Experiencing Love and Purpose Through Relationships
Discover the true purpose of life as Daron explores the importance of relationships in this episode. Drawing from the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he emphasizes that life is not about things and places, but about meaningful connections with God and others.
By examining the example of Jesus’ relationship with the Father, listeners are encouraged to prioritize relationships over competition and material possessions. Join Daron as he delves into the essence of true fulfillment and the power of loving, humble, and servant-hearted relationships.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️Life is fundamentally about relationships, with our connection to God being the primary relationship, followed by relationships with ourselves and others.
⚡️Achievements and material possessions cannot fulfill our inherent need for human connection, as illustrated by the biblical story of Adam and the Garden of Eden.
⚡️The importance of relationships is further emphasized by contrasting the unity at the Tower of Babel with the introduction of Abraham’s covenant with God, signaling a shift back to divine relationship.
⚡️Cultural obsessions, such as that with pets, can be indicative of our struggle with human connections and an avoidance of embracing our relational design.
⚡️Jesus’ model of servanthood and humble obedience offers a blueprint for how we should engage in relationships with one another.
Quotes:
- “Your life is so much bigger than failure, right? Your life is not defined by those things.”
- “I almost gave up on a lot of things in my life. Thank God. And I don’t mean that as just a trite thing. I’m saying. I mean it. Thank God. At least one of my gifts is perseverance.”
- “You were not created for things and for places. You were created on purpose by a relationship, for the purpose of relationships.”
- “Life wasn’t designed to be a competition. When we start to feel like we’re competing with our people, with our places, with our things, I think we know, hey, I think I’ve forgotten about what life is.”
- “You can trust the heart of God. He’s created you on purpose and for the purpose of relationships.”
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Tagline: Created on purpose and for purpose.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Daron Earlewine podcast. We’re still in January of 2024. Still feeling the momentum of a new year, right? I hope you are. Statistically, you have probably already blown your New Year’s resolutions by now. I’m not trying to be Debbie Downer or a Daron Downer. There’s no reason to down here. I’m just talking mathematics. I don’t like them either. I’m just putting out there. Chances are you’ve already screwed it up.
That’s why we have this thing called grace, right? It’s not about you getting knocked down. It’s about times you get back up. You can do it. I believe in you. Don’t completely give up because your life is so much bigger than failure, right? Your life is not defined by those things. And I’ll tell you what, if I’m honest, there have been so many times in my life where I almost gave up on faith. Excuse me.
I almost gave up on a lot of things. And some people may have a capacity for near perfect performance. Maybe that’s their thing. They’re like, hey, you know what? I’m so consistent, so disciplined, that if you want to see a person that’s like, I’m really defined by how well I do things, you wouldn’t see my life record. Some people are like, you know what? I don’t like to learn things the hard way. I prefer to study what other people have done and skip those steps.
I would say the first, probably good 35, maybe 40 years of my life, I was more likely, I’d like to learn things the hard way and then not learn them and then keep failing at them. And there are so many times that I feel like I was ready to quit, and I don’t necessarily mean that I was ready to quit on life as far as suicide or something. Thank God I haven’t had to battle that. But there are plenty of times that I was ready to throw in the towel on a lot of things in my life.
And thank God. And I don’t mean that as just a trite thing. I’m saying. I mean it. Thank God. At least one of my gifts is perseverance. And I want to pray that God gives you that in this year, that you’re not going to have perfection this year, promise you, but you would have perseverance because you’re going to need that kind of long suffering, persevering spirit if you’re going to make it in relationships. And that’s what we’re talking about in this episode, in this series, life is and life is relationships. First episode, we talked about the fact that life is relationships. Everything else is just the details. But life is relationships because God is a relationship if you are created by God and he is a relationship.
Bottom line, life is a relationship because God is one. This week, we’re going to go a little bit deeper, talk about the fact that life is relationships. Because you were created in God’s image, you’re created in his image, he’s a relationship. So your life becomes a reflection of that in which created you and in that that should play out in different ways that we actually order our life and the way that we live our life being that relationships are going to be number one.
This is going to be the number one thing. And I shared that quote from my friend Jamar about the fact that we’re always going to be in competition with a noun, relation relationally, right? A person, a place, or a thing. And right off the bat, we get an understanding of where the order should be. I asked you guys at the end of the last episode to take a minute and try to order those. What’s number one for me? Right? Relationships with God, relationship with myself, relationship with others. And then to get even more honest and say what’s really ranked, if I say that we’re talking about people, places, or things, what’s number one for me? Is it people?
