Never Once: All-In August #11

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you on a Sunday morning.

It is all-in August. We're day number 11.

I'm going to give you a little challenge, a little encouragement,

a little motivation this morning from a Bible study, a little devotional thought,

quiet time that we did last year on day 4 of all-in August.

This year we're doing it on day 11 because you're going to hit a patch.

If you haven't already hit it, you're going to hit a patch when you're trying

to go all-in, when you get some resistance, you get some headwind,

you get some difficulty, you get some opposition.

And you're going to have a hard time pressing through that. And you might even

mess up and fall back into some old pattern. You might have a day when things

don't go the way you want to.

And I'm just going to tell you, don't give up. Okay?

I'm going to remind you that God never gives up on you. You can look back on

your life and look at the hard times you've been through.

And you'll see that even at your darkest moment, there was still help. He was still there.

Never once did he leave you alone. There's a song from Matt Redman.

I actually used to play worship music in some of these episodes.

And you may not have noticed that, but the reason we don't do that anymore is

because YouTube doesn't allow you to play copyrighted music.

Even though I have a BMI and ASCAP license to play music on the podcast,

when it goes to YouTube, that shows up as a violation.

You're not allowed to do that on YouTube. So the only workaround there is either

not to share the episodes to YouTube.

And there's a ton of people who listen on YouTube, on the YouTube channel.

By the way, it would really help me out if you would subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, at Dr.

Lee Warren on YouTube. even if you don't listen to it there,

having more listeners, having more subscribers really helps the channel grow

and helps other people find it the way the algorithm works is the more people

that sign up, more people get it presented to them on their feeds.

And so just like in social media, it really helps if you subscribe at Dr. Lee Warren on YouTube.

But basically there's no workaround. If you're going to put copyrighted material

on your videos, YouTube is going to scrub it out and not allow you to present it.

Anyway, that's the long story short of why we We don't play the music,

but I'm going to put this link in the show notes to Matt Redmond's song, Never Once.

The song had a huge impact on my life when I was recovering from losing Mitch.

Still one of my most powerful songs when I need a moment to remember that you're

never alone. Never once does he leave you alone.

So today you're going to hit some resistance. You're going to find some fatigue.

You're going to have some opposition, some headwind, a big hill you got to climb.

I'm just going to remind you with this story that we talked about on All In

last year on day four, today on day 11.

That it's time to go all in and to be prepared for the adversity and the headwind

and the difficulty and the opposition.

And just to remember that you are equipped for it. You're ready for it.

Your brain is designed to heal.

Your mind is in control and your God is on your side. He's with you and you're never alone.

Share this with your friend. Send it to some friends and say,

hey, let's do this together. Let's go all in together. Let's get after it together.

I'm going to give you this episode. I'll be back on the back end,

but let's get after it right now. You are never, once, ever alone.

Good morning, my friend. Hope you're doing well. It is early in the morning,

about 4 a.m. Tata's not even up yet. He'll be up any minute, I'm sure of it.

But I wanted to get a jump start on today. I've got surgery today.

We've had a great week around here, did some great cases, had some great days

in the clinic, and just really enjoying our staff.

We've got a great crew that Lisa's put together, and just really blessed.

And hey, I hope wherever you are. I hope you got a team of people around you that are helping you.

And if you don't, then we're praying for you. And know that you have community,

okay? The church is community.

There are people who love you and care about you and who will come together with you.

And this little community online here, we have the prayer wall,

wleewarnmd.com slash prayer.

We have the newsletter, drleewarn.substack.com.

This is a community of people all over the world who care about each other.

They reach out, they help each other.

There's lots of different examples now, People who have connected through this

ministry, who have helped other people in other places.

We had a woman who was in the hospital in Michigan, and we put the word out,

and a couple of other listeners went out and visited her and spent some time with her and helped her.

And I had a lady in South Africa who was having some distress and was feeling

suicidal, and we connected a

couple of readers who knew a pastor in that town, and they went to visit.

And my point is just that there's community around you. You're never really alone.

You might feel alone sometimes, but there are people who love you and will care

about you, and you can find them.

One of the great tricks of the enemy is to make you feel alone.

Well, this month, we're throwing off chains. We're breaking down barriers.

We're saying we're going all in. We're tired of how things have been,

and there's some places in our lives that we want to push through and some hurdles

and obstacles we want to overcome.

