Kingdom Impact with Cory Long
2 Kings 6: Seeing God’s Provision Beyond What We Can See
What changes when God opens our eyes to what is already present? In this teaching,
Cory Long uses 2 Kings 6 to examine God’s provision, spiritual perspective,
mentorship, abundance, and the choice to bless rather than retaliate.
About This Teaching
In 2 Kings 6, Elisha’s servant wakes to find Dothan surrounded by Syrian
horses and chariots. He sees an impossible threat, while Elisha sees a greater
reality: the mountain is already filled with God’s horses and chariots of fire.
Elisha does not ask God to create protection. He asks God to open the servant’s
eyes so he can recognize the protection that is already there.
Cory connects that moment to the blind spots people experience in life,
ministry, relationships, finances, and entrepreneurship. The circumstances may
be real, but they are not the whole reality. God may already be providing people,
opportunities, resources, wisdom, and protection that fear prevents us from seeing.
The teaching also follows Elisha’s surprising response after the Syrian army is
delivered into Israel’s hands. Instead of approving their execution, he orders a
feast, feeds them, and sends them home. It is a practical picture of overcoming
hostility through faithfulness, generosity, prayer, and blessing.
“Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
— 2 Kings 6:16
Key Lessons
- A real problem does not mean God has stopped providing.
- What we feel in a crisis is not always the fullest picture of what is real.
- Prayer can change our perspective before it changes our circumstances.
- Trusted mentors help us see what fear and discouragement hide from us.
- God’s power and provision may already surround the situation we fear.
- Following God’s calling does not eliminate opposition or spiritual resistance.
- Blessing and praying for opponents can accomplish what retaliation cannot.
- Financial and professional abundance should create greater capacity to serve and give.
- Planning matters, but believers must remain open to God’s larger work.
- Faith becomes visible when we stop only discussing the work and begin doing it.
Questions for Reflection
- Which situation in your life currently feels as though an army has surrounded you?
- What might God already be doing that fear is keeping you from seeing?
- Who can offer you a faithful, honest perspective when you cannot see clearly?
- Are you fighting a person when the deeper battle is spiritual?
- How could you bless, feed, serve, or pray for someone who has opposed you?
- What resource, ability, relationship, or opportunity have you treated as scarce?
- What act of ministry, generosity, or obedience do you need to stop planning and begin doing?
Full Authorized Transcript
teaching by Cory Long. It has been lightly edited to remove timestamps and improve
readability while preserving the substance and conversational character of the message.
Read the complete transcript
All right what's happening everyone and we'll give everybody a few minutes here to hop on uh and then we'll get cranking into uh what we're gonna talk about today um been kind of trying to find a few things to dig into we're gonna we're gonna do some future talks on um money and some other things that uh seem to be topics that keep coming up inside the training hopefully we'll have a decent sized group here today and we'll have a little bit of fun uh for any of you that don't know who i am uh my name is Cory Long i am the founder of digital storefronts and marketing with the mission and Yroc Consulting and i don't know two or three other companies that we own now we just started another business literally three four weeks ago so as a serial entrepreneur i this
Is kind of what i do so i know we have some people on here that are from our groups i know we have some people on here that are uh new to me and new to what we do and so i just want to welcome you and um let you know a little bit about who i am uh just to give you an idea i spent about 17 years in full-time ministry we worked in youth college children's homework i ran a place called carpenter place which is a all girls children's home for a few years before we stepped away from all that craziness to try to figure out a way to do ministry without taking a paycheck that's what started us down this journey of doing what we do now and um i am sitting in my motor home we're sitting in branson missouri right
Now um and so we're uh we're kind of living and creating the life that we want which if you would have asked me seven or eight years ago i would have told you that's not possible um that you can't just create the lifestyle you want um but i'm here to tell you i'm proof of that that you can't you can truly create the lifestyle you want uh and the main thing is knowing what you want uh and that's kind of what i found is is it's much more about knowing what you want and then finding a vehicle for you to get there and so out of all of those ministry years we figured out a way now to be able to go and travel and do ministry work and we've been invited back to glorietta adventure camps this summer to help them we've been invited
Back to a church in angelfire this summer to help them we're about to head to um st louis area to help with a um i don't wouldn't call it a church plant it's a church it's been there for a little bit of time now that a student of ours actually is part of and he's invited this up so we're going to go and see if we can't help them for a little bit and then yeah i don't know what all else is going to be planned uh for this upcoming summer so uh exciting times for sure so today and for any of you that have never been on one of these uh these are kingdom mandate calls these are calls that we do um periodically i we try to do them about once a month and um they're basically calls for me to be able
To uh dig back into what i have done for ever it feels like uh ministry work and apply that to um our lives and specifically to business um not a whole lot of other not that we found anyway not a whole lot of other groups or workshops or uh types of of webinars out there that do kind of what we do within these calls and so i hope you get something out of it today we're going to dig into uh 2 Kings 6 uh i would be curious like drop in chat like where are you from because i know we've got a pretty wide variety of people on uh today so just drop in the chat box like where are you from uh so we can kind of see who all's here looks like we've got 20 plus on the call i know we've got
Some on here that i've seen that are familiar faces to me and we've got others that i don't know who you are and that's great uh we love having people that um that are new see here if i can remove that oh looks like we got people from all over the place nice california texas tennessee florida kentucky illinois wisconsin hey valerie hadn't seen you in a while virginia arkansas hey guys i tell you march madness 5:005 minutesman i stayed up late last night tech let me down broke my heart last night that's horrible horrible experience no they did really well uh california colorado san francisco nice so here's the deal uh we're going to look at a story that some of you may or may not have heard uh today and then we're gonna dig in a little bit about um kind of some of
The things that we're gonna draw out of the story personally and then also draw some biblical principles um out of that story too to be able to uh see if we can't apply those to our business and specifically any of you that are looking to do kind of like what i do if you're looking at being an entrepreneur if you are in one of my programs and you're starting your business or you've owned your business for a while now or if you are just looking at this as going hey i'm kind of curious uh bottom line is is is we can create the lifestyle we want um the fact that we're not taught that or taught the things that really have become invaluable to me the last few years as far as just living life um and and working as an entrepreneur it's it's crazy
