Foundations First: Discipleship, Purpose, and Divine Alignment

Have you ever wondered which parts of your spiritual journey might be starving while others are well-fed? Join me as I share personal reflections from my journey as a teacher, illustrating the transformative power of discipleship and meaningful relationships on both personal and professional fronts. Through heartfelt anecdotes, I invite you to explore the foundation of spiritual growth and the critical role relationships play in shaping a fulfilling life. We'll explore the value of nurturing the right aspects of your life, akin to feeding the strongest dog in the spiritual metaphor.

Let's examine what it means to stay rooted in our "blessed place." By reflecting on the metaphor of two dogs, I'll guide you through understanding how to focus on the right areas of your spiritual journey. Much like a plant thriving in the right soil, we, too, must remain where we are positioned by a higher calling to achieve true growth and fulfillment. I'll share a personal story about my daughters and the lessons learned about staying within the divine protection and provision, urging you to reassess whether your current path aligns with your spiritual calling.

Finally, we explore the significance of evaluating your alignment with divine guidance. I'll draw parallels to the story of Adam in the Garden of Eden, highlighting the consequences of overstepping boundaries and straying from our intended paths. By sharing my experiences of pursuing well-meant projects that were not aligned with my true purpose, I'll encourage you to introspect on your current commitments, ensuring they don't lead to unnecessary stress and wasted resources. As we wrap up, I'll extend a heartfelt thank you to our loyal listeners and remind you of the inspiration and community that "Call Me, Mr. U" aims to provide.

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Chapters

• 0:07 The Importance of Discipleship
• 8:50 Blessed Place
• 17:01 Evaluate Your Alignment With God
• 23:43 Inspiration From Call Me, Mr U

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Thank you for watching. Welcome back to the All Purpose Pod for an all-purpose life. Wherever you are and however you're listening to this show, we thank you again for making us part of your week. We are your weekly milkshake before you change the world. In your inspiration station, I'm your host, mr U. Thanks again for making us a part of your week, your day, however you're hearing, whenever you're hearing this podcast episode. Thanks again If you're listening to us audio-wise, if we're in your ears while you're at work, on your lunch break, going for a run, doing laundry, homeschooling. Thank you for listening to us via Apple Podcasts, where you can download all four plus seasons of our show and, of course, you can definitely follow us and subscribe to the podcast there. Everywhere else you're listening, like Spotify, amazon Music, pandora, iheartradio all great platforms. Thanks for listening to us and keeping us on the go with you If you're watching us on our YouTube channel at TheyCallMeMrU on YouTube, or simulcasting on one of your favorite social media platforms. Again, thank you. Keep the support coming.

Speaker 1: 1:39

We know that it's hard for people to understand who don't do what I do. Why am I doing this? What's the point? What's the purpose? Everything that we do got a purpose to it, and all your support makes a difference in us achieving that goal. So we thank you again for allowing us to move forward, to get the word out, so to speak, on a greater level to a greater platform. We know we're being heard around the world, not only around the country, but around the world literally. It's pretty exciting to see it. But we want to increase that. We want to increase that because the mission is growing and the need is growing and we want to make sure that we put out the kind of stuff that people can be proud to listen to with their families and not all the junk that they normally hear in their ears via media platform. So thank you for supporting our show and helping us stay strong out here. It really means a lot to me personally and to my family, and to the team and to the mission. So thanks again for what you're doing. I really, really appreciate it. Let's go.

Speaker 1: 2:38

So I want to kind of just share a quick story. You know I always talk about relationships on the show and I I do that even with our His and Hers podcast with Queen and I. I talk about relationships because they mean something to me. I recognize how important they are in the big scheme of things. A lot of things that we see are predicated on relationships, good or bad. So I really want to or it's really bad, it's a downfall in relationships somewhere in that person's life. If they grow and prosper and do great things in the world of sports, culture, science, a relationship was at the forefront of how that person achieved that success. So I know that relationships matter that much. So I emphasize a lot because it means a lot to me personally. But I recognize how important it is in the larger scheme of things, in the big picture, if you will. But I want to come back to that momentarily, but I want to give you a quick journey of mine.

Speaker 1: 3:39

Starting out as a teacher way back in the day Now, one of the things I would teach about in specific circles was discipleship. Now, that's not a popular topic. It's not new vote to teach about that. It's not even hip. There's nothing about it. That's hip.

