Sunday Service: Fill Your Cup

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil My cup overflows. Psalm 23 what does that mean? How does it apply to my life? If it even does, that’s we’ll explore today. Welcome to our Sunday service. Psalm 23 is one of the most well known and beloved passages in the Bible. It’s attributed to King David. It’s a Psalm of trust and of comfort that demonstrates God’s love and care for us through the imagery of a shepherd and his sheep. So to break this down, a couple of parts of it, because I think it’s really, really important, start with You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Now this tells us that God’s protection, protection extends good times in the bad times, even in the presence of danger and adversity, the idea and the image of setting a table signifies God’s hospitality for us and his care for us, and placing God as the ultimate host and ensuring that all of our needs are met. So it’s ultimate host who’s given us everything that we could possibly need, regardless of the circumstances, and God’s care is given to us freely and openly, again, regardless of what’s what’s going on in ancient times. To eat at somebody’s table that was emblematic of friendship and protection and honor hospitality. So when the psalm says that even when enemies are near, God provides not just sustenance but a public display of favor, and the final part of the Psalm says, My cup overflows, and the cup symbolizes abundance, joy, satisfaction, again, in ancient context, to have a full cup meant you had everything that you need. So the cup, when the Psalm says, My cup overflows, it’s going way beyond just sufficiency. It is speaking to overwhelming abundance. And blessings suggest that you and I have not just enough, but we have more than enough. And it also is speaking to the idea of spiritual fullness, that we are so enriched by God’s goodness that our cups overflow into all other aspects of our lives. So it’s not just the physical world material abundance, but it’s also having peace of mind. It’s having emotional stability and mental stability and fortitude and spiritual satisfaction. So you can look at all of it as as a metaphor for our journey through life. Our God is our shepherd, guiding and providing protection for us. It’s trusting in God that He will give us everything that we need. It’s all symbolized by the cup overflowing so modern times deeper interpretation of it, so that we’re not just seeking satisfaction in a worldly sense, but also from a Divine Sense, that we’re all looking for overflowing abundance. And don’t we have that today? Don’t we have overflowing abundance? Imagine if somebody from those ancient times were to look into your living room last night, to look into your kitchen last night, to go into your pantry right now, to open your refrigerator right now, to look at your your bank account today, even if you had $100 if you had some cans of soup, whatever a loaf of bread, it would have been amazed. It would have been amazed at the abundance that that, that we have so even the people that we consider to be struggling, and I’m not saying that, that that that we don’t and that they’re not. Certainly many people out there are struggling with things that I have no idea about. But for the average American, we live in absolute abundance. We have more than enough, and it’s a blessing. It’s amazing. And like everything else. There’s a flip side. It’s a challenge when our needs are met. When I’ve got what I need, I’ve got food and clothing and shelter, we have idle hands. All of a sudden, don’t know what to do with my hands. I’ve got I’ve got open space. I’ve got headspace. I’ve got free time. I don’t have to worry about where is my next meal coming from. I don’t have to worry about bands of marauding people coming to steal all my stuff. We have free time. We have these things. And with these new things, new problems appear. New challenges appear. Now we’re manufacturing them in a lot of ways. We are. We are coming up with new ways to to try and fill our cups. We look past the abundance that we have, that God has provided to us, and look for new fights. There’s this wonderful story about St George in retirement, and St George was the famous dragon slayer. And St George, as this story goes, went around and became extremely famous for slaying all the dragons. And when all the dragons were slain, he started looking for other dragons to slay. Still had his sword, still has the ability and the desire to slay dragons. It’s what he does, except there’s no more. So now we have to manufacture new dragons, and we as human beings have a problem with abundance. We start looking for problems where no problems exist. We start manufacturing problems when we don’t need to manufacture any new problems. And this St George analogy or metaphor pops up in so many different aspects of our lives, and you know what I’m talking about, you could simply look around the things that we are focused most on in our culture today, you’re like, wow, these are talk about privilege. What a privilege to be considering and viewing these as existential problems we have, and decided to fill our cups with new forms of religion or new forms of zealotry or obsessions. It’s all over the place, and when we have a desire or walking around with our cup out, looking for somebody to fill it up. Well, believe it or not, there are plenty of people who will gladly pour into our cups. We have an unlimited number of ways to satiate and to fill our cups, through social media and screen time and the Internet, gaming, gambling, literally, the abundance of processed foods on every corner, every street in the United States of America, even gas stations. Have I almost said high quality food, but that wasn’t what I meant. You understand what I’m saying. There’s delicious things to shove into our mouths everywhere we look, and we’re all indulging. And I’m by no means immune to any of this. I’m by no means above this fray. I fall into the traps. I’ve got my cup out too, and I’m interested in having people pour into it. I’m interested in experiencing new things, but these obsessions over politics and everything else I’ve been naming off, they’re making us crazy, while they may be pouring liquid into our cups. They are by no means filling them up. I think that they have a corrosive effect on our cups, for lack of a better term in that as we fill them up, as we pour into them, they’re destroying the actual vessel itself. They are eroding the lining of it. They are they are damaging the integrity of our cups. And in the context of this us, our brains, our ability to function and process information, our ability to suss out what is of value and what is not of value. And that’s obviously a very, very dangerous thing. You ever ask yourself, it, at what cost is this happening? At what cost Am I doing this? At what cost am I engaging in this activity, in this line of thinking, in this whatever it is, at what cost do we focus on one thing over another? And that’s the question, at what cost when we’re filling our cups with one thing, we’re.