To back florida i don't know if y'all saw this but florida just uh passed i think he's trying to pass a lot where if you're graduate high school you've got to actually go through and learn some actual skills amazing right you're going to actually learn about finances uh which is what you got to deal with the rest of your life and so it's kind of weird to me that we live in a world where we aren't taught any of the things that we actually really truly need uh out of school but but it is what it is right and so we get a chance uh to do that now and and i i asked a question inside of our group not too long ago about uh money like how did you learn about money uh how did you learn about finances and guys man i'm
I'm 47. i i still almost on a monthly basis at least sometimes on a weekly basis i learned something that i did not know about finances taxes business um because i'm constantly trying to figure out how to how to use the time that i we all have the same amount of time right so it's not a matter of having more time uh it's not a matter of those it's a matter of bringing more value to the time that we have um and so to me i want to make sure that i'm bringing the most value to the time that i have and then using that time to be able to go bless serve and give to others all right i am going to share my screen here and we are going to jump into this all right so this is um if you guys have
Not went back and studied Elisha man there's so many great stories there's so much content there's so much meat um especially if you're doing any kind of bible study or 8:008 minutesanything like that i used uh not this particular story that we're gonna talk about today or stories uh but i used Elisha uh two summers ago i had filled in at a church for about a month and a half and we every sunday morning with the adult class we'd go through uh some of the stories of Elisha and there's so many great stories uh that you can pull so much practical application from and so we're gonna we're kind of gonna blow through some of this we'll read some talk some read some talk some uh and then we'll uh kind of end this thing out with some thoughts and uh let any of you
Add anything that you have um but we'll start in in uh we'll just start in chapter six verse one here we're in 2 Kings uh now the sons of the prophet said to Elisha see the place where we dwell under your charges too small for us there's already an issue right there's already a problem uh let us go to the jordan and each of us get their own log or get go uh get there a log and let us make a place for us to dwell there and he answered go right so right off the bat uh Elisha's um ministry had spread he's got these uh follower these students right these mentees these prophets that are following him learning from him and apparently it's spread so much and so many have come to him that they don't have enough room guys how many of you
Would love to have that in your church right um you would love to have that where you are ministering or your business or whatever right that we have this problem we got too many people that are too excited about what's going on and they want to be a part of this right um and so his his uh his sons are the prophets right these guys come to him and say hey we need a bigger place let us go and and build it he's like great go right and then they asked him the next verse hey then one of them said be uh be pleased to go with your servants and he answered i'll go so he went with them uh so he went with them and when they came to the jordan they cut down trees but as uh as as one was felling a
Log his axe head fell into the water he cried out alas my master it was borrowed and then the man of God said where did it fall when he showed him the place he cut off a stick and threw it in there and made the iron float and he said take it up so he reached out his hand and took it all right so uh we've got an issue um right here's the thing uh life we're gonna have problems right but we should also look for provisions um and so as we are dealing with life right uh these guys were out there chopping down logs because they needed to build a bigger place so they could house more people and this guy's ax head flies off and it goes into the water and what does any normal person do they throw a stick in the
Water to make uh a iron accent float right because that's what you would do yeah any of you on the call would go yeah let's just throw a stick in the water and we're gonna make this thing float right no but yeah that's Elisha 11:0011 minutesright he's he's always doing crazy things so he he throws this in here why was this a big deal uh even though iron was common um somewhat or no i shouldn't say even though iron was available during this time it wasn't common and because it wasn't common it was expensive and this guy had borrowed it right and these guys are out here running around with Elisha so i'm sure that you know probably stressed them out didn't probably have any funds to replace it couldn't go to lowe's right and just buy something and so um he really needed to
To get that that iron accent back and so um so Elisha comes along and throws a stick in the water what's interesting is Elisha doesn't just go pick it up right um he he through all of this you're gonna see him be the mentor right so he says you know take it up he tells the guy hey go get it right so he has the guy go get it and be a part of the experience all of us should always be uh teaching training up discipline right that's something that i think we're told to do right we're supposed to be discipling and teaching and training and mentoring others uh and bringing them alongside us we get to do that inside of our training groups all the time which is blast um and so that's that's just a part of what Elisha did which he just
Is replicating from what happened between Elijah and Elisha right which we won't go back into that story all right let's keep going once the king once won the king of Syria's warring against Israel he took council with the service saying that such and such a place shall be my king but the man of God sent a word to the king of Israel beware that you do not pass this place for the Syrians are going down there and the king of Israel sent to the place about which the man of God told him thus he used uh to warn him so that he saved himself there more than once or twice the mind of the king of Syria was greatly troubled because of this thing he called his servants and said to them will you not show me who of us is for the king of
Israel right he thought he had a mole right one of the servants says none my lord uh o king but Elisha the prophet who is in Israel tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom and he said go and see where he is that i may send and seize him it was i told him behold he is in dauphin uh so he sent their horses and chariots and a great army and they came by night and surrounded the city all right so right off the bat we see that Syria and Israel are in a war time again right um this was going off and on right this has been going off and on right and so um basically the king's like hey i'm gonna gigasyria he's like i'm gonna get him right i'm gonna get him so he would tell
