Latest / The Becket Cook Show / He Tried A Gay-Affirming Church... But Knew It Was False: Josh Duiker Testimony

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He Tried A Gay-Affirming Church... But Knew It Was False: Josh Duiker Testimony · The Becket Cook Show

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Life Audio.
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  Speaker 2: You are listening to The Becket Cook Show with your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Beckett Cook. For more information about Beckett and his ministry,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: visit his website at Beckettcook dot com. To help support
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  Speaker 2: Please consider subscribing to the podcast and leaving a five
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  Speaker 2: star rating.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Hey guys, welcome to the show. Happy New Year. I
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: have a special guest today, Joshdiker. Josh lived as a
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: gay man for a while and then he had a
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  Speaker 3: radical encounter with Jesus and then started attending a gay
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  Speaker 3: affirming progressive church in Hollywood, and soon after he was
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  Speaker 3: after about a year, realized that it was a false church,
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  Speaker 3: Praise God. And then he ended up finding my church.
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  Speaker 3: And so I'm excited to hear his story. It's amazing.
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  Speaker 3: But first award from our sponsor. Please welcome Josh Dyker.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
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  Speaker 3: So so good to have you on. So let's start
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  Speaker 3: at the beginning. You grew up in kind of a
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  Speaker 3: secular environment. Your parents were your parents Christians.
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  Speaker 4: I went to church when I was a little kid.
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  Speaker 4: My mom took me to church, and so there was
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  Speaker 4: that exposure to church. My mom grew up in church.
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  Speaker 4: I think she felt it was important that I go
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  Speaker 4: to church. But I think she has a complicated story
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: or kind of experience with church. But my context was
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  Speaker 4: largely secular. There was a lot of divorce. They divorced
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  Speaker 4: when I was really young, and so the exposure I
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  Speaker 4: got to Christianity, to church was it was kind of
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  Speaker 4: a mixed bag. I'll tell you that my dad, when
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  Speaker 4: he was in his early twenties, he had a whole
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  Speaker 4: other family before me. He was married, he had two kids,
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  Speaker 4: and he left that family and he ended up with
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  Speaker 4: my mom. So I have a half brother and a
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  Speaker 4: half sister that are twenty years older than me, over
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  Speaker 4: twenty years older than me, and my sister became am
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  Speaker 4: born Green Christian when she was a teenager. So she
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  Speaker 4: was an influence in my life as a strong Christian
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  Speaker 4: woman and still is. But I would say, you know,
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  Speaker 4: most of the context of my growing up was very secular.
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  Speaker 4: You know, I grew up in the eighties and nineties.
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  Speaker 4: I was raised as an only child, so you know,
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  Speaker 4: I watched a lot of TV. I was alone by myself.
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  Speaker 4: You know, I was by myself most of the time,
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  Speaker 4: and I just didn't have a strong, you know, kind
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  Speaker 4: of Christian influence really in most of my life.
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  Speaker 3: And so, and how did TV shape you? Because I
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  Speaker 3: remember when I was a kid, a kid that TV.
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  Speaker 3: It was a sitcom. It was a terrible sitcom called
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  Speaker 3: Facts of Life. I don't have even heard of that,
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  Speaker 3: but yeah, I remember watching it as a kid, and
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  Speaker 3: my mother like she kind of passed by in the
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  Speaker 3: living room and she saw me watching it, and she said,
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  Speaker 3: I do what you learn the facts of Life from TV? So?
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  Speaker 3: How did how did TV shows?
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  Speaker 5: Like?
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  Speaker 3: What TV shows were you watching?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah?
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  Speaker 4: I mean it's funny that you say that, because TV
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  Speaker 4: is so formative, especially as a kid, and I had
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  Speaker 4: so little supervision.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know why.
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  Speaker 4: I think back now and I think, gosh, how do
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  Speaker 4: how do my parents let me watch what I watched?
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  Speaker 4: We had cable? It was the eighties, so I watched
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  Speaker 4: all kinds of stuff I shouldn't be watching, you know,
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  Speaker 4: horror movies I was really into. And I remember a
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  Speaker 4: phase of like seven eight nine being into that kind
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: of stuff. But you know, all the sitcoms me for me,
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  Speaker 4: it was like Growing Pains. Do you remember Family Ties?
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: Growing Pains?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah? So we're dating ourselves. But you know, I don't.
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  Speaker 4: It's easy to look back now and see how much
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  Speaker 4: it shapes you.
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  Speaker 6: Know.
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  Speaker 4: It tells you this is how you know who you are,
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  Speaker 4: this is what to value, this is how to look
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  Speaker 4: at the worlds. And it just shapes you in these
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  Speaker 4: profound ways. But it seems so inoculate, innocuous, right, you know.
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  Speaker 4: But yeah, so I just I watched all that stuff.
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  Speaker 4: I remember watching a movie with River Phoenix when I
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  Speaker 4: was a kid, and he was smoking, and I thought, oh,
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: I just thought that was I was like eleven, and
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: I just thought that was the coolest thing. I wanted
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: to I couldn't wait to smoke a cigarette, you know
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: that kind of thing.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Most chips are poisoned. They have artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, additives,
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• 5:56
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  Speaker 3: I think. The funny thing about no pun intended. The
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  Speaker 3: funny thing about sitcoms is they are the jokes are
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  Speaker 3: literally they're set up to It's like shows like Friends
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: or Will and Grace or those kinds of sitcoms. Those
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: shows are literally set up two constantly cut down. The
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: characters just cut down each other. That's the that's the
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: whole of the show. So everyone is like the butt
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  Speaker 3: of the joke, and we're supposed to like think that's
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: like a healthy kind of way of life is to
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: like you know, diminish somebody else or cut somebody else
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  Speaker 3: down like that. It was. It was such a it's
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: such a bizarre phenomenon, and it only could come out
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: of Hollywood.
