Latest / Why I Believe / Jeff Achen: Let God Surprise You

Transcript

Jeff Achen: Let God Surprise You · Why I Believe

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome back to Why I Believe.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Michelle von Ruden, and today I have my friend Jeff Aiken with me.
• 0:07
  How are you doing today, Jeff?
• 0:09
  I'm doing well.
• 0:10
  I'm glad to be on the podcast and I'm enjoying what you're putting out.
• 0:13
  Oh, thank you, thank you.
• 0:15
  Um, can you tell our audience a little bit about you?
• 0:19
  Yeah.
• 0:20
  there's there's a lot to to kind of go through in terms of where I could start.
• 0:24
  But you know, I um in my in terms of my faith, I I was raised Catholic in mostly North Dakota.
• 0:29
  I was born in Idaho, um, Idaho Falls, Idaho, but spent most of my childhood in North Dakota, raised by a Catholic mother and a Lutheran father.
• 0:37
  Uh they they made it work just seamlessly as I was growing up, but my parents decided to raise me Catholic.
• 0:43
  and so they instilled a very deep faith and and most importantly modeled it really well for me.
• 0:48
  Um, I was kind of a subpar student in high school, kind of a a kid all the way up until the end of high school.
• 0:55
  I never really wanted to grow up.
• 0:56
  I wanted to stay and play with my friends and go to movies.
• 1:00
  but I did decide, uh, looking in hindsight, I don't know, I don't know what really um motivated me to do this.
• 1:05
  But I signed I signed up for the Navy right out of high school.
• 1:08
  I think I knew that it would be good for me and help me grow up.
• 1:11
  It would give me some job skills, teach me some things.
• 1:14
  And then the the recruiter, of course, promised sail the seven seas and and
• 1:18
  I did get to do that um quite a bit.
• 1:21
  so I joined the military and that helped me grow up and um also presented some challenges where my faith kicked in and helped me through.
• 1:28
  Um and then I got out of the military, went to the college back in North Dakota in Grand Forks on the GI Bill, um, found a love for journalism.
• 1:38
  And so I went into journalism.
• 1:39
  Um, but before I took off with my career, I decided to go in the Peace Corps after after college and lived in Nepal for a year.
• 1:47
  serving as a Peace Corps volunteer.
• 1:48
  My parents had been Peace Corps volunteers.
• 1:50
  In fact, that's how they met and uh did that service as well.
• 1:54
  And then I came back from that and came back to grad school.
• 1:57
  And while I was in grad school worked as a television news reporter in that small market in Grant Grant Forks.
• 2:02
  And uh so I cut my teeth doing video and reporting and editing and interviewing.
• 2:07
  All of those skills came uh into play for me to eventually launch my own business and work in marketing, video production, photography.
• 2:16
  And that's what I do now.
• 2:19
  Wow, for such a young guy, you've had quite a lifetime already.
• 2:23
  So tell me, out of all the things that you've done, you decided to name your business call sign fifty one in part after the guided missile cruiser that you served on.
• 2:33
  Can you give us some background into that?
• 2:35
  What was that like for you as some a person of faith living on a missile cruiser?
• 2:40
  Yeah, that's actually a good question.
• 2:41
  I mean, I I didn't consider myself a pacifist, um, but I did have um such a strong faith, again, mostly imparted by my mother and my father, that um I remember wrestling with that
• 2:55
  question, you know, how do I feel about being in the military?
• 2:58
  What if I had to kill someone or something like that?
• 3:01
  I now fortunately I didn't have the type of direct uh combat experience that some soldiers and sailors have.
• 3:07
  I was uh
• 3:08
  uh basically a payroll clerk on a guided missile cruiser.
• 3:11
  But you know, our job as a guided missile cruiser was to fire missiles at uh at the bad guys.
• 3:15
  And so I, you I'm part of the apparatus.
• 3:17
  And what I really did come to reckon with with uh with my service and my support and my patriotism in the military was that we did play a very important deterrent role in a lot
• 3:28
  of the evil and bad that's happening in the world.
• 3:30
  And so I felt very good that, you know, the United States was doing what it could.
