Character Under Pressure "The Resolve to Double Down When Life Squeezes" Kevin Brechbill

When you think of the word "double down," what comes to your mind? Is that a positive thing or a negative thing to double down? When someone gets in trouble and you confront them about it, and they double down on it, they won't back up. Or someone's doing something very, very good, and then you hear about something or somebody else that isn't doing as well, and you say, "Man, we need to double down on what we're doing, like keep doing what's right." So that's the thought I want to leave with you guys to think about: to double down on what you know you're doing that is right and good.

I don't know, just coming out of KFW, and you hear all of so many people's struggles in their personal life, in their seeking to find good churches, people getting converted, they can't find churches close to them, they're lonely, or they're in churches that just aren't doing well, they're struggling, they don't know what to do about it. And there's just a lot of complexity just from the broad perspective of footprint of Christianity.

And I came home from that, and I'm still getting phone calls from it. And I just want to encourage everyone, what you're doing right, double down on it.

Just figure out what you're doing right and really double down on it. And what you're not doing right, work at changing. Okay? So this is my next thought.

When you think of an orange, what happens when you squeeze an orange?

Orange juice comes out.

No matter how many times you squeeze an orange juice, an orange, orange juice comes out. In fact, every time you squeeze that orange, what do you get? Orange juice.

The question is, why? Why is it that every time you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice?

Because it's what's inside.

And no matter how many times you squeeze that orange, you will never get apple juice.

So let's extend that metaphor to the next level. What happens when you get squeezed in life? Someone says something to you that annoys you, someone says something to you that's offensive, someone says something to you that you dislike.

When your children are stressing you out and your spouse does it again, and you need to get up tomorrow morning and go to work again, the monthly bills that used to come every month now come every week, and another person that is clamoring for your attention that you don't even know,

that is life. You're being squeezed.

And my question to you is, and only you can answer this. Well, only you can answer, do something about it. Other people will see what comes out. The question is, what's inside will come out? It's a very simple thought. You all know this.

But if you find yourself frustration, tension, anxiety, stress, anger, bitterness, if that's what's coming out when you're getting squeezed, it's your opportunity to change and to work at what is coming out, to make sure orange juice is coming out and not apple juice.

And you may say, "It's a simple illustration," but it's powerful.

Don't lie to yourself if something comes out that you dislike. Acknowledge it. If you don't acknowledge it, you won't change. And as Christians, our goal is to be redeemed. Okay? And one of our greatest tests is when we're squeezed in life, we see what comes out. That's how we know.

I mean, we talked about Saul being put in for king. He may have—I mean, I don't know how he would have known what's going to come out until he's tested in it. So when you're put in a position, you find yourself being tested, look what comes out.

You can't give away what you don't have.

And you only give away what you have on the inside.

That's what you give away because that's what's coming out. So I want you to think about that. Double down on your character. Double down on what you see coming out. You can change that. Takes a little bit of work, but you can change it.

When you get squeezed in life, you will either look at that situation as—and you will look at it as a lesson, or you'll be a victim. And every time you see something comes out and you turn yourself into a victim, you won't change that. But if you turn it into a lesson, then I think you will take ownership of that, acknowledge it, and recognize if the wrong things are coming out.

It's something we all have to work with. We just have to be honest with it, and we have to do it every day.

I recently heard a quote, and I kind of agree with this. He said, "Everything worthwhile in life is uphill." And I thought, you know, it's kind of true. Anything that's not worthwhile that's easy, you probably don't want it. Right?

So everything in life that's worthwhile is uphill. And what we mean by that is you have to work at it. You have to truly work at it. And you have to use the power of God in your life to truly change it. It don't just happen. But God gives you that free will to do that, to use His power or not to. It's at your disposal, whatever you choose to do.

So here's a verse. It says, "But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person." Just look at that verse and let that comprehension start to take place. What comes out of the mouth? So when you're squeezed, usually this starts to work.

