Latest / The HighDive / Ep. 11 | Stories of Hope | Victory over Demons and Darkness

Transcript

Ep. 11 | Stories of Hope | Victory over Demons and Darkness · The HighDive

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hello everybody, and welcome back to the High Dive Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: We are so glad that you were here.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think, Joseph, this is now like episode 11 or 12, I think, of this podcast.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's been great.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if you're finding us for the first time, this is the High Dive Podcast.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's a podcast of Calvary Baptist Church.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so our target audience are the people of our church, but anybody on the web, I pray that if you hear this, you're blessed and encouraged.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: If, in fact, if you don't have a church near you and you can't get near us, reach out to us.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: We would love to help you find a local group of believers that you can connect with.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so, Joseph, we're glad you're here today, man.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for uh being up.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: This is kind of this stories of hope.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've been sitting down with different people in our church, kind of hearing their story of where the Lord's brought them from, where they are now.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: So uh maybe let's just start with where you are now.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like tell us about Joseph and your family and all that fun stuff.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, where I'm at now is a place where I thought I never really would be.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that is kind of what I want to make sure I I convey in this this conversation is that ending, you know, it's kind of starting with hope and ending with hope.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that I never thought I would be in a place where I would have a wife who's as amazing as she is.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just incredible.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Who loves the Lord and is always has always been there for me.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like having her and then having my having children, having children at all, like I mean that has been the coolest, one of the coolest things I've seen happen in my life that again I never thought I would have.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so just seeing the Lord in my life now is amazing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing his grace has been crazy because I'm the kind of person who looks at my life and I'm just like, there's no way.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way I deserve any of these amazing things that God's given me.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And even like to the extent of like, why?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why why did you allow for someone like me to have this?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I am I am blown away um by his grace in my family, just seeing that picture, like having children who and I think about the time is as hard as it is for my kids when I leave the house to go to work, there's a part of me that's like this sounds probably a little weird at first, but like how the part of me that is happy, how sad they are, but it's that that's not really what I mean, but it just shows me that how much they do really love me.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, and to be loved, like to see that love like that, um, man, it's uh it's really big.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: That is huge.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And again, because I'm a person who never really thought he deserved or any kind of love like that, and to see that in my family is uh it's really moving.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wish they weren't so sad when I'd leave for work.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I know I I feel bad, but I gotta do this.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I uh kind of in the present, there's two things, observations I want to make about you that I just admire.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um like you, your home is open.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is it one night a week?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's just kind of like I think Sunday nights.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Whoever wants to come, like, why do you do that?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Where did that start?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we we had some friends uh a long time ago.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: They would do this thing called family dinner, and they'd always have a whole bunch of folks over.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And me and Amy started going to it, and we were like, man, we really like this, just really warm, and it's a time to share a meal and hang out.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, it's not like we were having crazy significant conversations about whatever.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We just were together, and we always loved that.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we said one day we'll, you know, when we have a house, we we would love to have that thing, and so sure enough, and that's another, you know, God's story of just Him giving us this place to have so that we could open it up to people.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, I I never felt there's a lot of times in my life where I didn't feel very welcomed.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't feel again, like moments where I didn't feel like I was cared for that much, and so I I wanted to do that to other people.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because I even I think in the worst of times, I still really wanted to just care for people.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so we started, you know, we we got into I think we tried it a little bit before we got to Calvary, but Calvary's where it really kind of latched on, and we've we definitely have our core group of people that come over every you know Sunday night.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, if the kids aren't sick, if somebody's not sick, but uh then whoever else comes, we've had friends bring friends from other churches, so it's become this little community at our house.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to make sure that it's like a safe place, like yeah, and I think that's the big thing is that I I've always needed that safe place.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want to, and and the safest place that I can think of is a place where there are other people who love Jesus and who want to walk that life together.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So even if we're not explicitly talking about the Lord, like we are together and we know, like for you to know that you're safe in my house, like that means a great deal to me.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what I'm trying to create in that environment.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we love you, like we just want you to be there.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to I want to I want to cook, I love cooking.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you make a mean cheesecake by that.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have I appreciate that.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, so some people may not have known that about you now.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: They also probably know, like they just, oh yeah, he's the guy, you know, in a cutoff shirt and a big beard that's playing every instrument on the stage.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I um I didn't prep you for this question, but it is not uncommon for you to uh if you're leading a song, to really get overwhelmed by the emotion.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, where does that come from?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny because I'm like, I hate that.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I love it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because I'm like, man, I'm trying to lead a song.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to lead a God.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I can't leave this.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and that's how it's always been.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and it's it's kind of like a weird, it's a weird place because I I'm trying to lead the congregation and the song, and when it's broken up by me crying, like I just like it's hard to lead.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't, how are you gonna leave through somebody crying over a song?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: But that's been a thing since I think I've known the those those true moments, what I would call true moments of freedom in Christ, because my life has been a struggle to I feel like to stay inside of those moments.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um there are these times in in what I I should, you know, in music, because I know worship is a lot of things, but I'll call it, you know, worship as in music.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And those moments, ah, see, there it is.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's that breath that I can find in those moments where I'm singing to the Lord, and I hear, I hear the congregation singing, and this, you know, we are praising God, and I'm remembering, I'm remembering what He's done for me.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Though that's why I become so overwhelmed, and I just I can't, I said I can't stop it.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot for the life of me.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: If as much as I want to try to stop just sobbing in the middle of this song, I can't because I know like God saved me.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like He He saved me.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm probably gonna cry like 7,000 times in this podcast, but like He saved me.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: He saved me from a crazy world that I chose for myself.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why that's why I get that way.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I get so overwhelmed because I was so sick and tired of living in these horrible places, um these really dark places, and so man, those moments are so free.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely so nice.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I just everything about it is just perfect.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like those are the heaven moments for me.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I don't know what heaven's like.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it's like at all, but I can imagine that if it's even a taste of something like that, then like I'm sold, like because having even like you know, a song is what two minutes long, like having like a cup, like a two-minute period of time where you feel free.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, where you feel like nothing else matters, you feel like you truly can just rest and finally be safe.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's why that's why it happens that's beautiful.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: It and it I and I I don't ever want you to feel like that's a bad thing, it's a beautiful thing, it's a it's an inspiring thing.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it it is an invitation for others to join you in that connection.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: So it's beautiful.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe maybe let's use that as a bridge then.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we want to hear your story today, as much of it as you're comfortable sharing.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's go back to the early days.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like, um, what was life like for Joseph growing up?