Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0213_ STORY INSPIRE: Josh Howerton — The War for Christianity: Faith, Culture, Religion & Modern Society

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#0213_ STORY INSPIRE: Josh Howerton — The War for Christianity: Faith, Culture, Religion & Modern Society · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Josh Howerton, welcome to the show, man.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: It's an honor, my friend.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: It's an honor to have you. It's an honor. So yeah,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I've been, you know, my chief of staff came from
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Dallas and she kind of put you on my radar
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: and I was watching some of the stuff. Like, I
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: don't remember how you popped up, but she had made
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a suggestion about you coming on and I was like,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: He's already on the list.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Well, dude, she's a former Lake Point member.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: She is. Yeah, dude.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was a very cool connection, man. Well,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: and you know, it's cool to meet the people you
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: listen to. I've been watching you for a minute. Yeah.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you for saying that.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, we've got a lot of stuff to talk
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: about today. I'm in, man. I'm pumped. I'm in.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Hey, before we get started, can I give you something? Yeah.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I've got to give you a gift.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: So, I appreciate... what you've done for our country, this
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: is a big deal to me. It took me a
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: long time to find this. Here's what this is. You
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: may have seen this. Have you ever heard of a
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Heart Shield Bible? You ever heard of this?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: This is like, this will make my eyes sweat a
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: little bit. So here's what this is. I want you
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: to hold that. So that's the 1943 Heart Shield Bible.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: And what that is, 1943, President FDR, he partnered with,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: I think, the Gideons. And they handed out these little
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: pocket New Testaments to active World War II soldiers. And, bro,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: what they did is, here's why that thing, I don't
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: know if the viewers can see. The front of that
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: thing is plated brass. And the reason they did that
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: is they designed it so that it could fit in
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: the front pocket of an active World War II soldier.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: So that it could stop a bullet.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: And, dude, so that guy, you'll see it on the inside,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: the one I found. That guy, there was, I think,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: an Air Force colonel. That wore that into active duty.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: And Sean, honestly, man, one of the reasons I said,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I don't do this. I don't travel.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I don't travel.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: I got kids and I'm focused. One of the reasons
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: I said yes to this is just why I see
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: God doing in you and through you. And the reason
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: that that thing means so much to me. Dude, what
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: that is, that's a prayer that the president wrote for
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: those soldiers to read that book. Wow. And the reason...
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I want you to have that is a man, you know,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: I'm in it with you. There's that thing that above all,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: it would sit right over a soldier's heart. And there's
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: that thing above all else, guard your heart from it
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: flows the wellspring of life. And how do you guard
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: your heart? I've hidden your word in my heart that
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I might not sin against you. So there you go, man.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Man, thank you. That's really cool.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Wow. I thought it was pretty cool.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you. This is awesome, man. Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, sir. Beautiful.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Beautiful.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I got a present for you, but it's not that.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Sentimental.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Come on, man.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Get you a bag of gummy bears. I love gummy bears.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Full of sugar, red dyes, yellow five, all the bad shit,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: but they taste amazing. And they'll probably be illegal here
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: in a couple months.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Is there pot in those? I need to know right now.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: No pot.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: All right, good.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I can have it.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Sorry about that.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: No, that's good, man.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: But just candy. Just candy. All right. But let me
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: give you an introduction here. Pastor Josh Howerton, you're senior
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: pastor of Lake Point Church in Dallas, one of the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: largest churches in the country. You're known for addressing difficult
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: issues at the intersection of faith, culture, politics, and apologetics.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: You're also the host of Live Free Podcast. You're a
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: husband to your wife, Jana, and the father of three
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: adopted kids. Welcome to the show.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: It's an honor. It's an honor, my friend.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So before we get started, you want to pray?
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I would love to.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: You want to lead us?
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to, man.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, thank you for being the sovereign and loving
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Lord of all the universe. And thank you that from
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: before the foundations of the world, you pick this moment
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: for me to have the honor of talking to Sean
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: and every man and woman that'll listen to this thing. Father,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I pray that you would just, you'd kiss it from heaven.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: There'd be an open heavens over the conversation. Lord, you
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: would lead us in paths of righteousness for your namesake
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: in a way that would be a blessing to Sean,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: his family, and everybody that listens. I pray that in
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: the crucified, risen name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Amen. Amen.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you. All right, here we go. Let's go, man.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Here we go. So third generation pastor, correct?
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: That is correct.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: And you were here.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: I was here. I was here, dude. So my papa,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Jerry Howarden, my life hero, he was kind of blue collar,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Ozark Mountains kind of kid and grew up, became a pastor.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: He was a little rural church pastor all over Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, all over the place. Drove a truck for
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: a little while and became a pastor. And man, I
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: miss him. One of the best men I've ever met.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: And then my dad, Rick Howard, pastor as well. And
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: he started a church, rubbed two sticks together, started a
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: little church here in the Spring Hill, kind of around
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: this area, the Bridge Church.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's like 15 minutes south of here.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: That's right, man. So my dad started that church and
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: then I had one of the greatest honors in my
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: life to step into my dad's shoes and pass that
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: church for about 10 years. And was there for about
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: 10 years. Lord did a, really unique thing, and then
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: called us to Dallas.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Right on. How did you, I'm just curious, how did
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Christ come into your life? I mean, how did you,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: what built your faith? Did you just always have it?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Or did something happen? I mean, I'm a hard knocks guy.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: He had to slap me around a little bit. He
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: still does it. I'm going through one right now. But,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? But I like... I don't
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: like it in the moment, but it'll 100X my faith.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Every time it winds up happening.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And to the point where it's not even faith anymore
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: for me, it's fact. And so I'm wondering, did you
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: always have it because you grew up in it? Or
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: are there any specific events that really just hit you? Like, okay,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: all this stuff that we're talking about, it's real.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: This is for real, for real. Man, honestly, I'd say both.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: You know, I'll just honor my parents. Uh, I got,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I got, uh, make my eyes sweat a little bit.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: I got, I got good parents and they love me. And, uh, man,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: you know, I grew up in the nine, I'm an
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: eighties baby, but the nineties made me kind of thing. And,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: you know, growing up in the nineties, it was kind
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: of like cool to be a pastor's kid and kind
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: of rebel. And, you know, I didn't understand that at all.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Cause I like every second of my life, I love
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: being Rick Howard's kid, pastor Rick's kid loved every second
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: of it. So whatever experience they had, I had the opposite.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: So I grew up, like my parents raised me, just
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: like the word says, in the fear and admonition of
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: the Lord. You know, I got a million memories. A
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: mom sitting there and quizzing me on Bible verses, you know,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: all this stuff. But I will say, there definitely came
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: moments where it was like, so here's how I say
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: it sometimes, like, what you just said is like, man,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: every now and then you'll go through it a little bit. And,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: you know, you have those moments where, you know, you
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: kind of get knocked flat on your back, but what
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: you'll notice is whenever you get knocked flat on your back,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: you finally look in the right direction kind of thing. And,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: you know, when I look back at my life, there
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: were moments where it was like, oh, like, I'm a
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: for real, for real sinner. And he's a for real,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: for real savior. And I'm I need something, I don't
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: got this. I need something a lot bigger than me.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I think probably around college, you know,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I had a couple head-on collisions with my own depravity.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: And I remember, I'll just, I haven't talked about this
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: in a long time. I remember writing in my journal
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: in college, like, you know, dude, you probably got the
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: same stuff. I'm just like, just like you. You sin
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: the same dumb sin for the millionth time.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And, you know. Thank God I didn't journal back then.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: But I didn't go to college. But that age, whew.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: I remember, I remember journaling in college and I was
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: reading the gospels. And, you know, I think a lot
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: of people think Christianity is, is like a bunch of
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: good people telling bad people how to be good. And,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like, you figure out real quick, that
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: is not what this thing is. The whole thing is like,
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not good. It's actually, you know, it's a bunch
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: of forgiven. Nobody's trying to tell everybody about somebody who
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: can save anybody kind of thing. And I, I remember
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: being in college and sinning the same dang sin for
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: like a millionth time. And I remember reading about Jesus
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors. And it was
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: the first time. Dude, I haven't talked about this maybe ever.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: It was like the first time in my life where
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: like it hit me like, oh, like I fit right.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Prostitutes and thieves, I fit right in. And I remember
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: journaling and going like, man, it really dawned on me today.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: that Jesus didn't come for good, but he came for
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: prostitutes and murderers and thieves and race traitors and da-da-da-da.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: And I remember journaling, and today I realize I fit
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: perfectly into that category. And I honestly think that's usually
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the minute when somebody meets the real Jesus. Because you
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: got to know you're a sinner to realize he's a
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: real savior. you know so I had a I had
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: a bunch of moments like that.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Right on when did you know that you were gonna
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: kind of follow in the family footsteps that you're gonna
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: become a pastor dude you know how long have you
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: been a pastor you know I.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: I started traveling around and preaching like in college. Actually,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: my youth pastor, Jeff Carlisle, he stood me up to
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: preach when I was like 16 in the youth group.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: And I just honestly, you know, you probably seen the
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: same thing. The difference between men that grow up and
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: they become good men and builders and makers instead of
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: takers and breakers kind of thing. It's usually they got
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: other good men in their life. Like that's literally the difference,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: you know. And I had a bunch of good men
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: in my life. And Jeff Carlisle was one of my
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: youth pastor. And it was like I was 16 and
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: he stood me up there. And he was like, hey, man,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: I want you to preach a youth group. I don't
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: know what I'm going to do. And, you know, I
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: just explained a verse that I read. And he grabbed
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: me afterwards. He's like, hey, man, I want you to
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: know like when you talked, everybody listened. There was like
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: a little heat on that thing when you did that.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: And I just, people around me kept, Saying amen, we
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: see it in high school. The guys who maybe weren't
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: on the same path that I was, you know, their
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: little joke, they called me Rev, you know, that kind
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: of thing. Kind of half making fun of me a
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: little bit maybe. But it was just something everybody kind
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: of saw in me, you know. And then there was,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: I couldn't imagine doing anything else.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: How was your first, how was it ministering your first congregation?
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: First time with them?
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: You know, honestly, dude, not good, you know. Yeah, dude.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: So I went up to, it was Mount Washington, Kentucky.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: I was going to seminary, which for everybody that's listening,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: that's like post-grad, that's like Bible, you're getting a theological degree.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: So I'm up there on Mount Washington, Kentucky, little rural
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: First Baptist church up there with sweetest people ever. Like
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: best experience ever, you know. I know some people have
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: bad experience with churches. Whatever that is, I had all
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: the opposite, you know. And I was there for like
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: three years. And I grew it from like 150 students
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: to like 120, you know. And honestly, it went okay. But,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: you know, it's one of those things like the Lord
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: was with me and I was figuring it out. Just
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: like you, you know.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Stop with it. Yeah. Right on, man.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Right on. All right, let's get into some hard stuff.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: This is a new question I just started asking. I'm
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: going to ask everybody this question that comes on that's
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: kind of in a position like yours. Why is Christianity
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the one religion that is totally acceptable to disparage?
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Can I give a starting point here?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I'm going to show you something, and I know you've
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: seen it because it's right up there. So do you
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: remember this little thing? This is gonna blow your mind.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: You remember that little thing?
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: All right. So what that is.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: We'll put it up on screen.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So what that is, is that is a chart
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: of every cross-reference in the Bible. So what I wanna
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: talk about, I wanna give a starting point. The answer
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: to your question is, in large part, because that's exactly
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: what the Bible said was gonna happen. So here's why
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: I'm always gonna go Bible. I'm dumb about a lot
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: of things. I try to love the Word of God.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: So here's what that is.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: 16, that is.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Every cross-reference in the Bible where the Bible references other
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: parts of the Bible, there are 16,791 cross-references where parts
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: of the Bible reference other parts of the Bible. And
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: when you look at that, dude, it kind of blows
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: your mind a little bit. Well, I just want to
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: point this out. Did you say 16,000? 16,791 from what
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I understand.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: I thought it was 62,000.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: It may be six. Actually, you're right. Actually, Sean, you're right.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: I think it's 67,000. 700.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: I think it's 60.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: I was off by an order of magnitude. I do.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I think it's 62,000 and some change. Okay.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: It's in the 60,000s. When you look at that thing,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: it'll blow your mind a little bit. If you were
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: to see that and one person wrote a book that
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: did that, that many cross-references and dovetails into other parts
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: of the word. You would look at that person and
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: you would think, that is the greatest author who has
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: ever lived, like goat. Opus and masterpiece. But that book
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: was not written by one man. It was written by
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: over 40 men across 1,500 years, across three continents, Asia, Europe,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: and Africa, in three different languages, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: it has one unified story. It has zero contradictions. Now listen,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: when I see that, like that'll make my eyes sweat
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: a little bit because there is only one way to
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: explain that. And it's that book over there, it was
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: written down by men, but it was authored by the
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: word of God, by God himself. So when you ask
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: that question, The response to the question, why is it
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: the one thing that everybody can disparage? Well, man, like
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: when we open the word, what we know is from
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Genesis 1, 2, and 3, we know immediately what Satan
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: does after the fall of mankind is he begins to
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: wage war on the offspring that God is going to
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: use to redeem the world. So that's the storyline of
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: the entire Bible. It's word versus world. If you skip
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: forward all the way to the end, you go to
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: the book of Revelation. A lot of people, they get
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: into Revelation and it's like, you know, they start reading
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: and it's like, you know, Jesus looks like metal and
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: his eyes are flames of fire and it's, you know,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: three-headed dragons eating babies. And, you know, I think people
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: start to go, I didn't know they dropped acid in
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: ancient Rome. You know, kind of like, what are they doing?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: What the book of Revelation is, is it's really, it's not,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of the book of Revelation isn't revelation about
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen in the future. It's revelation about
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: what's been going on behind the scenes in the spiritual
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: realm throughout all of human history. That's what a lot
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: of the book of Revelation is. If you get to
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Revelation chapter 12, you get this little vision of a
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: dragon that represents Satan. And what it says that he
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: does is he wages war upon the woman, which most
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Bible scholars go, man, that's the church, the bride of
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Christ and her offspring. So man, If you're going, why
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: is Christianity the one thing that you can disparage? It's
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: because the Bible says the whole world lies under the
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: power of the evil one. The Bible actually calls Satan
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: the little g God of this world. Actually, if you
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: want to get this kind of a little, it's really interesting,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: that actually in the temptation of Jesus, Satan does this
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: thing where he comes to Jesus and he goes, hey,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: I'm going to show you all the kingdoms of the world.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: And he tells him, he's like, hey, man, if you'll
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: bow down and worship me, I'll give you all of
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: these kingdoms. Now, what's really interesting is Jesus doesn't say
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: they're not yours to give. There's like this tacit assumption
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: throughout the entire Bible that Satan is really over all
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: of the world systems. And that's why everything in the
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: world aligns against one thing in particular, and it's Christianity, Christ,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: and Christians. That's baseline.
• 17:57
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• 20:28
  Speaker 1: a good answer.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: In fact, actually, can I go a layer deeper?
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Keep going.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: So, dude, I'll give you an example of this. So
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: do you know who Raymond Ibrahim is?
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: I do not.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Dude, you need to know who that guy is.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: So Raymond Ibrahim.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Is he alive?
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: He is. Raymond Ibrahim, he comes from Egyptian Coptic Christian family.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I just had him on live free. And he's like,
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: he actually got famous around 9-11 because he's a doctorate
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: in Arabic. He got a job at the Library of Congress.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: So he's back in the stacks. This is going somewhere,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: I promise. He's back in the stacks. So those are
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: the books no one has access to. And he finds
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: in Arabic transmissions from Osama bin Laden out to a
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: bunch of, you know, terror cells or whatever that have
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: never been translated. And then he like blows the whistle on, hey, dude,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: here's what this guy is saying. This is what they're
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: saying on BBC and CNN about why they're doing all
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: this stuff. Here's what Osama bin Laden is actually saying.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And it's, you know, let's kill the infidels and all
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: that stuff. So he blows the whistle on it. That's
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: where Raymond Ibrahim comes to fame. So anyway, he's on
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: a podcast. He's like a, he's a leading scholar on
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: the intersection of Christianity and Islam. Very interesting.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: So Ibrahim's on the pod and off air, he tells me,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: he's like, hey, you know what actually pushed me to Christianity?
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: I started studying the world and I noticed that Everything
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: aligns against this one thing. And then he gives, dude,
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: he gives this example, which I think a lot of
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: people will wonder about this. The example he gives is like,
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: have you ever noticed that progressivism and Islam, they always
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: seem to be on the same team, at least in America.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: You kind of seen that?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: It's kind of, in general, kind of tends to be
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: a thing, which makes no sense because you kind of got,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: hey man, we're over here, you know, gay rights, women's rights,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: you know, freedom of expression, progressive. And then you kind
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: of got Islam is kind of, you know, oftentimes the
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: opposite of those things. Well, if you start asking the question,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: why would this, the women's rights people kind of align
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: with kind of the thing that at least in many countries,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: hey man, they kind of, you know, they'll do something
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: to a woman that's not wearing a burqa, you know,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: that kind of, hey man, why are we doing, you know,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: queers for Palestine? You know, that's kind of like chickens
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: for KFC, you know, That didn't make sense. Well, the
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: unifying principle is the enemy of my enemy is my friend,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: anything but Christianity and anyone but Christ. And Ibrahim sees that.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: And he's like, everything's aligned against one thing. There must
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: be something to that one thing.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Interesting. You know, do you know who Eli Crane is?