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  Speaker 7: Right, I know it's true, Okay, And so what happened
• 6:55
  Speaker 7: in your I think when you went through puberty or whatever,
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  Speaker 7: what happened, like you you realize you were.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: Saying sex attracted. How how did you feel about all that?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah?
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  Speaker 4: I mean I must have been what eleven, twelve thirteen
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  Speaker 4: kind of in that range, and my attractions to other
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  Speaker 4: guys was really strong, Like I remember feeling really swept
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  Speaker 4: away in it. I had such lust in my heart,
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: you know, as a little kid.
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  Speaker 1: I just I just had this.
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, it's puberty, right, So all these
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: hormones are going and all these things and things are
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: happening emotionally and mentally and physiologically. And I had a
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: very kind of tumultuous childhood with marriages and divorces and
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: remarriages and kind of shuffling back and forth between parents,
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  Speaker 4: and so I think it was a perfect kind of
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  Speaker 4: environment for me to be very susceptible to being kind
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  Speaker 4: of swept away by my desires.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 4: And I you know, I would have these crushes on
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  Speaker 4: guys at school, and I would have this kind of
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  Speaker 4: rich fantasy life which I developed by you know, being
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  Speaker 4: by myself and watching a lot of TV, and so
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  Speaker 4: that helped kind of create a fertile ground for that anyway.
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  Speaker 4: And I was also kind of an unhappy adolescent. So
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  Speaker 4: the thing was that those feelings were so strong that
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  Speaker 4: they didn't I didn't really have space to deny them.
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  Speaker 1: I think that I've.
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  Speaker 4: I've heard a lot of people share who have had
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  Speaker 4: same sex attraction that when they start to realize this,
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  Speaker 4: or they hit puberty or a certain age where they're
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  Speaker 4: kind of having this kind of awareness of those sort
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  Speaker 4: of attractions, that it's there's almost an ambiguity about it,
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  Speaker 4: like is this happening?
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  Speaker 1: Is this not? I kind of like this person, but
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  Speaker 1: I'm not sure. And there was none of that for me.
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  Speaker 4: It was very clear that my attractions and my sexual
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  Speaker 4: attractions were oriented towards towards guys.
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  Speaker 3: And how did you feel about that? I mean, did
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  Speaker 3: you feel like this is strange and it's it's I
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  Speaker 3: don't want to do this, I don't want to be
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  Speaker 3: in part a part of this? Or did you how
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  Speaker 3: did I mean, how did you feel about it?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah?
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  Speaker 4: I you know, it was what the nineties, late late eighties,
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  Speaker 4: early nineties, So there was that kind of cultural background.
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  Speaker 4: It wasn't affirmed in the way it is now. But
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  Speaker 4: I also grew up in a pretty progressive household. My
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  Speaker 4: parents are very liberal.
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  Speaker 6: I I I didn't feel there was some fear and
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  Speaker 6: some anxiety, but I didn't feel a sort of a
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  Speaker 6: weight of this is wrong or I mean, I didn't
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  Speaker 6: tell anybody.
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  Speaker 4: So there was that, But and obviously obviously I didn't
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  Speaker 4: want to be bullied or an outcast at school. That
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  Speaker 4: already kind of happened. But I don't remember feeling particularly
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  Speaker 4: like that it was something that I shouldn't move towards,
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  Speaker 4: or that it was something that there was even an
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  Speaker 4: option for me to make a choice around. It just
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  Speaker 4: seemed like this inevitable thing, and I kind of walked
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  Speaker 4: towards it.
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  Speaker 3: You know, we'll be right back after this short break.
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  Speaker 3: And so when you entered into high school, you say
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  Speaker 3: that you were struggling emotionally and mentally in high school
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  Speaker 3: and that you started, you know, dabbling with drugs, in
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  Speaker 3: drugs and alcohol as a teenager. Why was that? Were
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  Speaker 3: you just kind of covering the pain of a tumultuous childhood,
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  Speaker 3: Like what was going on?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah? I think that was part of it, for sure.
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  Speaker 4: I think, I'm sure a part of it is dealing
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  Speaker 4: with these issues around sexuality and identity and not doing
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  Speaker 4: a very good job of that, not having a lot
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: of resources or being very equipped to handle that. I
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  Speaker 4: think part of is my disposition. I would sort of
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: an anxious kid, kind of an unhappy kid. So I
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  Speaker 4: think there was a combination of factors that led to that.
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  Speaker 4: I came out, as they say, told my parents that
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  Speaker 4: I was attracted to guys. I came out as gay
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  Speaker 4: when I was young. I mean I was like fifteen
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  Speaker 4: or sixteen, and I really thought that that was I
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  Speaker 4: remember I was thinking about this that I remember thinking
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  Speaker 4: that was going to be the answer, you know, that
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  Speaker 4: the problem was that I had these desires and I
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  Speaker 4: wasn't able to express them right, and that if I
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: was able to kind of be my authentic self and
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: come out, that that that would resolve all those kind
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: of that internal kind of angst.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: And it just didn't. It didn't at all. You know.