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, so I grew up here in Columbus.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I'm like I'm one of the only few people that are actually from here.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Funny enough, you get to talk to folks, but you have a lot of military, but I was like, nope, I'm born and raised in Columbus.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I moved away for a while, but uh, grew up here.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh dad was an administrative pastor, uh mom was a librarian and teacher.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she was librarian, she was a teacher before that, but um, you know, the youngest of four.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um but uh you know, life, young life was angry.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, unfortunately, I hate that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: I hate that I hate that what I remember, and I hate to say that because disclaimer, like, you know, I don't know where the anger really came from exactly.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I know that I had trouble, like, you know, me and my brother just never had a really good relationship as kids, but we were also kids.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was a kid too, and uh, and I in no way want to put blame on him.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I just definitely see that I think anger became more of something, and that did come from you know, some bullying here and there, but you know, we ended up, you know, kind of flash forward for a second.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: We we sat down when I was, I think I was 21 or so, after I had become a Christian, and we sat down and talked about it and kind of made sense of it all.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, well our relationship's great now.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate the relationship I have with my brother at this point in our life.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I really appreciate his love for scripture and his knowledge of it.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's somebody I call now and go to, so that's really cool to have him.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So despite all the things that, you know, I'm gonna say a couple things here, you know.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know that we had a rough go at it, but I'm sure brothers do and siblings do, but you know, I just kind of being bullied and picked on, it did take a big toll on me.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I really knew the height of that toll until kind of later on as anger turned into other things.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I just I wish I remembered more about childhood, but that's unfortunately my focus, where kind of goes to that place of like I just remember being mad, like I don't know, like were you kind of were you mad at specific people, or you're just all of your reactions to anything was an anger response?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It became like that, you know.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like I know I had like the you know bullying, but ultimately it just transferred into like I feel like every area of my life until I didn't know what was really like why I was so mad.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean this is kind of a wild thing to say, but like again, going forward, like something that my brother even told me when we got to be adults, he's like, I actually do think like you had some kind of like demonic thing going on with you as a kid.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and I was like, You really think so?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because that made sense to me.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: As weird and awful as that sounded to me, it's it made sense because the anger that I felt as a kid, and again, that's kind of what I remembered in my childhood, is like anger is like it was just it was a lot.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was heavy, it was heavy, awful anger that I just could not control.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: They would just fly off the handle and I didn't know what to do with it.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember I remember being in I don't know if it was like fourth, fifth, sixth grade area.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like I came home one day and my parents asked me a very basic question.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Very basic, not like I wasn't in trouble.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was something like, how was school or did you do your homework or something like that?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I went off the handle at them.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I went nuts.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like I started like fuming and crying, and like I got so mad, and then I started yelling at them, and very kindly they were like, What's wrong with you?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I don't think I said it in like a what's wrong with you, you broken.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: But it was like, what's wrong with you?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember going to my room and like screaming into my pillow and just literally saying, like, I don't know.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what's wrong with me.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know what's happening to me.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because like I grew up in a Christian home, like, and even I remember as a kid up on the Edgewood Baptist Church balcony, I was I don't know why we were sitting up there that day, but I was sitting up there and I said something to my dad about going down to the front, and I want I said, I want to do that, you know, I want to become a Christian.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was bare, I don't even know when that was.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: That was it had to be third grade or something, but I don't know why I said that.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was because it was this life that I was around, like that it was, you know, well, my dad was a pastor and my siblings.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: We all grew up in the church, and like this was I think that was it.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, in fact, it was.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was third grade, which yeah, it was third grade because I remember going to school, and then my teacher was like, Hey, Joseph became a Christian yesterday, and I was like, Ugh.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I remember thinking, like, don't look at me, like, don't like so I don't know.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I just adopted my parents' beliefs as a child, because I can tell you that I do not believe that it meant jack squat to me growing up.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because like all that anger and everything, it just continued to climb and build and become something else.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and then in the high school, it just got more and more.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then I feel like I was a pretty normal high schooler.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh from there everything just kind of kept building.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I want to interject there too.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think um part of that's very normal in that it's very normal for a a child who's growing up in a Christian family, growing up around church to just borrow their parents' faith.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um and I and that's certainly been my prayer for my kids.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: They're older now.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I know it's a prayer for your kids, but Lord, help them to stop borrowing my faith and start owning their own faith.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so I want to get to that point in your story when you did take ownership of your faith, but somewhere between that ownership and to where you just started with that anger, even not sharing sure where it came from, uh as you shared your story with me in the past, at some point kind of dark thoughts became part of your story.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Just as much as you're comfortable, kind of tell us uh explain that, kind of tell us some of that journey of where darkness really took hold.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's a couple points that I wonder about these things, you know.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if these things, and I'm sure they do, play a part in the later events that happen.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't really remember some things as a kid until later.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think these last five years or so, I started going, you know, that wasn't great.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there is one thing that I remembered forever, and I would like to say this just because of how sin works, is that part of my dark addiction I think stemmed in anger.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, definitely stemmed in anger, but also stemmed in sexual situations and things like that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because I remember the first time I ever saw anything.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if that's the case for everybody.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I it probably is because sin like that doesn't leave your head.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: I certainly remember the very first time I looked at anything pornographic.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was eight years old in my uncle's truck.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: I remember like it was yesterday.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's I say so I yeah, I want to bring that up because of how impactful it is.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's why I'm saying it, because that's how awful it is.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you can see beautiful things, and like for some reason, sometimes they just don't stick with you.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: But then, like, I was I don't know how old I was, but I remember the first time it was at my grandma's house and had nothing to do with her.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, she she was in a room or something, and I was watching TV and just watching cartoons or something.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And on this old, big, old box TV, I started flipping channels, and there was something there, and I'd never seen anything like that before.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I just kept watching it.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started feeling certain ways, and I didn't understand what was happening at all.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And like that was the beginning, I think, of given like back then things were a lot less accessible, which is great, but you know, now we live in this world where everything's incredibly accessible.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I think there was some deep root there, you know, because then and of course, into high school and everything, like I started getting very curious about you know, girls and sexual type things, and that was a a door that once you open, it's nearly impossible to shut.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, porn definitely porn came into the picture, and you know, then it was like magazines or you know, and then the internet kicked in and it was like yikes.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have a whole new evil now that we are wrestling with.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's so normal in the world that people don't, you know, it's like, oh, that well, looking at that stuff as normal, it's like, no, but it destroys you inside, and it's just it ended up becoming something else, like yes, and kind of like what we were saying before is that evil just becomes more evil, becomes more evil.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: But um, sorry, you'll have to do that question one more time as far as I was just simply saying, then in that bridge from where your your journey with Jesus started.