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Welcome to The Overflow—the bonus round of faith and real-life conversation with Brandon and Susan Thomas. Every week, they unpack the powerful insights, behind-the-scenes experiences, and personal reflections that didn’t quite fit into Sunday’s sermon.
This is where the conversation gets practical, honest, and a little bit unscripted. Whether it's an encouraging word, a deeper dive into Scripture, or a hilarious moment from their week, Brandon and Susan bring fresh perspective and spiritual fuel to keep you going.
It’s real talk, fresh takes, and full hearts.
These are the conversations too good to cut and too real to miss.
Welcome to the overflow with Brandon and Susan Thomas. We're so excited to get to talk with you today. We're talking about some of the values of Keystone Church, and we may get to two of them today in this conversation, or it may just be one. But today, we're gonna kick it off with talking about we always bring our best.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, values are a big part of carrying culture. Culture is what you want everything to feel like. Culture is what lives away from you, and values are the carriers of culture. And values is how the rubber meets the road.
Speaker 2:It's the practical, this is what we're going to be doing. And when we began to really try to evaluate, well, what are our values? What do we want? Culture is by design or default, as we say all the time, and what do we want by design? Well, we said we believe it honors God, and it's good church to bring our best.
Speaker 2:By the way, it's a great family culture statement. It's a great family value. It's a great business value. We always bring our best. And you know, when I think about bringing our best, I think about just how in the Bible, God, when he asks for us to bring a sacrifice, he said, Bring your best.
Speaker 2:And this is never more illustrated than in Malachi chapter one when the people of God got into a conversation with God, and God in the book of Malachi is correcting them. He says, you're not sacrificing correctly. They say, well, how are we not sacrificing correctly? Here it is. In Malachi one:six, a son honors his father and a servant his master, but if I am a father, where is my honor?
Speaker 2:If I am a master, where is your fear of me? Says the lord of armies to you priests who despise my name. Yet you ask, how have we despised your name? This is it. By presenting defiled food on my altar, how have we defiled you?
Speaker 2:This is like a teenager talking back. How have we defiled you, you ask, when you say the Lord's table is contemptible, when you present a blind animal for sacrifice. Is it not wrong when you present a lame or a sick animal? Is it not wrong? Bring it to your governor.
Speaker 2:Would he be pleased with you or show you favor? Ask the Lord of armies. And what's going on here is a conversation about bringing your best. Yeah. It's a conversation about worship.
Speaker 2:It's a conversation about is God first in your life, and when we offer God, are we offering God our very best?
Speaker 1:So good.
Speaker 2:And that's the conversation that I think we should have today to, because it is about our church, about bringing our best. We believe that our church and any other church, that when Christians try to spiritualize sloppiness, when Christians try to spiritualize a lack of preparedness, unpreparedness, I believe it dishonors God. We need to bring our best.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think this is a person thing, a person issue first, before it ever becomes a place issue. And the church is made up of people.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And so it's us dealing with the things inside of us that would prohibit us from bringing our best. And first of all, why does it even matter to God? Well, you just read why it matters to God. I think about the verse where God says, do everything as unto the Lord. Yes.
Speaker 1:And so that assumes that we care what the Lord thinks and we care about pleasing him. Do everything as unto the Lord as if it's for him. So whether you're changing diapers today in your house, whether you're doing a pile of laundry, whether you're going to work outside the home and you are pushing your pencil and doing accounting work or whatever it is that you're doing at that doctor's office working, admin or physician or everything in between, teacher, whatever you're doing, do it as unto the Lord. And nowhere should that be more true than in the church where we wanna bring our very, very best to our God. And makes me think, the first thing I think about, I don't even know what to call it, but it's like best bandits.
Speaker 2:We are the best bandits?
Speaker 1:No, like what are the things
Speaker 2:that rob us
Speaker 1:of It's being our like the best bandits, those bandits that rob us from being our best. And I just start having these thoughts roll around in my head. Go. And you think of them if some pop in your head. But what would keep us from bringing our best?
