LIVING WITH AN ETERNAL MINDSET// S06E07

Are you getting caught up in what the world wants? What do you want? And is it what God wants for you? It’s easy to get caught up in the desires of this world but when we start living in an eternal mindset everything changes. What you do today will bless future generations. Steward what God gives you and not what culture tells you. Submit yourself to Christ and you will see that the great commission is always involved. Listen to today’s episode to understand how we must seek God’s kingdom alongside the passions He’s planted in us. Don’t exclude Him, do everything with Him.

VERSES FROM THE FUTURE IS REVELATION 21:

2 Corinthians 5:17, Revelation 21, and 1 John 2:17.

QUESTIONS FROMTHE FUTRE IS REVELATION 21:

• What happens after death?
• What actually happens in Revelation?
• What does the future look like?
• Can God deliver me from distraction?

QUOTES FROM THE FUTRE IS REVELATION 21:

“What we are saying is change the way you see, not even just look at the part of revelation that has the wrath of God, but look past it, the future is revelation. Because after all that scary stuff, there’s peace. There’s finality. There a finality that continues forever. “

The Pantry Podcast, Michelle Watson, The Future Is Revelation 21.

“You got to be careful with passion. I mean seriously. I get distracted with my passion. Right. What is my passion? What is my focus? Become consumed over here with this passion. If it’s godly, if it’s of God, from God, with God about God, then it’s like, okay, that’s your starting block.”

The Pantry Podcast, Shea Watson, The Future Is Revelation 21.

Annotated Transcript:

Shea Watson: Does the brokenness of this world get you down, discouraged anxiously. There is a huge reality in the word of God that can reorient our entire lives and where we focus our energy. Are you using your energy in a way that will continue to energize you or drain you down?

Shea: Hey, I’m Shea.

Michelle: And I’m Michelle.

Shea: There’s a battle being waged. It’s not flesh, it’s not blood, it’s spiritual, and we need to be prepared. The last thing a warrior wants on the battlefield is spiritual anemia. When the enemy attacks we need to be prepared

Michelle: We don’t always realize where the attacks are coming from or that we’re being attacked at all. This is the pantry podcast, and we’re here to remind you of who we answer to what we’re capable of, and how we are called to do it in every aspect of our lives.

Shea: This is season six, rewired when you’re saved, you’re saved for good, we all experienced sanctification differently. The more we grow in our relationship with the Lord, the more he transforms and renews our minds. The more we cut the cords of this world, the more we’re charged up in him this season, we’re arming you with the sermon of some of the culture’s most toxic snares

Michelle: Support our ministry, reaching the lost and found in over 50 countries with spiritual and literal nutrition. Every one-time and recurring donation makes a lasting impact, donate through Patreon or pantrypodcast.com. And now let’s dig into the meal.

Michelle: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared and the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, look, God’s home is now among his people. He will live with them and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever. And the one sitting on the throne said, look, I am making everything new. And then he said to me, write this down for what I tell you is trustworthy and true. And he also said it is finished. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end to all who are thirsty. I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings. And I will be their God. And they will be my children, but cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt murderers, the immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol, worshipers, and all liars, their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.

Michelle; Hi, what’s up? I’m excited.

Shea: She beat me to the punch! We’ve been snatched out of this world and so the man with that, we’re going to turn it over to Michelle because, she’s going to roll this out beautifully because this is a special, a special chapter to her in the book of revelation.

Michelle: So in case you haven’t known, if you’re just joining us or if you kind of skip around in the pantry, the book of revelation is how I came to Christ. I saw an amazing amount of grace and patience from God in the book that most people avoid reading or get discouraged or fearful reading. I did get scared. I was like, I do not want to be here for any of that. But I read an annotated version of revelation, which allowed me to see a breakdown where any time something was a little confusing, there were some educated assumptions about what that could mean or conclusions based on Bible verses throughout the word. So I got a lot of contexts and read a lot of verses that are peppered throughout the Bible while I was reading revelation. And at the same time, I got to find out what Jesus dying on the cross actually means for us and how easy it is to actually get to be apart from revelation and be a part of Christ.

