Island Boy.

Hello friends.

Welcome to Activate, a podcast consisting of purposeful conversations aimed at encouraging listeners to embrace both the beauty and chaos of life.

I'm KB and I can't wait to share valuable insights on health, fitness, nutrition, aging, faith, family and everything in between to help you level up and activate your life.

I'm a former network marketing hater turned top leader in my industry.

I'm a certified life and nutrition coach, helping women to break the same chains that once kept me stuck.

I'm so happy you're here.

Let's do this.

Hello friends.

Happy Monday.

Happy day after Easter.

Happy resurrection.

He is risen.

I hope you really understand and fully grasp the gravity of what we celebrated yesterday.

The most important day in, in the life of a Christian.

It is the reason, it is the reason for everything.

It is our salvation and just such a special day and one that I feel like unfortunately gets.

I mean, it's just like every other Christian holiday.

It's kind of become a celebration without meaning behind it for, for a lot of people.

And I think it's important that we recognize the reason we're celebrating and that is the crucifixion, but ultimately the resurrection of, of Jesus to save us from our sins.

I am going to talk to you today about.

Well, first I want to talk about Iowa.

So I told you last week that I was going to surprise my mom and my boys.

It was Caleb's 22nd birthday and, and it just happened to fall on the same weekend that my mom was playing Mary in crown of thorns at her church.

The, the story of, of, of Easter, of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

And it was, I, I, I thought to myself, if this play is on the same weekend as Caleb's birthday, what a fun thing to go and surprise my mom and my kids.

And it was.

And so I booked the, the flight and made the plans to go.

I ended up telling my dad and my sister and my daughter in law so that they could kind of make sure that no one was making plans outside of what would work with me being there.

But one evening after I recorded last week, I got a text from Stellan and he said, are you coming home for Caleb's birthday?

And I just sent like crying emojis.

And he said, does that mean no?

And I couldn't bring myself to lie even for the surprise.

So I was like, bud, why would you ask me that?

Yes, I am, but it was a surprise for you too.

And his response was, you could have just said no.

I didn't know I was like, come on.

So then we chatted, and I told him I was going to surprise my mom, surprise Caleb.

And that yes, I would be home just for the weekend, but that I was, you know, just so looking forward to seeing him.

And I told him how I'd probably imagined a hundred times in my head what it.

What his face would look like when he saw me and the hug that I was going to give him.

And basically, he ruined it all.

But I.

Of course, I didn't say that.

A couple days later, Stellan called me.

I picked up the phone and he said, yeah, we got a problem.

And I said, does Caleb know?

And he said, no, but Graham does.

So he had accidentally spilled the beans to my mom.

And so Caleb was just the last one not to know.

And thankfully, he was still surprised.

And I was actually so sad that my mom found out.

I was so looking forward to the surprise of.

Of being at her play when she had no idea I was in Iowa.

But I.

I quickly got over it and realized God had a different plan.

There was a reason he wanted my mom to know, and there was a reason he wanted Stellan to know.

But I felt a little bummed at first.

So I flew into Iowa on Friday morning.

My sweet friend Nikki took the day off of work to come and pick me up, and we spent some time together that day.

She drove me all the way back home, and then we went to the gym together.

Did we go for.

Yes, we went for a walk that day.

We got some steps in.

We had lunch together.

We visited with my grandma.

And that was just a really special day.

And I'm so grateful for a friend that would take a day off of work just to come and get me and help me to.

To make this surprise come true.

So we did that.

And then I actually called my ex husband, Caleb, works for his dad.

And I said, when is Caleb getting home from work?

And he said, 15 minutes.

So I had just like an hour before I had to get to the play.

But I wanted to see Caleb on Friday because my fear was if I saved the surprise for Saturday, he would, like, stay up all night Friday night playing video games and then sleep all of Saturday.

And I would miss out on all that time with him.

So it worked out so perfectly.

I hopped in my grandma's car and I drove to his work, and I happened to just, like, pull in.

