Find yourself a bigger room. In this episode Phil Strong discusses the concept of finding oneself in a ‘bigger room,’ using anecdotes and reflections to illustrate the importance of expanding one’s perspective, relationships, and faith. Phil emphasizes the significance of embracing risk, generosity, and a mindset of continual growth to broaden one’s world and discover new possibilities. He encourages listeners to have faith as the key to experiencing a larger, more fulfilling life. Throughout the episode, Phil weaves in personal stories, biblical references, and practical insights to inspire and challenge the audience
BONUS CONTENT
- Bible Reference: Proverbs 11:24
- Previous Podcast: Episode 45
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Introduction
Well, good day, and welcome to coffee with Phil again. My name’s Phil, and it’s a privilege to be with you today. I came home and made myself a wonderful flat white with some freshly roasted coffee beans. My favourite roast is quite light.
I got some exciting news to tell you, though. I got given this year a coffee plant, which I’m nurturing, loving, and taking care of. I’m highly motivated, obviously, to make sure this plant survives, and Jackson, my son, and I’ve been taking care of it, and I’ve repotted it, and he’s been texting me every time I need to alter it centred outside on the weekend for a bit of fresh air and some rain, which was for it. I’ve sprayed it with some Concord oil to try and get rid of a bug, but here’s the exciting thing. A friend of mine, Pastor Michael, also has several trees, and we’re hopeful that we’re going to get a harvest.
But we’ve heard of two different of these: church pastors. Clearly, there’s a coffee addiction issue amongst church pastors, but two different pastors in Invercargill both have coffee plants. One of them sent a photo to Pastor Michael the other day, who shared it with me and her coffee plant inside, and her house in Invercargill, it’s 8 feet tall. It’s got red berries all over it.
And it looks like she’s going to have a bumper crop, so I’m highly anticipating the future of my coffee tree, and I shouldn’t be surprised because I’ve seen coffee trees growing in India and been to a tea plantation and a coffee plantation. And they looked wonderful. And then, look, there was this coffee tree. We’re going up to the school in India to have a look at what was happening in the school, and we’re walking up the steps, and there’s this coffee tree growing out of this broken concrete, almost like a weed.
And I remember it was 2 1/2 metres tall, full of rich colour. As the berries were on the ground, I shouldn’t be surprised that the coffee trees can grow like that. But I’m quite sure what Kathy’s going to think when my coffee tree at home is 8 to 10 foot tall. She’s not going to be so happy about that. I don’t think so. But, you know, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Anyway, I wanted to talk to you today, and here we are. Coffee with Phil, episode 46. In this episode, I wanted to challenge you to find yourself. Find yourself in a bigger room, and I’ll explain what that means. You’ve seen the headline. You’ve still clicked on the episode and chosen to listen to it. And here we are talking about the opportunity for you to find yourself. In a bigger room now, this thought comes to me after spending a week last week at a church conference in Auckland.
And I love being in a big room with a lot of people who are choosing to worship together. In a way, and you know, sometimes when you go to a conference, you just have a little bit of a higher expectation. You know you’ve got sometimes you’ve got overseas speakers that are, considered in your opinion, to be rock stars or out there. Yeah, these guys are men, and women are professional communicators on the road all the time. And they probably share these messages 50 times a year. Incredibly polished but impacting. just that impacting.
and so, I find that when I get into a conference with 1000 people jumping up and down worshipping Jesus, it just makes my inner world grow. I enlarge my world. I enlarge my expectations. I enlarge my thoughts around the possibilities for me. I enlarge my circle of relationships as I go on a journey with other people. I enlarge my knowledge. I enlarge my understanding as I grapple with knowledge and try to seek to find that revelation and understanding within it, and I enlarge my faith as God deposits something in me.
Small room small world
There’s something about finding yourself in a bigger room as a way to enlarge yourself. Now I remember with regards to church leadership. I remember Sam Monk, Pastor Sam Monk. Who is the national leader of the Acts Church, New Zealand He always said to us in leadership events he would say, Look, “if you want to grow yourself, you need to put yourself into a bigger context.” He says, “If you’re living in Te Awamutu,” so he’s looking at me. Right. He says, “If you’re living in Te Awamutu, then you need to get into Auckland to an environment in Auckland. So, you see something far, far bigger than the context you’re in so that you can dream, think, and experience what God’s got for you as you expand your ministry.
