Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / These New Converts Took the Same Advice — You Can Too || SLP674

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These New Converts Took the Same Advice — You Can Too || SLP674 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Very recently, we've seen three prominent conversions by three very different people.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: First, Joe Weller, a popular YouTuber and influencer, was doing things like this, but then he started practicing some spiritual disciplines.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Here he recommends them to Alex O'Connor.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_05: For the next month.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_05: Four times a day, say the same phrases that basically like say the phrase that basically I surrender to God.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_05: I am open to being guided.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_05: Just to see if it is real.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so but to me, those are two different things, right?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_05: Saying I could say four or five times a day, I am open to being guided.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_05: You know, God, if you're there, please, please let me in.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: Like, imagine we're just missing out on that guidance.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_05: Imagine we're missing out on that, what could be.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_05: That's why I'm like, I'm very open to just exploring these things and like giving it a go.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_05: And I've definitely noticed, I mean, I have never really been someone that's like religious or like 100% there's a god or there isn't.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: But like giving it a go.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_05: And I've gone, okay, let me just try this.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_05: Why not give it a go?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_05: And now here's what he's saying.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_05: Which brings me to now, the last five months at 30 years old, whereby through no hard work of my own, not by turning over a new leaf or my own self-help effort, but because I chose to love Jesus Christ, that he, the Holy Spirit, has changed my heart, transformed my mind, and renewed my spirit for life.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Or take the example of Brian Guan.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: He has given himself to certain practices.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_04: I don't really know if God is real, but action produces information.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: So for the next 30 days, I'm gonna pretend he's real.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_04: I will let you know if anything happens.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Can you take us through like your four practices that you challenged yourself to do every day?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, 100%.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_04: So number one is pray, uh, morning prayer or whatever.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: Number two is gratitude.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_04: Just like name a couple things you're grateful for and specifically be thankful to God for those things.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um, number three is read the Bible, right?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_04: Read a verse, learn about Jesus in the Bible.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: And then number four, I think this is actually the most important one, is apply his teachings.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_04: And then on day 20, this happens.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm done pretending.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this is real, dude.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Philosopher and YouTuber Joe Schmidt used to say this.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: Although you might have this vague agreement over there being some kind of higher power of some kind, there is a profound disagreement over the intrinsic character and nature of it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: I think that should really clue us in.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: And last week he stunned YouTube with this big news! God exists.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: Christ is Lord that he established the Catholic Church.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not kidding.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: I just converted to Catholicism.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Very different temperaments, very different life experiences, different continents, different denominations.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: We'll get into that.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: But is there a common denominator?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let me show you one common denominator that that I am seeing.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's not there, maybe I'm noticing something that's not real.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: But Joe Weller drops into his testimony this.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_05: All along, my nan was right my nan was right, you know, would always speak to me about Jesus, and I'd be like, yeah, cuz, yeah, cools.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_05: It's funny how the Holy Spirit, now I can tell, was between us, and I could feel an energy.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_05: I could always turn to her about anything, no matter what.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_05: She was the one person I'd always come to when I was down, you know, deep down.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_05: And all along, the Lord, our God, King of the universe, Jesus Christ, was talking through her.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_05: And it's crazy that when I eventually told her that I'd come to Christ and I'd found God, very shortly after she passed away.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_05: And you have no idea how God is using people in your life.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: You have no idea.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: And Brian Guan, the day after he makes his confession that Jesus is real, he calls his mother, and what do they talk about?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Paul is it's it's really.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_04: No, I'm I'm excited to read about Paul for sure.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, his mother is recommending that he read more from the Apostle Paul.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: His mother is a believer.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Brian talked to me about the power of a praying mother.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_04: So many people would send me DMs saying they were praying for me, and that was a very surreal feeling.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_04: But up until that, it was just my mom.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um but she prays hard.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: She prays hard.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: So And in Joe Schmidt's story, he really surprises Matt Fred when he goes onto Matt Fred's channel and confesses that his parents had no idea that he was anything other than a devout Catholic.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Here's how it unfolds.