• 3:34
  We also had opportunities too within the Navy when we
• 3:38
  stop into port to do service projects.
• 3:40
  So almost like little mission projects.
• 3:41
  And the chaplain usually led those.
• 3:43
  And so I got to go on a service project in Cartagena, Columbia at one point.
• 3:47
  Um, but you know, it was also discovering who I was and and a lot of my faith came into play in in you know, just being alone and lonely as a young man and and, you know,
• 3:59
  homesick and um trying to figure out my life and where I wanted to go with it, what did it all mean?
• 4:04
  and um
• 4:06
  It was such a formative experience that yes, years later, when I when I was thinking about my business, you know, at first I I was just a videographer and photographer doing some
• 4:13
  weddings, and then eventually grew into my business.
• 4:15
  And I thought, you know, I looked at models within here in the twin cities of agency names, you know, Fast Horse and and Space 150 and some of these other agencies and and
• 4:26
  marketing companies.
• 4:27
  And I thought, I need a creative name.
• 4:29
  I grew up with G.I.
• 4:30
  Joe and I grew up on Top Gun movies where they had call signs and code names.
• 4:34
  So I liked I like that phrase call sign.
• 4:36
  And then 51 was the number of the ship uh on that I I served on in the military.
• 4:41
  And it kind of all came together for kind of a cool name.
• 4:44
  but the way I spun it too with my business is that you know, when ships are out at sea, the way that they identify themselves in a sea of other ships is using a call sign, using
• 4:54
  a kind of a code name or code number.
• 4:56
  And I can help your business in a sea of competition stand out.
• 5:00
  So that's that's one of my kitschy lines that I came up with.
• 5:03
  But
• 5:04
  Yeah, the the the military is is it's more than just patriotism for me and being proud of uh serving my country or being in the country.
• 5:11
  It really was so formative to me that I I I owe a lot to um the military service.
• 5:16
  And then I think that helped me appreciate service in general, that we serve our communities when we're home here.
• 5:23
  You know, you don't have to and you and you know, serving in the Peace Corps is also another form of service.
• 5:27
  But I remember in the Peace Corps they would talk about you don't you don't stop serving when you come home.
• 5:31
  You you continue serving and
• 5:33
  I think there's a lot of military members and and first responders and stuff that really resonate with that notion that you you you have opportunities to serve every day, no
• 5:42
  matter whether you're in a uniform or not.
• 5:45
  Yeah, and I couldn't agree with you more.
• 5:46
  And first of all, thank you for your service.
• 5:48
  I am an army brat.
• 5:49
  My dad was in for 26 years.
• 5:51
  My mom was also in.
• 5:52
  So um definitely know the life.
• 5:54
  And I definitely understand where you're coming from about that servant leadership style, too.
• 5:58
  Um, that was instilled in me at a very early age as well.
• 6:02
  So you've done a lot of things.
• 6:05
  What do you think drove the most impact on your faith and staying true to you?
• 6:13
  while being afforded all these opportunities and also seeing all of the pain and heartache that you saw while serving.
• 6:22
  Yeah.
• 6:23
  Um, you know, I I would say you I grew up and was I was baptized and went through confirmation as a Catholic, young Catholic man in high school.
• 6:32
  And that set a really good foundation.
• 6:34
  Um, so that when I went into the military, and I'll say being in the military is uh quite a challenge to keep true to your faith and practice your faith as a young man.
• 6:46
  Probably the same way college is for a lot of people too, right?
• 6:48
  There's parties to go to, there's influences.
• 6:51
  There's all new ideas.
• 6:52
  In the military, I met people from all walks of life, all different religions, a lot of non-religious people.
• 6:57
  Um, you know, shore leave and and in a military boat and and in my time in nineteen ninety-three and nineteen ninety-four when I enter entered service a long time ago, uh, it
• 7:07
  was all all men on the ship, right?
• 7:09
  There wasn't it wasn't any women on combat ships at that time.
• 7:13
  And so a a ship full of guys in port, you know, the going to churches in the first
• 7:20
  bullet point on the list.