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: So you started in my childhood, there's a lot of anger, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: So some sexual addiction crept in, like when when and how did darkness start to take hold?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when I really noticed it was, and I didn't notice this until later on, but there was those moments where I was very angry as a kid that there was one day particular, and I mean I know this this it's I sorry, I just struggle because it is just it's it's just weird to voice out loud.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so like there was a night where I I felt so helpless, and why I chose to just go this direction.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know it was because now like I wanted control, I wanted to feel powerful after being feeling like I'm the youngest of four, the weakest.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just I have no control of anything, and I just want to be strong, and all I am is weak and I'm useless, and I have no purpose.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so like one night I don't know why, but I just like chose to literally call on like Satan.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's what I I just evokally was like, Satan, you know, like if you are real, like I need your help.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I was a kid, I was like maybe fourth to sixth grade.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I don't know why.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like verbally was just like, let's say these things, right?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but like I did, and I was like asking for like a sign, like show me that you're real, show me that you're there.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if it was early on, because I know later on I felt I felt some kind of what I called my comfortable, uncomfortable.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was a nightmare, but I felt it and I was chasing so hard after a feeling because it was something.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't feel God.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I never like those I didn't know what that meant.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know he was there.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I but I felt evil.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And from that day, I think, is when I started to truly understand like this feels like something, but I don't think, and I don't, I don't understand what I had in invited into my world because uh the first kind of situation that had happened to me when I was younger was I was I had done that, I'd asked to be kind of shown things, and nothing happened then, but then I remember one night, like like something, and I know this is the part that kind of sounds crazy, but it's just like it is what it is.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, whatever.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like something came in my room like one night, like, and I was I wasn't asleep yet.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I I mean, I literally saw something pulling back, like my curtains.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I saw its hand come around the curtains, I saw it pull it back, I saw it coming to me, and it freaked me out so bad.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I was like, this is gotta be like some kind of weird dream thing that's happening right now.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: But like the fear that I had and was just I mean, what my eyes were actually seeing in front of me, I was like, this is uh I went like full, I don't know how old you are when you pull them over your head, but I was I was not I was not young, I was a little bit older, and I pulled the covers over my head and I started screaming, just like screaming for my dad, uh, who is a light sleeper who slept 10 feet from me, and he just never came.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like he wouldn't come.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I'm like, what's going on?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why isn't he coming?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why isn't he coming?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, something's here, like something awful is here, and he's not coming.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, I was freaking out, and and I just started praying.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, God, I don't know what's happening, right?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I just did, like, but like I I got this thing has to leave.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's gotta get out of here.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, there was a crazy fear uh in like the air that was happening, but I finally came out and nothing was there, and I went to my dad the next morning.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Where were you?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did you not hear me?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did you not hear me screaming?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was screaming, like, and he's like, I didn't hear anything last time.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean they I think they even might have been like, you probably just haven't really been like, it wasn't a dream.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a dream.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I saw I saw this thing.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I don't think I knew that like I invited something in, but like that was kind of the first thing.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then flash forward just in a kind of nutshell this next year, years that happened.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just lots more anger, lots more anger.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of just not the dark thoughts, I think, didn't come until I started uh I went to a school in Montana.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And before I went to the school in Montana, which was a Bible school uh Bible college out there, I should have known because before I went to that Bible college, I decided that I should start doing as many bad things as I can before I got to the college.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, this is my chance.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: It really was.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's what I that was actually what I thought.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I'm gonna do bad stuff before I go there.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So if I do all these bad things, you know, and so I did that.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I went to the school.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of there going on, but you know, I got to the school where I was obviously surrounded by people who did love Jesus, and that's when the darkness hit me.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, is that one night I was sitting in my room and and I was reading, I think I was even reading the Bible, and then my roommates were they were in the room too, and I just started crying.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And my room I was like, what are you, what's what's you know, what's going on?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, dude, I'm not a Christian, and it is so clear to me right now, like I'm just not.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a Christian.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I believe in this God, but I am not a bel like believer, like I do not follow him.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not like you guys.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I just knew it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I could see the difference between me and everyone else.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not everyone, you know, but like a lot of these people at this school.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, these people love Jesus.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, I didn't feel like, oh, I need God.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: I felt betrayed.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's in the moment.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like God had lied to me my whole life.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because as a kid, I said I wanted to follow you.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be a Christian as a kid, you know.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't realize I kind of adopted my parents' faith.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so instead, I instead of just going like, you know, hey God, I need you, you know.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I didn't realize this.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was not like it was, I hate you.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I hate you so much.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I hate you so much because you have betrayed me.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: You made me think I was a Christian my whole life, and that's why I've been struggling this whole time.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because my whole life, I can think back and like remember all the youth events and the church events, and being like so overwhelmed with some kind of emotion and some kind of weird ripping in my life that I'm like, God feels so close, but something else is happening to me, and I can't explain it, I can't control it, I don't know what to do with it.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then it came to this point in Montana where I just lost my mind, and I went from I am a Christian to I hate you.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: I hate God, I hate Christians, I don't want to see you.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me you're praying for me, don't talk to me, don't mention anything about your God to me.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I do not care anymore.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, they could see the staff at the school were like, something's very off with this guy.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the guys was my cousin, so like he pulled me up to the cabin one night uh because I was just like, I I can't I can't do this.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I went out and actually, what I didn't know is I reverted back to that kid, and I was like, again, dark things, like evil, like literally praying like Satan's name to come and take me away.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I can't kill myself, and I'm so overcome with whatever is happening inside of me right now.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so heavy that like I need to die now.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's either you kill me, like, but I don't think I have it in me to kill myself.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was asking like Satan to kill me or take me.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the option I gave was either kill me or take me and use me for whatever you want to use me as.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And at that moment is when I really saw things start coming at this, just it started getting so dark.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and again, I'll try to nutshell some of these stories because it's just I wanna I want to try to help convey the gravity of what I had done.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because be as that happened, I felt like I was having a heart attack.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: I started feeling like all this pain in my chest and this heaviness, like somebody was crushing me.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that was kind of like the life I started to live was like it just felt like if what now I would call oppression was then was like I was being smashed.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember one night that two of my girlfriends at the school, girls who love the Lord, were like, something's different about you.