Is it God and people? Or have to be honest, right now, my number one relationship is with things and places. We get a really amazing clue as far as what God really wanted for us in the way he created us, as we look at the very first pages of the Bible. And I love it, right, Adam, God says that he makes mankind in his own image. And then as you get into chapter two of Genesis, we get this crazy cool image where God takes Adam and he’s made Adam and he’s made all the animals.
And then it says that God brings the animals to Adam to name them. Which. How long did that take, right? Which mind blowing idea. I mean, we’re not here to debate how long creation took, what never, and all that stuff, but this had to go on for months and months and months and months and months. All day long, God’s just marching through animals, through, right? Adam’s like, elephant, zebra, whatever, and that process is over.
He’s named all the animals. And you could imagine Adam’s headspace in this point, can’t you? At least I can, like, as a man. So all the women listening love all the ladies that listen to the podcast. You’re going to be like, preach, Daron. That’s true, because men are stupid. But he’s sitting by himself. He’s just named all the animals. You can almost just hear Adam sitting there in the garden of Eden being like, yeah, I’m pretty much the best.
If you’re talking about number one on earth, that’s me. I partner with God. I don’t know if you guys are paying attention. We couldn’t even say guys because he’s talking to animals, because there’s nobody else on earth except him, right? It’s a pretty impressive accomplishment. I just named all the animals totally connected to God. We’re in a relationship, you could probably say, without really even getting close to being not true.
I’m the most successful and accomplished man on earth. And you couldn’t argue because he was the only freaking man on earth. But he had just done something really remarkable. He had just named all of the animals. So at this point, Adam’s sitting there surrounded by his accomplishment, and it’s a great one. No one’s ever done this before. In fact, he is the most successful man on earth. So all of his things, this is the thing I do.
You call me the animal namer. That’s kind of my deal, right? I know you got, like, the dog whisper later on in humanity, but I’m the animal namer. No one else can actually have that title, because I’m the first guy, and then where I’m going to name him. So this is kind of my jam. Most important person. Here’s my accomplishment. I hope you like my things that are all over this place. So he had the things and then the place.
Let’s talk about the place. He is literally imperfection. Like, God created the Garden of Eden. It was supposed to be an eternal dwelling for humanity. Like, by the way, you were never supposed to die. We were supposed to live eternally in God’s presence on this planet. And the Garden of Eden was the place that God started it, right? He didn’t have to work. He had to work to get things to grow and to plant. There was no toil and working the ground. It produced its fruit in season, out, season like this.
It was all watered by springs. It was paradise. He was in eternal paradise with all the things that he accomplished. So things, check places, check. God himself, check. Adam had it all. And you would think, and maybe even as you’re looking at 2024, you’re like, freak. If I could have God and all my things in like, a perfect place, one, two, three, check. My life would be absolutely complete and perfect because I think my life is actually just me.
For me. Then we get to verse 18. Says, then God said, it’s not good. Remember he had said everything else was good. Created this first day, this day, this day, this day, all the days. And he saw it and he said it was good. He gets to verse 18 here and he says, it’s not good. You can see him basically talking, Father, son, holy spirit, talking to, like, they’re just kind of have a conversation because they’re a.
Hey, guys. You guys see Adam over there in the garden? It’s not good. Oh, really, son? Why do you think it’s not good? I don’t know, holy spirit, just think about it for a mean. Just take a look at Adam right now. Holy spirit, what do you, what do you sense? I sense there’s something missing in his heart, son. Yeah, Father, what do you think? Guys, I don’t want to agree with you, but I have to. I have to agree with. There’s. This is not good.
We see Adam. We know him. I mean, we know him completely. We affirm who he is. We just got done. He killed it. He named all the animals. So good. We blessed him with everything he needs here, but something missing. It’s not good for the man to be alone. Retranslate. It’s not good for humans to not have relationships with other humans. So God says, I will make a helper suitable for him. It’s not good.
We got the one thing right now, guys, in creation, it’s not good that that guy’s alone. And I promise you, if God had created an e first, it’s not a man thing. He would have been like, it is not good for the woman to be alone. And I said this in the last episode, but my guess is that as you’ve been thinking about your ideal 2024, it is so easy to do. And this is not like an indictment on you, because I can be in the exact same place and a lot of times I am is there are things in places that have been the escape. If I could just have these things in these places, right? And honestly, a lot of the times, if we think if I had these things, I could be judged less by the people.
