Staying Focused: Navigating Blessings Without Distraction

### Quotes for Outreach

1. "What do you do when God's blessing distracts you from his will? For example, you prayed for children. You couldn't wait to be a parent. You feel like it's God's calling on your life and you promised God, God, if you would bless our lives with children, we promise to raise them to know you like Hannah did Samuel in the Old Testament. We will, we will raise them to know you and you prayed and you fasted and eventually you were able to have a child and God answered your prayer. But now, now they've grown up a little bit and they're pretty good athletically." [29:36](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "What do you do when God's blessing distracts you from his will? When the genuine blessing of God, your children, is distracting from the will of God, which is to be involved in his church. Or you wanted to, you wanted to go to college so bad, right? You wanted to go to college so bad, you would be the first in your family to get a college degree. You prayed, you worked hard, you got the grades, you got a couple of scholarships, you're in, but you didn't realize, right? You didn't realize that there were going to be a lot of things that you could do in your free time." [30:46](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "So God says himself, I'm going to bless you like crazy. He says it to his people, I'm going to bless you with things that you hadn't even thought of. There are things that I'm going to provide for you in this promised land that is going to be so bountiful. Don't let it take you away from me. Don't let it, don't let yourself think that you did it yourself. Don't become arrogant. If you do, it's all going to fall apart. How do you keep from letting the blessing of God distract you from the will of God?" [35:57](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "Humility is the difference between someone who is blessed and it ruins, and someone who is blessed and it strengthens. Humility makes that difference. I think about it in my own life. I've shared, I don't know where I would be without God. God. I was not on the trajectory I'm on in my life without him. And I did not have, there are clearly things that I'm able to do in my ministry that I was not able to do without him. But there may be gifts that he's developed in my life and things that he's been doing, and it's apart from me." [48:28](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "It's tempting, right? When we experience the blessing of God, it is tempting. It's tempting to think that the promises of God aren't what we thought they were, and we'll try to reinterpret them, or we'll try to make them something else because, well, I thought, but it's like when you get a new big house, you know, like just a new, big, nice house, and man, it needs new furniture, right? You can't put the old furniture in the big new house, and it needs new decorations because you got to make the new big house. I mean, you got to do it." [43:54](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


### Quotes for Members

1. "One of the things I see about how blessings become distractions here in Joseph's story is that blessings can become distractions when they feel spiritual. When they feel spiritual to us. Verse two said, the Lord was with Joseph. Did you know that there are only six people in all of scripture that it says that about? Only six. And Joseph is the only one it says it about more than once. That's a big deal. God, this feels very spiritual. This feels very right. This must be your best for me." [41:12](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "Blessings can become distractions too when they feed your ego. Ego is dangerous. I mean, there are very few things more dangerous than ego. Blessings, man, they become distractions when they feed into that ego. It says, so Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him and he made him overseer of his house, put him in charge of all that he had from the time that he had made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, it just, it prospered." [42:26](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Humility, we talked about ego, but humility is the difference between someone who is blessed and it ruins, and someone who is blessed and it strengthens. Humility makes that difference. I think about it in my own life. I've shared, I don't know where I would be without God. God. I was not on the trajectory I'm on in my life without him. And I did not have, there are clearly things that I'm able to do in my ministry that I was not able to do without him. But there may be gifts that he's developed in my life and things that he's been doing, and it's apart from me." [48:28](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "It's tempting, right? When we experience the blessing of God, it is tempting. It's tempting to think that the promises of God aren't what we thought they were, and we'll try to reinterpret them, or we'll try to make them something else because, well, I thought, but it's like when you get a new big house, you know, like just a new, big, nice house, and man, it needs new furniture, right? You can't put the old furniture in the big new house, and it needs new decorations because you got to make the new big house. I mean, you got to do it." [43:54](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "It's sort of like thinking because you're having difficulties in your marriage that we just need to go to church together. We're having difficulties in our finances, difficulties in our other relationships, difficulties, whatever it is. If we just go to church together, but just going to church together, it's not going to solve all the problems, right? It's not going to fully get better until you humble yourself before God and do the work of putting him at the center of your relationship." [41:47](Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)