Speaker 1:I think easy answer, laziness. Laziness. An elevated desire for comfort. Comfort is not a bad desire. I mean, I wanna be comfortable.
Speaker 1:We all appreciate comfort, but there's a a draw and a lure of comfort, I think, that drags us to a ungodly place where we elevate it. And as a result, one of the examples is we just, we don't bring our best. We bring whatever can get by instead of bringing our best. How can I get by? So laziness, I think greed.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna hold back the best for me. Whatever the best is as I would define it, that's for me. It's for my agenda, my purposes, Or something I'm placing else,
Speaker 2:you give to the wrong things your best.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, misplaced best, there's another bandit. Misplaced best. It's good to give to good things and it's important. But when we miss the main thing, which is God and everything he's about and everything he's commanded, we've missed the best that God would have for us. I mean, what else would be a bandit?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1:Pride?
Speaker 2:I don't know about a bandit, but what I think about is when I don't understand the why, I don't know how to call that a bandit, I won't bring my best. The old, you know, like the motivating Adrivance. Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 1:You don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just don't know. I'm thinking more of it's a motivation. It's more of a motivation bandit. Like, I don't know what the, why are you doing this? What's the big deal?
Speaker 2:What difference does it make? You know, so it's kind of a motivation bandit. It's, I don't just, maybe someone doesn't accept that this is a value, and they need to be convinced that it is a value, right? When I think about that, I think about, well, why would I bring my best? I think the first reason is because God brought his best.
Speaker 2:You know, God models for us not just what gets by, and the ultimate example of that is when Jesus, when God sent his son, Jesus, the sacrifice for us was nothing less than God's best. I'll say that again. The sacrifice for our souls, the sacrifice that redeemed us, the sacrifice that paid the debt for our sin was nothing less than God's best, God sent his son, his son, his firstborn son, into the world so that we could be made right before God. That is God bringing his utter best. And I think when this is the gospel, and this is the way that the gospel works, I don't behave to get the approval of God, I behave from the approval of God.
Speaker 2:So apply that to this point, I'm not excellent to get the approval of God Yeah. Or to be godlike. I am excellent, and I bring my best because God brought his best. Yeah. And I wanna be a good image bearer, the Bible says in Genesis one.
Speaker 2:We are image bearers, and so I want to reflect who God is to others. And Susan, I really do believe that when we are good image bearers and when we bring our best, it really does say something about who God is to others. You know, if you are in the workplace and you're on a team and you just work really hard, you show up, you're there early, you're there late, you're working hard, and you have a unique kind of joy, right? You maybe socialize with some of those teammates, especially if you're single and you're getting to know people and you're hanging out a little bit. But let's just say you're socializing or you're at a lunch break or whatever it is, and somebody has taken notice of your motor, and they say, Where does that come from?
Speaker 2:When you give God credit for that, man, that's an opportunity for someone to come to Christ. Wow. That's an opportunity for their destiny to be changed just by witnessing your motor. Yeah. By witnessing your excellence, and for you to be able to say, man, God brought his best for me every day.
Speaker 2:I wanna bring God my best. So I mentioned Malachi chapter one. I believe that when we show up and when we work, that that is like an offering to God, and that's what worship is. Living a life worshiping God is not just singing. You live your life worshiping God, and worship is our response to God's activity in our life.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So God brings his best to me, and I respond by bringing my best to God. So my hard work day is a worship day. My dotting every I and crossing every t, that's an act of worship. When I am tired and I come home and I'm tired, instead of flopping in front of the TV, I get on the floor and play with those kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's me bringing my best.
Speaker 1:100%.
Speaker 2:Why? Because God brought his best for me, I can do this.
Speaker 1:So good, that is so good. And it plays out in the church. You know, let's think about what are some of the ways that we bring our best when it comes to God's house and God's church? Because that's a value of our church and that we believe it absolutely is a value that should overflow into every caveat of your life, every space of your life,
Speaker 2:I'm in the so inspired by our servant leaders. And if anybody's watching this outside of Keystone, we call our volunteers servant leaders. And our servant leaders just blow me away. Yeah. And when I see what they create, what I see, what they produce.