It proceeds from the heart.

And it's interesting to me, does anybody have any thoughts? And this defiles a person. Anybody have any thoughts on what that means?

Matthew 5:16, it says, "In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." So every time there's something happens in your life, you have the opportunity to let your light shine, that good things come out. That's how your good works are seen to others. That's how people know that you're different than the average person. It's not rocket science. It's just everything. The difference between the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of God. It's everything.

And in Corinthians, it says this, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all in the glory of God." It's this idea when we decide to be a Christian, everything that we do matters. Everything. There's no exceptions. And I've kind of taken the motto is I binge out on details.

Because I've learned in life, there's this thing in our modern culture is the details don't matter. No details matter. It's just the big things. It's actually the opposite. It's the details that matter how you respond in life. In everything that you do is what allows you to be in a position when you're made king like Saul, that's when you find this out. If you've paid attention to the details and then you're tested, that's when you'll either fail or make it. You'll either be King David or King Saul.

But it happens now in your life. And this thing of doubling down in your personal life and in our communities, in our families, that's what I want us to just really capture is not only is your character, but it's in your families.

And it's in our church community. How are we doubling down to do everything that we do to the glory of God?

So Frederick Douglass said this, "It's easier to build strong children than to fix broken men." I'll never forget when I first heard that quote. I think I was 19 years old, if I remember right.

Who would disagree with that? You don't have to raise your hands. But when you think about it, you have a completely innocent child who has the beginning of life. Is that easier to build, or is it easier to go over here and fix a broken 70-year-old man that's lived the life of many, many things? Which one's easier?

It's a no-brainer, right?

It's not that the 70-year-old can't be changed, can't be fixed, but it's a long road back. It's difficult. So we sit here with so many young people and youth in our church. And when I was at Fresh Start, they did all these studies and this idea of this age-related change. Okay?

When people have the most potential to change to when people are the most least likely to change.

Be glad you're all—most of you are young.

So most change happens from childhood to 20. That's when the most change. You have the most potential to change. And then there's a section of 20 to 30 that a lot of times people can take what they've learned from childhood to 20. And for 10 years, you can implement that. What's interesting is they say 30 is when you're mature.

Okay? Which is kind of really neat. You got a long life ahead of you to impact the world. You change a little bit from 30 to 40. You change from 40 to 50, which I'm just about done. And after 60, very, very few people change.

Now, where category are you in?

Okay? But there's something even really interesting.

There's this idea of extroversion and openness out there. Okay? It's your ability to be influenced from the outside and your ability to hear. Okay? When we get to be like 70, your ability to be influenced and hear.

My dad was 87 when he died. While his kids always laughed. To influence him, that was a difficult task. He was locked in. What he was, and he was good. It's just that the modern world just didn't influence him. It was kind of funny.

However, in the important things of life, what I like about this thing is if you learn at a young age to develop and change and you learn humility, you start that process and you can actually receive and be open to outside influence. You learn the tool of being open. You develop that character thing. So when you're 30, 40, 50, and 60, you're actually continuing to be open. And what's interesting is studies have shown the people that do that are when they get older and they have this ability to change, they're then relevant in their generation.

If you're stubborn at 20 and you never change, you're not relevant in your current generation. You understand what I'm trying to say? So the secret is what Jesus says.

Learn to be humble and understand yourself. Evaluate yourself every day and learn to change. If you never learn to do that, you're going to wake up someday and be irrelevant, and nobody's going to care about you or listen to you. And it's the thing you want.

I call it life returns.

Your life will return will happen, I don't know what age exactly, but somewhere when you get older from my age and on. That's when your life returns start to come back. But it's what you did till the time you're 50 matters. And three-quarters of you sitting in here or more are in these opportunities. So what you do in your character, the details matter.