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  Speaker 4: I thought that kind of finding my people and coming
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: out and doing all this would make me you know,
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  Speaker 4: that's kind of the story we're told, right, that would
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: make me okay. And I just continued with, you know,
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: the ruggling with the drugs and the alcohol and the
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: depression and all that kind of stuff just continued.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was that whole kind of push I was
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: like ten fifteen years ago from the LGBTQ community. There
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: were these advertisements where I think the tagline was it
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: gets better, right. I remember, No, it doesn't, it actually
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: gets worse, right, That's true from the gay world. And
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: so it got your drugs and alcohol got so bad
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: that you actually went to rehab in Rhode Island when
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: you were nineteen. So how did that even happen? Like,
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  Speaker 3: how did you even accept doing that or want.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: To do that?
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  Speaker 4: Well, I think I was kind of forced into doing that.
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  Speaker 4: I was I just graduated high school. I'd had a
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: couple years of really struggling with drinking, were smoking weed,
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: We're doing all these other drugs. So whatever I could
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: get when I was in high school kind of running
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: with the wrong crowd, you know that type of thing.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: And I yeah, actually it was Actually I was living
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: in Rhode Island, That's basically where I grew up, and
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  Speaker 4: I got sent to a rehab in LA And you'll
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  Speaker 4: get a kick out of this it was. It was
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  Speaker 4: a it was a rehab for gay and lesbian people. Specifically.
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: What was it called the.
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  Speaker 3: Probably probably the Geffen Center for Rehab. Like yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: has like a bunch of gay establishments in Los Angeles,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: does he? Yeah, like that, you know, in the Gay
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Lesbian Center, like he has, he has a bunch of
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  Speaker 3: he contributes a bunch to that stuff.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: So yeah, So I I was nineteen and I got
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: kind of shipped out to l A to go to
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  Speaker 4: this this rehab, and part of it was this sort
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: of residential kind of in treatment and then the second
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: half of yours sort of in a sober living. It's
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: like a halfway house, so you live there, but you
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: can kind of come and go and they you know,
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: you get a job and all that kind of stuff.
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  Speaker 4: You're sort of transitioned back into society. So, you know,
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  Speaker 4: I lived out here for a couple of years. But
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  Speaker 4: what's funny is, first of all, I relapsed several times,
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  Speaker 4: so it didn't you know, sobriety didn't take. But I
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  Speaker 4: that's when I started, you know, going out and having sex.
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  Speaker 4: That was when I really started to just I guess
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: dive in to.
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  Speaker 1: This whole.
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  Speaker 4: Thing of pursuing sex as a way to find comfort
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: and validation and escape and whatever else that it was
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: going to that I thought it was going to do
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  Speaker 4: for me.
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  Speaker 3: And how long did that go on in La?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I lived in la for a couple of years,
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  Speaker 1: and you know, I was, what.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: Twenty I've lived out here for a couple of years,
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: twenty almost twenty one, and you know, I wasn't really
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: doing much of anything, and I thought, I need to
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: go to school.
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  Speaker 1: I want to go back to the East Coasts. So
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  Speaker 1: I went.
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  Speaker 4: I wound up getting myself to Boston and I went
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: to college and I went to school there. I did
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: not finish, but I did get me to Boston and
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: I lived there for a few years. So I spent
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: kind of a good chunk of my mid twenties, early
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: to mid twenties in Boston. And it was the same
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: thing there. You know, I was in my twenties. I
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: was very promiscuous, and I worked, I went out, I
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: you know sometimes, you know, I went through these kind
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: of binges of sort of partying or whatever, and that's
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: just what my life looked like.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: It was a normal life to me. I thought it
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: were you going to make my way.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Were you in like, were you ever in a serious
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: relationship or was it always just kind of hookups.
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: I'd never been in a serious relationship. It was always hookups,
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: and I didn't want a serious relationship. That wasn't I know,
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: that's the desire that a lot of people have, even
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: a lot of people that identify as LGBTQ. And but
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: that just for me, what gave me kind of satisfaction
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  Speaker 4: was the promiscuous lifestyle was kind of the chase of that,
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: the high of that. It really did have a hold
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: on me. I did become a slave to that. And
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  Speaker 4: so that's kind of what I was just caught up in.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so and then you slowly but surely started
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: to kind of did this happen in Boston where you
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: started to kind of wrestle with the meaning of life,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: like what is the purpose of my life? I mean
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: that happened to me when I was you know, it
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: happened to me like when I was forty I think,
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: I mean it started earlier, but it really came to
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: a head when I was forty two or no, forty one.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: But so, what what was that all about? How did
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: that begin? And what did that feel like.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I actually you and I have a kind
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: of a similar path there.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: So I was in Boston in my late twenties.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: I think I was twenty seven, and I came back
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: decided to move back to LA. Boston wasn't working. I
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: was still wrestling with drugs and alcohol. I really couldn't
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: get my life together. I came out to La to
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: sort of get a fresh start. I went to rehab
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: yet again. This time it sort of took a little
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: bit more. I was able to sort of be sober,
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: and but everything else was the same. You know, I
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: was as promiscuous as ever.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: You know. The thing is, you know, I don't know
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: how if.
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: This is universal for people that have experienced with drugs
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: and alcohol and then get into kind of recovery world.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: But there's a sort of an under I don't know
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: how would I put this.
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: There's an idea in the recovery world that as long
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: as I'm sober, if I'm not getting high and not drinking,
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: that's that's the whole point.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: That's the end game.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: Any other kind of behavior that I need to that
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: I do to kind of manage my life is okay.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: So maybe I shop too much or maybe I overread
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: and that's not great. We can address that, but at
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: least you're you're not you're not getting high, you're not drinking.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: And so I think I let that become an excuse
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: for me to be very promiscuous and kind of seek
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: out sex as a way to cope with life. And yeah,
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: I mean I I I move to LA, I got
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: a job, I worked, I did get into a couple
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: of relationships.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: At that point, I was in my thirties.
