Gregory Dickow - Creating an Unstoppable You
Welcome to another episode of, "Think Like a Champion". Our podcast is dedicated to helping you win in every way and enjoy every day. I want to thank everyone who's written a review or shared this podcast on social media. I appreciate you partnering with me to help expand our community of champions because that's what we're building, a community of champions. Welcome home, Champion. So, I want to get right into today's content. I call it, "Creating an Unstoppable You," Creating an Unstoppable You. And I kind of start with something that I ended with the other day. And that is, that we have to elevate our tolerance for these things in order to grow. You have to learn to tolerate risk. You have to grow your tolerance, or elevate your tolerance, for taking good, healthy risks. We have to elevate our tolerance for failure, because we are learning to fail forward. Everybody fails.
But there's a skill and an art to failing forward rather than backwards, right? So, thirdly, we have to elevate our tolerance for embarrassment. When you start something new, you might feel it's embarrassing. You don't want anybody to see you. But we have to start new things. We have to try exercise. We have to try different foods. We have to try different hobbies that are going to be embarrassing at first when we start. Anything that produces growth is going to involve looking like a beginner at some point. Serving in a church, getting involved, singing, whatever it is, be willing to be embarrassed a little bit. And not deliberately, but in all new things you have a learning curve. Don't be intimidated by that. Also, if we're going to create an unstoppable you, we have to deal with rejection. We have to be willing to tolerate rejection.
If you're in sales, you have to tolerate rejection from 20 people before you get one to accept or to agree. So, or 30 or ten. I don't know what the number is. Depends on what it is that you're selling, obviously, but there's always rejection. If you want to meet somebody and have a real amazing, significant other, you got to accept being rejected by some people that you're asking out or wanting to get to know. Boy, I really wish we could understand that some of the things we run from are really a detriment to our growth. Some of the things that we are trying to avoid are really delaying our growth and our success and even denying ourselves growth and success in life. And God created us all to grow and to succeed in life.
And I love this verse in Philippians 4:13. I'm going to use it in a way that may be different for you in hearing this verse. But we know, most of us know if we read our Bible, we know Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me," or you can do all things through Christ which strengthens you, right? So, we can do all things through Christ, which strengthens us. We need the strength of Jesus Christ in our lives. But notice who's doing the doing. When he says, I can do all things, or you can do all things through Christ, which strengthens you. It's not God doing all things. It's you doing all those things, it's me doing those things, through Christ which strengthens me.
So, sometimes we forget it's not just what God's doing in our lives. There's something that we're called to do as well. So, in this case, if you think about it, God has His part in helping to create an unstoppable you. You can't be stopped by trials, circumstances, rejection, fear, embarrassment, whatever failures you've committed, whatever mistakes you've made. Those things don't have the power to stop you if you learn what we're talking about today. God has a part and I have a part. God has a part and you have a part. God's part, according to Philippians 2:12 is, for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure. One translation says, "For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him".
So, He's working in us and giving us the power to do. But we're doing something. He's working in us and He's giving us the power to do. But we're the doers, right? So, we have to get accustomed to being a doer in life, not just a talker, right? And not just waiting for God to do everything. It is He who is at work in you. And what does it say? Giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him? So, you're doing the doing? I'm doing the doing, but He's doing the working within us to give us the power to do. But we do the do. Got it. Now, all growth in our lives happens when we have non-negotiable commitments. Everything that is going to grow, you have to have a non-negotiable commitment to grow anything in your life. When you negotiate with your lower self, your fleshly self, your old self, your limited believing self, you lose. But when you refuse to negotiate with that person that you used to be, you win.
We have to refuse to negotiate with our lazy self. We have to refuse to negotiate with our lying self. We have to refuse to negotiate with that lowest part of us, or that lower part of us that is constantly trying to get us to negotiate our commitment to succeed, our commitment to grow. He wants the old you... And the devil works through the old you sometimes too. The devil works through the old me sometimes, too. But when you make up your mind that there are certain things that are non-negotiable in your life, you will grow in those areas of your life. If you look at life like, "Oh, I don't know if I want to wake up every day and pray, I don't know if I want to wake up every day and exercise. I don't know if I want to wake up every day and go to work". Whatever you start negotiating with the old version of you, you're going to lose. You have to tell the old version of you, this is not negotiable.