Speaker 1: 3:57

As a matter of fact, when Jesus called people to walk with him as disciples, it caused problems in the person he was talking to Because they were like okay, what does discipleship entail? And when they found out, they were like no, I'm good, I'm going to stay right here, lord. I like you and everything, but I'm going to stay right here. I can't do what you're talking about. That's how difficult it is to step into the shoes of a disciple. It requires something from you. It requires a great cost to be paid. We see it in scripture very often, but in discipleship it requires you to carry a cross. It requires you to die to yourself. It requires you to self-sacrifice like you wouldn't believe. I don't mean you know what. That last piece of cake. I'm not going to eat that cake tonight. The end of kind of sacrifice I'm talking about. I'm talking about a great level of that in your life. So discipleship means a lot to the Lord and it means a lot to me and I spent a lot of my early days walking in my faith, teaching about discipleship.

Speaker 1: 5:02

As a matter of fact, I was known for discipleship. It was what I taught about every time I had a chance to teach. I know for many that was in the audiences where I was teaching or preaching this message. It didn't go down smooth. I know that I can look back at it now and see it wasn't taken very well, not because of my attitude, but because of the context. It wasn't a flowery kind of message that people want to hear from popes in these days and times.

Speaker 1: 5:31

But discipleship was impressed with me really early, because I recognized that if the foundation is ignored, the building can get tall and get wide and get broad and get long, but it's going to fall, it's not going to stand, because foundation means everything and I don't care where you are in your faith, I don't care if you're just getting started. If you've been in your faith for 40 years or even 60 years and you think you're already good to go, you got it. Name's written in heaven. You ain't got to do no more work. However you feel about where you are in your faith and your walk with Jesus Christ, foundation still matters. It's important and what you have right now is a result of the foundation that was laid good or bad, what you have right now is a result of that.

Speaker 1: 6:17

So for me, discipleship is the foundation of every person's walk. It's not how good you can sing, it's not that there's a preaching call in your life. Now you can get people fired up and get a massive offering. It's none of that. The foundation of every person's walk is discipleship. I believe that with all of my heart. I even got scripture to back it up, if you'd like to have that. I'm totally confident in that. It's the foundation for all of my heart. I even got scripture to back it up, if you'd like to have that. I'm totally confident in that. It's the foundation for all that we do.

Speaker 1: 6:49

That's why Jesus asked that first Follow me, be a disciple. He didn't ask them for no offering. He didn't ask them to do anything outward. He said follow me, be my disciple, because that's the foundation we're supposed to wish young ruler. That's what he said. Follow me, put the other stuff down and trust me, give it to the poor, walk with me and be rich forever. And the rich and ruler, according to the scripture, walked away very sorrowful because he had so many things In life right now.

Speaker 1: 7:28

If you look around, if you do a real, proper assessment no funny bit if you do a proper assessment on where you are in your life right now, you're going to see you got a lot of stuff going on man, woman, sir, ma'am, you got a lot of stuff going on in your life right now. Now ask yourself how much of that is tied to your discipleship In Jesus Christ and how much of it is extra weights, extra burdens, extra stuff in your life in Jesus Christ, and how much of it is extra weights, extra burdens, extra stuff in your life that sometimes, every once in a while, hinders you from doing what your walk dictates you should be doing at this phase of your life, right now? If you do an honest, proper assessment, you'll find that there's a lot of stuff in your life that probably shouldn't be there and you probably need to get rid of it. Is that making sense? Discipleship is the core and the foundation. That's why I taught on discipleship so much and I still do to this day. I can't even help it anymore. Anytime I'm asked to minister or preach, that's what comes out of me is discipleship, because that's what I think about all the time. It's part of my daily disciplines, it's how I stay focused and stay on track, because I know that I can't afford to go off track. So I stay focused, I stay where I need to be in my walk.

Speaker 1: 8:50

There's an old analogy that I love to use from time to time. There's an old proverb I think it's a Native American proverb, not totally sure, but I believe it is so. It talks about two dogs and the son asked his grandfather which one is the strongest and the grandfather astutely answered the dog is the strongest, the one that you feed the most, whatever you feed the most, whichever you feed, whatever you feed grows, and whatever you starve dies. It's just that simple. Think about that in the face of your spiritual walk. What are you feeding that needs to die? What are you giving too much food and too much life to? What do you starve that hasn't been given the attention it needs to be getting? We should be starving right now. If you look at that in terms of your spiritual walk, whether it be fasting or prayer, you realize that we have our attentions sometimes focused on the wrong areas and we're feeding the wrong dogs, if you will.

Speaker 1: 10:37

I mention this type of thing because foundation is key and it's going to be a part of what we're going to talk about in this really quick episode today. But I talk a lot in recent episodes about positioning. Position means a place where something or someone is located or has been put a particular way and where someone or something is placed or arranged. That's position, and I'm highlighting this one because, when it comes to prayer and our walk with the Lord, he cares about where we've been placed. I tell a story all the time. My daughters don't really enjoy the story, but it's still a funny story. But it makes sense though.