Michelle: And so when we were talking about this rewired season and all of the different ways that God rewires us from the way culture has brought us up, I knew that this episode had to be included. And as you can see, if you’re watching on the video, the future is Revelation 21 is a shirt that I came out with a few years ago because I was sick of seeing shirts that said the future is female. But funny enough, this episode is not about feminism or woman empowerment or any of that stuff. That’s a whole other topic that we could get on one day. Instead, the reason I came out with this shirt is that this is what the actual future is. And so often I think the most predominant place I see it is, and those miss America, miss universe pageants, where they’re like world peace.

Michelle: I want world peace. And I’m not saying the world piece doesn’t happen, but I’m saying it doesn’t happen in this iteration of the world. And if you don’t understand that you will stumble and become distracted by some very good sounding and good intention, things that will get you caught up and swept away from what the great commission actually is. Because until you understand what the end game of this world actually is, then your priorities are askew. And so that is why I’m so passionate about this episode, because realizing that was what made me into a warrior for Christ that was obsessed with sharing his word and helping empower the people. Instead of getting caught up in what I’ll call a pet project, something that will impact, but we know biblically will never bear that ultimate fruit until after the book of revelation and all the crazy stuff happens. And in Revelation 21, the comforting part of that book

Shea: I like it the way she said that, because I would’ve said dung, I’ll tell you, like, I think it’s because of everything that I’ve been through in life, everything that I’ve seen, everything that I’ve witnessed, everything that I’ve been a part of or anything that’s been I’ve experienced. It’s like, you keep chasing after something better. You’re like, it can be better. It can be better. It can be better. It can be better. And you want everything around you to be better too. It’s like everything has to around me. So that’s a mentality. Everything around me has to be better. Everything has to be right. Everything has to be perfect. But then when you start thinking of individuals, see if you group it together. Yeah, you may, you might be able to do this if you put everybody on the same thought, but nobody has the same thought.

Shea: Nobody has the same mind, but you know, as you’re reading revelations 21, and you’re talking about the new heaven, new earth where we’re going, right. Cause this is what this is about. This is about where we’re going. Not where we’re at now, but the hope that we have and where we’re going. Right. And so it took me into like the thought of the new creation you know, our new creation in Christ. It’s like, wow, you know what? A 2 Corinthians 5:17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the newest come. So we’re waiting to catch up. Like, the world is way, how should I say that? How should I phrase that? Because it’s like, I’m a new creation already. Like I’m untouchable in the sense of like, okay, the physical, yeah. Someone can throw a stone at me.

Shea Watson: Someone could like run me over. You know, I can, I can hurt. I can be in pain. I can suffer. I can watch the world and be, be, be sad. Do you know? But I am a new creation. I the temple is inside of me already. See the temple is there. And it’s like, we’re waiting for the earth, the new heavens, and the north to catch up. And that’s the that is where we’re at right now in this, we’re in this, this pattern we’re waiting, we’re waiting. We’re either waiting for Christ to come or we die. That’s, that’s what we’re waiting for. Right. But it’s not something that’s negative. I hear people all the time. They’re like, I just want to go to heaven. I’m done with this. But you know, at the same time, there’s so much to be done, right. There’s so much work to do. And there’s so much, goodness, that is pouring into us through, through the rivers of flowing rivers, of living water, and all of these great things. And it’s like, so what are we going to do with this? Right. And like, I know your story. It’s like you sitting on a couch. You’re like, what am I going to do if I’m going to go to Jesus? Cause that’s a winner. Right?

Michelle: I think that the biggest thing that impacted me sitting on the couch, reading revelation on my laptop alone is this idea that all these things that the world is trying to do right now to fix things with a level of permanence like if we keep doing the work now, one day it’s going to pay off. And a generation in the future is going to experience the epitome of this working. Well, we’re going to escape the injustice, the oppression, the discomfort, the pain, the whatever it is. And there is a tension here in the sense of God, which calls us to do and seek justice. God calls us to do the godly thing. God calls us to store what he’s entrusted to us. Well, which means the earth, which means what we’ve been given individually means the children, the widows, one another, the poor, the wealthy, even everyone we’re supposed to respect and do and do well by them.