His army hey let's go camp here and then somehow the king of Israel would always go somewhere else right they would always go somewhere that the king of Syria's army wasn't and that way they wouldn't get caught they wouldn't get killed right war wouldn't like they wouldn't have to battle right and the king's like beside himself trying to figure out what is going on right so he brings his people in he says somebody's a mole they're like no no no the prophet Elisha is passing this information on he knows right he knows what words have been spoken in your bedroom right the most private intimate place um that he could possibly share right and so let's just let's kind of set on that for just a second i hope this isn't real loud nails ears my wife is washing dishes and trying to do some
Stuff here um so i want to i want to talk to you really quickly about how uh nothing's hidden right nothing's in from God we talk about this right um as christians we talk about the fact that that nothing's hidden God knows everything right but but isn't it weird that normally we're more terrified of other people knowing our secrets than the God of the universe uh because if we're really terrified of the God of the universe knowing our secrets right like y'all know where this is going i don't have to finish that like it's just the way it works right but we're terrified of what other people um might find out right about us uh about who we are about our weaknesses um we're all broken right i mean that's just a just a part of the world we live in a broken world we're
All broken we all fall short we we all have those things in our lives that we're not proud of right and yet we're more terrified of somebody else finding that out than we are of God already knowing it he already knows what's going on anyway right and so Elisha is God's inside man and he's able to warn the army right he's able to warn the army and so what does the king of Syria do king Syria is like i'm going to put a hit out on this guy if we go kill Elisha then they won't know and we can go trap the king of Israel right and so basically you've got um the king of Syria going okay well let's just go get him tell me where he is and so they they literally are they're trying to say if we go get this one
Earthly thing right this one if we go do this one thing we go we go get Elisha we'll take care of the problem right and so they he sends his army and they go out to this little little town of Dothan and uh surround it right and so that that's kind of you know we don't really talk about this much and especially with war and everything that's going on right now um but it would basically be like going into it like Dothan or Dothan was just a small little community it's not like they had walls it's not like like this this is not somewhere that they're gonna be really protected right and all of a sudden you've got uh Elisha and his mentee is servant his right-hand guy right uh out here surrounded by chariots surrounded by this army um and and that's kind of
Where we come into the story really what i want to kind of talk about today uh so verse um let's see where we at let me scroll down here you'll notice they came by night right came by night surrounded the city when the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out behold an army with horses and chariots was all around the city and the servant said alas my master what shall we do like he was freaked out right how many of you have found yourselves in a situation where it's hopeless right um we we've been there we've been there where things just didn't seem like they were going to work out we've been there financially we've been there health issues we've been there jobs and careers like where we were surrounded and uh things did not look good we've
Been in situations that especially at churches where we've had other ministers that had things that were going on that we didn't even know at the time um that caused a lot of issues inside the church and we weren't even aware but we were we were catching the flag from it right we were we were um we were literally catching fire from some of these other things that were going on in the church that we didn't even realize what was causing it but there was sin going on and there was other things going on that was creating these other issues right some of y'all may feel that way now you may feel trapped stuck or whatever and so the servant's like what what are we gonna do right he's turning into Elisha going man there's there's an army out here with our like horses and chariots
And we're surrounded and what are we going to do right what are we going to do and and like of all the things Elijah could say he says what do not be afraid for those that are with us are more than those who are with them the servant couldn't see at this point right but so many times what do we do we we end up fighting what we can see right we end up fighting the battle that we think is right in front of us right we we only see what we what we see at the time and all the servant all his all that he saw at this point was this army he had no idea so if you were stuck in this situation what would you want right i'm sure that he's probably sitting there going oh thanks Elisha that's great you and
Me we're gonna take this army on right uh he he's probably sitting there scared out of his mind which is the way i would have been right scared of his mind because he's thinking this is not what i'm planning right i i didn't plan on coming here and then getting surrounded by an army and here Elisha's going well don't be afraid man there's more with us than there are of them right but but he can't see at this point he doesn't realize really what's going on right so Elisha prayed verse 17 Elisha prayed said oh lord please open his eyes that he may see so the lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elijah right what does fire represent so many times in the old testament right
Um God right it represents this power this authority right and so he prayed opened the eyes of the servant and the servant literally saw these chariots these horses of fire surrounding this other army and so many times right we're we're fighting a battle against what's what's the verse say right we're fighting a battle against flesh and blood when really that's not what we're fighting at all right and so many of the battles that we wage in our lives the things that we struggle with the things that we're for fighting for especially in the chaotic crazy world that we're in right now um so many of the things that we're fighting against and fighting for uh we're fighting against um flesh and blood and so you know i would imagine at this point before before the servant's eyes were open he probably thought Elisha was a
Little insane right um and was the threat real because in in the servant's mind all he saw was this army surrounding him it was a threat real absolutely the threat was real but but what he didn't really realize was that there was something else that was going on right and sometimes we're scared of things right we're afraid of things that um that seems real but it's really not it's really not harmful and i'll give you an example back when we were working in denton our daughter was at the church one day and they were up there doing youth work or something i don't know and the somebody got a phone call my wife worked at the church she was doing the books for them at the time somebody got a phone call and cps was going to be coming to one of the members house
That had a had some kids and they were afraid that when they got to the house that the condition of the house would cause them to have their kids taken away and um they weren't very the parents weren't very uh mobile and weren't able to really do what they need to do so our my daughter and the preacher there and some other kids and some other adults all loaded up and they went over the house to clean and so they were out and cleaning and they were in the garage i think and they move something and this big rat runs out and the preacher like screams like a little girl and starts running around and my daughter's over there going not a big deal and she goes and just takes care of it and she gets a broom and literally whacks the the rat and