Speaker 1: 11:17

They want to go to a friend's house to go and play. If we know the friend and we're good with the parents, no issues there. You can go ahead and go to your friend's house and play at your friend's house, the designated area we discussed and we gave you license to go and do. We said you're going to whose house? You can go there for this amount of time. We tell our daughter before they even walk out of the house your friend's house is the blessed place. So that means you step outside of that place and go somewhere that we did not say you can go. You're stepping outside of the blessed place and provision and covering is in the blessed place where we sent you. Now we had no idea where you were going. Now we know grace can play a part in this. That does happen and it has happened to us, so we've seen it.

Speaker 1: 12:08

But the bottom line I want them to understand that where we send you is blessed and covered, seeing where the Lord sends his word, it accomplishes what it's sent to do and it prospers wherever he sends his word. It accomplishes what it's sent to do and it prospers wherever he sends his word. If I send one of my daughters to their friend's house, you good, but sometimes my daughters want to go somewhere else and that was just a cover story, if you will and they want to go to somebody else's house or go to a place where my wife and I wouldn't approve of where they were going. And then when something happens, they're like oh so what happened to you? Now, where did this happen at? Not where we sent you, right? No, you stood outside of the blessed place. And we're like yes, sir, god plants you in a place where he wants you to prosper.

Speaker 1: 12:55

If you're moving back and forth in different places, you can't grow. If you're into planting and gardening in any way, this is just common knowledge. It's over-the-top stuff. It's pretty easy to understand. If you keep taking the plant out of the ground and moving it around in different locations with different degrees of sunlight and soil coverage, things like that, the plant is probably going to die from shock and it's not going to grow. It needs to stay where you planted it so you can have time to deal with this environment, get acclimated, get settled and then start producing fruit. You're in that same way when God plants you is where he wants to prosper you. If he didn't plant you there, he don't want you to prosper there.

Speaker 1: 13:43

You got people out here trying to do stuff that's not even in their assignment, it's not even on their resume. They got no reason to even be trying to do what they're doing right now. But they out here doing this and mostly in spiritual circles, most people that kind of it's not intentional. It's a general overall assessment here people out here trying to do something that they're not supposed to be doing, they're not called to do. People come out here and they want to lay hands on people and they want to tell people what they think they should be doing in ministry or, in this case, proper, proper lying to people. What did the Lord tell you to do? Do that part.

Speaker 1: 14:33

Do you know that the reality of where we are right now in our walk, generally speaking, is that many of us have to go back 10 years to what God originally told us to do and walk in obedience to that? We got to go back in a time machine For 10 years or 15 or 20 or even more. We're walking in disobedience. We're doing what we felt good about doing. Or we operated out of our hurt that we had, or we operated out of offense and we did stuff that God didn't even say for us to do. We had no reason for doing this at all, except it felt good to us. And it was just straight up flesh, no holds barred, just the truth. It was just flesh. In order to go back to the place of obedience, we had to go back 10, 15, 20 years or more. What the Lord originally told us to do, that we didn't do yet, and what the Lord originally told us to do, that we didn't do yet. And that's a real thing. Ask me how I know it's a real thing. You got to deal with the obedience and where God has planned you to be. I don't mean your church.

Speaker 1: 15:43

I preached a message several months ago about this same topic, a little bit differently but different context, but the same general idea God want to prosper you where he plants you. And people think oh, you know, I'm in the right church or I'm in the right company, I got the right 401k, I'm on the right job, they give me a company car, I live in the right neighborhood. I'm in the right city. Anything that's going on in your life should be under the microscope. We should never live our lives with absolutes, saying, oh God is happy with this if we're not sure about that. We should assess everything that's going on in our life, from the church you go to to the company you work for in the city where you live at, and even who you're married to. You got people out here going to conferences in wedding dresses, seeing that the preacher who's already married, by the way is their husband, and God told him that. Talk back to me, something's wrong with that. Everything that we do should be under a microscope. We should evaluate everything because at the end of the day, if we're not in a blessed place, then that means we're outside of it. So we can't expect to get the blessings that we've been looking for.

Speaker 1: 17:01

If I can't stay where I was supposed to be, better be covered and protected against any danger, paranormal or harm. But when you snuck out and did something underhanded, outside of what I told you, what I instructed you to do, you put yourselves in a harm way and there's an opportunity now for you to be attacked because you did something outside of what we agreed on. If I said you can go to your friend's house and go to the mall, then that's covered because you did something outside of what we agreed on. If I said you can go to your friend's house and go to the mall, then that's covered. The mall is a blessed place. If I said you can go to your friend's house, to the mall and after that go and have a sleepover at a different friend's house, it's covered because your parents agreed on that and that's considered blessed places. If I didn't say any of that stuff and you just snuck out and did it, you're outside of the blessed place. You're outside of the place of provision and things can happen.