• 7:21
  Um and so there was a lot of pulls away from my faith, but I was able to find some balances as well as have some experiences I later uh repented for and regretted, uh, to
• 7:31
  put it lightly.
• 7:32
  And um I I think I learned, you know, some of the value of like having um
• 7:41
  Hey Jeff, I think we lost you for a second.
• 7:44
  I don't know.
• 7:44
  So I lost you're back, but I lost you when you were saying you had some experiences that you repented and then I lost you.
• 7:51
  So if you wanna pick back up and then I'll figure out how to cut this out of there.
• 7:55
  Creative editing.
• 7:57
  Yeah, I had a I had a lot of experiences, including ones you you know, I felt like I had to repent for um as a young man.
• 8:03
  Um, but I also have these opportunities to lean into my faith when I was lonely, when I was sad, when I was uh regretful, when I felt shame.
• 8:11
  Um, and I could go to the chaplain and I could talk with them about that.
• 8:16
  and experiences that challenged me um in my faith.
• 8:19
  And so
• 8:20
  Um, I think just that crucible of life kind of thing.
• 8:23
  Like if you don't, you're not gonna live and not gonna learn unless you get out there and live a little bit.
• 8:27
  And so again, I really credit f my experience in the military for putting me into those situations where I could learn and lean on my faith as a foundation.
• 8:34
  And then that grew my faith.
• 8:36
  Uh 'cause I don't think I was very mature in my faith when I first went in, but it had a good foundation.
• 8:42
  Awesome.
• 8:43
  Now I know that you said that you got to visit a lot of holy sites when in Israel.
• 8:47
  Was that through your military service?
• 8:49
  And where did you go?
• 8:50
  What where did you go?
• 8:51
  What did you experience?
• 8:52
  Tell us about it.
• 8:52
  Cause there's not a lot of people here that get to go over there and experience that.
• 8:56
  Yeah.
• 8:57
  my parents went to Israel and had to pay quite a bit to go on a on a guided tour and trip.
• 9:01
  And I got to go do that on the government dime.
• 9:05
  so that was really nice.
• 9:06
  We actually pulled into Haifa, Israel, and there were opportunities we had, you know, a day or two.
• 9:11
  I think we had two or three days of leave.
• 9:14
  And um I I took a a tour one day, went to Jerusalem, went to the Sea of Galilee and swam in it.
• 9:20
  And um they were guided tours, of course.
• 9:22
  So we got on a tour bus and and they took us to all a lot of holy sites.
• 9:26
  And I went to the Wailing Wall in in Jerusalem and have lots of pictures from that time of visiting those sites.
• 9:31
  And of course I grew up knowing about these stories.
• 9:33
  So um I I wish I could go back now older.
• 9:37
  Um I was, you know, 18 years old when I visited these sites.
• 9:40
  I think I had an appreciation for them, but I think I could have a deeper appreciation for those those holy sites now.
• 9:45
  And it was also pretty quick.
• 9:47
  Like we had a full day tour and and made our way around Jerusalem and hit the holy sites, but you know, it was a half hour at each site, that kind of a thing.
• 9:54
  But I remember going to the River Jordan and like I said, the Sea of Galilee and and all of that stuff.
• 9:59
  Um, it was really, it was really quite amazing to see these sites, having grown up with all these Bible stories.
• 10:06
  and I also got to vet visit uh Rome.
• 10:09
  we pulled into port there and um it nearby, I think we were in would have been Naples, and we got a chance to go to Rome.
• 10:16
  So I got to see both sides of Rome in terms of history, like the ancient Roman, the Romans, the Circus Maximus and Pantheon.
• 10:22
  But then also I I got to go to the Vatican and walk through the Vatican and see Sistine Chapel and all of the amazing stuff there.
• 10:29
  And then it gets as a Catholic, that was really interesting to be able to go and visit such an interesting holy site.
• 10:35
  And I think even the time I was there, the Dead Sea Scrolls were on display.
• 10:38
  So I took some pictures of that.
• 10:39
  Again, not really sure what I was seeing sometimes and and and kind of a quick hit because we only had a day and try to try to make it around city.
