Don’t Miss the Ninety-Nine

As Told by Kole

If you’ve been rocking with me for a minute, you KNOW how I roll. I like to look at things from a different perspective than what is considered to be mainstream. Today, we are gonna talk about the ninety-nine vs the one. Now you are probably familiar with the parable that talks about how we should leave the ninety-nine and go get the one. The parable teaches us that one lost sheep is worth going after, and that we should not be so comfortable with the ninety-nine that we forget to go after the one. Now I wholeheartedly believe and agree with that in that context. But that doesn’t apply to everything. It just applies in that context, which is why that context was given. Sometimes, we will take something we read or see and apply it to everything when it was never meant to be applied to everything. That is called taking something out of context. We do it often, and we really have to be careful. Let me explain. In life, there will always be that one person who doesn’t like you. There will be that one person you will never be good enough for. There will be that one person who is never satisfied with anything you do. And oftentimes, we will get so caught up in trying to convert that one person that we will forget about the ninety-nine people who love and appreciate us just for who we are. We will spend hours and hours thinking about the one person who did not support us and totally neglect the ninety-nine who did. This, my friends, is not good. It does a disservice to the people who really love and support you. It also gives the impression that you are not grateful to or for the people who do support you. It can be difficult to understand why those you love don’t give you that love back. It can be hard to understand why people don’t approve of what you do. It can be a challenge to get over how the one person you’d expect to support you doesn’t support you for whatever reason. However, you cannot allow that one person to become your focus when you have so many other people who love and support you. Can I be transparent for a moment? I have spent the past three years of my life trying to get two people to support me the way that I have supported them. Three years. 1,095 days. I have talked over 1,700 people out of suicide. My podcast was listened to by over 300 people in the first month with no mass advertising. I have published a whole entire devotional that has blessed hundreds of people all over the world. I send out daily text messages to people in EVERY U.S. time zone. YET… I often become discouraged because a certain TWO PEOPLE don’t really support me. Do you understand how foolish that is? But can’t you see in your life where you have done the same thing? And I get it. Please understand that I totally get it. However, just because I get it doesn’t mean that we should continue to behave in this manner. It is important that we focus on what we DO HAVE more than we focus on what we DON’T HAVE. Even God does that. Let me grab a bible verse. I reference the bible a lot because it’s one of the most relevant books I’ve ever read. It just always relates. To everything. All the time. Some people say it’s a collection of fairy tales. I disagree with that statement, but even if it were a collection of fairy tales, those fairy tales have helped me survive over 22 suicide attempts, so we’re just gonna roll with it. I digress. The Apostle Paul was talking to the Church of Corinth about their giving. He said, “For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not. (2 Corinthians 8:22)“ What you do is accepted according to what you have and not what you don’t have - as long as you are willing. As long as your mind is made up. So. If God doesn’t look at what you don’t have when it comes to accepting what you give, why should you look at what you don’t have when it comes to what you appreciate?