Speaker 2:I'll just give you one of the really good examples is parking. Yeah. Okay? Our number one lead at Keystone is our parking, and the reason is not because we designed it poorly when we built this campus. It's because our ability to reach high school students has grown so far beyond our size.
Speaker 2:We're punching way above our weight. We just reached so many high school students, and now reaching young adults. Just in And They, our
Speaker 1:singles, yeah.
Speaker 2:Young adults, singles, we in our family, how many cars could be on this campus When at any given
Speaker 1:we're at our absolute, you could call it worst, we'll have six family members cars here at the church individually.
Speaker 2:If you're counting Ellie and Tyler, that's probably seven.
Speaker 1:That's seven, yeah.
Speaker 2:They're married.
Speaker 1:They are you married, yeah. And so what a blessing that we have so many young people in our church, not only in our church, but ownership. They feel ownership. They're serving, they're getting up early, they're coming
Speaker 2:But multiple they're driving onto, and these young people One car.
Speaker 1:One person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one car, one person. They're driving onto campus. They're serving one hour, they're attending another, maybe serving a couple hours. Our parking team, they are there early, they set it up, they do such a good job.
Speaker 1:They smile, they're kind, and all kinds of crazy weather. I mean, Texas summer heat, 100 degrees to the, you know, ice storm that you have outside or the snow or the, you know, whatever the cold weather might be, rain. I mean, these people
Speaker 2:are They're so filled with joy. Let's pick another area. Yeah, every area.
Speaker 1:Think I've got one.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So there is a woman in our preschool area and I mean, this sweet woman has been faithfully serving in the preschool for, it has to be over a decade. And her kids have long since passed through the school aged years. And she faithfully, with joy and a smile on her face, is in that kid's room. And I will walk by and look in the window, and I'm like, there she is again. There she is in again, just serving her heart out, loving these little ones who have nothing they can give to her, but she's bringing her best for the Lord, and she's planting seeds in little ones' hearts.
Speaker 1:That church is a safe place, church is a fun place, church is a warm and loving place, and she's bringing her best.
Speaker 2:I'll give one more. Our student leadership, our crews, our support team, and production, but particularly I wanna talk about our crew leaders. Our crew leaders, I mean, they all deserve such double honor, but our crew leaders, which is basically small group leaders for our students, they have signed up that I'm going to be a small group leader from seventh through twelfth grade, okay? I'm gonna see them from seventh grade all the way through graduation. I'm gonna be there every week.
Speaker 2:Of course, you're gonna miss it from time to time, but the standard is I'm there. And then I'm going to camp. Yeah. And so they commit to go to camp.
Speaker 1:It's like the Green Berets.
Speaker 2:It's unbelievable, the level of commitment, and I'm convinced that level of commitment corresponds to the level of life change that we see amongst the students. Know, recently you and I were out shopping for a refrigerator. The refrigerator that we had had been with us for well over a decade. I mean, we're talking long time, maybe fifteen years, and it had been our refrigerator, it was time to move it to the garage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of our children had carved her initial on the front.
Speaker 2:Ava, Ava wrote a big Giant A. You were trying to protect her. I'm not gonna protect her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, giant A.
Speaker 2:Giant A. She didn't know was doing anything wrong. She just thought it needed her name on it. We stopped her before she got any further, but it's now an affection for us.
Speaker 1:Used to cover it with magnets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it was time to move it to the garage, and it was time to get a new refrigerator. So we're at Lowe's, and we're shopping, and the person who helped us, She was Shout
Speaker 1:out to Sheila at Lowe's.
Speaker 2:Yes, she was so helpful.
Speaker 1:She was.