How you raise your family and relate to your children that are changing from childhood to 20, you hold tremendous keys. And sometimes when you first get married and you have one baby and all your life, you want to get married, you want to get married. It's a wonderful thing in the world. Then you get married, babies show up, and they're like, "Oh, I was more in a bargain for."

And it's tough. It's difficult. But not to lose sight of life returns. Okay?

And the other thing is I think each of us come from—okay, I'm trying to think how to say this. We grow up in families, right, that have faults. They have weaknesses. And you will probably look at your parents and you're going to say one, two, three things, whatever. You don't like that. Okay?

It maybe even made you bitter or made you mad.

But if you don't do something about that, you're going to pass that—you're going to act like that, and then your children are going to act like that. You have the privilege to change that, to break that in your generation.

You can break that in your character, and then you can break that in your family tendencies. We all have them. Look at those things you want to change and change them, but do it when you're young. You'll never regret it.

I actually think there's church cycles, and this is a big subject. But how we relate to one another, the greatest thing in our Christian world is people, of all things, are lonely. They don't feel like they're connected to the churches. The churches are having struggles.

We can change that in our generation. I think it's a powerful opportunity.

I want to talk about something else. And this is just practical stuff that I've learned in life. I like to talk about your bandwidth. What is your bandwidth? And I think this is critical to understand. If your character, when you get squeezed and bad things come out or good things come out, if bad things come out, that means your bandwidth is narrow. You're not going to be able to relate to your children well, to your family, and to the church.

But if you have a bandwidth that you learn to respond well, then you have the bandwidth to respond to your children. And then you have the bandwidth to step back and relate to church community. Then you have the bandwidth even more to handle when people want to be converted into the church, to handle that. But if you don't have the character to start of that bandwidth and be able to expand yourself, you're not going to be able to do it. You're going to break down somewhere. Does that make sense? It's critical to understand that.

Trust me, I've gotten pushed to my limits. Okay? But I had a coach tell me one time, he said, "If you learn to handle your bandwidth, be that person. It's amazing how you can always take a little bit more and not panic over being overwhelmed." It's difficult. I'm not saying it's easy. And everyone has their capacity.

But he taught me something. You can always push your capacity a little bit more. And I found that to be true. If I relax, I can handle it. And I don't mean everyone has to be like me. I push myself too hard. I get it. I take too much on.

But if your family tendency, if you grew up with a mother yelling at you, you have the opportunity to change that and not yell at your children. You understand what I'm saying?

And there's a thousand things like that. A thousand things. Your children will be impacted by how you live and how they're going to relate to the kingdom. That then snowballs into church community.

The experience you give your children in church community will determine the next generation of churches. Okay? So we sit here with all these opportunities, and that's what I want to impress upon you. It's easier to build strong children than to fix broken men and really understand that ability.

Something else I recently heard.

And it's learning to break. So I want you to understand and to understand how to learn to break through when everyone else is doing it.

How many people in the US likes to pay their taxes? Does anyone know?

The best estimate is about 10%. Okay? About 90% of Americans complain about paying their taxes.

However, only 60% of households that pay taxes pay taxes. 40% don't pay any taxes, but 90% complain.

And about 50% of all households, there's only 60% pay; 50% claim they pay too much. So we got a lot to complain about.

I recently heard a businessman in a business meeting, and he was talking about people that pay taxes. And he brought this whole idea up. And this was a category of men that pay lots and lots of taxes. And he was asked, "Do you complain about paying your taxes?" He said, "Absolutely not. We are way past that."

10% of people that pay taxes are way past that. And it's the people that pay enormous amounts of taxes. Enormous. Billions. They write billion-dollar checks out.

Now, what for lesson is to be learned here?

How do you get to the point of breaking through something that 90% of the people do?

If you complain about taxes, that's your window. That's where you stop. That's your wall. If you look beyond that and taxes, is this a thing that you pay? And it's not something you worry about. They go beyond that.