And yesterday, we talked about that footbridge of faith. You've got to have

the faith that you'll take that step, and it's going going to hold you up.

Today, just for a few minutes, I want to talk about hope being a verb.

I've told you that before. Hope is not a passive thing. You don't just wake

up one morning and feel a little bit hopeful.

We're going to look at some scripture from 2 Corinthians 6, and we're just going

to talk about how hope is a verb and how you can find it no matter what you're

going through, just for a minute. It's a quick, quiet time before we go to surgery.

Hey, Linda's all in with us. Here's Linda. Hi, my name is Linda Carrillo,

and I'm from Western North Carolina.

I'm a high school Spanish teacher and I read your book, Dr. Warren.

About two weeks before I had brain surgery. And here I am, hallelujah,

and ready to go all in even more. We're glad you're with us, Linda.

And I'm glad my book was helpful to you when you had brain surgery.

That's really cool to hear from you and I'm glad you're doing well.

Hey, listen, friend, I want to share a couple of things with you.

When we used to live in Auburn, there was a sidewalk in our neighborhood that

went out to, we lived on Covington Ridge and Covington Ridge connected to Moores

Mill Drive and Moores Mill Drive connected to Moores Mill Road.

Road and so it was uphill out of my

driveway a quarter mile up to the stop sign that

connected Covington Ridge to Moores Mill Drive and then it was about a mile

almost exactly to the step a mile from that stop sign to the intersection of

Moores Mill Drive and Moores Mill Road in Auburn Alabama so I would hit that

and I'd be at about a mile and a quarter and I wasn't in the best shape of anybody listening to this,

but I was, for me, I've never been a real fast runner, a real strong runner,

but I was running pretty consistently 735,

eight minute miles back then.

And again, that's not fast if you're a real runner, but for me,

it was compared to my previous life was a pretty good time because I never ran

or really worked out or did anything until I met Lisa.

And I was in better shape at 40 than I was at 30 and in better shape at 50 than

I was at 40 because of her and her influence. So.

Anyway, back in Auburn, we lost Mitch, and for a while, things were really hard,

and finally, Lisa convinced me that I needed to get active again.

I just sat down for a while after we lost Mitch, and she was like,

hey, you need to get moving again. Again, you tell everybody all the time that

you can't feel your way into acting better.

It's time to act your way into feeling better. So we started walking,

we started running, we started exercising again.

And I had this route that I would take when I did these runs in Auburn.

And I had a playlist, just like I do now, a Christian music,

worship music playlist.

I had, of course, lots of Tommy Walker and Paul Volosh and Chris Tomlin and

Catherine Scott and all those artists.

But one of the staples on my playlist is always Matt Redman.

And the way this playlist played out,

you get to Moores Mill Road and turn right and I would go down Moores Mill Road

and there's a long downhill stretch that goes downhill for almost half a mile.

It feels great because I've been running uphill for the first mile and a quarter,

and there's almost a mile, almost a half mile downhill run, and then you hit

this really steep, like 40-degree incline.

That goes up about a quarter mile to a stop sign at the corner of Grove Hill

and Moores Mill Road in Auburn.

Grove Hill is the name of this hill, and it's a killer because you're running.

You've been running now a little over two miles or almost two miles,

and I hit this upslope that's a quarter mile uphill hill until that stop sign at Grove Hill.

And the way this playlist worked out is right about the time I hit that downslope,

Matt Redman's song Never Once came on.

And this song is about looking back at your life, at all the battles and fights

that you've been through, and remembering that during that fight, you were never alone.

That during that fight, he was always with you. So then you can turn and look

ahead at the coming fight.

You're standing on the battlefield, he says, looking at

how far you've come and you realize hey never once

did I ever walk alone never once did you leave me

on my own and I would hit the top of Grove Hill just

about to give out not sure I could make it wasn't sure

I could run all the way up it and I would get to the top of that hill at that

stop sign at Grove Hill and Moores Mill Road and right as he would say scars

and struggles on the way but with joy my heart can say yes my heart can say

never once did I ever walk alone Never once did you leave me on my own.

You were a faithful God. You were faithful. No, I didn't.

I would turn left and run down Grove Hill towards Rob Brooks' house.

I have an old friend, Rob Brooks.

My turnaround point would be his driveway.

My driveway to his and back was exactly 10K. It's about six miles, six and a little change.

But I would hit the top of that hill, and that was my kind of victory point.

I made it this far. I can make it farther.