If I went to these places, I might be able to get away from these people. And it’s so easy to think that the thing that’s going to satisfy the depths of our soul’s desire in 2024, I want to live my best life there. And in 2024, in fact, my word of the year is best. I’ve been praying for it. This will be the best year. And all I can think about is the places I want to go and the things that I want. In fact, I was so hurt by people in 2023, and in 2022, and for that matter, 2021, and let’s not even talk about the year 2020 is. I’ve given up on people, I’ve given up on relationships, and basically, I’ve been trying to suck all of the satisfaction for my soul out of the things that I have in the places I go.
And I don’t want to admit it, Daron, and I’m really, actually pissed at you that you’re making me deal with it in this freaking podcast. But I feel lonely and I feel depressed, and I’m starting to feel not human if that’s where you’re at. I’m really sorry. That’s got to hit hard. But the answer for that is really, really simple to say, really difficult to live is the reason you’ve gotten there is because you were not created for things and for places.
You were created on purpose by a relationship, for the purpose of relationships. Now, the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky, and he brought them to the man to see what he had named them. And whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds, the sky, and the wild animals. But for Adam, no suitable helper was found.
Quick thought, I want to interject here. Somebody’s going to be offended by this, but I’m going to take the risk. I think our current culture’s obsession with pets is actually an indictment on the fact that we’re broken. Here he goes. He’s going to go in on pets, right? I’m not going to go in on pets. I just want to bring a cultural observation. This next generation, not real big on having kids, right? Because we have fur babies.
Yes, fur babies. Okay. There is an interesting thing that happens in human society, is that if we don’t actually have children in a rate that outpaces the death rate, we cease to exist. Right? Like extinction. It’s not like, hey, that’s that spotted owl situation. Don’t dig in the spotted owl area because the spotted owls are almost extinct. Talking about you, me, Bill, Ted, excellent adventure, whatever.
Human beings cease to exist if we don’t have babies that outpace the death rate. And I don’t exactly know, I didn’t check the stats on that before this, but I have told that we’re getting a little tight on that. And I think some of this, it’s like, have you just met somebody? And I hope that you’re not listening to the podcast where it’s like, you meet them and they’re like, yeah, I have 16 cats. You’re like, oh, 16 cats, that’s interesting.
Why do you have 16? I just love cats. Do you have any friends? No, why? Because cats are better than people. Ooh. And the difficult part is we say stuff like that thinking it’s an indictment on other people. The difficult part is actually, it’s an indictment on you. You’ve actually lost sight of the fact that you were not created for animals, you were created for relationships with people. Yeah, but Daron, it’s so much scarier and difficult, and it takes so much more hope and so much more love and so much more faith to engage with people because they’re dangerous and they’re hurtful and they’re broken like me.
That is absolutely true. And that is why we try to just fill our life with pets. And then we don’t understand why pets and technology don’t fill our souls. And we go, I’m so depressed and I’m so lonely and I hate my life. So I’m just going to get another dog, or another cat, or another iPad, or another ps five, or another whatever it is. Another set of Uggs, another hat, another car, another fill in the blank. I know what I need. More things, different places, more pets.
It’s not working because life is relationships, and everything else is just the details. And the details will never satisfy your design if you have 16 cats or like 1200 dogs. I wasn’t trying to offend you. I’m just trying to make us get our minds around reality, because I want you to actually live the life that you were created for, which is a life full of relationships. So the Lord God calls man to fall into a deep sleep. And while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.
Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man. And he brought it to the man. And then the man said, this is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. And that is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. Genesis 2:18-25.
They were brought to this intimate relationship where they felt no shame. In this moment, they saw each other, they knew each other, they affirmed each other, and they gave to each other. Those four elements are absolutely integral if we’re going to have loving relationships. And next episode, this little teaser, next episode, I’m going to unpack those four terms and help us get an understanding. And for me, these four words are becoming a laser like focus for me and my life in 2024. And I want to walk you through that. That’s next week. You got to wait for the rest of this episode.
Listen, I just said a lot. I wasn’t trying to offend anybody, but it’s probably good for your mental health, emotional health, and your ability to finish this episode and not write me hate mail. If we just take a quick commercial break, we’ll be right back.
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Hey, I got a quote for you. Shared joy is a doubled joy. Shared sorrow is a halved sorrow. When I heard that quote, I knew I had lived it right when I was going through the death of my dream, the living part of it, when it was being created, I did it with other people and it was amazing. It doubled the joy. But when it died and I tried, had to figure out what do I do with my life? I was so glad to have people walk that journey with me. They really did help half the sorrow. I know you’ve probably experienced the death of a dream as well. And here’s the good news. God wants to resurrect a new purpose in your life, and you can’t walk that journey alone. That’s why I’m so excited to announce the release of The Death of a Dream small group curriculum this curriculum is video-based. You’re going to get together with a group of people, watch videos where I’m teaching concepts through each chapter as well as powerful insights that didn’t make it in the book.