• 10:46
  But what a what a great experience when I think back to
• 10:50
  A lot of people who have a four year um stint in a military don't get to near see nearly that many things.
• 10:57
  I mean I've I've I've been on the ship and we've traversed
• 11:03
  I do not know what's going on.
• 11:05
  man, this is gonna be frustrating.
• 11:06
  should be recording everything from my side and then uploads it.
• 11:10
  So you shouldn't lose anything that I said.
• 11:12
  You just have to stitch together later.
• 11:13
  That's a nice thing about Riverside, yeah.
• 11:18
  Yeah.
• 11:19
  Okay.
• 11:22
  Just making sure my son's not
• 11:24
  it could be my internet too, I don't know.
• 11:26
  Okay.
• 11:28
  Yeah.
• 11:29
  All right.
• 11:31
  So you were in Rome.
• 11:33
  Yep.
• 11:33
  Did I mention did you did you catch everything that I visited in Rome?
• 11:37
  Yep, you were in the Vatican, um, Pantheon.
• 11:40
  'Cause you were finishing the topic on the Vatican 'cause I had a comment I was gonna add.
• 11:44
  So yeah.
• 11:46
  So yeah, we got to see the Vatican and um a lot of these holy sites and that was just just tremendous uh again as a young Catholic uh to see all those sites.
• 11:55
  And I I knew that was a a really special thing to be able to fit all of that in and in the time that I was in service and and do all of that.
• 12:03
  Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting you bring up Vatican City because I was just talking to my husband about it yesterday.
• 12:09
  So as a kid, we were stationed in Germany and we took a trip to Italy.
• 12:12
  Um we stayed in Naples and we went to Rome.
• 12:15
  And at the time, I wasn't Catholic.
• 12:18
  My family wasn't religious.
• 12:19
  They, you know, we had Christian values installed, but that was about it.
• 12:23
  And we're I was just saying how it would be so much different to go back now.
• 12:26
  I mean, I appreciated it.
• 12:27
  Like you said, you appreciate it, but then you it hits different later in life, you know, when you've kind of
• 12:33
  Come all in.
• 12:33
  So yeah, that's interesting you brought that up today.
• 12:36
  Yeah, I mean, the Bible has come so alive for me through my life experiences, through more study of the Bible, through maturing in my faith and maturing as a person and a as a man.
• 12:47
  Um, that yeah, when you go back this time, you're gonna pay attention to different things.
• 12:51
  You're gonna treasure things, um, some of these sites, some of these holy places in a way you didn't before.
• 12:57
  Um, you know, I I think I remember praying at a couple of the sites, but now my prayers would be a little different.
• 13:02
  My prayers would be a little more profound.
• 13:04
  And the emotional experience, I think, would be heightened when you go into a place like that.
• 13:08
  But yeah, I got to see so much in the military.
• 13:10
  Again, I I I think even for four years uh of service, like I packed more in than most service members do.
• 13:16
  I mean, I my ship traversed uh the Suez and Panama Canals.
• 13:20
  I've been across the equator, and in the military they call that or the Navy, they call that the shellback ceremony.
• 13:25
  So now you go from being a polywog to a shellback once you've you've uh been through that initiation ceremony crossing the equator.
• 13:33
  Um, and I got my enlisted surf surface warfare qualification.
• 13:36
  It's a pin that you'll see on some service members from the military.
• 13:39
  It's like this ship with waves.
• 13:40
  It's a really, um, really interesting looking uh qualification that takes some time to do.
• 13:45
  And most people do it when they're gonna continue their service.
• 13:48
  And I just did it in four years.
• 13:49
  Um, and I I look back on the maturity and the experiences I got to have with such fondness.
• 13:56
  Um, it really gave me a lot.
• 13:58
  Yeah.
• 13:59
  That's amazing.
• 14:00
  And I think, you know, sometimes we look at people that join the military and you know, maybe we think they're just doing it for this, but you really do get to see the world in a
• 14:08
  totally different light.
• 14:09
  Um, you know, even though I didn't serve, I was a part of the military, right?
• 14:13
  Being a a brat, but it definitely does give you a different perspective in life.
