Latest / 10:14 Moondust / Episode 2: Pastor Kevin
Transcript
- Moondust: I take it we're going. Here we go. Hey y'all, and welcome to episode two of the 1014 Moondust Podcast. I'm the old gunny and I'm so glad you have chosen to join us for this ride. I'm joined by my good friend and co-host Daff. Top of the morning, ladies and probably not so gentlemen. Thank you for returning to our shenanigans. And hopefully we work out some of the audio issues from the last episode. This is a whole new ride for us as well. So not only are we not professional biblical scholars, preachers, priests, pastors, theologians, we are also apparently not professional YouTubers or podcasters. That being said, we also have James back there behind us, man of the camera and sound system. And he's learning right along with us, so you can blame him for any issues. Not this, he's a kid. Absolutely. If you join us for episode, One, you've probably noticed some changes of our studio. We have to give some props to our lovely brides for this new recording space and hopefully soon a new background. So my wife Katie has graciously donated her dining room, and Amanda, Death's wife, is getting us a new backdrop, which we'll be debuting soon. We also want to thank you for giving us another chance. If this is your first time, or first time you were joining, seeing, or hearing us, we humbly pray that you get to take away a little deeper understanding and what Christ can do for you and has done for you through some of the testimonies. For my brothers and sisters and ours. Before we go any further, let us go ahead and pray and bless God. Ask God to bless these efforts for us. Alright, I actually have some prayer requests that I got this morning through through the through the book of faces. So I'm I I got my list because you know my brain doesn't. You're saying you put your face in the book? Yeah, you got it? Yeah, both books. All right, here we go. The Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you, Lord, for this day. Lord, we thank you for this great opportunity, Lord, to come here and and sit down, Lord, and talk about you, Lord, and discuss all the great and wonderful things that you've done for us. Lord, we thank you for the for this podcast, Lord. We thank you for Daft. Thank you, Lord, for for my family supporting this, for his family. Lord, thank you for for the churches that have supported us, for all the people that supported us. We just can't praise you enough for all the good blessings that you've given us. But we do ask, Lord. as we as we go through this podcast that that you let us Lord reach out to some of those that may have lost their faith Lord some of those that are that are struggling Lord please let us hopefully reach them in your name Lord we do ask Lord that that you bless those that reached out to me this morning Lord wanting participate in the future that that we'll get those guys on Lord and and really Lord we just ask that you bless us today Lord that we will use this podcast Lord most most importantly is to glorify you and all the you've done for us Lord. We thank you once again for all of these blessings. We ask all these things in your holy name's sake. Amen. Amen. I'm gonna take a brief moment to reiterate our mission statement. And our mission statement is to glorify God through fellowship storytelling and studying his word. Ten fourteen Moon Dus aims to give veterans, first responders, and their families an opportunity to give their testimony, including their service and their journey in faith. Today's scripture comes from the Acts of the Apostles, and we'll be discussing in chapter 3, verses 1 through 10. Man, all right, now for the That's a good chunk of scripture too, though. It is. It's a very specific story, too. I'll tell you what, man, I I know that I've sent you I cheated little bit and I I piggybacked off that's that's a good military phrase for you. I piggybacked off my what the commander said? Sorry. No, so I'm doing I do a devotional every morning at park when I get to when in the party lot. That's kind of my moment to recenter myself, right? Yeah. And the devo I use the Bible app, which a great app. but I The devotional I'm doing right now is on Isaiah. so I sent you that earlier, what middle of last week? The chapter two thing? Yeah, that's Isaiah chapter two, and then you're like, hey man, what about this? And I'm like, man, all right, you beat me. wait, I don't know, I don't even know how that came about for me. Like just I gosh. So I gotta do children's church tomorrow for the our little pre-sermon thing. I'm also teaching Sunday school for the teens tomorrow. Yeah. So Or not teaching guiding Sunday school 'cause we have a book and I'm I'm learning too just as much as them. yeah, man, mine's on the desk over there, so But I was I was I was praying like Monday, Monday or Tuesday I think it was. And I don't know, like I I can't remember what I was actually I think I was praying and I was doing a evening devotional study and it had a piece of this in it. I was trying to find I was actually trying to find something for the children's church. But then Amanda said she's gonna do it, take it over, so she's gonna do it. She likes doing that. Hey, you got D bowed, man. Hey, that's fine. If she wants it she's a lot softer when it comes to stuff like that. She gets she talks to the kids more than I do. I I get it. Mama Bear. Yeah, there's a reason why I don't follow through preteens anymore. Yeah. But do you wanna you wanna take it or you won't yeah, I can I can read today. so I'm using the King James version. whatever There there's a lot of different translations of the Bible. Yeah. and and really as long as your what you're reading is i if it's preaching that that God is the one and only the Alpha and the Omega, right? And that I mean and that Jesus came and died for our sins and was rose again on the third day. I mean that I think you're doing okay. I'm old school, so I like the King James version. The thing is you have that this is the part that you that I have come to learn and see that you have to get more you have to figure out which translation are you going to want to be more close to the word-for-word version or thought for thought because languages change and things change. change like different words have different meanings. They might mean a whole half of a sentence in a certain language or they may apply it differently just because of the way the language like you might they might say the same word but in a different context. Yeah. It means something totally different. So so if you want word for word or thought for thought and I've what I from my understanding is that the King James Version is a little bit more of a word for word, it's a closer to the word for word, but not on the same as like the ESV or another translation. So it's like a spectrum. What's kinda wild to me is I didn't know this before we get into our scriptures I was I was doing some research the other day. I'm looking for a so I've recently been asked to help help guide some of our high school students in our Sunday school too, at our church. And and I also know that the the old school King James version is a little bit difficult for for them, right? Which I get. I didn't make it as I was you with the ranks I got a new King James version. Well so that's what I was gonna bring up is so I was doing some research 'cause I was like, man like like I've got an NIV. matter of fact my N I V's old school. I'll I'll bring it next time and show it to you. it's it's one of the little camouflage ones that I carried all over the Middle East. Yeah. you know we've got Katie and I have literally a basket full of every translation imaginable upstairs, everything from the message, which is a little That's a little too too thought for thought for thought for thought. Yeah, but but in my research I didn't realize that the new King James Version is actually more word for word than the King James Version. and the reason is and I I dude, I would have never guessed this, right, as I'm doing this research. The reason is is is when the original King James Version was translated, there were actually like gaps in their knowledge only on the old especially in the old testament, right? The old Hebrew. And so what they had to like they w they were guessing. and obviously in the last what eight hundred what, sixteen, four hundred years or so, right? no, I guess too much math for my thing. Found some more old papers. Then we found some more Yeah, right, and we've gotten better translations. But all without further ado, man, let's get let's get into the word. Are we gonna I got one quick question. Yeah. Are we gonna go Like section by section or verse by verse and talk d if we want to talk about something. I think we just kinda read the whole thing and then just kinda discuss as we go. I know. And then we start from the beginning and have some points. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's I gotta find my notes here, man, 'cause put up here somewhere. There we are. right, here we go. I gotta put up. it should be on the one of those pages I put up there for you, man. I'm I'm it might be on it should be on the back of your on the back of this one. Man, le simple turnover. Would you just look at? That's a great that that guy's hilarious by the way. Alright, here we go. Alright. Alright again, this is the King James version. so chapter three, verses one through ten, right? So we're going to start now. Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour, and a certain man laying from his mother's wound was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple. Who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple ask an alms, and Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them. Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Man, I think we listen to the k let's just pause there for just a second, and then we'll do that those last four verses. Okay. if you're okay with that man. Yeah. Imagine being this guy, right? You've been dropped off your whole life. Okay. Literally. There's there's a reason why I like this really stuck out to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, man. We all know that there is a homeless veteran epidemic. Mm-hmm. The difference is this is not a Walmart that this homeless guy who may like let's just insert I'm gonna make a little presupposition here. I think that's the right word. that or i it we'll do a Little bit of equivalent, like this was a modern day thing. Yeah. This this homeless veteran is not on the corner at the intersection of your Walmart. yeah, no, he's at a church. He's at a church. yeah. He's at or a synagogue or a temple or w somewhere. Mm-hmm. And people his family members, we all know peop there are people like this because we've seen them do this in the the modern day equivalent is those guys who their family will leave them there and Ask them keep them begging for money and then probably go and take the money from them or whatever the resources are. Take advantage of them. And I just thought there might have been I'm not saying that this is exactly what happened to this guy, but the modern day what we might see of something similar is something like that. and he but he's he's not outside of your Walmart. He's in he's outside of a church, the place where he's supposed to be able to go for help and healing. But he can't even go in because he's Because he's lame. Because he's lame. He's not healed. Mm-hmm. He's not considered Mm-hmm. Could you imagine from and from the time he's been in his mother's womb, he has been considered not clean. I mean, yeah, I like I can't even imagine I mean his whole life, right? So so his whole life, I mean the King James the Bible tells us that he's that he was lame. Doesn't really say what he had we can kind of assume that he couldn't walk, right? So because they're they have to carry him up there and lay him down. And in in those days especially, I mean even still today, right? But in those days especially, I mean that he was one hundred percent dependent on somebody else. Yeah. Right? And it doesn't say how old he is neither. No, it doesn't. And it also doesn't say, Not so doesn't say that his mom brought him there, right? It just says they. It just says they, right? but they let him there daily. Right? Every day at the at the gate of the temple, which is called beautiful, right? So I I can only imagine The beautiful gate is on the east side, it has a bunch it was described that way for being having a bunch of gold inlay and other things like that. But when I think of yeah. I can only imagine so you've probably seen I do this thing where I ride my motorcycle around and take pictures of my bike in front of churches. yeah. that's like one of my favorite things to do. I got a few extras yesterday. But there are some beautiful churches here in the southeast, right? Beautiful churches. Yo, downtown Augusta has someone like the most beautiful man. I didn't realize that. Yeah, they're beautiful. Some beautiful churches. Like, and so here's this guy who's been He's been lame his whole life, right? He's never been able walk. And and they've brought him here and they've dropped him off in front of this big, beautiful. Not only. Not only is it a big, beautiful temple, but it's at the temple gate that is called beautiful because it's The most beautiful of the beautiful. Right? Mm-hmm. Like that's his name. Yeah. The gate is named the beautiful gate. Yeah. Yes, literally called the beautiful gate, right? and he's there begging for alms, right? So basically he's like And alms for people that don't know what that means is just any kind of thing that would help. Yeah, it's is it's a giving to the poor of things that would help. Yeah. food, food, money, yeah. Maybe a piece of clothing, something to help him. anything. and and what's what's wild me is that Is that he sees Peter and John, right? Mm-hmm. He sees them and and he asks them for alms because he's to be honest, and this is what's he'd probably ask everybody, right? I mean, literally everybody that walks through, he probably has i he's been doing this for so long, he probably has a script in his mind. yeah. that that he says to every to everybody that walks in, right? And he stops stops him and and Peter, right? Like, like like look at us. So right. There's some significance to all this. First things first. Who was with who was with Christ when he healed the guy at the will of Bethesda? man, you're now you put me on the spot. It was Peter. No. Peter and John were both. Yeah, Peter John. I believe. I could be wrong. Because I think it's in the Gospel of John where it's actually written down. Yeah. But they at least the disciples were there with him. So and that's at the pool of Bethesda, which is like a pagan worship thing, if you understand. Yeah, they to like hobble down. Yeah. So he's like low crawling there with his face. But he was slow because he had no yeah. Yeah. He's fish tailing. It's terrible. That's like the most veteran thing ever to make fun of this guy trying to somebody probably was though. Yeah, I mean for however long this guy's life has been, people have seen him walk past him. Some people might have given something. It's the same as your homeless veteran. Like they might have given something. yeah. They don't know nothing about it. They can like, he's just lying. He's just trying to beg and take advantage of the people who can come in here. yeah. Absolutely. And it's so and also the part about the ninth hour, do you know what time of day that is? Hold on. I can't that's too much bath for me. it's somewhere around twelve it's around three o'clock afternoon. Three P. Yeah. So three PM in the middle of Jerusalem. I don't know if they had very harsh winters there, 'cause I've never been. Imagine. I mean it's given the landscape in the Middle East, it might be a little warm. Ironically, ironically, our guest is here, so when we get ready to introduce him, he can probably tell us all about the probably gonna correct us on some stuff. He could tell us we're all wrong. But you guys are terrible. Probably. Well, I mean he can give us some that's great. I love c I love correction when it's necessary. Hey, listen, that's what we need. But so he It's it's three PM. This dude's been out there all day, the modern day equivalent of a veteran, but he's begging outside the church. People are going into the church, and some people may have given, some people may have not. They but they look past him. And it's to the point where he he's acknowledged, you know, he's probably there shaking a little clay cup, not a tin cup. Yeah. And just whatever he's got. So probably like passive about it. You would I would assume that doing it his whole life is probably passive about it. Because this is just his routine. And they're probably going to see really. For the first for for one of the first times in this man's life, probably, the church reached out to him. Peter reached out to him on the front gates and said, Look at us. And it wasn't until the man acted and looked at him that when they went so he gave them his attention expecting to receive something from them. Yeah. So his intention was to look at them. Like it it goes into listing his intention of expecting that they would give him something. Yeah. But what they did was they acknowledged Peter goes on to where'd you stop at five or six? we finished seven, but really six is yeah, I see what you're T Then Peter said, Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. So One, he demonstrates the power of Jesus Jesus Christ's name that it has for the healing. Yeah. That has in it. And it wasn't a question. You know, Jesus would ask about people's faith. Peter just proclaimed the name of Christ. And he was like, In the name of the I give this to you. I give you this healing. Or I I don't have money or anything to give you. But what I can't give you. And essentially him providing this to him as the man gets up and walks, it provides so much more for him. yes, now he is able to go and do for himself. He doesn't have to be carried to the door every day. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. And it was because Peter and John took the time to get down face to face and acknowledge this man as a person. yeah, absolutely. But it also required some give on his part to acknowledge that they even said, look at him. Yeah, and I'll tell you, so that's where we and we'll talk about this a little bit actually when we hit Kevin in here in a minute. but you know today's church, you know, we have a tendency to be like, yeah man, here, you know, let's throw some let's let's throw some s you know what I mean, let's throw some money at the poor, but man, they better not walk into they better I don't want to sit beside me at the pew, you know what I mean? Like we have a tendency to do that. And what's beautiful here is that is that is that Peter's like, look man, I I I I don't have any money. Because well, he didn't have any money, right? Yeah. Kind of starting some stuff here. Yeah, and kind of in enemy territory at this point. our rabbi just I don't know if you know, got Yeah. Across a week or so ago. Yeah, we definitely just had some some big ticket things. well I'll tell you, man, I and also if you think about this too, the people that would have been what was the synagogue or the church at the time, they would have been the people that were hostile towards Peter and them because Peter and them were going into the church to preach Christ. To preach the gospel. yeah, yeah, to preach the good news. To preach a risen Christ to them. So it they're going into I don't want to say enemy territory, but like they're going into hostile territory. It's definitely gonna be hostile. Yeah, definitely. well look man, let's let's finish these last four verses real quick because we don't want to keep Kevin waiting too long. He's already looking at us like we owe him money. he made the mistake of wearing shorts and center of the table. we'll explain the shorts thing here in a second. Alright, so let's knock out these last four verses and then we'll introduce our guests if you're good with that. Yeah. Alright, so starting verse seven or continuing to verse seven. And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he, leaping up, stood and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the beautiful gate of the temple, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him. Man, I see two things here. Right. One, think about your kids, right? Think about your little guy, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, Teddy's four years old and he still learned how to walk. I mean he knows how to walk, right? But he still trips over his own feet, right? Yeah. Like, and he's four years old. He'd been walking for a long time, right? Dude, I'm 44 years old and sometimes I trip over my own feet. Right? I got a leg that gives out every now and then. Yeah. This guy had never walked before in his life. Ever. Not one time. That's a very good point. Not only does he stand, but he leaps and dances and I mean. So like the there's a little note for on online for to go back to Isaiah 35, 6, where that that is the one of the verses that talks about the lame leap Leaping like deer. Yeah. So like you like I don't know if anybody's ever seen a deer. Like we live in South Carolina, it just gotta be deer season. So you know, deer gonna be running for a lot of stuff. They leap. They jump big fences and stuff. yeah, yeah they do. they also jump over motorcycles too. I don't know if there's white tail in Jerusalem. Anyone a Jerusalem white tail would look like? Wonder if tastes any better. Probably not. But it's yeah, it it you imagine like not doing not ever having done that for however long this dude's been alive. Yeah, his whole life. His whole life has never walked. Yeah. And he instantly became the hype man for Peter and John. Yeah they had. Like it instantly goes into the church and is becomes the hype man. And then so back to the point of the people knew who this guy was that he had been there every day, they all recognized him immediately. Yeah. And was like, you know, even he probably the people that carried him in there were like yeah. Okay, so subscribe. They probably dropped him off. They probably dropped him off, gave him a high five like good luck dude. Good luck. I'm gonna need two shekels later for transport. For d for dragging you here. Yeah. Yeah that's crazy. And they all know them. all right man. But what d what was the end result for what they did? Everybody And all people saw them walking and praising God. Everybody saw the power of God. Everybody. And it started with I the main thing got put into motion when the church told the man who might be the equivalent of our homeless veterans today to look at me. Yeah, that's all it took. Treat him like treat like a creation of God. Yeah. Another image bearer of God. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Man. All right. Is it time for us to So one one last little thing, with with that relation to our own lives, how can we use this experience? From the word to go forth and spread the new good news of the gospel. Don't ever think or miss the opportunity to look somebody in their face and treat them like another image bearer of God. Yeah, you have to. Don't ever overlook that because you never know what's gonna come from that. Now this man has restoration of his la his walking, other people see and believe because of the bold amount of faith that he had. And still again in the middle of hostile territory. Yeah, you're right. Amen, man. That's it's all about it it's all about seeing each other, right? Is I'm gonna use some poor terminology here, but there's a a phrase that's probably prevalent. Hey time to nut up or shut up. Yeah. it's time to get up and don't shut up. Yeah, it's time to go, man. It's that's what we gotta do. You gotta treat I mean people you work with, the people you see on the street, like all of them. Like, yeah, absolutely. Look somebody in their face as another image bearer of God. Yeah. Tell them to look at me. And show them the power. And hopefully, look at me and then you acknowledge Christ in that. Show them Christ in that. Yeah, show show his power. Yeah, absolutely. You might look at my face, but I want you to see and feel Christ. Yeah, yeah. Don't see me. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm dumb. Yeah. I'm just some poor hillbilly for my poor hillbilly. South Carolina. The middle the lower low state lower state of South Carolina. Alright, well man, dude. We might have to continue acts for the next episode. I like it. I do like some Isaiah though. I'm an old I'm an old testament kind of guy. Yeah, I gotta learn a little bit more about Old Testament. There is a I do got a a thing from Ecclesiastes. Yeah. Some correlation stuff that I had picked up on I ran I actually ran it by my pastor and Miss Wanda. Can you spell Ecclesiastes? E C C E No, I cannot. L E S I A Period S T E S. I think. I can spell X. I can spell the abbreviated version E C C period. Alright man Alright, you ready for this next part? Yeah. Are we going to pause or do we just want to So joining us today is our very first guest. It's a godly man that I'm gonna try my best to introduce. he served twelve years in the United States Army, to include the reserves. He served in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia. He's one of those crazy people that jumped out of perfectly good airplanes. Now he serves at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church here in Aiken, runs their video, teaches a Bible study, preaches. he's done a lot of things, honestly, to To help me come back to my faith, right? he probably didn't even know that, but it's probably the first time he's heard that. but he's definitely done a lot to help me with my faith. so without further ado, I want to introduce our good friend, Mr. Kevin Goldsmith. I don't know. What Mr or Pastor? PK? Good. Like the Pinecans? That's good. It's good to see you again, man. Yeah, it is good to see you. look, we put you in a hot seat though. That's good. I'm good with that. So we should all be in the hot seat as as believers. That's kind of our spot. You know, it it's funny it's funny you say that. it's funny you say that we should all be in the hot seat as believers. I was talking to a guy on on the interwebs this morning about how he has struggled with the things that he did like while in the military, right? Right. Like some of those things. And and he actually used a phrase like like I'm gonna have to answer to those things on the judgment day. and we discussed, you know, I mean just and this is all through texting on the internet. hopefully we'll get him on the show. and but we just kinda discussed like, hey man, like like he's diving across four of us right so all right man. man, look, so we went through your questionnaire. So if you guys don't know, we do this questionnaire thing that we send out to our guests. Kevin's our test dummy. I don't know if he do you know that you're our test dummy? I think you mentioned it. Well I mean would it be in episode two? I would think he could. Right. Yeah. He's a little bit better at math than us. Well he was in the army, he's probably way better at math than us. He did jump out of airplanes though. Yeah, that is. Yeah. So That's math, aren't That's critical thinking about that. Yeah. So we sent out this this really this is just this questionnaire just to kind of give us an idea of some things that we might want to talk about. and then Daf and I go through and highlight some stuff. and man, really, this is this is about you and your testimony. We're just gonna try to ask some questions and get you get you rocking and rolling and sounds good. tell us about your family, tell us you know where you came from, that of stuff. Well, I was born and raised I was born in twenty nine palms, California before it was even really a big base. I was born in a Quonset hut actually. And it was called the Base Dispensary. Yeah, hold on, where'd that go? Wasn't even the hospital, the base dispensary, but sounds like I was born like in a pharmacy. I don't know. It sounds like you were a test tube. Right. No doubt. a Marine and my mom had just you know graduated high school and at the time they were living my dad was living in Big Bear because that's where my mom was from yeah and driving down the mountain every day to go to 29 Pums. Yeah it wasn't it was it was decently far and he i he got lucky and got some kind of like extra duties because they do have some MW MWR stuff up in Big Bear so he was doing some stuff like that. But so born there my dad was in the Marines my whole Yeah, my whole life until I left home. I had one sister, she's passed away. But yeah. But we always were near military bases, so I was near I mean i I was used to moving every three years. so that that definitely had an effect. Definitely did not go to church ever. I mean Maybe we went I went with friends sometimes, like if I was staying at somebody's house and then they made me go, you know, so I went then. Yeah, th so it wasn't i not a not a real emotional support family, my dad you know, being a a gunnery sergeant. emotionally distant gunnery. Listen, man, gunry sergeants are the most nice, kind people you'll ever meet. To be fair, that goes that that that goes along with like some things that I've learned about like there is no middle ground with that. They are they usually are some of the most extremely caring staff SEOs that I've ever met. Or We just ain't putting over your nonsense. Or they are a or or to them, unless you're on the same plane as them, you are dust. Not even dirt, you're just dust. Dust. Okay, it can be blown away real easy. Yep. Speaking of that. Ugh. That's awful. So Married? Married, yep. I I I you know, did the usual thing that most young soldiers do. I realized that my pay could double if I got married. So I made a really awesome decision a and married somebody that I'd known for like, you know, two months. But th that was the first go round. but because of I mean even though I didn't really know God at the time, he knew me and I still had Not that I didn't believe in God, I believed that there was a God, and I had morals and values that were instilled in me, you know, by my family, by my father and my my mother. So I I didn't want to leave even though I instantly knew it was a mistake. I mean I got married right before I deployed. So left her to figure out. I mean, I got in so much trouble from this. to figure out how to get the page situated, all that stuff. so but I you know we we had a ch our first kid pretty quickly. So I was like, okay, well I guess I'm here for eighteen years. And then we had, you know, basically I've told all my kids, I'm like the at least my first four, you all could be named after the hey Bosnia, what's up Somalia? Hey Haiti. And I could name all of them. Yes. So that th they could all be named after you know whatever because i it it and we just never were you know the what the bible describes as as joined now here's the crazy thing she was a Christian but instead of her modeling for me, she would nag me to go to church, but not really sh I she allowed me to pull her down. Yeah. I'm not going, I'm not yeah, I know more about the Bible than those idiots anyway. What what's the what's the reason for going to church? It's just for hypocrites, blah blah. You know the stuff that everybody says. So yeah, I mean it it it was really unfortunate that that happened that, you know, instead of her keeping her faith, 'cause she grew up going to church every Sunday, doing the Sunday school thing and all that, but You know, she would politely ask if we could go and of course I would not so politely say there's no way on the planet Earth I'm going to one of those places and Yeah. Organized religions full of hypocrites. Yep. I might have said that a time or two. Yeah. that was me. I mean I was wrong. Yeah. Because we're all hypocrites. