 The son of popular music artist Toby Mack recently passed away. Today we're going to be talking about that, the death of Kobe Bryant and where is God in the midst of it. Hey, what's up guys? My name is Isaac and this is The Daily Disciple, where I help you follow Jesus daily. First off, I just want to give a huge shout out to my patrons on Patreon. Thank you guys for supporting and partnering with this ministry on there. If you want to partner with this ministry and give monthly to what I'm doing here on Instagram, on other places, doing live events, that kind of thing, please head on over to patreon.com slash daily underscore disciple. So today's topic is pretty heavy. So this has happened a couple months ago, but the news recently came out that Toby Mack's son, Truett passed away and it was quite a surprise. I think it was the day, if not it was the day after or the day before he was supposed to be performing in my city here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. So it was kind of close to home because he was coming here. There was a lot of anticipation with a lot of people in the city, especially within the Christian community. And when we heard this news, it was just a shock. Later on, a couple months later, Kobe Bryant and his daughter and a number others passed away in a helicopter crash, absolutely terrible tragedy. And it really, that one, in particular, sent shockwaves across the whole world. And just questions of death, why, why could this happen? Why did this happen? How could God, if there is a God, allow this to happen? Where was he? These are the kinds of questions that even Christians were asking ourselves. And I remember as I was watching the news coverage from the Kobe crash site. And just in utter shock, I grew up watching this guy play basketball. I, you know, I actually like cheered against him for the first number of years that I got into basketball as like 11 year old. I was a Boston Celtics fan and he played for the Lakers, they're our tribal. But even now, you know, seeing somebody that seemed unbeatable, un, you know, unstoppable life being taken away without, you know, against their will, right? It was just like, wow, even Kobe can die. Why did this happen? Why did this happen to Toby Mack's son? Why did this happen to Kobe? Why does this happen to anybody? You know, why do bad things happen to good people, I guess, could come across some people's minds. When talking about his son's death, Toby Mack really hit home a really important point that I just want to touch on here. So Toby says, we don't follow God because we have some sort of under the table deal with him. Like we're following you if you bless us. We follow God because we love him. It's our honor. I want you to think for yourself because this is what I'm doing. How often do you think of, you know, Christianity as some sort of under the table deal like, okay, we serve God. We try to obey and God gives us back blessings and makes our lives better because I know sometimes I get caught in that too. We honor God. We try to do good things. We walk old ladies across the street. We try to be an upstanding citizen. We try to read our Bible Bible. We try to pray to him and in turn we sometimes expect and I know I sometimes expect that my life is going to go better or I'm going to get what I want or God's going to, you know, give me the desires of my heart or fulfill my dreams and what I want to happen because I've tried my part and now God has to fulfill his part of the deal. It's like we're manufacturing a new form of covenant between us and God, but God didn't agree to this covenant. This is just something we're making up. Hey, God, if I try my best, you're going to make my life go swimmingly, but it doesn't happen. We encounter sickness. We encounter tragedy. We encounter struggle. We encounter shattered dreams. And I think about myself and all the dreams and aspirations that I have and just this, you know, a lingering expectation that just because this is something I want and just because I'm trying to serve God, you know, it means God should give me everything that I want in this life in terms of my dreams. But at the end of the day, no, that's not how God works. And that's not how we should be looking at it either because when you look at it like God's not a means to an end. He is the end of himself, right in and of himself. He is the end. It's not like we need to go through God to so he can bless us to get what we really want, have a nice life, have our dreams fulfilled, you know, accomplish all we want to accomplish, get a massive following or earn lots of money or have a nice big house or a comfortable life. God is not a means to that end. No, he is the end, right? The life that we're living is all about God and growing closer to God. And through that struggle, through that pain, through that suffering, through those shattered dreams, we actually learned to cast our gaze upon Jesus, who is the point. He is the reason that we're living. He is the reason that we're like we're doing anything or he ought to be. So these suffering, this shattered dreams help us refocus our attention on what really matters. I can get caught up in my dreams and what I wish would happen. I want this YouTube channel, I have a million subscribers, I want my ministry to be really big and successful and share the gospel with lots of people and just use creativity to honor God. But I also want to be like I want this to become my job and I want this to become sustainable and those are my dreams and hopes. And I can say, oh God, but I'm doing this for you. Why are you making this work for me? And God's like, this is not the point. The point is me. The point is not what you want to do. God is a better plan for you than your dreams. And I know some people say that sometimes and it's actually wrong what they're implying is because sometimes people imply that God is going to make your life better and more comfortable and more worldly successful than you could on your own or he wants you to be that kind of worldly successful, comfortable, successful, rich, all that kind of thing. But when I talk about a better plan, the better plan does not entail getting more stuff or getting more achievements or more fame or more success. No, the better plan actually entails whatever necessary to cast your gaze upon Jesus. That is God's better plan for you. Because he knows what's best for you is to be focused on him. So whatever the path of your life needs to take in order for that to happen, that is a better plan than you could imagine because you're playing on your own. If you got everything that you wanted, if you got your dreams fulfilled, if you never encountered difficulty, even death with like loved ones or family members or whatever friends, we wouldn't rely on God. We wouldn't be focused on God because our lives are great without him. But the fact that we do encounter this stuff reaffirms in my mind that there's something more than just stuff and worldly success and trying to grow a YouTube channel and trying to grow an audience or whatever. It's about God. This week, I encourage you to focus on God. You know, we may have all sorts of goals and that may be awesome, but maybe some of those dreams may be shattered. Maybe they won't come true in how we wanted them to. But ultimately, we can see those things. We can see those difficult things in life, death, suffering, sickness, is all kind of a just to get us to look at God again. Get us to look at what this thing is all about. And that's my encouragement to you this week. Thanks so much for watching, guys. I really appreciate you subscribing to this channel down below and giving this video a like, putting out new videos every single week. Thanks so much for watching. Leave your thoughts in the comments down below. Once again, thank you so much to the patrons on Patreon. Support me on patreon.com slash daily underscore disciple. And I think that's everything. Thanks so much for watching, guys, and I'll see you next time.