He says. “I live in Auckland, so I can’t expect to expand my world by staying in Auckland,” he says. “I’ve got to take myself to London. I’ve got to take myself to San Francisco or New York,” he says. I’ve got to put myself in a bigger context to enlarge my view of the world and the expectations, so that I can see where God wants to lead me, and I’ve been really challenged by that. I do want to say this, though, and I’ll be very careful how I say it, but if you keep yourself in a small room, you will only experience a small world.
I want to speak about this in a minute. But I could even say [I could even say], that if you keep yourself in a small room, you will maintain a small mind. And it’s possibly not as positive, but certainly more confronting. And I would say, You know, look, I. I work with a lot of people in different ways, and I would say when we put ourselves in a small, safe, controlled, limited space, then there are long-term consequences, and I’ll share a story with you about that from a very long time ago in my world.
But I [but look I…] let me just acknowledge that some people like safety, some people like small spaces, some people like safe, controlled environments, and some people are happy to embrace limitations. But if that’s you, can I just invite you to go on the journey with me? Because I want to close this podcast out with something that will hopefully invite you to see things in a different way, and I’m not trying to change who you are. I’m trying to invite you into a new space.
So, let’s go on a journey and see what comes out of this. As we do this together, I want to share with you that, you know, when I left home, I moved away to work in a corporate environment, and I just wanted to see the world where I wanted to get out of my home. I was actually completely bored with the education. It wasn’t that it was challenging. It was probably that it wasn’t challenging, but I also didn’t know what I want to do or be. I was trying to find myself really, I guess, and you could say in those days we didn’t call it that. We just said, “Oh, I can’t be bothered. I’m going somewhere else.”
So anyway, I moved to Wellington, and I worked in a very large corporate office, but I had a very small world. And what I mean by that is that I worked in the same office. On, on, on, on, on. In the same environment for 11 years. And I remember, you know, it was an interesting season for me because I moved out of home, and I still tried to find myself. And then, after getting lost and getting more lost, it actually came out of that space of confusion, and, you know, obviously, I met Kathy through that workplace.
So that was a key, right? And you know, we got married. And we bought our first house together. The house that we bought together and moved into It was just as I was settling, I suppose, into the season of life that I started to realise I had created for myself a very small world. I mean, the organisation was a big global company. But the world, for me, was very, very small. I was in what I call a rigid pattern. Which means I got up at the same time I caught the same. Bus to work. I sat in the same seat, and I did the same thing every year, and so I was rigid in these patterns.
But what was worse than that is [because that’s not bad in… in this sense]. But what’s bad is when you get into rigid thinking. And I started to confront myself in this space, and I didn’t actually like what I discovered about how I had created my world as a young man. The other thing that I noticed because I sat there looking at it as I started to explore this was that I started to see there was a world outside my world, but what I know is that it was in the corporate world. There was a corporate ladder. And we all knew that you had to do the right things to climb to the next rung of the ladder. The good news is that if you manage to scrape your way up a rung of the ladder, you got a pay rise, and that’s what we all were hanging out for, and you get to be a different level of a different grade.
And so, your pay packet is slightly larger, although in those days it was pennies on the dollar. But what I noticed was as the ladder went up the wall, it got narrower, which meant there wasn’t that much room for everyone to climb the ladder. Now there were some people that were happy with that, and they just stayed on the same run. And I remember sitting with a guy who was incredibly intelligent, and he built this database system, he was super proud of it. He was, you know, meticulous in what he’d put together, and it was highly functional. But he had to protect it, he says. He said to me one day he literally said to me, “I can’t let anyone learn the system. Because then I’m not valuable.”
