Inspiration Station - The Pearls of Great Value Part 2

Could the foreign elements that often disrupt our lives actually be opportunities for growth? As California battles a devastating fire crisis, we reflect on the fragility of life and challenge ourselves to reevaluate what we truly value. This episode of the All Purpose Pod invites you to ponder how you can protect and cherish the relationships and treasures that define your life. Drawing inspiration from Proverbs 4:23, we explore how guarding our hearts can shape our existence and encourage meaningful connections. Listen as we offer a compassionate reminder of the real people affected by the fires and urge a thoughtful approach towards social media discourse and prayer.

Our conversation then shifts to an intriguing perspective: the creation of pearls as a metaphor for welcoming the unfamiliar. We discuss the power of trusting and embracing new experiences, even when past hurts make us reluctant. Using the oyster's process to transform an intrusive grain of sand into something beautiful, we delve into how opening ourselves to foreign elements can lead to personal growth and the creation of valuable relationships. This episode is a heartfelt call to step outside our comfort zones, overcome fears of being hurt, and see challenges as opportunities to create something beautiful in our lives. Join us on this thought-provoking journey as we look beyond the obvious and explore the potential that lies in every challenge.

This episode explores the themes of value, loss, and the importance of relationships in our lives, particularly in light of recent events in California. It encourages listeners to reevaluate what they truly value and how they treat those significant to them.  

• Discussing the impact of California fires on personal value  
• Reflecting on material loss versus relational worth  
• The significance of guarding one’s heart, based on Proverbs 4:23  
• Using the metaphor of pearls to illustrate valuing relationships  
• Encouragement to embrace foreign elements as opportunities for growth  
• Highlighting sacrificial love through biblical parables  
• Asking listeners how they treat their valued connections  
• Concluding remarks on the transient nature of material possessions

Hope you enjoyed today's episode! You can find and subscribe to our show on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Theycallmemistayu

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

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, the Call Me, mr you and the Inspiration Station. Thank you again for making us part of your week. In case you were not aware, it's all of your news cycles for sure. The state of California is on fire, literally. Please continue to be praying for them and if you got people out there, reach out to them. Check on them. See how they're doing is a dire situation. Lives are being lost and just to be clear, as a little subtle reminder, saying about politics or people groups, this is about real people in real trouble and if it can happen in california, it can happen in other places too. So please be thoughtful about your comments on social media. Please be intentional about your prayer time. If you ascribe to prayer time, be praying for the salvation and the preservation of the people.

Speaker 1: 1:42

You know what this reminds me of, and this is kind of a par for the course for episode that we did recently. It's making me just think about it again. You know those things that we are watching on TV being burnt down. I mean all the mansions and all the homes and all these things that represent such great value to the owner, especially, of course, the property value and all of the trinkets and artifacts and all the things that make these houses homes. When they're destroyed, it's like I don't know. I can't imagine what people feel like. I've been in a fire before where we lost our valuables. I understand that from that standpoint. From my level, I can't imagine how they feel to have amassed so much wealth and so much and so many things and to find that they've been destroyed. It's like what do you, what do you do with that? But what is making me think about and I don't know if you're in the same place, but it's making me think about what's valuable to us, what we ascribe value to and how we treat it. If it's worthwhile, how do we treat it? If your wife or husband is valuable to you, how do you treat them? If your local ministry means something to you and it matters to you, how do you treat it? If your friend is important in your life, how do you treat them? It's just so many little things that we think about, or we should think about anyways, in regards to value, we did a recent episode called the Pearls of Great Value.

Speaker 1: 3:21

I wasn't able to get into all the thoughts that I wanted to in a short period of time. My goal, my attempt, is to try to do that today and kind of round this out. Let's see what happens. But I want to just share with you just a couple of things from Scripture, proverbs 4 and 23,. It reads above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. In essence, it determines the course of your life. I think that's really important.

Speaker 1: 3:51

When we were talking about the pearl, the granular sand that fell into the oyster shell, immediately the oyster went into protection mode and began to place a substance that sealed sand to protect it from bringing harm to the overall community to the shell. I talked about it the last time we had a discussion about this, about foreign elements into our life and and how we respond, how we react to them. But I also made it a point to make it very clear that every foreign element in our life is not always to harm us. What would happen if we were willing to trust again? What would happen if we were willing to grow outside of our comfort zones? What would happen? Kind of just imagine that, because so many of us refuse to do that because of their hurt. We're afraid to be hurt again. So if anything foreign comes into our shell, we cover it, we shield ourselves from it because we don't want to be breached in that way. We don't want to be affected and impacted in the way we remember we were hurt before. We look at foreign elements like a danger to our comfort as opposed to an opportunity to make something beautiful. And I think that goes with friendship relationships in every area.