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah All of us. Yeah. We were all every single one. Man, that's So nine years of active service. and then three in the Air Force Reserve? No, it just the regular Army Reserves. Army Reserve. I got that wrong. Yeah. okay. Air Force. Yeah, I was I was U S A R and he took I got it, I got it. Well, I mean I told you man, you can read better than me. I remember I remember the first time I worked with other branches of the military. Right. Right. I know you do because you were jumping out of their airplanes. Yeah, all all the time. Yeah, we were always working with them. Man, dude, hold on. Alright. You gotta tell me what? So I'm looking I was look you had a story in here that was really hilarious. Or like I'm running I'm reading this thing and I'm like dying laughing. So many. so you jumped out of perfectly good airplanes. I did. And then you got on here that you landed in a one hundred and fifty foot pontery. Yep. In the middle of the night, dude. At night. Okay. Yeah. I I you gotta tell us just like what happened. geez. I would love to say it was all the Air Force's fault, but it wasn't. Yeah, it was very hard to see. I mean, obviously it's very hard for I mean, God bless those guys that that that drive those C one thirties. to hit that tiny little patch of dirt. but It's very hard to judge the wind when it's pitch black outside. So you're supposed to slip into the wind, and I slipped with the wind, which then carried us 'cause the whole everywhere in North Carolina is just pine trees everywhere, and then they happen to clear out a section of dirt that we called the drop jump. You had to been a brag stand. I mean for a absolutely, yeah. And and so I went the I mean I slipped the wrong direction and I didn't even see them until it was getting really close and I'm like I was way too late. So I just kind of like, God, please let me just not be impaled by anything. And then eventually I stopped and then I I looked down and it's still very hard to judge how high up I am. So I really didn't know until somebody else came by and they had some chem lights and I'm like, geez. And then the way that they tell you to get down is insane, and you never think you're gonna use it. That you're supposed to climb out of your harness and then use the suspension lines of the parachute to climb down from your your roost up there. Seriously? Yes. They'll like if you're you know, if it's that stuck, you're you know, you're supposed to test it and then you use that. I kind of did that, but it's made out of silk and it's f basically five fifty cord extension lines. I don't have any gloves on. So essentially I'm just kinda like falling from one tree limb to the other tree limb and then I eventually get to where there's no more tree limbs and there's still a good fifty fifty. Yeah, there's a good thirty branches start with what kind of pine trees. Have you seen the pine trees in Fort Bragg? Yeah. Yeah. It's nuts. They're those pine trees, the limbs are high enough That you can hide an entire artillery battery inside of trees. Yeah. And shoot like through them. Yeah. Dude, I can only imagine being stuck on top of those things. It it was not fun. So yeah, I bare hugged the tree and sort of slid down. Brown were your pants. How brown were your pants? I was t trashed. I actually they ripped everything. that's not the brown one I was talking about. Yeah, well that's When I especially when I noticed like I was seriously gonna just wait till somebody were on a ladder. But they were fresh out of ladders out there. They don't keep any ladders in Not D C. They do not. Right. So that's fine. Yeah. But that was the only time, thank God. Did you ever hit a tree? That I hit a tree. I hit The Humvee before I hit Yeah hit some other things. you know with the social media, right? The algorithm picks up what kind of videos you watch, right? Right. And I it might have been 'cause I was talking to you, I don't know. But through social media for like the last two weeks, all I've gotten is like Like airborne mispass of people like hitting cars and getting all rees and hitting trees and fancies. Yeah, man. Like that's why I didn't jump out of airplanes. There's a lot of reasons there's way more reasons not to jump out of airplanes than there are to jump out of airplanes, that's for sure. Yeah, that's that's crazy. so I man, I wanna do you. Do want to talk about some of the like what did you do in Somalia if you if you're okay with what? Well at that time we were it was military police stuff, so a lot of I mean quasi-EPW operations, even though they weren't really enemies, so like when they were rounding up people who they thought were part of like the militia and stuff like that, guarding you know guarding them, doing tons of convoy security. Because that was one of our main mission sets was convoy security, so being in the front, the back, the middle, of you know, and obviously those things have big targets on yeah. So lots of that. So yeah, it it was a good time. Yeah. That's I I laugh because I was in Iraq in two thousand four yeah i as as an artillery battery right and we were convoying and we got right outside of well right outside of the city where we're going to and we picked up this MP platoon. Right. And they're like, we're gonna provide security for you. I was a young corporal, right? And I'm like, you're provide security for us. Like, that's great. I'm like how many like how many trucks do you have? Three. She's like she's like three. Yeah. And I was like, How many machine guns do you have? And she's like, We've got A fifty and two two forties. Uh-huh. And I look over my shoulder at this artillery battery. Yeah. It's like Dude, I think we got like 16 machine guns. Right. And I was like, I'm not trying to be rude here, but How? Who's actually for who, right? but I will tell you it was one of the craziest things ever. We actually took fire on that convoy. and at the time That was when General Mattis released his his like, I don't care what your job is, if you're driving down the road and somebody shoots at you, you pull over and you kill them. And so we're driving down the road. And somebody shoots at us. And the the female, sorry, I was young corps one at the time, Sergeant Howard, I'll never forget this, I'll never forget this sergeant. I'll be honest, she completely changed my perspective of of females in the Marine Corps. This this sergeant did by herself, right? great Marine, like she was a phenomenal Marine. I we did a mute workup, so I like work was all the time. But So her truck ended up being right in front of mine. So we take fire, I jump out, I'm like, dude, let's right. And I look up and here she is on this 50 couch, just I mean rocking everything. And I was like, You know what, boys, get back in the truck. Yeah. We're good. We're good. She said she had 150 and a 240s that she meant she was gonna use. I was like, let her rip, man, let's go. And so we I mean, I don't even think we finished getting people out of the truck to be honest. It was like a stop. Yeah. Hey, we're done here, guys. Let's go. Have you seen the video of the guy in the back of the Humvee? With the with the fifty cow and he's th he screams the the r Bobby Hill thing, That's my person, I don't know you That's great. Yeah, Cowboy Security's a wild job. Yeah, we did a lot of that. Yeah, in in every place that we went, that was seen to be what they would use us for. Like I mean you're essentially just drawing fire. That's what your job is to go out and and and keep the people and usually the people that were escorting are not an artillery battery, it's mechanics and cooks in yeah. That's about what that's what we did. That was my whole de that was what was supposed to be our deployment. Yeah. And we got a whole bunch of nothing. Yeah. Man, I tell you what, we had a we had when I was in Afghanistan we had a that's I f I don't know what they I don't know what kind of unit they were, but all they did was convoy security. Mm-hmm. And they escorted the jingle trucks up from Pakistan. I was like, nah. Y'all are out of control, man. Yeah. The jingle trucks. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? The jingle trucks. Yeah. We were talking about those and somebody didn't somebody didn't believe us about the jingle trucks. We were talking about it at school. Yeah. I was talking about this at work the other day. Mm-hmm. And So somebody's like, what's jingle truck? I'm like, come here and I'll show you. And I Googled jingle truck network, and of course, like a hundred images these things pop up. And whoever I was working with was like, I can't believe Google knew what you were talking about. Well when you see it, it immediately makes sense. Like, yeah, that's what I would call it. Like I don't Yeah. It does jingle. It jingles. Mm-hmm. It jingles. The prayer mu the the prayer music's on all the time. Right. It smells like curry on the inside. Yep. Curry and moondust. Yes. That's the whole smell of the inside. Uh-huh. Unless you get real lucky and then it smells like black tar heroin and then you're like that just smells like straight like you know what, dude? You just straight on going. Go somewhere. I don't want what's in my house. No. And we sure don't need to be protecting it. No. No. man. So man, Haiti for hold of my You meant a Haiti in ninety four. Ooh boy. That one was wild because so first of all, yeah. Up it's first of all the what's that was where I got robbed of my mustard spot because of Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson and the whole piece My combat. Where we were on the way in the airplane to go jump into Haiti at the airfield. And we got turned around midway. Because they basically turned it from an invasion into a police action, basically. They negotiated with Cedros, who was the guy that had took over during the coup, and I guess he decided he didn't want an entire airborne division dropped on his head. Yeah. That's probably I mean, can you blame him? What's the the picture of the C seventeen side this is what a can of whoop ass looks like? Right, yeah. I don't think I wanna So it was kind of a bummer 'cause we were all, you know, a young high five and you're gonna we we we were all like already like you know had there been the internet at the time we would have been ordering our combat wings already. yeah. But no. Yeah. So we turned around and then typical military stuff happened. Yeah, yeah yeah. No doubt. No doubt, yeah. Journaling phone. Okay, it's all crazy. Not anything crap. But there's a lot of so then we sat there for three days while we decided what we could carry and not carry since it was no longer an invasion. So they didn't want too heavy of guns so that it wouldn't be on the news. You know, so really we took everything except. are Mark nineteen's. We were still they didn't want us taking those. So was that a State Department op for you guys or was it No well we did so did work with some of those because we did a lot we did also do protective service there. The wildest thing there though was those Like everywhere you go at first they were happy we were there and about two weeks later they weren't so happy that we were there and yeah, they were trying to to to kill us in some really innovative ways there. They were running like piano wire across the streets so that they could take out the people in the turret. And I had a buddy of my luckily his gun was up, you know, because we were go and he wasn't in the like that and it hit the The sixty flipped it you know, completely bent the whole thing but protected him from getting his head taken off. You know it's crazy like the solder out s the what are they called? The outsider world show. Yeah they were doing that too. And it took some people getting hurt before like we remembered. Yeah. It's like God's this is not the first time we have done this stuff, right? And they even had stuff for it. They had these wire cutters that you could put on there that would We catch it. Like literally they already existed. We just had to get shipped to us from space because we had dealt with it before it walked. Yeah, it was crazy. But yeah, there was a lot of wild stuff there. They were just they would shoot out of the middle of crowds there. Especially down at the port. i i they w they were throwing grenades and i 'cause you had like people mixed in that were par still part of that faction. You couldn't tell. I mean everybody was dressed the same, they weren't wearing uniforms. So they were trying to kill people who were happy that we were there and that were pro Aristide and it yeah, it that it that one was wild. It was wild because and it was wild because You know, everybody was thinking it was gonna be one way and it wa it and it definitely was not that way. It was it was a lot more I th it was almost more heavy than than being in Somalia, honestly. The the the amount of contact we were getting from people that weren't supposed to be doing that. It was wild. Yeah. It was wild. How long were you there for? We that one was really short. That was like three months. Okay, so you're doing like you got all this all this going on in three months. Yeah, yeah. It was it was exhausting. So like daily there's probably Couple a couple different scenarios of like some form of being engaged by somebody with something going on. Yep. And then finally we just we started to occupy police stations like their national police and started seizing all their weapons, which mostly consisted of like ancient World War Two like World War Two. Yeah, it was like World War Two infields that were bolt action. It was it was cra which you knew, yet we're getting shot at with other things. So they're turning in all these ancient things, but there was other stuff. So you're getting shot at by a Galil, but the only thing but the only thing you're finding is a Most of the gun, that's Russia. It doesn't even work. Yeah. It's got amazing. You talk about it being exhausting. The whole concept of a, you know, so General Kruak and the Marine Corps introduced the idea of a three-block war, right? Where like on one block you're handing out Mr. E. Right. Right. And then on the next block you're doing some type of police action. And then on the next block, you're doing like straight up in contact with Yeah, door to door. Yeah. And and those those blocks aren't necessarily in that order, right? They move all. And dude, that is. probably the most exhausting type of warfare. and it definitely tests tests your resolve, it tests your faith, it tests because I mean I know that I've been on ops where literally, man, I am passing out like literally passing out humrats, right? Humanitarian rations. Yeah. trying to give a guy a blanket, he's refusing to take it because the Taliban's gonna come behind him. And I get it, right? There and then five minutes later I'm driving down the road and I get a call that that you know one of our Allied units, you know, an Allied nation convoy has been hit by a massive IED, so now we're hauling butt over there to take care of that. And then I mean it's yeah, dude, that that type of war is It's nuts. 