It's amazing what we can do if we have someone who believes in us.
When I speak of bloodstained allies, I'm speaking of men and women with a common purpose who
also have common pain.
So they have a relationship based on a past experience and a present existence that has
drawn them together into a common bond and a common mission together.
It's kind of interesting some of the research that's out there, recent scientific research
at the University of Virginia.
I like this research because I can relate to it in so many ways as a leader, but also
as an athlete.
So let me read a little bit of the study.
Recent scientific research at the University of Virginia shows that people see their realities
differently when they have other people with them and alongside them looking at the same
objective.
In one group, they asked a mountain climber who would be hiking alone how long it would
take him to scale this particular summit that he was looking at.
So in the study, he's at the base of this high mountain and he's looking at summiting
that and they ask him how long will it take you.
Then they took another group of climbers who were asked the exact same question, but with
another climber beside them who would be hiking together with them.
So there's one group, you're going to hike alone.
They ask each individual hiker how long will it take you to summit this peak.
They get a number.
They get how many hours it's going to be.
And then the next group is two guys or two women, it was men and women, who come and
they are asked the same question about summiting the exact same peak.
Everything's the same, except when they ask the question, it's two of them together.
Here's what's interesting.
In over 75% of the cases, the climbers who were asked the question who would have a fellow
climber with them when they were asked the question predicted up to 40% faster time to
scale the exact same mountain.
So something about having a relationship, having someone beside you increased your faith,
increased one's hope and vision for what they could do.
And it just goes to show all of us in our design by God that the Lord has put people
in our life.
And when there's others in our life that encourage us, when there's others in our life that build
us up, it is amazing what we can do.
It's amazing what we can do if we have someone who believes in us.
So imagine several people in your life that believe in you, the difference that it can make.
And some of you have been through disaster after disaster.
Some of you have been through so much pain in your life.
And God is calling you now to not do this alone.
Don't walk with God alone.
You need bloodstained allies.
You need other men in your life.
You need other women in your life.
We're going to be talking about that in the next few episodes about how to find that,
what kind of qualities those people are.
But here's the deal.
And I mean, I'll tell you, I've met a lot of men and a lot of women that have been through
tremendous failures in their life, deep valleys.
But because they have kids now or because they're married now or because of people who
are dependent on them, they're making decisions based on that.
In other words, it moves them forward because of the sense of responsibility that goes with
that.
So again, isolation is the number one tactic of Satan.
And I'm going to tell you that community is one of the number one strategies of God for
building strong men and women.
Sean Accor wrote a book called Big Potential.
And I love Sean Accor.
I've read several of his books.
He is a professor at Harvard.
At least he was a professor at Harvard in what is becoming known as positive psychology.
And what positive psychology is, is the study of positivity, the study of happiness and
how we find happiness and how we become more positive people.
But he wrote a book called Big Potential.
Love this book.
And let me read a quote from him.
Sean Accor writes, I believe that there's one main reason why we are seeing.
Elevated rates of anxiety in our schools and unhappiness in the world.
A crucial mistake that every major religious tradition and ancient philosopher warned us
against is we've been trying to pursue happiness and success by ourselves in isolation and
in competition.
We've been told that success is a zero-sum game and if someone else gets happier you
feel worse in comparison.
We've also been told that happiness is a private, personal choice and that you can't change
other people.
This leads us to feel disconnected at work, hyper-comparison on social media and never
feel like we ever have enough.
This is what I call small potential.
I believe we have to do all this alone.
We have been taught to strip others out of our formula for success and happiness.
When you choose to be more grateful and positive though, that makes other people around you
more grateful and positive as well.
This creates a virtuous cycle.
The only way to achieve our big potential is to transform the pursuit of happiness and
success from a solitary one to an interconnected one.
I love that and I would encourage you to read Big Potential.
The Happiness Advantage was the book before that also by Sean Accord.
The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential are excellent books on interconnection.
The importance of the positivity psychologically and spiritually that occurs when we have deep
friendships and a deep relationship with others in our life.
Eugene Peterson, another author that I follow and I've read probably a dozen of his books,
former Presbyterian pastor, he's since passed away.