So, he was protecting his own kingdom; he wasn’t actually paid that much, and he wasn’t very high up the ladder, but he had built this empire around his intellectual property, and he wasn’t prepared to share it because he was fearing that he was less valuable, and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” And this guy was like, you know, I think I was in my early 20s at the time, and this guy was probably in his late 40s, although it looked like he was 60 in his late 40s, and I’m like, is this my future? Oh wow, I suddenly had a reality check on the world. And what I did discover is that I started to look into different parts of the organisation because I’m like, Hey, yes, the company pays well, and I’ve got this really amazing benefits package.
But I realised that the politics of the corporate world was about dog eat dog, and the only way to get ahead was to eliminate the competition. Who was probably someone you’re working with. And I watched it play out, and I was like, man, I just don’t want to live in this world.
So that is the reality of what I was experiencing. And for some of you, I’m probably talking about your current reality. But here’s my point. Let me understand this. There are long-term consequences for living in a small room or in a small world. The long-term consequence for me was this. When I finally decided to take the faith step, a big leap and jump outside of that world. 11 years I’ve been there. There was a massive contrast to what I had to learn to navigate in the real world, and so I would say this: if you’re not going to put yourself into a bigger room from time to time, then you’re going to almost find it impossible to navigate circumstances in the world outside of that.
And I was just talking about this. With someone today in the office and saying, You know, even with our kids, we’ve got to allow them to experience a world outside their comfort zone in order that they can find the maturity necessary to walk into situations like that as adults. And I remember when I was a teenager, when I was 13. We were in a very sort of, I suppose you could say, conservative Presbyterian church that had a really good youth group. But I think the parents realised it wasn’t enough.
And so, they would take me long on a Friday night to this campus life youth event down in Naenae in lower Hut. You know I was 13 and Mum would make me dress up and look like an absolute goober, and I dropped me off and say, Hey, we’ll pick you up tonight at the time it finishes, and I’d walk into that room and didn’t know anyone, and it was a Christian environment.
There were some really awesome leaders, and they did their best to make me feel safe and comfortable and to contribute and be part of, you know, that large. It was maybe 100 youth in the room, and I give thanks to my parents for that. I hated it, but I give thanks to my parents because they put me outside of my small world in order to expand the world that I was beginning to appreciate and that I would learn to navigate as a young adult and later in life.
What does a ‘bigger room’ mean?
So, if you have a small room, you’re going to end up with a small world and possibly even a small mind. So. What does it mean to find yourself in a bigger room? Well, I just gave you an example of me heading off to a conference in Auckland with a bunch of people from our church. And we were just immersing ourselves for four days or three days; whatever it was, we were immersing ourselves in the culture and environment and allowing ourselves to be led by those that organised the conference. Well, let me. Add to that, then, as a second example. I would say this: To you, show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future. Now, I’m not trying to disrespect your friends. I’m certainly not disrespecting mine. I’ve got some. Beautiful, loving friends that I really enjoy spending time with.
But if I limit myself to the world of me and my friends, that’s really going to become my ceiling. And I was really fortunate in 2011 when I was working in a Christian environment, in a ministry and the business ministry, and the people who I was working with—God bless them, we really honour them. They had recognised that I was frustrated about some of the boundaries around where I was operating, and they sat with me and they showed me a conference that was being offered in Dallas, Fort Worth, up in Texas, and they looked at me with tears in their eyes and they said, “we think you need to be in this room. We think you need to be exposed to this. We really, truly believe God wants to expand your world. And we’re going to try and find a way to invest in you in order to put you in that environment” and it blew me away I was so excited.
But what happened out of that experience? You know God bless them and the people that contributed financially to allow that to happen. And I flew up into Dallas, Fort Worth, TX, and walked into a room with 150 crazy people. There’s a Christian business conference, and out of that, I made some new friends. And as I made these new friends, I got to understand a bigger world that existed outside of the one that I was experiencing at home. So show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future. What does it mean to have a bigger life?
The other thing that I find really just such a joy, and in some ways, oh my gosh, you know, I’ve got it written down here on my notes, you know, risk leads to reward. But not always.