• 14:19
  And I think that's cool that you're able to share that with us today.
• 14:22
  So thank you so much.
• 14:23
  Um You know, you said something really interesting.
• 14:27
  One of the questions I ask all my guests was, Why do you feel called to share your story?
• 14:31
  And you said, Because God didn't act in my life for me to keep it to myself.
• 14:36
  There is purpose in my stories and in my grief.
• 14:39
  And I think it's just that's so profound that like you realize that yes, you've been through these things, good things, bad things, right?
• 14:45
  All of the above, but that you need to share that.
• 14:48
  So, what is one thing that you we haven't talked about, we kind of focused a lot on your military, um, that you want to share with us today.
• 14:55
  What is one story you want to share?
• 14:59
  man, I guess I wasn't prepared for this question.
• 15:01
  Um, one story to share.
• 15:07
  Yeah.
• 15:08
  Um
• 15:11
  I am I'm going through a divorce right now and I'm we're wrapping it up.
• 15:16
  I've been separated for a year.
• 15:17
  Um, and that has been a very the toughest thing I've ever had to go through and anyone that's been through will resonate with that, um, just emotionally.
• 15:25
  It's it's such a strange experience in the sense too that everything else is kind of going on as normal.
• 15:30
  You still have a job to go to, your kids still need you.
• 15:32
  You need to go to that football game or basketball game or ballet sh show and and you you need to show up for the people around you and
• 15:39
  No one's sick, you're you're you're healthy, you're you're grateful for everything you have, bills need to be paid.
• 15:44
  And yet you're going through some of the most profound, not just grief, but life change, right?
• 15:50
  Now I see my kids half of the time now.
• 15:52
  The person that I was best friends with 20 years is now a stranger in my life and is somebody I don't talk with very much.
• 15:58
  And there's and then there's pain.
• 16:00
  And to have God to go through this, I I've I've I've wondered with some of the friends in my divorce care group at my church, uh, how does anyone navigate this without faith?
• 16:09
  And that could be said of any really tough experience in life.
• 16:12
  And I think um one of the things, as I mentioned, is that you know, you're gonna go through this and uh and if you're open to it, I think God wants to teach you something
• 16:23
  through any loss that you have.
• 16:25
  Um I've I've I've talked with many people at at the church here that um have gone through profound loss and and the wisest ones and the ones that have
• 16:34
  navigate it in the best possible way and and are the healthiest have reflected on it and learned from it.
• 16:39
  And then they've shared it with others.
• 16:41
  And it's been able to bless others and it's blessing them.
• 16:44
  And so I think you know, going through this, uh, sharing the the stories, the times that God has shown up, um, I could share stories of how we've shown up financially.
• 16:52
  Most recently, a huge deposit came into my personal account that I at first I thought was a mistake.
• 16:58
  And I was like, don't, don't get your hopes up.
• 17:00
  that you know, I needed this money right now.
• 17:02
  I've been tithing uh faithfully since since I started working here at the church and and since the divorce.
• 17:07
  And and I didn't know if I'd have one of those tithing stories where you're tithing every month and then all of a sudden, you know, God rescues you financially.
• 17:14
  And he did.
• 17:15
  He did just last week.
• 17:17
  Um that money was actually a refund once we had sold our house and it was a refund for homeowners insurance.
• 17:22
  I I had forgotten or not even thought about the possibility of that being a sizable check.
• 17:27
  And that helped me out in a moment of need.
• 17:29
  And that was it.
• 17:30
  I I cried when I saw that deposit come through and I realized it was actually my money and refunded to me for things that I needed right now.
• 17:37
  I had I had one with my son, you know, I I he's eleven, my youngest.
• 17:42
  I have two two girls as well, fifteen and eighteen.
• 17:46
  And I had a moment of prayer with my son one night where he prayed over me.
• 17:49
  I had had never had him pray over me before.
• 17:52
  And he prayed um Philippians uh four.
• 17:57
  Verse six and seven, you know, cast all your anxieties and on me and pray and give thanks and trust God and the God of peace will be with you.
• 18:04
  You know, that verse.