'Cause you can't I mean a your buttons can't change gears that fast. Yeah. So that's hard to do. A little bit of You mentioned that being a a test of your faith. So like how was your fate during service? I mean there's no atheists in foxholes, so I mean other than that, but no, I was again I was still the guy and and I still look back and I was so lucky to be able to reach out to people after I did come to faith. that had modeled it to me and even though I was a complete, I'm not even gonna use the right the words, but jerk to them, but reach out to let them know like, dude, it wasn't in vain. Like I may have not reacted the way that that you would have liked, but it's it planted a seed. Yeah. Because I knew there was something bigger. The crazy thing was is I spent a lot of my time on active duty looking for whatever it was to fill that God shaped hole in my heart. I into being a Muslim. I looked into being a Catholic because I knew there was something bigger, but I didn't know what. You know, I didn't know what I what that looked like for me. You're over here trying to snack on different things and never eating a full meal. Exactly. I would and I would go to the library, the but post library, and check out books. Yeah. And I'll tell you the reason I'm not a Muslim, I was like, five times a day, no thanks. That's too How many times have you how many times have you said we can think about it? How many times do you end up praying a day? yeah, way more than that. I may not be getting on like pulling out my pulling out my prayer rug and like going face first on the ground, but like I f like find myself every morning, it's First thing I do, I you can consider a prayer, like I get up, I've tried to make it a thing where I wake up in the morning, first thing before I even get out of the bed is thank you Lord for breath. Yeah. Do that and then go on. I'm trying to like one fill my head with but then on the way to work, I'm praying. I pray now, I've s this school year I've started praying and when we do our moment of silence, like I will pause kids in the hallway now. because I mean my office is where close to where your old classroom was. And I'll pause kids in the hallway and I'm like, hey, stop. And then I'll make sure they see me praying. Right. Not because I want to be seen doing it, but because I want them to know that people are praying for them. And I want them to hear that I am praying for them. Yeah I'm praying specifically for the school. Then I try to I'm trying to get my son to make him one my son says grace for us. That's his thing. He loves doing it. That's good. and a matter of fact, if we s if we get a little ahead of ourselves, he's like, hey, we didn't say grace. Yeah. Okay, man. But it then you realize like, man, I you add it up, it's way more than five. Absolutely. Even if you just throw some percent. Well, and you know, you talk about praying it like in front of right? That's how you plant the seed. so you mentioned in your questionnaire, Dan. Yeah. Right? That was that was one of the main. You want to talk about land for a moment? Yeah, yeah. So he was just a guy that we went to went to basic together, we went to Airborne school together, and he was always just I mean the best word meek, you know, like that. And humble and never beat you over the head with it, but you could tell that there was something different and like you know, why are you not acting a fool like us? Why are you not, you know, engaging in all this, you know, every other word's a curse word, every you know, way there There was just something, and instead of like asking him like, so what is that? I just made fun of him for that. You know, like it but he and he never would give it back. Never would give it back. And I mean, we still were cool, but I'm sure he may say something different. We weren't that cool. You know what? Probably not though. We've talked since then, but yeah, he but yeah, it was definitely Something that I noticed and that's the specific instance the guy that I was able to reach back out and say d dude it it wasn't it wasn't in vain. You know, that that it it it definitely had an impact because I wanted what he had. Yeah. I wanted that it that that peace that you know I we we were doing all those other things because there was something missing, you know, drinking, chasing women, all that kind of stuff because I was trying figure out how to fill that hole yeah and his it was filled and it's crazy because like you you mentioned that and I talked about it on our first episode where my buddy Hanson he was he was a lot of the same way like he he like it it's not that they were shoving it in your face and when you said something to them like you're like man why you why you don't want to it's just not for me. Yep. That's that's that was generally his response most of the time he's like I just don't want to it's just it's just not for me. But there was an example that they led by and like you could see it it I there's a very similar thing and it's crazy how you see like that peace among them even in the craziest stuff. Now I'm not saying that person didn't get mad or nothing or didn't you know they might not have had moments but they felt different about those moments. But they also had a peace with everything that and they weren't just like cast off to the side, like most people look at like you were probably like, the judgmental Christians are gonna push me to the side and this, that and the other. They weren't that kind of person. person that you knew they were there with with you but they they might not be participating in it right really what they were doing is trying to make sure you were okay yeah because for us a lot of it was Hansen was making sure like he felt the need to be the guy that's like hey if I need to drive y'all home I get you if if I if y'all need something if I need to pull you out of because Hansen was not weak by no means. Hanson can't turn sideways go to a door Dude Hanson would like we when we were in Afghanistan and like we were on Leather Neck and they had like th they finally got this one little gym set up. Like Hansen would get mad and go in there and power clean like Twenty two twenty-five. And he was mad. Right. And he's like, and he's just throwing it down. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? And he was just mad. Right. And he would he between that and he would walk around with a big thing of planters, peanuts, and he's just eating out of these peanuts, this peanut jar all day. And then you see him, he's ha ha ha ha. Like I'll laugh you, but when he got mad, dude, man. One time he did get mad, he slammed an MRAP door on the back and bent the hinges on it. Like so you talk about those guys though, you know. Dan. Yeah. Yeah. what's crazy when you talk about filling that God-sized hole, right? I so I look back, you know, and there were a few people in my career that that were, and what I noticed now, looking back, and I noticed it then, I just didn't really understand it, right? Is that they had joy. yeah. So my So well, so I volunte I was recently started volunteering with our youth at at our church, right? and on Wednesday night our youth pastor actually preached about their you joy and happiness, right? and first off, listen, if you want to hear a young man who really knows how to like like connect with youth and like like I'll take you on Wednesday, it's why. Like I don't understand how he does it, it's amazing. Right. but yeah for sure. man, yeah. Like he's better human than I am. Yeah. But He but he was talking about joy versus happiness, right? And I look back at those times and and there were some times back then that were happy, right? I mean I had some really fun times. Yep, and then it's gone. And then it's done. Yep. 'Cause I also had a lot of really Bad times. Yes. Right. and they usually were like one right behind the other. Mm-hmm. Right? Like it very rarely was it like, this is great for six or seven months and then like, here's a bad spot and then this is great again. it was usually like this is great. God, no it's not. Yep. Right? Like it was like that. And those bad moments, you like those guys are the guys that are in joy. Dude. They are in joy they're not just enjoying what's going on, they are in the joy. They will find a way to be joyful in that in the suck. Having that perspective From God. It's how you see you can be in the same situation as all of us. Yeah. But when you're seeing it through the eyes of eternity, it's totally different. One way that I've started describing something similar to that to the kids at the school, like when they come in, because like all the kids are like, they got some kind of anger issue with something. Yeah, because they're kids. They come into my office and they want to vent about stuff. And I'm like, listen, like you gotta understand your perspective is totally different. Look out my door right now, because I got you know two doors to my office. Like, look out the door. What are you looking at? And they're like, no some stuff. And I'm like, if you if I'm looking out the door, I got a whole list of different stuff than what you see. That's because we're in two different positions. It's the same way with whatever you're going through right now. You got two people looking at two different two we're looking at the same situation. We're looking at the same hallway, but we're seeing two different sets of what's really there. And it's just because of the perspective. If I adjust to your perspective, I can get a little bit more of an understanding. If you adjust to what I got, you can get a little bit more of an understanding and then we can get the full picture of what's there. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Well, and I'll tell you, if I can go back to like for the active duty folks and for the folks that are currently in the reserves that are that are hopefully listening to us, right? I I I've had some really great chaplains in my career, right? But I'll tell you, with the exception of one, chaplains because well could w they're officers, right? And they're right. And so they have an effect. But Dan, yeah. Right? Hansen, the the guys and the gals that are that are going through exactly what everybody else is going through. And they're going through it with that joy. Yep. Right. And with that, you know, like, you know, they're not dropping the F bomb every twelve seconds. They're not, right? They're they're just, man. It I look back at it and I'm like, man, I wasted a I wasted a good chunk of my life getting pretty angry for no reason. Right. Absolutely but also There is a bit of thankfulness that we get to have being able to look back and saying that there was enough God's grace was enough for me to one, see him in that through that person. Like I might, I might see, I might see Dan, I might see Jeff or Hansen, I might see them, but I see the example of Christ that they are doing. That they are living out. They're not just talking about it. They are living it out. Truly living it out. And I'm pretty sure Dan and I know I know Jeff did. They both had things in their own life that led them to that. And they just got there sooner. Yeah. But in God's evident wisdom, he knows What is going like who's going to be there for him? And he he's patient. Yeah. He's patient. Absolutely. He he is a just God that, you know, hates idolatry and all that stuff. But at the same time, we are living in a time where we are allowed the grace to be able to be given all this information, all this revelation that we have, or what we are able to see. Yeah. And then we get to make the choice of we we we are allowed to make the choice of what Christ is to us. And God's foreknowledge does not negate your free will and choosing all that stuff. Yeah. I've made a comparison before to somebody where it's like, okay, you have a doctor. Like you go to a doctor for help with related religion. You go to a doctor for help. You go get x-rays. And or you get test results. And your doctor comes back with something that is for sure going to kill you. He has that information. He's not even in the room yet. He's got the information, the diagnosis, he knows everything. His foreknowledge of what you have does not negate the fact that you need treatment. Right. Mm-hmm. And it also does not negate the fact that you can turn around and walk out of his office and never receive treatment. That's right. Yeah. That's right. It's a good way to put it. Yeah, I mean it's like you said, it's just seeing them Live it out because I used I tell people all the time, like a lot of times for people, they may never the dark darken the doorstep of a church. They may never pick up a Bible. For some people, we are the only Bible they will ever read, the only Jesus that they will ever come in contact with. So we have to be and just like the verse you guys were talking about while while I was waiting there, you know, it's that testimony. The Bible says that we're overcomers by the blood of the Lamb and the words of our testimony. And that's such a powerful verse. Think about that word. We're overcomers. Yeah. We're overcomers. I mean, that's what makes us overcome. That's where the joy comes from. That's where the and and the words of our testimony sometimes are verbal. Mm-hmm. But sometimes they are yeah, the body language and and the way that we act is a more powerful testimony sometimes than the actual words, but as Christians we've gotten away from both modeling it and talking about it. Yeah. We're f we're afraid to share our testimony. We're afraid to share what God has done for us because we might be put in that box of no, they're a Jesus freak, they're a Bible thumper, they're a whatever. Call me all of it. Yeah. That's fine. Absolutely. I don't I don't mind now. Why don't we? Yeah, we we need to wear that as a bad. Of honor, you know? man, I'm gonna so it I I think we both highlighted this at the same time. you know, you talked about lukewarm Christians, right? yeah. and then and I know that you want to talk some about some of the things you do for the school outside of just being sure an instructional coach. But man, there's In some ways it and I get it, right? Like it's it's hard in some ways to say, hey, like, let me let me preach, right? That's hard. But I also think that that we have to support each other, right, when we when we're doing it. I mean, I know that we've gotten more support than I can even imagine. we said we said, hey, we're gonna start this podcast. And within two weeks we had like podcasting equipment donated to us. Yeah. We had a place to record. my wife, God bless her, is like like the other day it was just like out of nowhere was like, Hey, we're gonna turn the dining room into a into a studio. 