Ends up taking it right the threat seemed real but it really wasn't right and so many times in our lives we are in these these uh states where what we feel is what not always what's real right what we feel is not always what's real and so we feel like there's no hope right we feel like there's no way out we feel like there's no end to whatever it is that we're dealing with right now right we feel like the army surrounded us right and we don't have anybody to fight for us right but but a lot of times what we feel is not real and the servant had to have his eyes opened and what did he need the servant really needed a new perspective and so what did he do he looked to his mentor and said what are we gonna do right
Some of you don't have mentors in your life um some of you may be especially for any of you that are in ministry right now man that is one of the hardest positions to be in because there's not very many ministers to ministers out there and it can be an island i've been there and you don't feel like you can talk to anybody share with anybody you definitely don't want to share your struggles right you don't want to share the demons that you're having to fight to right and uh inside our group we this is what's so cool about what's happened guys look i started all of this online junk to be able to go do ministry what's really cool is ministry has found me inside of our group um we have a small group of men that won a little competition that we were
Doing a while back and i met with them for about a week we did this week-long thing 25:0025 minutesand out of that has spurred one of those men in that group has been called to minister to ministers that's what he feels like that's like one of his main ministries that he does on top of other things that he's doing and so they meet regularly now and sometimes i'll get to hop in with them and meet with them but they meet and get poured into and sometimes we need a mentor we need somebody that we can turn to and be real with i don't know if y'all have that person or persons in your life um but we need those types of people in our life right we need somebody that we can turn to and say hey let's let's talk some real talk i had
A group of guys back when i was a youth minister in westgate and abilene and we would meet every wednesday night and we would sit and talk for hours and um everybody would share real stuff like there were guys in there dealing with all kinds of things from pornography to one of the guys was a college professor and he had a young lady that was crushing on him and he was trying to figure out how to deal with that and others were having issues with marital issues and prones you know close to divorce and others were like others had issues with their kids and things that were going on right like all of them were dealing with some stuff and it was really neat to see how the group was able to to kind of pray over each other and help each other and support
Each other right uh and so we we need those mentors in our lives all right so let's keep going uh where are we at here whoops i went a little bit too far all right so uh he sees that he sees that the servant sees the mountain with full horses and chariots and fire um a fire all around him and Elisha right God's surrounding right and when the Syrians came down against him Elisha prayed to the lord and said please strike this people with blindness so i struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha and Elisha said to them this is not the way and this is not the city follow me and i will bring you to the man whom you seek and he led them to Samaria all right first of all like when i first read this i was
Thinking well that's weird how if you struck a whole group of people with chariots and horses and all that truly blind right how are they gonna travel like we're talking this was a three-hour 12-mile ride or hike from where they were at over to Samaria right so um you know really what he did is he he he struck him with blindness almost in the sense of what the servant had right where he couldn't see he could he didn't realize who he didn't realize the guy he was lit they were looking for was really the guy that was leading them right they didn't realize what was actually happening at the time cool part right is i we've got a God that can can do what's needed at the moment or at the time right and so he tells them hey this is not the way this
Is not where this guy's at right but i'm going to take you to him right i'm going to take you to Samaria and and i'm going to i'm going to take you to him so as soon as they entered Samaria Elisha said oh lord open the eyes of these men that they may see so the lord opened their eyes and they saw and behold they were in the midst of Samaria as soon as the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha my father shall i strike them down shall i strike them down he answered you shall not strike them down would you strike down those whom you have taken captive with your sword with your bow set bread and water before them that they may eat and drink and go to their master so he prepared for them a great feast and when
They had eaten and drunk he sent them away and they went to their master the Syrians did not come again on raids into the land of Israel all because of what that happened right and so we see this crazy thing right we see the servant is basically blind and then his eyes are open to what's really going on the spiritual battle that's happening right in front of him the fact that he has the power the might of God literally surrounding this other army he has nothing to worry about and then we have on the opposite side of that we have Elisha blinding these um this army bringing them into Samaria where the king of Israel and the army is right bringing them right into the midst of the enemy the king of Israel sitting there going should i kill you should i just kill them
All right should we just take them out and and Elisha's like no no we're going to feed them we're going to feed them and we're going to love on them and we're going to bless them and then we're going to send them on their way and because of what he did right because he did what he did they literally were they really they stopped the raids they stopped what was going on right and so as you're kind of thinking about this right we read in scripture all the time about how um in in so many man there's so many things that we can talk about references here right about people that were blind uh that saw right the guy at the cross right surely surely this is the son of God after he had seen everything that he saw right so many times through scripture
We see this now what's crazy is is only a couple of times in all of scripture do we have something like what happened with Elisha and the servant where his eyes had been opened where he could actually see the army of God and he could see the fire right he could see the chariots and the horses a fire and he could see what was actually happening in front of him we don't see that very often right but at the same time if you think about it like un like when we're unbelievers right scripture talks about right how we don't really understand everything until the spirit comes involved right there are things about all of this where we have these blind spots in our lives um there's only one other time that Dothan is actually mentioned in scripture and i'm not going to tell you what