Speaker 2:She was knowledgeable.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:She cared. She began to give us extra knowledge. She's like, Well, okay, if you need help with this, this, this, here's a business near where you live that could help you with this, this, that. I mean, she's helping people come by, she's attentive. When she's working with us but someone else were to walk by, she would, she'd call him, it was a woman, she'd say, Hey love, I'll be with you in just a moment.
Speaker 2:You know, how many times have I been waiting on someone and they just act like you don't exist?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:This woman was so filled with drive and so filled with what I think is biblical dominion, she was bringing her best. How many years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, she'd been there for a long time. Don't remember what she said.
Speaker 2:I think she said she'd been at different stores, but I mean, twenty five years she's been doing this, think is what she said.
Speaker 1:One is we talked to her, we discovered that she's a believer. She
Speaker 2:loves Jesus.
Speaker 1:She loves
Speaker 2:Jesus. It's some baptist such
Speaker 1:picture, such a picture of bringing your best everywhere you go. And that sweet lady sure did.
Speaker 2:I was so struck by that, and you know what happened? When she brought her best, it blessed. Yes. When she brought her best, it blessed you and me. It made, and she did a great job.
Speaker 2:Probably And
Speaker 1:bought her refrigerator back.
Speaker 2:She probably upsold her, you know, really, I just was like, I believe anything you say.
Speaker 1:That's
Speaker 2:true. Because you're so good at what you do. I am putty in your hands, and she sold us something more expensive now that I think about it. But when someone brings her best, man, it just makes everything better, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Yes, it does. And I believe that it's because we live in a world that has been broken by sin. We always go back to the story. Everything was created and there was nothing broken. The world was operating as God designed it to operate.
Speaker 1:Genesis three happened. Things broke bad. Sin crashed in, destroying everything in its wake. And so now everything gravitates towards broken. Cars get older and start to break down.
Speaker 1:Milk spoils. Decorations go out of style. Couches begin to get holes in them, you know, if you sit in them long enough. All these things, that's a natural gravitation. And so to bring our best, it's an effort.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:We are efforting against a resistance.
Speaker 2:Ugh, let's talk about that. So like an example is the garage.
Speaker 1:Oh, boy.
Speaker 2:The garage.
Speaker 1:The garage. Anybody got a really clean garage? Hats off.
Speaker 2:Here's the crazy thing about our garage.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I will work in the garage, I will organize it, I'll even build shelves, and I feel so good. But what happens? If I don't stay on
Speaker 1:it Yes.
Speaker 2:Stuff will stack up. Stuff will get in the way. Stuff will, you know, I'm in a hurry or it rained, rained and I'm bringing stuff in real quick and it just finds a home, or I come in from fishing and I've gotta hurry and just, and guess what, I don't go back and clean it, all of a sudden you have a cluttered garage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or let's talk about my piles.
Speaker 2:Do you wanna talk about your piles?
Speaker 1:No. They bless your
Speaker 2:I didn't bring this up. Would you like to talk about your piles?
Speaker 1:I mean, it's an ongoing life struggle.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I appreciate cleanliness, but messiness can at times be a challenge
Speaker 2:with I like some neat. Yeah. You like things
Speaker 1:You don't care if it grows fungi on it. You do, you
Speaker 2:I do do.
Speaker 1:You do care. But I just piles. And it's if if it's not stayed on top of, it's like piles just grow. They just grow, and they pile up around our
Speaker 2:house. I saw something recently where it said, don't put down your dishes, put them away. Yes. So don't allow them to stack in, this is our problem, don't allow them to stack in the sink, you wash them off, and you put them in the dishwasher.
Speaker 1:Did that person have children?
Speaker 2:I know, that's a good question. I know. Boy, wouldn't it be great if we had such a great dialed in excellent culture that our kids would put away the dishes into the sink, into the dishwasher.
Speaker 1:Maybe some of y'all are joking.
Speaker 2:We have gotten them to the sink.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, are to the sink.
Speaker 2:They are to the sink.
