Latest / Faithful Fitness With Coach Alex VanHouten / Christian Athletes vs. the World: Preparing Young Athletes for Spiritual Warfare with Drake Reed

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Christian Athletes vs. the World: Preparing Young Athletes for Spiritual Warfare with Drake Reed · Faithful Fitness With Coach Alex VanHouten

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Faithful Fitness Podcast for my Dad. Coach
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Alex van Houghten helps you get stronger and mind, body,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and spirit. He believes that your body's a temple, so
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: taking good care of it is an actual worship.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: I should know.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I live with them. Every week. He brings truth from
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the Bible too, of some science and stories that will
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: set your heart on fire. May God bless you to
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: become everything He made you to be, just one percent
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: better every single day.
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  Speaker 3: What if the abilities you're most proud of are also
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  Speaker 3: the things that are most likely to break you. Every year,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: thousands of Christian athletes lose their identity when the game ends,
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: not because they stop playing, because no one ever taught
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: them who they were apart from the sport. Hey there,
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Faithful Fitness. I'm coach Alex van Houten, and
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: around here I work hard to help you make the
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: most how the body God's given you. Today sitting down
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: with former professional athlete and high school coach Drake reid
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: Man who played overseas coach young man on the front
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  Speaker 3: lines and watch what happens when talent grows faster than
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: spiritual foundations.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: If you're an.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Athlete, or a parent or a coach who wants faith
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: stronger than fame and discipline deeper than performance.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: This conversation is not optional. Let's get into it. What's up, guys.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: This is coach Alex Van Howden on the Faithful Fitness Podcast.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: I'm super excited to be hanging out with you today.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Our mission is to help you make the most out
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: of the body God's given you, and I know this
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: episode is gonna do that for you. I get to
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: be hanging out with coach Drake Reid, who just so happens,
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: just so happens to have lived, competed, and graduated in
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: the same town that I graduated, and we have no
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: idea until just now.
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  Speaker 2: What's up, coach? How you doing? Brother?
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  Speaker 4: Knowing great? How about you?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: I'm doing good, man, I'm doing good. So I didn't know.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: I didn't know until it was actually my sister who
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: connected connected us. She works for our office and whatnot.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: When your interview request came through, I was like, oh
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: my gosh, this guy went to school like fifteen minutes
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  Speaker 3: away from when I went to school. You went to
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: Northeast High School. I went to Kenwood High School and
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: we graduated a year apart, you a year ahead of me.
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  Speaker 3: We were like hardcore rivals and didn't even know it.
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  Speaker 4: So it's brothers in Christ.
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  Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, bitter rivals. We're both on the
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: same team. But you know, you got to have somebody
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: to butt your head against. I wasn't any good at
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: basketball or football, so I didn't actually get to cross
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: swords with you on the quarter on the field. But man,
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: I'm so happy to be hanging out with somebody who
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: graduated in clarkschool. Can you tell me a bit about
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: your background as an athlete? Introducing you to our audience.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: You are a coach, you're an author. We're gonna be
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: talking about your books today, but I want to talk
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: about your background.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: As an athlete.
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  Speaker 3: You through high school, into college and even beyond, you
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: had the upper cortunity to play in a lot of
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: environments that athletes don't get to play in. So can
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: you talk to me a bit about what you've done
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: as an athlete? And it's okay to toot your horn
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: a little bit because because you you really went went
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: far from an athletics perspective. Statistically speaking, not a lot
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: of people get to go where you went so so
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: tell us about it, coach.
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I start, I grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri,
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: and I moved to Clarksfield when I was fourteen, So
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: when I you know, my foundation was was in Saint Louis,
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: But my life took off. My life really began sports
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: wise when I moved to Clarsville, and I was able
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: to take it to another level. My brother was real
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: instrumental in that. My father was real instrumental. My dad
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: played college basketball at at the NI level, and he
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: really taught me to dribble with both hands and how
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: to shooting all these things. And so interesting enough, I'm
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: left handed. I'm born left handed. I used to do
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: shoot left handed, throw left handed everything. But my brother
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: is six years older and he's right handed. So when
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: we were kids, he'd be like, you using the wrong hand,
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: going right hand and then shooting right hand. And so
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: I still eat left handed, bat left handed and all
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: this stuff. But but it made me, are.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: You serious, You're you're a goofy footer.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's awesome. Me a lot in basketball be able
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  Speaker 4: to shoot with both hands. So that was us. Uh,
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  Speaker 4: But but I learned a lot from my from my
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  Speaker 4: dad because he was just hard nosed on both of
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  Speaker 4: my brother and I and just making us put in
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: the extra work and told us how serious everything was.
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  Speaker 4: So it was tough. We had a lot of tough
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: Carl Riders home because my dad used to coach me
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: when I was real little, and then my older brother
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  Speaker 4: coached me a bit when I was in high school
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: in the au circuit. So uh that so that was
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: a great experience. And he played college football at Austin
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: P and now he's a he's an agent for Clutch,
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: so cool, so he's quite He's pretty big in the
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: sports world as well. But in any case, I want,
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: I went ow to Northeast. I started off the class
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: for the Academy, then transferred to Northeast my sophomore year
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: and finished up high school there. I started off at
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: Shamanad High School and in Saint Louis and then I
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: moved off to class for But in any case that
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: was I was able to become a too. Two sports
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  Speaker 4: standout in Northeast and football and basketball. But my first
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: love was always basketball, so I decided to go ahead
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  Speaker 4: on it and play at Austin P and things really,
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: you know, things went well there, we went to the
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: NCAA tournament, we went to the n I t UH
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  Speaker 4: and and I was able to become one of the
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: better players in the country during that time. That's awesome.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: That led me to going overseas. I tried the NBA,
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: but things didn't really work out for me and that
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: as far as getting a lot of opportunities, so I
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: took it abroad and UH played everywhere from Australia to Italy, Argentina, France, United,
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: Arab Emirates, Libya and I even finished my career playing
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: on the MALEI and national team. After I was able
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: to UH find my my heritage there. There was a
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: lot going on, but I'm glad to be home and
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: be in the same place for a while.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: How long was that that period of your your athletic career,
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: traveling from UH Austin p and then and then to
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: to the time that you took on coaching Eleven years?
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  Speaker 4: Wow?
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  Speaker 2: Man, eleven years traveling playing basketball? Holy cow? So I
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: mean you've been a lot of places.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a challenge actually coming home and getting
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: used to being an American again.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: That holy cow, man, Like during that eleven years, how
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: often did you actually get to come home?
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  Speaker 4: I mean just in the off season, you know, every
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: once in a while. I mean you'll go, you'll go
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: home for Christmas if you want to. But after I
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: would say most guys when they get to their late
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: twenties or so, if they're still playing, they stop going
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  Speaker 4: home so much and people kind of come and visit
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: them because your life is really over there.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that was that was my life. But coming
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  Speaker 4: home and forgetting all the holidays, you know, like you
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: really don't celebrate Thanksgiving, you know, you never.
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  Speaker 2: Have MLK Day, Patrick's Day, you know.
