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Hey, what's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Preaching to the Choir. The lull. What a strange word. L U L L. The lull in the gunfight. I legitimately mean lull in gunfight. I could correlate this easily to my circumstance where I was in a intense fight for my life, for the security and sanctity of the relationship between me and my children. Alarmingly, like many people go through, whether a divorce, whether a toxic circumstance, a lot of people go through this in their lifetime. My mom went through this. When I sit back and I enjoy moments like yesterday where we played out in the snow with the kids and brought them inside and set up tents in my studio, which is why I'm doing this here in my master bedroom. It's a mess. It's complete chaos. But no way would I rather have it than being completely immersed in my children's lives. But it feels weird. It feels strange. It feels clumsy and awkward. How do you go from not having your children at all and fighting for them in a court of law to just getting back to. Elicits a lot of emotions as well. I don't want to derail this conversation with those emotions, but it does. Here's a clear example. My son fell on his butt out of the trampoline that's 10ft from me. Yes. I have a trampoline in my master bedroom. When he fell on his butt, I was concerned because the first thing I thought, oh, my gosh, he hurt himself. We're going to have to go to the hospital. Should I have so much anxiety in me that I'm fearful of my children falling because of the potential repercussions that I might face from an accident? No. And so the same emotions that I had in periods of lull in real gunfights is similar to how you might feel in your lull in your life. But it's the wrong perspective, especially when it comes to God. There is an idea of a lull because it's silent, but it also makes us anxious. It makes us fearful, especially the fear of the unknown, not knowing if we'll be back in the gunfight and not be prepared. So it doesn't afford us peace or resolution, just the absence of noise. But see, in the infantry and in special operations, we don't look at gunfights as a bad thing. We look at it as a period of conflict that we have to work through, almost like we're going to intentionally put ourselves in that position. In fact, we do. We raise the right hand. We volunteer to go to Airborne. We go through Special Forces selection. We're intentionally along the way, in the process putting ourselves in a position to be invested in the conflict. Now, I'm not telling you to invest in your conflict. What I'm saying is invest in your individual preparedness for the conflict. We've conditioned ourselves to believe that if nothing's happening, then something's wrong. If nothing's urgent, nothing's on fire. We get unsettled, we get uncomfortable. So we fill the space with distractions and we create problems. We even self sabotage. You might be that guy. I'm not that guy. You might be that guy. And I know plenty of guys. And when I say guys, I mean plenty of people. You don't recognize the quiet without the chaos. You. You don't understand loss without stillness. You don't understand failure unless you slow down long enough to look at it honestly. In the military, when we have a lull, we look at it as an opportunity. We have this acronym called mwe. Men, Weapons and Equipment. Because we upgrade our circumstance in a low. We check on the men, the status, to reorganize, reconfigure to top off food, water, ammo. So technically, what we're doing in LULZ is preparing. So the next time we're in another gunfight, we're better than we were before. And that's God's plan for you. There's a line in the Bible that talks about seasons where not everything is a time to build or fight or move. Some seasons exist to slow you down on purpose, and this is that season for me. I'm not really on social media anymore. I go on Instagram periodically to do a few posts to check in, and then I delete it from my phone. Recently I saw all these people that I no. At a Christmas party, I saw people that are in my circle post about every aspect of their lives and every moment they spend with their children and their spouse and their loved ones. And I don't mean to judge, I just look at it differently now because that used to be me. Now I was very intentional because I was doing it for the gram, for a marketing opportunity, for inspiration for others, to motivate people. Now I don't do it at all. Yeah, sure, I'll post something periodically, but I have no desire. I saw recently as it relates to stoicism, where somebody said, if you have fewer arguments in the year, then that means you're advancing, evolving, and growing. Not always is it necessary to invoke our opinion on things. And people ask me all the time. What, what's my opinion? More often now than before, especially in this season, I don't have an opinion. I'm good. And I think that was intentional. You see, when things go quiet, most people panic. They confuse silence with abandonment. They assume God stepped away. But Scripture definitively tells us to be still. Not passive, not lazy, just still enough to listen, to prepare. That stillness is uncomfortable because it removes noise and exposes what you've been avoiding. And there's a reason for that lull. Even in my own uncomfortable skin, trying to interact with my children once again, where I'm afraid to do certain things, to be certain way, because I have no confidence anymore, I realize that God's given me the opportunity to have perspective, self awareness, to be present for the first time in a long time. Look at Elijah. He'd been in conflict non stop, burned out, running on fumes. And when he finally stops, God doesn't show up in chaos or spectacle. He shows up in the quiet. Not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, in the lull. Each time I've been in a gunfight, whenever I've had a lull, I've reset, reconfigured and re attacked. It's benefited me because I've been more capable the next time around. And that matters because we keep waiting for God to speak through intensity, explosions, breakthroughs, dramatic moments in our life. But most of the time, direction comes when everything else shuts up. You see, the law is not inactivity. It's reproduction. It's assessment. It's where you check your wounds, where you realign your priorities, and where your individual discipline replaces emotions. And this is where most people screw it up. Instead of holding their position, they rush. They don't have the tactical patience, so they start pushing open doors that aren't open. They start breaching doors that are unlocked. They make emotional decisions because quiet makes them anxious. They rather fight something unnecessary than sit still long enough to hear what gods I actually saying. Ooh. Do I need to heed this advice? Because I've been in the fight for a year and I'm looking for it. I'm looking for the enemy to lift their head. I'm looking for opportunities. Because the quiet and the stillness and the peace, it couldn't be something's wrong, somebody's plotting, or it's just a season. And there's a reason Scripture ties trust to direction, not the other way around. You don't get clarity first. You get obedience. And then direction comes. If you're in a quiet season right now. Sit in it, don't rush it, don't self sabotage and don't light a fire just to feel useful because the law isn't a punishment. It isn't neglect it for sure is your preparation. God does his best work in the unseen, in the quiet in the spaces where you stop trying to force outcomes because you want control and start paying attention. Stay disciplined, stay obedient, stay patient because when that firefight kicks off again and it will, it will you'll be ready for it just differently this time. Appreciate you guys. I do want to say before I close out my friend NASA Holmes whose husband is a retired fifth group guy who's been through a very difficult time this year. Both of them have has just written a book on daily devotions for veterans but I think it applies to a lot of people. I'll link that down below in the description. Appreciate you guys till next time. Peace.