The reason I'm telling you that story, and I had no idea I was going to get

choked up when I told that story. I don't think I've ever said that to you before.

But the reason I'm telling it to you is that if you're in the fight,

if you've decided to go all in, this is about the time you're going to start

hitting some resistance.

The first days are usually pretty great. You've got all this adrenaline and

dopamine and stuff going. You've made this decision to fight.

You're going to go all in with whatever it is that you're dealing with in your life, friend.

And you're going to hit a big hill.

You're going to hit some opposition. position. I'm going to tell you that I'm

already dealing with this month.

I'm just telling you're going to hit some headwind, some big challenge,

some enemy is going to rise up. Something's going to happen. It's going to get hard.

And that's when you need to remember that he's always been faithful because

no matter what you're going through, you've been through some stuff before.

So no matter what you're dealing with in the future that you just found out

about yesterday that you discovered on your partner's cell phone,

you found out the biopsy results, You look at that 401k and inflation's eating

it up and you're worried about the future and you're not sure that all this

money that you've saved up is going to actually help you in your retirement

now. And you're scared, right?

There's going to be some challenge ahead of you. But I just want you to remember.

To look back. Psalm 124 is this amazing Psalm when the people are dealing with

something hard and they're reminding themselves about all the battles they've been through before.

And they say, if the Lord had not been on our side, let Israel say,

if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us,

they would have swallowed us alive.

When their anger flared against us, the flood would have engulfed us.

The torrent would have swept over us. The raging waters would have swept us away.

Praise be to the Lord who has not let us be torn by their teeth.

We We have escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare. The snare has been broken and we have escaped.

Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

You see what they did here? They did self-brain surgery.

They were like, hey, we're getting ready to go into this hard time.

But we've been through hard times before. And if God hadn't been on our side

then, man, we would have been hosed. We would have gotten eaten up,

swallowed alive, burned up.

But praise me to God, he didn't let that happen. So guess what?

We can make it again. See, hope is a verb, friend.

Hope's not an accident. You don't just wake up and decide to be hopeful.

I didn't just get up one morning and say, you know what, I'm grieving,

but I'm just gonna move on now. That's not what happens.

You have to have some hope. You have to have some memory to remember,

hey, you know what, I lost my son. It was impossible.

But you know what, there was another time that I thought was impossible.

I was outside in Iraq during a mortar attack and I found this wall and I just

huddled up against it and the bombs were going off.

And for an hour or so, the alarms were sounding and there was rockets and mortars

and it was scary and I was caught, unexposed and alone and I thought I was gonna die.

God got me through that. Those bombs didn't land very close to me.

It was super scary, but in the end, I was fine.

I made it because he protected me. And then I went through a divorce and I thought

that part of my life was gonna be impossible to navigate and God got me through that.

And then I thought my family was gonna be impossible to put back together and

I didn't think I would ever be

in love again and God just repaired all of that. He got me through that.

And then I lost a son and I thought that was impossible.

And he got me through that. And then we decided to move to Wyoming.

Our practice, things were difficult in Auburn.

It was hard to navigate that post-loss world.

And it was hard to navigate the post-affordable care act, private practice reality

that was making it hard and unaffordable to be in private practice.

And we made this big decision to move to Wyoming. And we thought,

we didn't think we'd be able to get through that. But we did.

And God got us through that.

And then we thought, gosh, now we finally made it. We built a house in Wyoming.

Everything's great. and then along comes this giant corporation that buys our

hospital and things go crazy again and we're in this position of maybe we need

to move again and God's calling us to something different and we didn't know

if we were gonna get through that and all of a sudden this hospital in Nebraska

calls and says, hey, we have an idea.

We wanna start a neuroscience program in our hospital. We never had a neurosurgeon here.

And all of a sudden, out of all that chaos and all that mayhem,

God's got a new plan and it's this beautiful place on the river and I feel like

I'm back home for the first time in my life.

See, if the Lord had not been on our side, let Israel say, I'm just telling

you, let the self-brain surgery podcast community say, if the Lord had not been

on our side, if the Lord had not been on our side when X, Y, and Z.

When all those things happened in the past, I wouldn't have made it.

I couldn't have done it. I'm running down Grove Hill on the beach just about right from my stridest.

Boom, my feet are hitting. Never once did we ever walk alone.

My feet are hitting just about right and I don't think I can make it up that hill.