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  Speaker 4: So yeah, so that stuff is like what it's a
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: holiday today. So adjustment just the mentality of coming back
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  Speaker 4: to a capitalist society when you live in a socialist
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  Speaker 4: society or archy or whatever's going on wherever you're at.
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  Speaker 4: So it's it's a lot of things that you have
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  Speaker 4: to get broken of when you are living in other
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  Speaker 4: places because everyone thinks everything is like in a big city,
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  Speaker 4: like you just, oh, yeah, you're playing France. Are you
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  Speaker 4: playing Paris? Like nah, I don't, I don't. I don't
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  Speaker 4: play in Paris, Okay? Are you like they think that
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  Speaker 4: if you if you're in Australia that you automatically Sydney
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: because they just look at what they know, just like
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: a foreigner thinks that everyone from the States is from
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  Speaker 4: New York, LA or Miami because of the movies. But
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: there's there's thousands of cities in every country and you know, uh, there's.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Their different flavor, different culture.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. So so so you have that going on, and
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  Speaker 4: everyone has a different twist. So it uh, it'll jam
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: you up, but it opens you up to be able
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: to be more adaptable to a variety of different people,
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  Speaker 4: and you're able to not just survive in places, but
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: you're able to become be able to thrive whever you So, yeah, I.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Want to dive into some of the things that you
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: were exposed to while you're over there. Particularly I read
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: we'll talk about this in a bit, but I read
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: your your new book, The Protection Manual, and some of
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: the things that you mentioned in there that that Christians
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  Speaker 3: can be influenced by and exposed to in the spirit world.
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  Speaker 3: I can tell that you have been to places where
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  Speaker 3: this is way more out in your face and in
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: the open than here in the States. We generally think about,
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: you know, demonic possession or ties to tarot crystals and
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: that sort of thing, like we don't generally think they
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: exist here. I'm not saying they don't, but they're not
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  Speaker 3: as not as prevalent. But you walked into several countries
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  Speaker 3: where the predominant religion is not Christianity, and so you saw,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: you saw some stuff. So I can't wait to talk
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: about that, but I do I do want to stop
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  Speaker 3: down on one thing. Being from Clarksville, well not from
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I was born in Colorado.
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  Speaker 4: I'm an army I consider myself from Clausville as well,
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: like I'm say Louis and I'm from Plattsville.
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  Speaker 2: However, you want to you know, right right right, well
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: same here.
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  Speaker 3: You know, so I was born in Colorado, but I'm
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: an army brat and so so coming around to Fort Campbell,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: Kentucky slash Clarksville, Tennessee is a military town, I would say, gosh,
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, how much like at one at one time,
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: if I remember right, about two thirds of the population
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: of Clarksville was made up of the military and military families.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: So so, what's really interesting about Clarksville, or at least
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: I thought was interesting being there is is it's a
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: it's a it's a town in the US in the
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: middle of Tennessee. There's nothing, nothing really special going on
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: there as far as like landmarks or buildings.
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  Speaker 2: Or anything like that.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: But people are from all over the place, Like you
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: meet you meet people from from every walk of life,
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: every culture, every ethnicity. Like it's a it's a very
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: diverse place. And I actually haven't seen that kind of
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: diversity literally anywhere else I have ever lived since then.
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  Speaker 3: So so what's really interesting about that is as an athlete,
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: it was a very competitive place. Like we had what
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: like seven high schools in the area. How many high
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: schools does Clarksville have?
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: I think it's eight now it might be nice. Okay, okay,
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: just moving back home about the must ago.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: So I'm still still tallying it.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Every time you guys get to go play a game
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: with the team, Yeah.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: Next month, So I'm still figuring out you know, who's who.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: But but now it's it's always been, you know, a
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: smaller town, so the competition is packed in.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Intense is intense.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: So to grow as an athlete in that sense, as
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: a young athlete, one of the things that I find
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: coaching And I have two boys, I've got a ten
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: year old and a six year old, and so I'm
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: very pro sports for them, but I'm pro sports with
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: a twist because I.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Want them to be athletic. I want them to explore
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the gifts God's given them in their body. I want
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: them to learn discipline.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: I want them to learn how to bring the best
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: out of themselves, because that's not an easy skill, especially
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: in today's world where the easy road sounds much nicer.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Right. But here's here's.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: An interesting thing, and I'm curious about your thoughts on this.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: I have worked with people in their forties and fifties
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: as a health coach and personal trainer who were collegiate athletes,
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: but then they got injured and it was like a
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: twenty year span of not knowing who they are because
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: their primary identity was I'm an athlete. But as Christians,
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: we know that my primary identity is a disciple of
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, an adopted son of God the Father, and
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: I just so happened to also get to serve him
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: as an athlete. And so as a young athlete, when
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: you're working with athletes and stuff, I know as a
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: coach this is different than when you were becoming an
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: athlete yourself. Was your identity as an athlete primary first
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: and then God got a hold of your heart? Or
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: did you hold on to your faith and identity in
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Christ first and always understand that you were an athlete second.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: I'm curious about your thoughts.
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  Speaker 4: I was total athlete. I was totally told, total job,
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: total athlete, I'm a ballplayer, this, I'm that, all that
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: type of stuff. I talked to all types of trash
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: and stuff like it was growing up in Saint Louis.
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: Like and so in Saint Louis, if you if you
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: are humble, people people frowned upon that. Like if you're
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: in the gym and they about to pick up five
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: guys and they ask you, man, you know, we don't
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: really know. Can you can you play? If you be like,
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: I'm okay. If you say something like that, you're out
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: of them.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: You're You're like, I'm the best thing ever.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like man Hen saying he can play, man, you know.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: But then you moved to Tennessee and it's the opposite,
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: you know, So that was a change. But but yeah,
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: I didn't grow up in the church. I can't. I
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: found I think I'm more typical to the average person,
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: like you kind of learned about God later in life.
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: You know, we always uh, we went to church every
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: blue moon, you know, every now and then. We always
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: knew Christians. And if we had to fall back on
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: the thing on anything, we will say we were Christians.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: But I didn't. I didn't come into Christ into college.
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: When I got into college, I got baptized and I
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: started going to church regularly in college, and so that's
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: when I introduced to Christ. But it's that you're saying
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: all these things because I was speaking at the conference
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: earlier this summer, and the heart, the heart information, the
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: herd fact that I was picking up from surveying families,
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: survey Christian families and athletes and Christian athletes was that
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: there's so many things that we don't know when we
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: leave our homes. So when you go in too prep school,
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: when you going to college, when you going to a
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: professional level, you don't really know enough about God as
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: a pertaine to you, Okay. And so that's where you
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: see guys in their twenty five or at twenty three
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: and they strung out on drugs? Are they making a
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: lot of bad decisions? All these things because you really
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: didn't get the tutelage that you really needed before you left.
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: And so one of the things I really press upon
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: parents is you don't have the you don't have the
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: affordability to tell a fourteen or fifteen year old athlete
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: that you know is going to probably play in college
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: sports that I'll tell you when you're an adult. I'll
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: tell you when you get older. Was different. You know,
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: I was explaining to some pastors that I was speaking
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: to a while ago. You know, I was. I was
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: in the newspaper, on the internet, on TV three times
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: a week since I was sixteen years old. So there's
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: no I mean everyone, and you're the most visible people
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: in the in the in the community. Okay, so in
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: college you're on billboards, you and magazines and all this stuff.