What’s the cost of that? And I think that we all know that it’s massive, because our cups are big enough to fill them up with everything. That is, I suppose, a feature of human beings is that I can’t do everything. And I think and talk a lot about this comes down to hierarchies and priorities of the things that are most important to us, because I can’t be on social media for four hours a day. I can’t watch Netflix for four hours a day. I can’t spend four hours a day with my kids. I can’t spend four hours a day with my family. I can’t spend four hours a day exercising. I can’t the list of things that I want to be filling my cup up with. It can’t be everything. It just can’t be so at what cost when I put down the encyclopedia in favor of People magazine? What’s the cost to me when I choose Doritos over anything else? What’s the cost to me when I choose comfort over discomfort, what’s the cost to me? And the answer is, it’s massive. You know what I’m getting at. I’m not saying that life or this choice making, decision making, process is a game of perfect. I don’t want you to be perfect. I am. I am not a monk. I’ve taken no vow of poverty. I am not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination. I am a regular person by every measure. So it’s not a game of perfect. I’m not trying to be perfect. It’s a game of better, trying to get better. It’s game of recognizing what it is that we’re doing. It’s easy to just get caught up in the caught up in the current carried along by the currents of life. It’s easy to be to be complacent and to be trapped in comfort, in normal, in the usual, and time passes. And when we’re not careful, a lot of time passes, and what we’ve been filling our cuff with, like, Why in the world were they doing this? Why have I spent so much time doing these things. It’s understanding that when I say yes to one thing, I’m saying no to everything else. That is a stark reality. When I say yes to this thing, I’m saying no to everything else. We only have so many resources, our most valuable resources of time, energy, attention and money. When I allocate them to one thing, I’m saying no to everything else. We have to say yes to some things. For sure, have to say yes. It’s just a matter of, what do I want to fill my couple up with? What is the right thing for me to be filling my cup up with at this time, it’s a really profound thing. It’s okay to read social media, it’s okay to look at social media, it’s okay to read People Magazine. It’s okay to keep up on politics, but it’s not okay to do those things exclusively and to do them in place of more beneficial things. Think about this, what if? What if? What if you had made the decision to read 10 pages a day 10 years ago? Would you be glad that you’ve made that decision, or would you be upset? I’m sure you’d be glad. I’m sure you would think about the learning that you’ve done, the amount of books that you’ve read, my goodness, you would be glad. What if you had started 10 years ago? You started every day with a walk, get outside, move your body. Would you be glad? Or would you be upset by that? Each of us has to make our own decisions, and then we have to live with our own decisions. And each of us, I advocate, submit that we have to use our past choices to make better future choices. You think about all of us have regret or were I don’t know if regret is the right term. Each of us has regret over past actions and experiences. I shouldn’t have done that. Really wish I would have done this differently. That’s fine. It’s okay feel the way that you feel, feel that regret, just allow it to shape your future in the way that you want it, to take those feelings and use them to. Make better decisions moving forward on how it is that you’re choosing to fill your cup, use your past choices to make better future choices. You tell me how you’re spending your time, your attention, your energy and money today, and I will tell you, beyond the shadow of a doubt, where you will be 10 years from now. Let’s look at three years. 10 years a lot. Let’s look at three years. You start making better choices today. You figure out what’s of greatest value to you, what’s of greatest importance. You start making more active decisions on this is how I’m going to fill my cup for the next three years. Really going to focus on filling my cup with these things over those things. You do that, you execute on your plan. You win the next three years. What? You’ve done is you’re creating a virtuous cycle. You’re showing yourself that you can make good choices. You’re showing yourself you’re capable of pursuing discomfort over simply being safe and comfortable doing the same thing you’ve always done, even better is that you’ll probably win the three years after that, you’ll probably have created wonderful habits and routines and rituals of success in your life. You’ll be a happy, healthier, more productive, more satisfied person. You’ll do it three years after that, three years after that, three years after that, you get the idea you’ll become a much better person. You get to choose. You have choice. You have agency. You make good decisions. Make good decisions about how it is that you are choosing to fill your cup and again, People magazine’s Okay. Every once in a while, do your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.