction.
[00:09:53] I'm going to shift over to a particular scripture. We're going to anchor our conversation on this a bit more. Today.
[00:10:02] We did an Old Testament scripture. We're going to do a New Testament scripture, and we're going to go to Matthew, chapter 17. Let's do this. We'll start at verse 18.
[00:10:20] And it's interesting to this because it is after goes from the mount of transfiguration, which is a point where he is in front of his closest apostles and friends. He is operating in his full glory. Okay.
[00:10:39] 14 Matthew, chapter 17, verse 14. And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to him, kneeling down to him, saying, lord, have mercy on my son, for he is epileptic and suffers severely, for he often falls into fire and often into the water. So I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, oh, faithless, perverse generation. Jesus was mad. How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to me. Then jesus rebuked the demon and he came out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. Then the disciples came to him privately. This is what they had. A recap, and I love this part, said, why couldn't we cast it out? They're like, why didn't it worked for you? But why didn't it work for us?
[00:11:32] We want to figure this out. And he says this.
[00:11:36] So Jesus said to them, because of your unbelief, you surely, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting. He kind of softened the blow a little bit for them. So potent possibilities. There is this thing about faith that we have not uncovered and what we have yet to understand.
[00:12:19] I would say what we have yet to.
[00:12:23] We glorify the endings when there's profitability, when everything is visible. But what we do not put a light to are the smaller days when things are just getting started, when it's just you that believes in a dream, and when it's just you that is working hard at night to believe something.
[00:12:48] Faith Bible again says in Hebrews eleven, which I've referenced before, says, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[00:13:00] And a mustard seed or any kind of seed, we'll talk about any kind of seed first. Then we'll talk about a mustard seed.
[00:13:09] A seed is very small, but in every seed has the genetic makeup to become a tree, an apple tree, an orange, a tree, a vineyard, anything is in the seed. It has the makeup to become what it needs to become. However, it needs to be set in the right climate in order for it to germinate. Well, there is a parable of where seed is dropped. And I'll probably mention this on another podcast, or maybe the next podcast, really, because what it does is it talks about how powerful seed is, and the reference to this is the seed of the word of God, and our heart is the ground. So in this case, as a seed germinates in soil, it becomes what it's supposed to become.
[00:14:14] Now, we may ignore the seeds.
[00:14:19] Some we eat, like sunflower seeds, or maybe watermelon seeds by accident, if you're eating watermelon.
[00:14:28] But the thing is, the potential for that particular fruit to continue on and create another generation of itself is left in its fruit, which is the seed.
[00:14:45] And it's small.
[00:14:48] We kick around seeds all day long.
[00:14:52] No one's saying, oh, let's carefully place this seed in the ground. No one's doing that.
[00:15:00] If you do, God bless you. But last time I checked, people step on seeds, they throw them out the window, they spit them out, and all of that potential is going somewhere, right?
[00:15:13] But it's all small now, a mustard seed. And maybe what I'll do, I'll put a link in the show notes to show you the size of a mustard seed. In some translations, it says the size of a grain of mustard seed. That's how potent faith is. It's comparing faith to a mustard seed, and I would gather it might be less than a centimeter, maybe, of mustard seed. And a mustard seed, when it germinates and grows, becomes a massive tree.
[00:15:50] Massive tree. You just don't expect that kind of tree to come out of something so small. So let me give you some stats here so I can help give you guys some context for how small a mustard seed is to what it becomes. The mustard seed is one to 2 mm in diameter.
[00:16:14] Now just google it. Figure that out. Yet when it's fully grown, the tree can become as tall as 20 to 30ft, with branches and leaves spanning across another 20ft in circumference.
[00:16:33] Huge.
[00:16:37] And God is saying, jesus is saying, if your faith is as small as that, not only does it have the ability to throw and move things supernaturally, it also has the ability to affect and grow further than you even think it could.
[00:17:01] So if you have seen faith work for your family, so we say you were believing God for healing for someone in your family. Someone said they pray for you. They pray for the healing of your aunt or your mother or your sister, your brother and God did something for them, they were able to be healed miraculously. They recovered quickly. Whatever the case is, if they've experienced now, their faith has gone up, right? Because now they can say, I've seen God do this over here.
[00:17:36] What makes it not possible that he could do something else over here?
[00:17:42] You see what I'm saying? What ends up happening is faith becomes contagious.
[00:17:50] It starts to affect every other part of your life, and soon, not just every other, every part of your life. Because if you haven't seen him heal, you may have seen him become a provider. If you hadn't seen him become a provider, you've seen him become a banner for you, or a fighter for you or a defender for you. But this is the great thing about faith. We can borrow one another's faith. Because if I haven't seen it, I can have faith for you. Which means now our two trees can get together and we become a bigger, broader. My branches can reach over to you and I can help provide areas of support.
[00:18:36] Because you may not have faith in that area yet is the key to all of this.
[00:18:45] You may not have it yet, but that doesn't mean you won't.
[00:18:51] And that is why we can never, ever discount starting small on anything.
[00:19:02] Yes, people around you may discount it, that's fine.
[00:19:08] You might even discount it at times.
[00:19:12] But if you believe enough to keep going, to stay consistent, to trust that this work will always profit something, Bible says labor will always profit. So whether you are doing something, you doing something can build something in you or build into something.
[00:19:37] You just don't want to get results. You will get results. But sometimes the results have to work on you first before the results become visible to you.
[00:19:47] It always God doesn't waste a thing.
[00:19:52] He doesn't waste your time. He doesn't waste your experience. He doesn't waste your heartbreak. He doesn't waste your tears. He does not wait or waste anything.
[00:20:05] Bible says all things work together for good. For those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.
[00:20:14] Everyone listening to me today, there is a reason God allowed some of the things he allowed.
[00:20:24] I don't know why, but do we have enough faith to believe that what has happened is working on us to be something better, to be who God has purposed and destined for us to become? That's the question.
[00:20:46] But then the follow up question is, are you willing to start small, not have any clue of what it's going to look like, but believe God for the outcome and hold on to him when you can't see anything happening.
[00:21:04] That's the challenge for you today.
[00:21:07] If this blessed you, I'm asking you to share it with someone who needs some exhortation to be encouraged, to be built up. Because I'm telling you, there's things that are starting small now that become massive. Things later, and dreams, beliefs, books, businesses have all.
[00:21:33] I was saying have all.
[00:21:36] Let me resay that again.
[00:21:38] Many businesses, books, speakers have stopped because starting small didn't feel good.
[00:21:54] While God is rejoicing, some of us were lamenting and we quit.
[00:22:03] So God has placed something in you. Please don't quit.
[00:22:07] People need what you have been brought on this earth to do.
[00:22:13] They need you.
[00:22:16] So without any further ado, we will catch you in the next pie. Peace.