Michelle: The difference is the word of God is directed to those who are willing to read the word of God. And then more so to those who submit themselves to Christ, the ones who allow the Lord to be their savior, you know, in the simplest form, everyone in the world is an in on it. And so what we’re actually doing when we put the great commission aside and say, I’ll do that, or I do that in my spare time, or I make time for that. But my real passion is saving the dolphins. My real passion is social justice. My real passion is whatever it is. Even if it’s something that I’m passionate like human trafficking, right? My passion is this. If you do that separate from the great commission, right? Where in your head, you see them as two different slices of pie, because there’s something different that happens when it’s one slice of pie.

Michelle: But when it’s two slices of pie, that one will become bigger. And you’re building babble. You’re doing the tower of Babel again because you’re trying to build the perfect situation without God. And you’re trying to work out a perfect world where a lot of the people involved don’t have the holy spirit and as cutthroat as that might seem, we know that doesn’t work. We know the end game. We have the end of the story that tells us that a lot of these routes we’re choosing for ourselves are actually going to amount to temporary reprieve. But the temporary reprieve may very well still send some people to hell in the sense of hell’s the default. And with one choice you get to not go. It is very simple. It’s a beautiful, simple gospel, but the distractions can overwhelm us because we were convinced we can solve that problem ultimately. And not just temporarily, right?

Shea: One key keyword I keyed in on, right. Or one word I keyed in on passion. Ooh, you got to be careful passion. I mean like seriously, like, right, right. Like, well, in that, in the sense of like this, I, I get distracted within my passion. Right. What is my passion? Right? What is my focus? It do I do, I start to become so consumed over here with this passion. Now, if it’s godly, if it’s of God, from God, with God about God, then it, that it’s like, okay, that’s your starting block, right? Like, like to get, if you want to be over here helping human trafficking or social injustice or, or any of the things that we face and we’re naming the ones that are like huge guys and you know, the ones that are a lot of people’s tongues and we’re purposely doing that.

Shea: You have to put it through God, right. It has to be here. Right. So, so if I’m going to run my passion, I can’t run straight to the source because unless I’m filtering the information that I’m getting and coming in at me, then I’m not applying. Yeah. So passions can be awesome and they can be discouraging. Right. Because if you’re not in the hopefulness of God, knowing that he has ultimate everything, ultimate of Florida, ultimately everything, right. Then you’re going to be out here discouraged because things aren’t happening the way that you would like them to happen. Right. And so you have to resort back to the hope you have to resort back to eternal happiness or eternal joy. Right. Which leads to happiness. Believe it or not. I mean, like, you know, I think I was having a conversation, somebody, and they’re like, they’re like, and I and they’re just frustrated. There’s a lot going on in their life. Right. There’s a lot of challenges, you know, not their challenges, but other people’s challenges.

Shea: And they’re like, I just feel like I’m falling, you know? And, and, and they’re, cause they’re down, they’re kind of struggling a little bit. And, and I was like, but that’s not joy. Like joy is not happiness. Yeah. And they’re like, and so we talked about joy for a minute and like, I wake up in the morning, look, guys, I’m looking at you now. I wake up sometimes in the morning and I don’t want to get out of bed. That’s me. This dude that runs like God, 24/7 Imagine if I didn’t run God 24 7. Imagine if I didn’t wake up in that discouragement, say, Lord, get me through the day. That is my hope. Right. I mean, just because we’re Christian, just because we have Christ doesn’t mean that we don’t feel the impact of the world, that we don’t care about things that are going on, that we don’t have love and compassion.

Shea: I get that one too all the time. On the other side, you know, some people like, I just I’m, I’m struggling. I should be, I should have more joy, but they misunderstand what joy is. Right. So they think it’s happiness. And I’m like, okay, well, joy doesn’t necessarily mean joy and suffering. Y’all come on. I mean, look, I’m getting beat down, throwing stones at me. And I’m like happy. No, but I have joy knowing where I go and where and when, and who’s covering me. Um, and then on the other side of that, you know, you get a lot of hate and it’s like, you hate, you hate you, hate your Christian. You hate no, no. In fact, that same foundation, if I go to that foundation and I don’t go to myself and I don’t go to my feelings and I don’t go to my own passions, but if I go to that foundation, I speak the truth, but I speak it in love. So, you know, I love the direction of Revelation 21. Right? I love it. I love looking at the book of revelation saying, thank God I ain’t there for most of it. Right.