It is you guys can go look for yourself it's a very interesting story another old testament story um but i want you to think about the fact that um they they literally brought them in they were surrounded right and instead of killing them he fed him um and he blessed them uh and so look we all have this stuff in our lives right like if you've if you've actually searched me online there are people lying about me what i've done in the past like people can say anything they want to online i've learned that look if you want to learn about how cruel people are start running ads of yourself online and spreading your stuff seriously like i don't care what you try to run ads for i don't care if you're just trying to be helpful and you run a homeless ministry in your
Backyard you're going to get people that are going to just trash you and lie about you and talk about you like it's just the way it works like there are sites literally competitive like these are all 32:0032 minutescompetitors by the way they're competitors out there that have built sites about me that are just flat out light and and they just have planted little seeds of doubt because they want to and because they can and the reason they're doing it is to make money because they want you to buy their product that's only reason but they can do it right we all have these things in life where um like can i just be really brutally honest for a minute like there are times when i want to do the same thing the king resort said let's just go just let's just go take him out
Right that's how sometimes we feel about people that are attacking us or people that are hurting us right and yet Elisha goes no no no no let's just let's just feed him and and not only do he feed him but did you did you catch what he said he he literally said a great feast they prepared a great feast for them and they set and they ate together look um i'll give you the exact the people that i'm talking about that have built these sites and are saying a bunch of garbage alignments none of it's true but they can say what they want that's the bad part about online you can like and people believe it that's what's crazy um you can say anything you want online right any of those people that showed up today at my house guess what i do like if
Any of y'all that some of y'all met me and you know me like i would just i would do exactly what they did we'd sit down and we'd have a meal and we would talk about life that's what we do like um that's just who i am and that's who i will always be and there are people that have told me hey you need to go chase these guys and go after them and rebut all that junk and i'm like nah God's got it i don't have to fight against that garbage like God's going to bring the people that need to be in our program in our program this is the way it works and and the people that believe that 34:0034 minutesstuff and buy into that stuff probably don't need to be in our program they're probably not people that i would probably want
In there anyway um and so i i we're looking for servant-minded people right people that are wanting to to give and do all that and you look through scripture guys there's all of these things that happen and yet if if we could really see right if we could really open our eyes and see what would we see the army of God was already there it wasn't that the army of God wasn't there and then all of a sudden it miraculously it like appeared right no the army of God was already there the servant just couldn't see it Elisha already saw it i mean how cool would it be to go around and be able to see like i don't know maybe it wouldn't be maybe that'd be frightening but how cool would that be to be able to like walk outside and Elijah be surrounded
By this this army and then go ah no big deal he's sitting over here sipping his latte right it would do y'all realize what this would like this would be like some little small city and tanks and blackhawks are staring at you that's what it would feel like right there's some people in our world dealing with that kind of stuff right now luckily in america i mean for from the time i've been alive right we don't know what's gonna happen in the future but until now i never had deal with anything even remotely close to that nobody's ever been out after me i've almost done some stupid things myself almost got myself in trouble a few times but nobody's ever came after me right and so i i think as you look at this like what are you not seeing that's already there right what
Are you what are you blinded to in your life right now what are the blind spots right now that you can't see where is the power of God the authority of God where is the army of God surrounding your enemies right now that you don't even see it right how cool is that to know right that that God wants the best for his children that he wants the best for his children that he wants to bless us in ways like i think about how much i love my daughter and i'll do anything for and and that's just a that's just a tiny comparison to what God's love is for you and me right and what he wants for us eight years ago i would have thought now there's no way to do this there's no way to do what we do today where we get
To go travel and serve and give and guys we've been able to bless some really cool places and people and um we we do this thing where my dad uh for years when especially when we were broke he even did this for the grandkids and stuff people would come to see him like we'd come into town to see my dad and he'd slip us a hundred dollar bill now my mom never knew because mom wouldn't know she'd probably been mad at him but dad always did this he'd always slip these hundred dollar bills to us and it would pay for gas and help with you know whatever else and sometimes it was like how we got home sometimes it literally was how we paid for the trip but that's what dad always did for us and a little while back michelle said why don't we
Just start doing that why don't we just start blessing people with 100 bills just you know when God calls us to do it like when so we carry 100 bills with us just to give away and it's the coolest experience ever when you're like the other day we were sitting in a restaurant we went to i don't know if i've ever eaten it we're in branson there's tons of places to eat and so we were down at paula dean's and we were eating we wanted to try it we never eaten there it was okay it wasn't anything the the what is it ooey gooey butter cake oh my goodness that stuff's addictive i i couldn't have that stuff anywhere near me but um we had this young lady that was waiting on us and we're sitting there talking with her and um she had done
An okay job wouldn't have been a great waitress but she did an okay job for us and at the end of the year she's super friendly you know and at the end of the the um i guess she got kind of to her lunch hour so she kind of disappeared for a little bit somebody else waited excuse me waited on us and then she came back and uh so we're sitting there talking to her and uh we we were telling her that we were in branson because we're here for health issues and then we're seeing a doctor here but we're looking for places to serve and we were um trying to do some things for the college of the ozarks and blah blah she mentioned something about that in it and then that somehow it came out that we had done ministry work and she
Was like oh like that you could see the flash in her eyes and she said well i'm i'm at camp canacook here and some of y'all probably know the camp like it's huge um she's here on a gap year doing their study program to teach about discipleship and she's not sure where she's heading after this she may go back to vegas or whatever and so we had this big a long conversation and michelle looked at me she goes yeah this is the one and so she like the girl left went off to do whatever and michelle pulls out 100 bill hands it to me and she said um a little girl came back and i think we had paid or something i don't even know and and we handed her the hundred dollar bill and you would have thought we'd hand her through the world