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Eli Crane is a Congressman out of Arizona. He was
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: a Navy SEAL. He's a good friend of mine. And, um,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: He's a huge fan of yours. He must have saw
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the post where you were coming on. So I wanted
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: to wait till the end to ask this. But me
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and Eli bat the Israel topic back and forth pretty consistently.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: And we just disagree. We have wildly different ideas of
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: what this is and what the relationship should be and
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: what's going on. And, but I, you know, I respect Eli.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: He's a really good friend of mine. And so he
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: wanted me to ask you about Islam and prophecy.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, geez. Okay.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Just go with it? Just go for it?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Hit it. All right. You already know, if you watch this,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: you know, we go to some dark, dark times.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go. Okay. Well, quick caveat. I'm just going
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: to start right here. I'm a pastor and What my
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: heart beats for more than anything else is for everybody
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: everywhere to know Jesus Christ and to love the Father.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: So that's my starting point. So before I say anything,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I want you, Eli, and anybody else that listens to
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: know I love every person that calls himself a Muslim.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: And I hate Islam because it destroys people and eternities.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And I can do both of those things. I can
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: love a person and I can hate what I believe
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: is a demonic ideology. So let me just point some
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: things out. So like some things that are interesting to me.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: And let me give a quick, I want to set
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: this up. So like, especially you, maybe you, Sean, or
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: maybe some people that are listening, you're going to hear
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: some things here in a minute. And you'll be like, man,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: there's some real dark stuff in the world. Like, in fact,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of the reason that you're seeing
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: a resurgence of the purposes of God, I think, Sean,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I think a rising hope I think we got a
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: chance to see something special, man. I do too. I
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: think we got a chance. And I'm willing to pour
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: my life out for it. I think part of the reason, dude,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: is in the era leading up to where we're at now,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: and I'm going to get back to what you just asked.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: I'm making my way there. Is the obviousness of darkness
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: became so smack you in the face that people... they
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: awakened to the reality that there was a non-ignorable dark
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: force in the world. And then, dude, I think what
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of people do, especially young men right now,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: is they're going, man, if there's a darkness, there must
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: be a light. And that light has a name, and
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: his name is Jesus Christ. I honestly think that's a
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: lot of what's going on. Now, that dovetails to what
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: you're saying. I just want to point some things out that,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: you know, You or anybody else can think I'm an idiot.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: That's fine.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: You know, whatever. Let me point some things out. All right.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: So what Muslims do in general, what a lot of
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Muslims do, is they trace their spiritual lineage to Ishmael.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: So what we're going to do, we're going to Bible
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: nerd out for a second, and we're going to go,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: we're going to do some Old Testament theology and then
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: make our way forward. Okay. So we're going to do
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: a little Bible study real quick. So in the Old Covenant,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: God makes his covenant with Abram, who becomes Abraham. Okay.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: And he tells Abraham through you and your offspring. And
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: it's very interesting, Sean. This is very interesting. I'm a
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Bible guy. When it says offspring, it's singular. So in
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: other words, you're going to have one future offspring. And
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: through that one future offspring, somebody out of your lineage, Abraham,
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: is going to bless the entire world.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: How do you know it's singular?
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: In the book of Galatians, it specifically talks about that.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul calls attention to
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: the fact. that it says offspring. So Paul is, what
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: I'm doing right now is I'm making the same point
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the apostle Paul makes in the New Testament. And so
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: it points that out. It's a singular, okay? Now, obviously,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: there's nations that come out of him and all of
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: that stuff. But there's the specific promise is gonna find
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: its termination in one future offspring that I'll just pull
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: my punch is Jesus Christ, okay? So that's where we start. Now,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: The promise and the covenant that was given to Abraham, obviously,
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: he was going to have a child. Now, the child,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: he has to wait for a long time, and he's
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: waiting around for the promise to happen. And he takes
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: matters into his own hands, and his wife, this is
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: a whole deal, his wife Sarah gives him his servant, Hagar,
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: and they have essentially a covenantally illegitimate child named Ishmael.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Then later, he and Sarah have a child named Isaac.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: So here's what you got. What you end up with
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: because of he and Sarah's disobedience is you have one covenant,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: but you have two sons. And now we got a
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: problem because now we got two sons, they're gonna end
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: up fighting and all of their offspring are gonna end
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: up fighting in the spiritual realm, I believe it's connected
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: to that over this one covenant. So then what you
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: have is you have the children of the promise, those
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: are the Jewish people historically, And then you have what
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Muslims do is they trace their lineage to Ishmael. So
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: this is what you have.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: The other son.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: The other son.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: So now one covenant, two sons. Now you got a
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: thing going on. Okay, you got that thing going on. Okay. Now,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: fast forward in Galatians 1.8, Paul says this. He says,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: but even if we or an angel from heaven. Now,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: this is really important. I'm going to give you two
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: verses where you can connect some dots. He says, but
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: even if we or an angel from heaven. should appear
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: to you and preach to you another gospel, let him
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: be accursed. Bookmark that in your head. Then you got
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: another Bible verse in the New Testament that says that
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: what Satan does is he, quote, masquerades as an angel
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: of light. All right. Now, dude, I'm a dumb rural
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Kentucky kid. But you start putting some things together. And
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: in the 600s, what Muhammad says happens is he, now,
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: first of all, let me just say, I'm not like
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: some Islamic scholar. I'm doing 30,000 foot big rocks. What
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: he says happens is he wanders in a cave and
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: he essentially does this. He goes, man, man, I was
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: in there and this real weird thing happened. I was
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: in there and this angel of light appeared to me.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: And he started revealing to me another way to God
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: that's different than the one that we've had. Now, dude,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden I'm going, well, that's real interesting
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: because 600 years before he's doing his thing, you got
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: a Bible verse saying what Satan does is he masquerades
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: as an angel of light. And then you have a
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: specific warning that throughout history that an angel from heaven
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: may appear and reveal to you another gospel.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Why? Because Jesus came and he said, I am the way,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Father except through me. And I just want to say this,
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: and this gets me in a little trouble. You know,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: you may have some experience with this. Every now and
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: then you'll do something, the internet will get mad at you.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: That happens to me. And, you know, one of the
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: things that pastors don't have to try to be controversial.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: They just got to read Bible verses. And one of
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: the things that Jesus said that mad people today just
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: hate it. But it's not, I didn't say this, Jesus
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: said it. And man, I'd be a liar not to
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: tell you what Jesus said. And he said he was
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: to the Father except through him. What he didn't say
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: is I am a way, a truth, and a life,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: and some people come to the Father except through me
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: or also through me. So then you got that. So
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: you got the birth of Islam, and it seems to me, man,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: like it's the fulfillment of exactly what was warned against
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: in the scriptures. Now, I'll give you two other things.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Jesus said, I think it's in the Gospel of John,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: He said the time will come, and he's talking about
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: the end. I'm not a huge end times guy, but
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: he's talking about the end. And he says the time
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: is coming when they will kill you and think they
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: are offering service to God. Now, I think what a
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: lot of people have done, especially in America for like
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: the last 30, 50 years, is a lot of Christians
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: have been like, man, we're nervous about the rise of
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: secularism and the rise of atheism, and people are just
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: deconverting and apostatizing, that kind of thing. But honestly, you
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: take that verse that Jesus said real clearly. And what
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Jesus seems to be saying, is it like the final boss?
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Like when Jesus, like right before Jesus returns, the final boss,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: it's not going to be atheism. It's not going to
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: be secularism. It's going to be some other religion that
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: believes that killing infidels is offering service to God. Seems
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: like that's one clear meaning of what Jesus said. Now,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I'll give you one other one, and then I'll just
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: point this out. In the book of Revelation, again, Revelation
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: is peeling back the curtain. I'm like, man, what's been
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: going on in the spiritual realm throughout human history? One
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: of the things that it says is John gets this
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: vision of all the martyred saints. All that means is
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: just Christians. So all the Christians that were martyred because
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: they refused to not worship the lamb. They're like, that's Jesus.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: We're Jesus people. We're team Jesus. And it doesn't just
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: tell us they were martyred. It tells us specifically how
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: they were martyred. And it says, he saw the souls
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: of those who were beheaded. Now, dude, again, I always
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: want to take this with a grain of salt. Like,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I'm not a big, like, here's all the charts and
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: here's when Jesus was going through all this stuff. But, dude,
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: I do want to have my eyes open with my
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Bible in front of me. And it is interesting to me, man,
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: that I'm aware of. There is one major world religion
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: and one only that doesn't just specify to sometimes kill
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: people who have a different faith than you. It specifies how.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: And the Quran calls it striking next.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: It's beheading.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: So you got that. And then I'll do one last one.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: It's hard to do from memory, but I'll do my
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: very best. In Islamic eschatology. So that's it. What eschatology means,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: it's two Greek words. Eschaton means last, and ology means
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: study of. So study the last. In Islamic eschatology, like
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: the end of the world, what it says is there'll
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: be this figure that rises up called the Mahdi, M-A-H-D-I.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: And different in the same way that in Christianity, there's
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: like different sects of Christianity that view end time stuff differently.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: And that's not my fastball, but it is what it is.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: It's the same thing in Islamic eschatology. Different Muslims believe
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: different things. But there's some really interesting things that they
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: believe about the Mahdi. They believe that he will rise
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: to power during a global tumult. They believe that when
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: he rises to power, he will unite the world in
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: a one-world Islamic government. They believe that that government will
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: be headquartered in Jerusalem. They believe that when he does it,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: he will slaughter the Jews. They believe that he will
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: usher in a seven-year peace treaty in that area. They
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: believe that he will ride in, they believe things like this,
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: that he will ride in on a white horse. Now, dude,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: I just want to point this out. If anybody's listening
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: and hair's standing up on the back of your head
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: and there's little alarm bells going off, I just want
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: to point this out. if a little alarm bells are
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: going off in your head because you read your Bible before,
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: that's because a lot of the aspects of the Islamic
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Mahdi are the exact descriptions of the New Testament Antichrist.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: So do I know what's gonna happen? Nope, I don't.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: But I do have my Bible open and I wanna
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: be a guy that's like, hey man, I'm ready, I
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: got my eyes open, I'm waiting. That's interesting to me.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Interesting, interesting. Is Christianity, is it growing or is it shrinking?
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: It's globally growing, globally growing, if I understand correctly.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Because it seems like, I mean, I've seen a lot
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: of charts, and I think it's globally, I think it's growing.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: I think there's a resurgence happening. But, I mean, you
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: see all these college kids getting baptized and- Well, it's
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: the best. You know what I mean? And I just
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: saw another one. It was like a couple thousand people,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I think, got baptized on the beach.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's my buddy, Joby Martin.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: That's my buddy, Pastor Joby Martin. That's one church.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: One church, Church 1122. Shout out. One church. They baptized,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: I think it was almost 4,000 people on a beach
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: down there in Florida.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Wow. 4,000 people. 4,000 people.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, dude, we're seeing, man, you know, I'm not
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: a super emotional guy, but if there's one thing that
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: makes my eyes sweat, it's that, man. we are, I'll
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: just say this. So like in my lifetime, Christianity in
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: America has generally been declining. I'm 43, 1983, uh, feels
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: like the tide's turning and every pastor I talked to, man,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I'm like every pastor I talked to, it's like more
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: people getting saved. They've ever seen more people getting baptized.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: They've ever seen, uh, church attendance spike. Like, Tides turning.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: That's what I feel like. But then I see charts
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: and it says, you know, it's a decline. Yeah. I
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's real. Do you have any insight
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: on any of that?
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm not a sociologist. What I can
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: say is, you know, I don't like talking about stuff
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: that I don't know for sure. What I have been
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: told is that in places that have generally been characterized
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: as the West, Can I ask you a question in
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: a second? Am I allowed to do that?
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: All right. In a second, I want to ask you
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: why you think the tide is turning. But from what
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: I understand, places that have been generally characterized as the West.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: So you're talking about like Eastern Europe and North America
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: and Canada. From what I understand, in my lifetime, Christianity
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: has generally been declining in the global, what's been called
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: the West. Okay. From what I understand, Christianity has been
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: exploding in Africa, the global South, Asia. That's from what
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: I understand. So you're hearing stuff about Chinese house church movement.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: That stuff starts to explode, especially in the last 50 years.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I read something a few years ago, and I may
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: get a detail wrong on this, that at current growth
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: rates of Christianity in China, there will be more Christians
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: in China in 50 years than Christians in America.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: So now listen, that's like, wow. So there's stuff like, man,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: there's stuff like that that's happening.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Well, here's some stats. In 2007, 78% of U.S. adults
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: identified as Christian. By 2023-24, only 62%, a 16-point decline
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: in just 15 years. Among women, 18 to 29, 43%
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: religiously unaffiliated in 2025, up from 29% in 2013. Churches
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: were losing 1.2 million members annually before COVID. Disengagement has
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: accelerated since. For the first time in American history, young
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: people grow up with Christianity as one option among many,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: not the baseline assumption. So, you know, I don't, I don't,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just, but I live in a, you know,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: this area is a little different than most parts of
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the United States. You know, this is, this is Tennessee.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: We're in the Bible Belt. So you, everywhere you go,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: the first question is, what church do you go to? And, uh,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: it's not like, it's not like that very many other places. Right.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: But I mean, you asked me, why do I think
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: we're seeing a resurgence? I think we're seeing a resurgence because,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, I agree with you that the darkness, I
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: also think that nothing makes sense. I think, I think
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: the search for, I mean, there has never been more
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: distrust in, in U S institutions, world institutions, our government, um,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: We've been lied to a lot by pretty much both
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: sides of the political spectrum. And I think people are
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: looking for something that's concrete and they're finding it in
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: the word. I agree. You know, I think it's that basic.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, we can't even figure out what gender people
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: are anymore. We can't. Everything has turned out to be
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: a lie. These wars. Lies. Past wars. Lies. Government corruption. Lies.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Does it get fixed?
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: No.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: It continues on, you know, and there's just nothing to
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: really ground yourself in anymore, anywhere, except the word.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right, Sean. That's right, Sean.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Man, I think that's, you know, maybe it's a good
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: thing all this shit's happening.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: There's a verse in Hebrews 12. This is what God
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: does is he shakes the things that can be shaken
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: so that only the things that cannot be shaken remain.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: And I think throughout human history, the Lord does that.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Where he just decides like, hey, man, I got to
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: almost like I got to flip the Monopoly board real
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: quick so that you guys see like, hey, man, stock
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: markets and institutions and ideas and ideologies, they're gonna come
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: and go. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: I also think, I think what you said, like our church,
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: you know, it's especially, it's reaching a bunch of, tons
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: of young men, it's young dudes walking in with families.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: I think what we said earlier, like that's a little thing,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: that's like a little bit of my theory, is that
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: I think Satan is so real and so evil. It's
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: like that thing, the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: but I have come that you might have life and
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: have it to the full. And I think he's so
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: full of evil and hate that in every generation when
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: he gets some momentum on the field, there's that thing
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: I said earlier, the devil always overplays his hand. And
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: I think a little bit of what happened in the
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: last 15 years, I think you nailed it. You made
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: good theologian over there, Sean Ryan. I think what he
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: did is we got to the spot where people are
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: looking around and they're honestly like, I'm just like normal,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: normal guys. They're looking around and they're kind of going like, man,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: like who's going to tell my son he can't be
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: a chick? You know, who's going to, you know, who's
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: going to, it's that kind of stuff. And honestly, you
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: got to the spot where there wasn't many places in
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: our culture left that besides the church of Jesus Christ.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Even a lot of churches are putting that out.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like calling.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Probably not in Texas.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: You can go to the Northeast and you can see it.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Everybody's welcome. Everybody is welcome. Why do you have to
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: say it like that? We know everybody's welcome.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, man.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: I would not call those churches, but I understand what
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: you mean.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I think another thing too is, and I'm not, I'm
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: not trying to get political here, but it just is
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: what it is. I mean, I think that, you know,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: we've seen, and I'm guilty of it. You're probably guilty.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody's guilty of this at some point. But,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you know, we've just become so tribalized here, and we've
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: put our faith in men, in human beings. And, you know,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: you go on one side of the aisle, and it's
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: this guy's going to save the country, and da-da-da-da-da-da. 90%
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: of it was fucking bullshit. You know, you go to
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: the other side of the aisle, same thing. And so
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: you got these two groups that were both really, I mean,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: the statistics aren't lying. You know, the majority of both
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: parties have been let down by the people that they
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: stood behind and propped up. And it's disheartening. And you
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: can see what's happening and what's happened. And it doesn't
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: align with with what people want. You know, there's some
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: kind of, something's going on in there. I mean, I
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: think there probably always has been. You know, it's just
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: the limelight's kind of on and these younger generations are
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: a lot more skeptical than we ever were in the
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: people before us. And so when you see how bad
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: it actually is, I mean, where do you, there's nowhere
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: else to go.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. It's like, man, I got a
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: lot of thoughts on what you just said. I think
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: you're onto something. There's a reason the word says, trust
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: not in princes. You know, there's like some things that
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: I can hope that a human leader will do, you know?