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: You know, I thought that's what, you know, maybe would
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: bring me some happiness and some contentment. And just like you,
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: I know, I know we're very similar in this part
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: of our stories. I got to a point in my
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: life where I felt like it should be enough, you know,
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: like my life wasn't fabulous, but I had more than
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: I thought that I would. You know, I had a
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: decent professional life. I had some success there. I had
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: you know at a time, I had a boyfriend, I
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: had a nice place to live, I had a good car,
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: I had you know, I kind of had the things
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: and it just wasn't it wasn't enough, And I, like you,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: wrestled with that for you know, I think a good
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: two or three years of sort of like, what if
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: this isn't enough?
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: What's enough? You know, if this isn't when you were
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: meaning what does.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so when you were wrestling with that, did you
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: ever consider God or was that not even on the
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: table for you? Well?
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: I think, like a lot of people, a lot of
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: my sort of secular coworkers or neighbors, or I had
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: kind of a hodge podge mostly sort of New agey
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: view of God. You know, God is a you know,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: God is a loving force, and you know, the universe
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: does this or the universe does that? You know. I
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: just sort of like, yeah, right, people say it all
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: the time every movie you watch. I think the universe
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: wants me to do X, Y and Z. The universe
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: is telling me. I'm like, really, because the universe is
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: just a bunch of stars and empty space. But okay.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: I had a friend. I had a friend who's who's
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: this is a long time ago. I had a friend
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: whose boyfriend got in a motorcycle accident, and my friend
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: was visiting him at the hospital and he said to him,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: the universe is telling you to slow down. I think
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: of that all the time, Like, the universe is telling
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: you but anyway, go ahead.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So that's kind that was That was what
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: I adopted, right, That's what I inherit the spirit of
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: the you know, that's the spirit in the of the air.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Right, that kind of hodgepodge.
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, I you know, I was really never int astrology,
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: but I was kind of like whatever I mean, I
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: think I went to go see a psychic a couple
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: of times in my life.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I was just sort of open to that kind of
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: whole vibe.
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: And God is love, which basically means he just affirms
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: whatever I do and wants me to be happy and
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: that kind of thing. So that was sort of my view,
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: and it's it's not enough. And I reached a point
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: probably thirty eight or thirty nine, where I I thought,
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: my life has no meaning, like there's no purpose to it.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: And it wasn't even just this idea that my life
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: didn't have meaning or purpose, but life the way that
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: I understood it didn't have meaning or purpose at all
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: for like for anybody, you know, like what was where
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: was this all going? It was it was very kind
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: of Ecclesiastes, right, like where, you know, what's what's.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: The point of this?
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: Like I'm going to die, and then everyone I've ever
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: known is going to die, and then everyone they've ever
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: known is going to die, and then the Sun's going
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: to burn out and the universe is going to go cold,
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: and what's the point of any of this? And I
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: remember having this deep, this deep, unsettled kind of pit
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: of like, even if I got a better version of
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: my own life, even if I made more money or
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: maybe got a family, or I took this path or
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: I took that path, I started to understand deep in
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: my core that it was that it still wouldn't add
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: up into anything, and it still wouldn't be rooted in
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: anything real. And I didn't know what to do with
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: that right away, but I can see now that that
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: was one of the ways the Lord started to lay
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: the foundation for me.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just kind of like the same thing with me
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: that happened in Paris six months It was like I
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: had that moment of like, WHOA, I feel completely empty,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: And it was the weirdest, scariest feeling I've like I've
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: ever had. It was so strange. But as you said,
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: the Lord was preparing me to come to him six
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: months later. So speaking of that, so then what happened
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: when you were alone in your apartment and what happened
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: with that? Tell us about that story.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I all these years later, it's it's still it's
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: still so it's still so amazing to me and hard
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: to articulate or process. But I was I was alone
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: in my apartment. It was a random week night. I
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: wasn't doing anything in particular. And the best I can
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: describe it is, did you have life at the time. No,
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: I was just I was single, living on my own,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: you know. I think it was around forty, well I was.
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: I was forty. I turned forty and the veil, I
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: think the veil was lifted somehow. There I was alone,
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: and I just had the shift. This this this thing happened.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: It's came over me, this light and this thing, this
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: inner vision that was also sort of an outer vision.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: It's like how to Paul describes it?
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Like is it?
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: And I can't articulate everything that happened. But one of
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: the things that I experienced was it was Jesus right.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: I fell to my knees and I had this experience
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: with Jesus, which I wasn't a Christian, you know, at
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: the time. I had a very low opinion of Christians.
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: I really did not like Christians. They were enemies in
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: my mind, backwards bumpkins, zealots, just the worst.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: People, and especially the Evangelicals.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: Especially the Evangelicals exactly, and I just I really loathed them,
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: I really did. And I was very political, because that's
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: the religion that you need if you don't have anything
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: else to fill that God.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: God is the state, which is political, and so you
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: that's that's your God politics.