Little girl just almost start bawling right because that was a ton of money for her right now she's trying to figure out how to pay for everything she's doing and all the stuff that she's doing and it's just ways for us to bless people and i don't say that to brag or any of that i say that to say it's an amazing feeling when you create the life that you want you have abundance because there's abundance everywhere you have abundance to be able to just go bless people and i never felt that before not with finances we have done it with our time we've done it with our gifts that God's given us like we had man my wife and i love working with kids and families and my wife has got a gift to work it like she'll pick the hardest kid out of
The whole place and that's the one she seems to be attracted to yeah she's telling me she doesn't pick them but that's what happens like she gets like it's like radar man it's like she picks the hardest kid boom she goes to that kid and that's who she goes and like i don't know why and but that's who she goes and that's who she's that's the way God made her and it's cool to watch her like get through those walls and break down that stuff to where she starts to to see that and guys how many blind spots do we have in our lives we're not seeing ways for us to be able to go and do these things right to be able to go give and serve and do i mentioned somebody the other day about um we're doing a blessed to be a
Blessing thing inside of our group we've been where we just did it we're probably going to do another one soon where i just asked to invite everybody go find a ministry or non-profit to go bless uh teach you know maybe use your skill set go teach them go do whatever right um because the skill set that we have allows you to fundraise and allows you to to get more eyeballs on whatever the ministry is to be able to help bring more people in more donors more people to volunteer more people to maybe need the services right whatever it may be um and so uh it was pretty cool we were talking about all these different things that were happening in this guy it said i mentioned to this guy hey we need to one of the things that i would encourage you to do he's
Administrative church i said one of the things i encourage you to do is to do a business workshop at church and to teach some of the stuff that you're learning inside the program and he's like yeah man i need to go talk to i know a guy that go talk to and we could talk about it and i was like i said you just need to go do it and he was like yeah i do don't i because so many times we like we just want to go talk about it or we want to go plan it or we want to go discuss it but in reality we just need to go do it um how many times has that army been there and you just haven't seen it right um we used to talk about all the time on our campus at the children's
Home i used to tell my staff we want to ooze God everywhere like it those kids as they're watching you live your life because those kids they're blinded to love and care and they're blinded to God they're blinded to all those things when they come in because they've been abused and hurt someone had been trafficked someone had been homeless and i was like i want you to ooze God everywhere i i want those kids to there should not be a time of the day that they don't know that you love them and that God loves them and so it was really cool to watch as these kids whether it was play time or study time or school or an event that we were doing or whatever it was that we were doing that these kids didn't get to see these house parents living out their
Christian walk and that was the good and the bad too right because they needed to be real with them they need to be real when things weren't good and so what blind spots do you have in your life right now because i can tell you one huge blind spot you probably have and that's the same blind spot i had is i'd come out of ministry for for 17 years we were broke we had to borrow money to move we had to borrow money to start a business like we had to start completely over at 40. 40 years old and i'm asking my dad can i borrow money so i can move my family guys that is a you talking about a hit to your pride right but i didn't know what else to do i just had to do what i had to do right
And so dad was of course my dad's love language was always helping that's just that's just who he was he's like yeah no problem like money was in our account the next day and we're packed up and we're moving to denton texas and starting over and i'll tell you a blind spot that i i'm almost guarantee i've taught thousands of students now online and almost all of them have this blind spot about abundance but there's truly an abundance out there there's no lack of money there's no lack of resources there just isn't you may think there is but there's really not like um i just post i post in our group almost every week on fridays i post hey anybody close any deals this week and one guy said yeah just close the 2800 deal plus a percentage another guy was like close to 3
500 worth of websites another guy like guys i was talking to one of our guy i don't think he's on the call today he might be i was talking to one of our students yesterday that i've known for years and years and years way back before we ever did any of this stuff we knew each other through ministry work and um his preacher didn't even realize he was doing this he's a youth minister full-time and he's kind of kept it separate he wanted to keep it all separate and he didn't really want to make it a big deal at the church or anything he wanted to do it on his own outside of that um where he could just kind of have it as you know just something as just his over here without having to bother any of the church folk or do any
Of that and as the preacher you know were talking and he said uh he said so how long you been doing this he said well i've been doing it since february last year and he goes seriously i didn't even know you were doing it he goes yeah he said manage my time really good it doesn't you know conflict at all and i don't bring it into the church or any of that stuff and he goes so if you made like you know have you maybe made 10 15 of your your salary now like are you getting you know some of that some of that money coming in he goes i've doubled my salary since i started this and he said i'll probably triple it or quadruple it soon if the pre-trials fell over and it's because there was an abundance it it's not a lack
Of guys it's just finding the right vehicle learning it enough where you know what you're doing and then going and putting it to work that's all it is and that abundance will allow you to create the life you want and that's a blind spot that i had for years and years and years i always thought well i got to go to eight to five job i can only do ministry if i work there because i'm not gonna have enough money to be able to go do it otherwise um like that's so not true at all it's just not we've had months in our business where we've done a hundred thousand dollars of profit not gross profit like money that we put into our bank account like i never even felt that like i never made 100 100 000 in a year much less than a
Month right and so um i want to make sure today that you look at those blind spots in your life right that you're paying attention to where God's working that you're praying for God to open your eyes to where he's working and what he's doing that you're praying for those people that are the the right the king of siri the army that's coming and surrounding you and that hopefully you're blessing them you know what's crazy uh back when we started digital storefronts um these other guys that are building these sites and doing all this mess uh they were really attacking me online like attacking me attacking my family and um there were people some of my network that were like man we we need to take care of this and i'm like no let's just pray for him man there's if if they're that mad