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, you know, I'm
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: not going to trust a king. I really got to
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: put something in a king of kings, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: You know, your thing of like, at the end of
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: the day, where are you going to go? I think
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: that's what people, you know, what it reminds me of,
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: I love to know how this kind of lands on you, is,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: you know, Parable of the Prodigal Son. And you got the,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: you know, you got the kid who, you know, great,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: great dad. The dad represents God and he runs away
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: and he spends all his money on parties and strippers
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: and alcohol and, you know, whatever. And then if you
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: read that, there's this little verse, and everybody skips the
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: verse that I think is most important, where he gets
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: this spot where he spends all the money and everything
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: that he thought was gonna make him happy, it just didn't.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: And so he's out of money, and he's in pig slop,
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: he's feeding pigs, which obviously for a first-entry Jewish guy
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: is like a little no-no. And then there's one little
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: verse that says when he was feeding the pigs, it says,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: And then he came to his senses and he started
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: running back to the father. And I, you know, a
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: little bit, man, I feel like, you know, we got
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: a bit of a prodigal nation. It's like a little boy.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: You said, where am I going to go? I think
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: that's what happened to the kid. And the story is
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: he woke up one day. He's like, where am I
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: going to go? And honestly, man, he went, oh man,
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: everything else didn't work, but I know I can go
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: home to dad. And I think a little bit in
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: our country, I think everybody's going, man, we honestly do.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: We tried everything else, and it didn't work. And I
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: think there's a little bit of people that's going, you
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: know what I can do. I wonder if I can
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: go home to my Heavenly Father. I think that's a
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: little bit what's happening.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I think so, too. I think so, too. Let's talk
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: about forgiveness.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: I'd love to. How do we forgive? Here's a question
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: for you. Justice and forgiveness.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Yes. Not at odds.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: They're not at odds. I know. Yeah.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: No.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: How can you want justice and still be able to forgive?
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: Well, so, you know, let me just do a few
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: things here. Yes. Yeah. So a few things. One, let
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: me just get one thing out of the way, because
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: what I don't want somebody to think if they hear
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: what I'm about to say and they're like, man, somebody
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: abused me. Or like, you know, somebody committed a crime
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: against me. Somebody raped my daughter, whatever it is. And
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: when they hear what I'm about to say, they think, oh,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: because I forgave them, I don't need to, you know,
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: I don't need to call the authorities. That's not true.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: Justice and forgiveness, I don't got to reconcile them because
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: I don't reconcile friends. In fact, what I'll get to
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: in a second is that actually the foundation of true forgiveness. Sean,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: you probably figured this out, some things that you've been
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: through in your life. Nobody makes it unless they learn
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: to really and deeply forgive. Dude, they just don't make it, man.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of things as a pastor. One
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: thing I can make you promise, nobody makes it that
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: doesn't learn to forgive. So let me just get this
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: one thing out of the way.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? Nobody makes it.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: So dude, what I mean is, man, there's hardly anything
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: that'll mess you up more than clinging on to. So
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: there's a verse in Hebrews. It talks about a root
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: of bitterness. Hey, you make sure that a root of
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: bitterness doesn't spring up in you. The reason it calls
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: it a root is because roots always grow up into fruits, right? So, dude,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: what I've seen, like, let me just, okay, let me
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: do it like this. if heaven is the place where
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: everybody's forgiven and hell is the place where nobody's forgiven,
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: when we forgive, we pull heaven down into our lives.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: And when we choose not to forgive, we pull hell
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: up into our lives. Now, what I wanna point out
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: is there's this really weird connection in the Bible between
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: satanic and demonic activity and unforgiveness. I'll just give you
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: a couple little examples. So first of all, Jesus calls
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Satan Beelzebub. What that literally means, it literally translates to
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: Lord of the flies. And the implication is like, man,
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: if you get like a deep wound, like a flesh wound,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: what flies do is they get in there and they
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: infest the wound and then something that hurts you, well
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: now all of a sudden it becomes fatal because they
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: get up there and they infest the wound and it
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: And so when Jesus calls Satan Beelzebub, what he's saying is, hey, man,
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: every wound you got, if you don't, by the power
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: of Jesus Christ, his blood and forgiveness, close that wound,
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: that is a wide open pathway for Satan's work in
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: your life. I'll give you another one. In the book
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: of Ephesians, it says, hey, don't let the sun go
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: down on your anger. Why? Because I don't want you
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: to give any opportunity to the devil. The book of James,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: it does the same thing, this weird connection between demonic
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: activity and unforgiveness. It says that bitter people, it says
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: bitterness is, quote, earthly, unspiritual, demonic. So, dude, a lot
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: of people miss that, that there's like a really powerful
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: connection in the Bible.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Can you say that again? Unforgiveness is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: So they miss it. Apparently, there is some in the
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: supernatural realm, the spiritual realm, there's a way that unforgiveness,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: it's like a portal, like straight in your soul for
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Satan and demons. I don't understand how that works. I
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: just know that it works to get in your life.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: And one thing that it'll do, man, is like, you know,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: I'm 43 and my life goal, I love being a pastor.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: I like teaching people the Bible. All that's awesome, man.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: My life goal is to finish my race. having been
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: faithful to Jesus. I don't want to be one of
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: those pastors that somebody tells a story about someday. Remember
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: what that guy did? You know, I want to finish well.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: I want to be faithful to my wife. I want
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: to sit in a rocking chair next to Jana, old
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: and wrinkly, holding her hand, watching our great-grandkids play around
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: in the backyard, and they love us and they love Jesus.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: So one of the questions I ask myself the most
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: as I get, you know, I'm getting a little older
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: every year, you know, is if you watch people, there's
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: some people who they get older, and the older they get,
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: the more cynical they get and angry they get, and
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: they just get a little crusty. And then I'll see
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: some other people who it's like, man, the older that
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: guy gets, he's just a little more joyful, a little
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: more soft in the right ways and not the wrong ways.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: He's a little happier. I don't know. And man, when
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: I meet people who are the second one, You know,
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: you asked me a question you've started to ask everybody.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: When I meet people whose age starts with like a 6, 7, 8, 9,
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: and they're just like old and happy and they got
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: a joyful heart, I always tell them, hey, it seems
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: like people end up this way or this way. What's
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: the difference? Here's what I think the difference is. One person,
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: they cleaned out all that junk in their heart throughout
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: their entire life with forgiveness. And one of them didn't.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: And over the years, they just almost become like just
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: real slowly, man. It's real slow. In fact, if you'll
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: let me bobble nerd out on a little thing. When
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: you read in the Gospels and it talks about people being, quote,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: demon possessed, that's a bit of an inelegant translation of
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: what that is. It's literally, it's one Greek word. We
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: make it two English words. It's one Greek word. The
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: word is demonized. So kind of like we say fossilized, demonized.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: Like in the same way that a fossil, it started
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: out as this. But then very, very, very slowly over time,
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: it was this and now it's this. Honestly, man, a
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: lot of times that's how like demonic activity works in
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: people's lives. It's slow, it's imperceptible, gets up there maybe
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: in a wound, something like that. And how'd that guy
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: end up? Old, angry, cynical, crusty. There's like no love
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: in his heart. It's all anger, you know? Oh man,
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: just very... Very, very slowly. He didn't learn to clean
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: it out with forgiveness, which brings me back to the beginning,
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: demonic activity and unforgiveness. If hell is a place where
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: nobody's forgiven and heaven is a place where everybody's forgiven,
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: every time we learn to forgive, Sean, you know, you
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: pull heaven down into your life. Every time you choose
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: not to, you pull hell up. I don't think that's
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: a question you asked me.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of dog foods out there, and
• 55:00
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• 55:06
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• 55:11
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• 55:33
  Speaker 1: I put Sundays down and he's on it. That tells
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  Speaker 1: another way to support The Sean Ryan Show? Head to SeanRyanShow.com
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  Speaker 1: and check out the latest drops from Vigilance Elite. We
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  Speaker 1: the show and helps us continue bringing you independent conversations
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: without compromise. Visit SeanRyanShow.com and grab yours today. I've been
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: thinking about this for a couple of years pretty hard
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: about forgiveness. And I think it's more of a.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: For lack of a better term, I almost think it's
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: kind of a selfish... because it's really, you know, what
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: I've figured out is it is, it's for yourself, you know,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: which is what you're saying. I mean, you're healing wounds
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: by forgiving. And the more I do it, the more
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I figure it out, the better I feel because you
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: are letting go of shit.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean you have to,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: you know, be around this person, pray. That's right. You know,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: praise them, talk about them. But, I mean, it's just
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: kind of like letting it go. Am I wrong about that?
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Bro, you're dead on, man. So, man, the path, like,
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: if I'm a.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Self-cleansing process.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: 100%, man.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: It's really hard to do. But, in some circumstances, but.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: People who really haven't been through something, They don't realize this.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: You probably do realize this. I think very frequently the
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: hardest thing a man ever has to do in his
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: entire life is forgive somebody. Very frequently. Now, when you
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: say that, honestly, man, it's like you're saying Bible verses
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: and you may not even know it. It's like, so
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: in Matthew 18, you're talking about, man, it honestly feels selfish.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: It feels like it's for me. Yeah. Like, there's a
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: reason we called the podcast the Live Free Podcast. Live
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: as people who are free, only do not use your
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: freedom as a cover-up for evil. It's like, so in
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Matthew 18, Jesus tells this parable. And I'm a 21st century,
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: I'll do my best. Is he tells this parable about
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: a guy who like owes a money lender a bank.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: And it says like 10,000 talents or something like that.
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: But it's essentially, a word that's like, this guy owed
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: this guy the net worth of Elon Musk. Like that's
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: what it's implying. He'll literally never be able to repay it.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: And the guy's like, hey man, your debt's due. And
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: he runs up and he falls on his knees and
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: he begs. And he's like, man, would you please, please, please,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: please forgive me. And the guy, it says out of
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: the kindness, he forgives him. But then that guy, he
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: turns around and he finds somebody, an all 21st century,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: he finds somebody that owes him, you know, like the
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: cost of a postage stamp. And in Jesus' parable, he
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: like chokeslams the guy for real. He like starts laying
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: hands on him. And he tells the guy like, you know,
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: pay me back everything you owe me. And, you know,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: I'm going to put you in prison. You're not going
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: to get out till you pay the last penny. And honestly, man,
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: I'm skipping ahead a little bit. Somebody may hear that
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: and be like, well, how could the guy that was
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: forgiven the net worth of Elon Musk turn around and
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: exact revenge on the cost of a postage stamp? Who
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: would do that? And Jesus' answer is, you would. Jesus'
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: answer is, hey, man, I'm cutting to the chase a
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: little bit, is the basis for us becoming forgiving people
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: is understanding I have been forgiven by God. more than
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: he will ever ask me to forgive anybody else. He
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: forgave me the net worth of Elon Musk. And every
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: time I hold a grudge against somebody, I'm like making
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: them pay for the postage stamp. Now what's interesting about
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: that parable though, let's take it back to where you
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: started is you're like, man, it kind of felt like it's,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: it's selfish in the parable. Uh, When the guy is
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: not forgiven, what he is, is it says that he's
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: put in prison. And the implication Bible scholars think what
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: Jesus is saying is he's saying, hey man, do you
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: know what unforgiveness is like? It's like a prison. And
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: do you know who's in the prison? You are. And
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: you probably notice this, man. The people who don't learn
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: to forgive, what they do is honestly, they get stuck
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: in time And they spend the rest of their life
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: responding to something that happened ages ago. And they live
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: the rest of their life out of that one event. Well,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: that becomes a prison.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: But I think there are definitely different degrees of, or
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: maybe levels of forgiveness. I mean, forgiving somebody for, I
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: don't know, stealing a water bottle out of your refrigerator
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: is a little bit different from forgiving somebody that raped
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: you your entire childhood, you know? And so... It's made
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: a difference. You know, it's... Sometimes it's more challenging than others. And,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: you know, so how do you do it, you know?
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: How do you do it? How do you do it when... Yes. Yeah.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're a popular guy. You're a borderline celebrity.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: People are using you.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Serving a celebrity. I always like to get in there.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: People are using you, people will abuse what you have.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: And the same with me. And I mean, it just
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: is what it is. There's no getting around that.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: I've seen people do that to you.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: So you can forgive them. And I have forgiven them.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: You probably have too. But then it keeps happening.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: By the same people.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: And every time it happens... it's a little fire comes up,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's, you get pissed and then you
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: start thinking about things you probably shouldn't be thinking about.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: And so my question is, is that, is that forgiveness?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Did I really forgive him for the original thing? And
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: I've distanced myself and I've, I've come to peace with it,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: but then it happens again. Yeah. And then it happens
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: again and you have no control over it happening.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: No, you do not.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: So how do you deal with that? How do you
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: deal with that with forgiveness? Yeah. Something I personally struggle with.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Welcome to team human. Hey, brother, can I just get
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: this on the table? Me too. I just want to
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: be super honest, man. I need the same grace I
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: preach every week.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: In fact, there's no reason for me to go into
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: it here. That's one of the hardest things. most consistent
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: fights in my life. You know, it is. So let
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: me just, you know, let me say a few things. Actually,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: can I tell you a story about what it looks like?
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: Let me start here and then back up and answer.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: So every now and then, you know, and, you know,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: when I became a pastor, I knew what I was
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: signing up for, you know. So every now and then
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: I'll say something and, you know, the internet will get
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: mad at me.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: That'll happen.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: One of the first times that happened to me, dude,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what was going on. And yeah, honestly,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: the first thing, you probably remember one of the first
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: times it happened to you. The first time that happens
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: to you, it's pretty disorienting. I was a young pastor
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: and man, I remember I was taking a long walk
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: and I remember thinking like, man, I wonder if my
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: ministry is over. Like I was getting, I won't go
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: into it. I was getting crushed. And I came home.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: And I was like, man, I wonder if my ministry
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: is over. And I honestly wonder if I've ruined everything.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: And how am I going to provide for my family?
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: And I walked in the door and I smelled something.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: And as soon as I walked in the garage door,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: my wife, Jana, was there with my three little adopted kids.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: And they all yelled at the same time, welcome home, dad.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: And they brought me in to the kitchen. And Jana
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: had all the, like, she'd cleaned up everything. It looked
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: spotless in there. And she'd gotten these candles out, and
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: she'd lit them on the table. And she had cooked, like,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: my favorite meal. It, like, takes a long time to make,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: my little favorite meal. And I was like, babe, what
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: is going on? And she said, she quoted a verse
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: from the Sermon on the Mount. She said, Jesus said, Josh,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: blessed are you when people revile you, insult you, slander you,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: and falsely say all kinds of evil against you falsely
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for great will
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: be your reward in the kingdom of heaven. And then
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: she said, so tonight we feast. And we prayed. Jana
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: made me. we prayed for some of the people who,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: you know, they were just, you know, teeing off, you know.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: Can I just say something to you? Without Jesus, there
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: is a zero, I'm just telling you right now, dude,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: a 0% chance that we can be like that. So
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: you asked the question, how do you do it? And man,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: you know, this is not you, but if somebody's listening
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: and you don't know Jesus, I'll be honest, man, I
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: don't even know what to tell you. I really don't.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know what to tell you. Because if I
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: did not believe that, two things, that every single sin
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: will be fully recompensed for, either, and I'm skipping ahead,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: either that person that committed that sin against me will
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: become a Christian. And at that point, Their sin was
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: paid for by Jesus dying on the cross, a gruesome,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: horrific death. Or they won't become a Christian. I'm going
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: to say something really straightforward, and I'm not trying to
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: be a jerk. This is just Bible. Or they won't
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: become a Christian. They'll die, and they'll go to hell,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: and they'll pay for that sin forever. One way or
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: the other, that sin's getting paid for. If I didn't
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: believe that man, in addition to the second thing, the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: reality that I know, and I know down to the deepest,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: the deepest parts of my bones, I know I've been
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: forgiven more than the Lord's ever going to ask me
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: to forgive anybody else. If I didn't believe that, I
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: don't know what the.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Heck I'd do.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: I don't know what I'd do. So, like, I'll give you,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: you know, this, like, this honestly deserves a lot more time.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: But if somebody's like, how do you do it, man?
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: I'll give you a quickie. Here's a quickie.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: We don't need a quickie. All right. We need the
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: real deal. All right. Like, here's an example, you know.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: I can't stand being used. I don't like being used.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: Tried the church thing. Felt like that was getting ready
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: to start happening. Then we do a Bible study. Couple families.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Because I... In privacy. You know, we wanted... In privacy.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Things start getting leaked. Personal things. I call a lot
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: of shit out on the show. A lot of evil.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: pisses a lot of people off. Pisses evil off. They
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: had to hire security. I've had to double that security.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: I haven't had to triple that security. I've had to move.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: Now I have to move into a gated community because
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: people can't shut their mouth and stop leaking shit. And
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: every time it happens, I forgive them. I'll never do
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: that Bible study ever again. ever again because of that
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: they put my family at danger it continues to put
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: my family at danger but they get something out of
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: it leaking personal shit about my personal life and my
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: personal family when the whole thing was set up for discretion.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: How do you forgive that?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: Hey, first of all, man, you know, I'm a nobody.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: Hey, I mean, it is what it is. People are
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: gonna people.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a good way to say that. People are
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: gonna people.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? How do you forgive that?