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when they said that, they switched something in my brain, and it turned on this monster of a something that and I can't explain it that well, but the best thing I got is that Joseph was like this, and he was inside of me, and he was really small, but he was there was something far bigger inside that would not let me have anything anymore.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was just like you don't have control, and I do.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it took over in that moment, and I started like thrashing.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: I things started happening.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I wanted to like these girls, they were just trying to like ask me how I was, and it went from like that to like they were praying immediately, but I was frozen, like my body was frozen, and they were holding my feet to the ground.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: These are two like girls who were not very strong to like who I should have been able to rip them off of my feet.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were like just like they laid hands on my feet because I was sitting on a like a couch at the time, and they were just praying, and I was trying to move, and I could not move because it was like Jesus was holding me to the ground, like trying to submit.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I just was like, no.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it was this other thing that was in me, and that situation that was the beginning of what I started seeing, like, oh, this is something else that's happening to me, and that continued to happen.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they eventually told me, like, and this sounds a little weird, but like they were like, You really don't need to be here at the school if you're going to continue choosing this stuff.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was now like, this is my path.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want to choose this.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I remember I'm I started not caring about anything, nothing mattered.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: I remember my parents, I had a I told him, I was like, just I want I want to leave too.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be here anymore.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to like go to the mountains, and they're like, uh, I don't think that's a good idea.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Cause like I want to go to the mountains to pretty much just die.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was ready to just die.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how it was gonna happen, but I just wanted to like just wander off and just die.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're like, you have to call your parents.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like, I was like, that's crazy.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I called my parents and was like, they're like, what's going on?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm leaving, like, I have to leave the school, you have to let me, because if you don't let me, like, I'm gonna kill myself, or I'm going, like, either way, I'm probably gonna die.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I remember my parents being like, Okay.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, which I think on their end, they were like, All right, God, like, we're just giving him over to you, and hopefully this will work out, you know.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Cause then I I remember like my mom was like, Love you, and I was like, Yeah.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I hung up the phone.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't care, I just stopped caring about everybody and everything, and that just kept transferring, and that was the so that was the beginning of the darkness, I think, that I really saw.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it definitely kind of set root in the younger days, but that's when it exploded, and that's the way I described is like all the anger in my life had exploded at that point because like thinking God betrayed me is when my life exploded, and from there it um sorry, I'm trying to transition well.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is good.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh can I help you?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think I there there are two big ideas I think that are important for us as as we hear that story, knowing the you now and hearing that story is on one side in our clean, polished Baptist Protestant world, we really try to ignore and deny the reality of the darkness that's in the world that's been there from the very beginning.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, in the Garden of Eden, uh Satan coming to Adam and Eve and trying, not trying, successfully convincing them to believe a lie.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then in that moment, it was oh no, I don't believe what God said, you're not really gonna die.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: In in your story, it sounds like it was, oh, God's betrayed you.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, why don't you just trust in me?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so he he is the deceiver.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think even when you move forward then into into Genesis 6 or in the story of King Saul or all the way then into the story of the revelation of the ultimate battle of evil and good, that narrative is part of the battle.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Ephesians 6 even speaks to it.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's hey, don't deny the reality that there is this spiritual world and this spiritual war that's waging.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's not against flesh and blood, it's against principalities and powers.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's the first big idea that we don't need to be naive to that.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: And your story, your personal experience is I think beneficial to draw a reminder of that.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, as you were talking, I was looking up um the context of that story, it almost adds another layer to the power of John 3.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: So Jesus is talking to Nicodemus in the dark, and then he says it starts with this very familiar um for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: Verse 19.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: This is the verdict.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: Light has come into the world, but people love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: So let's let's use that beautiful story of hope in the midst of darkness, because I'm sure we could talk for days about all of the experiences of darkness, but you've given us a snapshot.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now let's uh let's leap forward in time.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: At some point, you moved from I hate God, He has betrayed me, I've given over into this darkness, to I've been made alive in Christ.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: Death has come to life.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: So let's move to that story of okay, when and how did your journey with Jesus really begin?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that I mean it was still, I do believe that in Montana that's where it really happened.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that was where the change did happen.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I did end up going into the mountains.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it was about three days in the mountains by myself.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was scared to death.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for the first time, first time there was nothing.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't I didn't really think there was anything there all of a sudden.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like my mind was kind of quiet, but it was lonely.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was very alone.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think God has always, like looking back, has always been there with me, you know, but I thought the mountains was gonna gonna be my end, but when I went out there, there was just nothing.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was I felt scared at night sleeping like about there by myself in the middle of I mean nowhere.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in the middle of nowhere.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was the middle of the it was at the how the Rockies out there, but there's just nothing.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I was afraid.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: And three days later, I don't know whatever it was, but something about it was just like I can't do this.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm tired, like I'm so tired.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of this evil clinging to me.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I I can't do it because I felt like there was something always on me, always with me, and there was a darkness about me that people saw, and and it was weird because like I think that whole control thing, I wanted people to fear me.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted people to be like, but they did, but it wasn't really me.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: They were fearing something else that I was dabbling with and like telling the inviting into my life.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, I remember that day very clearly because I said I can't, I just can't do it anymore.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I surrendered, I did, and I was like, God, I I need you, I can't run anymore.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in the story, I do still remember how I felt when I was just like, I need you, I can't do this, and I need you to take this stuff.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when I did, I mean, it was the most perfect day.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, literally, the clouds actually parted, and the sun really did shine through, and it hit me in the face, and I was warm, like all the way through my bones, and I was just like, This is it.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that and I will try and again, I I will try to nutshell a lot of this, but the moment I think I became a true like I'm going to follow you and surrender my life to you, that was the moment that my life flipped so much further upside down than I had ever seen.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because the way that I see it in my past is that when I did that, I became a threat.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I became a threat to everything that was chasing me, everything that I had invited into my life, I became a threat.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I relate it to the strong man passage in the Bible, and I'm gonna butcher this.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you probably could do it better.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh hey, we have Google if you need to know about in fact, would you mind reading that little passage about when the strongman comes in, you know, he brings it's like bringing it's gonna the state of the man's gonna be ten times worse than it was originally.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the passage about the room being swept clean.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a couple of versions of that.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this is the Luke 21 version.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, when a strong man with many weapons guards his own house, the things in his house are safe.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: But suppose a stronger man comes and defeats him.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: The stronger man will take away the weapons that the first man trusted to keep his house safe.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Then the stronger man will do what he wants with the other man's things.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: Whoever is not with me is against me, and anyone who does not work with me is working against me.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: When an evil spirit comes out of someone, it travels through dry places looking for a place to rest, but it finds no place to rest.