Michelle: You. know, what’s interesting is there’s a, there’s a taking it too far pursuit of social perfection. And when you do it, without God, you end up in line with the antichrist. When you look at how the antichrist handles things, you see how everyone is, codified controlled, but there are three and a half years of peace because everyone is practically a slave. Whether or not they feel that way or not. They’re being tracked. They’re being coded. You see this in countries around the world today that there are more and more ways of tracking, controlling, canceling all these things. And why are they all coming in when you, when you come against that, when you, when you speak out and point out some of the flaws or danger zones of those things, you’ll come and you’ll encounter people. And I say, well, it’s making things better. It’s keeping bad from happening the movie minority report where people are arrested before they even do it wrong.

Michelle: And then when you argue from the non-God perspective, you’re like, well, it’s keeping crime from happening. Do you know? But technically in the current time zone, innocent people are being carted off because of it. And so when you look at trying to go too far into why this is happening, it’s funny, they don’t go all the way down to its sin. And we all have sinned. They stopped just short of that. And that’s where we get in trouble because we start trying to control. Everyone’s free choice decisions to prevent all bad from happening. And that is pretty much on an antichrist level. God says, despite your brokenness, despite everything I will redeem and I will save and I will sanctify. So that with your free will, you will come to the knowledge and wisdom. And you will cohabitate with me in a world without pain, where there are no tears where there’s purpose without toil, you know, where there are all of these things in the way he always intended them to be.

Michelle: But what’s the key to that place. It’s not that we have to figure out the root of all of this and fix it ourselves. It’s that you need only have faith in he who did it for you. And that’s where it gets tricky. Because I remember in college, I would walk up the hill to the student union and be messing on my phone because everyone wanted me to sign a petition or learn more about what’s broken over in this area of life and help and have me sign up to help actively solve this issue and buy a brownie to raise money, to prevent this from happening. And it got to the point where I felt so overwhelmed and overloaded and worthless because I could not help everything, but everything was a problem. And you can end up there too, right? With hopelessness, discouragement, and bitterness.

Michelle: And it sounds kind of cold to say, oh well, you’re just focusing on then. And the pain is now. And that’s not it either because the Lord also says, don’t just say, I’ll pray for you to the starving person and go walk by what your Chick-fil-A is said to feed them. It says, but he doesn’t task us with solving Earth’s sin issues. He tasks us with going out. He always says go after the individual. Oh, that person that you just encountered is hungry and you have the ability to give them some food, give them some food. He doesn’t say solve world hunger in my name. And one, it’s trying to put the weight of God on you. That’s the devil. The other one is saying, come alongside me and let me use you to be a light, to lead people to me. And so it’s so important to have this, but not to become a fatalist.

Michelle: I think sometimes people have called it, grinds my gears. When people call my husband a fatalist because he says Revelation’s going to happen. That puts in perspective your life choices and what you’re going to commit to. Are you coming alongside something that’s promising? It’s going to eradicate something from the face of the earth because only God can do that. You’re going to go waste your time, or are you going to boldly? And in faith, say, Lord uses me. And today it might be, I’m a feed. Someone tomorrow might be, you’re going to speak the truth. Even though it’s uncomfortable. The next day, you’re going to take the jacket. You just saved up to buy and hand it to someone who’s freezing outside. And then five minutes later, you’re going to get covered in water and soaked to the bone in the dead of winter. And you’re going to show the joy of the Lord is my strength and start singing to the Lord. It’s going to touch someone across the street that watched that happen to you. That leads people to the Lord, to eternity, to heaven that actually eradicates their pain eradicating temporarily. Their pain is not the ultimate form of,