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: So there's no hiding from temptation, hiding from the people
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: that might be into some dark spiritual practices. There's no
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: hiding from people that's trying to get you to do
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: drugs and alcohol. There's no hiding from none of that.
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: So you have to be trained in those things from
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: middle school on.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And it can't be that it makes you uncomfortable.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: You don't want to talk about it, are you none
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: of that because you not wanting to talk about it.
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: You're not wanting to train the kid up in that way. Okay,
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: it's going to put them in and they're going to
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: be confronted with these people. It would immediately. They don't
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: have to seek them out. They're not in the office
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: working the job. They're not in the uh, they're not
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: in the school teacher or something. They're in they're visible.
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: There's thousands and thousands of people that see them all
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: the time. So you have to you have to know
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: right up front who you are in Christ. You need
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: to understand your gifting as soon as possible, okay, so
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: that you know what you're capable of and what guy
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: and what direction God wants you to go. You need
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: to have a spiritual team set up, you know. So
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: you need to have your mother's, your aunts, your uncles,
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: your father, all those people. They need to be praying
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: for you, because you need more prayer than somebody who's
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: not being who doesn't have that many fish hooks in them.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: So a lot of different things I don't want to
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: take up you know, everything you will want to speak about.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: But no, that's good. That does this is really good.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: It's so important.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: You know a lot of people don't know this, but
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: but a young man's frontal lobes like hit. The complete
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: part of his brain is not formed all the way
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: until he's about twenty five twenty six years old. And
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: even as an adult past twenty five twenty six years old,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I still have to learn to take every thought captive
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: for Christ. Right, I still have to learn that skill.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: So we take like a sixteen seventeen, eighteen year old
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: guy who has the athletic ability that that people are like, wow,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: you know, putting you in the newspaper, putting you on
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: billboards and stuff, put like putt microphones in your face
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: and that sort of thing. If you aren't anchored in Christ,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: if you don't understand that He is a lord of
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: your life, If you don't have that number one goal
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: post foundation firm train up a child in the way
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: they should go so in the end they don't depart
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: from it.
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: If you don't have that, sports easily becomes its own idol,
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: and unfortunately that idol leaves a lot of gaps. It
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: doesn't give you the tools and weapons that you know.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: I guess the coaching metaphor is this, would you allow
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: your team to go into practice and not practice the
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: things they're going to see in the game, and then
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: throw them into the game and they'll be like, I've
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: never seen this, but what was that play?
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: How did that? How do I counter that move? Coach?
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: And it's like, oh, it's the game. Good luck.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: You know we're going to win or win or learn.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: It's like, no, you in practice. You you practice the
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: stuff that you're going to face. You're going to practice
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: this stuff you're up against. And so what I hear
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: from you is saying, hey, as an athlete, there's a
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: lot more to this whole being an athlete thing than
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: just being on the field, being.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: On the court. It's it's life and there's some life stuff.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: That you got to know that you practice that you
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: got to be coached and discipled and and that's it
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: sounds like that's your heart for young athletes.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: Definitely. You know, it's uh, it can be challenging and
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: you know, and this is this is value one of
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: Christian athletes versus the world. Okay, this is what you
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: need to know before you leave your family so that
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: the things that are really just like you said, God
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: is number one. We're used to hearing that. Okay. We
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: used to always say that in that cool and that's cool. Okay,
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: but you're not taught to diligently seek the Lord. Okay.
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: I think that's the big things. Okay, So when things
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: are rough, you're not taught how to read the Bible.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: Many athletes don't have teachers, someone that can really teach
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: them what the Bible means. You might have the wrong
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: translation for you to understand at the sixteen year old,
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: twenty year old age. Okay. All these sorts of things
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: can get you lost. Okay, because the time that you're
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: not spending, the enemies working against you at at all times,
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: looking for the loopholes. Okay, is this person into Is
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: he spending too much time with the girls? Is he
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: spending too much time with the with the with the
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: people in the streets. Is he spending too much time,
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: you know, doing whatever sins Okay, that a person is
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: is apter is after it is prone to get into
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: or their family members. The enemy is watching that. Okay.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: You need to be understanding these sorts of things, and
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: you need to be praying daily. Okay. You have a
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: list of prayers that you say daily so that you're
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: covering yourself so that God's angels can be working on
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: your behalf at all times. And so that's and so
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: that a lot of people think that's like some heavy
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: stuff to put on somebody, but it's really not. It's
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: the simplest time your shoes, okay, it's as simplest getting
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: up and brushing your teeth. But it has to be done, okay,
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: because there's too much competition against you physically, and there's
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: too much competition against you spiritually and mentally to try
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: to capture your mind and take you away from guy's
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: because what the what the enemy tries to do is
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: they try to take an Anakin skoytwalker and turning the Darvador.
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: Okay they're trying to do okay, because you can simple
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: you can easily be on a prophetic calling, get and
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: get switched over to a psychic. That can happen real quick, okay.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: And you're going to be around all those type of people, okay,
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: on a daily basis that you can't avoid simply because
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: you're in the sport, you're in the college campus with
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: people from different places, you're in a professional setting okay
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: as a pro, and you're traveling all over the country,
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: all over the world and different things. The game is
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: so international now, whether it's foreign players come in to America,
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: whether that's American players going to other places, whether that's
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: for preseason games, the Olympics, all these sorts of things. Okay,
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: it's a lot. It's not. I thought it was a
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: big deal moving to another country or traveling to another
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: country when I was young, until I got on the
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: professional team in another country and half the team, Okay,
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: left their families in middle school, high school to go
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: to another country so that they have an opportunity in sports.
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: So this is not a big deal for a lot
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: of people. So this is what's out here. And so
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: when you drop a kid off that's nineteen years old, okay,
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: that's sixteen years old and to another state, another country,
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: something like that, Okay, there might not be Christian churches there, Okay,
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: they might not understand that this is not These people
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: are not living for the Lord, Okay, might not understand anything.
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: And everything sounds nice. Every spiritual pract has something that
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: sounds real, deep and real majestic and all this stuff.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: So when you're for twelve, fifteen, twenty, okay, you're very young,
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: very impressionable, and you need someone that has more experience
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: than you, has lived a similar lifestyle that you that
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: you're pursuing, Okay, that can break these things down to
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: you so that it don't makes sense, so that you don't
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: get lost.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Well said.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: And so hence the title of your book series, the
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Christian Athletes Versus the World, because the idea is like,
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: you are bringing Christ into these places in these situations,
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: and that discipline the same. To me, it's the same
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: discipline you have to have. It's, you know, different manifestation
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: of it, but it's the same discipline you have to
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: have to be an athlete. I think that's one of
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: the things I love about being an athlete so much,
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: is that is that it teaches you integrity and grit
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: and growth and a sense of awe and meaning about
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: you know, being a part of something greater. Athletic discipline,
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: coaching and training mirrors this spiritual maturity that you're talking about. Uh,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: it doesn't happen by accident. You don't walk out on
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: a basketball court even if you have anate talent, and
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: you don't start sinking threes every time like.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: You got you got to train that man.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Blood sweat and tears ten thousand times, you know, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: and you get you grow in that natural ability. And similarly,
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: when when we come to know Christ, we're not wisked
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: off to heaven. God still has a mission and a
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: plan for us here and so and so we have
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: the opportunity to grow in maturity. And that maturity doesn't
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: happen by accident. That maturity happens through, as you said,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: getting in the word, having a mentor who can help
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: to teach you, praying every day. And yeah, you said, hey,
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: this might be heavy, but I mean so is sprinting
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: uphill over and over and over again.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: That's rough.