So, what are the non-negotiables? I'll give you a few of mine. Non-negotiable is my time with God. Praying, speaking to Him, talking to God, worshiping Him, worshiping Him in church, worshiping Him in my own personal life, talking to Him in my own personal life. Listen, the amount of time that I can spend praying, and speaking, and worshiping God, the amount of time is negotiable. But time spent with God at the beginning of my day is non-negotiable. The amount of time, negotiable. Sometimes, I can spend an hour talking to God and listen. Sometimes, I can spend a half hour. I try to stick to an hour, but just to get that habit in my life and just to expose myself to what the Holy Spirit could do in my life in time spent with Him.
So, you see what I'm saying? He's always with us, but you understand. Deliberately making time for my devotion to the relationship with God, that is, that I've been so generously given. And you have as well. So what are the non-negotiables in my life? My time with God is one of them. Building myself up is another non-negotiable. I'm not going to negotiate with building myself up. I am going to build myself up to be a better version of myself. I'm going to construct an unstoppable version of myself where I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me. So often, as I said, we think God is supposed to do all the work in our lives. And there is much He will do in our lives. But then there is a part what of what we do. There's also the work of building ourselves up.
I love this verse in Jude, the Book of Jude. Hey Jude, verse 20. "But you beloved, building yourselves up". Building yourselves up. He doesn't say God building you up, although God does do that. But he's talking to us about our personal development and our personal growth as well. You beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith. So, who's doing the building of yourself up? You are. I'm building myself up. How? In my most holy faith. And how. And he describes what his most holy faith is, praying in the Holy Spirit, and keeping yourself in the love of God. By praying in the Holy Spirit. By praying, spending time with God, you're building yourself up. You're building up your most holy faith. And you're staying. It keeps you in the love of God. It keeps you remembering and reminding yourself of the love of God.
This is something I think about every day and take one action step towards building myself up; building myself up and constructing the unstoppable life. We're not going to let the devil stop us. We're not going to let our fears stop us. We're not going to let our failures stop us. We're not going to let other people's expectations of us to stop us. We're not going to let our limited belief system stop us. We're going to break the power of limiting beliefs by believing unlimited things that God says. We can do all things. And He's able to do exceeding abundantly above and beyond all we can ask are think. You see, if we're not building something with our lives, we're not doing what we're created to do and we will end up unhappy and unfulfilled. Now there's a third non-negotiable. I have more, but a third one I'll just mention. But I want to really focus on number two. Building yourself up. Building myself up. Building yourself up.
So, what are the non-negotiables? My time with God for me. Number two, building myself up in some way every day. And number three, building others up, which includes my family, my church, my community of champions, my kids. Like, everything, all the important people in my life. My non-negotiable is I'm living this life to build others up. I'm living this life to spend time with God. I'm living this life to build myself up. I'm living this life to build others up. But let's double click on building ourselves up, because as I mentioned, if we're not building something with our lives, then we're going to be unfulfilled because we're not doing what we created to do.
Hebrews 3:4 says, "For every house is built by someone". So, no house just miraculously is built during a tornado. An earthquake doesn't build. A tornado doesn't build a house. It destroys it. A house has to be built by a builder. Nothing that has order, and symmetry, and that has structure or some sort of form is ever created by accident. It is designed. No one walks into a... No one has ever been to a printing shop where books are printed, and an explosion in the printing shop; a bomb goes off in the printing shop, and out of the explosion emerges an 1828 dictionary. It's just nothing of order comes out of disorder. Nothing just happens. There's a builder. No car accidentally comes off the assembly line. Somebody had to build it. No human, no family is created without people building that family; creating that family. You do not become the best version of yourself accidentally. You have to be a part of building yourself up, and being a builder, and having the mindset of being a builder.
Hebrews 3:4, "For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God". God builds us up, Jeremiah 24:6, "For I will set my eyes on them for good and I will bring them again to this land and I will build them up". And since God is a builder and He made us in His image, then you can see the logical conclusion is that we are builders too. God calls every one of his children to be builders. Everyone is created and called to build something. Adam and Eve were called to build a civilization.
I think it's amazing if you go through the Bible. Noah was created to, and called to build an ark. Then he was called to build an altar in Genesis eight, verse 20. Abraham was called to build a nation in Genesis chapter 12. Isaac was called to build an altar. Jacob was called to build an altar and build a family; 12 sons that became the tribes of Israel. Moses was called to build a tabernacle. Joshua was called to build an altar. Gideon was called to build an altar. David was called to build broken men into leaders. David was called to build broken men into leaders. Boy, we should really associate with that; should really identify with that. That we're called to be. We are broken men and women. And God wants to rebuild us, repair us. We have to rebuild ourselves and reparent ourselves in many ways.
