CHAPTER 48: THE CUP PEOPLE 2026
We all get stuck in our own ways. It always seems like bad behavior that gets stuck, right? It never seems like good behavior. I never hear anybody say, “I’m so stuck in good behavior, my wife just knows I’m a saint.” No, that’s not what I hear. You know, what else nobody says? Nobody says, “I’m stuck and I like it.” Basically, we lose the point.
I do hear many people say “my way is the right way and you’re way is not.” In an argument, it’s all bad, both sides get nowhere. So Chapter 48, The Cup People. Are the cup people right or wrong. Neither. They’ve lost the point.
Revelation 3:15 “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. 16 So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither [a]cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. 17 Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—
Consider a cup of coffee. Left on the table it will turn into a science project. A cup full of oddly shaped organisms thriving to live in a temporary environment. Within these left over coffee grounds there becomes an actual pecking order, chain of command, the strongest organism in charge. Bob, the top organism, is now the new government of the cup. Bob controls who eats and when. The cup thrives on left over coffee, until it’s gone. And when it’s gone, or when it simply dries out, the wind will blow away the dust inside the cup and the new government that once was, is gone, and will never be again. An entire eco chain that did nothing, for nothing and it meant nothing. Bob the organism is gone. No memory for future generations, no resume material, no accolades for what was done during the time of the cup.
Stuck — a status quo that is fiercely maintained by those who are truly lost and believe in the holy grail of the cup. Those who are stuck in the cup, don’t want out. A cup person likes the cup, it’s comfortable, familiar, new information is not welcome here, only the status of the cup. I saw it in failed start-up companies. People in new situations, briefly funded, dreaming of super financial stardom, fighting about who was the genius and who was not. Employees undermining each other to climb the ladder of the start-up that was going nowhere, back-stabbing each other, as if one or the other had more importance to the “go nowhere” company. It wasn’t about the success of the company, it was about who was fired, hired or moved up the ladder. It wasn’t about the success of a product that could change humanity for the better. It was about who looked brilliant for the moment inside the cup. Not one of those companies survived, and whoever felt relevant from that situation disappeared. Another phantom effort of human confusion, lost, no point, no yield.
Galatians 4:9 But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
Dust, not even a memory. A perpetual neighborhood of nothing going nowhere with a false, imagined sense of noble and important. Without growth, without substance, without direction, roaring towards nothing. Again, missed the point and spent a lot of time on a pointless direction into nothing.
I had an associate once who told me, “I want to start a company and be the president.” I said, “wow, how incredibly inspiring. I never knew that about you. What is the product your passionate about?”
She said, “oh, I don’t have a product, I just want to be the boss.” Sad. Very. She ruined her career doing all the things talked about in this chapter. Looking for a point that looks like the holy grail and missing the true Holy Grail altogether.
Ecclesiastes 9:5 For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward,
and even their name is forgotten.
Cup People are everywhere, in any culture, any religion, even believers, churches, families blocked in by stupid concepts handed down, generation to generation, all in the name of some concept of God. The whole world is an apartment complex of cup people. Worthless environment clamoring, striving to achieve top billing inside of their cup. Again, missed the point. What is the point?
Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
What is your mission? What is my mission? What did God build me to do? Make money? That can’t be it. Be powerful? At what and why? Back bite and claw my way to the top of what?
Church, corporate world politics, fame, fortune, all of it, what’s the point? My mom and dad were so glad I had a corporate job. They envisioned a retirement, insurance, benefits and finally their son had found himself. How’d that work out?
I learned about the cup people. The company is the almighty and climbing the ladder of whatever that means in whatever cup we’re all stuck in. I got fired. The cup didn’t want me. No retirement, no benefits, no insurance, not even a Hostess cupcake. Everybody else, stormed up the side of the cup to cup stardom. Where’s all those people? I don’t know. They’re just gone. The cup dried up and the wind blew the dust away, or somebody cleaned up the cup and put it back in the pantry.
All of us are susceptible to the mysticism and the excitement of the occult, false prophecy, wrong thinking, magic, theories and generalities, promises of the big time. Be careful with whom you find yourself keeping company, lest they be the “doorman to oblivion,” a cup master, offering a one way ticket into stuck stardom in the land of the lost.