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: You know, it's so interesting that you're that you're asking
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: me about this topic because I'm so passionate about it.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: I interviewed sixteen pastors that went into that went into
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: the Christian athletes versus the world books, and I really
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: and I interviewed them because there's so many things that
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: are very simple that they know, but many of them
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: didn't know the walk of an athlete, okay, the lifestyle
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: of an athlete. Okay, everyone wants to go to the
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: games and say, hey, they know such and such a
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: great game or whatever. I'm praying for you, blah blah blah.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: Right now, I need to know how to pray. Okay, yeah,
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: someone just tells you, okay, you need to pray. Duh. Okay,
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: what type of prayers we're talking about? So I didn't
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: know how to bless house a house until my career
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: was open. Okay. Meanwhile, you're on all these different countries
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: and all these different hotels.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: All these different places.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: College as a pro player and whatever. You have a nightmarriage,
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: you can't sleep good. You're having all these this crazy
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: stuff that might happen periodically, and you just take it
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: off as this is badgering, this is weird. Oh wait,
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: some stuff not realizing. If you just bless your place,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: it's under the covering of Christ. Now, okay, an enemy
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: can't come in, all right. If there's disarray and there's
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: dysfunction in your household, okay, you bless your dorm room,
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: you bless your vehicles, you bless your locker room. Okay,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: then these type of things just simply won't happen to
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: you because the presence of God is there. Okay, how
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: do you bless your house? Okay, it's very it's very simple.
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: But you if you don't know it. You don't know it. Okay,
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: what do you do when you're meeting all these beautiful
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: people that want to talk to you and have your time? Okay,
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: but you don't know how God wants you to date? Okay.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: That was one of the areas that a lot of
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: pastors had a lot to say about. It's like, well,
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: here I am. I'm in my thirties now, just now
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: being taught how God wants you to date. But I
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: was going to church every week. So what I do
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: is I say, well, I focus on tangible things. Okay.
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: So you're not talking to such a broad and a
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: broad spectrum. Okay. So so that's really what it comes
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: down to, because you know, one of the worst, the
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: worst type of culches to deal with is is hey, man,
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: go out there, run fight when right, But you're not.
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: You're not you're not teaching me the strategy. You're not
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: teaching you're not developing anybody. You're not doing nothing. You
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: just hope that talent works out, okay, but developing the talent.
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: So athletes have to be developed in their spiritual weal
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: just like anybody else.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, and a good coach is willing
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: to get in the weeds too, and to identify that
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: the small things that are going to make the big difference.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: So, so I don't know jack about soccer, all right,
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: but I'm coaching my my first grader's soccer team because
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: I can coach and they're first graders.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Like, it's more like hurting cats than it.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Is teaching the technique at that point, exactly exactly, we're
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: learning how to listen to the coach.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: We're learning how to listen to the coach. We're learning
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: how to run drills. We're learning how to work as
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: a team and not get mad when someone steals our
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: ball and that sort of thing. So they're learning the
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: fundamentals of just you know, being a human who can
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: be an athlete. So but but I do have an
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: assistant coach who is a collegiate level soccer player. So
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: so he doesn't know anything about well, he does know
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: he's learning, but but he's he still doesn't know how
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: to corral bunch of first graders.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: But the man knows his techniques. Right, So we're breaking
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: down this one thing.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: This kid keeps getting his ball stolen when he's running
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: down the field and and and so the coach went
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: to teach him how to My assistant coach went to
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: teach him how to do a juke. You step to
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: one side, then you got to push the ball with
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: the other foot on the outside of the foot, and
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: then and then you can go around. Well, the kid
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: could not maneuver the ball with the outside of his foot.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: He didn't have that technique down. And so a good
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: coach recognizes, hey, we're going to teach you how to
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: use the outside of your foot to push the ball
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: in a circle. And so, you know, that's what the
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: kids did for a while, pushing the ball around and
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: around and around a circle. And then and then you
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: can build that into something you can work with a
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: juke when when somebody's running towards you on the field.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Now I've learned that about soccer, which is great. But
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: that's what good coaching is like. It's it's I see
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: where your gap is, and I'm going to drill down
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: on that and help you to build that skill over time.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Similarly to I'm walking with Christ. I know God's God,
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: but I don't know how to seek him. It's like,
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: are you praying every day?
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Praying? What? How do I pray every day, pray this. Man,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: We're gonna pray We're gonna pray this. We're gonna pray this.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: We're gonna pray this, and if you're in this situation,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: we're gonna pray this. I found that to be very,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: very pertinent in your new book, The Protection Manual, where
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: you're talking about spiritual warfare that you've faced, and the
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: entire book is more like you have some paragraphs that
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: kind of frame things, but the entire book is more
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: like a collection of declarations and prayers that are scripturally based.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: Every single thing has a scriptural citation or component multiple
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: usually that that go along with us like, hey, this
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: is how you pray scripture into this situation. This is
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: how you declare scripture over this situation. I found it
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: intensely practical. It was very much like a coach would say, Hey,
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: if you're shooting the ball and it keeps hitting the
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: rim on the left side, change this about your wrist
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: and your jump right right.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: There's something like that.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: And so I love that you got in the weeds there,
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: And I'm curious for you when when you started writing,
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: because you were an athlete, Like, what the heck does
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: an athlete have to do with being an author. I
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: think it has a lot to do with it, by
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: the way, But but that's not when when you started
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: writing how did how did the Lord help you? To
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: articulate those getting in the weeds sorts of things that
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: were intensely practical but bite size and useful.
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: Well well, based off the things that I experienced in life.
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: One thing that I that I understand totally is, man,
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: when you endo the rest, man, you don't need someone
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: coming in here speaking to you, to another speaking to
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: you in another language. Okay, you know, like you don't
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: need someone coming in here talking to you about calculus,
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: trigonometry and all this stuff. It is too it's too much.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: Hey man, you you you had a fight, okay, all right.