I love that David was called to be a builder of men who were broken. We don't discard broken people, we rebuild them, we pour into them, we empower them to build themselves up. Peter was called to build churches. Paul was called to build churches and to build leaders. So, everybody that God used, every character that we see in the Bible is called to build something. And we're called to build something. You're called to build a great life. I'm telling you, when you have this mindset that you're a builder, your life gets better because you're intentional about the things that you commit yourself to. And whatever you commit yourself to is what's going to improve. The only thing that can't improve in your life is the thing that you're not committed to seeing it improve. That's the only thing that can't improve. Everything else can improve when you add commitment to the desire to improve it.
And discipline, not inspiration, because inspiration comes and goes, but discipline sticks no matter what you feel, right? No matter what your emotions are doing in that moment, you're sticking to the plan. You're disciplined to the list that you have in your life that are non-negotiables for you. I love what Proverbs 14:1 says. "A wise woman builds her house, but the foolish one tears it down with her own hands". Wow, I like where he gives us the option. God is saying we can be wise like the woman who builds her house or foolish like the woman who tears are down with her own hands. Let's be like the wise girl. We've all been the wise guy long enough. It's all right.
Isaiah 49, verse 17, look at this verse. You builders hurry; your destroyers and devastators will depart from you. He said, You builders, hurry. You builders, hurry. He's saying, be in a hurry to build. Be in a hurry to build. In another translation of this verse. "Your sons shall make haste; your destroyers and those who laid waste shall go away from you". So, the New American Standard version of this verse, he says, "Your builders hurry". In the New King James version, he says, "Your sons make haste". What is he showing us here? What do these two versions show us? It shows us that the definition for the word builder is a son. Son is the definition for builder. And son is not gender limited. He's referring to the children of the father and the mother, the son or the daughter. If this in this context, is this a son who's a builder? The definition is a builder. A builder is not limited to a man, male or female. A woman can be a builder, too. So, the word son here is the word builder.
And so, we have to realize that we're God's sons and daughters, and we're created in His image to be builders. And we're truly acting like sons and daughters of God when we're building something, when we're building up ourselves, when we're building up others, or building our relationship with God. Sons build. Children tear down. Sons prophesy. Children speak foolishly. Sons take more ground. Children sit and play. Now, there's nothing wrong with being a child when you're a child. But the child has to grow up and become a son or a daughter, which is different than being a baby or a child, or childish. Sons build. Children tear down. Son's prophesy. The Bible says your sons and daughters shall prophesy. How we have power. We have power. Use it. And sons take more ground while children sit and play. So, what are we to build? Of course, when we talk about building yourself up, building ourselves up, we said there were three things that are non-negotiables for me: my time with God, building myself up, and building others up.
But we're really focused here on number two, building ourselves up. So, what are we called to build? Let me give you a few things and then we'll pick this up on our next podcast. But number one, build your faith. Build your faith. How do you build your faith? The Bible says faith comes from hearing the word of God. Faith, or belief is to believe in something consistently until it manifests. To believe something consistently until it shows up. So, we have to build our faith by seeing the stories in the Bible of people that built great things in their life. We have to also associate with and realize that to build our faith, we have to think about the things that God has done in our past. We have to remember how good God has done; how many good things God's done. When you remember the good, you begin to expect the good. And faith is an expectation of what is going to come in your life.
So, we have to build our faith up by surrounding ourselves with positive, optimistic, faith-filled people rather than negative, pessimistic, fear-based people. So, we have to build our faith. We have to look at the promises of God's Word and speak them, and digest them, and envision them; thank God for them. This is how you build your faith. Number two, and we can we can talk more on each of these items another time. But number two, we need to build our tolerance. We already said this. We need to build our tolerance for these things risk, failure, embarrassment, rejection. You have to build your tolerance. We have to learn to swallow these things or we will be swallowed by them. Listen, it's hard to swallow risk, and failure, and embarrassment, and rejection. But if you want to move forward in your life, you have to choose which hard you want more.
It is hard to create, build a tolerance for risk, and failure, and embarrassment, and rejection to grow; to be told no by 50 people before you finally hear one yes. When we built our first church, I heard 15 noes. I personally went to 15 banks or more. I can't remember exactly how many. And I went to every one of those banks for the first loan so that we could build a church. This was years ago. And. I was turned down by every bank. But I kept asking. I was rejected by everybody. I created a business plan. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how to do it. I just did it because I was passionate about building a church. But. I was rejected 14 times by 14 banks before one bank finally said yes. 14 of them said no. One said yes. All that matters is the one yes. Forget about the 14 nos. If it would have been 15, 16, 17, I would have just kept doing it until someone said yes.