Speaker 1:But it's just the natural thing. I mean, it is the we're up against a resistance, whether it is your piles, your garage, your dishes. But even in the church, there's a resistance to just kick back and let things happen. And this is where you can even get into philosophies, which you may be about to do, where you could even begin to take on the brokenness of post, I call it post Genesis three. You can take it on and normalize it to the extent that you accept it.
Speaker 1:Well, this is just how things are. And you can even assign spiritual value to it, which we would call a poverty mindset. And that could be in the church, which I'm thankful this is not the mindset at Keystone Church, but that somehow if you let things break down and become dilapidated, that's almost a spiritual thing rather than investing
Speaker 2:Oh, can I
Speaker 1:in the carpet being cleaned?
Speaker 2:Okay. I, can I, can I, I, I go?
Speaker 1:Go, go,
Speaker 2:So I gotta exercise some of this church hurt, right? Oh, no. I
Speaker 1:hate
Speaker 2:that all I'm gonna church hurt. That's a whole another pocket. I will say this comment. I understand church hurt.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And there's definitely some people who've been hurt. Yes. But I think too many people made
Speaker 1:cultural mantra out
Speaker 2:of there that
Speaker 1:it is against the Lord.
Speaker 2:All right, with that said, so here's one of those moments. I remember when we went to a church, my father was a brand new pastor at a church, and he would go to ministries that were struggling, and he would build them up. And he went into this church, and they were struggling, and I remember they had orange carpet, and there was tears in the carpet, and they had been held together literally by duct tape. Now this is the house of God.
Speaker 1:It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2:And when you would ask people about it in leadership, they said, Oh, well, we don't spend money on fixing carpet, we send money to Africa. And I'm like, okay. So meanwhile, you're willing to be culturally appropriate halfway across the globe, but you're gonna ignore the culture in your backyard. Yeah. Who is your neighbor?
Speaker 2:Who is your neighbor? Is your neighbor the person in Africa, or is your neighbor the people that pull up and they see your sloppiness and they want nothing to do with you? I say you don't have to choose. You can reach your neighbor, and then that will empower you to reach the person in Africa. You don't have to choose.
Speaker 2:That was such a dumb thing for them to say.
Speaker 1:Well, isn't that exactly what, in a sense, Judas did? Who would I'd have to Google it. Remind me of the story, right? But the lady, I think, breaks her alabaster Oh,
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, yeah. Or is Yeah, this just her go ahead.
Speaker 1:Right? I'm maybe mixing up
Speaker 2:the John's the one who comments on Judas, right?
Speaker 1:But Judas basically is like, well, we could give that money to the poor. And Jesus says, well, the poor are always gonna be with you. I will not always be with you.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Judas did not see the value of Jesus. Oh, man. He did not see the value of Jesus, and he also had ulterior motives, John told us.
Speaker 2:Doesn't that go down to the Malachi one point. You don't see the value.
Speaker 1:You
Speaker 2:don't see the value of what I'm bringing should be my best because of the object of my give. Yes. The object of hard work is ultimately my worship to God. Jesus didn't see the value. That's great, Susan.
Speaker 2:Jesus didn't see the value. I don't think we see the value. Yeah. We're talking about hard work, and I think one of the, you know, you talk about bandits. I think a best bandit, bringing your best, bandit is we measure ourselves, my best is measured by, let me think how I wanna say this, your best is measured by other people, not potential.
Speaker 2:So a bandit would be that I'm measuring myself, I'm comparing myself to others.
Speaker 1:Comparison.
Speaker 2:Comparison. There it is. Boy, that was rough one.
Speaker 1:That was It was there though. Comparison. Comparison. I'm looking over the fence, and I'm measuring myself. This is exactly what Cain did with Abel.
Speaker 1:The very first fight and murder recorded in the Bible is he looked over at his brother and he began to seed with jealousy because why is God accepting his mine, which God was looking at the heart and the motive and all the things in between. Cain was not bringing his best, but Abel's motivation was I just wanna bring God my best. Cain's was, what's the least I can bring and I'm gonna compare to my neighbor.