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: You need very practical, very simple things that you can
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: that you can spit out right away. So that's how
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: I coach. That's how I teach people, Okay, because you
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: talking about you talking to people that are fifteen years old,
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: twenty years old, twenty five years old, and so they're
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: young people in life. And if you get to talk
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: to them about the King James version when they don't
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: even understand, you know, two or three sentences and that
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: and how that's how they's spoken. They don't understand different
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: cultures and things like that, but a person can understand
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: the a if you say these three prayers okay, and
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: you having problem people at your at your workplace trying
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: to get you fired, okay, they are they slandering your name,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: and you say these three or four prayers daily, okay,
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: those people gonna stop. They understand that, okay, and then
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: and then, and it's going to speak to them to like,
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: wait a minute. Everyone has some situation that work every
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: now and then. Okay, okay, you keep your family members
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: keep losing your job, like your mom just lost her job,
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: his dad lost your job, and now you lost your job.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: And okay, yeah, that's a lot of bad things happening
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: all at once. That's not normal. Okay. That's something I
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: talk about in my books too. When you hear people
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: from other countries, especially if they're from Africa or Caribbean,
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: they say that's not normal. Well, in their mind, they're
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: letting you know that there's something spiritually wrong with that,
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: and you need to take attention to the spiritual aspects
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: of that, because the pattern is showing them that it's
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: some type of a spiritual attack, okay. And so now
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: you need to consider that and pray against whatever might
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: be coming up against you. Okay. I talk about poposis,
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: So it sounds like you read the book so opposite.
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: So if something is coming, if something is disturbing your piece,
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: you need to speak the prayers of peace, okay. And
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: if there's something that's coming to get you, that's making
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: you ill, you need to speak the healing type of prayers.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: And so these are very tangible, simple things that anybody
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: can understand. But if you don't know, you don't know.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: And it's very intimidating to just say, all right, man,
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: you just need to read the Bible. And it's two
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: thousand and three thousand pages. You know they're not gonna
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: read it because it's too intimidating.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: All right, right, right, well, and you know I like
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: to saying from I think it's D. L.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Moody.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I might I might have it wrong, but he said
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: that the Bible.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: The power of the Bible is that it's shallow enough
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: that children can get in without drowning, but it's deep
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: enough that theologians have been swimming around for thousands of
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: years and still haven't reached the bottom, right. I like
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: that quote. At the same time, though, I do teach children,
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: and I teach adults, and that that inner child who's
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: very intimidated by a very large, very complicated. Uh, it's simple,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: but it's still complicated. If it's it's very difficult. It's
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: very difficult to understand exactly where to start in the Bible.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: It's difficult to understand how that applies to your life.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Even more so.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: And this, this might get in more to the spiritual
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: warfare side of things. When we say the sword of
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: the Spirit, which is the Word of God. If I
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: hand my six year old a double bladed play more
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: super sharp, right, that sucker is gonna cut me and
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: himself and our car, and our bushes and our poor cat.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: You don't know how to sing, yeah, all over the place,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: and and and the Bible is is the sword of
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: the Word.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: It is this word of the Spirit. It is the
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: word of God.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: And to understand how to wield it takes time, it
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: takes practice, it takes effort. And so you know, for
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: my son, it's like if I was going to teach
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: him how to swing a sword, I'd probably stand behind
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: him and we would practice just one swing for a
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: long time until he gets strong enough to wield that swing,
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: and then he would learn another swing. And I don't
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: mean to carry this metaphor too far here, but I
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: think this is extremely important. I work with men regularly,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: not necessarily athletes, but men who would say I want
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: to love God's word, I want to know it, I
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: want to understand it. I know it's going to be
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: good for me. I just don't know where to start.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: And it sounds like your work, your goal with your
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: athletes specifically, is to say, hey, you're an athlete. I
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: get that, I understand that, and you get the mentality
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: of an athlete as you go out into the world.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: Here is how you can use God's word in bite size,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: usable chunks so that the word that lives in you
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: can help you overcome the things you're going to face
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: in the world. Is there anything that you would add
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: to that. I feel like that's the heart of your work.
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: I think the main thing is when you're an athlete,
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: like we said, your identity is in the sport, whichever
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: sport that is, okay. You're taught to work hard, to
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: out outwork people and all this stuff and you're taking
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: supplements and you're studying film. Everything is to make you
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: a better player, right, realizing that the actual words in
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: the Bible is going to make you a much better player. Okay,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: but it's not being taught to you in a way
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: to where you are you're so open to it, Okay.
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: You think it's like all about correction. Okay, and there's
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: a lot of correction in there. But for instance, if
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: I was to say, psalms, okay, the Lord you know,
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: prepares my hands for war. Okay, that that jumps off
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: the rail to an athlete, like what you know, I'm
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: listening Okay, if they're if they're teaching you about David
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: more than just his fight against their life. You know,
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: how he became a king. Okay, different rigors in the
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: in the ups and downs of what he had to
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: do while he's becoming a king. Okay, an athlete can
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: can understand the rigors of that, you know, working hard,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: having to outwork people, having to be doubted, you know,
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: having people not believe in them. Okay. When you talk
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: about Gideon and some of the things you teach him
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: about the warriors and those type of people in the Bible,
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: that's going to get your attention, but it's also going
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: to be edifying your spirit and letting you know that
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: God is truly for you. When you see the kings
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: like Josiah, you know, and you see you see Josiah
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: willing to go in and correct all that was done
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: wrong in his kingdom and go step by step and
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: destroy the evil alters around the country and to put
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: his people back on back and under God's covering. To
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: see that type of leadership, Okay, that speaks to the
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: leader within someone that's in the that's in the in
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: the athletic realm. Okay, I dig that. If I'm the
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: captain of the team, I can dig that. If I'm
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: the culture and I'm starting and I'm starting new team, Okay,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: I can speak to the sports realm and that in
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: that way. Okay, that's how you need to be taught
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: on your athlete. That's going to initially get your interest
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: in it because you see that it's tangible. It's something
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: that you can use. Meanwhile, while it's tangible, just like
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: just like we're using sports to bring people into Christ. Okay. Now,
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: now Christ is up in you because you learning the
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: word and you're applying it on a day to day basis. Oh,
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: by the way, you just so happen to stumble across
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: this chapter, okay, And now you're looking to get into business,
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: and there's some stuff in there about business, okay. Your
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: family members are going through some bad some hard times,
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: there's some stuff in there about that as well. So
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: so the main thing is you got to open the
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: door to them to let them know that it is helpful,
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: because the number one thing for anybody is what's in
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: it for me? And that's really not entirely a selfish
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: way of looking at it. It's like, hey man, I'm
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: having challenges like anybody else. I'm trying to make my
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: life better. Okay, houses going to make life better, okay,
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: And so much comes down to teaching and teaching that
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: person how to instill that into that day to day life.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: And once they hooked, they hooked. Once you know that
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: it works, okay, then you're prone to stay with it, okay,
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: and that and that's the thing. But it's so much
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: that you don't know. It's it's interesting that you even
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: hit me up about this, because I just was looking
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: at this yesterday and so maybe God wanted me to
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: share this today. But these are some of the things
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: that most Christians don't know when embarking on a sports career.
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: This is this is from some of the data that
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: we got from Christian athletes bbous the world they're gifting.
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: So most people don't know anything about apostles, profits, pastors,
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: evangelist teachers. Okay, they don't know anything about their gifting.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: Most most athletes don't know what the opposition looks like.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: They don't even know if they're around people that are
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: into dark spiritual practices. Okay, Meanwhile they're telling them all
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: about their life, all their personal business, and not realizing
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: as you're talking to somebody that's an enemy in.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Your face, right, the bullets in their gun.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, most people are not taught to pray
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: against unseen forces that are hindering their career, how the
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: spirits to protect themselves? Who not to have praying for you?