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: Right, I mean I was the most typical, you know,
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: gay guy living in Los Angeles, progressive, political, promiscuous, you know, totally.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: And look, I know that's not everybody's experience, but it's
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of people's experience, and it was mine. And
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: I had this experience with And so I'm in on
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: my loan in my apartment and it's Jesus and I
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: fall on my knees and I'm sobbing and I experienced
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: the reality of my I don't know, it's this conviction,
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: this conviction and grace. Like I saw my need for him,
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: I saw my sin and my shame and my guilt.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: But it didn't crush me because in equal measure and
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: more measure, I experienced his grace simultaneously. I mean, that's
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: what was happening to me. That's what I and I
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: was sobbing, and I knew it was Jesus. I mean,
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: there was this moment with the Holy Spirit. He lit
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: the flame, and I did not know what to do
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: with this. Like the next day, I'm in I called
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: my sister, who's, like, I said, a very strong Christian
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: moment and she loves the Lord, very godly woman, and
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: I told her, I told friends, I mean it sounded
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: so insane. I didn't know what to do with it,
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: But what was it did? Was there something like the
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: moments before that where you encounter Jesus. Was there something
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: that led up to that or was it just out
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: of the blue? Yeah, reading the Bible? Had you been
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: like was there anything that you were doing? No?
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I hadn't been reading the Bible. I hadn't been you know.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: I think I've been wrestling with those questions. But other
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: than that, there was no. I wasn't reading the Bible,
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: had gone to church. I hadn't been talking about those
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: type of spiritual matters with friends. It's just it's just
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: this thing happened to me, and it just put me
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: on a different trajectory. And what's funny is I think,
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: you know, if we were gonna if this was going
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: to be a Hollywood film the next day, I would
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: have gotten up and like I like, my whole life
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: would have looked different, very very quickly. But you know,
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: sometimes the Lord works differently with different people. For me,
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: it was the flame. The spark of the flame was
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: lit and I was put on a different path. And
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: what happened in the subsequent weeks and months was I
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: did go to church, and I did start reading the
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: Bible and all this kind of stuff. But it did
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: there was a little bit of that. You know, it
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: took a chunk of time for me to start moving
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: that direction.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: And so how did you end up at what was
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Hollywood United Methodists, which is a game for me? How
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: did you even decide what church to go to?
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's that's a good question. Well, I had
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: a co worker, so kind of paralleled all this happening.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: I had a co worker. And the God is so
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: awesome because the way this worked is this guy he
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: worked in a completely different department we had, we had
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: no reason to interact, but he ended up sitting near
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: me totally different guy, just this really cool Mexican dude,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: totally different than me. And I don't even remember how
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: we got to kind of kind of talking and becoming friends.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: But he was a Christian, a strong Christian, and I
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: started having these conversations with him, and I told him
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: about my experience and I started asking questions and we
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: would talk all the time. He actually brought me to
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: his church. It was the first time I went to church,
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: and I was ready for it because of that experience,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: I think. And I didn't really connect with his church,
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: but it sort of opened the door for me, and
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: I thought, Okay, I'm going to go to church.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: You know that I want to go to church. I
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: want to seek this. I want to seek him.
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: I don't I didn't you know how we apprehend before
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: we comprehend. It was that kind of thing. I sensed
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: a direction I was being pulled in, but I didn't know.
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: I didn't know the first thing about anything. And I
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: don't remember how I found this church. I don't know
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: if it was a friend of a friend that recommended it,
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: or if I had driven past it. It was a
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: big old cathedral, right, you've seen it? Yeah, I think
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: probably and maybe that's the.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: One on the island is a big ribbon on.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: It, Okay, exactly someone, Yeah.
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: That is like the original gay church. Yeah, it is
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: the original gay church. So maybe that I just thought
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: that's what church was. It's a big old cathedral. But
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: somehow I wounded. I wound up there and I was
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: so hungry for the Lord, like he had he the spirit.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: He lit something in me and I started going to
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: this church. And at first I was like really into it,
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: you know, I mean I was so excited to be
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: around other believers, and I knew that it was affirming,
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: like the associate pastor was a lesbian, like they had
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: a big rainbow flag outside. But I didn't it. I
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: hadn't even got to the point where that I was
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: even that even register like I was. I didn't even
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: know what to do with being gay and being a Christian,
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: Like I hadn't even sorted through all this.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is so early on. Yeah, so that's
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: how I wound up there.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: And how long did you stay there?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Well? I was there, I guess a little over a
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: year or so.
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: I wanted to be around other Christians and I dove
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: wrote write in you know, I wanted to know what
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: it meant to follow Jesus, and so I started, you know,
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: interacting with people at church. I started serving there, and
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: in parallel to that, I started to I don't know
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: how I stumbled across it, but I stumbled across like
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: the Bible Project. And then I started watching a lot
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: of sermons. And I started watching like John Piper and
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: like Arc Sproul and like Tim you know what I mean,
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: a Matt Chandler and like all of these guys. And
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: I would go home and I will watch like three
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: sermons a night. I mean, I'm telling you about it. Yeah,
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: I just and I would I would read the Bible.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: I started reading books. I started reading A. C. S.
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: Lewis and Mere Christianity.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: How did those sermons compare to the sermons you were hearing.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: At Well, that's the that's the thing, Like they are
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: preaching the gospel right, and I'm reading Scripture. I would
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: read at night. I remember I would cry because I
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: would read this and this wasn't some weird ancient foreign
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: book that had no relevance to me. I would read
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: these words and it was like it was speaking to me.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: He was speaking to me. And there was this illumination
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: I didn't even understand. And that was the same thing
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: happened to me when I first started reading the Bible.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: I mean I would I was just end up weeping
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: because I was like, I can't believe this is true
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: and and I can't believe I'm a part of this
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: whole redemption story, Like this is insane. I mean it
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: was the same exactly experience.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, oh totally, Like I mean talk about the scales
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: falling from my eyes. I thought it was like if
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: you told me there were aliens living among us. I
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: was like, this is it's true. Like I knew that
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: Jesus was true. I knew that what Christianity was saying
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: about the world and about me and about you and
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: about where this whole thing is going was real and true.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: And I would look around me. I would go to work.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I'm like,
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: how am I supposed to sit at my desk when,
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: as you put it, I've met the king of the universe? Like,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: what am I supposed to do? I mean, my whole
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: world was turned upside down and I was so on fire.