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: You try to move on, but it just keeps happening.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dude.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: And that's just one of a hundred examples. Yeah. I'm
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: sure everybody's dealing with shit like this, you know, one
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: way or another, the thing that keeps happening.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: Literally everybody. There's a few things when you preach on them,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: you know, every single time it's got, you know, whatever
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: you want to, you know, people are going to talk
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: about it. They love, they need it. The view counts
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: like it connects forgiveness. A hundred percent hit rate, a
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: hundred percent hit rate because of what you just said.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: So man, let me say a few things. Number one,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: If somebody's going to sit down, I'll just give listeners homework.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: If you're like, hey, man, what do I do? This
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: thing happened to me. What do I do? What you
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: need to start doing is study Matthew chapter 18. Matthew
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: 18 is where Jesus starts walking through. Jesus essentially does
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: a Bible study on what to do when your brother
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: sins against you. So there's a few things. I'm going
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: to rapid fire these and just do my best here.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: He starts the passage saying, if your brother sins against you,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: there's a few things there. Number one, if. You need
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: to make sure, did somebody actually sin against me? Or
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: was it honestly, was I just offended? And I'm not
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: talking about you, by the way. These are just generalities.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: If your brother sins against you, the first thing I
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: got to figure out is if. Did they really sin
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: against me? Is it like an actual Bible sin that occurred?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: You know, or honestly, man, am I just being a
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: little sensitive? You know, it's really just my feelings. If
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: your brother sins against you. Number two, it says if
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: your brother sins against you. The second question I gotta
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: ask is, man, is this person a brother in Christ? Like,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: I'm just telling you how I'm gonna pastor somebody through it.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: Is this person a brother in Christ? Okay, because if not, man,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: me having a conversation about this forgiveness happening, that's really
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: not the conversation I need to be having. I need
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: to be having a conversation about this, like you and Jesus, man. Like,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: y'all gotta get good. You know, so if your brother,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: if your brother sins against you, okay, was it against me?
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: I'm making sure this thing, what I don't need to
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: do is take up somebody else's offense. And then I'm
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: angry on behalf of somebody else. Like we call that Twitter.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: You know, what are you going to do? So then
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: it says, well, the next thing you do is it says,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: go and show him his fault. You know, hey, I'm
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: going to go talk to you, man. Man to man,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to talk to you. Here's what you did. Okay,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: now you do all this stuff. You kind of walk
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: through that process. If that doesn't work, then it says
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: what Jesus says is if that doesn't work, then take
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: two or three others. Let me take a few other brothers. Like,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: hey man, would y'all come with me? We all love
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: each other. We all love Jesus. This is our little
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: band of brothers. Let's talk about this thing together with
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: an open Bible and open hearts. See if we can
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: figure this thing out and reconcile. Let me pause and
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: say this. There is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: Forgiveness takes one person and it's always possible. Reconciliation takes
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: two people and it's not always possible. Forgiveness can, like
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: literally every time, I can forgive anybody of anything because honestly, dude,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: that forgiveness, just to put it in a straightforward way,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: I do not have a right not to forgive somebody
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: who sins against me because Jesus paid the penalty for
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: that sin and he has commanded me to forgive everyone
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: who sins against me. So I wish it were different sometimes.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not allowed. Takes one, okay? But reconciliation... It takes
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: two people. It takes two. You got to want to reconcile.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: They got to want to reconcile. And they got to
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: be willing to own what they did. Bend the knee.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: But hey, dude, I messed up. I'm sorry. And then
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: you have to go. We're doing a little Bible study here.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: You got to go to the book of Proverbs. And
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: Proverbs gives a taxonomy of three types of people. And man, Sean,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: just as I think, I think there's a blessing on
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: your life. And like the fact that you'll even have
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: a pastor. Like I saw you have Bryce on and
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: some other guys, Jeremiah, some other guy. Like you're going
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: to have some people who try to take advantage of you.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: And sometimes that's going to be because the enemy is
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: going to work in it.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: So you're going to have this, you know, you're going
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: to have this thing happen. This like for guys who, man,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: for whatever reason, they got a lot of people who
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: know who they are like you. This little thing from
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: the book of Proverbs might be one of the most
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: important things you ever internalize. In the book of Proverbs,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: there's three types of people, wise, foolish, and evil. And
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: so when you're deciding whether or not you reconcile with somebody,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: and I say this not just Sean Ryan, I say
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: this to anybody, you got to figure out, is this
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: a wise person? I probably want to reconcile with a
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: wise person. Is this a foolish person? Question mark, because
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: fools can hurt you, right? Is this an evil person?
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: You definitely want to stay away from an evil person.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: So I think you're going to ask that question. Then
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: I think what I'd say, if you're just going, hey,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: how do you do it? Number one, if you don't
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: get like, dude, like down deep, deep, deep in your soul,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: the reality of the gospel, the gospel is the good
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: news that I am not a mistaker in need of
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: a life coach. I'm a sinner in need of a savior.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: And that God so loved the world, they gave his
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: one and only son that whoever believes in him would
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: not perish, but have eternal life. That like, man, God
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: so loved Josh Howard and that he gave Jesus Christ
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: so that if Josh Howerton believes in him, Josh Howerton
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: would have eternal life. If I don't receive that forgiveness,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: it's like in Kentucky, I grew up in Kentucky, you
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: might say it like this, you can't give what you
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: don't got. Can't give what you don't got. So one,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: I gotta start there, all right? Now I'm gonna start there.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: I'll do these others, try to be a little more.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: Try not to do a whole sermon here.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: You can do the sermon, man. All right. It's all good.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to respect you. All right, I'll do my
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: best here.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: There's no reason to speed it up. All right.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: All right. What happens to most people, in my opinion,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: is honestly, man, they never fully realized what happened to
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: them and is still happening to them because of what
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: happened to them. And it's like you can't forgive what
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: you didn't identify. I can't solve a problem that I
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: didn't define. If I can't define it, I can't solve it.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: So I got a buddy that recommended this, and I've
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: been recommending it for years. Is that parable in Matthew 18,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: it says that when somebody sins against you, it is
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: as if a debt has been occurred. That person took
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: something from you. So in your analogy, that person may
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: have taken your ability to feel at ease and safe
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: around pastors away from you. I hope the Lord redeems that.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: And I would just say to anybody, this is not
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: about you, this is just about anybody, anybody who receives
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: a wound, anybody, Satan will get in there and try
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: to capitalize on it, and that's the prison. Hey, because
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: that thing happened to you, you make an inner vow,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: I'll never do that again. I'll never trust men again
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: because that dude did that to me when I was six.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: I'll never go to, what people don't realize, when you
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: start using that type of language, that's prison language. In
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: other words, bars have been erected between me and that thing.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: And I just want to give a gentle watch out
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: to everybody listening. Sometimes that thing is a really, really
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: good thing that Satan's trying to use an old wound
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: to keep you from ever getting that good thing again.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: So what you got?
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: If you're talking about, are you talking about my particular situation?
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: No, I'm saying that's anything.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: Because I did say I'll never do it again.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: No, I use that analogy. I'm talking about anything.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: Doesn't mean I'll keep myself from the word. It just
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: won't be particular. Of course. Okay.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm saying, no, no, what I'm
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: saying is typically when somebody is deeply wounded, and it
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter your thing, anybody's thing, and this is not
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: what you're saying. What Satan will sometimes do, I'm preaching
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: my little sermon here and What Satan will sometimes do
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: is get them to make an inner vow. Like, let's
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: say a girl is abused when she's seven by her uncle.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: She'll make an inner vow. It's like a demonic reverse
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: covenant is what it is. I'll never trust men again.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: And what Satan is trying to do is cut her
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: off from, honestly, a lot of men that she's going
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: to need in her life to become the beautiful, noble
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: woman of God. You see what I'm saying? Does that
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: make sense?
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: That's perfect sense.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Now, let me ask you this. Do you think that
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: wisdom can come from people sitting against you?
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, bro, yes. My gosh, yes. It's like.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, with that comes experience, and while maybe
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: it would be foolish to say, I'll never trust another
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: man again, I think a lot of wisdom can be
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: pulled from that, and maybe I will never trust this
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: type of man again. You can see through, you know, you'll,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: you know... A lot of times, you can just see
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: right through people, through experiences of things happening. And then
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: you'd notice patterns that come with every human being that's
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: like that. Yes.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: I strongly agree with that. That's exactly what the word
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: means when it says that God works all things for
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: the good of those who love him and are called
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: according to his purpose. And all things includes all the
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: jacked up things. It'll redeem all those things.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: So if we're going back to how do I do it, man,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: this next thing that I'm going to say is like
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: for real, it's one of the hardest things you're going
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: to do. And it's one of these things you can't
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: do it in five minutes. Like it's going to take
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: like five hours, five weeks or five months. But this
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: thing has got recommended. I've been recommended ever since. You
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: got to almost like make a debt ledger. This is
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: what Jan and I have had to do for people
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: who have very egregiously sinned against us. And they were
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: never going to own it. They're never going to own it.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: This is what we had to do. So Jesus in
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: Matthew 18 says, like a debt. So what you do
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: is you get out a sheet of paper. It's a
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: little exercise and it's not fun. And you sit down
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: and first of all, you pinpoint who sinned against me.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: And I need specificity. What you got to watch out
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: for is they. You know, there was one time You know,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: a lot of people don't think about this because people
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: do get hurt by pastors. See, you got that story.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I've been hurt by a pastor. There
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: you go. I would not say that. I don't want
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: to put that on anybody.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: There you go. But, you know, with some people.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: It's trust.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense. But what, you know,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: and I'm not, this is not a pity party at all.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: But what I will say with some people sometimes don't
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: realize is, man, you know, pastors, pastors can get shot
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: at sheep bite. Yeah.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: So there was one time I was, I went to
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: counseling for a little bit when I was in Nashville.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: Cause I was honestly part of, cause I was struggling
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: with some unforgiveness. And, uh, uh, this guy asked me,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: he was like, uh, you know, Hey man, what's.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: Going on with you?
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: And I was like, man, the church, I'm a pastor.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: The church hurt me.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: I'm doing this thing.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: And, uh, And he paused and it was one of
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: the most powerful things he ever did is he stopped
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: me and was like, hey man, he judo moved me.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: He said, well, hey, wait a second, man. What do
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: you mean by the church hurt you? I said, well,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: the church, I mean, man, this is, we're going through
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: this thing. And he said, wait a second, Josh, your church,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: I think my church at the time was a thousand
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: people or something like that. He said, hey man, your
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: church is a thousand. Did all thousand hurt you?
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, no, shut up.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: Shut up, nothing but no. He said, well, hey, man,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: here's what I want you to do. Write down the
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: names of every single person who actually hurt you. And
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: I wrote down those names with Jana. And when we
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: got done, it was seven people. But what I think
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: Satan had done is he had gotten me to transmit
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: the pain that came from seven people to the church.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: So what you got to do is it starts with
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: getting like specificity. Who specifically sinned against me? I think
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: step two, and it's not fun, is you gotta take
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: inventory of what was taken from you, right? So I'll
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: give an example that probably a lot of guys that
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: listen to this podcast, like, now you better watch out,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: this'll get you, is your story is one time you
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: stood at altar and you said, till death do us part,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: and you meant it. And then one day you woke
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: up and found out she didn't. And now somebody else
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: is tucking your kids into bed at night, right? Well,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: heads up, man, that's gonna leave a mark. You're gonna
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: need to clean some things out. When you get to
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: that debt ledger, what you gotta get down, okay, this
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: is who sinned against me. Now I gotta start going,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: I need to name everything that was taken from me.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: And dude, you gotta write down, You got to write
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: down like all the stuff. Like, man, it's hard for
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: me to, you know, let's say this example I just use.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: It's hard for me to trust women anymore. That was
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: taken from me. Man, I spent eight months of my
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: life not sleeping good and drinking too much because of
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: that girl. Hey, you know what's taken from me is
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: half my income. You know what's taken from me is
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: all the job opportunities that I would have had. if
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: I'd have been able to focus for that year on
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: my career. Hey, do you know what it was taking
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: for me? The ability to, now I see my kids,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: you know, 50% of the time. I just lost 50%
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: of being a debt. Like, you got to get down
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: and like, and the reason I say that, man, is
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: people who don't do that, like, if you don't get like,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: this is what's going on, what it's taking for me.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: You can't cancel a debt that you never inventoried. And
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: if you don't do that, like, okay. Now, once you
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: got your debt ledger, okay, and that'll take you a minute,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: you have two choices of what you're going to do
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: with that. And the first one, they both suck, but
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: in different ways. You can, one, you can hang on
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: to it. I'm going to keep this debt ledger for
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: the rest of my life, you know. And everywhere I go,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: everybody's going to know the reason I'm pissy and angry
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: and crotchety is Everybody's going to know. It's because they
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: did this, and I'm holding on to the debt. And actually,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: and I will say this. One of the biggest reasons
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: nobody likes to talk about that people don't forgive is
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: because if they forgive somebody, they lose the excuse for
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: why they act like they do.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: That's a damn good point.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: It's like, if I forgive them, I don't got an
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: excuse anymore. for why I'm angry all the time and
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: why I don't trust nobody and why I'm cynical all
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: the time. It's like, you gotta watch out for that, man.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: So you got that. Either you can hold on to it,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: but that comes at a real big price. It costs
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: you the joy for the rest of your life. Or
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: I think it's the book of Colossians. You can do this,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: and it's not easy, but it's the best thing that'll
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: ever happen to you. It says that what God did
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: is he canceled the record of debt against us with
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: its legal demands, nailing them to the cross. And what
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: you can do is you can take that debt ledger
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: and I'd encourage you to like actually like physically do
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: something like this. Like me and Jana, Jana burned hers.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: She took it out to our fire pit and burned it.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: I got, we got an old cross on our property.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: This we built, it's got some sentimental value to me.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I'll walk out there and I'll literally just like
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: old school, late 80s youth camp, like I'll nail it
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: on there. But you've got to make a decision to
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: cancel that debt. And just say, okay, Jesus, I'm trusting
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: that either you paid the penalty for this sin on
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: the cross or that person will pay the penalty for
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: it in hell. But what I know is it's not
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: up to me. Vengeance is mine. I will repay, declares
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: the Lord. Not up to me.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: What about forgiving yourself?
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: That's probably the biggest one of all. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: So when people say forgiving themselves.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: That's a big ledger.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: It's a big ledger.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: For some people.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: It's the biggest one, biggest one. I had a guy
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: write me from prison a few years ago after listening
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: to a sermon. And I was talking about the grace
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: of God and how God can redeem anybody, you know.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: And he said, he wrote me a letter and he
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: was like, hey man, I want to believe that, but
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: you don't know what I've done. And what I would
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: say to that guy, actually what I did say to
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: that guy is, hey man, that's actually not the problem.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: The problem is you don't know what he did. Because
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ went to a cross and he paid the
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: penalty of your sin for you. Man, what about forgiving yourself?
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: There's this really interesting thing that happens the longer somebody
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: walks with the Lord. where the longer they walk with Jesus,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: there's this weird thing that happens where the better you are,
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: but the worse you feel. It's actually a weird thing.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: I think John MacArthur, an old dead pastor, said that.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting. If you watch the life of the
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: Apostle Paul, a lot of people miss this because the
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: books of the Bible are not in chronological order of
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: when they were written. They're in a different sequence. But
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: if you line all the books up in the order
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: that the Apostle Paul wrote them, he starts by referring
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: to himself as one of the apostles. And then he
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: goes a little farther and he says, well, I'm the
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: least of the apostles. And then he goes a little
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: farther and he says, he calls himself the least of
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: all the saints. And then, and I think the last
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: letter he ever wrote, he says, this saying is trustworthy
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: and deserving of full acceptance. that Jesus Christ died for
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: sinners of whom I am the foremost. So it's almost
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: like a reverse testimony. It's almost like he started feeling,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: and the reason for that is the longer you walk
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: with the Lord, you sort of know him a little better.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: and and the more you know him the more of
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: his perfection you see and the more of your imperfection
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: you see and you feel that gap so what happens
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: is that gap gets bigger and bigger and bigger here's
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: what I should be and here's what I am and
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: honestly the longer you live some life you sin some
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: more sins it's like the gap gets bigger and bigger
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: You know, you've done some stuff and seen some stuff.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: But what happens is the longer you walk with the Lord,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: the gap gets bigger and bigger between you and what
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: you should be and what you are. But if we're
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: really understanding, we're looking at the cross and we're understanding
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: what Jesus did for us, what really ends up happening
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: is your understanding of the grace of God to you
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: and what Jesus did for you on the cross. It
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So John Newton,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace, he was involved in
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: the slave trade, I think when he got saved, if
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: I remember correctly, and had a pretty radical conversion and
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: it bothered him for the rest of his life. At
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: the end of his life, I think he had a
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: little dementia. And at the end of his life, one
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: of the last things he ever said was, though I
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: am old, And my memory is fading. I remember two
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: things very clearly. I am a great sinner. And Christ
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: is a great Savior. And man, if somebody's going, how
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: do I forgive myself? Man, honestly, what I would say
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: is you got to get your eyes off yourself. And
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: it's really not about what you've done. It's about what
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: he did. And there is this last thing. I'll just
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: say this. There's a little bit of me that just
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: wants to just gently, gently with a pastoral heart. look
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: at a guy that says that and be like, hey man,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: who do you think you are? Do you think you're
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: a better sinner than he is a savior? I don't
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: think so, man. I don't think so. So I think
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: you just gotta go back to the cross over and
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: over and over again and know, hey, that thing was
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: nailed to the cross and I really am free. I
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: really am.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: The original question was, How can you forgive, still want justice,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: but not be overcome with vengeance?