Speaker 2:You know, kingdom of God falls into this as well. If I'm constantly just comparing myself to someone else, then I've set the lid, and the lid is everybody else. But what if God was to do something special than you? What if the kingdom of God advances by God raising up people who do new things? By raising up God who do things better, and it challenges others to be better.
Speaker 2:You and I have a joke. We think about the food that we loved when we were younger, and we go, man, what happened to that place? Man, I used to love that. Man, they've lost it. And then we joke, have they changed or have we changed?
Speaker 1:Like Long John Silver's?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like Long, I think Long John Silver's is exactly the same.
Speaker 1:They're little crunchy things. I loved them so much, they're crunchy fish.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you something. I'm about to continue It's the same. It's the same. Are we sure? We've changed.
Speaker 2:We've pushed the needle, okay? And God, the kingdom of God is about the people of God pushing the needle, pushing the world to see how much better God is, and the more we do that, the stronger we are, the more the world will know that he sent us. Yeah. I just believe that with all my heart. So don't measure your best by other people, measure it by your God given potential.
Speaker 1:Right. I Oh, say go ahead.
Speaker 2:I have a thought, I So gotta get it that goes two ways. First of all, God may wanna do something extraordinary in you, but also, is it like I'm the best or I suck? Like, I'm looking at somebody over here, and they're doing this and that and the other, and man, I can't sing like that. I can't build like that. I'm not a leader like that.
Speaker 2:I can't preach like that. So do I suck? No, it's your best according to what God has put in your hand to do.
Speaker 1:That's so good.
Speaker 2:What is your potential? Stop looking at other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and right along with that is the reality that when we are comparing to one another and comparing ourselves to someone else's best, it's almost a form of idolatry. Mhmm. Because I care more about that lateral you, people. What do you think? What do I even think about my performance?
Speaker 1:And it's like God's opinion and God's glory is not even in the conversation, if I'm being honest. Because I'm more concerned about the person next to me than I am the creator of the universe to whom it's for anyway. And so I think that comparison bandit is a for sure robber.
Speaker 2:So good. So hard work is our worship to God. How about this? I wanna throw a word, but let me throw some scriptures on this. First Corinthians 10, you quoted this, I looked it up.
Speaker 2:First Corinthians ten thirty one, Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, everything for the glory of God. Do everything for the glory of God. And then Colossians three twenty three, Whatever you do, do it from the heart as something done for the Lord and not for people. Knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord, you serve the Lord Christ. Isn't that great?
Speaker 1:So good.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about creativity. I think bringing our best involves creativity. Creativity doesn't mean that you can sing or dance or you're proficient in the arts. Right. That's what we sometimes think of, oh, that person's so creative.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Meaning they're artistic.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean you're a decorator. Doesn't mean that you are great at fashion.
Speaker 2:Creativity is creating something new. It's the creative process where you are taking something and you're giving something breath.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:You're bringing something into being, and new things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:New ideas. Help Yeah. Me
Speaker 1:I think that it's easy to think, well, you know, someone else has written a book or someone else has sent a song and so we don't need to write any more songs. We don't need to write any more books. But God is all about the fresh thing. He's all about the new thing And it's your day. Ask the Lord, what have you put in my hand and how could I make it beautiful?
Speaker 1:If you've been given a home, ask God, how can I creatively create culture in my home? What can I creatively do with my family? What can I creatively do for family traditions and moments and memories together? There's just an element of creativity and asking God to open our eyes. But you know, we don't have bandwidth for that if we're just in a scrape by mentality.
Speaker 1:Just get through it. Just survive it. Some Christians, we're just trying to survive till heaven. And God's saying, no, I put you here to thrive. Every time that you create something that the Holy Spirit breathes inside of you, I believe it's a signpost to heaven.
Speaker 1:It's a signpost that there's a God who creates a new sunset every single day.