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: And I would go to this church and I noticed
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: that people weren't on fire like that. They didn't talk
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: about sermons and books they were reading. That was the
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: very first thing I noticed. There was a difference. It
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: was like a social club, but people weren't talking about
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: what's the Lord doing in their lives and how he's
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: moving and how he's opening up new new understandings for
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: them or whatever it was.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: There was just none of that fire. There was no
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: fear of the Lord, none of that.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: And there were, you know, fifteen minutes sermons on five
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: ways to be more grateful compared to and I've watching
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: like John Piper, Yeah.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I was. That is amazing. I've told this
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: story before, but when I first got say, well, actually no,
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: this was like a year after I got saved, a
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: good friend of mine started coming to my church. He
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: was my best friend, and he started coming to my
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: church and he came for about every Sunday for about
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: three months to reality La and then he suddenly disappeared.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: And I found out later that he started going to
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: All Souls Church, which is a gay church in Pasadena. Okay,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: So I was like, what on earth do they even
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: say at these churches? And so I listened to a
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: few of their sermons, and it was like what you said,
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: it was just like absolute nonsense, Like it was just
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: it was like the flowers in the beauty of the
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: universe and this, and it was like, what, like this
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: has nothing to do with the gospel. Finally, somebody created
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: a healthy version of Gatorade, and it happens to be
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: Josh who works on this show. And it's called Sport Drink.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: Comes in two flavors, no yellow, five lemon, lime and orange.
• 34:34
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• 34:40
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• 34:43
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• 34:47
  Speaker 3: you don't. And it comes in these cans, these steel cans,
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: and you just take a scoop of the powder, put
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: it in your water at home, mix it up and
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: you have your sports drink for the day. And the
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: steel can is more recyclable than plastic, and there's no
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: microplastic exposure. Gatorade uses high fruit doose corn syrup, which
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: is terrible for you, terrible. I can't express how terrible
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: it is. And neurotoxic dyes. They use these artificial dyes
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: in their drinks, which why would you want that in
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: your body? It's terrible for you. So go to sport
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Dash Drink dot com. That's sport drink dot com. And
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: when you go to the checkout, put in the code
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Becket and you'll get ten percent off. That's sport Dash
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: Drink dot Com. And you're gonna love it, and your
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: body is gonna love it too. How did you extricate
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: yourself from this port? How did you finally just realize
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: that you needed to leave?
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, it's so funny. It's the same
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: thing you're saying. It's the same thing you're saying. I
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: think I was I was reading scripture and I was
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: listening to the word being preached, and then I was
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: going to this church, and the difference was so stark,
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: you know, Like I was reading in John and he
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: talks about you know, he talks about you'll be baptized
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: in the spirit and truth, and it was the truth.
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: He said, his Jesus says, my word is true. You know,
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: he is the truth. And I wanted to know the
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: truth and what I was hearing at these progress and
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: I went to some other I mean, in the circle,
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: I kind of got exposed to a lot of progressive
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: ideology and progressive Christianity, which is not even it's not Christianity.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the whole of the religion.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: But you're right, it's very Yeah, it's very it's very
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: influenced by New Age and all this kind of stuff.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: And it was like a hodgepodge of you could just
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: believe whatever you want. So if everything is true, then
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: nothing is true. There was nothing to grab hold of. Yeah,
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: But what really changed, what really came to a head
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: as I decided to I needed to understand what it
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: was going to look like for me to walk with
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: the Lord and having this having same sex attraction. And
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: I had sort of tabled that for a while. All
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: I knew when I first got saved was I put
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: it together enough that I wasn't married. I was like, well,
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: I'm not married, and I think that Christians don't have
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: sex outside of marriage, so I'm just gonna not do that.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: That was as much as I could put together. But
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: I knew I needed it, and the Lord was so
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: gracious with me the way he ordered things. Sometimes he
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: orders he orders like his conviction of sin and his
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: revelation in different ways than I would have or what
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: I want for somebody. But the way he ordered it
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: for me was very gracious. And so after a few months,
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: I said, I need to figure this out, and I
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: started to do a really deep dive and I read
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: all I read a bunch of books and videos and
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: all this kind of stuff I could about, you know,
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: that this issue of does scripture does scripture affirm same
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: sex relationships or not? And I read, you know, the
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: Matthew vines and all that kind of stuff right on
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: the affirming side. And then I read, you know, a
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: Preston sprinkle and a bunch of other stuff on on.