Just like, I was probably a quarter mile behind the trucks all pulling in from their job, and Caleb didn't notice me.

He hopped out of the truck and was Kind of like beelining it for another building.

He had his head down, just walking and I like sliding slowly pulled up, rolled down the window and said, hey bud, happy birthday.

And his face, it was worth every, it was worth everything.

Like he just lit up and he was like.

Mom gave me a huge hug.

Now mind you, I've not seen my children since I told them goodbye before my surgery.

And so it was just.

I don't know how to explain it.

It was, it was everything I could have hoped it would be.

He was so happy.

He genuinely hugged me just so tightly and was so joyful that I was there and so grateful that I came and we made a plan for the following day and I told him I was going to Graham's play and you know, just that I love him so much and I couldn't miss the day with him and he's so special to me and oh my gosh, it was just, he must have hugged me five times in those 15 minutes that I spent with him there and you know, just sent the sweetest text later how grateful he was that I was home.

And it just, it just absolutely.

My heart was so overflowing and full of joy, I cannot even tell you.

And then I went back to my parents house and my mom got home from work and she pretended to be surprised.

She knew I was coming and we had talked about it, but she got out of the car and she's like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited.

So that was sweet.

And I got ready and went to her play, which was just amazing.

This beautiful depiction of, you know, how God sent Jesus to save us and the, the cruelty of it all and what he went through, you know, leading up to his crucifixion and death on the cross and, and, and then I had the, the beauty of, you know, being risen and coming back and, and saving us and this gift of salvation and eternal life that we all get because of him.

And it was so good, so moving, so beautiful, such a great, a great play and my mom did a great job and it was so good to be there.

And so I did that Friday night and then Saturday, I trying to think, when did I finally get to see Stella?

And I got to see Stella on Saturday.

Caleb came over for coffee in the morning and we all went and worked out together and that was so fun and sweet.

I got to go for a walk with Britney and just get to spend time with her and talk with her.

It was just the most perfect weekend.

I will say Sunday was a little bit Sad knowing that I was leaving and I went to see Caleb's house for the first time.

And while it makes me so happy and proud, it also made me sad.

His house felt a little lonely, little cold.

I don't.

I just, like.

I just felt sad for him.

I wanted to stay there with him forever, even though I know that's not what's best for him.

I wanted to make his house a home, and I wanted to cook all of his meals and make all of his protein shakes and just get to say good morning and good night to him forever.

That's.

That's just who I am.

But we went.

He and I went together on Sunday and did a workout.

We had a birthday party for Caleb on Sunday.

That just made my heart so happy.

I have just the best family.

I'm so grateful when I tell you just on the plane home how full of gratitude I was for the children.

God bless me with the parents God blessed me with for that.

My grandma, at 88 years old, almost is still with us and just as sharp and funny as ever.

And the friends, the.

The.

The friends that I am so blessed to have and that I am able to maintain over such a distance and so much time apart, and how grateful I am to just be from Iowa and to have been born and raised there with just the values and morals of.

Of Midwestern upbringing.

And I just was so full of gratitude.

It.

The weekend couldn't have been.

I couldn't have imagined it better.

And so, you know, all the time I got to spend with my kids, the pictures I got.

I'm always just all about the picture because once I leave, it's all I've got.

And as much as they hate it, they.

They oblige.

They give me what they know I need.

And I couldn't be more blessed with Britney, Stellan's wife.

She is so sweet.

You know, between her and Caleb, I got the most sweet and genuine text messages just of how grateful they are that.

That I got to come and spend the time and how thankful they are for me.

My gosh, I am so thankful for them.

They just have no idea.

So.

Couldn't have been better.

I'm so glad I went.

I felt so full of gratitude for a direct flight from D.C.

to Cedar Rapids.

I.

I'm telling you, I.

On the way home, I think it was an hour and 34 minutes from.

From wheels up to wheels down.

I felt completely safe.

There was very little turbulence.

I hadn't flown out of Reagan, so I was a little nervous flying out of Reagan, because of all the news.

But airplane travel is safe.