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. That's good. This gets into a, something
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: is called, the theological term for it is sphere sovereignty.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna be a little nerdy for a second, if
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: that's okay. So in the Bible, God has established three
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: institutions that when they work like they're supposed to work,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: it's good for people and it's good for societies. And
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: the three institutions are the family, the church and the state.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: And all three institutions have different roles. Okay. So, you know,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: kind of the image that theologians have used to just Bible,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: be Bible, you know, Bible nerd for a second is
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: what they'll say is, you know, you know, you got the,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: the rod, the keys, and the sword is what they'll say.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: Sort of the image that's the logo of the family
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: is the rod. Hey, good fathers discipline their children, raise
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. The
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: image of the church is the keys. That's Jesus when
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: he talks to Peter, I give you the keys of
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: the kingdom, whatever you bind on earth will be bound
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: in heaven, that kind of thing, keys. It's about ordinances,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: helping people understand, helping people be saved, and then helping
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: people understand that they are saved. Okay, keys. And then
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: the image for the state is the sword. That comes
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: from Romans 13. And it says that the government, that
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: human governments, as very imperfect as they are, I think
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: we agree on that, that they have been instituted by God,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: that actually governments are a good thing. Bad governance is
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: a real bad thing, but a world with no government
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: is a real bad thing, right? And what it says
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: is that God has, one of the roles of the
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: government is to, quote, bear the sword and be vengeance
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: to the wrongdoer. So to get back to this question,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: how can I forgive somebody and still seek justice? Well,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: here's what you do, okay? Romans 13 is the passage
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: where it talks about the role of the government is
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: the sword. It's to bring justice on the wrongdoer. What's
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: very interesting is right before that in Romans 12, it
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: says this, you're actually alluding to it. It says, vengeance
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. In other words,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: don't seek vengeance. Don't ever do that. What it's acknowledging
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: is there's a difference between the role of an individual
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: and the role of the state. So you as an individual,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: my job is to love you, to forgive you, to
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: release you from your debt. Like I'm not walking around
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: trying to take vengeance on you. It's actually wrong for
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: an individual to try to do the job of the government.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: So I can forgive you, but then it's still a good, godly,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: and just thing for the government to do its job
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: to try to bring justice on the wrongdoer. So, man, honestly,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: it's fully appropriate for somebody that commits a crime against
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: somebody for you to forgive that person and then call
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: the police and be like, hey, man, This person just
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: did this and report them. Those things are not in conflict.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: That makes sense. It does make sense. Why did Jesus
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: have to die on the cross?
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: Why did he have to do it? I mean, he's
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: God's son. He's God's only son. Why didn't God make
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: another son? We've got a lot of questions here. I mean,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: I just don't. I don't. fully understand why it had
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: to happen if he is God.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: Why couldn't he just forgive?
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, that's like my favorite question to answer ever.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: So the Bible says that God did it that way
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: so that he could be both. Let me say it
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: and then explain it. So he could be both just
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: and the justifier of the ungodly.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: Just and justifier. All right. So my favorite way to
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: illustrate this is by a story, okay? So best illustration
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: of why Jesus had died on the cross I've ever heard,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: all right? It goes like this. Once upon a time
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: in a far off kingdom, there was a king who
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: was known by everyone in the kingdom to be the
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: most just and loving king who had ever lived. But
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: then it was discovered that somebody was stealing from the
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: king's treasury. And so the king being a just king,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: he sent out an edict that whenever it was discovered
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: who was stealing from the king's treasury, that that person
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: would receive 10 lashes. Well, the theft continued, and so
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: he issued another decree. When it's discovered who's stealing from
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: the king's treasury, it'll be 20 lashes. The theft continued,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: 30 lashes. Until finally, the king issued a final decree,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: and he said, when it's discovered who's stealing from the
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: king's treasury, it will be a sentence of 40 lashes. Now,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: the problem with that was, that 40 lashes was a
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: death sentence. And so the theft continued until eventually it
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: was discovered that none other than the king's daughter was
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: the one who was stealing from the treasury. So then
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: a question began to ripple through the kingdom. What would
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: the king do? Some thought he would forgive her, but
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: then how would he be just? Some thought that he
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: would issue the sentence, but then how would he be loving?
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: It was decided. The king sat down and decided, you
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: know what? The sentence is just. The punishment must fall.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: And so the decree stands. And so one day the
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: entire kingdom was gathered. And in front of everybody, the
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: king's own daughter was marched up to the podium in
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: front of the entire kingdom. And she was bent over
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: the podium and the back of her shirt was ripped open.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: And the executioner stood there and he began to raise
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: his whip to land the first slash. And as soon
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: as he did, the king yelled, stop. And there was
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: a silence that fell. And the king strode forward and
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: he took off his own shirt and he bent over
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: and he wrapped his body around his own daughter and
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: looked back up over his shoulder and he said, now
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: hit her. And the executioner objected and he said, but king,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: those lashes, they'll fall on you. And he said, the
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: sentence must stand. It's just hit her. And so 40
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: lashes fell on the body of the king that protected
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: the body of his daughter and the king died in
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: the stead of his daughter. And what happened, Sean, in
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: that story is the king was both just because payment
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: for the sin had to be made and the king
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: was the justifier of the ungodly. She went free because
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: he took the penalty. See, the reason Jesus had to
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: die on the cross is because God is just. And
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: so payment for sin has to be made. Like if
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: somebody walked into a courtroom and a judge just went,
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: you know what, man? You raped that girl when she
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: was young, but you're real sorry. And I have the
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: power to do it. You're forgiven. Nobody would think that
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: was a just judge. So penalty for sin had to
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: be made. but God is love, so he made the
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: payment himself. That's what the Bible means when it says,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: for the wages of sin is death, but the free
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: So it's a substitutionary sacrifice. In my place, condemned he stood.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: Wow. It's a great explanation.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: Does it make sense?
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: Makes perfect sense. Okay. Thank you.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: You want to take a break?
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: Let's do it, man.
• 1:39:01
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• 1:39:12
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• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: All right, Josh, back from the break. We just wrapped
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: up forgiveness, but I did have one more question. Is
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: there anybody or anything you're struggling with to give forgiveness?
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: You got any stories on that? Anything going on right now? Dude.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: I think we all struggle with it. Yeah. It's tough.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: It's hard to do. Yeah.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: Man, you know, probably not, you know, I don't know
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: if there's anything I would want to put on air.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: You know, there's probably like you, maybe something I could
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: be transparent about. Being a pastor is a weird thing.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: It's a, it's a peculiar, it's a peculiar life.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: And, uh, why do you say that?
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: It's just a, it's a weird life, man. It's like,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: what's weird about it? Hmm. Well, you know, uh, uh,
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: you know, everywhere you go, um, probably similar to you,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: at least where you are. People know who you are. Uh,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: and they have extremely strong opinions about what you do. And, uh, Uh,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: and then you kind of talk, you know, you get
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: on top of that, man, my job is to say,
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: to open the word of God and then do my
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: very best to apply it to your life. And man,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: you know, sometimes that's going to get up all in your, do.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: You let those opinions get to you? Does that bother you?
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: Not as much anymore. Not as much anymore. However, uh,
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: there are people who over the years and what I,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: Usually it'll last for like, this is weird. I've kind
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: of talked about this publicly. There are people who, for
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: whatever reason, might be a personality type, might be something
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: else who they'll just decide they hate you. And they'll just,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: it's almost like a dog on a bun. They're like
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: a latch on. And like they make this destroying you,
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: their life calling for a few years. And you know, man,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: it's like that affects, I'll give you an example. Uh,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: Here's how it affects me. Like, this is a debt
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: ledger kind of thing. You know, like, I preached a
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: sermon a couple years ago that got into culture on
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: political applications. That year, our home insurance application was denied.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: We were threatened by multiple people, lawsuits. They got a
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: hold of Jana's, my wife's, cell phone number. and just
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: spam the cell phone, they posted our address, that happens
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: to all, everybody that's public, they posted our address a
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: million places, a million stories, you know, it's like, every
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: time to open the internet, it was, he's a pedophile, he's,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, like, insane, you know, stuff. Posted, you know,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: pictures of our, of our kids playing in our yard
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: on the internet, I mean, it's like.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: Privacy violations.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dude.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: And it's like, What did you get out of that? Yeah.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: Why'd you do it? Did you get something? I hope
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: you got something out of that.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: Well, they don't. I know you didn't.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: You think your friend gives a shit that you saw
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: my kids playing out front? They don't. They don't give
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: a shit. And then they do it again.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: And then they got to pretend to be your friend.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: That's kind of like some of the stuff that I
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: was kind of getting at earlier. You know what I mean?
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: And it's just like, I just don't realize how much
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: that like, it's not even, it's a safety thing. And
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: it's like, what did you get out of that? I
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: know you didn't mean anything by it, but what'd you
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: get out of that?
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: Well, no, I think they do mean something by it sometimes.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean, okay. I was talking about, you know,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: people that don't mean you harm.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: You know, but then there is the other side of it.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, when I got, you know, that year, We
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: had some, you know, I don't, I think it's okay
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: to talk about it. We had somebody like arrested on
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: our property. You know, I was, you know, our kids
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: are coming home asking why is dad on the news?
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: You know, cause they're, you know, it's just like, honestly,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: it doesn't bother me when it starts messing with my kids.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: That's a new ball game.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. Dude, I
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: want to go back to one thing you said earlier.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: You asked the question, it's like, man, I, the same
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: thing will happen and it just sends me. Like I
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: just keep feeling the same thing over and over again.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: One of the misconceptions I think people have about forgiveness
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: is they think it's a one-time event. There is a
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: reason Jesus says, hey man, you're gonna have to forgive
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: seven times, 70 times. And honestly, Sean, what I've learned
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: is a lot of times, all of them are for
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: the same thing and the same person. Like I'm gonna
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: have to forgive. If somebody's husband cheats on them, they
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: forgive him and they reconcile and they keep the marriage.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: That happens in our church all the time. Then every
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: time they see their husband talk to a woman, even
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: completely innocuously in the lobby at church, it's like just
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: saying hi to somebody that's on their serve team. She
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: may have all those same emotions shoot back up, even
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: though he's not doing anything wrong. She's going to have
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: to forgive again and again and again for the same sin.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: So you're saying every time somebody sees the perpetrator, it
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: comes up again and you have to go through the
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: process all over again.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: That thing Jesus said of, how many times should I
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: forgive Jesus? Seven times? And in Matthew 18, Jesus goes, no, Peter,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: it's actually going to be seven times, 70 times, 490 times.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: And what he's saying is infinite. And honestly, a lot
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: of times you just have to forgive the same one
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: sin over and over and over because it keeps coming
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: back up in your heart. The reason that's important is
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: people will live with false guilt. And they'll think, man,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: the fact that I still struggle with the anger on this,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: it means that I haven't forgiven. I must not be
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: a good Christian. It's like, no, man, you're a normal human.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: And you're just doing the forgiveness thing over and over
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: and over.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. Let's go back to the comments.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: It sounds like people's opinions bother you.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: You know, at this point, is that.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: In your head when you're up there giving your ministry? Oh, gosh.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: Good.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: No, not at all, man. The first few times it
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: happened to me while I was younger, it does. It did. No, like.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: You don't become a pastor unless you like and care
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: about people. I hope, you know, there's probably some psychopaths
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: out there. So yeah, the default mode is you do, man.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: You want people to love and trust you. And the
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 2: first time, you know, you get a little internet mob
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: or whatever it is, it does mess with you. At
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: this point, it's just so, you know, there's always a
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: little of it. You just kind of get to the
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: spot where it's, Galatians 1.10, for am I now trying
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: to please man or am I trying to please God?
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: If I'm trying to please man, I am no longer
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: a servant of Christ. And you just sort of, let
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: me just turn it off.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just gonna bring that up. I mean,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: it's interesting, you know, I'm kind of going through that
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: right now and I've never, I never thought that I
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: was influenced by my audience but really by anybody. And
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: that's really important to me that I'm not influenced by anybody.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: And I always say what I'm gonna say. I don't
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: let anybody dictate what I say, what my opinions are.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: I don't care, but I do care. I did care
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: a little bit. I would get the internet mobs and
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: I would, It would hurt, and then I would steer
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: away from certain conversations for a little bit until I
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: felt like I was healed, and then I'd dive back
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: in the fight. And I realized that, what am I
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: trying to say here? You know what I realized? Ever
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: since I came to Christ, probably about, I don't know,
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: three years ago maybe, like fully committed, I read this
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: thing in the Bible once that said that many people,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not a guy that quotes scripture. So, but he
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: was talking about many people will say they're doing things
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: in my name and they aren't. That's right. And that's right.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: I kind of self-reflected on that. That may have been
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: like six months ago, maybe half a year ago. So
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: I'm like, shit, man, like, I feel like a you know,
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: he's always in my head, you know, I'm always trying
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: to do the right thing. But then you get all
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: these people coming up to you and they're like, oh,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: you're doing God's work. And you look at the comments
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: and they're all like, oh yeah, you're doing a great job, Sean.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: You look at the views and the likes and, and
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: the negative shit too, you know, and, and, and you
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: get pumped up, you know what I mean? By all
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: these people. And, and then, and then it, it, I mean,
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, it mind fucks you.
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh shit, I am doing the right thing.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: But it's just a bunch of people that don't know
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: any better than me or you or anybody, you know,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: and just go on with the flow. And so you are,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: it tricks you into thinking that you're doing the right,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: and I'm not saying I was doing the wrong thing.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: I think I've done some stuff that's wrong, you know,
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: on here that I thought was right, that I was
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: influenced by, praise, you know, and I feed off the bike. Oh, well,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: if all these people think I'm doing the right thing
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: that I must be doing the right thing.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: But they don't know shit.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: And I don't know shit. And so I just recently
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: just cut it all off. I'm not on, I don't
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: look at any of it anymore. I don't even look
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: at the financials behind anything anymore. Really?
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: Because I don't, I just don't want to be, I
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: want to be totally uninfluenced and in touch with God
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: as much as possible without man, human beings, getting in
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: the middle of that relationship. You know, I really want
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: to know, like, what do you want me to do here?
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: What do you want me to talk about? What do
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: you want me to do? Not what all these people,
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: you know, six million people want me to do. I
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: want to know what you want me to do. So
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: I cut it all off. I don't even have any
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: of it on my phone. I will watch YouTube. And
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: that's it on my TV. But I don't, I don't
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: look at any of that shit anymore. Let's see how
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: it goes. I could crash and burn. I bet not,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: but it feels pretty good so far.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: Dude, I think you're heading in the right direction. I think,
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: I'd love to know what you think about this. You know,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: kind of what, what I learned when some of that
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: stuff started happening is like, you know, um, There's a
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: proverb that says, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: and a companion of fools will suffer harm. And it's
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: kind of that principle of, man, over time, you and me,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 2: we will end up becoming whatever is like the average
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: of the five people who are closest to us. Whoever
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: those five people are, you extrapolate out five years, 10 years,
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: that's who I'm going to be. And so, you know,
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: I've kind of thought about it. I'd love to know
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: what you think. how I've kind of thought about it
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: is like, man, you know what I'm going to try
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: to do? What I'm really going to focus on is
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: assembling the band of brothers around me and getting, I
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: care who that.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: Is a lot.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: Like who are those like five ride or die guys?
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: That band of brothers, like they know my junk. I
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: know their junk. And when it hits the fan, that's
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: who I call. And those are the guys that like,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: I got those guys. I got five or six guys.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 2: They know we text multiple times per day. They're praying
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: for you today. And it's like, hey, man, what do
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: you see in me? Am I missing it? And he's like, hey,
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: I need you to. Because I will say there are
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: some people who like.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: Who are they? Who did you put around you?
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: Do they work with you? Are they part of your ministry?
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: There are. Are the guys out the side there?
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: There's some of them. Actually, some of those guys do
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: function like that. So our elders, we've got elders in
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: our church. Every year I do the same thing. What
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: do y'all see? I'll say what I do every year
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: is I'll ask them. First of all, they've got an
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: open door. The key to this that I've noticed is
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: you probably felt the same is like, man, as a man,
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 2: I say this with humility. I hope that, you know,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 2: as your as your platform grows, your notoriety grows, it
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: gets harder to find people who will be honest with you.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: So then what I've noticed is I have to like
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 2: deputize people like I'm giving you authority here. to call
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: me if I'm breaking the speed limit. That's your job.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: I'll say, I need you to keep me out of
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: the newspaper. I'd rather be embarrassed in front of you
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: than embarrassed in front of however many millions of people
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: or whatever. So for me, we got elders at our
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: church that we're meeting constantly, and they know, like, hey, man,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: tell me. Once a year, I ask those guys, what
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: should I keep doing? What do you see in my life?