And that angry about the fact that i just went off to go help ministers and servants and other people that want to do this online then something's wrong and i can't imagine the damage that's doing to their household and their little kids and the marriage and the family let's just pray for them and guys we we need to do that right we need to we need to bless them and we need to pray for them and um we need to make sure that we're doing what we can do to make sure that we're living a life of integrity and living right right all right let's let's stop there because i know there's a ton of you that have made comments here yeah he's teaching me patience right now yeah other thoughts other people want to jump in what if anything that stuck out to you
Today from what we've what we've just looked at anything stuck out to you that didn't stick out and something that i had mentioned yeah tyson says God's always in a position to care for his people that goes away beyond invisible that's right Elijah did two cool things he gets his servant's eyes on God's provision for him absolutely instructs the israelites to compete with the natural response to fulfill uh the yeah cover no blessing absolutely then to see his reality repeat in Ephesians 1. yeah guys look like Elijah's life was just a shadow right of Jesus like it's just it's a shadow of what's to come right eliza did all of these really cool um miracles and all this crazy stuff right guys man if you haven't studied it great study compare the two lives prepare what Elijah did to what Jesus did very cool study
Very very cool study and we didn't really talk about this but like when when you do what God has gifted you to do what do you think's gonna happen right what do you think's gonna happen because when Elisha did what God gifted him to do what happened he had armies coming after him like let's talk about the reality of what it is to follow Christ right if we're truly gonna do what we're called to do we're gonna run into the enemy he would rather you just be busy he'd rather you be distracted he'd rather you be doing whatever it is that you're not really supposed to be doing right but when we're called to do what we're given the gifts we're given to do just like Elisha was look at any of the prophets guys beat up left in the ditch right like look at
The apostles i mean come on you look anywhere in scripture when somebody did what they were called to do like it's it's gonna happen you're gonna have people um you're gonna have things attacking you it's just it's a part of it right uh mark said what struck me is how many times uh do we not pray with belief for God to show us the arguments there for us yeah absolutely man yeah and we don't you know it's not even something we really think about right it's not even something that we really even go man God show me show me where show me where you're surrounding whatever this is that i'm struggling with right now the health issues the financial issues the family issues the kid issues right um man i yeah absolutely yeah if satan can tempt you to sin he will waste your time
Absolutely we would rather believe that there are not angel armies on our behalf than believe that there are and that goes back to this idea of um right at the very beginning right we talked about the this whole idea that that man we just have these blind spots and and the fact that the fact that Elisha knew what was the fact that he knew what was being said in the bedroom that should scare the snot out of us right in in a good way that should tell us like we serve that's the God we serve right that he's all powerful all-knowing right that he's got her back now here's the deal uh and let's let's talk about this real quick um at the very beginning of that story they had a problem right Elisha had started his ministry he had some guys coming and then
Boom they didn't have enough room um you know we talk about all the time about goal setting and all that stuff inside of our our um does if you guys are like health nuts right you're setting goals of you know what you want to weigh or what you you know your body fat percentage or i don't know whatever right we set goals all the time guys how many times like you're let's say you're three years into your last five year plan that you created how many times does it ever go the way that you think it's gonna go let me come on it just doesn't it's not life right it's not life and so we we do need to plan and we need to have goals but but we also need to understand that there are bigger things at work here right and that when
We start something uh we may struggle for a while the guy that i was talking about earlier the youth minister that's doubled his salary now and doing all that on the side he he's about to hit summer time and for any of you guys are doing youth ministry i'm praying for you like summertime is like like it's you're away from your family for seven eight weeks you're out on the road doing mission trips and camps and retreats and service projects and you're with kids at the church and you're with families doing family activities and right like he knows that over the summer he's going to have to ratchet back his time and his business the cool part about it is the business doesn't stop that's the cool part about it he can just keep like the business is just going to keep chugging all summer
Long why he's off doing his ministry work which is why i got into this in the first place right and so um when he started he started in february but he'll tell you like if you sit down with him he'll tell you i went through the course and all that but he said it didn't really start until august or september because he's kind of started learning and he kind of got into a little bit and then summer hit and then he was out doing ministry work all summer and then he got back from that got a little bit of a rest and then he hit it hard and then i can tell you there were weeks and weeks where he would write because we're like say we're friends we've known each other for years he'd write me and go dude i don't know if i
Can do this i don't know if i'm ever gonna make any money and get my money back i'm like yeah you will just stick with it right sometimes you need to turn to a mentor just like the servant did he couldn't see what he couldn't see i knew that if he just kept working i tell our students this all time if you'll just keep after it i knew what they couldn't see is that it will turn and when it does turn you better be ready you better be holding on and when it turned we met one time he won this 30 minute thing that we did a competition for we met one time met for 30 minutes that next week he closed four deals three or four deals and and from then he's been fighting to try to keep up and i told him like
I told him like it's just a matter of you going at this long and hard enough that you are committed to it and persistent with it and then it'll grow right but that wasn't his plan his game plan was when he started was man i'm going to blow this thing up so that we can get to here and do this and go this right that's not how it worked like he spent weeks and weeks and weeks busting his home talking to people and prospecting and trying to close deals and building sites and doing stuff and and it wasn't paying off and then all of a sudden bam bam bam bam bam bam bam like it just took off i knew that because i'd already been there and i've seen it happen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times but he didn't know that