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: So the prayers of a righteous man developed much the
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: prayers of an unrighteous man. Okay, that's closing the door
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: on all right. Most athletes don't know how to best
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: their home, how to find a church. It's so, it's
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: so it's so surprising how many we had we did surveys,
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: and we surveyed high school, collegiate and professional athletes as
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: well as their parents. Eighty percent of all the parents
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: that we interviewed said that it's important for their children
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: to find a church home out of state. Are broad okay?
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: Only in sixty percent of the Christian athletes that we
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: interview said that they have not found a church home
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: outside brought So if you and seventy five percent of
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: the Christian athletes that we that we surveyed, okay, didn't
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: know what the five four ministry was as well as
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: their parents said that they don't know either. Wow, thirty
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: five to forty percent okay, of all the Christian athletes
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: didn't know what the Armor of God was, and the
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: same for their parents. Okay. So you're talking about young
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: people sixteen to probably twenty five years old. Okay, whether
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: you're going to prep school, college, are you going to
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: play on a professional team, because that's pretty much that
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: age bracket. Okay, when you leave in your family, you
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: don't know anything about your gifting, so you don't know
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: what you're capable of. You don't know you have dominion
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: and authority. Okay, you don't. Almost half of them don't
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: know anything about how the spiritual protect themselves if they're
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: feeling some type of resistance or bad things that have
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: to they don't know anything about protect covering themselves, okay,
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: and then they also don't know how to find the
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: church that can teach them any of me. So that's
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: what we're up against right now is to close that gap, okay,
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: because I should be able to in my city, I
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: have what fifty churches here in Clarksville, sixty churches, and
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: this is a This is a town with three hundred
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: thousand people. So if you go to Nashville, Memphi is
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: someone it should be hundreds, okay of churches. You should
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: not leave there to go to college anywhere in the
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: country or or anywhere and not have an idea of
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: how to find a new church, because actually, what you're doing,
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: you're going to your family's church that they already was
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: going to for probably ten twenty years or whatnot. But
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: when you go to college, okay, it's a whole different
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: ball game. You're in a new city. You got to
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: figure things out. So speaking to the pastors about how
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: to find a good church home, it made it easy
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: for me to find a church home. When I got home. Yeah, yeah,
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: but that needs to be taught as well. It's a lot.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's not like it's a there's not an
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: instruction manual for finding a good church.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: Well there is now no.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, thanks for that, Thanks for that shameless plug.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: We got two links the show you want, y'all and
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: pick up Coach Drake reads books because especially if you
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: have an athlete in your life or you are an
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: athlete yourself, getting these waters and uh, I could talk
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: to you about this for a while, I didn't get
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: the opportunity to talk to you about how how going
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: from an athlete to a coach. I didn't get to
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: talk about that gap. But if we have time, I
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: want to get there. But there is one thing that
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: that troubles me at the moment and and something I
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: want to I want to bring out here, and it's
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: it's this idea that there's a lot, especially with our youth.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: There's a lot.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: Going on in the virtual world right now, social media,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: texting back and forth, you know, access to God knows
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: what right. So like in your book, you talk about
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: different ways that that demonic presence or or principalities can
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: enter through our lives in in all kinds of different ways.
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: There's all there's different books and stuff, there's there's different
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: TV shows, There's there's stuff there there's sin in our
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: life that that we can be in inviting these things
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: into our life. But I got I got my phone
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: right here, right And I know most of our young
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: athletes are walking around with a phone in their pocket.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: And and there is this there's this cultural shift towards
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: so many things happening in the virtual world. And I
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: believe and I pray over regularly the the space of
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: athleticism because to me, it's one of the one of
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: the few things that you can't make virtual. You can
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: you can't. You can't make a basketball game virtual. You
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: have you have to touch the ball like you have
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: to go take the shot. You can't make a track
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: meet virtual, you have to you have to go over
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: the hurdle.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: And you can't make practice virtual.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: I mean you can virtually coach a practice and lead
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: somebody you know who might not be in your vicinity
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: there in person exactly. There's a there's a hands on, sweat,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: visceral aspect of athleticism that that can't be virtualized, that
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: can't be sublimated into the cloud. And I think for
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: many young people that is what athletics is keeping sacred
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: and good in their life. They get the opportunity to
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: go play soccer, even if you're not good at it,
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: kicking the ball around, because I need to know how
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: to move my body.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: I need to be embodied.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: I need to bump up against other people and compete
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: and lose sometimes, right, And the same thing goes the
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: more and more competitive it gets, and the older the
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: kids get and the older older the young adults get
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: that there's less and less people involved. But this whole,
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: this whole sphere of athleticism is something not only am
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: I praying over. I actually wrote a book, republishing it
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: in the coming weeks here called Faithful Fitness. But my
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: goal is to help individuals understand how their fitness journey
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: and their faith journey are aligned, because I feel like
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: in many ways those are separate in the church, and.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: I don't want that.
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: I want I want.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: Every day Joe's who think, Ah, those CrossFit people are
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: weird and those athlete people are weird. But we go
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: to church like no, no, God made you a body
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: that you get to be a steward of and let's
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: talk about what the Bible says about that. But I
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: want to ask you as you are coaching youth and
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: you see they've got their phones and I'm sure they're
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: they're talking about things that are happening in the in
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: the internet space and watching YouTube and maybe using chat
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: GPT to write their essays or whatever else. When you
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: work with these athletes, how do you see God using
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: athletics to create that space where they can learn these
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: important life skills. I hope I'm speaking to the parents
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: of athletes or maybe potential athletes to strengthen why athleticism
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: is so important to encourage our youth to be a
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: part of in today's world. So I'm curious about your
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: thoughts on that, why this is so important and how
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: you see it affecting your players right now.
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: I think it has to be made perfectly clear from
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: you from a very young age and consistently every year
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: there your ability to play the sport okay, at a
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: high level, is a gift from God. Okay, it needs
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: you need to also have it explained to you daily,
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: Okay that your effort, okay, you're giving it your best, Okay,
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: is exemplifying the glory of the Lord. If you're not
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: being spoken to him that way, it's very easy for
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: you to think it's about you. It's very easy. It's
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: very easy for a person to come into pride. Okay.
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: It's very easy for a person to come into rebellion
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: when they think it's about them. Okay. It's very difficult
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: to correct someone who basically can become a monster based
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: off their media exposure. Okay, everyone patting them on their
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: back and telling them how the great they are. Okay,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: if you're not, if you don't have the foundation of
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: price within you from an early age, okay. And kids
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: are very open, like it's not like they don't want correction.