Speaker 1: 17:58

As adults, we should be thinking the same way as that child should be thinking Am I in the blessed place? Am I in the place that I'm supposed to be in? Am I doing what I'm supposed to be thinking? Am I in the blessed place? Am I in the place that I'm supposed to be in? Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? I don't mean what you're good at, because you're very talented, you're gifted, you're skilled. You can do a lot of stuff. I can do admin like nobody's business. I'm not going to work at somebody's office. I got a lot of talents, a lot of things I'm really really good at doing. I ain't going out here and just doing it because I'm good at it. I need to have some clearance. I need to have a green light, a stamp of approval, if you will, to make sure I'm in the right place. It's just something to think about that we don't often care to think about.

Speaker 1: 18:52

Adam was in the Garden of Eden. He was in the place where he was planted, but there was a provision that was given to him in the place where he was at. That's a different wrinkle. He was given a provision. There was an order of restraint saying you know what, in this area, you can't do this. You got the whole garden as it pertains to this tree. Do not eat of that fruit. You can have this vast garden. It's yours. Tend to it, do what you want to do. Free reign when it comes to this tree right here. Don't touch that fruit, don't eat from that fruit. Out of all the things he had access to, he chose the thing that he couldn't touch, that he couldn't eat. It cost him being uprooted from the place where he was planted.

Speaker 1: 19:48

I say this to you today. I hope you're hearing all of this stuff. I hope this is ministering to you. This is not what I planned for today, but I believe it's what was needed to be heard today. Wherever you are today, and however you're listening to this show, I implore you today as your brother, as your friend, as your big brother, your uncle, however you're listening to this show, I implore you today as your brother, as your friend, as your big brother, your uncle, however you see me, dad, papa, whatever I implore you to look at every aspect of your life today. Take the time to evaluate it all. Put it all under the microscope. Let God search it all and if there's anything that ain't right, anything that gives you pause, anything that says you know what, I'm not sure I should have ventured into this territory. I shouldn't have started this, let him have it.

Speaker 1: 20:40

I probably scrapped about three projects that I was really super intensely on fire about this year alone At least three. Three things that I was committed, indebted to Matter of fact, it's probably more than three, but three come to mind right now, in this moment. And I was invested, where I put money into this, I put time into it, I put time into it, I put prayer into this. I was on my knees about this stuff, giving my schedule and my agenda up for this stuff. And guess what? As I sit here today, talking to all of my friends, viewers and listeners, I tell you that all three of those things were not from God. None of the three of them were not from God. None of the three of them. I shouldn't have done any one of them, and they were all good things. I wasn't supposed to do any of them.

Speaker 1: 21:35

Maybe it was your job to do it, but it definitely wasn't mine. And I wasted time, days, weeks, months, even years, doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing, operating and functioning in a place where I was not planted. Lord, have mercy. So I know. Maybe you think oh, that's you, that's not me. My situation is down pat, I got it going on. Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 1: 22:06

But for those of you who don't feel that way, who are a little bit more humble than that, take the time to search every aspect of your life, even on this. Don't even wait until tomorrow, don't wait until next week. Do it now, do it today. Search your life, even write down. Do it as exercise. Write down everything that you do, everything you put your hands forth to do, everything that's a project or an assignment for you, write it down. If it don't line up with discipleship, if it doesn't line up with your assignment, if it makes you uneasy at all or you feel like it's just an extra added weight that you're doing because you love somebody or you care about helping somebody else out, or you're doing somebody a favor. Put that stuff to the side. Look at all the things you got your hands involved in.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Ask yourself is it what God is saying? Is that where you are specifically planted Not only in general, but I'm talking about in this season, the right now. I don't mean five or 10 years down the line, I mean right now. And ask yourself not only is it where God has planted you, but I'm talking about in this season, the right now. I don't mean five or ten years down the line, I mean right now. And ask yourself not only is it where God has planted you, but also, are you willing to allow yourself to do what I did with those three projects and more that I had this year and give them up so that I have room for the Rehoboth that God has for me Ask yourself will you do? That Is for the Rehoboth that God has for me. Ask yourself will you do that? Is your love and relationship with God worth it? Enough to you that you want to walk in obedience in every area of your life and that you will get rid of anything, no matter how good it is, no matter how great it makes you feel to do the perfect will of God? Something to think about as we close out.

Speaker 1: 23:43

Wherever you are and however you're listening to the Call Me, mr U, the podcast and your inspiration station. Thanks again for making this part of your week. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts and on our YouTube channel at they Call Me, mr U. Thanks for continuing to listen. Share this with somebody else if you can, and, of course, enjoy the music we're out of here. Have a great day.