'Cause you were we were talking I remember us talking about that at the lunch table and you were like, That'll never happen. Yeah. Right, man, we just got so much support. Yeah. and what I've what I've learned from this is that if we support each other, yeah, it makes it so much easier. And I'll tell you, man, so and and not not trying to steal your interview, but the amount of support we've got, right? So I went to work and I man, and I've talked about this podcast at work, and I've always been kind of the guy who's like, Man, I I have my beliefs, right? But my beliefs that they're my beliefs. Right. And I don't care if people s like I hope I model those beliefs, but I don't like Preach those beliefs, right? But I'll be honest, man, like, like some of the folks that I've talked to that work with are like, hey look, man, I've s you know I started this podcast. And man, they've come out of like people have come out of the board board. Sure. Like, and people that I would have never expected to be supportive of this, right? because their beliefs aren't the same as ours. Right. Yeah. But they're still so supportive. And I know that that's not I mean, you know, even if you go all the way back to to Exodus, right? You know, it talks about God hardening Pharaoh's heart. Right. God also softens hearts. Yeah, he does. And so I'm like, man, dude, this is but to but you can't be lukewarm. Yeah. Can I speak to that a little bit about Yeah, man. So I I am I have a belief and I don't want me to s just not a belief, but a A thought running through my head. I'll just leave it that. That like right now there is one a massive outpouring of the spirit from God in our nation right now to where people are and like it may not just it may not be a full on like everybody's on fire, we've got a giant revival in the nation or it's gonna spread across the world, but there is something going on that that Christ is using in the church in America to try and turn things around from what we used to have with A lot of like soft sensitive, like we don't want to offend anybody, kind of Christianity, right? Stuff like that. To where the more bold, for lack of better term, camel skin wearing locust eaton, John the Baptist crazy guys hollering in the wilderness on the river coming up and like those are the guys who the the men There's nothing wrong with coming out of the mountains every now and then. preach the word God. Just so you know, there's nothing wrong. But there's something going on and like people are seeing it and they're taking note of what happens when like good strong men or men who realize that I am lacking in certain areas because that was part of what was going on with me. I was like, I am severely lacking. And there's People at work not at at the sheriff's office have made like people that I would never expected have just been like, Hey man, this is going on like you say, there's there's a lot of affirmations going on but they're like, I see what you're doing. And like I in random conversations, it's not like a conversation that you brought up and people that like I talked to maybe on training days. And they're like, Hey man, I see what's going on, which you like it's it's good. Yeah. And it's not I'm not saying that to boast me up. I don't want people to see me. I want people to see what Christ is doing through. Yeah. Like use me as a vessel, let him see what he's doing. Like front desk lady at the school yesterday, she asked me, and you know how goofy she is. she asked me, she's like, 'Cause principal assistant principals use my office Talk to a parent, so I stepped out. Yeah. And she goes, hey, what's moond dust? And I did not, I hadn't shared the podcast with her. She doesn't know, like, I think she's, I don't even know if she's friends with me Facebook. But she was just like, hey, what is that? And it's I was like, huh? And she's your pod the podcast thing. Like, what's that? Is that a military thing? And I did. I explained it to her and I'm like, she's like, that's awesome. Yeah. More importantly, you gotta you gotta spread the word. Right? Yeah. So I I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna. You probably even know this, so I'm gonna I'm gonna I had I had kind of stepped away from my faith right while I was in the Marine Corps. Towards the end of my career I had some folks that I was I that had kind of steered me back, right? but when I was teaching, when we were working together, right? I was still The prodigal the prodigal came back. Right? Yeah. But what what the Bible doesn't tell you is how long that walk was for the prodigal. Yeah. Right? Like it didn't tell you that, right? it does tell you that you just gotta you gotta read it to find it, right? God does tell us about how long that walk is, but Amen. But but it's it's a walk, right? It is. and as and I'm walking back and then and then I met you, right? We started riding motorcycles together. and I don't even know how it happened. I stumbled across a video of you preaching. and I don't know if it was like recent or if it was when you were still in in comedy I mean California. like I but is it from the new church or when he Dude, I don't know, man. This was like there's even stuff yeah. This was like Carolina. and I remember thinking, right and and man, we've known each other now for what, five years? Yeah, about five, six years now. Yeah. And and I remember thinking like, man, I don't know, like like Kevin's kind of a soft spoken guy. I'm like, I don't This is not the same dude. I was like, well, so I watched this and and I was like I was like, well, what I can tell you for a fact. is that when when Kevin prays and says, make all give all glory to him, it put me, you know, hide me behind that man, it happens. It does. It's unbelievable. You I mean cu 'cause you do like you do a podcast, you preach. tell us some about that, man. Some of those things that you do. Yeah. man. You know, it it was difficult to not be in ministry anymore and I knew that was not over. But so we had a we we moved to California, just long story short, because I had a job at a huge church. Yeah. A mega church, let's just put it that way. And I'm not gonna put any names out there. And I knew it was my pride that took that. I've always been against I won't say against against what I feel is not biblical about churches that size. Yeah. Because the Bible as as pastors tells us to know well the condition of your flock and pay attention to your herds. How can you do that with 10,000 people? You can't. You delegate that down. And then they'll always come back at me, Mega Church. Well, he said mo to Moses, appoint some over 10, some over 100, some over I'm like, yeah, but not their spiritual care. Yeah. He wasn't talking about their he wasn't solving problem. Yes. He was talking about this guy rare. Yep. He was talking about that. And that was the first thing people said to me when I said, Yeah, hey, w at the little church I was serving at there, I'm moving, I'm t they're like, I thought you I you've preached so many times against the mega churches and I'm like, Yeah, well this one's different. And it w it wasn't. It was not. I think that go like that might be this is just me being a young believer. Okay. So You gotta look at like what are the fruits being produced for the church as well. Right. So and when you talked about lukewarm, the lukewarm concept and when it's mentioned in Revelation, 'cause I don't know if there isn't, there might be another place where it's mentioned or something. Yeah. It it was specifically referring to a church. It was. If you look at the context of what that verse was taken, it was one of the seven churches. Yep. The church of Laodicea. It was a church congregation that had become lukewarm. And they were not willing to, if I'm not mistaken, they were not willing to help out other churches or other congregations or other flocks. so what kind of if you if you talk about a church that has that What kind of things are they helping support? Like what are the fruits that they are producing? And you're right, like I may not be able to I may if I'm the lead pastor of a of a mega church like that, not me specifically in that role. if I'm if I am that guy, how am I one leading the flock that I have And am I able to make it to where there is some like I can can I put people in place that hold the same kind of biblical understanding to provide that for the flock that we have? And that's how you take care of it. Because you have like even in from what I understand of the thing like Christ is our chief shepher our chief shepherd, right? Yeah. The pastors are the under shepherds and then he like they delegate responsibility down to everybody else. And it's just a mil if you've got a military command structure. Yeah, but like I get Like me on the level that I'm at Like and I'm I'm happy to serve whenever this comes up or whatever they need or whatever I might be ready for or whatever my my local church, especially if you have a mega church that is still saying, like, you might look at us, but this does not need to be your only thing. Go support your local church. Go support like a a mega church that is willing to say, like, go support your mega church or go support your local church. Like we have, you know, sixty-seven million people in this city, and thirty thousand of them come here. So you're looking at what, maybe a half of a percent of the population? I can't do math or nothing. But is is it all about the numbers or is it about the fruits that is And that's a personal opinion. We can see examples in the Bible where they all came together and there were I mean, Peter preached to thousands on the day of Pentecost. So and it but the primary example is going house to house. So really if we want to say I mean if we went by the Bible we could say, well that we shouldn't have any churches, you know. We should just be going house to house. This is big enough, two or three, right? Or do we say, you know, do you get into like okay, so yeah, you have a co thing of so both of us go to the Southern Baptist church, here's the Baptist church too, yeah. Do they all belong to the Southern Baptist Convention? Is that not just an organization with satellite churches? Right. I don't know, I was looking at it. Right. And then you have not Baptists. You better be careful saying that about Baptists. Yeah, yeah. Baptists will fight you over there. Well I'm also open to like me being a young believer, like this is a thing that young believers need to have. You have to be open to be willing to be corrected. Because that was a huge pride thing that I had in not wanting to even go into church. And I've had I've talked to my pastor about this. I said I said, this was a thing that I had to humble myself to like even say, I don't know. Yeah. So if I don't know, I need to go to the people who do know or have experience in it. And if I think they might be wrong, I'm going to not come at you disrespectfully. I'm going to ask questions and try to prevent my Yeah, I'm trying to be I'm gonna try and be better. I might not I still might not agree with you, but I'm going to try to come at you with and if I can come at come to you with an understanding of what I've read in the scripture and then be corrected on certain things and then come to an understanding with you, that's also me growing as a believer. And that's also the pastor taking care of his plot. Absolutely. Or even the elders or the deacons. Yeah. Like I used to tell my church all the time, you know, don't take my word for it because the Bible tells us, you know, I w to that the Bereans were a a a more honorable believer because they went home after hearing the preaching and made sure that what they said was true. Yeah, yeah, they that's what I and that's what I want everybody to do. Don't just take my word for it. Make sure and and and and that's falls right in line with what you were saying there. You I we should want people to do that. You talk about like the make we go back to mega church and do a little everybody loves Philip Anthony Mitchell just 'cause the way he preaches he talks to God at Atlanta. But like the one thing he's there the clips that go famous of him right now are like him screaming like read the scriptures for yourself. Yeah. Like him doing it like so many people won't tell you that. Like don't trust me. rough. Yeah. It it is. And I'll tell you what what we I mean Listen, I'm just I jokingly tell people all the time that I'm a back row Baptist. Not because I don't want to be close to the word, but like, know, the speakers hurt my ears, you know something about canons and anyway, like so I don't like being near the speakers. I don't like I mean, I I go to a pretty big church, right? Biggest one I think it might be the biggest one they can count. It's not the biggest, it's pretty close to it. but it's like it's It's loud. I prefer the old style hymns. Right. but I don't have the praise music is what it is. I mean, I I I don't dislike it. Right. but but I jokingly call myself a back row Baptist. But what we can't do as church members, right, a as churchgoers, as Christians. is I can't treat a church as if I'm a consumer. And the church can't treat me as if I'm a consumer. Absolutely. No. Right. I I go right and and and it's kind of a give and take, right? and and on Sundays On Sunday morning worship service, I I we call it big church, right? Because that's what the fool guy calls it, right? But at big church, I'm there to refill my cup. Right. Right? Like battery recharge. Right. Yeah. The the pastor's preaching, he he is recharging me. Right. But before that, if all I do is I show up at ten thirty. Yeah. Go to sit in that service, get refilled, and walk out. Well, yeah, he refilled my cup, but it's got holes in it. Yeah, sure. And if you it and it the way that most of us, the life comes at most of us, if that's all you're doing, you're gonna be empty by Tuesday. yeah. So what you need to do is fix your cup and then turn around and while it's full, share it with somebody else. Absolutely. And the way you fix your cup is not. By spreading the gospel, right? And you can do it all kinds of ways, right? Whatever God tells you to do, right? I I I can tell you exactly what happens when you when you do what you want to do instead of what God wants you to do, right? what happens is this. Miss Marsha at Milbrook's gonna be mad at me, but that's okay. When you do what you want to do instead of what God wants you to do, right? You volunteer for the with the fourth and the fifth graders to coach basketball. Yeah. And then you jump up and down on the sidelines and you flash back to your previous life. Yeah. And you don't really make an impact, right? Like you make a little bit of an impact, but not you don't really produce good fruit, right? When you When you know I tell people all the time I'm an extrovert. I know that I'm an extrovert. anybody watching this podcast knows that I'm an extrovert. sometimes sometimes when I deal with people, I gotta tell myself to shut up and let other people talk, right? We've talked about this in the past, right? When I'm talking to God. Sometimes I just need to shut up. Amen. man. Yep. So often. Prayer time when I'm like I'm like, how I can't. I can't sit there and sh like there's been times where like I've I've had like recently that I've had to like take a break because I have a bad habit of like turning on a podcast. I can't focus typing out something or if I'm typing an email or an incident report or something. I can't focus if I don't have music or something going on in the background. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't I have It's become a problem and a thing for me to be sitting down. Like now I have to I I am getting better at making myself get up at five thirty in the morning, thirty minutes early, thank God before I get out of bed, and sit down quietly. Just have quiet time. And quietly and read. I will read a chapter. Find somewhere. Whatever it I like wanna I'm working through Luke and I got Hebrews over here for this and this Bible. Yeah. But just being quiet. Like I can't and when I even when I try to do that, and I might ask your advice on this, how do you sit and just listen for God? So I'm I'm gonna ask for your a little bit of your pastoral advice. Like, how do you do that? Because I I that's a problem for me. I can't my own head still goes. Yeah. Well it's going to, and number one, the first thing is people usually just forget it's so simple, is to ask him. to stop your head from going. Because that's what I have to do. Mine is constantly squirreling, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. So I have to ask him. And it may not happen the first time, but God quiet my spirit quite so that I can hear you. I just want to listen to you. I want to hear your voice. Like I just want I'm gonna cry right now. I just want to sit in my dad's lap. Yeah. Listen to him tell me story. Absolutely. And that's and that's exactly it. And I I've gotten to a place where I mean I don't say a lot. I listen And that's where I hear so many things. Not audible, not whether from God, or He'll give me a vision that I of something that I need to do. A lot of times we say, I just don't know what God wants me to do. It's because we're not listening. We're doing all the talking. You're searching for seven other seven other things to tell you what to do to give you confirmation. And he's shown you a thousand times. You know, I bet you for both of you, how many times did he show you this is what he wanted you to do before you did it? man. But I'm just not sure. I'm just not sure yet. All these doors are being opened. Well what's funny. What's funny is he's like, hey, you need to do this. I'm like, what if I do it like this? Right? Right. No, no. No, no, go do it like Do this. This. Well what if I Yep. Yep. Yeah. if if you don't mind sharing, because I I think practicality is is key, right? Sure. What is your like What is your morning routine to ground to to really get in touch with with God and And and how do you ground yourself in the morning in your faith? My morning routine, because it's always it it's been this way for as long as I can remember, my quiet time, my sanctuary, especially when I was in the classroom, is in my car. Because when I'm getting up, I'm getting everything ready, I'm doing all this stuff, and I just turn nothing on in the car. Not gospel music, not anything, and I just talk to my dad on the way to work. And then sometimes, especially When I was at Silverblow. Me and my father had to have some real heart-to-hearts to get me out of the car. Like, God, you gotta show me that that this is where I'm supposed to be. Because this is so difficult. And please remove the bitterness I have towards, and I would name specific kids, you know, like I'm already. got my dukes up before they've even done anything because of stuff they did in the past. So God just give me the grace that you've given me to to to not be that way, to greet them and and and and and just give them that grace. And yes, they're gonna mess up. Just move me out of the way and just let them see you and me. So that's yeah, long story short, my that's my morning routine and always has been is once I get in that car. I I literally Yeah. As soon as I get in that car it's just like, all right, and then people probably think I'm insane. Because I'm just going yeah, or or they think I'm singing along to something because I'll just be having full on conversations with with God all the way to work and then usually for a little while once I get there just You know, gu i we me and my wife also have the same prayer and it's the same when I do it before I get out of the car. You know, God use me today. Use me right where I'm at. Let me where my feet are at, forget where I what I want to do and all these ambitions and whatever. F today, while I'm in this cubicle, let me let my light so shine before men that they will see see the good works and it will glorify you. And and I want to that's what I wanna be able to do wherever I go. And It may not seem like a big deal to be at the district office or whatever, but wherever we're at, we're making an impact, especially when you're in a school, you know, because you have so many kids looking at you and they're going to be able to see that example. And it may not show fruit right away. And I and that's another thing that I always pray is, you know, God, help me not to get discouraged because I don't see it. Yeah. You know, you because you may not see it this side of eternity. You may not. You know, and and that used to be something that was hard for me as a pastor is not seeing like I wanna see the results, I wanna see that they're getting it, I wanna see and I and and I would be reminded so many times. I may not know until I get to heaven and then I'm like, wow, it did. There he is. There he is. It took you know, so yeah, that's that's my my morning routine. I know it my wife is big on getting up. She gets up really early. I'm not a morning person like that. She gets up, she does like twelve devotionals and sends them out to you know a million people. God bless her for that. Let her let her know that though when I walk in the mornings and like when I walk into school and she's there like with the kids, hearing her saying, Good morning, Def. And like as happy as she is. Is and I'm like, it's way too early for this, but I'm really glad that I get to meet somebody that's that happy. Yeah. She's a morning person. So I'll tell you what I started doing probably about a year or so ago. I'm like you in the mornings one, because I like when I first opened my eyes, like I can't. I just gotta get ready. Yeah. Right? And it's on autopilot. Like I and I I've heard people say, Well, like you've gotta you know kinda like kinda lay down front my thank thank you for another day. Yeah. Right. I gotta get now I'm getting ready. because to be honest, I'm just man, like I'm not ready to talk yet. Right. Right. but I get ready and drive to work and I do listen to music on my way to work and I my music choices are a little bit of everything. Yeah. Sometimes I well I always listen to at least one gospel song on the way to work. Primarily because that's what Spotify does for me. Spotify hooks a brother up and says You know what you like? Yep, yep. Here's you one here's you one church song. Right? It might be two or three, but right. anyway, so I do that. Put my sunshade up, turn the headlights off, so this time of year I'll leave the truck running because it's about a hundred and seventeen degrees at five o'clock in the morning. But that's neither here nor there. Dude, I gotta use the air conditioning. and then between those. But I do a short devotional on my phone, you know, on on an app. I do a short devotional, say a prayer, and then I just take about ten minutes. lean back, close my eyes. Sometimes I'm not gonna lie, listen, if my boss is listening to this, please don't write me up. Once in while, you I'll get that like you know what I yeah. doesn't happen very often, but and I set my alarm because just in case, right? But I close my eyes and I just take about 10 minutes just being it's still quiet and being still. and since I started doing that, man, it has like what a game changer, right? Like it's amazing when we be still in the yeah. Yes, I know. Again. Yeah, yeah. God says do, and I sometimes I say, Well what if I do it this way? What if I do this and I do twenty devotionals and I do all the other things? And God's like, be still and know that I'm God. Yeah. So we were joking. four the four is gone thing, yeah, shut up. Yeah. So we were joking w we were talking about first starting this, and there's been multiple times through my life where God has kind of like steered me back in the right direction, right? Of once where God was 100% like no. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And I actually, again, God's telling me to do something. And I'm like, what if I do it this way, right? And I'm like, man, you know what my church needs? My church needs a connect group or a Sunday school class just for better. That's what we need, right? And dude, I had myself like sold, right? My wife's like, Yeah, I mean if you think that's kinda like that's it's a great idea, right? You know, talks to the church, you're like, yeah, I mean like, you know, you think that's you know. and then one of our pastors was like, he's like, Well I'm gonna ask this question. Like, what's that mean? He's like, Have you prayed about it? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure I have, right? Right. Sure I have. No. Right. And so I'm like Dude our pastor, you know, he does the altar call at the end of pretty much every service, right? You know, and I'm like, you know what? Pastor's right, I need to go pray about this, right? So here I am on my knees at the stage, right? You know, the praise team's up there doing don't even know what they're playing, right? Right. And I'm like, Hey God, like like I this is what I wanna do. Bless what I already have decided. Yeah, that's what I wanna do. That's like, no. Yep. No. S stand up, take your butt back to your seat and sit out. Mm-hmm. Alright, very well. Yes, sir. Absolutely. And then literally not even a week. week later, I don't even know how our conversation got started. But like not even a week later. Yeah. F is like like somehow we texted back and forth. It was a I sent you a Facebook video. Like a funny Facebook video about faith or something like that. And and it was something about faith. He seems to and I and I responded back to him, I was like, dude, man, I'm like, I just want you to know that that you like inspire you know what I mean. and he's like, Yeah, well, you know, we kinda talked for minutes and he's like and since we don't work together anymore or Right, hey man, let's get together and have lunch, just and then before you know 'cause I was asking you, I was like, I think there's like there's there's something there was something stirring. my spirit for me to be like look there's a there's a ministry opportunity that you can have and and I say that I I say that there was something in my spirit like it's all about me. It wasn't like there was like there was a nagging like there's nothing like when I start like it's weird because when I start feeling like there's a physical like I can feel a pull on the back like I can point out my shoulder blade back here when I start thinking about this stuff like that area starts to feel like a pull. And I don't know if it's got trying to tell me to pull towards it or something trying to pull me away from it. But the more we've leaned into this, the more it's going I'm like, I I'm thinking about I was like, Hey, I there's some kind of ministry opportunity or something like that. So like I start classes Monday is when the the Two classes that I'm taking online start for me to finally utilize my GI Bill for what it means to be to go get a degree. we were talking hold on hold Maybe one day you'll catch up with this guy with his twenty seven degrees hanging up. So you were talking about like you you have those times where God's like, Hey, you know, you find out that he's ri there one of those times where I could tell you that like it caught he caught me in the middle of me brushing my teeth. Like dead middle of me brushing my teeth. That's what I was like thinking I was thinking but thought training first thing in the morning. I cannot remember how I got on a thought train where I like, I'm never gonna go back. Like I was a one spe same way I was against church, I'm like, I'm never going back to school. And then like like yeah, I'm never useless. I don't need I don't need no dad gonna use this degree. I make I make decent money now, like this, that and the other and then like I after like Like making decision, committing to it, and like I'm this is what I'm doing. I'm doing it, it's gonna suck, it's gonna be hard. Yeah. I'm gonna drag my feet through everything, but I'm going to have to sit down and do this. And like, it was like something from the Holy Spirit, all I could imagine was like and this I know God has a sense of humor with us too, but there was like it was the like a it looked like in my head, I remember seeing like a in the Facebook Instagram message or like a text message through it and then the Dave Chappelle meme where he's like, Gotcha That's all I could imagine in my head. And like it did, it wasn't just that I saw that, it was like it's weird because there was like a feeling that hit me, but was just like this is from me. Yeah. Like, that's it. You get a solid confirmation in your soul that it was like, this is from me. Yeah. And man, it was so cool. I had to go I had to go tell my pastor, but I was like, I was brushing my teeth this morning, and it was like literally. Gotcha. And that's a blessing because that doesn't happen. I mean it it we don't often get that and when you do it's such a blessing to know. You start seeking those opportunities again and again and again. Not just the confirmation, but you're like, I just want it. I want it that closest. That's the second of knowing you that well, I want it again. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. That's the high that I'm chasing right there. Yeah. Yeah. And better one. So you do a lot of stuff. I mean, right now you work for the school district. Yep. I know you're You're at the district now, right? I'm at the district office. You're one of them now. Are you are you still coaching? yeah. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. That was part of the stipulation to take the job is that I still got to coach? man. how do you use especially now that you're at the district, right? How do you use that opportunity? I'm stealing Dasner because he's the one that highlighted this, but I think this is a good way to kinda get over our next topic. I know you you don't have all evening. we could probably sit here and talk about this all evening, though. how do you use what you do for work, coaching and working at at the school district? How do you use that to advance the gospel? How do you use that to to share to share Christ? man. Lot of different ways. same as when I was in the classroom, because you're in a work environment and there are some people that are w that that that are full blown John the Baptist and I don't care if I get fired, whatever, I'm not one of them. I think sometimes that defeats the purpose, right? Right. Absolutely, because I don't want to look like the Bible tells us very clearly that you know there there are there are people that we're supposed to obey and and authorities that we and so I'm not gonna go rogue and and you know just start, you know sharing the gospel. There's a there's scripture about living a peaceful life. Right. Peaceful life Yeah with the people around you. Yeah. Yeah. But what I love to do is open opportunities for people to ask me, and I did this in the classroom all the time too, on the very first day. I would let them know something about me. And of course I'd always mention I'm also a licensed and ordained you know preacher outside of here, blah blah blah. And just that's it. Just let sit there. So that would let them and and everybody I work with knows that also. So it opens doors to for people to ask me questions, which is awesome. Same thing with the golf team. And with them, even more so, it was better. I made sure it was okay. So I talked to all of them and like None of y'all are gonna turn me in, right? If we pray before I I w now if you don't want to, it's fine. You're it's not gonna be part of like how you're judged whether you're gonna get to play or not. You know, not at all. So if if you're not comfortable with that. They automatically start whatever park. Okay. But it was so awesome because all of them were like, no, absolutely. And then they were s they swore it 'cause after the first one we we we placed better than they had ever placed in the first tournament and they're like, that had to been wild. that all the time. I'm like, hey, it couldn't have hurt, I'll tell you that. But yeah, it it's been awesome to use that. But that's my main trick is making sure that I'm just sharing personal information about me, which allows them to be able to ask questions and it never fails. Do you feel like it's kind of a I don't want to say we're tricking people into asking about the gospel like if we're like I think it gives them safety to know like okay or if you're just upfront about it like Hey, this is something or hey, do you mind a do you mind if I pray for you? Or do you mind if I pray? Like I got this, this, and this going on? Absolutely. Hey, and like I I had a way that I was gonna rephrase the question, then I went Windows ninety five blue screen on That's all right. That's all right. But th do you think that like there's a not tricking people into it, but Hey, I don't know what you believe. Yeah. Like this, this, and this seems like something that can have. Yep. Like that and not being a jerk about it. Yeah. Like being polite about it. And then a lot of times I've noticed recently what you get is a Yeah, I mean, like or there might be some confusion or a little bit of like Other thing most people were like, Hey, yeah, that's you know, that's a really good thing. I I I believe that too. This is what my pastor taught about at church. Absolutely. Yeah. I think if we're just open and upfront about who we are, like I always tell that this is me outside of here, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, so you know, whatever and then you can take or leave that with whatever. And a lot of times that You know, they'll they'll ask if if they're curious, they'll ask questions. If they're a believer, they're