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: I've obviously got Jana. Jana should be number one. Jana,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: me and Jana take a walk. I'm not saying everybody's
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: got to do this. I got a lot of problems
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: in my life. I got a real good marriage. I
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: got a real good marriage. Jana is a wise, very courageous,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: very godly woman. We take a walk. We usually take
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: two walks a day. So we usually walk about four
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: miles a day together. And really all we're doing is
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: it's just like we're talking about Jesus. We're talking about life.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: We're talking about our kids. We're talking about ministry. And
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: Jana will tell me if she sees something. Jana's going
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 2: to tell me. But she'll also be the person that
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: if I were to ever need to preach something that
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: was difficult, it's like, I know this is going to
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: make people mad. If I flaked and I walked off stage,
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: Jana will be the first person to be like, I
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: love you. You flaked. So she'll speak into my life.
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: She'll also put steel on my spine. She'll do that. Nice.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: And then I got some of these guys out here.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 2: I got a group of pastors that I've been friends
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: with for a long, long, long time that we're on
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: a group text, and we keep in touch. These are guys,
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: a guy in Arizona. There's a guy up in the
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: state of Washington. There's a guy over in Atlanta. Those guys.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting. I love it. And I do
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: the same thing. And I've got, everybody's in, I mean, everybody,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: I've got four people in this building that have been
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: with me since the beginning of this damn thing, or
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: right at the beginning. One of them came before that,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: 17 years old, when I was teaching tactics. And he's
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: been with me for 10 years now. And these people
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: are like my family. So I have that. Now on
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: the flip end, I love them and they love me
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: and we've been through a lot of shit together and
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: we'll go through a lot more stuff. And I always
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: take what they say into account. But the interesting thing is,
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: They're also influenced by the success of this. And so
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: you can't 100% buy into everything that they're telling you
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: because they are influenced. Their lives are influenced by this.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: So of course they're influenced by this. Same with your
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: guys out there. They're influenced by the success of what
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: you're doing. And so you have to keep that in mind.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: You got to have the outside. But what that does,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: at least for me, is when stuff hits the fan,
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: which I pray is not frequent, you know, the little
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: axiom becomes for me, criticism should be weighed, not counted.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: So I'm not taking a poll of how many people
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: liked it and how many people didn't like it. And
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: if more people didn't like it than liked what I said,
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: it was wrong. Now, man, we got Bible verses for that.
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 2: Let God be true and every man a liar. Amen.
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: We're going to be in the minority on a whole
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: bunch of stuff. We're gonna stand on the Word of
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 2: God and let God be true in every man a lot.
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: We're okay with that. But when it hits the fan,
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: and I'm starting asking people, man, what'd you think, did
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: I miss it? I'm not counting how many criticisms did
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 2: I get, I'm weighing who did it come from. If
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 2: it came from Jana, I almost don't need to hear
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: anything else. If it's one of my elders, I almost
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: don't need to hear anything else. It's one of those
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: guys that's like a ride or die. So that's how
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: I kind of think about it.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: There's a point where you realize you're doing the same
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: things you used to do, but your body just responds differently.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: Same workouts, same efforts. Same discipline, but recovery takes longer.
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: Energy isn't as steady, and you don't bounce back the
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: way you used to. And, once you notice that, you
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: start asking questions. Is it stress? Is it sleep? Is
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: it age? Is it hormones? That's when guys start looking
• 1:59:02
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• 1:59:06
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• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: them our show sent you. My wife's the same. It
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: sounds like our wives are very similar. You know, my wife,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: there are days that she just is like... We can
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: stop at any time. We don't need anything else. And
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: I think about that. And I'm glad she's like that. Because...
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: You know, if it was the other way, she would
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: just want more and more and more.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, dude, that tells me everything
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: about your wife.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: Because what that tells me is she's into Sean, not
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: what Sean can do.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: Yep. She doesn't like this. She loves what I do.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: She doesn't like the notoriety.
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: Why doesn't she like it?
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: She doesn't like the notoriety that it comes with. Chill.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: Low key.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's how Jana would roll if she could.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We were going to do... that editing room over
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: there with all the computers, that was going to be
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: our studio. We were going to do a husband wife thing.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: And we did nine pilots and they were wildly successful.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: And we, we deleted them all. Cause she didn't like
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: the eyeballs. She's like, we got kids. One person on
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: the light is more than enough. And I don't want
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: anything to do with it. And, uh, That's cool, man,
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: because most women? Opposite.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, I don't know anything about her. That's a
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: good woman. Yeah. There's a, you know, genesis, you know,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: pattern of marriage, and this is one thing that'll get
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 2: you in trouble a little bit, is, hey, in a
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: God-honoring marriage, husband's job is to be a loving head,
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 2: and her job is to be a respectful helper, and
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: there's nuances to that. But when it says helper... It's, uh,
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: it's Evan, so the Hebrew is Evan Azar. It means
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: necessary ally. And the implication is, man, God designed her
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: for Sean Ryan. And there's a whole bunch of battles
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 2: that Sean could not win if that woman was not
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 2: at Sean Ryan's side. And, you know, if you watch,
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: every man either marries a launch pad or a lid. And,
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 2: you know, I, you probably feel the same way as me. Uh,
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 2: There are guys that, man, they were way, way more
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: talented than me. Way better opportunities and that kind of thing.
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: And a lot of the things that, this is one
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: of the other things, there's a couple things I can't
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 2: talk about with Maya sweating. One of them's Jana. The
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 2: reason that we've been able to just see some of
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: the things that happen is because I married a launch
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: pad and not a lid. There's no way I'd go
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: a tenth as far as we've been graced to do
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: if I had married Janet Howard.
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: How'd you meet her?
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 2: Blind date.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: A blind date. Blind date, yeah.
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: Blind date. I was a senior in college, and I
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 2: was single. Janet, she got saved. She gave her life
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 2: to Christ in college. She was the president of her
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: sorority over there at Western Kentucky University. And so she
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 2: went to college in the town where I grew up.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: So the guy that discipled me, and for listeners, all
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 2: that means, like when I became a Christian, it was
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 2: an older godly man that I met with to like,
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: and he showed me, here's how you be a Christian man.
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 2: That's all that means. He discipled me. The guy that
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 2: discipled me, his wife discipled Jana after she gave her
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: life to Christ in college. So then Jana's there, and
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 2: she's president of her sorority and everything, and they just
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: started asking her, hey, why are you single? And she goes,
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: I don't know. And they sat her down, and did
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 2: you grow up in church at all?
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: Say that again?
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: Did you grow up in church at all?
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: Catholic.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: Catholic. I'm going to show my ignorance real quick. Did
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: they have like an old, when I was growing up,
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: we had church directories where they'd have everybody's names and
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: pictures and phone numbers. Did they have that?
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: Not that I'm aware of.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: All right. Well, my old Baptist church had that. So they, uh,
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 2: they were sitting down with Jana and they pulled out
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: the church directory and started finding all the guys her age.
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: And they were like, what about him? What about him?
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: They did.
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: They did.
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 2: And then, uh, and then they finally got to me
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 2: and they were like, what about him? And she was like, man,
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't know. And, uh, so they, they
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 2: sent me an email and, uh, His name, Jeff Carlisle,
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: I mentioned him earlier, my youth pastor. And he was like, hey, man,
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: I got this girl that you need to trust me.
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: You need to meet this girl. And I'll be honest, man,
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: the first time he emailed, I was kind of like, well, man,
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm Josh Howerton. I'm not desperate. And then
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: he sent me a picture and I was like, I'll
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: be there next week. And I drove up to Bowling Green,
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 2: Kentucky and blind date. And we dated for four months,
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 2: got engaged, engaged for four months, got married. Fast as
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: we could. Best decision I ever made.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: What'd you like about her? What was the first thing
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: that hit you?
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, she was very attractive. That's the
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 2: first thing I noticed because I've got a picture. So
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 2: I'm allowed to say that. First thing I noticed.
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: When you met her?
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 2: When I met her. Oh, say it again.
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: Other than that, what's the first thing that hit you? Man,
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: she loved the Lord.
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: Honestly man it was like in two seconds like all
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 2: she wanted to talk about was like how she wanted
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 2: to pour herself out for stuff that mattered I figured
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 2: out real fast she obviously wanted to enjoy a great
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: marriage she wanted to find somebody that she could live
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: and die with throwing haymakers for the kingdom of God
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: I figured that out real fast and she was wise
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: she is a wise wise person Very wise. Her judge
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: of character is ridiculous. You probably had a few moments
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: where you got betrayed by somebody and it's like, are
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 2: you kidding me? Like, I knew you for eight years
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 2: or 12 years or whatever.
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: She saw it.
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 2: There has never been a time, a 100% hit rate.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 2: That sound familiar? Oh, yeah.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 2: The Bible doesn't call him a helper for nothing.
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: Sounds like an amazing woman. Yes, she is. So these elders,
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: do they have different opinions than you on topics? Oh, yeah.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We'll have meetings. And there's a great unity of spirit. But, man,
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: they love me. And they love me enough to, hey, man,
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 2: here's what we're thinking. we'll pray about it and talk
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 2: about it and argue about it and then pray about
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 2: it some more until we get consensus on a thing.
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 2: That's very, oh, very, there's a very, very high level
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: of trust and love among those guys. And those guys
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: at our church, they're not, you know, like you said,
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: hey man, you gotta watch out when somebody's, you know,
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: it's like their livelihood is tied to the success of
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 2: the thing. That'll affect their judgment. These guys at our
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: church may not, Not every church is like our church.
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 2: At our church, they're just godly church members. They're not
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 2: getting a dime from the church. Not tied to that.
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: Which gives them the ability to love me enough and
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: just like, hey dude, here's what we're seeing, here's what
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: we're thinking.
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now the guys I'm talking about, I mean they could, Yes,
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: there is that aspect, but they're also, you know, just
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: to give them credit, they all tell me like, hey,
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: if you end this today, we're good with it. We
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: just want what's best for you. You know, so I
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: got to give credit where credit's due. And like I said,
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: I love those dudes. But I also like, you know,
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: I like, so I like talking to Eli. You know,
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: I brought up Eli Crane earlier. And that's, you know,
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: if you watch, you know, that's been a topic on
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: this show, the Israel topic. And, and, I talk to him.
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: Every couple of months, we battle it out, and he
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: hasn't changed my opinion. But maybe one day he will,
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: and I love it when somebody does change my opinion
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: because it means you're growing.
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: That's right. But that's iron sharpening iron.
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: That's what you just described. We got a Bible verse
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: for that.
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 2: That's great. Sometimes sparks fly. When iron hits iron. And usually,
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 2: a lot of times, those are the best friendships that
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 2: take you the farthest.
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He's a good dude. And I know there's no
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: financial incentives behind him that are swaying his opinions. And
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: I deeply respect that, especially a man in politics. That's right. But...
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: How many people are in your church?
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 2: On a normal week now, you know, let's say here recently, 30,000.
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: How many?
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: 30,000? Yep. Holy cow. 30,000? I know, man.
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: I know. It's a lot of people. I know. Wow.
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you watch my episode about the religion business?
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 2: I was sent clips.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: What'd you think? I got a lot, a lot of texts.
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 2: Well, man, you know, there's, you know, I don't like
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 2: commenting on stuff that I didn't dig in on. I
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 2: know there's a lot of misconceptions about that kind of thing. And,
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: Are there some truths?
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 2: It depends who you're talking about. So let me just,
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 2: I'll shoot you real straight. There are some guys that are,
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 2: you know, quote, unquote, pastors yeah man it's like that's
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 2: not a good guy absolutely yeah but you know the
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 2: weird thing about what I do is like a lot
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: of those guys that are like pastors of you know
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 2: bigger churches like I know all those guys you know
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 2: and it is the thing that you know again this
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 2: stuff I've never talked about publicly the thing that can
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: be tough for me is when a guy that I know,
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, the internet mob, whatever, the public perception
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: is this, and I'm like, I know that guy, I
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: know what you're commenting on, and I know how that
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 2: is like a freakishly cartoonish caricature of this thing that
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: actually happened, but because of the realities of the terrain,
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: he's never gonna correct the record. That's tough, that's tough
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 2: to see, you know?
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: Because he's got something to gain off of it.
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying? Somebody that will start controversy
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: to make themselves relevant even though they know it's not true.
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: Is that what you're talking about?
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 2: So it can be, you know, and dude, I'm not
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: talking about anybody. I don't have a name in mind.
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 2: I might, but I'm not going to.
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: Well, 30,000, it could be any name. You know what
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: I mean?
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're talking about church members.
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. I thought that's what you were
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: talking about.
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm talking about just like in public when you'll
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: see pastors get shredded. Like, you know, like kind of
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: that kind of vibe. I'm talking about when there's like
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 2: this massive gap between like, yeah, I know that guy.
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 2: And I know the real story on that thing.
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 2: You see what I'm saying?
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah.
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm talking about.
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 2: That can be tough.
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: When you're watching. Okay. Yeah. When you're watching somebody that
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: you know be defamed, is that what you're talking about?
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I know, bro, that is not. Yeah. That
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 2: ain't what happened.
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 2: And so what'll happen to some of these guys is because,
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: you know, the incentive, you just were mentioning this, you've
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 2: experienced this. The incentive structure of the internet is for
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: people to be big game hunters, right? Who's got a
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 2: big platform? If I can create that person, if I
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 2: can create controversy by attacking that person, I can harvest
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 2: some of their platform for me, which not in all cases.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 2: Let me just really quick say, there are some people
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 2: who they are saying righteous and true things about people
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 2: who are not good men. Absolutely. So let me just
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 2: say that. I don't want anybody to get me wrong
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: on that. Then There are other people, it's like, man,
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 2: what's real interesting is, you know, you're saying this about
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 2: this guy, that he's just doing all this for money
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 2: or whatever it is, when actually what's happening is you
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 2: have a monetized website, and whenever you create a bunch
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 2: of controversy, you drive a bunch of clicks to your
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 2: monetized website. You know, it's weird. It comes off weird.
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: What are some misconceptions? Man. Anything in particular?
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, my big caveat is there are guys,
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: and I'm not going to go there on public. There
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: are guys that I don't know well enough, but when
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 2: I hear about them, I'm like, that guy does not
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 2: sound like a good guy. That guy don't sound like
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 2: a good guy. I've been around some guys where I'm like, it's...
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 2: It just didn't feel integrous to me. I think I'm
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 2: going to make my band of brothers these guys over here.
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 2: So let me just say that. But sometimes, man, the
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 2: gap between reality and kind of the vibe of like, man,
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 2: all these big church pastors, they're all having affairs, and
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 2: they're all just in it for the money, and they're
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 2: just exploiting people and getting rich. I'm like, dude, that
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 2: is just not true, man. I'll give you an example
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 2: of this. So I was 16 years old. God had
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 2: just called me to ministry, and I'm in high school.
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say his name. The pastor of the,
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: at the time, I believe the second largest church in America,
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 2: the man's name was Bob Russell. He pastored Southeast Christian
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 2: Church in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm 16 years old. God calls
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 2: me to ministry, and my dad, because he was a
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 2: good dad, my dad went, hey, Josh, so here's what
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: you need to do if you want to be a
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 2: pastor someday. You need to find good, faithful, fruitful pastors.
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: You need to go get in front of them. You
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 2: need to ask them intelligent questions. You need to write
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 2: down everything they say. And then you need to do
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 2: everything that they said. That's the book of Proverbs. Step
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 2: one of getting wisdom, get wisdom. You got to go
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 2: get it. So I was like, well, who's the best
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 2: pastor I've ever heard of? And I was like, probably
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 2: Bob Russell. The problem was he passed through a church
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 2: that like in the 90s was a church of like 20,000
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 2: people or something, which back then, like that didn't even
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 2: exist back then. So I'm gonna confess a sin real quick.
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 2: I was 16 and I drove up to the Southeast
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 2: Christian Church new members class. It was for people who
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 2: were trying to become members of the church. And the
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 2: reason I did it is because I knew on a weekend,
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 2: because there's 20,000 people there, even though he's always in
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 2: the lobby, I might not be able to talk to him,
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 2: but I knew he taught the new members class and
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 2: there was only a few people there. I was like, well,
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 2: I'll go to that. So I sat through the whole
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 2: new members class. And then at the end, I came
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 2: up and I said, Pastor Bob, I am so sorry.
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to become a member of your church.
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 2: I live two hours away, but God called me to
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 2: be a pastor. Is there any way I could take
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 2: you out to lunch? I'll only take 45 minutes of
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 2: your time. I'll drive to you. I'll bring prepared questions.
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 2: And I just want to ask you questions about how
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 2: to be a pastor. And he said, you know what, Josh?
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 2: If you'll reach out to my assistant, we'll see if
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 2: we can set something up. So she set something up for,
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 2: I think, it was two years later, if I remember right. Now,
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 2: that was probably a gentle way to see, is this
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 2: kid going to follow through? I think it was like
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 2: two years later. Now, I'm going to give you a date.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 2: I bookmarked this date in your head because it's going
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 2: to be important in a second. She set the date.
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 2: for I think it was September 13th, 2001. So two
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 2: years later, I'm in college and I wake up that day.
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 2: And now remember, I just want everybody to remember, this
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 2: is the pastor of the second largest church in America.