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: It's not like they don't want to learn. Okay. Most
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: kids are open. But you have to give them before
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: the world gets them too much. Okay. Just like when
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: someone gets into the drug trade, right and they say, man,
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: kids too deep in the game, all right, you got
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: to hold them too late. Okay. You need to give
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: them that elementary middle school age to start dropping seed,
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: dropping seed okay, so that when they see when they
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: get around something they get uncomfortable, they know they're not
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: in the right situation. So when I look at, you know, athletics,
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: I think that God is really working a lot of
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: great works through people. But we have to do a
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: better job, especially in the athletic more so than even coaches,
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: because people are more focused on the athletes and they're
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: playing well, and they're jumping high, and they're running fast,
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: and they're winning championships and all these things. They say
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: to let people know that they're believers. Okay, because when
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: you let people know that they're believers, Now this ten
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: year old kid, okay, that has your poster up on
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: their wall, now they want to be a believer. They
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: want to be just like you when you're fifteen. Now,
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: they're gonna want to be like you. Regardless of what
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: you're into. If you want to be in the drugs,
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: if you want to be in the parties, if you
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: want to be into whatever, they're still looking up to
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: you because they're looking at the talent. Okay, They're not
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: look at the substance because their kid they don't know
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: any better. Okay, But if you get to talking about Christ, okay,
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: and what and what Christ is doing for you in
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: your life, that's gonna make that kid open their Bible
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: up a little bit more. Okay, that's gonna make that
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: kid want to listen to some gospel music instead of
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: necessarily some of the some of the garbages out here.
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: So it's our responsibility as ambassadors of Christ, okay, to
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: let people know that we are indeed Christians okay, And
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: although we might not make the best decisions all the time,
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: God is chiseling us, and we're getting closer and closer
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: to the to the purest life that we can live.
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: And so that's very important to be in that from
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: an early age because you all, you always, everyone is
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: who what their environment is. If your community is jacked up,
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: you're gonna make some jacked up decisions. Man, That's just
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: how it goes. Okay. You know, I've lived in a
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: lot of places where people never even heard of Christ
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: like that, Like they've heard the name, but they never
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: had seen no church. You know. I've been in villages.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: I've been in in towns where it's thirty thousand people.
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: It's a pro team in the town with thirty thousand people, Okay,
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: but most of them folks, man, they haven't lived moved
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: out of that place, so they don't really know We're
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: fortunate because we live in America that there's a church
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: on every corner. Okay, if you if you get mad
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: at the folks at this church, you can go ten
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: minutes up the road and it's another one that's just
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: as good or better. Okay, that's not a reality. And
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of places on this planet, and so you
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: have to you have to be able to take advantage
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: of that. And what happens when you have so much
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: access you don't appreciate it. You know, I'm telling you,
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: I've been to Paris, I've been to Cairo, I've been
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: to Milan, everywhere. Okay, man, nobody appreciates where they're from. Man, nobody. Oh,
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: it's nothing to do here. You know, people here in
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: Whack and all this. Man, you live in New York, LA, Chicago,
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: you know, Paris, London, Like, what are you talking about?
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: Nobody appreciates where they're from. Okay, But the things that
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: you need are typically right around you. Okay, they're at
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: your disposal. And so when it comes to these phones
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: and the technology, it has to be monitored at such
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: a higher level because you have access to what somebody
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: that's doing something totally illegal and totally dark. Okay, it's
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: doing in another country and another kid, and it doesn't
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: matter that you as a parent or as a coulch
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: or whatever the art that you don't care about it,
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: that you don't think is a big deal. It doesn't
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: matter that that is because when that kid is seventeen
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: or they're twenty years old and they started talking on
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: a bunch of crazy stuff and you're like, what's happened?
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: You know these kids, man, because you ain't been watching
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: you in dependent you wasn't important. But the enemy didn't
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: think it wasn't important. No, why men slept. The enemy
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: saw weeds amongst the weed, you fell asleep. So it's
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: a day to day thing. Man, as you're coaching, you
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: have to be instilled in these life skills. Okay. You
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: have to be dropping seed every day okay, because the
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: enemy is trying to drop seed every day. Okay. I
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: have to give these kids the tools that they need, okay,
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: so when they're not around us, when they're not around
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: their parents, when they're not around their teachers, okay, that
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: they know how to handle themselves and conduct themselves when
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: they have the movies, when they're on the road trip.
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: You know, when they're on a vacation. When they get
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: to college and there around a bunch of different people
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: that they don't understand their background, so that they actually
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: not only are they able to handle themselves, they're actually
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: transformed transferring the the information of God to them. It's work, Okay,
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: So that that has to be. There has to be.
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: And when you're an athlete, because you're traveling so much more,
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: you got it. You have to you have to be more,
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: you have to be more adept to different environments. And
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: but you have to come and not and not become
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: the environment, you know, like like the Bibles, like we're
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: in the world, but not of the world. So but
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: that what does that really mean? Okay? So, now when
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: you move to another state, another city, another country or whatever,
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: and you're going to pursue track, are you going to
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: pursue hockey or whatever it is that is, you already
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: have to have the Holy Spirit oozing in the inside
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: of you, oozing out of you, and the Word of
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: God coming out of you. Okay, And once people see that,
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: then they're going to be edified and they're going to
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: be freed as well. But why you're doing those things?
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: Understand that It's not just gonna be like you're gonna
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: be speaking the word and doing all these things and
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: nobody's going to come against you. You have to understand
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: that portion of it as well. And I think that's
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: what a lot of people are not that they teach
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: you a word of God, or they teach you about
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: Christ or whatever, but they don't teach you about how
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: to deal or with opposition. You know, people don't even know.
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: I was interviewing one of the pastors and he said, man,
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: he said, before before a press conference, I would just
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: ask God to go with me and pray before the
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: I'm like, man, it's prayers. It's president my book for that.
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: I'm like, man, I don't even think about that. I
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: can't even tell you how many microphones I had to speak,
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm interviewed that. You know, people probably talking
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: bad about me another languages.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on, especially after a game.
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: Right, never once had the presence of mind to pray
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: and ask God to go with me into the into
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: the into the press conference. Okay. Very simple thing to do.