Do you understand what I'm trying to communicate? So when you're in a—when you grow up in a family and you have a difficult family trait, you have a difficult character trait that you want to bust through, you have to look beyond that to break through it. You can't just be stuck in complaining about it, or you'll never go past the 90% of the people.

It's an amazing thing how that you can become stuck and you claim that the very thing that you hate, the very thing that's keeping you from making progress, and then the ability to break free from that and not worry about it. I think we as Christians need to be a part of that 10%, by the way. I think we should be leading the way.

I think that should not be in our vocabulary. That's difficult, especially certain times of the month.

So Matthew 5:16 says this: "In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." And these are the same two verses I said before. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Learn to break through those difficult things in your life, whether it's in your personal trait, family, and building churches. There's difficult things we have to break through in churches. All right.

Another verse. It says, "By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples."

Now, I was thinking about this. So we as Christians, and I hear this about radical Christians, intense Christians, serious Christians, they want to bear much fruit. Has anyone asked the question, "What is bearing much fruit? How do you bear a lot of fruit?"

I'm curious. Does anyone have any thoughts on that? I really got some answers. What's bearing a lot of fruit?

What does this look like? How does this take place? When you look at someone, "Am I bearing a lot of fruit or am I not bearing much fruit? Are you bearing a lot of fruit or don't you know?"

Everyone gets scared to answer.

John 15 talks about receiving the commandments. And I don't know where that verse is from, but I'd say bearing fruit is abiding in the commandments. Okay. So obedience, that's a way to—I mean, obviously, that's the way we bear fruit is through obedience. But how that lives out is your obedience in how you're being squeezed in life. Okay? What's coming out? It's a daily thing that you can see.

How you respond to your family, how you're executing and living out your family at home, that's a part of bearing fruit. How we get and relate to one another in church life, that's a part of bearing fruit.

And I think when you really see this happening is when you get older in life, your returns.

And I'm starting to see something in life at 50 that when you buckle down and you try to work hard at your character, you work hard at raising a family, you work hard at living out your church life, you work hard at trying to evangelize to the people you meet, it's a multiplier. When you get to my age, all of a sudden, things start to multiply and you literally can't keep up.

You have so many opportunities. You literally can't keep up. But I remember being 20 and I thought not near enough was happening. I couldn't get any traction because I was stuck in working it out. And I don't know how to communicate that to everyone, but I really want you as a church to try to dial that in, to understand that what you're doing in your life, and if you do it well, it will multiply in about another 10 or 20 years, like big time, if you do it well. And that's the inspiration I want to give to every one of you young families.

Every person, if you start now and you do it well, it'll multiply. And in some ways, it doesn't take that long. I'd say 10 years. If you do something well for 10 years, it'll multiply.

Just a couple of verses here. So the Bible talks about these lofty things. Okay? And in Psalms, it says, "The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like the cedar in Lebanon." Okay? So it's this idea of they are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green. They declare to the Lord. They declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. It's this idea that when you do things right every day, the multiplication just starts to take place. And when you're old, you reap that.

Okay?

It's actually true where it says you reap what you sow. If you reap bad, you reap bad. And if you reap good. And I think the problem is when you do evil, I think what people misunderstand is it multiplies evil. It gets worse.

But when you do what is right, it multiplies good, and you end up in a way better place that you even thought was possible. And I don't think we understand how God has set that up. I see it and I experience it. I see it in other people. But to believe that when you're in it is difficult.

And I'll close with this verse. "If you abide in me and my words abide in you," okay? This is Jesus to John, "ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you." So if you live your character right, you respond right to your families, you live right in church, and your life is set up, you've done this, do this every day. I think this verse actually starts to become true.

When you ask something, whatever you wish, it will be done for you. I've never been able to understand that verse till recently. It's a really strange experience.

But it comes from multiplications of following what is right. And that's what I want our experience for our church to be, that this can be multiplied in our lives, in our church families, have more churches. But it takes everyone dialed in. There's no shortcut.