(The following is an abbreviated transcription from a video Linda and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)
So I remember when we were first getting started getting our finances in order. And just thought that once we had our debt paid off, once we had certain amount in savings, once whatever… we had some investments. Like once we had everything together that there’d never be any financial obstacles again.
But it just doesn’t work like that because if you’re following God and he has things that he’s putting in your heart, they’re often bigger than what you have available to or achieve them. And I think that’s the way it should be because we have to trust God, he will provide the provision for the vision. In this article we’re discussing overcoming discouragement when your dreams seem impossible!
I recorded our discussion that you can listen to on our Podcast, or you can opt to watch the video we recorded of our conversation on our Instagram account.
But, if you would rather read the full transcription, you can do so here in this article!
Enjoy.
Being challenged and trusting God
Bob: There’s often this disconnect of where we want to be, what the vision is and what the current circumstances are within often presents a financial challenge.
Linda: Yeah. And what this has done for us, which I think is really good and challenging at the same time is it puts us in a position to be trusting God for things.
Bob: We have some really big dreams in our heart and some really big things that God has put in our heart that we’ll share some details of at some point. And It just puts us in a position where it’s like, we have to have God. There’s no other way that some of these dreams can come to pass without God coming through on it. And there’s certain days, like yesterday, where I get kind of discouraged because the dream feels so far away and feels it feels impossible. And to be honest, it is in the natural. Without God, it is impossible.
Encouragement from King David’s life
Linda: Look at the life of David and he was promised to be king, you know, when he was a shepherd. Which I didn’t realize was such a low position in life to be a shepherd. But he’s promised to be king. And then he goes through years and years and years of not being recognized as anything, even close to that, to the point where people were trying to kill him for years. And he was on the run for years and years when he was anointed to be king, you know?
So the promise was still there, but there was a lot of ups and downs in between when anointing for it came and then when it was actually come to pass.
Looking to the past for encouragement
Bob: Yeah. Well, and one of the things that you said that I think I found to be really encouraging, it’s great to have an encourager in your corner (check out these 7 marriage lessons I’ve learned so far), is just this idea that I’m pretty good when I’m talking to people about investing. I mean, one of the first lessons I’m always telling people about investing because new investors always get freaked out when whatever their investment goes down 10% or something like that.
And assuming you’re doing it our way, what we’re teaching the long-term investing in our 10X course, this is a long-term game and you have to be able to look at the big picture. You can’t look at the ups and downs that are happening every day in the market and stuff like that.
And when you do that, and when you think longterm, you know, I look back at the stock market performance for the last a hundred years. The average of the last hundred years, it’s about nine to 10% return over that time. There’s been a lot of ups and downs over that period, but …
Linda: Big ups, big downs.
Bob: But that’s been a good baseline to go off of for what might happen in the future, because we have such a long history of what’s happened. And as I was kind of struggling, you know, dealing with…
Linda: Ups and downs?
Bob: Yeah. Dealing with some ups and downs yeah, that was one of the things you brought back to my attention.
Don’t miss the forest through the trees
Linda: I brought this up to you because you were seeing some ups and downs. And because Bob is so in the weeds with things, you know what I mean? Like he’s the one that is daily looking at what is going on. It’s easy for him to not be able to see the forest through the trees, whereas I am a little bit more hands-off and so I can take a, you know, 10,000 foot view approach.
What has God done for us in our past?
Linda: One of the things that I come back to is, what has God done for us in our past? The Bible says we overcome by the blood of The Lamb and the word of our testimony. So I always go, okay, what is our testimony?
And this is something I continued to bring up. It’s like remember when we walked through this challenge and God brought us through. And so even though we are seeing a challenge, the challenge is what builds our faith, right?
Don’t forget God’s faithfulness
Linda: This is what I keep going back to is if Bob’s telling everyone to just look at the stock market for the last hundred years, then why are we not looking at our lives for the last 40 years (which is where we are right now)? Watching the faithfulness of God and seeing how he’s brought us through. And then basing our decisions off of what he has already done and the faithfulness that he has already had on our lives.
It is not about these tiny little “oh boy it looks like that might be kind of tight. Or, it looks like we’re not going to be able to do this thing that God’s asking us to do,” you know? Whatever those things may be. Or it just looks like the thing that I want to do I’m not going to be able to do. We go back and we look at his faithfulness. And that’s what we base our decisions off of.
Bob: Yeah, it’s so good. It’s hard to do, when you’re in a tough moment where you see this thing that God is calling you to do, that looks so big and so far out there, and it’s like, how is this ever even going to be possible?
Are you building memorials with remembrance stones?
Linda: We have to go back. And in the Bible, it talks about how people would make memorials, do they have memorial stones? Is that what they call them?
Bob: I think so, remembrance stones.
Linda: And they would build this little memorial. They would build up these stones to remember, this was a place where this happened at this moment and God did this.
He brought us through, or he promised this, or, you know, whatever the thing may be. And this is one of the things that I’m sad, that we’ve lost as generations have gone on is we’ve lost the thing of telling of the faithfulness of God and reminding ourselves of what he has done in the past.
What the Jewish culture does well
That’s what, one of the things I think we love about the Jewish culture, is that they keep reminding themselves of the things that God has done about how he brought Moses through the wilderness. How they cross the Red Sea, you know, all these things that God has done, that we cannot forget.
We cannot forget that the God who did miracles for the people in the past still wants to do them today.
Bob: Yeah.
Linda: It’s easy to forget about that when you’re looking at the numbers and you always tell me I like to see the trends. I can see where things are going. And I think that’s so valuable and that’s something that’s from God. But when it is actually going against your faith in God, that’s where it gets a little dicey and you have to go back to, but what has God done in the past? We need to remember the trend of what God has been doing.
Bob: Yep.
Linda: Sermon for the day.
Our encouragement to you
Bob: Yeah, I think our encouragement to you, if you have that thing that God is calling you to do, that seems too big, that you don’t have the current provision to supply the vision…
Linda: Go back and remember what he has already done for you.
Bob: Mm-hmm
Testimonies serve as great encouragement
Linda: And if you can’t find anything, if it’s not happening for you, go ask some friends for some testimonies. You can actually go look up testimonies I’ve heard on YouTube. Where people are like, I’m believing God for this. I’m trying to pray about this happening in my life. And if you go and type in that subject and like testimonies add testimonies to it. You’ll see all these people who have had similar things happen.
There are so many places you can find these things where God has been faithful. So, yeah, hopefully this has encouraged you today. I know it encouraged us just talking about it, talking it through. And reminding each other what God has done for us in our lives. But if you have something specific that you need prayer for that you need encouragement about, send us a direct message on Instagram.
Bob: Yep.
Linda: Or send us an email or whatever.
Bob: Yeah.
Linda: We’d be happy to stand in faith with you.
Bob: All right. Well, I think that’s all for today. Have a blessed day. We’ll see you next time.