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's not really a side. But what blew
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: me away Beckett was that it wasn't even close the
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: arguments for like the affirming side, that oh, the scriptures
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: just we just got it wrong. Whoops, you just have
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: to kind of look at it this way. And then
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: none of that was true. It was a big misunderstanding.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: The arguments were so weak. It didn't it wasn't even
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: I thought it was going to be this big rustle
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: for me to figure out, like what's the truth. It
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: was so clear, I mean, just read the scripture. It's
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: so clear and so I was wrestling with this and
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: I came to land. I landed at that point, and
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: I remember asking the pastor at this church. I said,
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm trying to figure this out or what
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: if this looks like? And what what what do I
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: do with with the reality of sex? And and and
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: am I supposed to have sex with other people? And
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: you know what does that look like? And she said, oh,
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: Jesus isn't really that worried about it. As long as
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: you don't hurt anybody else, you can kind of have
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: sex with whoever you want. And I thought, that's the
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: same answer the world gives. How can the exact how
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: can Jesus, who's totally upside down be giving the exact
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: same answer that any average secular atheist on the street
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: would give me about sexual ethics. It just and that
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: was it. That was a straw that but I just knew,
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: I just knew. I was like, I got I have
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: to get out of here.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: Wow. And by the way, you mentioned Preston Sprinkle, I
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: just want to clarify for my audience that do not
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: buy Preston Sprinkle books. That whole revoice side B stuff
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: is from the pit of hell, and so please do
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: not because I know a lot of churches are buying
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: into this and they're having their congregants or their leaders
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: read Preston Sprinkle books. So please avoid all of that.
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: I've I've done a whole episode. Well link it below.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: I did an episode with Rosario Butterfield and christ Oh yes,
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: she's great. Yeah, on side sideb Christianity and that whole mess.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: It's just a total mess. It's not biblical. It's the
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: spirit of the age.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Anyway.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: I just had to say that before before.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: We do, and and I'll just I'll just add that,
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: you know, I read a lot of different opinions and
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: or our perspectives, i should say, and all sorts of
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: and it was it was helpful for me to go through.
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: And I did read some stuff that's heretical, right, I
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: mean one of the first books I read was Love
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: Wins by Rob Bell for gonna sakes. I mean, it's there,
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: so you know, I was on her journey to figure
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: out what's true. And there's a lot of unhelpful, let's say,
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: and also untrue information out there. Rosera Boda Field, she
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: was so helpful for me and working through some of
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: this you know her stuff, and there's a lot of
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: great voices out there. But I I I want to
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: I want to kind of affirm what you're saying is
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: that you have to use discernment on who you listen
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: to and how you take those things.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, and so what happens next? How did you
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: find a real church? How did you?
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Reality and reality la? Okay, Well it's really funny.
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: So I told you that when I first got saved,
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: I was like, I didn't know what to do with myself.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: It was such a drastic thing that had happened to me.
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: It felt it was so transformational that I think I
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: felt like I needed to respond in some kind of
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: dramatic or drastic way. I didn't know how to process
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: what was going on. And one of the things I
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: started doing was I started looking into missions, like I
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: need to go on a mission.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I need to go to Africa. Oh.
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: And I started looking into like Christian communities, Christian intentional communities,
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: or kind of commans where Christians lived together. And I
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: found a while I started corresponding. Mostly I was going
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: to go live on a farm in Georgia, you know
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: what I mean, with a bunch of Christians, and I
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: just didn't know. But one of them was in San
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: Francisco and I went to visit them and they were
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: very cool. It's a very cool church. Not you know
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: that that wasn't the path that I needed to take.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: But I remember hearing about Reality SF and I remember
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: looking at their website and thinking, this is like a
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: really cool church when I was up in San Francisco.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: And so when I was looking for a new church,
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: I think the Lord the Holy Spirit brought this to
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: my mind and I just thought, maybe there's a Reality.
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: I didn't know anything, I didn't know how to find
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: a church. So I literally just thought, maybe there's a
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: Reality in LA and I just googled it and it
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: was the first thing that came up, and I just
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: went back next Sunday and I went and.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I knew that was my church.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: What year was it was my church?
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Twenty nineteen?
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: Oh wow, so pretty recently. I mean yeah, relatively recently.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: And so and then you so you immediately just felt
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: like this is where I need to be.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, uh mm hmmm. Yeah.
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: And what I love about and I think what's important
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: for any church is I was hungering to know. I
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: wanted to be disciples, right. I wanted to know what
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: does it look like for me to follow the Lord
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: in my day to day life? What does it really
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: mean in every aspect and all of life to look
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: to look to him to trust him?
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: And I've and you know, I.
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: Had to continue to do that with I think anyone
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: who experiences on matt desires, which is going to be
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: all of us, is going to have to continue to
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: press into trusting him that what he says is true
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: and good. And that was the space that I could
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: really you know, or a church that I could really
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: do that in.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: And so uh and so what what did your did
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: you tell your parents all of this? Do they are
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: they aware what happened when they found out that you
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: were just, yeah, a real Christian?
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's really funny that you asked that, because it
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: was awkward. I think I think, I, I know, I
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: know your story too, and that you've had similar experiences that.
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: When I went and I started to tell friends and
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: family that I was a Christian and some of the
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: implications of that about how I was going to be
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: living my life, I got kind of the gamut of response.
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: A lot of people were very how do I say
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: graciously that very yeah, I mean they just weren't. It was,
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: it was I got very negative responses. I mean I
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: remember telling an old friend of mine. He said, he
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: just he just I think that's abhorrent that this Christian,
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: you know, the whole thing around the gay thing, the
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: way his understanding of how he just thought it was,
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: he couldn't wrap his head around it. I mean, he
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: thought he felt the way I felt before I became
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: a believer. I had this Facebook post for from about
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: six months before I became a Christian. I get to
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: it was it was on my my sister's Facebook page
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: and she had written something or something about her faith.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: And I wrote this whole thing about how your religion
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: is sick and it causes people that you know, you know,
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: lose their lives and it's it's twisted and this whole thing,
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: you know, I mean, I hated Christians. And it's so
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: funny because you know, here I am following the Lord.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean so I understood it.