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: Your parents have any idea about what you're going through at this point?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: Or is that too big a question to stop right now?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: My parents, I told my parents two days ago that I was an atheist and that I was an agnostic and that I just reverted.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: Hang on.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_03: What?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: Two days ago from this day?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: Two days ago.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: I told them for the first time that I deconverted from Catholicism.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't know that.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: Ten years ago.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: How do they not know that?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm good at keeping things hidden, I suppose.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: You have a YouTube channel.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: But listen, I'm the baby of the family.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: They are I love them.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_03: I love them to death.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: They're the best parents I could possibly imagine and hope for.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: They're the most selfless loving people I could imagine.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: But they don't follow YouTube.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: They don't follow me on Instagram or social media or anything.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: Probably, yeah.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: So they had actually no clue at the time that I even deconverted in high school, that I was an atheist in the household.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, to my shame, I systematically deceived them for about a decade.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: They would have been disappointed, upset.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so it turns out, so I sat them down.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: I wrote a letter to them right when I reverted.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I did I didn't sit share with them the letter uh at the advice of uh of a confessor.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I was like, okay, I got invited onto your channel.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I'm not gonna let a conversation with Matt Frad be the first time that I t I revealed to my parents that I systematically deceived them for a decade about being Catholic when I wasn't Catholic.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I wrote this letter, um, just explaining things.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I sat them down and I was like, you know, got something to tell you.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it ends beautifully, but there are some really bad things along the way.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh no, I didn't get anyone pregnant.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: So then they're like, okay.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so I was like, yeah, listen, in high school, uh I deconverted.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: I became an atheist.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: And then I became an agnostic.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm sorry for systematically deceiving you, deceiving the church.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: I um I went through with confirmation, even though I didn't believe, you know.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: I, you know, I've confessed all this stuff, thanks to God, you know.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, work sin abounds, grace abounds all the more again.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, I sat them down, told them that, and I'm like, you know, ultimately, God works things for the good of those who love him.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Joe's parents are very devout.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he just drops this little tidbit into uh one of his videos on miracles.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's 10 and a half hours on miracles.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's about 15 minutes devoted to the resurrection and 10 hours and 15 minutes devoted to Marian apparitions and Eucharistic miracles and the like.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: And uh here he just drops this detail in.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the 1713 silver and crystal glass shrine containing the Lonciano relics themselves.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: My parents have actually gone to Italy and seen these with their own eyes.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: Very cool.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: So Joe's awareness of Eucharistic miracles and the sorts of things that he talks about at great length in his miracles video.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's not a new thing to him, even though the influence of people like Ethan Mews has come into his life more recently.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this is something that Joe has been formed in over his life, and that is inevitable, and that is not a bad thing, and I'm casting no shade on Joe Schmidt for that, because I'm going through Brian Guan and I'm going through Joe Weller and Joe Schmidt.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And um, faith is inevitable, and acting out your faith is inevitable.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: And all of those guys and all of us are constantly believing things and we're constantly acting things out.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Which means that for many years, even as Joe was thinking agnostic and atheist thoughts, he was still to some degree being formed by Catholic conversation and Catholic practices.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: When he went home on vacation and that sort of thing, I would guess that he went to mass.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And when his devout family spoke about matters of faith, I imagine that certainly during the years in which Joe's family thought that Joe was still Catholic, he spoke like a Catholic.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I'm casting no shade on that.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think that is an inevitable thing to do.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think we are all always being formed in certain communities.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: But it does mean that there will have been a certain level of cognitive dissonance between the Joe Schmidt that is a devout Catholic and that acts out his devout Catholicism, and the Joe Schmidt who is a philosopher who's doing his PhD in Princeton and a YouTuber who is getting his ideas out there into the world.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: There have been multiple Joe Schmidt's around.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: And again, I don't think that's a bad thing.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think we are all a bundle of different impulses and different visions of the good life, and we are living in multiple different directions all at once.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think Aristotle was right to say that the human person is basically like a chariot that's being driven by at least two horses, and those horses are very rarely going in the same direction.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that is all of us.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: We all have cognitive dissonance.