Shea: You could, you could flip that over to the ministry. Yes. So what I’m going to say on that is like, okay. A couple of things that I took out of that, let’s just start with sin first. You know, you’re saying that you get down, then you get stopped short of sin. Why is it? There’s such a stigma on the word sin. Okay, let me just break this down for all y’all sin failure, missing the mark. We are so eager to call out all of the other things that miss the mark. But we’re afraid to say to ourselves that we missed the mark too, that like we might be in need of something. Um, and so when I’m thinking of saying, it’s like, you get, like, when you get to that sin, no, no. It’s like, it’s a stigma. The minute they hear sin, it’s like, they freeze up. They’re like, no, you know, and, and I’m not talking necessarily all believers. I’m talking about people on the street. Cause it looks like, let me tell you about this fatalist

Shea: Because of the finish, because of what’s going on. This fatal is a guy that gets called fatalist all the time loves you. Cares for you. Listen to me right here, us, us, me, and you. I love you. If you’re a nonbeliever, I love you. I care. I care about you living in victory. I care about the person who doesn’t have Christ, the person who isn’t eternally secure yet. That’s how I fight this. Now let’s get to the ministry side of this. I love so much that my wife tells me, you gotta slow down. I can’t take, I can’t take on. I can’t take on every ministry. I think it goes two ways. It’s, you know, we want to fight all these battles and you know, on the Christian side of things, I want to fight a ton of battles. I want to jump into every pond.

Shea: Every pool be a part of, but I can’t. So I have to watch it, go back to the foundation. I go back to the holy spirit. I go back to God and I’m like, okay, God, that has to be where I start. That has to be where I finish because he is the one who’s going to guide me to where I need to go. Like today. It’s like, I’m sitting there talking on the phone with our church in Kenya and oh my gosh, like I gotta, I gotta check for some support. And I, and I just got in the bank account, right? Uh, pastor Jackson is, is, is, is online with me. And he’s like, um, you know, there’s some, there’s some, some, some discord between some churches, uh, you know, I’ve set up something, you know, I’m being prayerful that we can raise this money.

Shea: You know, he knows my financials, you know, he knows I can’t just throw out money. Right? And he’s like, I need 15,000 shillings, 150 bucks. Guess what I was about to send him today, 150 bucks. See, when we’re in tune with God, it works. When we talk to God, it works. Will we have a perfect world? No. And here comes my fatal fatalist verse for everyone. Cause I love to read these. I love to put these out there. 1 John 2:17 and this world is fading away along with everything that people crave, but anyone who does what pleases God watch, this will live forever.

Michelle: Right? And what pleases God having faith in him. That’s it. That’s it like everything else. It’s like a bonus. Right? But if you, if he says wash the car and you do everything else to clean your house up except wash the car, you’re just as disobedient as the person who just sat on the couch the whole time and did nothing. So it’s about obedience, not about looking at all the accomplishments I’ve done. I consider accomplishments. It’s about doing what he said and trusting that that’s enough. And that’s a sketchy place for us to feel like we’re like, Ooh, I don’t want to, but it’s so freeing because the weight comes off of you. The world wants to fix problems by labeling the bad guy. God wants to use sin as a great equalizer, pay for it all and say, now you can move on and be used. That sounds like such like I know I’m passionate and I’m like, Hmm. Do you know?

Michelle: But this is it’s. Um, it’s cause I’m happy. I’m passionate about freeing you, from the yoke of bondage that the devil wants you to play God and you are, and you don’t see it that way. And that’s the goal. If, if you saw it that way, a lot of you would be like, oh, I can’t do that. I don’t want to play God. But if he convinces you that this is what God wants you to do. You don’t realize you’re actually playing God in a play of things that fade away. And again, I have to say this over and over. Cause I think that this is the big resistance. It’s not that we’re saying to stop caring and stop helping and to walk away from organized maneuvers and ministries and collectives that are trying to solve an issue. That is not what we’re saying.