They’re going to help you walk together through the process of discovering God’s call in your life. Seeing God resurrect a sense of purpose and hope, it’s going to be amazing. There’s also a great journal that goes along with it. It’s going to help you have a process and a guide to observe, reflect, discuss, and open up the insights that are going to lead you into what God wants to do in your future. So listen, here’s your quick action steps and get a group together. Invite some friends to join you.
Go to daronearlewine.com/the-death-of-a-dream. Buy the curriculum, schedule a time, get together, and begin the process of walking together towards the resurrection of your purpose. Once again, it’s at Daron Earlewine.com. The death of a dream. Thanks.
Hey, we’re back. And let’s jump back in. Life is relationships because you’re made in the image of God and the relationship we were created for in the image of, right. It actually provides us the image to emulate for our relationships.
So that’s a special way. I try to be creative using a lot of I’s in one sentence to say this Jesus, right? He’s the example that we follow and actually just the whole trinity, not just Jesus. Father, son, Holy Spirit. When we see how they interact together and we see how they interact with us, it gives us the image we need to know. This is how I engage in relationships. Because if I’m made in his image, the image of my relationships in love, the ideal would be for it to look like he. Like the way that he loves, right? This is why I think Jesus said things like, I only do what I see the father doing, and I only say what the father tells me to say.
Like, I’m so connected in this relationship that I’m just a reflection, a perfect reflection, a perfect manifestation of who he is in this relationship. And that would be what I would love for people to say about me and my life is they say, man, Daron is a perfect reflection of the relationship that he sees in Jesus. But we get this wrong all the time, because back to Jamar’s quote, we’re always in relationship or in competition with the relationship between a person, place, or thing.
That word competition is tough, very competitive person. I have discovered in my life that I love, love to win, love winning. But what I have come to realize is I actually hate losing more than I like winning, which is kind of weird. Like, I could win something and be really excited that I win. But when I lose something, I am so fiery pissed that I lose. And no matter what it is, be the dumbest thing ever. I hate losing. I’m very competitive. I have raised three competitive boys, actually, like two and a half my middle sentai.
He’s not as competitive, and he’s way more fun to be around. But he gets that probably from my wife, because she’s not that competitive. But we are competitive as human beings. And here’s what I think I know is true, is life was not designed to be a competition. Life wasn’t designed to be a competition. When we start to feel like we’re competing with our people, with our places, with our things, I think we know, hey, I think I’ve forgotten about what life is.
And it didn’t take long for us to screw this up, which is kind of funny or not funny. Genesis one, two, three. Right? We get the creation of humanity. Adam realized, God realizing, hey, he needs a helper. Genesis three, everything goes awry. And by Genesis eleven, we get a real picture of what we’re really about as humans in Genesis eleven says this. Now, the whole world had one language and common speech.
As people moved eastward, they found a plain of shinar and settled there. Then they said to each other, come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They used bricks instead of stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to heaven so that we can make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered all over the face of the whole earth. This is the story of the tower of Babel. If you’re not familiar with the Old Testament, eleven chapters into the Bible, humanity is going, yeah, you know that relational situation we had? Yeah, you know what? How about this? How about we compete against everybody and see if we can’t be the best?
And the natural inclination of humanity is to build, to build and to compete. And this was not God’s initial design for us. Okay? So the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, and the people were building. The Lord said, if as one people speak in the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other.
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. This is why it is called Babel, because there the Lord confused their language, the language of the whole world. From there, the Lord scattered them all over the face of the earth. What happened here, you say, look, this was a great, unified project. Daron, what’s God? He doesn’t like unity. That’s the problem here. No, it’s not the problem here. I think the problem here was God was seeing that as a group, as humanity being able to speak and grow together, they had lost their actually divinely designed purpose and were saying, hey, we’re not here for relationship.
We’re here for accomplishment. We’re here for a thing. We’re here to compete. They made their purpose a thing, a tower, power, accomplishment, trusting in their own creation, not in their creator. When they say that, said, listen, we got to do this. We got to build this. We have to do this thing and build this great name for ourself. Otherwise, we’ll be scattered over the face of the whole earth. For me, what I’m seeing there is that this thing and their ability to trust in what they could build to protect them was showing that they had lost connection, that our purpose is relationships, first with God, then with each other. We trust him in this loving relationship and lead with him.