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 2: I'm a 16 year old nobody, even more of a
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 2: nobody than I am now when he meets me. So
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 2: that day I wake up and I drive five hours
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 2: from Union University up to Louisville, something like that. And
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 2: I get there. and I sit down with him and
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 2: back then it was pre-iPhone. So you remember those little
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 2: tape recorders that you could put on a table and
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 2: you press the thing? I brought one of those. I
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 2: still have the tape. And I sat there at the
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 2: time I was 18 then and I put it on
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 2: a table and I had spent two years thinking of
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 2: what are the 20 best questions I could ask a
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 2: faithful pastor. And I sat there and Bob Russell, the
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 2: pastor of the second largest church in America, He sat
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 2: with a 16, then 18. He sat with an 18-year-old nobody,
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 2: college kid, didn't even go to his church. He sat
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 2: there for two hours and answered my questions, and I
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 2: still have the tape. The story's not over. The best
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 2: part's to come. In fact, to talk about what we
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: said earlier about our wives, I'll never forget this, dude.
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 2: The last thing I did is I said, Pastor Bob,
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 2: is there anything that I need to know that I
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 2: didn't ask you? And he said, yeah, Josh, there is.
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 2: You need to know that the most important decision you
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 2: make for your ministry will not be what seminary you
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 2: attend or what first church you take. It'll be what
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 2: woman you marry. I never forgot it, dude. I never
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 2: forgot it.
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: Mic drop.
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 2: All right, so we finish. And then I drive him
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 2: back in my little 96 Kia Sophia to his church.
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 2: And I drop him off. And as I drop him off,
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 2: his assistant goes, do you know what he just did
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 2: for you? And I was like, man, yeah, he spent
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 2: two hours with me. It was amazing. Thank you so much.
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: And she said, no, no, no.
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 2: Did he tell you what he did to meet with
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 2: you today? Now, I said earlier it was September 13th.
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 2: It was September 13th, 2001. Two days after 9-11. Bingo.
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 2: She sits there and explains that that morning he had
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 2: gotten called by the largest radio station in America and
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 2: the largest TV station in America to do an interview,
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 2: a nationally syndicated interview, about God and 9-11. And Bob
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 2: Russell said no because a righteous man swears to his
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 2: own hurt and he does not change. And so instead
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 2: of talking to the entire country that day, he said
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 2: no to that so he could sit with an 18-year-old
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 2: nobody and tell him how to be a faithful Christian
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 2: man and grow up and try to be a faithful
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 2: Christian pastor. Now, some of me looks back and I'm like,
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 2: I think I would have done the other. But what
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 2: I will say is those are the types of stories,
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 2: sometimes it'll bother me because all the, you'll hear these
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 2: bad stories that go viral and it's like, that story
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 2: doesn't go viral. And there's a, brother, there's a million
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 2: stories A million of those.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: That's a cool story, man. I like that.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: In fact.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: Somebody said that once. I saw this somewhere. I heard
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: it somewhere.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: Who the most important person in the world to me
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: is right now? You are. I like that. I like that.
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 1: I like that a lot. It means something if you
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: think about it.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 2: It sure does. And people feel that. They feel that
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 2: from you. I'll. Sometimes when I'm around these guys. I
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 2: won't use their names. Because they're the kind of guys
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 2: they wouldn't like it. But it is weird because they're
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 2: all my buddies. Like I know them. So like. I'll
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 2: just give like maybe just a couple examples.
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: So like.
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: One, and it's fun for me because all the names
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 2: pop into my head. One, one of the pastors of
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 2: one of the three largest churches in America, nobody will
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 2: ever know this, he asked his elders to cap his
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 2: salary years ago. They don't raise it. And he and
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 2: his wife sit down every single year and they go
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 2: on a generosity retreat. And they try to figure out
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 2: how can we give more. And they're now up to
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 2: giving away 60% of their income just to help people.
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 2: And they'd give these little anonymous donations to people in
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 2: the church and they're never gonna know it came from
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 2: that guy. One guy was a pastor of, I think,
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 2: one of the two largest churches, maybe in American history, maybe, maybe.
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 2: He wrote a book at the time. He wrote a
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 2: book that became, I think, one of the three or
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 2: four best-selling books in world history. And what a lot
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 2: of people don't know is what he did with all
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 2: the money is he reversed, first, he repaid the church
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 2: every dollar that they'd ever salaried him. And then he
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 2: and his wife sat down and they figured out how
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 2: to reverse tithe on the money. So they gave away
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 2: 90% and they only lived on 10. And he used
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 2: that money to start a series of nonprofits that just
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 2: helped the poor. This guy's name, I will say, I'm
• 2:22:56
  Speaker 2: gonna brag on him because he's on our teaching team
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 2: at Lake Point. There's a guy named Pastor Mike Bro.
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 2: He pastored a church of over 10,000 people in Lexington, Kentucky.
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 2: I grew up listening to him as a kid.
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 2: Now he's on our teaching team at Lake Point. And
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 2: I'm going to brag on him. He may kill me,
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 2: but I'm just going to brag on him. That guy retired,
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 2: stepped away from his church when it was like, I mean, peak,
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 2: like crushing. And he stepped away and you know what
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: he ended up doing? He ended up helping his daughter
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 2: plant a church in a city in California, like rub
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 2: two sticks together. Nobody's there. Help his daughter plant a
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 2: church in a city that like didn't have many churches.
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 2: And you know what that guy does now? Every Thursday,
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 2: he wakes up and he leads a little Bible study
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 2: at a local Starbucks for recovering addicts. And he volunteers
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 2: his Thursday afternoon to help widows repair their homes and
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 2: mow their lawns. This dude, like everybody would have been like, like,
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 2: and I could keep going. Like, dude, I got, There's
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 2: another guy who's, he sets aside, one of the pastors
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 2: of the largest church in America. They set aside a
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 2: large portion of their personal income to help families in
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 2: their church adopt kids. And what they do is they
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 2: set it up where every time somebody in their church
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 2: is adopting, that person anonymously gets sent like thousands of
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 2: dollars and they'll never know it, but it's from that
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 2: guy that's the senior pastor And they've set a goal
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 2: of funding at least 100 adoptions. Now, I could keep
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 2: going on and on and on and on. But when
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 2: people hear that, I think a lot of people hear
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 2: that about megachurch pastors. And I think they go, well, man, Josh, yeah,
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 2: but why don't I ever hear those stories? Because planes
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 2: that land safely don't make the news.
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. Thank you for sharing that. I
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: always notice when somebody goes the extra step. It does
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: not have to be some huge thing. It could be
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: someone following up when they said they would, giving you
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: a straight answer, or taking a little extra time to
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: make sure the job gets done right. That sticks with
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: you because it shows they actually care. And if you're hiring,
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 1: that same thing matters. You don't just want someone qualified.
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 1: You want someone who actually wants the job and is
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: willing to go the extra step. That's where ZipRecruiter comes in.
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: Candidates can tell you in their own words why they're
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: interested in your job, which gives you a better read
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: on who is really paying attention. And ZipRecruiter has a
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first,
• 2:25:39
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• 2:25:43
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• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Try ZipRecruiter.
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: and meet great candidates who go the extra step for
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• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. ZipRecruiter.
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. So, in a church of 30,000 people,
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody's wanting to get some time with you.
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: They want your advice. They want some help. How do
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: you determine who you personally give your time to? Because
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: it's impossible to divide it up to 30,000 people. Plus,
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: you've got three kids.
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 2: And a wife. I do, and that's my first ministry. Well,
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 2: a couple things I say is that's true in any church.
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 2: That's really over, honestly, I don't know, 600, 800 people.
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 2: It's kind of the same thing. So what I'd say
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 2: is a few things.
• 2:26:54
  Speaker 1: Do you give it to anybody?
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 2: Give what?
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: Your time.
• 2:26:57
  Speaker 2: To just anybody?
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: Who do you give it to? Do you give it
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: to anybody?
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, do I give it to, oh, of course. Oh
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 2: my gosh, yes, of course. Yeah, man, like what I've,
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 2: so let me say a few, what I do now
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 2: is what I try to have this motto of do
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 2: for one what you wish you could do for all.
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 2: So man, can I do it for 30,000? No, I
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 2: can't always do that. I'll talk about that in a second.
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 2: But I never want to get to the spot where
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 2: the shepherd doesn't smell like the sheep. Okay. So what
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 2: I'll do is me, me and Jana, whoever it is.
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 2: First of all, we're in the lobby after services, pray
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 2: with people. You know, I said like after every service,
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 2: every week, unless I preach too long and I can't
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 2: get out there, you know, and we're just praying, praying
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 2: with people. Anytime I'm not preaching, we just travel. I
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 2: did this last weekend. We just travel all the campuses
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 2: and we just get there early and stand in the
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 2: lobby and we just sit there and pray with people.
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 2: It's like the dude, it's like the best thing. It's
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 2: like my favorite. It's the best thing ever. Uh, do
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 2: that stuff. Uh, One thing that I'll do, and then
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 2: what I do is, so in the book of Acts,
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 2: when the church gets, it's the same thing, Sean. The
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 2: first church that ever existed, Acts 2, you got 3,000 people.
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 2: By Acts 3, it's 5,000 people. There's indications later in
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 2: the book of Acts that the church definitely grew larger
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 2: than that. So this has been around since the beginning.
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 2: And in the book of Acts, I think it's, in
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 2: the book of Acts, when it gets to the spot
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 2: where the church grows to the spot where there were
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 2: a group of widows in the church that the pastors,
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 2: the apostles themselves, they were like personally handing all the
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 2: food to distribute to the widows to help them. The
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 2: church eventually grew to a spot where they were spending
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 2: so much time doing that, that the Bible says they
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 2: were distracted from two things, prayer and the ministry of
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 2: the word. So then what they did, if you read
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 2: the book of Acts, is they essentially restructured the leadership
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 2: of the church. They added a layer of leadership that
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 2: we now call deacons. That's where that came from. That
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 2: deacon word just means servant, you know. They did a
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 2: leadership restructure, added a layer of leadership, and it uncorked
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 2: a little kink in the hose so that now, hey, man,
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 2: these deacons are the ones. They're administering this ministry to
• 2:29:09
  Speaker 2: you so these guys can focus on prayer and the Word.
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 2: It's kind of been the same thing forever. So that's
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 2: really what we try to do is, man, my job
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 2: as the senior pastor of a church is not to
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 2: personally do every aspect of ministry in church. My job
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 2: is to be responsible as best I can that ministry
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 2: happens for every single person at church. It's like we have,
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 2: you know, our team, we have hundreds of pastors that
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 2: are trained. So when somebody grabs me in the lobby,
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 2: they're like, hey, man, I need to meet with you. Well, one,
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 2: I'll talk to you right now in the lobby.
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: Let's talk.
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 2: What can I help with? I pray. But one of
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 2: my questions is I will sometimes ask, hey, man, which
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 2: one do you want? Do you want help or do
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 2: you want me? Because if you want help, I can
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 2: get you with a person that's actually more gifted than
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 2: me for the ministry that you need that's actually going
• 2:30:00
  Speaker 2: to get you better help. That's why the Bible talks
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 2: about how there's one body with many parts. Everybody, including
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 2: every pastor, has different spiritual gifts. Let me get like, bro,
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 2: you don't want me counseling you. When I used to
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 2: do some counseling, I'm just not great at it. I'm like,
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 2: hey man, quit doing that. Let me pray for you.
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 2: And here's a sermon to listen to. But we have
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 2: people on our team who like, You know, I'm not
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 2: the best preacher in the world, but God's given me
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 2: some good ability there. We have guys on our team
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 2: who are like, they are way more anointed and gifted
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 2: to personally counsel somebody going through a really traumatic thing
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 2: than I ever will be. So I want to try
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 2: to get them to the pastor that can help, best
• 2:30:45
  Speaker 2: help them. The last thing that we do is, you know,
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 2: we just never want to get to the spot where
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 2: the shepherds don't smell like sheep. So we constantly got
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 2: people in our house. At our church, it's called a
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 2: rooted group. It's a little discipleship group. And Jan and I,
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 2: we usually lead at least one per year. Last time,
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 2: we just led a big discipleship group with 30 young adults,
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 2: just sort of random young adults, a bunch of kids
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 2: sitting around our living room, and we're just discipling 30
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 2: kids in church. Or if I hear sometimes about somebody
• 2:31:13
  Speaker 2: that's going through it, I'll just tell you, man, we had...
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 2: One of my favorite church members in our whole church
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 2: just died of cancer. He's hugging Jesus now. Kelly Goudreau.
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 2: Best dude ever. For the last part of Kelly's life,
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm calling Kelly and checking up on him.
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 2: I'm praying with him. I'm seeing if I, hey man,
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 2: what kind of, you know, we interacted almost every day
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 2: for the last however many times. So what I try
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 2: to do is do for one what you wish you
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 2: could do for all and stay connected to the sheep.
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: It does make sense.
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 2: That's what I try to do.
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 1: It does make sense. And I get it. I mean,
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not a pastor, but I've got a lot of
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: people that watch this, a lot of people that want
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: to come on here. I look for the biggest impacts.
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: Biggest way I can make an impact. Let's move into
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: passing the torch, meaning how do you get your kids?
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: How do you get young adults? How do you, how
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 1: do you, how do you really, I mean, like I
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: told you, you know, I grew up Catholic, went to
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: church every Sunday, did the Sunday school thing and it
• 2:32:38
  Speaker 1: never sunk in. It never sunk in until I got
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: slapped around by God a little bit. and uh and
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: then it sunk in and uh but you know hopefully
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: not everybody has to go through what i go through
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 1: because it's tough real tough and so how do you
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: successfully pass the torch and get them to get it
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 1: like really get it not just sit there you know
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: i mean i i I'm still Catholic. You know, I
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: bring my kids, but, you know, bringing a five-year-old to
• 2:33:16
  Speaker 1: a Catholic mass is like torture. Good luck, sir. You know,
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 1: but I mean, how do you get the little guys engaged?
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 1: How do you get them to get it without having
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: to get knocked around?
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, one, I don't want to give somebody a
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 2: promise that's not a promise. So let me just say,
• 2:33:39
  Speaker 2: here's why I say that. Like as a pastor, what
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 2: I've learned is when I say what I'm about to
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 2: say about how to do it, what you're going to
• 2:33:47
  Speaker 2: have is hundreds of thousands or millions of dads, moms, grandpas, grandmas,
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 2: that when I say what I'm about to say, they're
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 2: going to get overwhelmed with regret of what they wish
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 2: they did. And they're going to start blaming themselves for
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 2: their kid getting sideways or going prodigal or whatever. So
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 2: here's my caveat.
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: It only works for you. You know what I mean?
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: It's just one way. There's a hundred different ways to
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: do this. I'm asking how you do it.
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's good.
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: That helps. And your way wouldn't necessarily work on everybody else,
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: but I'm just curious, you know, how do you do it? Yeah.
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 2: All right, that's good.
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 2: All right. My caveat for those people, to dovetail you
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 2: making that point, is I do not see a promise
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 2: in the that if you do this 100% of the time,
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 2: your kids will turn out this way. My example of
• 2:34:41
  Speaker 2: that is Garden of Eden. Garden of Eden, you've got
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 2: a perfect father. God's a father. That's pretty perfect. You
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 2: got a perfect father. You actually have perfect kids. Adam
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 2: and Eve don't got a sin nature yet. And you
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 2: have a perfect environment. Eden, there's nothing. It's a perfect.
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 2: So you have perfect father, perfect kids, perfect environment, and
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 2: they still rebelled. So I will just say, hey man,
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 2: give yourself some grace. You know, that kind of thing. Now,
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you, as far as, How I'm doing it,
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 2: my kids are 15, 11, and seven. So I'll be honest, man,
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 2: jury's still out. We'll see. We'll see if I do
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 2: my job. But I do know I'm gonna give it
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 2: everything I got. Here's what my dad did that I'm like,
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 2: that worked. And I'm doing it with my kids and
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 2: I'm going, that seems like that's working. Okay, I say
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 2: three things. Okay, number one, your faith doesn't got to
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 2: be perfect. It does got to be real. So like, dude,
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 2: I remember being a little kid growing up in church
• 2:35:50
  Speaker 2: and my dad's sitting in the front row and, you know,
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 2: we're worshiping or singing hymns or whatever. And my dad's
• 2:35:57
  Speaker 2: like not a super emotional guy. But like, I remember
• 2:36:00
  Speaker 2: watching dad and like just a little, his eyes would
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 2: just start sweating just a little bit, you know. And
• 2:36:06
  Speaker 2: I remember being 13, 14, 15, 16 and watching that
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 2: and being like, that man is not just leading a service.
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 2: That man is worshiping his God. And I remember thinking like, man,
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 2: I want to know who he knows. He knows somebody.
• 2:36:26
  Speaker 2: I want to know his God because that's real. And
• 2:36:29
  Speaker 2: there's a million times I saw stuff like that. Like, whoa,
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 2: that's real. So it doesn't got to be perfect. We're
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 2: going to need grace, but it does got to be real.
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 2: Number two is what everybody tells you when you're younger.
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 2: You're a new parent. It's like, hey, man, here's a secret.
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 2: Here's a secret, Sean. You got to get down in
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 2: their world. If they're into bluey, you're into bluey. If
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 2: they're into cocomelon, you're into cocomelon. Whatever it is. Now,
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 2: that strategy... that might be fine. I'd say until they're
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 2: like six or seven. But eventually, reality kicks in. And oh,
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 2: by the way, reality is undefeated. And I'm going to
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 2: say something with a bit of an edge to it.