• 18:06
  Very familiar verse for somebody who's going through something tough.
• 18:08
  I I was familiar with it.
• 18:10
  But to have my son say it in that 11-year-old voice, right?
• 18:13
  That child's voice.
• 18:14
  And then he found a prayer online that complimented that and he prayed over his dad and said, Dad, you know, Lord, take care of my dad.
• 18:21
  ah
• 18:23
  I got off the call with him and broke down into sobbing tears.
• 18:26
  This was probably back in February.
• 18:27
  Um, just feeling like I had an encounter with God, that he had used my son to speak to me.
• 18:35
  That's amazing.
• 18:36
  Yeah.
• 18:38
  That the kids, you know, not only that he knew that and to do that, right?
• 18:43
  But the way that God works through people and, you know, he always talks about let the children come to me.
• 18:47
  And you have to have that childlike awareness and love in order to find that peace and love, right?
• 18:54
  Because as adults, we always try to find the reason within things.
• 18:57
  And it's not always about reason.
• 18:58
  It's always it's not it's about faith, right?
• 19:01
  At the end of the day.
• 19:01
  So
• 19:02
  Well, and that's what I've really learned through this divorce in particular.
• 19:05
  I've been through some tough things in my life.
• 19:06
  Um, but um wanting answers is a very strong impulse.
• 19:12
  And you go through a loss like this, a relationship ending, and you don't get to talk to the other person.
• 19:18
  And sometimes even if you do, you don't get to understand why things I don't I don't know.
• 19:23
  I honestly don't understand why.
• 19:25
  I prayed for years as I was trying to save my marriage in the final years that God would rescue our and redeem our marriage.
• 19:31
  And
• 19:33
  Why that didn't happen, I I don't get to understand, but I get to I get to choose to trust God.
• 19:38
  And that's uh it took all the years of learning to to walk this Christian walk to come to the maturity to to to to just surrender and and obey and trust God.
• 19:51
  Yeah, and I think having that background that you have is really helpful for I mean, obviously you said it's helpful, but I think when people go through something traumatic
• 19:58
  like this, they can go one of two ways, right?
• 20:01
  Some people fall off and some people dive in.
• 20:03
  And it looks like you just like dove headfirst into your faith.
• 20:08
  I did.
• 20:08
  That's the only way I'd want to do it.
• 20:12
  but you're right, there's people that um and and it's not that they would run away from God or be mad at them, that is one reaction possibly, but a lot of people feel lost too.
• 20:20
  And I don't feel lost.
• 20:22
  Yeah, that's awesome.
• 20:24
  Not awesome that you're going through this, but awesome that you have that foundation, you know, that you know that you're gonna be okay.
• 20:29
  Um yeah.
• 20:31
  I wish it would come quicker.
• 20:34
  But God's like I said, God's already blessing me.
• 20:36
  There's there's ways that it's happening.
• 20:39
  there's times that it's pretty painful.
• 20:41
  It is.
• 20:42
  It is his timing.
• 20:43
  Yeah.
• 20:44
  Yeah.
• 20:45
  Which, you know, we don't love.
• 20:48
  It's it's hard.
• 20:49
  It's it's hard to wait for on somebody else 'cause, you know, his timing is perfect and we don't realize what's happening and we don't see the bigger picture, right?
• 20:56
  So
• 20:57
  Yeah, one thing, and just this is kind of maybe this is something too for your audience, is I think about all the different life experiences from the Peace Corps to the military.
• 21:04
  I mean, I was in the other thing is, you know, in the Peace Corps, I was in Nepal, uh, home of Mount Everest for and, you know, just between uh China and India there for some of
• 21:13
  your listeners.
• 21:14
  And it's a beautiful country, very poor, but they were in the middle of a civil war when I was there.
• 21:19
  They had a lot of uh strife going on.
• 21:22
  There were times we had to lock down into our our homes that
• 21:26
  We were in in Nepal.
• 21:27
  So it was a little bit scary.
• 21:28
  And there was times I really needed to trust God to take care of me.
• 21:31
  And I told my friend this one time, and he thought this was really profound.