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it says, I will go back to the home I left.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: And when it comes back, it finds that home all neat and clean.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Then the evil spirit goes out and brings back seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all go and live there, and that person has even more trouble than before.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: And as Jesus was saying these things, a woman with the people there called out to him, blessings from God belong to the woman who gave birth to you and fed you.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: But Jesus said that people hear the teaching of God and obey it, they are the ones who have God's blessing.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's when that's when that struggle, I think, really kicked in.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's when I think addiction really kicked in for me.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Is that when I became a Christian, things flipped upside down, and then I was trying so hard to go to God, but it's like everything was just like come back, come back, come back, and trying to remind me of what was so good that we had.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was better over here, yeah.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I believed that, and it came harder this time.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I think about the Christian life, I think of take of your cross daily, which I think is the the there's three times that's mentioned.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Mark, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then Luke, I believe he says daily.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of them.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: But like that is the thing, is like I I can't I can't take my cross up once.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I have to surrender my life every single day to Jesus.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I don't, what's gonna happen is gonna keep happening.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when I became a Christian, even like the couple days after, I was still having a really hard time with oppression.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I really felt like demons were coming for me constantly, being like, no, come back, come back.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah, I miss you.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I really miss you.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: I miss feeling so horrible, which is crazy.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: But there was something about the darkness that I just it made me feel a certain power and made me feel almost like I didn't really need to have control.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like I could just like let loose into this evil, and then it just grew.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And from there, I you know, more of the whole the story right here in scripture.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I feel like happened to me is that I rejected God because I don't think a believer, a true follower of Christ, can be inhabited by demons.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that, agreed, but I do believe a person who has become a Christian can absolutely invite stuff in their life still, even after being like, hey God, like, and I think that is what happened because I don't have any other explanation for what happens in the next years because of my choice to be like, I hate you, God, because I was still fighting him.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't want you, like, I want my old stuff.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I started trying to find power and control, and when sexual addiction kicked in, and when more demonic type addiction kicked in, and I was just like, I reject God, and then I rejected God again to the whole world.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: I went on my Facebook one day, you know, and I was like, I just want everybody to know so they stopped bothering me.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I hate God and I recant these things that I've said, and I don't want him.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then I invited things back, and I think when I did, it got way worse in the first state of who I was before.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I experienced true, what I would call like, because I have no other way to explain it, like true possession, like where I would lose a day, or I would wake up and some friend of mine would be like, I remember one night, and like I said, there were these times where just I was searching for the most evil types of thing I could do just to lose myself.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: And thankfully my stint into like drugs was very short-lived.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: But like one night off of like cocaine, I was trying to bang my like head into the road, and I was successfully doing it until my friend stopped me, but I was gone.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then like the next day, my friend was like, dude, he was just sobbing.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen him cry.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was sobbing, and I was like, What's wrong with you?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, You left, man.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like you left last night, like you weren't there anymore.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I've known you my whole life, and you were gone.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like something else was where you were, and like I didn't know who that was anymore.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like it scared the mess out of him.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: But like, because I offered myself up to this other thing, and it happily took over, but it only took over in the most vile ways.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I had to be so far like gone, and I would find this thing and it would take me.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because it happened there.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just and then again, my addictions kept growing.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: But there was always this struggle the whole entire time of me going, What are you doing, man?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you doing?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, stay with God.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's trying to keep you safe, he's trying to give you a better life.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: But my addiction to like what was this darkness and what was just like I have to have more evil, and then I have to keep losing myself in this weird, like, power struggle control thing with women.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it just went crazy to where, like, for I think there was like an eight-year period where I don't remember not having sex.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't remember not finding someone new or finding more than three people in one week to be with, and like no one mattered anymore.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't care about people, I didn't care about their lives.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted them and I wanted to use them, I wanted to feel powerful.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I would go places and I would find people and I would use them and I would do whatever I wanted to, and then I would be done with them.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about them.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to use them for sex, like that's all I wanted.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then at the end of all of it, at the highest highs being with the whatever, like I was just so destroyed afterwards, still like there was nothing.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: All it was was death every single time.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Emptiness, emptiness, emptiness, hard, hard, awful, depressing emptiness and just all the evil that I was chasing after.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: It just made me feel so awful that it just ended in this place of me going, I don't deserve to live, and I deserve pain.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started, I then I started cutting because that's what again I started feeling things again.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I would cut and I would bleed, and it felt right, and it felt like I deserved this.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I would started breaking mirrors.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've messed up my hands too many times, just smashing mirrors, screaming at myself in the mirror, drinking myself into like an oblivion.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I started, you know, I had a rest in Tennessee because I went so mad with just like rage that I had to call the police on myself.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like I threat I was threatening myself in the street one night with like a knife to my own throat, and they had to put me down.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like it happened again in Montana later because I was still chasing after evil, and there's just no depths to how evil can be more evil and more evil.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I I got arrested out there because my dad called the police on me because I called him and I had just been just cutting up.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd cut my face up and cut my arms up, and I was just again smashing mirrors because I just I don't know if I hated the look at myself, but that's what the darkness led me to is these places of like in stepping outside of it for a second, like you think this is so good and so comfortable, but look what it's doing to you.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like these things are trying to kill you, it's destroying like and all like all the things that you're chasing after, like the Addiction now that you are a full-blown sex addict, that you cannot get free, whether it's sex or porn or whatever you can find.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was addicted to like destruction, and I just wanted it.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted evil.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love how it filled to the point where everything that was wrong, it didn't seem wrong.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed right.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the right things that I would do, there are times now that I regret doing the right thing.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: I regret not sleeping with some people.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have those regrets.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how a twisted I know my mind is that I can't sit here and go, man, thanks God that I didn't do that.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: My brain goes, You really should have had sex with more people.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Do you understand like what I did and how much I did and like how much my life I gave away and how much I took from people?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, I was ripping people from their families.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like I ruined like three families, and I didn't care.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there were so many awful evil consequences that came from actions that I made.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like I actually destroyed lives like in order to find this awful evil that I was chasing because I just I wanted more evil, like because it felt good.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but all the while I can look back and see like God was trying to hold on to me.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: And like I am so thankful that he held on that whole time and he gave me a friend here and a friend there to try to keep me close.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because I was always in a church, I was always finding someplace to go.