like, great. Yeah. Another one I think it's then also if they're flat out not, what I'm not gonna do is I'm not gonna sit here and I'm not gonna get into into a debate. Right. I'm not gonna try and use this opportunity to convince you that you need salvation because this is not the chance or the opportunity for me to this is not the environment a lot of time for me to do that. I will leave it as is. Yeah. Because if I can't give like what you're gonna and whoa God of Jackson, big maybe church pastor out of Jacksonville. I watched some of his podcasts and stuff a good bit. Named Johnny Martin. Read his book, Stand Firm and Act Like Men. Freaking awesome book. Like I love that book. but he says, he's I don't know where he might have got it for somebody else, but he says, I don't even bother my time with people that don't know that they need salvation. If you can't acknowledge the the first thing you need the that you need To need or to understand is that you need to come short of the glory of If you don't think if you don't if you don't think you you need to understand your need for a savior. If you don't understand or think that you need a savior, then that's that's the thing for you. Yeah. I I can't show you, but eventually when you come to that realization and you want to come talk, then I'm happy to share anything else about you. Absolutely. But until you understand that the the need there, yeah, you're not gonna think that you need it. You're just gonna want to debate and argue with it. No, and I know You know what's crazy though? I don't do the debating. What's crazy about about people that are like that, right? And and and what man I love what you do, right? You're like, hey, this is me. Right, this is what do here. This is what I do outside of here, right? And and What you don't realize though, is if you le if you live the example. Yeah. Right? If you live the example of Christ, then you don't honestly, you don't have to argue with them, right? Yep. Because what will happen, one of two things is gonna happen, right? What we hope to happen is that they see our example. Yep. And they they realize that they need salvation. And if they don't come to me and they go to Daff or they go to you or they go to a pastor or the I don't care where they go. Yeah. If they go somewhere else and they and that's where they learn the gospel, and as long as I you know if I planted that seed, you know, there's a lady in our church, she says this all the time, she said it's not my job to save people. It's not my job. It's my job to live like him. To plant the seed so that he can save people. Your salvation is nowhere is dependent on nothing that I do. Absolutely not. We can't do anything. And it's it and the Bible provides us an examples of how it's a multi step process. Paul planted, Apollo swatted, and God provides the increase. Like you never know who might be, you know, w we're all part of that that process. And so for some people it's short. For people like me it took decades. You know, like okay, yeah, finally getting around. Or yeah, people like me who it was about same as me. Yeah, people like me who it was short and then decided that I was gonna jump overboard for a little while and go do my own thing. Go have fun. Yeah, I was gonna have Because everybody thinks they're missing out on something when they it's like, I gotta do this, this and this, or I'm not ready because I God knows I'm missing out on all the fun. Yeah. Once you really accept Christ and you really know what it's like to walk in communion with him and have the Holy Spirit then you you're not missing out on anything. You're not missing out on anything. And what you are missing you don't want. And that's the thing is he removes that like all those things you thought you were going to miss out on, you just don't need to It's amazing what really amazed me was like how quick that happened. Yeah. Like it's pretty yeah, that's it's it's like once you dive into it, yeah. What amazed me is how quickly that happened where like there were certain things I'm okay, open confession time, I had a bad problem with pornography and it was probably a time where I had a bad problem with my drinking. I was not an alcoholic, but I had a bad problem with my drinking. Amanda didn't have a problem with my drinking. Right. I had a problem drinking. I would go and sometimes I would I would drink in a in up a third or half a bottle of whiskey down a night. Yeah. Or every every other night. And that was just for me to go to sleep. And I'm gonna say it's not because I had a bunch of PTSD from the from the military. Like there were some things that residual like that came over from that that like that there were some things that translated to that and then law enforcement did not help that. Your current job is probably Yeah, especially with and where I have worked and some of that stuff, like it's some of that stuff is bananas. Yeah. And then I look back and I like wunkers. grew up and then coming back there and working as a law enforcement officer and then moving away from there again, I realized I was like, this is not normal. Like this town is not a normal battle. Like if anybody does not know Warren's work, South Carolina is not normal as far as like when you got a town, the city limits itself had there's I think it's like thirteen thousand people that reside there, but there's way more than that. Plus you have students who are not technically residents of the city. Right. South Carolina, State Univers or South Carolina State University and Claflin University right there with it. And the crime rate in that place per capita for like six years straight at one point was higher than Atlanta for violent crime. It was around the one corridor. Not normally. Like that's not you got you had a one in eleven chance of just visiting there and being a victim of a violent crime. That was a statistic a couple years ago. Yeah. I did not realize that that was not normal. Right. Like not everybody living out in, you know, just a few miles outside the city limits has their dad get shot in the back with and leather belt with a twenty-two from a drug deal from the neighbor going next door. Your next door neighbor in the trailer doesn't have like almost a bank system with a pipe PVC pipe set up where he's selling drugs. And people were he shoot he had a air hose that would with a PVC pipe that he shot like he would I don't know how he did this, but he had it. Like he would people would come and leave the money in the mailbox and then go pop the front the top cap. off his the little the metal fence post and like would pull drugs out of there. Like I I don't know how they found out that he was doing this. Wow. It was wild. It was crazy. One day I called me one At work and I screamed and he's like, hey, he's like, hey, what do you know? What what's going on with this shooting over here by the house? It was the same house, different people living in it. Dad's talking about him and my mom laying on the floor because apparently the guy inside there was having a drug freak out and was just firing outside towards the people who anybody that was showing up, he didn't know that it was the police out there, but anybody that was showing up, he just blasting through the walls, and my dad and my mom were laying on the floor at two in the morning flat. Like Yeah, that's not a normal there are places in the I even know where I was in the United States. I don't know where I I don't know where I was going with that for a minute. It's yeah. It it it what was my original point? You're you were talking about how you had I mean being grow growing up like the through all that medicate yourself. So last year around Father's Day, I my Father's Day last year, twenty twenty six was or twenty twenty five was my first day. I felt the need to go to church. And I was like, Hey, we're in Tried to get my kid at vacation Bible school that week. Mm-hmm. I guess that was not the time because all three of us got sick that week. And we ended up not being able to take Tristan to vacation Bible school. So we showed up church on Sunday morning and I didn't realize at the time, but I had brought my younger brother, who is technically my half-brother. He's not my not my dad's kid, but my dad has raised him his entire life. Right. he knows who his dad is, that's a whole other story. And my nephew, my wife's cousin's little kid, there's a whole nother story about why his dad is not present. his life and that's that's not for me to tell but he doesn't have a dad and like mm-hmm so and he he's really good he's a really awesome kid I've known him since he was a baby and I just brought him to church with me on Father's Day I went up there, I cried with our pastor. We I I asked him for like, hey, I am seeking God's help. I don't know how to pray this. I am just seeking God's help on helping me be a better man and a better father. Right. Man, the turnaround on look the return on investment when it came to that stuff was like amazing. Like it the the I love here. The need for porn, like gone. Like legitimately I'm not saying I don't like have problems with lust or whatever, like there's a difference between acknowledging that like somebody looks like somebody looks pretty and like, okay, cool, that's a good looking per woman or whatever, versus saying I need that or I want that. Like or I wanna take from what is another a female image bearer of God something that is not mine. Absolutely. And then also It's not my wife. I had a lot of shame and a lot of problem with that. I will talk openly about it, not trying to glorify it, but yeah. I had a problem. Yeah. I had a problem needing a a substance to put me to sleep at night. Now nowadays, like I go to sleep saying the Lord's Prayer. I get about halfway th and like I s I I say the Lord's Prayer and I go through it. If I need to go to sleep, I'll go in there, I'll go get on my knees and pray at my bedside. Then as I'm going to sleep, one whisper of prayer over my wife. Pray the Lord's prayers and I go line by line, thinking about it, not just saying it just to repeat it, but thinking about it. I barely make it halfway through before I fall asleep. And the peace that you get falling asleep in your dad's arms is like, You you don't get better sleeping than No, you don't. And that turnaround on and then like all this stuff started happening and my want for that. changed within months. It did not take long. No. No, yeah, no. Yeah, well you're truly heartfelt asking God to change you. Yeah. And you gotta like you gotta realize your lack. You're you're you gotta realize the lack of what you need. Yeah. And that goes back to the thing of if you don't understand your need for s for a savior, you're not gonna want that need. Yeah. So and like for a while before going to church, one of the biggest things and this is I don't know, it was weird. I I don't know why I would always think this thought process. And I started using it to talk to the teens a little bit. where I'm like, all right, if you just go back and think, like just in your head, think about the amount of history that has happened in the world. before you ever got here. How much of an intimate knowledge of that and experience, not just a knowledge of it, but how much of that experience have you participated in? And think about what that feeling is like before ex before you even had a sentience or an existence or anything like that. How how does that feel? A lot of people say empty. That emptiness that you feel right there, okay, my thought process went from there is like, okay, when I'm when I'm gone, am I gonna Now that I have sentience, I have a a life, I can acknowledge things. Is that emptiness gonna be the same thing that I feel? Dead? And if it is, I don't want it. Mm-mm. I don't want it. Yeah. And the only way that I found to feel that is not at the bottom of a bottle. It's not in another religion. Cause before some things went topsy turvy in my life, and before we went to this, There was a time where I was like looking into like north like doing the cool veteran thing and going North Pagan and stuff like that. Like the mythology and stuff is cool. The stories are cool. Like the elaboration of it all is I like good stories. I like good stories too. But you don't get better than the good story that's in here. No, not a story man the other day. Yeah. This is not a s this is not just a story. He didn't even notice how this was Make of him, did he? I think he's bored with us already. But it's it's not that. It's that I didn't want that emptiness. And that w when I went up there to talk to talk to Pastor Burt and like asked for that, it took me years to even realize like that is what I went there. I went there completely empty to somebody who knew what was going on and he helped me with it. And it wasn't just that, but immediately the cup started getting filled. And now I'm looking at how do we pour this cup over to somebody else? How do you pass this along to other people? So they don't have to fill it up. And then you gotta get in in your own word, or not in your word, but in his word, right? In your Bible. Yeah. And do things like what we're doing here. And now, you know, you go from a little cup that's full, then you start building your cup bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah. So that way you can help pour into other people's cups. But pouring your cup out, when you drain your cup empty. Make sure you fill it. Make sure you fill it back up. But I don't want to like Tim Tebow in a in a bunch of his interviews. Recently. Tim Tebow. I don't know. I like Tim Tebow. I used to not like him when we were in high when we were in the Rigor. And like I was like, you know, there's that. He's talking about he's authentic. He's been like, a lot of people are so surprised by how he is when you meet him in person. I'd love to meet in person one day. That'd be amazing. but he says that I don't want to he he made a statement on I think it was the Sean Ryan show the first time I heard him say it. I don't want to get to heaven tired or get to heaven and not be tired. Yep. That's what man. Wow. I he's been doing. Yes. And then he like have you seen the Sean Ryan show with that? Him talking about his his story about how he like was not supposed to be warm. Yep. And then it's like now what's amazing. Yeah, it's it's crazy. But speaking of speaking of now going into pouring into other people's cup, how or when did you feel God's call for you to get into the ministry that you were in? Like what did that look what did that journey look like for you? Wow. Specifically to ministry, not to ministry. We've gone through how you've ran from God for so long. How did that how did that 180 for you into Not only are you running from him, now you're pushing other to the front of the line. So when I finally decided to really not just go to church also, but give my life so I need to make this quick, but so it's not all crazy. But when I first I'm I'm an all or nothing person. So when I go into something, I'm like, okay, there's no way to do this halfway. So I started going it and I saw it a ton it when I was a pastor too. I started going to church and probably a month into it, I was like, I'm definitely called to preach. That's it. So I'm meeting with the I'm trying to meet with the pr the pastor there. That's what I need to be doing. That right there. And guess what he said? No. Pray about it. Have you prayed about it? And you need to let's let's slow down. Maybe you need to pray about this for a while. you're wrong. So that that I don't need to wait for anything. But luckily just circumstances change that. I was like, you know what? He's probably right. I don't need to be doing that. Because then I started really getting into my word and getting into and I was like, yeah, no, I actually want nothing to do with that. And I started really reading the Bible. I was like, never mind, that's not what I thought