It is the safest way to travel.

I felt perfectly safe.

I was like, man.

I ate lunch at the airport in Iowa and I had landed after losing an hour in the air by 2:35 back here in Virginia.

And it's just like, okay, this makes me feel so much less far away from the people I love, knowing that I can get to them literally in an hour and a half.

So praise God for all of it.

I had a lot to just write down and recap in my gratitude journal on Tuesday morning.

Just the perfect weekend.

I.

I couldn't have imagined it better.

So, so grateful for that.

I had a.

Really speaking of Iowa, I have a very sweet friend who I met in college in Iowa, and we have stayed close.

Despite her now living out west and me living out east, we've managed to just stay in contact.

If you don't use Marco Polo, I implore you to use Marco Polo.

It is a.

A video messaging app, and it's my favorite thing.

I keep in touch with a lot of my favorite people via Marco Polo.

We just send a video and then whenever the person, you know, the other person has time, they can listen to the video and respond via their own video.

And it's such a nice way to be able to see the person, but you're still just able to get to them when you, you know, different than like a phone call when they need your attention immediately.

But I am very grateful for Marco Polo and the way it's helped me to stay in communication, really constant communication with so many people that I don't get to see on a daily basis.

So she and I had a conversation last week, kind of like a deep and emotional conversation, you know, about our faith and about her feelings regarding what God says about homosexuality and her just her not being able to reconcile sort of a loving God with homosexuality being a sin when it's just about love and God is love and why would he not want people to live out, you know, what makes them happy and loved?

And it was a really hard conversation because I had to, you know, share with her that I see it differently and that I do see it as sin.

And it's because God says that it is.

And it's in the Bible.

It's in both the Old and the New Testaments.

And I believe that the Bible is the ultimate truth.

And I was trying to talk a little bit about how, like, sexual activity with the same sex is considered sin, but it's not because we hate or exclude A person that desires that, but because it falls outside of what God, what his original design was for sexuality and marriage.

Okay, so the Bible consistently presents sexual intimacy as something created for one man and one woman within the covenant of marriage.

It's.

It's referenced in both the New and Old Testaments.

Same sex sexual behavior is contrary to God's design.

And it's not that the Bible singles out gay people, but it teaches that all people are born with a sinful nature.

And we each have desires, sexual or otherwise, that may not align with God's will.

We all have them.

The Christian message isn't about condemning one specific group, but about God offering grace and transformation to everyone through what Jesus did for us on the cross.

I read this book one time called Gay Girl Good God by Jackie Hill Perry.

And it's like, it's about a Christian woman who was gay and that it wasn't about becoming straight, but about surrendering every part of life to God's design, right?

And how that leads to deep joy and freedom in your life.

So it's such a tough one.

It really, really is a difficult conversation.

But it leads me more into some things that I've been learning as I read a couple of books.

I've been reading about spiritual warfare and about our God given purpose in our life.

So I just wanted to share that with you.

And again, I know this podcast is different than it used to be, but I cannot help but share about God and what the gift of his son's sacrifice has done for me in my own life and for all of you.

And I just want.

I just want us all to be in heaven together one day.

And I feel so called to share this message.

And I don't see it changing.

For all of you who loved it before, I don't see it changing.

I'm not going to apologize.

We all grow, right?

We all change.

And I.

Your girl has just has changed.

And so much about the things I used to share about, I see are sinful and are not helpful.

And maybe they're relatable because sin is relatable, right?

We can all relate to sin.

But you're going to relate today to what I have to share with you about.

About what the devil is doing and about temptation because we all are tempted.

So again, this just reminds me of this conversation I had with my friend because it made her question God, it made her doubt him, and it made her wrestle with what she.

She knows of God because to her, God is love.

And why can't people just love each Other.

So the thing about God is he can handle all of your questions, he can handle your doubts, he can handle your wrestling.

But be aware that the enemy uses this as a tactic.

So his goal is to make you walk away from your faith, right?

And the easiest way to do that is to make you question and doubt goodness of God.