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: That could take three to five minutes. Okay, and we'll
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: change your entire outcome. We have to. We have to
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: be taught in that way as athletes and as coaches. Okay,
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: and the parents of athletes and the parents of coaches
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: have to also have some knowledge of this so that
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: you can better equip your your child because I was
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: talking to I've been talking to a lot of parents
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: parents over the last three to five years, and it's like, listen, man,
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: you might have three kids and only one of them
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: can play, and if you didn't play, you think that
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: kid is weird because they're like, I can't miss practice
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: or a game to go to the family a reunion. Okay,
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: you got a problem with this kid, but just because
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: you don't agree with it doesn't mean that that's not
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: what their life is that ye yeah, Okay, So you
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: have to get informed and get informed by people that
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: actually are in this industry that know what they're talking
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: about so that you don't mess up, because that might
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: be that kid's call and that God might be get
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: raising that kid up to go be the next big
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: time athlete to spread the message of the Lord, because
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: you can wach a million people, but your kid can
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: reach a million people. True that, and they either going
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: to reach a million people teaching them teaching them about
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: God or teaching them about the enemy, one of the other. Okay,
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: And so that's something that we really, we really have
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: to be diligent and working towards every day man is
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: making sure that that we don't get lost, that Christ
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: doesn't get lost as we're raising these kids.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: Well said, Well said, and thank you for what you
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: do on that front, because that you know, in our
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: world today, every parent will have to answer to God
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: for the discipleship they provided their children in their home.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: Every every every parent who belongs to Christ is going
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: to have to answer for the stewardship in the ministry
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: of their household. And yet it takes a village. The
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: spirit of the Father is is also a community thing.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: I Am going to have to answer for how I
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: stewarded the children who came across my path via coaching
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: and and other opportunities, you know, on the playground when
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: when I'm playing with my boys and that sort of thing.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: I have to answer for that as a dad. And
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: I understand that that coaches. I'm a coach. I don't
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: coach in the same capacity you coach with youth.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: In basketball, U.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: But but I coach people and children and I know
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: that there is an intense mantle of responsibility when you
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: have that influential position in the developmental years.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Of a child's life.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but I would say that
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: there are coaches in my life who influenced my life
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: more than my family influenced my life because of some
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: of the lessons I was taught and in some of
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: the work ethic that came out and some of the
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: really like just hard nosed things I had to learn that,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: you know, it took a you know, Coach Babcock. He
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: was the if you're listening to this, Coach Babcock, I
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: miss you, dude. You're awesome, big thick coke bottle glasses.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: He couldn't see seven feet in front of him. But
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: coaching track and stuff.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: That guy was the most hard headed guy I've ever
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: met in my whole life. And he wore our butts
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: out like constantly.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: He didn't put up with any of our one and
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: he didn't put up with our shenanigans, you know, And
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: I still remember, I still remember what he instilled in
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: me because he was willing to get in the weeds,
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: he was willing to do the work, he was willing
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: to call us out, you know, a bunch of high
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: school dudes getting into too much trouble probably and him
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: just and drilling down.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: And I know he was a man of God. I
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: know he came prayed up.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: I know we probably wanted he didn't have a lot
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: of hair, but if he did, he would have wanted
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: to tear it out sometimes on our behalf, right, But
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: I remember that, and I know that you, as a coach,
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: where that mantle as well. So for me to you, hey,
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: thank you for stepping into that and being willing to
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: take up that mantle. I know that puts a target
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: on your back with regard to how the enemy does things.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: At the same time, man, the Church is on offense.
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: We've got to take this territory and the gates of
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: Hell will not prevail against it. In Jesus' name, So
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: thank you for being one on the front lines.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: And what I say, it's like, man, we're fighting a battle.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: You're like, no, it's a war. Man, we were in
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: a war for real. Thank you for that. I appreciate
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: it very much. Thank you, Uh coach Drake.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: We're coming up on our time here, so I want
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: to give you an opportunity to have the last word.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: To any athletes or parents listening to this podcast, I
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: want to encourage them to pick up your books. Their
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: links are in the show notes below. They can find
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: those and pick them up off of Amazon. I really
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: enjoyed your your latest book and found it very useful,
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: not just like oh I read it like I've got
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: some marked up spots. And these prayers are going to
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: be useful in speaking protection, revocation over certain things, and
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: then declarations over my family, my business, and the people
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: who who I come across to my circle. So it's
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: very useful for me. I hope it'll be very useful
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: to our listeners as well. So I wanted to give
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: you the last word. What do you hope that athletes
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: and parents hear from you? Before I pray over you
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: and your ministry.
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: I feel like I need to say that, prad Man.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: I feel like Holy Spirit is kind of tugging me
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: a little bit, so I just want to stay a
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: prayer far I leave Father bringing us out here this
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: afternoon and seeing to it that we're all edified by
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: the by the Holy Spirit and the word that you've
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: placed upon us. If I got to pray for everyone,
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: that's listening everyone under the sound of my voice to
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: have a phenomenal finish to this year at and a
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: great start to their basketball season. For any other kids
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: that's playing in any other sports, Father God, see too
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: that they're with the right people, Father God, you know
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: correct there. Keep them on the narrow path, the narrow
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: on the straight path, Father God. That's anyone that has
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: any type of bullying, any type of mental health thing
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: going on. Father got see tour that they are free
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: from that, Father God, we bind it up and cashing
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: into the bitch right now seven the tized permanently with
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: the sword of the Lord and the name of Jesus.
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: Father God, see too that everyone who needs an opportunity
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: has provided the opportunity this year. That they're ready and
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: willing and able to seize the moment when their time comes.
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: Father God, and Namguz, I'm paying for covering for the
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: coaches that are listening to this, Father God, for them
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: to be the great leaders and the shepherds of these
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: young men and women moving forward this year, and that
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: they hold themselves to a high standard so that they're
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: above reproached this season. In the mighty name of Jesus
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: and Father got see too that everyone who's searching for
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: a church home, who might be in college or a
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: professional athlete, or moving to another city or state in
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: a prep school. Father God, that they are provided the
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: right church home for them. In the Mighty name of Jesus,
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: Father God, make it easy for him. Given the right
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: people around them, speak to their heart to speak scripture
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: to them, Father God, and help them to be able
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: to understand and digest what's being revealed to them on
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: a daily basis. In the name of Jesus God. See
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: toward their families, have a great understanding of what young
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: man and women are in front of them. Father God,
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: drops seed into them, give them dreams and visions and
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: interpret and understanding that of who their children is in
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: the spirit, and who you are, who are you you
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: are rooming them to be, and what needs to be
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: done moving forward for them so that they reach that
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: maximum level that you have in that you have assigned
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: for them in this lifetime and the Mighty name of Jesus.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: Amen, Amen, Amen, thanks for that.
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: Man.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: I appreciate that very much. I think that's a good
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: a good last word. If it's okay with you, I'd
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: like to cover you in your ministry and prayer, and
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: then we'll close it out here. Father God, thank you
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: so much for the opportunity to be with my brother
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: coach Drake today. Thank you for the words you've placed
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: on his heart, that he's put them in a pen
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: and that he shared them with athletes and their families. God,
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: I lift him up before you in Christ Jesus name.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: I pray that you surround him with your mighty angels,
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: and that you would help him in his practices, that
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: you would help him to see the weeds and the
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: difficult places that he's coaching these young athletes to grow in. God,
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: I pray that you would help them to wreck them
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: by your spirit, the spirit of the Father that helps
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: young men see the way that they should go, so
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: at the end they would not depart from it.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: Lord.
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: I also pray that he would be able to lead
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: athletes in their families to you, Lord, as they would
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: find belief in your son, Jesus Christ, who died on
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: the cross for our sins. I also pray, Lord that
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: you would bless him, bless his health, that you would
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: bless his mind so that he can be sharp and
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: ready to take on the obstacles that come before him, Father,
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: both the obstacles you have sent to strengthen him and
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: the obstacles the enemy's thrown in his way to stumble him. Lord,
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: I pray that you would help him to grow year
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: by year, and that he's only getting started in the fight.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: We love you, Lord, I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen, men, Amen, man,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for your time. And to the audience, guys.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: You guys know what's coming next. Us has been coach
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: Alex van Houghton on the Faithful Fitness podcast. Until next time,
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: train hard, but pray harder.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Hey, if this episode helps you, jaret with someone who
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: needs to hear it, and don't forget to subscribe and
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: leave us a raving review so more people can find
• 59:23
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• 59:29
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• 59:32
  Speaker 1: then join our free community at Better Daily by clicking
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: on the links in the show notes below. We all
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: have a cross to carry, but it's lighter when we
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: do it together, so check out both links in the
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: show notes. Don't be a big well Bob, just do it.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Until next time, don't forget, train hard, and pray even harder.
• 1:00:01
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