about. I do not. And then we ended up going to a s really small church. We got invited to there, and and the pastor that ordained me. When I heard him speak, I was like, This this guy, I don't know why there's not a thousand people here. Like 'cause everybody needs to hear him. but still wasn't I did not want to preach, I wanted to serve. So I started doing sound, I started doing stuff, whatever. He's the one that told me. He said, You know you're called to preach, right? I went, you know, you're crazy, right? Literally, that's exact exact quotes. And he's like, You'll see. And then he just left it alone. And What really got me to think I used to watch how hard he worked and there was nobody else because it was a small church, like he he could never take a week off. And I finally, by seeing that and seeing how much he poured into us, I was like, I'll tell you what, like you said like If I can help you, I'll do whatever. Like I can do a like a Bible study or something one Sunday for whatever. And he's like, no, no, you're gonna you're gonna preach. We'll see. So that's kind of how it came about. I was like, I'll help you. But then I'm like, but If I'm gonna do this, I really need to I want to be properly trained. So not just by him, so then I started going to school. I started going to seminary. And and and long story short, I started preaching a little bit there, but it really hit me. when I really knew that's what I was supposed to do, and it wasn't just a temporary, you're just helping out, is I used to work like several jobs and I was Used to clean the gym overnight. and I was mopping the j entire gym floor and listening to music, and it's the only time I think I've really heard God's voice. And he said y and he just confirmed to me, like you are this is what you're supposed to be doing, and you're going to lead people to Christ, and you're gonna do it from the pulpit. And I literally just fell down, I was like bawling like a big Nobody else. Just me in a gym at two in the morning, just bawling like a baby, like wha 'cause like that feeling you said when you know. It's like no, you're not just doing this to help out. No, you're not doing this. You're doing this because this is what I'm calling you to do. Mm-hmm. And and like my pastor used to say, you can quit a job but you can't can't quit a calling. That's like, you know, you are y'all getting any more of these spam robot calls? yeah, I get them all. yeah, man. So you start ignoring does it reduce them any more any less? Right. No. It doesn't. No. I mean so The phone calls a little bit. The text messages, no. I think I think what they've done is they've switched over elves. What I'm getting at is like the more you ignore a calling, the more your phone starts ringing. yeah. Yeah. And then you pick it up, you pick it up. Sometimes you don't hear anything. Yeah. And I only put that together later. I would see f between that time and then like all the doors that were opened and all the things that were confirming it and people that I didn't even really know, you know, said Saying that, yeah, I I may remember one particular at a gas station. I didn't know this person, but somebody was like, hey, can I and I thought they were crazy, like, can I tell you something? God told me to tell you that you're going to impact people with his word. I was like Okay, buddy. Yeah, good job. And it's just it's phenomenal what God does. Not long before we started this podcast, Amanda sent me a video and it it kind of you reminded me of this is where like the the girl it was a girl she was talking about making a decision on a job change or something like that. And like you know, it was a she was a crit really she was a Christian and knows her content she was talking about and then you know she's like I'm praying about it, asking God would it do this, that, and the other. And she's like, it hit me one day when My husband asked me, he's like, What's your whale? And she was like, What? He's like, What's your will? He's like, You you keep being told that you need to do something and eventually God's gonna send a whale to find you and spit you out back in the shore. You can end up in the belly of a big fish. Yeah. So then it's like like she she was like that reversed my whole thinking about it. Like do I wanna be snatched up in the middle of a and a lot of people forget about the the beginning portion of that where like there was tragedy after tragedy after tragedy being brought upon upon Jonah in the in the on the boat. And then to the point they were gonna throw him overboard. Then the fish they throw him overboard like. I know you gotta be somewhere, but it sure ain't here. It's the only time there were guys like, you what, you're right, this is me. And they're like, get off. Yeah. I mean, it's a prime example though of what happens when we keep running from our calling. Like you're going to, it may not be that kind of calamity, but it's gonna be. Like you're constantly, you're just never gonna be walking in the steps that he's ordered for you until you relent, until you yield, you know. It's I mean this this is a perfect example, right? I mean it's I can't You fight the submission and the meekness that you need. Yeah. And then not realizing what meekness ni is. Meekness is not weakness. That's what people don't understand. And Meekness from what I understand about the actual like original term is it is it was something used in like horses in in the equestrian like old Middle Ages to prep a horse for battle. It w being having a meek horse was a horse that would obey whatever the rider the Lord was doing, the Lord over the land that was riding. finally relinquished the reins of whatever it was doing over to it. So what happens to horses that are meek? are typically building stronger muscle. Right. They are typically living longer lives. And they are at the limb of the person that rides. Right. And they go where they where they're directed. Where they're there's not a fight there. No. But they are still the strong. Like the stronger. And they're better off and they're stronger because just like that rider has the best interest of the horse in in his heart. They know more about where they're going than the horse does. They know and God always has Our best interest at heart. Yep. Always. The the rider on the horse never wants his horse to die. No, absolutely not. Yeah. That's a really good analogy. I like that. It's amazing. well guys, we've been at this for I don't even know. It's probably been about two hours. yeah, we've been at it for about two hours now. so we should probably Let Kevin go take care of his life before she one final question real quick. Yeah man. Just so we can hit this we w we highlighted it. what's your favorite scripture before we go? Romans eight thirty one. wait, you gotta tell us why. Hold on. I'm gonna have to you wanna read it? Sure. I should have glasses. I'll read it for you. I got it. I would let you borrow a lot of I don't think I don't think mod are gonna help you, man. Yeah, no, it's good. It's perfect. I'll i I can quote it, but I'll read it straight out of here. what then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Well Amen, amen, and amen. That's why it's my favorite because I mean I spent a lot of my life fighting and thinking fighting God, fighting his will for my life, but it perfectly fits what we just talked about there. He wants what's best for us. And if God is for us, then we don't need to worry about all the things that seemingly are against us. Because if he's for us and we know we're doing his will, he's going to work, as the Bible also says, all those things together for our good. there's a second part to that for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. So if we're doing that, if we love him, if we're called according to his purpose, if we're doing him, doing what he's called us to do, he's gonna work all that together for our good because if he's for us, nothing can be against us. It's for our good. Yeah. For his purpose. Which kinda Which is our good. Which is our good. Like that's how a a relationship works, isn't it? Like I The purpose is our purpose is to glorify him. Yeah. And that like now I don't want I don't want to do crap else with my life. Right. Like whatever whatever position he puts me in, put me there to to do it. Yeah. Like and like you're doing a great job with that. Like and we were talking about you you being like Like you say that you put this at the forefront of conversation. For three years of working with you at the school, I never knew that. As a matter of fact, I didn't know that until we started doing this and then Shalanda told me that you were you were a pastor or no, she came to me and was talking to me, asking me what I was reading one day I 'cause I had my Bible open reading at work 'cause you know I had I was just doing it. Yeah. And I leave both my doors open. I got the mirror window, so I can I can listen if ain't nobody beating anybody up, then you can sit in your face and I'm just kidding. You know, unless they need people well, I don't know, some things have changed with the new administration, so it's a little different. Not saying it's bad. Some of it was like a rough road to get there. But she came in, she was and she was like, yeah, and then she started talking about the church that y'all attended and stuff like that. And I could tell you she's a very godly woman where you can really tell that she is you know like and it's not something that you like advertised that like that. And to your credit, when she told me that you had passed her church, I like That makes sense. That makes sense. It's it's and I was like, okay, s because there was a lot of conversations that you had had with me that like and it was about law enforcement. So we didn't get into your law enforcement. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't make it to that. Anytime. And it's but it was I was like, that is that's that's cool. And they I didn't realize how much of a thing you were pouring into me and how much of an example you were so like when it got brought to brought to light there it all made sense. Like you yeah live such good lives that or live such good life among the pagans that on the day that he comes they will glorify God. I might have misquoted that a little bit, yeah. But as First Peter one or First Peter two twelve one twelve something like that. I got a shirt with it. That's but it I didn't even know. you r you you sir live such a good life or such a life that emulates Christ that when it's brought people's attention they're like that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't I this is about this is about him, right? This is about God. Yes. a hundred percent. But but we do have to man, I I don't think you truly realize how much of an impact you've had on me and and like it's thank you. That's what you pray for. Yeah. So you know you said earlier that you know as a pastor sometimes you're like you're like, man, like I want to see the results. Yeah. Well, I will tell you that that at least in me, probably in Daphne too, you you're looking at some of the results. So and that's just once again, that's God answering our prayer. Yes. You've been one of the many things that get to pour into us and now we get to pour in our kids. Yeah. That's what it's all about. Yeah. So we'll definitely have to get you back going, man. We didn't even man there's some stuff on here that we need to talk about that we didn't get to. Something about a burn barrel? Anyway, I would have probably Right of our whatever, man. The police has got some police officers. So so we're gonna have we're definitely gonna have to do this again. one, I don't think our listeners have the attention span of like a twelve hour podcast. No. and two, Do you got any questions for us before we go? Yeah. Gotta ask that. man, no, that's No, I mean not no questions, but I do you know I just want to encourage you guys to keep doing. It's very easy, trust me, from somebody who's doing it and I'm kind of or was doing on a hiatus because I job change and all that to get caught up in the how many views do I get and the analytics end of it. But just know that you know and my wife used to tell me this all the time when I would do it and I would spend hours editing it and then there'd be 43 views. She's like, Well, if one person saw that and it changed. their life then isn't that more than enough and I'll be like yeah you know but I mean yeah man it just be encouraged that you guys are doing the Lord's work you know and I'll use her words and if one person is impacted or changed by this You know, you're not doing it for monetization, you're doing it for the love of the Lord and and shake their hand. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's all I yeah. Yeah. Amen. So th yeah, that would be all I'd say is just man, I love that y'all are doing this and just you know, s keep encouraged and and and keep doing God's work and following his his his will for your life. Awesome. do you have any closing thoughts before we wanna get See if he wants to lead us in a closing prayer. Yeah, let's so for everybody watching and listening, obviously you can watch us on all those crazy platforms, Spotify, iHeart, man, I don't even know what all they are. Yeah. Main one, you two, if you like what you like. If you don't like something or we're wrong on something, comment and let us know. Yeah. We will try to look at it and engage with it in the middle of the hour. And if if you want to come on the show, tell us your story, tell us your testimony, man. We'd love to have you. leave a comment, send us an email, we'll put all that stuff in the comments and all that good stuff. so without further ado, Kevin, if you want, man, we would love to have you pray us out again, man. Absolutely, let's do it. Father God, in the name of Jesus, Lord, God, we just thank you. Lord, we thank you for who you are. Lord, we thank you for for God, just what you've been to us and through us in our lives, Father God. So, God, we just pray that even right now, Lord, that you would use this platform, that you would use this message, that you would use these two men, Father God, to reach people for your name's sake, Father God. Because we know that your word tells us that when you are lifted up, you will draw all. Men unto yourselves. So, Father God, let them continue to lift you up. Let them continue to magnify and glorify you through word, action, and deed, Father God. We just thank you for their willingness to, Lord, just to let their light shine, Father God. And we just ask that you continue to encourage them, continue to fill their cup up, Father God. And for those that are watching this, Father God, that they would come into a love relationship with Jesus Christ. Because the Bible tells us as we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus. And we believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Don't let this moment pass you by. If you don't know Jesus in the pardoning of your sins, he tells us that he's standing at the door and knocking, and if you let him in, he'll come in and he'll sup with you. So don't let this moment pass you by. All you have to do is pray a simple prayer like this. Lord, I'm a sinner and I know that I need a savior. Come into my heart and life and become my Lord and Savior. And if you pray something like that, you will be saved and you'll be able to be written into the Lamb's book of life. So we just thank you, Lord, and we love you for all that you've done and all that you will do, Father God. Now into Him who's able to keep us from falling and present us spotless before the presence of His Majesty with exceeding joy. To the only wise God we glory, power, and dominion both now and forevermore. If you love the Lord, say amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. God bless you. All right. Thank you. We'll see you guys next time. God bless. Adios.