And I get to the top and it's scars and struggles on the way.

But with joy, my heart can say, yes, my heart can say, never once did I ever walk alone.

I want to read you, somebody posted this on my Facebook wall yesterday, this verse.

And it was amazing because I was already planning on using it in this episode.

And somebody made a quote about it in my Facebook yesterday.

So I'm going to pull it up. I hadn't planned on mentioning this,

but let me pull it up real quick. Her name is...

Janine. So Janine Klebar, I don't know her, but she's connected to me on Facebook

through, looks like Julie Walker.

Julie Walker and her husband are great followers of the podcast.

They have their own podcast, a really cool show that I'll mention to you sometime.

But Julie Walker and her husband connected to a friend of theirs,

Janine Klebar, who connected to me through Facebook and she posted yesterday

on my wall and had been listening to the podcast and she said this.

She said, loving August all in, my verse I memorized and keep close to my heart

during seasons of darkness is sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, 2 Corinthians 6.10.

You can have joy and sorrow in the Lord at the same time. It's a paradox full

of hope from our amazing God.

That's exactly right, Janine. Thank you for mentioning that. Here's 2 Corinthians 6.

Now remember Paul, right? The apostle Paul. If you haven't read his story,

go look through the New Testament and see this guy.

He's always writing about how your mindset said can help you and how you should

be joyful and rejoice no matter what is happening in your life.

But the guy who's writing that has been in prison. He's been flogged.

He's been shipwrecked. He's been snake bitten. He's been poor. He's been in chains.

He's been abused. He's been starved. He's been, he's been hopeless, but he always has hope.

So this guy who's telling us to have hope has some credibility when he says hope is a verb.

He didn't say hope is a verb. I said hope is a verb, but he's saying,

do something to your mind to remember to take hope.

Okay. When I say hope Hope is a verb. Here's what I mean. It requires memory,

like we just read from the Psalm, from the idea in Psalm 124 of remembering

that the Lord was on our side, and if he hadn't been, we would have been hosed.

And it also requires movement. You have to do something.

You have to keep running up that hill, or you're not going to make it.

You have to get up off the couch, friend, and start fighting for hope.

Those two things together, memory and movement, to produce hope.

They are the component parts of hope. And hope is a verb. It's an action word

and you have to fight for it.

And let me tell you, there's this quantum duality we've been talking about how...

Our God can give you two things at the same time. You can lose your child and

you can have a grandchild. You can have darkness and light.

You can have sorrow and joy at the same time.

And that's the reason that you can make it through life. And you can't get rid

of the hard stuff, but you also get the abundance that Jesus promises us in

John 10. So here's what Paul says.

This is the lesson for today. It's a really short idea.

As God's co-workers, this is 2 Corinthians 6. As God's co-workers,

we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain, for he says,

in the time of my favor, I heard you.

And in the day of salvation, I helped you.

I tell you now is the time of God's favor.

Now is the day of salvation. So get this friend, Jesus doesn't say that there's

some particular date and time out in the future when he's going to help you.

He doesn't say, I just need you to suffer for a while. And when I'm ready,

I'll come get you. That's not the kind of God that we serve.

What he says is when you get to to the point where you realize,

friend, that you can't do it.

You can't get up. You can't move forward. You can't stop drinking.

You can't fix this relationship. When you are at the end of your rope,

okay, I've got a friend, I told you, did an episode a while back on rock bottom.

I have a friend who hit rock bottom and he didn't mean to and got himself in

some trouble, some real trouble with a habit he couldn't break.

And now he's got some legal trouble and now it's threatening his,

he may or may not ever be able to practice his profession again.

He's in trouble and he might end up having some incarceration type trouble. He's in real trouble.

This is a rock bottom moment for my friend and he's got to make a decision.

If he's at the point now when he's going to say, God, I can't do this.

Like this thing that I've gotten myself into, there's no way out of it unless you make a way.

There's no way it's impossible unless you make it possible. He's He's at rock bottom.

And sometimes what Jesus is waiting for is for you to say, hey,

you said that day of salvation is out there. Can it be now?

God, can you help me now? I'm at the point where I've got to have you helping me.

So Paul says, I tell you, now is the time of God's favor.

Now is the day of salvation. So friend, if you're all in August and you hit

day four, you hit day seven or day 13 or whatever, and you're like, you know what?

I can't do it. I can't make this change in my life. I've been trying for years

and I just can't do it. Now's the day of salvation.