• 21:35
  So maybe I'll share it here, which is that I have actually um kind of I would say enjoyed let letting God surprise me.
• 21:45
  And I don't know if that's the right way I say it, but like trusting God when maybe it doesn't make sense or things are s really scary.
• 21:52
  And just waiting for God to come through.
• 21:54
  And I've had enough, I've been blessed enough to have experiences through the military, through the Peace Corps, through college, through relationships, through my my married
• 22:02
  life, through all the challenges in life to um really just blindly in some cases trust and then see God show up in a in surprising and uh amazing ways.
• 22:15
  And it it makes me um really excited for the next opportunity that I get to just
• 22:21
  See what Gods can do.
• 22:22
  Not a lot of people take that attitude.
• 22:25
  And I think, I think when you do as a Christian, um, you get to you get to experience that.
• 22:32
  Not in not not in your own timing, but it can be really, really amazing to let God cook and then watch what he comes up.
• 22:42
  I've seen it mine.
• 22:42
  is that's good.
• 22:43
  Yeah.
• 22:47
  All right, Jeff, I ask everybody this question, what is your favorite Bible verse or which one are you walking through right now?
• 22:55
  Well, one I'm walking through right now, it's it's not um on anybody's I don't think it's on anybody's favorite list, but it was profound to me.
• 23:01
  And it's something that I think if you're dealing with human relationships and some brokenness and some healing, um, there's two words I was I was really struggling with, um,
• 23:10
  which was anger and righteousness and and it's righteous anger.
• 23:15
  And I was thinking to God, this was a couple of weeks ago, aren't I right to be angry about this pain that's being caused?
• 23:21
  That this person did something very wrong.
• 23:25
  Isn't it right for me to be angry?
• 23:27
  Don't I have a righteous anger?
• 23:29
  And God, I went into James chapter one because it talks a lot about dealing with hardship and perseverance.
• 23:35
  But I got down to James chap chapter one, verse 20.
• 23:39
  And it says, Human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
• 23:46
  And that was uh a direct answer to the two words I was struggling with.
• 23:50
  Human anger doesn't produce righteousness.
• 23:54
  the righteousness God desires.
• 23:56
  And so no matter how right we are in a conflict, personally, personal relationships, um, our anger isn't the solution.
• 24:04
  Us being anger, no matter how righteous we might feel, it isn't what God desires.
• 24:09
  Um, and so naturally you can be angry, you can feel your feelings for sure.
• 24:14
  But just know that it's not gonna, it's not gonna be the solution, right?
• 24:17
  You're gonna have to look beyond the anger.
• 24:19
  It might be forgiveness, it might be kindness, it might be mercy or grace.
• 24:23
  to to to give that person.
• 24:26
  But it's not gonna anger itself isn't gonna produce righteousness in that that relationship in that person's life or in your own that God desires.
• 24:34
  And I think that's an amazing verse that I had never really paid much attention to.
• 24:39
  And it hit me like a ton of bricks when I read it.
• 24:41
  Yeah.
• 24:44
  Hm, sounds like it was right on time.
• 24:47
  Yeah, it's it's I've had a lot of moments like that more, you know, I've never had the audible voice of God experience that some Christians have had and and that's amazing when
• 24:56
  they have that blessing.
• 24:57
  I've asked to hear God, I've asked him directly many times almost daily.
• 25:01
  I want to hear you, I wanna know you, I wanna see you.
• 25:03
  Um, and he's shown up through my child's voice.
• 25:07
  He's shown up by leading me to a chapter and a verse like that right on the day I was asking about anger and righteousness.
• 25:14
  And so he's speaking.
• 25:15
  God is speaking, he does speak.
• 25:19
  We just have to listen.
• 25:20
  to listen and you'll have to look for it.
• 25:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:23
  Yeah.
• 25:23
  absolutely.
• 25:24
  Well, Jeff, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story with us.
• 25:27
  I appreciate you and I wish you all the best.
• 25:30
  Thank you for having me on.
• 25:31
  Keep doing this great work of sharing these stories and why their faith matters and and um and blessing people through these stories.
• 25:40
  Thanks, Jeff.