He wrote The Message, a translation of the Bible that's very, very popular.
Anyway, he writes this, Eugene Peterson writes,
Friendship is a much underestimated aspect of spirituality.
It's every bit as significant as prayer and fasting.
Like the sacraments of communion, baptism, friendship takes what's common in human experience
and turns it into something holy.
So he's speaking of the spirituality of friendship.
I'm calling it bloodstained allies.
It's the spirituality of friendship through difficulty and hardship.
Now from my perspective, I don't believe you really develop a deep friendship, covenantal
friendship.
A bloodstained ally, unless you've been through hard times together.
So if the relationship is completely just built around positive things, wonderful things,
nothing wrong with that.
I'm not saying go create problems for yourself, but I'm just saying that I'm talking about
something deeper than just somebody you go fly fishing with or somebody that you ride
motorcycles with.
As important as that is, and I think that's the beginning of a covenantal friendship and
it's also the beginning of being bloodstained allies.
But bloodstained allies are those that you have a mutual pain together or you're going
through something or they're going through something in which you can identify with them
and that you can love them through that.
So bloodstained allies are kind of those men and women in our life where you have nothing
to lose.
You have nothing to gain other than empathy.
We need empathy in our lives and these are people who bring that kind of empathy into
our life.
And in my case, the men in my life came because they knew me from a stage.
So they were at the church that I was at and so they appreciated my teaching, but we didn't
really have any kind of a close relationship before that and there was no need for it in
my life.
At least.
But now that I was at this place of desperation and depression and struggle, and as they began
to listen to me around that fire pit, that began to birth something within them where
they could identify with something that I said.
And so what began as kind of a one-way communication, me sharing my heart, became two-way because
of my vulnerability and from my life to them, it gave them permission to be vulnerable with
their lives.
And so we need vulnerability.
We need people that we can share our heart with.
And when we have that, it makes us stronger.
We come away from that kind of connection with, I think, a new sense of courage.
So I'm not talking about personal counseling.
This is not really about relationships.
where someone listens and then they tell you what to do,
or they just listen and they just listen.
Now this is, Bustained Allies are other men,
other women in our life who, they listen,
they understand what you're going through,
but then they share about stuff that they've gone through.
So it's mutual sharing, and it's also mutual listening.
So in the word, the rubric of this would be,
in my opinion, vulnerability and authenticity.
It's that vulnerability, that getting away from the BS
of the religious talk and gotta be perfect.
It's saying, I feel, I'm completely lost, I feel broken.
I, you know, I thought about taking my life.
Those kind of, I'm talking about deep level stuff here, man,
that we all go through.
When we share that, the other person's not gonna go,
what?
You know, it's more like, yeah, I know what you mean, man.
I know that feeling of desperation in my life too.
What you're doing is you're creating this virtuous cycle
of vulnerability, but also these are allies.
So these are men and women that have a passion for the Lord.
They have a passion for God.
It's not just a pity party,
but it's actually a purpose party.
It's getting back to the purpose.
And that's why I think it's important
that there is a common theme of seeking first
the kingdom of God in a relationship like that.
So even in the Cave of Adulim with David
that I talked about in the last episode,
you know, they rallied around David.
They didn't just come together and, you know, everybody,
okay, we're gonna have now community time
where we're gonna share how much money we owe to everybody
and how we need to wear camo more
so we don't get caught by the sheriff.
I mean, it wasn't that.
It was they were coming together
with a mutual understanding that David should be king,
that David's our leader.
And so these are men and women that come together
and say, Jesus is king.
Jesus is our leader.
And we're gonna help each other.
We're gonna have empathy for each other
so that we can become the missional disciples
that God's called us to be.
That's a huge part of these studies.
Now, these are secular studies by Shawna Core at Harvard,
as well as the University of Virginia study.
But what they're showing is that there is this human element
of being created in the image of God
that was built into us by God to be able to need
and to pursue other people in our life that make us better,
that make us more courageous, and that make us more strong.
In the next episode,
I'm gonna talk about some of the qualities
to look for in a bloodstained ally.
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