Speaker 2:Nope, we're gonna get to that. Nope, nope, But
Speaker 1:it is so creative.
Speaker 2:In, I wanna talk about that in beauty.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, it's a great example. But he's just a very creative god. The kinds of fish in the sea he created, he's creative, and he wants us to be creative.
Speaker 2:You know, when I think about creativity, this is actually a best bandit, is copying versus creative. Okay? Now I do believe, hey, learn from others, even let others be a baseline for what you're doing, but make it yours, you know?
Speaker 1:Be inspired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, be inspired. Don't just copy someone else. Don't just do something because everybody else is doing it. Man, get before the Lord and say, God, what's my version of this?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Okay, God, yeah, okay, this is the way they do it. I'm with you now. God, would you show me how I do that? And again, I've known people that are very not artistic. There's some people in the business world, and they're numbers people or they're leadership people, and they would say, man, I can't carry a tune.
Speaker 2:I'm color blind. I don't know how to dress, my wife dressed me, you know, but I've seen some of those people incredibly creative, and here's how they're creative. They're creative on like, okay, how do I reach that person in the workplace? How do I, they're creative because they're like, okay, this person responds to this kind of leadership, that person responds to that kind of leadership, or they get new ideas, hey, I'm install Fun Fridays, or, you know, just you have these creative ideas or how you're going to do the presentation. A creativity could just be an opening illustration in a business meeting, Creative you or changing the seating of, you know, all of sudden, I'm not gonna sit there.
Speaker 2:One of the cool things in the business world these days is huddles. We do them at Keystone called staff huddles. Staff huddles, everybody's standing, it's a shorter meeting, and we're there for a specific purpose, and we gather, and that's creative. That's a creative way for everybody to hear something, not in an email, but it's relational and we're all together. So don't copy, be creative.
Speaker 1:That's so good, I love that. I think there's so many different ways it can show itself in the church, in your personal life, in your home.
Speaker 2:So let me, you mentioned something, and I wanna jump into this. It's a great bridge Yeah. Between creativity and the next topic of bringing your best. This is a thought that God gave me years ago. How creative is God?
Speaker 2:Okay. You talked about the creativity of a sunrise or a sunset, and I think I was missing what you were saying, and then later it settled in. What I think you were saying that I was missing, I think you were saying meant every single day is a brand new sunrise. So I kinda interrupted you, so go back to it.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I think my point is is we are made in the image of God, this topic on bring your best and this application of creativity. We're made in his image and God is a God who paints new sunsets every single day. None of them are exactly the same. He's creative. He has a template, it's a sunset, but each day is brand new.
Speaker 1:And so I think it's just, again, an example, a picture of who God is. And one of the beautiful things I think the Bible reveals to us is that God has made us in his image. And so some of us are wandering around feeling so unfulfilled and lacking purpose and not sure who we even are, and we need to get back to discovering God. And in discovering God, he's so kind to let us discover who he made us to be, creative.
Speaker 2:You know, when I think about how God is created, I think about there are places in the world that no human eye has ever laid eyes upon. The depths of the ocean. You know, the great unexplored places on our world is in the depths of the ocean. Yeah. And in the depths of the ocean, there are these now that we finally go down there, we see these fantastic creations.
Speaker 2:These fish with gnarly teeth,
Speaker 1:and they
Speaker 2:have these crazy, illuminescent
Speaker 1:Antennas.
Speaker 2:Antennas that dangle in front of them to dangle bait to it, and then they, it's like their own little fishing rod. God has created that, and for thousands of years, no person had ever seen those creations. Now with our technology, we begin to see, and God had it there all along, and what that means is sometimes the beauty on earth is just for the creativity of it. Yeah. That God has done some things, and and that's okay for us.
