Hi, my name is Pete Scazzaro. I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy

Leader Podcast. So good to be with you. Today's theme or title is don't trade your inner life

for the illusion of momentum. Don't trade your inner life for the illusion of momentum.

And my comments are going to

come primarily out of the book of Revelation, which I've been meditating and studying and

pondering afresh these last few months. I've been eating it, as John the Apostle wrote, in the book

itself, letting it become a part of me. And I really want to invite you to do the same as well.

Hopefully this will wet your appetite to do so.

I want to begin today in our theme with a story about Catherine the Great in 1787.

She reigned over Russia, one of her field marshals named Gregorio Potemkin, he wanted to impress her. So he organized a tour of southern Russia for her. In fact, it was considered one of the most lavish royal tours in the history of Russia. And he was governor of one of her provinces. And he was anxious

to impress her with his expertise. So he organized a visit for the empress in 1787. So he planned it

over a four-year period. It was very lavish, very costly, and actually covered the distance of

a thousand miles.

And so as she came all along the way, Catherine the Great, she would gaze out of her carriage

at these very happy peasants who lined the shores and the streets for a mile after a mile

after a mile.

And what a Potemkin had done was he had created these fake villages, these shams, with,

in other words, they were fake buildings actually, and he would transport the peasants

from village to village in advance so that they'd be standing there in front of these fake villages,

you know, applauding and pressing the Empress. And so the term Potemkin village entered the vocabulary culturally

in English. And it came to me putting up a facade, political facade, to actually cover up

unseemly conditions of Potentgen village.

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