He didn't know what he didn't know right you guys need to make sure that you have mentors in your life like when i want to go i i've been trying to get back in shape i'd love to play basketball again man i love playing basketball as a kid and uh i quit playing when we were at children's home because i blew me out and i haven't really been able to play much since i every once a while i'll go shoot around i'd love to get back there if i'm gonna get back to doing that i'm probably gonna have to hire a coach right so i hired a coach he worked with me for a long time last year guys i was doing great until i threw my back out trying to lift my dad off the floor a couple times over a weekend and then
I just kind of threw everything out of whack right life's gonna happen that wasn't the plan that wasn't the plan for Elisha and his followers to have to go build a new place to house everybody right good problem to have but it wasn't planned so when your plan doesn't always work out that's okay like it's probably not going to and we got to be okay with that right we got to be okay with that um okay uh let me see here i know there was some other stuff here uh allison's saying super scary time when we walked away and allison i she and i actually ate um a meal together we actually sat down and it broke bread together at the last event we had she was at our table uh walked away from a comfortable income she worked forever as a um uh as
A i am totally blank right now i can see it park ranger um and and walked away from that career because she knew that there had to be something more uh she's still working to be get back on her feet truly humble yeah i've been there i've done it uh often i don't know what to pray for or what to ask for that will help my situation blindness is all uh he knew to ask never did he think of what he was really mean yeah yeah God does yeah yeah and then that crazy like like Elijah knew exactly what to pray for for the sermon but servant didn't know what to pray for sir didn't even realize it was there but it was there the whole time right it was there the whole time uh God never failed to provide through 40 years of ministry
Stress about retirement the whole time finally made it well i said yeah yeah walt and his wife are involved guys and he's he's retired man he's trying to get more income coming in and for them to be able to go do more ministry love it love it love it love it david never really knew goliath street because he was too focused on gods absolutely yeah proud time great meal love it yeah guys look i mean bottom line is is we all have blind spots uh before we started in our rv lifestyle uh my wife and i thought let's go rid an rv because uh we've never been out and done this kind of thing and so we we went through um i don't know whatever that rv rental service thing is and we rented this 30-something foot motorhome thinking man this is going to be
Fun and i was speaking in vegas at a big marketing event in front of i don't know 300 plus marketers and so we um we hopped in the rv i never drove anything by this by the way we hopped in the rv took off i drove it back home i was scared to death the whole time right got it back home about two hours away from where we picked it up and then we took off to head to vegas on the way to vegas we stopped off uh in arizona at flagstaff and where we camped and where we had to park :031 hour, 3 secondswas not uh level and i couldn't get the level i didn't know what i was doing i couldn't get the the coach leveled :101 hour, 10 secondsand so um we needed to pull out of the spot and move and
So i'm fo like there's a truck right here to my right and there's a trailer :191 hour, 19 secondsright across from us and it's a little bitty skinny road and i'm focused on not hitting the trailer my wife's trying to help me not :261 hour, 26 secondshit the truck what we had forgot is the tree that was back here and when you turn an rv what does it do :351 hour, 35 secondsit swings and so the butt of that rv swung around and all of a sudden i feel this bam :441 hour, 44 secondsand i hear in the rv like i slam on the brakes and i'm thinking what in the world did i just hit in a borrowed rv that i rented :541 hour, 54 secondsuh and we'd only been in it for like two or three days uh it was not a fun
Experience and so anyway i had scratched the whole back end of this thing i've been having to pay to get it fixed but it like it was a blind spot right i thought i had had everything seen the tree is always there the tree didn't just like all of a sudden poof there's a tree right the tree was always there i just didn't see what i didn't know right was there and sometimes what we feel isn't really what's real and that's where i think a lot of times we get in life we feel the stress we feel the pressure we feel all of those things um when in reality we have a God that's bigger than those things we have a God that's surrounding those armies we have a God that's for us because there's more that's for us right than or against us and
So that's that's what i wanted to focus on today i hope that this has helped you i hope you got something out of today this is fun for me this is something i don't get to do a whole lot anymore um just because of time doing other things got too many other irons in the fire um but would love to have any of you guys like if you if you want to uh get on these calls make sure and stay inside the the groups that we're in i'll have another i'll do probably one of these a month kind of what we've got planned right now and then uh probably be on like the third or fourth friday depending on how the month lays out uh like this on a friday afternoon i know a lot of people can't join so if there are people that
Can't join always remember these are recorded and then they'll be dropped back into the uh the group so i know some of you are looking at some of you are invited by some of our advisors to just come and experience um this crazy bald guy and so hopefully today uh you've experienced who i am this is just what you see is what you get guys like this is just who i am and so um if this is if this is something that resonates with you i can guarantee you would you would love to be a part of our family we'd love to have you as part of our family um to be a part of what we're doing and how we're doing it so i don't want to take too much more of your time i know we're after three already i know you guys
Have things probably to do on a friday um just today uh i pray that you your eyes are opened right that that we can truly see what really is going on that our battle is not against people right that chasing after Elisha the king wouldn't have got what he wanted even if he had killed Elisha he still wouldn't got what he wanted but he thought he would and yet so many times we chase after a thing right or a person or whatever guys this business is just a tool that's all it is it's a tool for me to be able to do ministry work and it allows me and affords me to be able to do stuff like what i'm doing today and so um i i hope that you find whatever it is that you need to be able to move through whatever that
Army or that battle or whatever it is that you're fighting right now and dealing with and some of you you may be seeing the the army of the lord and you're like man i'm all in let's go right let's go whether you're whether it's just life or whether you're wanting to bless people or whether you want to go on the road like us or whatever it may be so i hope you find that today you guys have a blessed friday have a blessed weekend and definitely let us know if there's anything that we can do for you or any way we can help you um but i just wanted to just wanted to help you today maybe hopefully clean up some blind spots y'all have a blessed one and i will see you guys inside the groups