1 Timothy 4:2 These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead.[a]
How to avoid the cup? How to avoid wasting life and precious time. What is the point? For me, the point is Jesus and once Jesus touched my life, I see the waste of time I committed whole heartedly to waste and personal preferences that I thought were oh, so important. I’d missed the point, entirely and it cost precious moments of time, life, family, and above all, I did not, was not able to touch the breath of the creator, true knowledge, these powerful things had escaped me.
Napolean Bonaparte quoted the truth about true power, making a comparison of the difference between men’s authority and Jesus Christ, he said:
“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force.
(On the other hand)
Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.”
Can you imagine what I thought when I read that? When I realized the gravity of stupid, inept, gullible, weak, dead end life I’d committed to such stupid grandiose, prestigious nothingness? The realization that the only real truth is Jesus Christ, the one true salvation, Messiah, King, He is the Judge. To know I’d missed that all my life to that point? How many never know?
Ecclesiastes 10:15 The toil of a fool wearies him, for he does not know the way to the city.
Matthew Poole, an English Non-conformist theologian and biblical scholar during the the mid 1600’s said, and I quote..
“God hath given to men those gifts which he hath denied to beasts, reason and religion, wisdom to know God and themselves, and their obligations to God, and their dependence upon him. And therefore it’ll become them to lie like brute creatures, roaring and crying out in their miseries, without taking any notice of God in way of prayer or praise; and if they do so, it is no wonder if God takes no notice of them.”
God did not make the cup. It is made by men. To achieve the consummate top of the cup, only to realize, the whole world is out there and it doesn’t doesn’t care about you, or your cup. And where is God in all of this? The cup is not just a false god, it is the temple of a false god. At least it was for me.
Ephesians 2:1-3b ..just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world.[a]
I’ve often said, “if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll waste your time.” In Christ we are re-born, strengthened, fiercely alive and relevant. Without Him, ..stuck in the cup, lost.
Ephesians 6:13 and v18 (NIV) Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
A cup of coffee left outside for any length of time will yield within it, a living breathing “city of organisms” fighting for survival. Cut off from anything meaningful, ultimately, it will dry up, not even a memory remains of anything that was ever in the cup. That doesn’t have to be you or me.
1 Peter 2:9 NIV But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
The world, it would seem, is a giant movie, a narrative, if you will, created by a handful of people to control all the cups. Played out in the media, with players and actors portraying a story, not produced by the left or the right, democrat or republican, rather a set of cups offered to the masses for the express purpose of keeping everybody busy. For what? Good question, you should ask yourself that everyday when you’re listening to the world events. It is a narrative, and they’re are many “movies” so to speak to watch. And if you’re not careful, you’ll believe “Indiana Jones” is a true story, historically correct and that Indiana Jones is truly Harrison Ford. Could it be that all of the world is this corrupt? Good question. I will tell you the world has one thing in common. It questions the bible? Yes. But that could be healthy. What else might the producers of cup opportunities have in common. Well, here it is. Jesus and the bible are held in contempt. There is even a number of different cup start up companies that have invented alternative bible diversification programs and updated Jesus perspectives. But you know what, the bible doesn’t change, it is the same narrative it has always been, and it is not a cup, it is, if you believe, the only Truth that matters. It is the point.
Your word is a lamp for my feet,
a light on my path. Psalm 119:105
Find the truth, it’s out there. Know what you’re watching on social media, know what you’re looking at in the mirror. Look for Truth. Live your true story, truth in you, achieve in Truth and Truth alone.
John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Climb out, stay out, pray for a world stuck in cups. Run for the Original Blueprint of you, made by Him, Jesus Christ, the path to everlasting freedom.
Isaiah 35:8-10 (KJV): “And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness;
One might say, Jesus is a cup, too? A cup has a beginning and an end. What is inside of a cup is “finite, limited to a start and a finish.” Christ is “infinite.”
Revelation 22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
John 16:8 – “”And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment;”
Do cup people believe that? Not until it’s too late.
“For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death. 2 Corinthians 7:10
Don’t miss the point of it all. Stay out of the cup, any cup.
Colossians 3:2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Amen.