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 2: But again, reality is undefeated. Kids are fools. We got
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 2: a Bible verse for that. Foolishness is bound up in
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 2: the heart of a child. Kids are fools. Their default
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 2: mode is foolishness. That's why they're moms and dads, godly
• 2:37:31
  Speaker 2: moms and dads. So here's the thing. I don't need
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 2: to get down into their world as they get older.
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 2: Their world is full of rebellion and foolishness. I don't
• 2:37:42
  Speaker 2: want to get down in their world of rebellion and foolishness.
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 2: Instead of getting down in their world, I want to
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 2: pull them up into my world. So here's what I
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 2: started to see. Like my dad, he's a pastor. He's
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 2: got a good band of brothers. I remember growing up,
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 2: it was like every, I think it was Tuesday night.
• 2:37:57
  Speaker 2: I remember growing up, their whole discipleship group was coming over.
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 2: Bunch of couples that like, they were awesome. Like they
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 2: were like actual normal people that loved Jesus and loved
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 2: each other and had fun lives, you know. I'm seeing
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 2: all them like opening that book and like talking about
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 2: it and you know, all that stuff. So then I
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 2: get a little older and my dad started doing this
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 2: thing and looking back, I'm like, I know what he
• 2:38:20
  Speaker 2: was doing. I didn't know what he was doing in
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 2: the moment. My dad started doing this thing where like
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 2: the church staff who were all awesome, they would like
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 2: go out for lunch and my dad would be like,
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 2: hey Josh, you wanna duck out of the thing you
• 2:38:34
  Speaker 2: got today? Why don't you come to lunch with the
• 2:38:37
  Speaker 2: staff today? So then here's what's happening is Now he's
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 2: pulling me up into his world and his world was
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 2: full of wisdom and righteousness. And he's pulling me out
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 2: of my world of rebellion and foolishness. So then I'm
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 2: growing up around all these people and I'm, dude, I'm
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 2: growing up going, man, the people that I respect the most,
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 2: I'm like, it's Jeff Carlisle. That's one of my dad's
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 2: adult buddies. It's this, like I can name all the
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 2: families to this day. And what that did is I
• 2:39:07
  Speaker 2: grew up sitting around at those lunches or at our
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 2: home and going, you know, I wanna be the type
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 2: of person that can fit in with these people instead
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 2: of looking at foolish, rebellious kids and doing that thing.
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 2: So Hillary Clinton wrote that, was it a book that
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 2: she wrote, I think, called It Takes a Village, something
• 2:39:25
  Speaker 2: like that, I can't remember. She wrote something, I can't
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 2: remember what it was. That's a lie. I'll just tell
• 2:39:32
  Speaker 2: you right now, that's a lie. Because if the village
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 2: that you're using to raise your kids is a bunch
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 2: of like woke pagan secular Swifties or whatever, if that's
• 2:39:44
  Speaker 2: the village, well, if the village is a bunch of pagans,
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 2: they're just gonna help raise a whole bunch of other pagans.
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 2: So you don't need a village. Here's what you need
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 2: as a dad. You need a redeemed village. The Bible
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 2: calls that a church. So it's like, I gotta grow up.
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 2: What I'm doing right now, I'm doing exactly what my
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 2: dad did. I was like, literally this week, Yesterday was
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 2: our all-staff meeting. It's so funny. I didn't even think
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 2: about this. I literally yesterday did what my dad did
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 2: growing up. My dad's awesome. Yesterday was our all-staff meeting.
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 2: My 15-year-old Eliana right now, she loves Jesus. She loves people.
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 2: And there's a little grace on her life leading worship.
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 2: She loves serving at church, doing that stuff. So yesterday,
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, Eliana, why don't you? That's so funny, dude.
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly what my dad did. I was like, hey, Eliana.
• 2:40:36
  Speaker 2: why don't you duck out of what you got today
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 2: and come to staff meeting with me and your mom?
• 2:40:41
  Speaker 2: So what's she doing? She's sitting around, I don't know,
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 2: 400 pastors and their wives and people who love the
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 2: Lord and they're trying to serve him and that's who
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 2: she's around. Well, what am I doing? I'm not getting
• 2:40:55
  Speaker 2: down into her world. I'm pulling her up into my world, okay?
• 2:41:00
  Speaker 2: Last thing I'd say is, is, and by the way,
• 2:41:05
  Speaker 2: I got these from a buddy of mine named Josh McPherson.
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 2: He's probably the best dad I've ever seen. Is whoever
• 2:41:11
  Speaker 2: tells the best stories wins. Dude, this is a total,
• 2:41:17
  Speaker 2: this is a total cheat code parenting hack, man. So
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 2: what's interesting, if you go back and next time you
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 2: read your Old Testament, you'll notice all these times where
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 2: like God does like this amazing thing. Parts of Red
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 2: Sea or Defeats AI or whatever it is. And then
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 2: he tells all the people, hey, before you leave, will
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 2: you guys please set up a big pile of rocks
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 2: right here? And, you know, and the Hebrew word is
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 2: there's a hymn that if you're listening and you grew
• 2:41:53
  Speaker 2: up singing those old hymns, there's an old hymn called
• 2:41:55
  Speaker 2: Come Thou Fount. And one of the lyrics of Come
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 2: Thou Fount is here I raise my Ebenezer is with.
• 2:42:04
  Speaker 2: What is that? That word Ebenezer, it comes from two
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 2: Hebrew words. I said it. I'm just realizing I said
• 2:42:10
  Speaker 2: it wrong earlier. Two Hebrew words, Eben-Ezar, which means stone
• 2:42:15
  Speaker 2: of help. So what all those little rocks were that
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 2: God said, pile those up, is he was going, hey,
• 2:42:23
  Speaker 2: all throughout this little country the size of New Jersey
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 2: where you're raising all your kids, every time you walk
• 2:42:32
  Speaker 2: past one of these piles of rocks, God was going, hey, hey, dad,
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 2: what I want you to do is stop and you're
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 2: going to point at that rock and tell your son, man,
• 2:42:43
  Speaker 2: when Papa was here 60 years ago, he was standing
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 2: right there. And him and all his buddies, they marched
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 2: around that city seven times, son. And you're never going
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 2: to believe what happened. The Lord gave us this promise.
• 2:42:59
  Speaker 1: You don't got to fight.
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 2: You just got to be still and I'll fight for you.
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 2: And son, you're never gonna believe this, but our God
• 2:43:06
  Speaker 2: is so powerful that when your grandpa was over there
• 2:43:10
  Speaker 2: and did it, God conquered that thing. And so they
• 2:43:14
  Speaker 2: grew up telling all these stories. So here's the deal.
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 2: God was wiring into how the culture was structured. He
• 2:43:25
  Speaker 2: was giving all the dads and moms, here's all your
• 2:43:28
  Speaker 2: story opportunity. So for me growing up, like, Us sitting
• 2:43:35
  Speaker 2: around the dinner table at night, you know, I was
• 2:43:38
  Speaker 2: just constantly hearing all these stories. Dad would come home
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 2: from work. And I was constantly just hearing all these
• 2:43:43
  Speaker 2: stories about, man, this widow that somebody just gave her
• 2:43:46
  Speaker 2: a car. And I just, because they're out of nowhere.
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 2: And this marriage got healed. Guys, that addict that we've
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 2: been praying for for three months, they just got free. And,
• 2:43:56
  Speaker 2: you know, I was just hearing all these stories. And
• 2:43:59
  Speaker 2: it just, it just, it just gripped me. And the
• 2:44:03
  Speaker 2: older I got, I was like, well, I want to
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 2: be a part of the thing where all that cool
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 2: stuff happens, you know? And it just rubbed off on me.
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 2: So I think the thing I say, the just encouragement
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 2: I'd give to, you know, guys who are in the
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 2: thick of parenting like you and me and all the
• 2:44:18
  Speaker 2: guys listening and trying to figure it out, doing their
• 2:44:20
  Speaker 2: imperfect best just like me, is, man, the most significant
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 2: thing you do with your life if you're a father is,
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 2: It's probably not going to be something you accomplish. It's
• 2:44:35
  Speaker 2: probably going to be somebody you raise. So pour it
• 2:44:39
  Speaker 2: all in.
• 2:44:40
  Speaker 1: That's cool you said that. Trending your replacement. It's good stuff, man.
• 2:44:49
  Speaker 1: That's what we're doing. Thank you.
• 2:44:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 1: We got one last question. It's a hot question.
• 2:44:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, buddy.
• 2:44:56
  Speaker 1: I actually have one here, but I got my own. Okay.
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: What is your favorite miracle that Jesus performed in the
• 2:45:07
  Speaker 1: Bible and why?
• 2:45:11
  Speaker 2: Well, am I allowed to cheat and go resurrection? You know?
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. All right. All right. You know?
• 2:45:23
  Speaker 1: Other than that one.
• 2:45:24
  Speaker 2: Other than that one. Dang, man. Oh, that's fire. That's good.
• 2:45:30
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 2:45:32
  Speaker 2: This is shooting from the hip. If I have more time,
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 2: I might think of something else. All right. I think
• 2:45:40
  Speaker 2: it's when Jesus touches the leper and he heals him.
• 2:45:48
  Speaker 1: Can you go into it? Can you tell the story?
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, he heals lepers a few times, okay? And honestly,
• 2:45:55
  Speaker 2: there's not much description to this miracle. But there's a
• 2:46:00
  Speaker 2: specific time, or maybe a couple times in the Gospels,
• 2:46:03
  Speaker 2: where Jesus reaches out and he touches the leper. But
• 2:46:06
  Speaker 2: there's a reason that like most people, it's not the
• 2:46:10
  Speaker 2: kind of thing you see. There's a reason that's my favorite. Okay,
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 2: might be my favorite. So in the Old Testament, there's
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 2: all these laws about what to do with somebody that's
• 2:46:21
  Speaker 2: got leprosy. And in the Old Testament, if you had leprosy,
• 2:46:27
  Speaker 2: you were ceremonially unclean. And the kind of the rules were,
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 2: that if a clean person touches an unclean person, the
• 2:46:36
  Speaker 2: unclean person makes the clean person unclean. So then, you know,
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 2: what you would have to do if you had leprosy
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 2: is in that time, you would have to stand, you know,
• 2:46:47
  Speaker 2: according to tradition, maybe 50 paces away from somebody and
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 2: you'd have to yell unclean, unclean, unclean. So when I
• 2:46:52
  Speaker 2: read that miracle about Jesus just walking right up to
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 2: the guy, you know, he's like, hey, will you make
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 2: me clean? You know, and Jesus is like, you know,
• 2:47:02
  Speaker 2: I will. And he touches him. I will be clean. One,
• 2:47:08
  Speaker 2: that guy that had spent his entire life having everybody
• 2:47:11
  Speaker 2: stay 50 paces away. Jesus walks up and he's like, man,
• 2:47:14
  Speaker 2: I'd really like to get right up in. I wanna
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 2: get right up where you are. I wanna be close
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 2: to you, brother. Gotta get close to you. And then
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 2: when Jesus touches him, it heals him. And for the
• 2:47:28
  Speaker 2: first time in the entire Bible, instead of when a
• 2:47:31
  Speaker 2: clean person touches an unclean thing, the unclean thing makes
• 2:47:34
  Speaker 2: the clean thing unclean, Jesus works it backwards. And because
• 2:47:39
  Speaker 2: he's clean, the clean thing touches the unclean thing, and
• 2:47:44
  Speaker 2: the clean thing makes the unclean thing clean. And it's
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 2: like a, it's a picture of what happens when you,
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 2: by faith and repentance, reach out and touch Jesus Christ.
• 2:47:58
  Speaker 2: And when you touch him, he makes you clean.
• 2:48:03
  Speaker 1: That's a good one.
• 2:48:04
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 1: How did the people react to that?
• 2:48:08
  Speaker 2: Well, in different times they reacted different ways. A lot
• 2:48:11
  Speaker 2: of people did not like it when Jesus did healings.
• 2:48:15
  Speaker 2: They did not like it.
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 2: Because it messed with a lot of their traditions that
• 2:48:24
  Speaker 2: had built up around the thing. In fact, one of
• 2:48:27
  Speaker 2: the things that sets off the series of events that
• 2:48:31
  Speaker 2: leads to the crucifixion of Jesus is him healing people
• 2:48:34
  Speaker 2: on Sabbaths. They were like, hey man, you ain't allowed
• 2:48:38
  Speaker 2: to That was like one of their little rules. What
• 2:48:42
  Speaker 2: legalistic people do is they take the rules that God
• 2:48:45
  Speaker 2: actually gave in the Bible and then legalistic people add
• 2:48:47
  Speaker 2: rules to the rules and then they condemn you for
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 2: not obeying the rules they added to the rules that
• 2:48:52
  Speaker 2: actually God didn't make in the first place. And they
• 2:48:54
  Speaker 2: did that with the Sabbath laws. I think they're called
• 2:48:57
  Speaker 2: the Targums. They did that with the Sabbath laws. They
• 2:49:00
  Speaker 2: took one command. Hey, don't do work on the Sabbath.
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 2: Keep it holy as unto the Lord. And they had
• 2:49:06
  Speaker 2: a bunch of rules about what counts as work. And
• 2:49:09
  Speaker 2: then they added rules to the rules and ended up
• 2:49:11
  Speaker 2: all this stuff. Well, one of their rules was, hey,
• 2:49:12
  Speaker 2: no healing on the Sabbath, which is real dumb. God
• 2:49:15
  Speaker 2: never said that. And so one of the reasons that
• 2:49:19
  Speaker 2: they got mad is, well, you're breaking our little religious tradition.
• 2:49:25
  Speaker 2: You're making us look like idiots. We said you couldn't
• 2:49:28
  Speaker 2: do this, and you're doing it.
• 2:49:31
  Speaker 1: I never understood that. I'm not well-versed. I read it.
• 2:49:36
  Speaker 1: I don't understand half the stuff I read about. When
• 2:49:38
  Speaker 1: I read the miracles that he did, it seems like
• 2:49:42
  Speaker 1: the people were pissed every single time he performed one.
• 2:49:45
  Speaker 2: Very frequently.
• 2:49:46
  Speaker 1: I don't understand. I mean, like, he's doing unexplainable things
• 2:49:53
  Speaker 1: unless you have faith in God. And so, I mean,
• 2:49:58
  Speaker 1: he's doing it right in front of them. How are
• 2:50:02
  Speaker 1: they pissed? How do they not get it?
• 2:50:06
  Speaker 2: Well, I think two things. You know, I think one,
• 2:50:09
  Speaker 2: it was a threat to their fame and sort of
• 2:50:13
  Speaker 2: the power that they had. It's like, hey, quit busting
• 2:50:17
  Speaker 2: up our thing. We're the ones that are in charge
• 2:50:19
  Speaker 2: of all the stuff. So when Jesus kind of, you know,
• 2:50:23
  Speaker 2: he kind of rolls in and starts breaking their thing.
• 2:50:26
  Speaker 2: There's two things the Bible says about the Pharisees. Now,
• 2:50:28
  Speaker 2: there's actually a time where Jesus pronounces woes on the Pharisees,
• 2:50:31
  Speaker 2: and I won't be able to rattle them all off
• 2:50:33
  Speaker 2: off the top of my head, but he gives seven woes.
• 2:50:35
  Speaker 2: And it's essentially like, here's what's wrong with you, you know,
• 2:50:38
  Speaker 2: you know, you ask people to tithe a tenth of
• 2:50:43
  Speaker 2: this and you neglect the weightier matters of the law,
• 2:50:45
  Speaker 2: justice and mercy and loving your neighbor. And he goes
• 2:50:48
  Speaker 2: through like seven different things. But two things the Bible
• 2:50:51
  Speaker 2: that Jesus says about Pharisees is they loved the praise
• 2:50:54
  Speaker 2: of men more than the praise of God. So one,
• 2:50:57
  Speaker 2: what they cared about, like you're like, hey man, why
• 2:50:59
  Speaker 2: wouldn't they want people to have faith in God? Because
• 2:51:02
  Speaker 2: that really wasn't what they cared about a whole lot.
• 2:51:06
  Speaker 2: what they cared about a whole lot was people thinking
• 2:51:09
  Speaker 2: they were awesome.
• 2:51:10
  Speaker 1: Power.
• 2:51:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, they love the praise of men more than they
• 2:51:14
  Speaker 2: love the praise of God. I think power plays into that.
• 2:51:18
  Speaker 2: And they were like, man, what we really care about
• 2:51:20
  Speaker 2: in their heart of hearts, everybody cheering us on and
• 2:51:24
  Speaker 2: applauding us. And then it does say that they loved money.
• 2:51:30
  Speaker 2: And so I think those two things, if Jesus rolls
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 2: in and busts up their thing, that's a threat to
• 2:51:36
  Speaker 2: their two things.
• 2:51:38
  Speaker 1: Right on. Well, it's a good miracle, but I like it.
• 2:51:42
  Speaker 2: I like it too.
• 2:51:43
  Speaker 1: I like how you told that. Thank you. Well, Josh,
• 2:51:46
  Speaker 1: it was an honor, man.
• 2:51:48
  Speaker 2: Josh, my honor. Thank you.
• 2:51:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 2:51:50
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you.
• 2:51:51
  Speaker 1: God bless you. Yes, sir. No matter where you're watching
• 2:52:06
  Speaker 1: The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out
• 2:52:10
  Speaker 1: of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe.
• 2:52:16
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• 2:52:23
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• 2:52:26
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