Now, it’s a situation where competition and things and places took the place of the relationship. Now, I think it’s interesting that’s in Genesis eleven, Genesis 12. If you jump in your Bible, you’ll see that in Genesis twelve, it begins the story of God establishing a covenant relationship with Abraham. And until I was studying for this podcast, I don’t know that I connected those two. I’m not a biblical scholar, and I’ve not done hours of research. So I’m not saying this is 100% true. I’m saying this made me biblically curious, that as you’re reading the Bible, you have this moment where humanity comes together and God says, man, if they can do this, there’s nothing they can’t do, meaning there’s nothing that they couldn’t do to separate themselves from understanding that this is about relationship, not about competition. It’s not about things. It’s not about places. This is about love.
But in the next chapter, he goes, you know what? We need to rethink and actually begin establishing a deeper relationship with this fallen humanity. And he calls Abram to himself, establishes a covenant, becoming one with him. Right? Promised to protect and provide for him. They exchange some of their name. Abram becomes Abraham and father. Abraham becomes father. The nation of Israel, end of Islam, end of Christianity.
That’s for another episode. He establishes the relationship because God knew how important it was. So what do we do with that, with one another? How do we not get into that competition side of things? Well, first and foremost, we make sure that things and people or things and places are not in first place. And then when we see our relationships, we say, okay, I’m made in the image of God. God is a relationship.
When I look at how he interacts with himself, what do I see? And one of the most beautiful passages of scripture that gives us an understanding of, how do I do this? I got to keep people as the number one thing. God’s the number one thing, and people are next, right? And places and things are down the list. But we go to the scripture where it talks about the way that God, the way that Jesus interacted with God the Father, the way that this worked in relationship and his purpose on earth.
And Philippians two, starting with verse five, it says this, in your relationships with one another, good place to start if life is relationships. Paul saying, hey, listen, guys, life’s relationships. So in our relationships with one another, we need to have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. So the way that Christ interacted with his relationship with the Father and the spirit, that’s the kind of relationship we need to have with one another. And he says this, who, being in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used to his own advantage.
Competition wasn’t there. This wasn’t a competition. This wasn’t some hierarchical thing. I’m better, you’re better. I’m this, you’re that. No, it was an interdependent, non-hierarchical, self-serving, humble, holy relationship. He didn’t see equality as something to be grasped right or somebody to be used to his own advantage. It was not a competition. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.
Being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself. Servanthood, lack of competition, humility, and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory, God the Father, Father the Son, the spirit coming together, not competing, but in a servant-hearted, humble, obedient way, being there for the purpose of the relationship, for the mission they were given, and what happens, right?
Jesus humbles himself to the Father, then the Father exalts the Son. There’s this back and forth of humility and affirmation and seeing and loving and giving and blessing, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful model for how we interact with one another. So what’s it look like for you? Kind of coming back to the same thought we had last episode is, where’s the hierarchy for you? Is it God, you people? Or do you have to say, you know what, Daron? Places and things are number one, and my life is about a competition. I’m building my own tower of Babel because relationships are hard. I’ve been burned by them. I don’t want to trust them again.
But you’re right. I’m building this tower in my backyard and building this tower in my garage with my trinkets and my stuff. I’m building this tower with all my places I visit on Instagram or maybe my pets. But there’s something missing because I don’t want to admit it. But you’re right. It’s not good for me to be alone. It’s not because that’s not what you were designed for. You can trust the heart of God.
He’s created you on purpose and for the purpose of relationships. And he will teach you how to love, how to live, how to forgive, how to serve, how to humble yourself, how to be obedient. He will teach you how to do it as he did it, how he’s doing it. He’s still in a relationship with himself. And through that, he will exalt you and lead you into experiencing the love and the hope, the fulfillment, the purpose that your heart desires and that your heart was designed for.
Listen, I’d love to hear from you. I’d love this to be a conversation, not just a monologue I do with you. So listen, you reach out to me. Text me 317-55-0507 you can always reach out to me through direct message and all the socials. You can email me directly. Daron@blackbirdmission.com I’d love to talk with you. I’d love to have you process what maybe God’s teaching questions you have, what you’re learning through this episode.
Can’t wait for this next episode. We’re going to look at the story of Jesus with the woman at the well. We’re going to look at the idea of the four pillars. We need to build a step into this kind of loving relationship in 2024. I’m going to hit you with those four pillars in the next episode. Until that time, remember, God’s for you, not against you. He’s near you, not far away, and he’s created you on purpose and for purpose. Thanks so much for downloading this episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Talk to you next time.