Speaker 1: 5:15

I love that scripture in Proverbs 4 and 23, because it reminds us very, very well as a matter of fact, that we should protect our hearts. We should not put ourselves in a place where we allow certain things to come into our heart because, like the scripture says, everything you do flows out of it. What goes into our hearts, that's what comes out. If we deal with adultery and fornication, we deal with sexual perversion and we have these things in our heart. If we watch this stuff on television or in the movies, it comes out of us and it determines the course of our life. We can't just watch and say, oh, that was a good movie and move on. It impacts the way that we think, how we feel, how we act. It creates situations for us that could be damaging us. Because we allow all that stuff to come into our hearts. We need to protect it.

Speaker 1: 6:02

But I love the idea of the pearl because what that teaches me is that something beautiful can come out of conflict. Something beautiful can come out of unexpected circumstances. If oyster shells in the sea, of course, a grain of sand can get into the shell, it's not impossible. They're all in the same location. What's awesome is the reaction to it, the response to it, and I feel as though we have to look at the thing that happened in our life and ascribe the right value to it.

Speaker 1: 6:36

There are areas I can go into. I've gone into them on most of our podcast episodes dating back the first three years and what I would say, just as somebody who's just being transparent with you guys, like I always try to be, most of what's happened that's been good in my life has been considered a foreign element. I'll take my wife as an example, not to dumb her down to being a foreign element. She's more than that. She's my best friend, my partner, everything. But she was foreign to me. First off, she was from the country. I'm a city boy to my heart, I've been down in the country for a while but it really hasn't changed. I've maintained that aspect of who I am, I guess as far as how I see the world.

Speaker 1: 7:28

Also, she's a foreign element in the fact that I didn't have around me examples of marriage and strong relationships. I didn't know what that was like. I learned my stuff from television and movies. In the real world I didn't see that. Very often it was around, but it wasn't around as much in my personal circle for me to learn how to embrace a faithful, strong relationship or how to embrace a strong and faithful marriage. I didn't know how to embrace a faithful, strong relationship or how to embrace a strong and faithful marriage. I didn't know how to do that. So for me this was foreign. To even know her and love her and be with her. I had to learn this. But it was a foreign element to me. Now, if I had treated it like some of us do when we engage with a foreign element, we push it back, we get it away from us, we protect ourselves against it because we don't want to let nobody come into our heart, into our peace, into our comfort had I embraced that foreign element, I wouldn't have a 29-year marriage, almost 30 years now. So every foreign element is not bad. We got to make sure that we kind of parse that out and don't put everybody in the same category.

Speaker 1: 8:42

There's some foreign elements that are pearls in our life of great value. I love Matthew 13, 44 to 45. It's an incredible parable. I want to read it to you really quickly before we close the episode out. But it says the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again and then, in his joy, went and sold everything he had and bought that field, because what he had in that field was precious, so precious, he wanted to have the entire field. Verse 45 says again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. There's that word again. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and he bought it. Listen to what's taking place right there.

Speaker 1: 9:28

This is a very short parable, a couple of sentences. Look at what's happening. He found a pearl of great value and he sold everything he had and bought it. This is a great example of sacrificial love or sacrificial act. If you find a pearl that's of great value, you do all you can to retain it, take care of it because you love it.

Speaker 1: 9:54

And I go back to what I said at the start of the episode Where's the great value in your life? Who and what has great value in your life? How do you treat it? How do you treat those that you call friends? How do you treat them? Those that you call a husband or wife, a spouse how do you treat them? A local ministry? Maybe it's a job assignment, maybe it's a business. If you love it and it's of great value to you, how do you treat it?

Speaker 1: 10:22

These men that were in this parable saw everything they had because of how valuable what they had in that field was, or what they had located. They saw everything they had to obtain it. If you have in your mind a great value for someone or something, you do all you can, everything you can, sacrificially, that you can do to obtain that and to make that relationship stronger, to hold on to the love that's in that marriage, you do whatever it is you can do. I don't know how we got here today, but here we are. I was intending to go a whole different location. Here we are, so I'm hoping this is a blessing to somebody that's listening today. And if you have any questions or comments, by all means please share those in the comments section, wherever you're seeing this episode.

Speaker 1: 11:12

And back to California, real quick All those things that got burned in these fires. They may have been valuable from a monetary standpoint, but now they're gone. Before you go and assign value to someone or something, just recognize that it should be more valuable than God himself. It should never be more valuable than your morals and your ethics and your values, because in a moment they can be gone. We had to recognize that putting value into something is an investment and you never know what you're going to get back in return or if you end up losing it. But you treat it while you can the best that you can. Hope that makes sense, whether you are and have you listening to the Call Me Mr you and the Inspiration Station. Thank you again for making us a part of your week. I can't tell you how much that means to me and to us and my family and the family here at the Call Me Mr you. Thank you very much again. Have a wonderful day. Hope to talk to you really really soon. Enjoy.