So people, some of these questions that people often ask are, is God real?

Is God good?

Is God powerful?

Is God for me?

And can I trust God's people, which is the church?

The enemy will cause us to doubt one or all of these truths.

Sometimes faith gets tough.

Just like what I just shared with you.

Faith gets tough in this area.

This friend of mine, she has a niece who is gay.

And her inclination, her natural inclination, is just to love her and support her in whatever it is that makes her happy, right?

And I think as Christians, sometimes we get in trouble because we think we're supposed to be happy.

So again, the enemy's gonna cause us to doubt one or all of those questions.

And sometimes faith gets tough and causes us to wrestle, question and doubt.

Some will try to take from Christianity what serves them right.

Like, they'll take salvation, they'll take heaven, they'll take crying out to God for help in difficult times.

But then they want to leave the rest.

They want to leave what doesn't serve them.

They want to leave the hard stuff.

They don't want to have to die to themselves or their selfish desires.

They want to live for themselves and not live for Christ.

They don't want to admit their sins and repent of them.

If you find yourself questioning whether God is good because of a pain or loss that you have suffered, know that God never desired for his children to suffer.

Right?

So again, what.

What are these tough things?

It can be so many things, but like the loss of a child, that is one thing.

I have always thought I could never survive that I believe.

I don't even want to say I believe that I could because I don't want to.

I don't ever want to experience that level of pain.

But based on what I have seen God get me through, I trust that he would get me through that.

But my goodness, it is my biggest fear in life.

But he has never desired for us to suffer in that way.

We.

I talked about this last week, but in Genesis 3, because of the Fall, the world that we live in is not the.

The world that God ever intended us to live in.

His first desire was for us to dwell with him in peace, that our hearts would be filled with joy.

And we would be surrounded by perfection.

And that's what we can look forward to once we get to heaven.

But here, the little G God of this world, which is the enemy, has come to steal, kill and destroy.

Is it crazy that the enemy Satan is the God of this world?

That is so sad.

But he uses every bit of suffering to drive a wedge between us and God.

He delights in our suffering.

He loves when we suffer, and even more so when we blame God for the suffering.

It's all part of his ultimate plan to separate us eternally.

That's his whole goal.

Part of the enemy's tactic to cause suffering is through temptation.

He wants to use temptation to destroy you, but God wants to use it to develop you.

Every temptation is an opportunity to choose rightly and do what is good.

Have you heard of the fruit of the Spirit?

I've talked about it on here.

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self love control.

To have the fruit of the Spirit is to be like Jesus.

But what I know about fruit is that it ripens slowly.

Similarly, God develops the fruit in your life by allowing you to experience circumstances in which you are tempted to express the exact opposite quality.

What I know about fruit is that it ripens slowly.

Similarly, God develops the fruit in your life by allowing you to experience circumstances in which you are tempted to express the exact opposite quality.

The development of character.

The development of the fruit always involves a choice.

And temptation provides that opportunity.

We learn to love by dealing with those who seem unlovable.

We learn real joy in the midst of sorrow.

We develop peace in times of confusion and chaos.

When we choose to trust or God.

We develop patience in circumstances where we are forced to wait.

God uses the opposite situation of each fruit to allow us a choice.

You can't claim to be good if you've never been tempted to be bad.

Our integrity is built by defeating temptation.

So every time you defeat temptation, you become more like Jesus.

You develop the fruit of the spirit.

Temptation follows a four step process that begins with a thought.

And this thought is suggested by the enemy.

God does not tempt you.

So it's.

It's begins with a thought that you give into an evil desire.

Temptation begins within us.

It always starts in the mind.

In fact, Jesus said from within a person.

I'm sorry for from within, out of a person's heart come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, eagerness for lustful pleasure, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.

All These vile things come from within.

And James tells us that there is a whole army of evil desires within you.

The next step is doubt.

Satan wants you to question whether sin is really wrong.

So that's back to the homosexuality.

Like my friend was using all of these examples like this has been like, since the beginning of time, people have been involved in homosexuality and it's just trying to.