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, only God can do that. Only God can turn
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: you know, Saul of Tarsus and you know, and from
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: a from a murdering a guy who's affirming murdering Christians
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: to one of the most prominent, you know, apostles of
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: all time, and we wrote most of the New Testament.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, God can turn people around like that, and
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: it's just it's the same thing with me. I mean,
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: it's like it was such an unexpected thing in my
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: life that God just God just kind of like, you know,
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: he's looking around La and he's like, you're going to
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: be in my kingdom now, and you know You're no
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: longer going to live that life. Like I'm plucking you
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: out of that darkness into my light. And it's like, whoa,
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Like it's just that a supernatural, amazing experience.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But to answer your question, yeah, when I mean, yeah,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: And so I can understand why people had a hard
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: time processing that. I mean I kind of joked, I
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: used to joke that it was I had a harder time.
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: I was more nervous and had a harder time telling
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: my mom that I was a Christian than I did
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: telling her that I was gay when I was fifteen
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: or sixteen, because you know, she's had a lot of
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: church hurt and she has a lot of she you know,
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: and I think we come to the table with a
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: lot of assumptions about what Christians are, and we since
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: over the past few years we've had we have such
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: a great relationship and the Lord is doing such awesome
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: things in her life and she's i think, be exploring
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: what it means what Christianity is, and so it's really
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: opened up a door for my family. I've seen the
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: I've seen the Lord just do amazing things in her
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: life and my life. But it was through him calling
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: me to his family that those things started, you know.
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: So yeah, it's been cool.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: That's good. Praise God. I just want to go back
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: to because about just the idea of your friends, you're
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: just having negative reactions. And Jesus said, you know, I
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: do not think that I've come to bring peace to
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: the earth. I have not come to bring peace but
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: a sword. But I've come to set a man against
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter in
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: law against her mother in law. A person's and a
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: loves father or mother more than me is not worthy
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: of me. And whoever loves son daughter more than me,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: And whoever does not take his cross, take up his
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: finds his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: for my sake will find it. So it's like God
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: does that, you know, when he he caused in your
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: life and my life, he caused once we became born again,
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: Like he caused this division in our lives, you know,
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: and especially with all my friends. I mean, there was
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: just like I bear, I don't even speak to I
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: think ninety nine percent of those friends like anymore because
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: it caused such a deep division, you know that sword
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: just witch and so yeah, so tell us, now what
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: are you what are you doing? Because you left La?
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Why did you leave La?
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: And yeah, I left La recently just to spend a
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: couple of months. I decided to uh to move to
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: North Carolina, of all places. I I got a new job,
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: you know, I got laid off from my own job,
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: did the whole job search thing, got a job that
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: allowed me to work anywhere in the country. One of
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: my closest friends also moving here, and we decided, like,
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: let's do this adventure together. I think, you know, La
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: is great. It's like anywhere it's there's pros, there's cons
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: there's stuff that's really good, there's stuff that's not good,
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: and it can be a hard place to live, you know,
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: financially and otherwise. So I felt like I did a
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: lot of praying, a lot of discerning, and I felt
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: like God was opening up an opportunity and a door
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: for me to to kind of have a shift in
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: my life. So it's been hard to leave church, to
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: leave reality, you know, and to start the process of
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: brooding myself in a new church. But the thing that
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: you know, that I kind of held onto this whole
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: process is just that He is with me, you know.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: He says, do not be dismayed. I am your God.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: You know, I will strengthen you, I will help you.
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: I will hold you by my righteous right hand. He
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: tells me, you know, he tells us that that wherever
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: we go, he's he's with us.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's been it's been an adventure.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: But and so, and are you liking North Carolina?
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's an adjustment. Again, it's early days.
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: It's only been a couple of months.
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: You miss the weather in La right now, it's like
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: seventy degrees and gorgeous out.
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right, totally. Yeah, Yeah, it's a different lifestyle. But
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: I have to say, you know, I want to to
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: share that as part of my walk with the Lord.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, I love what you just I
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: love what you read, and it reminds me of how
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: I think it is. In Matthew nineteen, Jesus talks about
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: you know, he says, you know, if you will leave
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: anyone who leaves you know, brothers and sisters, lands and
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers to follow me
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: for the kingdom's sake. And he talks about that, and
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: you know, he tells us that there's going to be
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: relational sacrifice, and he tells.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Us that.
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: We will need to say no to some deep longings
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: and desires and then that's universal, that's not you know,
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: these people over here have to say no, and these
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: people over here are good to go. I mean, everybody
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: across the board who's going to follow Jesus is going
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: to have to trust him and learn to say no
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: to some unmet desires and even good desires. And so
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: that's kind of been that's just been my walk with
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: him for the last you know, seven years, is continuing,
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: like all of us that follow him, to trust him,
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: to to to go to him with my fears and
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: my laments and my desires and trust that he'll meet
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: them because he knows me, because he's the good shepherd.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: A man to that well, Josh, we're going to leave
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: it there. Thank you so much for coming on and
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: sharing your story. I appreciate it.
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Beckett, it's been a blessing. And thank you
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: for all the ways that you build up the church
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: through this. It's really encouraging.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Beckett
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: Cook Show. Your support makes this content possible. All episodes
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: of The Beckett Cook Show are also available on YouTube.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: For more information about Beckett and his ministry, visit his
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: website at Becketcook dot com.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: Thank you to the team at Life Audio for their
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: partnership with us. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: you will find more faith centered podcasts about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: and more.