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was always finding some dude.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll snick malt me, man.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever hear this, I love you, brother.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because God sent me that dude.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he sent me Matt.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: He sent me these people that came into my lives to keep me straight and that were straight shooters and were like, dude, you're doing crazy things, and you need to stop because God loves you and he wants you.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: And like they weren't, they were unapologetically like trying to keep me straight.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole time I'm just like, I need help, please help me.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm clinging to my friends.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, like, they're not walking away from me.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, but I'm gonna hate you through this process, but I need you, but I'm going to hate you, and I'm gonna be mean to you, but please stick with me because I feel insane.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like that time in Montana, I woke up from some crazy, like when I got arrested that night, I ended up waking up somewhere.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: I woke up in a facility.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what was happening.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: I just woke up in this facility, like it was some kind of like mental something facility, and I was trapped inside this concrete box.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what was going on.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: All I know is that they said that like the previous night before, it took like seven people to hold me down because something else was coming over me.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't remember it.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think I lost like two days, but like, and this is what I wanted, like I wanted this, right?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, I finally got out of there, and like my dad, I like thank God for that man who's just the most patient man, you know, he came out and he took me back home and he got me more straight.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: We tried to figure out things together.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: But like this whole struggle, it just it was all he was always there, God was always there the whole entire time.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: But no matter how much I was trying so hard to choose awful things throughout my whole life, he's always been there to try to get me back to kind of like to come back to him.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so let me ask you this question then, as you as you reflect back on that and that statement that you just made.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: So now where you are, I I can only imagine when we sing uh this explains the emotion, I think, when you're singing even more.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: When when maybe we're in a a life group class we're talking about scripture or we're singing a song and we're reflecting on the character of God, I would assume that when you hear or read about the mercy of God or the grace of God or the loyalty of God or the steadfast love of God, it probably hits you even more uh sweetly, I guess, or in in a real way because you've you've experienced that rescue and you've seen that faithfulness almost like that prodigal, the father of the prodigal son who's sitting on the porch just waiting for this person when they've hit rock bottom.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I I can only imagine the the depth of the worship and the thoughts and the connection of intimacy that you have with the Lord when you reflect on his mercy and grace and love because of that.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: And grace is a huge word.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: That was a fight to to be like, I don't want this, I don't deserve this, you know.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: But he is that is what he is, he is grace, he is gracious, and it is I am so thankful because I have just done so much damage to myself and to others, and to be able to sit back today and go like he still wants something to do with me, like he still says I have value, he still says I have purpose after what I did, like after the things that I did that I don't have time to go into.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, and I know this is just it's just so messy, like, and it's hard for me to keep it straight because I just chose so much garbage for so long.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it just so it just trapped me.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: It trapped me so hard.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't get out of it.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to get out of it, I wanted to die.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to end it so many times, but I just couldn't do it.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thankful I couldn't because he has a plan.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and so that's I wish I had time to go into some depth, like just to say, like, you are not too far gone.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you're not, I don't care if you're a murderer, like I don't care if you've done some of the most horrible atrocities in life, like you are not too far gone from God's grace, like he still has grace, he's still grace.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can still be saved from the garbage that you have maybe chosen for yourself, or that someone maybe you were put into a situation because that was a big thing about me, is that I chose most of these things.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: I chose to walk into evil, I chose to bring evil into my life, given there were some things that happened as a kid, but like, I mean, still, like I made big choices to invite evil into my life.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: I chose to ruin lives because I wanted evil.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: But like, you are not beyond grace.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you have a like you have a story with God that is so far greater than anything you've ever imagined or experienced.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just like I said, those two minutes of like singing a song to God is better than a lifetime of the most evil things that I could think of doing.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, better than any of the sex that I could ever imagine, better than the highest high of drug could give you, or whatever you think is good.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it is nothing compared to just two, maybe one, ten seconds of an incredibly breathtaking moment of being with Christ.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: And realized that you are you are free.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: You are free, even if it's still a struggle every single day.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, even if you have to fight and claw to live every day, even if you still struggle with addiction, even if you still struggle with suicide, or you still struggle with this or that, like it's still far more freeing than anything I've ever experienced.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, I still have problems in my head.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: I see myself as an addict still.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not having sex with everybody or still, I'm not.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: But in my head, sometimes I am.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I fantasize, sometimes my mind gets away from me.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I am the most free and the most healthy I've ever been in my life right now.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's only because of grace.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's only because if that's who he is, he is gracious.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he did save me from all those things, but I do have to keep taking up my cross every single day, and dying to that garbage and remembering that it's not love, it's lust.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: That remember that it is all lies, all the stuff.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: To say like you can handle just a little bit of this.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, I cannot.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: I can't.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: I know who I am, I know who I have been.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not who I am.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: You clarify that.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is not who I am.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is not me.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: I am new.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, if anyone is new in Christ, he is a new creation.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: The old has passed away and the new has come.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's who I am.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not old Joseph.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's not God.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: He is transforming me continually, and he will do the same thing to you.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that will preach.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: I I want to respond and encourage a couple of things.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe to start, you know, if we're wrapping up present, we're starting to put the ribbon around the outside.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm reminded Philippians 2, 12.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the and the challenge is um, wherefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence, but how much more in my absence?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a reminder of your journey now.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like you have been brought from death to life, you are free in Christ.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: But every day, like there is this I'm understanding the gospel more, I'm understanding the expect extravagance of God's forgiveness, I'm understanding the depth of his grace.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think for all of us, regardless of our journey, like there's some darkness in our past that you know, maybe maybe we're struggling with temptation or lustful ideation or fantasy, as you use your word, or any other type of thing that's in the moment, or sometimes it's regret from the past.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that's part of that journey of not becoming more saved.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: We are fully sanctified and made alive in Christ.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that working out your own salvation with fear and trembling is living in humility and response to Almighty God and um understanding his grace more and more.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was talking with somebody yesterday who not in the same but in a similar space, uh they've been uh they've been following Jesus for just a year, so they're still very much a baby believer.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: And a part of their uh long story short is just there is extreme guilt over things that they've done in the past.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as you were explaining this, like I mean, the the families I've wrecked or the people that I've hurt or I've used.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was a similar type story.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I tried to encourage him in that moment of it's like part of the Christian journey and trusting the Lord every day is learning to forgive myself for the things that Christ has already forgiven me from.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's part of that working out that salvation.