You've got to adapt.
You must be able to adapt.
Now, let me teach you something as well.
It's called the overload principle, okay?
So when we think about adapting, right?
'Cause the title of the sermon is to adapt and overcome.
Get with the program, okay?
Stay current.
Here's something called the overload principle, okay?
So who knows what the overload principle is?
Put up your hand if you know what I mean by that.
Who's into, one person knows what I'm talking about?
Think about it from a weightlifting perspective.
Now who knows what I'm talking about?
All right, now we're up to almost 10, all right.
Well, you know what?
I'm so glad that I'm teaching you about this then
because at least I'm not getting up
and teaching somewhere 99% of people, yeah, we already know.
All right, get ready to adapt, folks.
I'm teaching you something new here.
Overload principle is this.
In order to get stronger, you must overload your muscles.
In order to get smarter, you have to overload your brain.
In order to get better at playing the piano,
you got to overload your piano playing circuits.
I don't know how else to word that, okay?
Look, this is called the overload principle.
Now, if I go to the gym and I lift the same amount of weight
for the same amount of reps,
and I do that three times a week, religiously,
and even if I'm lifting a lot of weight,
I will not get any stronger at all.
There'll be no adaptation.
Now this explains why every water delivery guy
is not just like this huge Hulk buff dude,
because you'd think they would be lifting
all those heavy bottles a day.
I mean, that's a workout, right?
Those five gallon bottles are pretty heavy,
and they're just unloading,
just bottle after bottle after bottle after bottle.
I mean, you'd think that they would just be huge.
I mean, you'd think that the mailman,
I mean, the mailman's out walking every day for a long time.
You'd think he's ready to just walk across the United States
or run an ultra marathon or something,
but the reason that they're not
is because they're doing the same thing every day.
So if you became a water delivery guy for the first few weeks,
you're gonna get a lot stronger.
I mean, the first few weeks you're gonna go home
and your arms are gonna be sore
and your muscles are gonna be getting bigger and bigger
as your body adapts to being able
to unload those heavy water bottles.
But you know, after about a month of that,
you're not gonna get any stronger.
You're just gonna be stuck at that one point.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
Okay, if you sat down at the piano and play the same songs,
you just sit there and just run through the same songs,
I don't care if you practice for two hours a day,
365 days a year, you sit down and play the same songs,
you will never get better at playing the piano.
You must play songs that are a little bit too hard for you,
songs that are a little bit over your head,
that challenge you, that push you,
and then you're gonna get better at playing the piano.
You gotta go into the gym and lift a little bit more
than you did last week, or more reps, or whatever,
if you wanna get stronger,
this is called the overload principle.
This is the reason why Greek professors
can go to a Bible college and teach Greek for 20 years
and they can't speak Greek.
They cannot speak Greek.
They cannot even pick up a Greek New Testament
in most cases, and if you just flipped open
to a random passage, they cannot sight read
the Greek New Testament and just open it up
and just read it like they're reading English.
But yet they've been teaching Greek
for a living for 20 years.
How can this be?
Because here's the thing, they're teaching the same class,
same vocabulary, same grammar.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
They've got the same, there's 5,400 and some words
that are used in the New Testament,
and they're basically teaching their students,
319 of them, and they're teaching,
and if they just keep teaching those same 319 words
for 40 semesters, does that mean that they're gonna be able
to read the New Testament now?
Or let's say they teach 1,000 words.
80% of the words they don't know, as far as the vocabulary.
So do you see what I'm saying?
People who get stuck in a certain pattern,
they're not growing, they're not learning,
they're not getting any smarter,
they're not challenging themselves.
If we're not challenged, we're going nowhere.
We're getting weaker, we're not moving forward, okay?
And this is the way it is with your job too.
If you just go to your job and just do the exact same thing,
you're never learning anything, you're stuck in that,
and then all of a sudden something changes like,
oh, we're eliminating that position.
Now where does that leave you?
So this is why you have to be adaptable.
You have to be ready to say, okay,
well let me do something different.
It's like the people who whine about the self-checkout.
Oh, you're taking away people's jobs!
If a machine can do it better than somebody,
then let a machine do it.
So what?
But it's like, oh, you're taking away those people's jobs.
So okay, well, and this is like those states
where you're not allowed to pump your own gas.
You know what I'm talking about?
It's like, I'm not allowed to pump my own gas.
I have to pay somebody to pump my gas for me.
So I have to pay more so that some guy
in a white outfit can come out
and he's not even wearing a white outfit.
At least in the '50s, they came out with a white outfit on.
They checked your oil and wiped your window down.
Now it's just some guy half-heartedly.
Who needs to hire somebody to pump their gas for them?
Who wants to pump your own gas
and pay a little bit less at the pump?
Okay, guess what?
Times change, move on.
Well, what about the guy whose job it is to pump gas?
He needs to get a different job.
He needs to learn another skill besides pulling one trigger.
Okay, there are other...
So what I'm saying is we've got to be learning,
we gotta be growing.
And listen to me, you that are getting older,
you need to be careful of this,
that you don't slip into this thing
of where you don't adapt anymore.
I have met people that are 90 years old
that are as sharp as a tack.
I have spoken to 90 year olds and man,
they are sharp and they're interesting
and they can learn, they can still learn new things.
You know, you'll tell them something,
you'll teach them something and then months later,
they'll be like, oh yeah, and I took what you said
and I learned even more and here's what I found.
And they're 90.
You run into other people that are only 70
and they are stuck in a certain program, okay.
What was that term that you were telling me the other day?
They're like, they're the non-playable character, NPC.
These people become like a non-playable character
by the time they're like 50 or 60.
They're just like in a routine where basically
they're doing the same things every day
and they learn nothing new.
And these are the people that are gonna be senile first.
I promise you that.
They will be the ones who get Alzheimer's first.
They'll get dementia first.
They will be senile first because they have stopped learning.
And you know what?
If you stop learning, your brain will lose the ability to learn.
You will get to a point where it's impossible to learn.
Look, I've been out soul winning and tried to give the gospel to someone and come to
the conclusion this person is incapable of learning.
It's like talking to a robot.
I'm talking about older people when they get to a certain point where who's ever felt like
I'm talking to someone who's incapable of learning?
And so you're friendly and all right, God bless you.
Have a good day.
But you're just like, what can I do here?
This person is incapable of learning.
I don't ever want to get to that point.
The Bible says it's better to be a poor child than a king.
I'm misquoting this, but the Bible talks about the king, the old and foolish king who will
no longer be admonished, talking about old people getting to a point where no one can
teach them anything, no one can correct them, no one can admonish them.
Don't ever get to that point.
That's the secret to staying young.
And you know, hey, I'm all for staying in shape physically, but you know what, I'd rather
that my body be totally decrepit and still have my mind than to have a great physique
and my mind is just senile and I've become a non-playable character robot automaton who
just gets up every morning and just goes through like a computer program where I'm just stuck
in a loop on repeat, okay?
I'm telling you, this is a danger.
Even studies are constantly showing, scientific studies are constantly showing that if you
do crossword puzzles and Sudoku, learn a foreign language, that you will push back Alzheimer's.
You'll push back dementia.
You'll push back senility by exercising your brain.
But if you're just going to sit there and watch TV all day, and I'm talking to those
that are in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, you're going to sit and watch TV all day?
You know what?
Just hello senility.
Hello nursing home, right?
Hello non-playable character.
And you know what, go learn what non-playable character means because then at least you're
learning something new.