So, you know, I’m a risk-taker. I embrace risk. I like change. I’m happy to walk into something that’s challenging or risky because I know that there’s a possibility for reward there. But I also know that it doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, but for me, to create a bigger room means living in a space where I’m prepared to accept risk. Because I know the risk is the necessary key. As it were, to unlock the door into a bigger room. Now, that hasn’t worked for me 100% of the time, so I am not saying that you need to run out and risk your life savings and always live on the edge of risk. I mean, you’ll just become either a junkie or you’ll become someone that people don’t want to hang out with. Possibly, that’s why I’m in the space I’m in. But the point I’m making is that you have to embrace one of the keys to moving into a bigger room, a bigger space, to find yourself a bigger person, and to learn to embrace risk in the right way and maintain personal balance.
And so that’s what it means to move into a bigger room. The other thing that it means is to have an attitude. I’ve always maintained this attitude around personal growth. And I suppose I’ve learnt that I love to learn. And one of my elders said to me the other day we were chatting, and he said, Look, he said “you have a voracious appetite for content and a capacity to process that content and apply it as necessary.” I don’t retain everything I read. I certainly don’t retain everything I try and learn. But when it gets, it gets. and I consume a wide range and a high volume of content in order to get myself to that point because I’ve chosen to grow. Grow myself and take responsibility for myself to grow personally.
The other side of that, which is not necessarily my strength, but it becomes, I suppose, a trait that I’ve got to manage, is that I’m constantly finding myself in situations that are beyond my capability or capacity, and that demands that I grow, and some of it’s my own fault because I take on challenges I shouldn’t. Or I think every idea is a good one, and I get myself into trouble. The point is, Let’s not do this to hurt ourselves, and I’m trying to fix my weaknesses.
But I would say to you and me that we just need to grow more. We need to become bigger people and sometimes. [In the context of discipleship,] what I’ve found is that Jesus would often say to me, “Fool, less of you and more of me would be more helpful for you in a situation.”
So, growing isn’t about me becoming bigger. It’s about me becoming less in order that my world could become bigger, and often I find that the key there is Jesus is trying to take stuff out. You’re trying to prune stuff. In order that we would be more fruitful, and I read that somewhere in the Bible. So, you can find that. John, 15. I’m joking; of course I know where it is. OK.
So, find yourself in a bigger room through expanding your world, finding friends that are beyond where you are today, and taking a little bit of risk. And looking to have an attitude to grow.
The other thought that came to me in this conversation, although as I was preparing for this conversation, is a well-known verse, well known to me at least, Proverbs 11, verse 24, and one of the translations, or the one that I memorised, says, “The world of the generous gets larger and larger. And the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.” I often find people with a small world are very selfish; they are fearful; they’re trying to control their world, and as a result of it, the Bible calls them stingy, and prophecies’ in fact, that their world gets smaller. But the positive is always first; the world of the generous gets larger and larger.
Who are you giving into?
And so I’d say, who are you giving in to? Who are you giving in to? And I just shared that example of, you know, being sent up to Dallas, Fort Worth, to a conference that expanded my horizons and expanded my world, but there was only possible because people invested in me.
There was a season in my life where I owned, in fact, the first business I owned. It was a business with New Zealand home loans. I was a franchise owner, and in that role, the business required me to help people every day. I had to find people to help with their finances. And my job was to sit down and to talk through their circumstances to help them embrace good discipline when it comes to money in order that they would be in control of their debt and that they would also be able to achieve their goals, their hopes, and their dreams. And, oh man, I love that season in my life. I was passionate about it, and I just got a thrill out of it. But you know. What was amazing is that as I invested into more people, I gave myself into these circumstances, and sometimes I got paid really well for doing this, and other days we just couldn’t get a deal done.
And so, because I was commissioned only for that, it just meant I didn’t get paid. But that wasn’t the point. The point was, how many people can I help? And what I found as I expanded my desire to help people was that I wanted to help more than one at a time, but what I was learning is, like, you know, I would sit at the kitchen table or the dining table or sit in someone’s office, and it might be the CEO of a manufacturing company. Who would, you know, then, on the way ahead, give me a tour of the factory, or it could be someone that you’re in business with that I’d, you know, like to learn about their tailoring and their sewing, or I would sit with someone, and they would have a passion for woodturning.