Speaker 2:Bringing our best is sometimes in the hidden places. Mhmm. It's sometimes just doing something just for the Lord, and no one else will ever see it.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:That leads me to the next word on bringing our best, and that's beauty. Beauty. I think a best bandit here would be boring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:You know, just boring.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No beauty. And this is a big deal in church because there is a bit of a, there's a wonderful Protestant work ethic that we need to rediscover, but one of the sad things about the Protestant revolution, as you would call it, is they lost some of the beauty of the Catholic church. When Protestants, they wanted to do away with the veneration of the art of the things of God, and and they went the wrong direction toward, things very, very plain, puritanical, very plain, a little bit drab. And, you know, when you begin to understand that, no, no, no, God, here it is, God is so filled with beauty and creativity. God is the one who creates a sunset that arrests your attention.
Speaker 2:You stand there and you look at it, and it's like therapy. God is the one who made your eyes so wonderfully complex that you can see and you can capture color. God's the one who has done all of this, and it's just filled with beauty so excellent that our greatest master, our greatest artists, if they can capture a sunset or a sunrise on a canvas, and if they can capture it almost perfectly, it's considered a masterpiece. Yeah. And it hangs in the hallways of our museums.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But God does it every single
Speaker 1:Every day.
Speaker 2:Day.
Speaker 1:Every day.
Speaker 2:That's the beauty of God. I don't believe another best bandit would be perfection. Perfection is not the goal. Perfection is not the bar. It is
Speaker 1:You say it is a bandit?
Speaker 2:It's a bandit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Perfectionism. If I can't do it 100, I won't do it at all.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is so important for someone to hear right there. If I can't do it 100, I won't do it at all. That is robbing you, robbing you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so do, hey, do your best. Your best doesn't mean a 100. My best today may be 85% of what I could do tomorrow, but I'm gonna give God my 85 today because I'm walking with a limp today. Maybe I'm a little tired, maybe the baby kept me up all night, whatever it
Speaker 1:is. Right.
Speaker 2:But I'm gonna give, my 100 is 75% today, but I'm bringing my 75% as opposed to zero I'm staying home.
Speaker 1:Right, so good. So
Speaker 2:good. I may not be up to being my very best parenting today, but I'm gonna be the best I can. And I'm bringing God my absolute best.
Speaker 1:And that comes with your personal care of your hygiene, your life, how we carry ourselves. Let's be Christ followers, people who bring our best. It doesn't mean that we have to all look the same or dress the same. It's just what is in my hand, what has God given me, I'm gonna care for it. Even the temple that you were born born with and that now, if you know Jesus, the Holy Spirit resides inside of you.
Speaker 1:Your body, the Bible says, one Corinthians six, is a temple of his spirit. And how are we caring for our spirit? Often that's gonna overflow into how we care for anything and anyone and everything else.
Speaker 2:So good. You know, there's a book, this goes back to creativity, but it's about bringing your best within what you can do. There's a book by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art. It is not a Christian book, but it's a book on creativity, and it's a book, and he basically says in the book that the greatest artists, the working artists, okay, not somebody who paints for fun or thinks they're creative, I'm talking about people that get paid as a career to do art. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He said career artists understand that creativity is not zero boundaries. So maybe that's another best bandit is zero boundaries. The best artists, they understand the boundaries of a budget. They understand the boundaries of size, and they actually appreciate the boundaries. They live within the boundaries, and the key to great art is within the boundaries.
Speaker 2:That's where you create the greatest inspiration. It's not without boundaries. It's actually thriving within the boundaries, and your best may be within a boundary of time. Yeah. Your best may be within a boundary of budget.
Speaker 2:Your best, and we say excellence to scale at Keystone, that means that if I don't have the resources to commit to it, well, let's find a way to make it the best we can with what we got. And we say around here, we're scrappy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? And so we wanna bring our best in every square inch of who we are.
Speaker 1:Yes. So we wanna encourage you. We wanna encourage you wherever you are today that you would experience God's absolute best for your life. Anything else you wanted to say before we sign off?
Speaker 2:I wanna say this, how could we bring God anything but Yes. Our best? We wanna thank you for being a part of the overflow with Brandon and Susan, and we are pumped to see you next time.