I want you to think about the biggest challenge that you've had in the past month. Get that in your mind. It was a difficulty. It was a problem. It was a challenge, maybe seemingly catastrophic, but the the biggest one you can think of in the last month. Now, once you have that, in your mind, ask yourself the question, how did I feel when that was happening or is happening now?

What did I think? What did I say? And how did I act upon it? Well, this entire module is on how we deal with those challenges or problems in our lives. And I want to share with you a rather revolutionary technology that is old as the wisdom of the first and second centuries, but is absolutely effective in dealing with challenges and problems, in fact, as I contend It is truly revolutionary. Now I get these insights from reading in the New Testament of the Bible, in the book of James, where it says this in a Philips translation, it says when various trials and tribulations crowd into your life so that means that you know, most difficult time you've had recently that challenge that you have in your mind when those things crowd into your lives.

He says, Don't treat them as intruders, but welcome them as friends. Now, I want you to think about that. This terrible thing that's happened in your life, this incredible problem or challenge could be relational, it could be financial. It could be physical, could be the loss of someone in your life could be a breakdown in communications. It could be professional side, a personal side, whatever it might be. What the author here James says is don't treat those as intruders, but welcome them as friends.

Now let me ask you this question. How do you treat intruders? Well, you know, at best, we are annoyed by them and we get rid of them. At worst if if you're in Texas in America, you may shoot them. But you do something to get intruders depending upon how severe they are out of your life. We certainly don't welcome them.

But the author here says don't treat them as intruders, but welcome them as friends. Now, how do you respond to friends? Well, when I see my friends, I tend to come up and give them a great big hug. I embrace him so great to see you. Because I love my friends. I appreciate my friends and I want to warmly greet them.

And so that is really what the author's saying here. The worst possible challenge you can imagine in this last month, don't treat them as intruders, but welcome them as friends. Or embrace them as friends. Now, let me ask you a question. Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard? I mean, I mean, in a sense from a purely human perspective, it's just so counterintuitive to embrace problems, to embrace difficulties, to embrace challenges to literally welcome them, not be turned off by him not react to them not get angry because I'm not let them turn you into a state of depression or frustration, but instead to embrace them.

Well, why does the author say that and James? Well, he goes on to say this, here's why. The trying of your faith produces patience, and let patients habits perfecting work in you, in order that you become complete and whole, wanting nothing. Well, the bottom line is this. And again, this is so helpful and and if you can get it, it will be transformative in your life. If when you have a challenge, you can embrace it and not ask, why is this happening to me?

Instead ask, what can I learn from this? What can I do the right way? If I'll do that, over time, what will happen is patience will be developed. And that patience over time and repetition will result in my life becoming complete, and whole, wanting nothing. And honestly, where every one of you want to be, where I want to be where everyone I've ever met, wants to be, is complete and whole. I mean, at a deep level of satisfaction, completeness, peace, joy, love, we all want that.

Now we try to get up by having greater experiences or making more money or being more popular or or somehow achieving a higher level in our professional life or have more children or whatever it might be. But instead, what the author says is the way we get there is through challenges that we respond to by embracing them. And that creates patience, which over time and repetition equals completeness, or wholeness. The equation is this. Problems plus embracing equals patience. And then patience plus time and repetition equals completeness.

So if you want to live a life that's complete, if you want to be whole, if you want to want nothing, the key is I believe, in this life, to be weaned, from circumstances as a source of our joy, and instead be willing to trust trust, believing all things will work out and for me that's believing that God war call things out for good In my life, and that trust will create within me a sense of contentment. So I'll have the same joy. When I'm rich or poor, I'll have the same joy when I'm sick. Or a, well, I'll have the same joy when things are going great and when things are going poorly, why? Because I see all of this as a process of creating in me, the ability to be complete and whole, wanting nothing is a way of life. I hope you get this.

This is so radical. And this has been so life changing in my life. Now, what I'd like you to do to put this to work is to ask yourself this question, again, when this thing happened to you this great challenge or difficulty in the last month or so, or maybe it's still ongoing? What did you feel? What did you think? What did you say?

What did you do? And our action step for you is to work through the T bar worksheet. In the Resource Center for you, and at the top put down the challenge you're dealing with, write it down at the top. And then down the left hand column, I want you to write down how you thought and felt, and what you said and what you did in reference to that really meditate on that. Think about it. So think about whether you reacted or responded.

And in what ways and then on the right column, I want you to put down in light of what we're talking about embracing problems, how you can feel differently, how you can think differently, how you can speak or talk differently, and then how you can act differently. Because I want this to become muscle memory in your life. And in the next session, I'm going to give you an example of technology that allow you to even do this in a more practical, ongoing, daily basis. And the technology is called learned optimism. You're going to look forward to this so get to work. Let's get going By all means, spend some time in our Facebook group, talking about what you're learning what your experiences throwing out your questions, and we'll use our group wisdom and our team and myself included to respond to you