And so, if I just learned to ask the right questions, my world would get larger. As I learned to ask questions and ask people to share their interests, passions, or dreams with me, I would grow because I was interested in their world and how I could help them make their world larger. So, there’s a flip side to this; that’s the upside that’s a benefit: the more people you give into, the more people you invest in, and the more people you help on their journey, the more you might help them make their world bigger. Your world will get larger and larger. You’ll find yourself in a bigger room. With way more possibilities, hopes, and expectations, your relationships will expand, and your knowledge and understanding will grow as you invest. And other people.
Faith is the key to a bigger room
And so let me just remind you that Proverbs 11, verse 24, says the world of the generous gets larger and larger, and the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. So, what do you choose? Do you want to be generous? Or do you want to be stingy? The final thing that I want to share with you in this episode of Coffee with Phil is that faith is the key to a bigger world. You know, when I read the Bible, which I really like to do, I just constantly come to this place of realisation that God desires for me to experience his world, and his world is infinite. There’s no end to God’s kingdom or the world that he is creating around me. And therefore, if I believe that God desires for me to experience this world, therefore, He wants me to experience a larger room, a bigger room, a larger life, more possibilities. But then it’s going to take faith.
It’s going to take faith for me to walk into that, it’s. Going to take. Faith for me to stand in a place of expectation and say God, I want to see what you see for me. And that’s going to take faith in him leading in him orchestrating in him being in charge of my world.
And so, I don’t… Well, try not to fabricate my own opportunities in reality because, you know, a wise man once said to me that the world that you create, you have to sustain. But the world that God creates around you, he will choose to say, stay in, and retain. So, look, I’d rather have him do what’s awesome as I lead this to a landing. I just want to remind us all that your faith is the key to your bigger world. Then you also need to accept that faith is like a muscle. As in a muscle on your body, and it only grows when you choose to extend.
And so, the principle of muscle building when it comes to working out is that you would extend that muscle beyond comfort to the point even where the fibres of your muscle are tearing under the strain; that’s what the burning is. If you’ve ever done a workout, the muscles are tearing slightly. And amongst the fibres of the muscle, when you’re extending it beyond its capacity, you’ll rest that muscle and allow the muscle to heal. Then it actually enlarges that muscle, and it increases the capacity of that muscle and therefore the strength of that muscle, where faith is like that muscle. If you’re going to put yourself in a place where you’re extending your faith beyond your current capacity, completely dependent on God, it’s going to be really painful in the midst of that.
And you’re going to be like, um. But it’s going to bring healing, which is going to enlarge your faith, which is going to make your faith stronger, which means it’s going to increase your capacity. God is going to increase your capacity when you trust him to build. And I would say to you that a larger faith is your key to a larger world to find yourself in a bigger room.
And I’m not saying this because I’m trying to belittle or put you down, or put you in a space where you’re feeling inferior. That’s not my goal here. My goal is to inspire you to a what if? What might be? What has God got for me that I would see a world beyond my current reality? So many stories in the Bible flash in my mind right now: Jacob and the stairway to heaven, as God just unveils the reality of heaven coming to earth, or Isaiah as he’s drawn up into this vision of the throne room of God, and he’s like, ah, the description is amazing. You know, or what about being one of the disciples of Jesus and seeing him stoop down and lift the woman who crawled to touch the hem of his robe and faith, and he lifts her and says, “Woman. Your faith has made you well.” Bearing witness to that would build your faith, wouldn’t it?
So, God wants us to have a bigger world, to see our world from his perspective, to enlarge our expectations and faith of what is possible so that we might lead others to experience that also. And I guess that’s the whole point.
So yeah, I’m not sure what challenge you take from that. I’m certainly a possibility thinker, so I’m going to find a quiet space and I reflect on this right now. In fact, I’m going to go make a cup of tea. I think possibly a licorice tea this time of the day. And I’m going to consider the possibilities of how I could find myself in a bigger room. I always enjoy spending time with you. I hope you enjoy spending time with me. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast. Share it with a friend, and why don’t you come back next time and have coffee with Phil? I look forward to catching you then God bless.