Trying to doubt the truth of God, right?

We can't believe.

We can't believe in Jesus and be saved when we don't actually believe that what he says is the truth.

So the third is deception.

So once he gets you questioning, Satan offers a lie to replace what God has said is truth.

Step four is disobedience.

So when you have this lie that you've replaced with God's truth, then you act on the thought you've been toying with in your mind.

You give in to the temptation, and that's when it becomes sin.

It was never sin.

Temptation is not sinful.

It's just the act of giving into the sin.

Christians will never grow out of temptation.

Temptation is part of being human.

In this fallen world, it is not sinful or shameful to be tempted.

Even Jesus was tempted, but he never sinned.

Temptation only becomes sinful when you give into it.

The closer you grow to God, the more you will be tempted.

Tempted.

The enemy has a target.

There is a target on your back once you've accepted Jesus into your life.

The enemy, you're a threat to the enemy once you've done that.

So it's important to recognize your pattern of temptation and be prepared for it.

So there are situations and circumstances that will cause you to stumble almost immediately.

These situations are unique to your own weaknesses.

And Satan knows exactly what trips you up, so he is constantly at work trying to get you into those circumstances.

So it's important to ask yourself, when am I most tempted?

Where am I most tempted?

Who am I with when I'm most tempted?

We all know there are people who you can spend time with that you end up making decisions you wouldn't have made otherwise.

How do I feel when I'm most tempted?

Am I lonely?

Am I sad?

Am I hurt?

Am I angry?

All of these negative feelings can lead us to giving into temptation.

So identify your pattern and then avoid at all costs those situations as much as humanly possible.

Ask God to help you overcome temptation.

Jesus is sympathetic to our struggles.

He understands our weaknesses, for he faced all the same temptations we do.

Yet he did not sin.

The Bible says he faced all the same Temptations we do.

And yet he did not sin.

So come to the Lord boldly and ask him for the power to resist temptation and then expect him to provide it.

1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us, no temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.

And God is faithful.

He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.

But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

The devil is sneaky.

And he knows you.

He knows you so well.

He knows how easily you can be tempted.

And he knows exactly what to use to get you to act on those temptations.

I know there are parts of the Bible that are so, so difficult to understand.

And we reason in our own mind why we can make things okay, right?

We can.

We can do it because culturally things have become okay.

Culturally and in modern times, we have made sin.

It's just become so.

What's the word I want?

It's become so normalized that we think it's actually okay.

And it's not.

Just like homosexuality is a sin.

Sex before marriage is a sin.

And how normal normal have we made that?

It is not easy to stay free of sin.

It is not easy to not be tempted.

It is not.

In fact, it's impossible not to be tempted.

But God will give us a way out.

There are a lot of questions that we're going to need to ask God when we get to heaven.

We're not going to get those answers this side of heaven.

But the simple truth about sex outside of marriage and homosexuality is that is just simply outside the design that God had for us.

Sex is something that is to be between one man and one woman inside of the covenant of marriage.

And anything outside of that is a sin.

Thankfully, God knows we will sin and he gives us a way out.

He gave us Jesus.

It is what we celebrated yesterday.

His son, the perfect Lamb of God, the sinless Lamb of God, died to save us from our sins because he knew we could not live up to his standards.

So pray on it.

Ask God to remove the temptation.

Ask God to help you through the temptation.

Ask God to help you to understand the temptation.

Start to learn to recognize your pattern so that you can keep yourself out, out of places where you're tempted.

I hope that some of this was valuable.

I say it every week.

I hope that that resonated with somebody.

Even if it's just one of you.

I hope that you can.

I don't know, maybe it made you recognize a sin in your life that you can ask for, forgiveness for and repent of because that is what God wants for you.

I hope you have the best Monday I'm grateful for.

That's a wrap on another episode of Activate Stay up to Date by following ristonleighballard on Instagram.

And if this episode made you laugh, offered value, or simply entertained you, please like share and give a five star review on itunes.

Thanks for being here.

Love y'all.

Later.