Now's the time of God's favor. And all he's asking for is for you to reach up

and take his hand. Behold, he says, I stand at the door and knock.

He's knocking. He's waiting for you to say now is the time.

So here's the quantum physics thing I want to share with you.

Starting in verse 3, Paul says this.

We put no stumbling block in anyone's path so that our ministry will not be discredited.

Rather, as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way,

in great endurance, in troubles, hardships, and distresses, in beatings,

imprisonments, and riots, in hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger.

That's some big stuff, and he's literally going through all of it.

Abundance, endurance, troubles, hardships, distresses, beatings,

imprisonments, and riots, And then listen to this switch that happens in verse 6.

In purity understanding patience and kindness in the holy spirit and in sincere

love in truthful speech and in the power of god with weapons of righteousness

in the right hand and in the left through glory and dishonor bad report

and good report genuine yet regarded as impostors known yet regarded as unknown,

dying, yet we live on, beaten and yet not killed, sorrowful yet always rejoicing,

poor yet making many rich, having nothing and yet possessing everything.

Friend, there is something in that paragraph in 2 Corinthians 6, 3-10 for you.

There's something in there that describes what you're feeling, I guarantee you.

I'm working, I'm slaving away for this company that doesn't care about me.

I'm making other people rich.

I am doing all this good stuff. I'm working hard and making things better, and nobody notices me.

I am doing good things, and I'm doing right, and I'm making my best effort to

make the world a better place, and other people are taking credit for my work.

I am trying hard, and I'm failing.

I'm suffering, and nobody seems to notice.

I'm working, and it seems like the world is just coming hard after me.

There's something in there for you.

But there's a switch that you can make. The switch where you accept all those

hard things and you fight for the good things at the same time.

And the switch happens in verse six.

It's beatings and trouble and hardship and distress and poverty and riots and

sleepless nights and hunger and hard work.

And at the same time, in the same breath, in the next stroke of the pen in verse

six, in purity, understanding,

patience and kindness in the Holy Spirit and sincere love and truthful speech

and the power of God with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in

the left through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report,

genuine yet regarded as impostors, known yet regarded as unknown,

dying and yet we live on, beaten and yet not killed,

sorrowful yet always rejoicing, poor yet making many rich, having nothing and

yet possessing everything.

Listen to the footsteps. steps, boom, never once did I ever walk alone.

Hardships and joy, glory and dishonor, bad report and good report,

sorrow yet rejoicing, boom, boom.

You can get up that hill, friend. You can do it. You can run.

You can make it to the top. And when you do.

You will rejoice. Yet with joy, my heart can say, yes, my heart can say,

never once did I ever walk alone.

Never once did you leave me on my own. You are faithful, God.

You are faithful. We're standing on the battlefield. So the fight is not yet over.

You've made it to the top of Grove Hill, but you've still got to get to Rob

Brooks' house and turn around and run all the way back.

You've still got some road ahead of you, and there's still going to be challenges,

and you're going going to twist your ankle and you're going to see a snake in

the path and you're going to have a car get a little too close to you.

It's going to be scary and you're going to be hot and sweaty,

but you're going to keep running because you're going to remember if the Lord

had not been on our side, we would have been swallowed up before.

Let all of us say, let the self-brain surgery podcast, let Dr.

Lee Warren's friends say it, say it friend.

If the Lord had not been on my side, I would have been hosed,

but he was because he never once left me on that battlefield.

And I'm gonna remember and I'm gonna move and keep running for it and that's

how I'm gonna find hope and that's how I'm gonna go all in.

And the good news is, my friend, that's how I'm gonna start today.

I hope that was helpful to you, my friend. I am all in. Lisa's all in.

Tata's all in. People all over the world are all in with us.

Here's another one right now.

Hello, it's Nancy O'Brien. I'm simply leaving you a message to say I am all in for August.

I'm really excited that you're doing this and I'm trying to share with many

people to join me, But anyways, I'm in. Hey, Nancy's all in.

Lisa's all in. Tata's all in. I'm all in. Self-brain surgeons all over the world

getting together to press through to remember that we've never once been alone.

You have all the tools, everything you need.

All you need to do is change your mind and you'll change your life.

Let's go all in. Share this with your friend. Read Hope is the First Dose.

Read All In by Mark Batterson. And we will see you tomorrow for Mind Change

Monday. Let's get after it.