Michelle: What we are saying is change the way you see it to not even just look at the part of revelation that has the wrath of God, but to look past it, the future is a revelation. But I wanted to say the future is revelation 21 because, after all that scary stuff, there’s peace. There’s finality. There is a finality that continues forever. But in the best way, that is what we play for. That is why we do everything. That is why we feed people. That’s why we help people. But more importantly, that’s why we share the gospel. Even if it’s awkward, even if it hurts, even if it costs us something that is the priority, the rest is supplemental and led by the Lord. And that might look sporadic for you. Like every day, you’re helping in a different way. It might be hyper-focused into one area of ministry, a niche, but the key is why what’s the root. What’s your, why is your why to eradicate it from this earth or to bring God glory doing it? Do you think that it’s going to one day Saul, is it one day going to save the sea turtles? Cause that you’re living a lie, right? Redirect keep helping the sea turtles, but knowing revelation 21, put the, use that to put yourself and your decisions in perspective and then move forward.

Shea: Yeah. Galatians 5:13. Wraps that up. Really nice in that, in what you’re saying in the sense that it says for you were called to freedom. Brothers only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. Now the course that’s speaking to the church, that’s speaking to, you know, the believers, but you know, in that serving one another, that loving one another, we learn to love and that serving one another and loving one another and building that, that, that, that, that body, we have an opportunity there to turn out to the community because it also says, takes care of the needy. It says, takes care of the widow like you were saying earlier, right? And we want to be able to do that. We want to be able to live in this freedom. But for freedom crisis says free stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. See we keep, we keep, we keep re yoking ourselves to what enslaved us before he set us free. And we, I do it. I think this is one of the biggest ones I’m going to be more, so-so like open it and raw right now with y’all. I do it. And I had to bring Michelle a green tea latte today

Shea: But I’m saying, but we yoke back to this. The slavery, not the freedom, not the grace, not the mercy. We get back to the world. And, and that’s, that’s all this episode is really about this rewiring, Can have these, these things that we, we like to fight for. And we do have generations behind us. And we don’t know. I want my little girl to have a decent place to live too. I mean, it’s in your heart, it’s in your mind. Right? But watch this on the other side of that, as I look at it, I look at scripture, I look at the word of God. I look at society. I look at the way things are going. I have another responsibility and that is to build her up in the Lord so that she can experience joy and suffering so that she can experience, you know, this peace that passes understanding so that she can understand the grace and the mercy and the love that she’s about to that she needs to afford to someone else that she’s not just out there being reckless, and, and being a part of, but being someone who can bring change and bring the, bring the Bible, bring the word of God to someone else.

Shea: And so I have to look at it this way. I maybe it’s tactical in me. Maybe it’s the military in me. Maybe it’s just that, that prep, you know, it was like, yeah, it’s, it’s critical. Long-term thinking. And it’s like, so I sit there and I think like, no, no, no, man, the world’s going to be kumbaya. I don’t raise her up to be prepared. Right. Then I felt my daughter. I felt like the next generation. I’m not building her up so she can build the next generation. And all that next generation to generation to generation is my family will serve the Lord. Right? That’s it right.

Michelle: Am I investing more time, energy resources in general so that my child will have a comfortable life that fades away, meaning this temporal life, or am I investing more in them being built up for eternity, for their eternal security and with the skills that even if things aren’t comfortable anymore, they have the Lord. If you say, I pursue Christ first and we happen to have all this stuff, that’s comfortable, praise God. That’s awesome. But if you have all the comfortable stuff and you’ve invested all the time in getting a life, that’s lush here, a life that’s comfortable and safe and secure here. And yet the Lord is a little shaky, a little questionable. It’s never too late to pivot and, and to reassess because, with God, that’s, that’s the key, the repentance, which means changing your mind, the pivot. So that the next time you shoot, it’s not a miss

Shea: May the God of hope, fill you with all joy and peace in believing and believing so that by the power of the holy spirit, you make bound. And that is what we want to live in. And we’re hoping that the word of God will bring it to your life. Amen.

Michelle: This week’s question is what are your thoughts? Because we covered a lot. We rolled a lot and we want to see where you’re at. We want to have the pulse of our people. So the pantrypodcast.com as well as across social. So until next time, bye.

KEYWORDS: REVELATION 21. BOOK OF REVELATIONS. ETERNAL MINDSET. LIVING WITH CHRIST. CHRISTIAN LIFESTYLYE. CHRISTIAN LIVING.