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I I do agree with you, and I and I hope if you're watching today, you'll find some encouragement of this as uh as a believer um that reminder to I am crucified with Christ.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: Nevertheless, it's not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of Man who loved me and gave himself up for me.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I do die to myself every day.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I just uh my story is different than yours, but you know, the addictions in the part of my past, I think what I have to be reminded of is uh my story of addiction was very much in the sexual realm.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: Pornography was had a grasp on me.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I I I experience a walk in freedom for that, but daily in my prayer, every morning before the Lord, I I have it as part of my rhythms where I I die to myself, and for me that prayer specifically sounds something like God, today I acknowledge that you're God and I'm not.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I fully I just whether by life or death, I just want you to use me today, however you want to and then I will pray Lord give me freedom over sexual temptation and addiction today.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: Just today.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, because I I'm an addict, and once an addict, an addict.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I know that it uh to me it's similar to that person who um you know their hi, I'm so and so, and I'm 12 years sober and I'm an alcoholic.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a similar thing, it's just that awareness of it's only by God's grace that I'm gonna rest and walk in freedom today.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: And um I see that in you as a as a as a son of God who is free, who has been brought from death to life, who shines brightly, you truly shine brightly for the glory of God and the way that you love and the way that you care and providing a safe space in your home for people.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so I I take great joy in watching the gospel shine through you every day, in and in the rawness and in your willingness to say, like, man, I'll be real, today's a hard day.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_02: So now we can link arms together as brothers and walk through that.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: So um it's it's it's a beautiful story that you're sharing.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that I think that's the thing.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think the willingness, and not say that I'm something or nothing, but just I think I've realized that I don't care anymore.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I want to I do care and I don't like what people think.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like this was kind of hard to do because I was like, my story is now not just it's not at a coffee table.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is like anybody's gonna hear this now.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was a hard pill to swallow.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: But part of me is like, I I don't care.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: I do care because I do sometimes care what people think of me.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that makes me you know nervous sometimes, but like, especially with my stories, they're a little wild, but then I don't care because I'm kind of over it.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like because it's not really about me, it's about like if God can use this, then like thank God.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I want.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want people to be able to see, like, hey, I went really far, and there you will, if you keep going, if you keep going down an evil path away, if you keep going from eight, you know what?
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you just keep going away from God, it ends in two ways that I figured either you will die by your own doing, or you will die slowly, like without you even knowing.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: It will just become your life, and you will just slowly, stagnantly die away from the beauty that is Christ.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want that for anyone, like, and I hope that other guys or other ladies or whoever you you can talk about the things, like talk about the dark things, and like scripture says time and time again, expose the darkness to the light.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because as someone who has known his demons very personally, if you put it in the light, it cannot breathe.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: It cannot breathe, it won't work.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: Demons cannot live in light of Christ, it doesn't work, and it's a beautiful place.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: The light of Christ is beautiful because it is freedom.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: The light of Christ cast out all the garbage, but you have to be willing to speak out that garbage out of your life.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are one of those people that is hiding all this stuff because you are afraid, because you have so much guilt and you have so much shame, put that on Jesus and bring it out to someone.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: Find buddies, find friends, find your pastor, find someone who can get it out of your mouth and expose it.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I want to, for a second, plug just my amazing wife.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we do now to set up, and I wanted to say this setup for success is if you are married, if you're not, find a pastor, find a really good friend you can just talk to and just really tell all the things that you need to say and get it out, get the darkness out of there so it can be known and be transparent.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like live life transparently.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that is mine and my wife's thing is like anything that I do, she knows about.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: Some people might be like, well, she just like has full control.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, that's not what it is.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: I tell her, I need you to do this.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have come into this marriage that wasn't a band-aid, by the way, because some people, I want to make that clear, is like marriage doesn't solve your problems.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: It you will still have addiction.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like it doesn't just, oh, I don't have addictions anymore.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's not how it works.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now you have someone to help you in Christ.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is Amy.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, she is, I tell her everything.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: I ex anything that I'm having problems with, I speak it out as quick as I can because if it festers in me long enough, I will not tell her.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: I will not let her know things.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll keep it to myself and it will wear me down and it will destroy my mind, and then it will turn into something else that it doesn't need to be.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we do now is we talk about everything.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: We get it out on the table.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm struggling with something, I tell her.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, literally, she has all my social medias.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: I only got it before I could do some music stuff.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I found out three weeks ago, once I got back on social media, I hate social media because I don't have to look for evil.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: It will find you.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and it did.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, uh-uh, I don't want this.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: Nope, nope.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I gave it to her.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, you I need you to take this.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, I can manage it, I'll do this.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: You just will post videos through me.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, thank God, thank you so much, because I can't do it.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like I'm not like, well, I'm stronger than this.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, I'm not.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not stronger than this.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, just be open and transparent with your life if you have a spouse, be with them so that you can grow in obedience together in your relationship with God.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I have found more freedom, even though I don't think we'll be truly free until like eternity.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's my eternal freedom.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: But like now, I will get glimpses of more and more freedom as I choose, and this is where it is obedience.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: Obey Christ, obey him.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and if something good comes into your mind, I like to say that everything good and perfect gift comes from the Father.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if it's a good thought, proceed into that good thought.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: Say, Lord, guide me in this good thought and let's do good things together for you.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is about Jesus.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is about God.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is about this new life that we have.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: And life will change for you in obedience.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: In obedience to Christ and transparency.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it also feels better to not have, to not sit there and go, I'm lying to people.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I'm just have, I don't, there's nothing true about me.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, don't live that way.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: Live in the light.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: Live there.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because living in the light and living in obedience to Christ, that is where it is.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you will see the Lord working.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like you will.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: He will show you things.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: I love what you said about like use me in whatever way you want today.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like I used, I used to pray that.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: I need to pray that again because when you start to think, acknowledging like God's going to be working, I want to see it.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see him work.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see who he brings to me today.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see what make conversations happen, Lord, help prompt things so that I can talk about you today.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: Give me opportunities to talk about you.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm still scared to tell people about Jesus, even in all of this.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's still moments where I just I fall into the fear of man category, and I'm like, but I want to tell people about Jesus.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's why wouldn't I after what he did?