Do you know that was almost 30 years ago now? 1996, I think it was. And okay, so that's 27 years, I think, ago. And you know that 27 years later, that 15th banker is my still my banker today. And we both have made a lot of money for each other because when you commit yourself to building others up, and he committed to help build our church up. I committed to help build his business up with his bank. And when you build, you win. You have to build a tolerance for risk. Thirdly, you have to build your health, soul health, body health, financial health, relationship health. Will dedicate an entire podcast to building our health. I just don't want people to be turned off and say, "I'm not disciplined". I don't teach like that where it's just discipline. I'm going to help you change the way you think. That will cause you to be able to build a healthy life in those vital ways, soul health, physical body health, financial health, and relationship health. I think everyone would agree that's a vital thing that we should be committed to building in our lives, right?
Let me jump down to the next one. Number four, we have to build our identity. You have to feed your soul the correct version of yourself. I love this passage of Scripture. It's a very obscure passage of Scripture when it comes to building your identity. It says in Judges, chapter 11. Yes, the Book of Judges in the Bible. Most people don't even know there was a book named that. And in chapter 11, verse one, it talks about this man named Jephthah. And It says now Jephthah was a mighty man of valor, but he was the son of a prostitute.
Now, notice the contrast there. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was the son of a prostitute. I believe this is a picture of the two versions that each person has two versions of themselves. So, we have the version that God says about us, Mighty Man of Valor. And we have the version that our history says of us, Son of a prostitute, son of a you know what, son of a gun, whatever you want to use in that illustration. You can choose your hereditary curses that you grew up with and that were passed down to you from generation to generation. You can choose that identity. Or you can choose God's identity of you, a mighty man of valor.
So, God has an identity of us that leads to our destiny. But this world, and this world system, and our physical DNA gives us a version of ourselves that is about our that is all about our history. So we can choose the version that is about our history and keep repeating history, or we can choose the version that is about our destiny and fulfill our destiny. Did you hear that? Well, rewind it if you can, and play it again, Sam. But you got to hear that over and over again, because it will change the way you prioritize how you look at yourself. Jephthah had to choose which version of himself he was going to be. Is he going to identify with being a man of mighty man of valor, or is he going to identify with being the son of a prostitute and live in shame for how he was born? Thank God he was born.
It doesn't matter how you got here. God wanted you in in this earth. You might have got here because parents intended to have you. Or you might have got here because parents accidentally had you. You might have got here for some other crazy reason that has to do with your parents. We all got here through parents, whether we grew up with them or not. That's how we got here. But it was God's idea. You were God's idea. Well, I'd love to talk more about this one on building your identity, but I'll close with this fifth thing that we build. What are we what are we called to build? What are we supposed to be building? We're supposed to be building the family of God.
Number five, building the family of God by serving in your church, by encouraging people daily. The Bible says encourage one another day after day as long as it is called today in Hebrews, chapter 13, chapter three, chapter ten. Every one of us is called to be a part of the family of God. We're called to be a part of a tribe. A church is like a tribe. There're many great churches, just like there're many great tribes in history. A tribe is like a family. A church is like a family. A tribe, a community. We're created for community. Each and every one of us are created for community. We are better together. You're called to be a part of something bigger than just yourself. You're called to be a part of a tribe, part of a church family, part of a group of people, a community of people that are imperfect people, but happy, imperfect people, imperfect people, but growing imperfect people; imperfect people, but forgiving imperfect people. We're supposed to be a forgiving people, a growing people, a happy people.
In Ephesians, chapter four it says that we're to be rooted and grounded in the love of God in chapter three, so that we would no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. We're not supposed to just follow everybody on Instagram, and everybody on TikTok, and everybody that seems like a popular preacher, popular motivator... We're not to be tossed to and fro by all these different teachings and all these different points of view and all these different opinions. We're to be planted in a church family and grow. Otherwise, you're going to be deceived by human cunning and craftiness; people having their own agenda for you.
But it says in verse 15, rather, instead of that, speaking the truth in love we're to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body joined together and held together by that which every joint supplies. The body is then equipped when each part is working properly. It makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. These are God's words, not mine. He tells us here we're to grow up in every way into Christ to be Christlike. Were to keep growing up. And we're to speak the truth in love, and we're to be a part of a whole body. That when each joint supplies, you do your part, I do my part, that creates a joint. This is how we grow. This is how we build the church, build the family of God, build the citizenship of heaven one day.