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I want to I kind of want to in there at least I think it's beautiful.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's huge.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, when you think about the simplicity of what Jesus commanded in the Great Commission, go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe everything I've commanded you.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: I I kind of want to uh I just pulled this up.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to maybe end this as the final bow.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you just you made a comment about like if you have a good thought, just like walk into it.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_02: And and my mind immediately went to 1 John 4.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I I mean, this is a long form podcast.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna read all 21 verses and then we'll wrap up.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: It says, uh beloved, do not believe every spirit.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that's applicable to what you're saying in your story.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_02: But test the spirits to see whether they are from God.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: For many false prophets have gone out into the world.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: By this you know the spirit of God.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ is not from God, this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and is now in the world already.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_02: Little children, you are from God and have overcome them.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: For he who is in you is greater than he that is in the world.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're from the world, therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: We are from God.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_02: Whoever knows God to listen to us, whoever is not from God does not listen to us.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_02: By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_02: Beloved.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_02: But let us love one another.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: For love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_02: And anyone who does not know God because whoever anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the love of God was made manifest enough that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_02: And this is love.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_02: Not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Us and sent his son to be the propitiation of our sin.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: Beloved, if God is love, we also ought to love one another.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: No one of us has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent his son to be the Savior of the world.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_02: Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_02: God is love.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_02: By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because as he is also, we are in the world.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_02: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_02: For fear has to do with the punishment.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_02: And whoever fears has not been perfected in the love, we love because he first loved us.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_02: And if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_02: For he does not love his brother whom he has for he remember words, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_02: And this commandment we have from him whoever loves God must also love his brother.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think I that testing of the spirit, I think some of that's talking about false teachers, but it just certainly I think applies.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um confessing the Lord, God abiding in us, us abiding in him, and resting in that is a beautiful connection.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um thanks for sharing your story, man.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else you want to say before we wrap up?
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I like what Quinn said.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: I listened to you know him and Crystal's uh podcast.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_00: He said something about as far as just for people like me, people who struggle with things like me, he said, you know, don't isolate.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to agree with that and I and push that as deep as I can.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't isolate yourself.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: And on the flip side of that, the community, and I'm not saying well, Calvary's a great insurance.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: You should come to Calvary.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: You should, but that's not what my plug is here.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: My plug is that we found more growth in Christ and in our lives when we got with a solid community who is doing the exact same thing that we do, which is seeking after Jesus.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_00: Community, because I think really in the last two years, I have really begun to follow the Lord.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I give a lot of credit to, I mean, of course, all of God's grace, but having the community here at Calvary, having our little community at home, like it's breathing life into my relationship with God.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you love others in Jesus, when you that that's so just don't isolate.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you're an addict, if you have these dark things in your head, the last thing you want to do is get alone because you are the most vulnerable when you are by yourself and you will believe a lot of lies by yourself.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have a friend to help you see through the lies, man, it is a lot harder to believe evil stuff when you have a community.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: So get a community.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a church, if you don't have people who want to walk with you through the darkest things, like pray for those people to be entered into your life because community will save your life.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like Christ, Jesus community will save your life, and then obedience to Christ.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: But He is grace, He He His grace is absolutely enough to pull you out of the garbage.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I hope if you're listening and watching today that you find comfort in that, that you're never too far gone.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um love and obey the Lord, walk in community with other believers who are like-minded in that.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I, a couple of observations as we close.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I have been overwhelmed with gratitude to the Father as as we've been walking through these stories and just hearing it's so easy to believe the lie or to comparison is a trap.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_02: When you walk into Sunday morning, oh, everybody's got their life together.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we're hearing all these stories of people that have, you know, freedom from addiction, drugs, alcohol, grief, divorce, abuse, evil, darkness.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're this beautiful community of believers, all by God's grace, just pursuing him together and in the dirty, you know.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_02: But the willingness to get in the mess with each other, it's it's transcendent beauty.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's absolutely beautiful because it's a picture of what Christ is for us.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so um uh I'll reiterate if you were watching from the very beginning, if you're watching or listening to this, uh we would love to help you connect to a local church.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_02: If you're near us, please come to Calvary.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: But more importantly, find a community of believers where you are, as we like to say, where you live, work, learn, and play.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, we would love to our URLs in the show notes or on our website, Calvaryga.com.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Reach out to us.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_02: We would love to help you find a community of believers where you are.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I also realize I think uh this would be important to say, because we have dealt with some heavy today as believers.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_02: We we can't ignore the reality of Ephesians 6, the spiritual war that we are in.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: But also, you may have read this today or listening to this today, and you are dealing with that heavy.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Please, if you are in danger, call 911.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: If you are having thoughts of hurting yourself, call 988 and that suicide hotline.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like get some help.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but the ultimate help is going to be found in Christ, and the freedom is gonna be found in pursuing him, following him, and then doing it in a community of believers.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so um thank you for today and thank you for watching.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Again, as we always say, please click like, share, subscribe.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it helps it helps others connect with us.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um have you watched one of our podcasts to the very end to know how we end every episode?
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_02: I have I actually listened to the last one.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_02: That that's I haven't seen one, yeah.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_02: So uh we always end it the same, so you can help us out with this.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's an a tip of the hand to Brother Don, who I know that you know and love him well.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Who uh who even still to this day will find himself whenever the meeting's over and everybody else doesn't quite realize it's actually over, he'll just stand up and go, bye.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the way we end.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: So shall we end it?
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Bye,