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it seems like in the last week, publicly, Joe Schmidt is now aligning the Joe Schmidt YouTuber philosopher with the Joe Schmidt who has been acting out a Catholic faith for a very, very long time now.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that, yes, this is best described as a reversion rather than a conversion.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: And again, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is the ineradicable human condition in which we all must believe and we all must act out what we believe.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the common denominator that I want to talk about between these three guys.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's Joe Weller, there's uh Brian Guan, and there's Joe Schmidt.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: And there's lots that's different about them, and there's lots of other things that are similar about them.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: But here's one thing that has helped them in this journey, and it is about jumping in with both feet to practices and aligning what they want to believe with what they are practicing.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: And in that alignment, they are finding resonance, they are finding healing, they are finding peace, they are finding faith.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: To put it in a sentence, first they pretended, then they surrendered.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: And they are surrendering to a kind of a form of faith that at first they are not entirely believing in, but they want it enough to act it out.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, their feelings of conviction and faith follow from the practices that they are committing to.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: First they pretended, then they surrendered.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: And they are not doing something illegitimate or strange.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: They are doing kind of what we all do.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: We got into this with Brian Guan.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Brian said to me that he had tried the atheism thing and it had not served him well.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: He said it like this.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_04: I did the thing where I was like, it's all about me.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_04: I tried that.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_04: I really tried that.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_04: And it did not, it did not give me the peace or satisfaction that I thought it would give me.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_04: I really, really tried being like, it's all about me.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Brian Guan tried to live out the ideology of expressive individualism and of consumerism and of me first, right?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: He tried that out.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was a belief that he had that led to certain practices.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he says here, he had an atheism that he was acting out.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_04: For the past year, I've been sort of agnostic, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_04: I I at some point I was like, uh, maybe the atheism is atheism has not served me.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's what I realized.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_04: It hasn't served me the way I thought it was.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: So certain beliefs led to certain practices, and certain practices were forming him in that kind of vision of life.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he's decided he wants to repent and believe, right?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: He wants to turn his back on that and dive into a different way of thinking.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: But how do you get into this different way of thinking?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you actually don't do it by sitting down and wrapping a wet towel around your head and thinking really hard.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, you live your way into a new way of thinking.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: You don't think your way into a new way of living.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: And this is what Brian Guan has discovered.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: But what he has discovered is actually how humans tick.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone is a believer and beliefs get acted out.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now, whatever else Jordan Peterson has said in his life that is right or wrong, he is spot on about this.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's always saying stuff like this.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen you say that you certainly live your life as though God exists.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I would say, well, to the best of my ability.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's the fundamental hallmark of belief is what you it's how you act, not what you say about what you think you think.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: What do you know about what you think?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: What you act out is much more what you are than what you say about yourself.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And what the hell do you know about what you believe, anyways?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're complicated, man.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Fair question.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, seriously, people are complicated.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone is a believer and everyone is acting out their beliefs all the time.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: So then what is going on with conversions?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's clearly not about clever people thinking their way into the clever way of living.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Which is so often what we're tempted to think.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: We're tempted to think, especially when there are Princeton PhDs like Joe Schmidt, who is the smartest kid on the block.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: Joe Schmidt is like the smartest kid on the block, which is why it's so destabilizing, especially for the atheist community, it's so destabilizing.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: When Joe Schmidt becomes a Christian and a very devout Christian.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: But it's not just atheists who can get destabilized by that.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's Protestants who can get destabilized by that.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's the clever, maybe all the clever kids become Catholic.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we're we're swimming in the shallow end of the pool, right?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that fear will not be solved by looking at any one conversion or reversion, because it's not about intelligent people following pure evidence and rationality.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, think about the two Joes, for instance.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: Joe Weller left school age 16.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Joe Schmidt is doing his PhD at Princeton, and yet both have found themselves surrendering to God.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's clearly not about your level of academic achievement, because both Joes have found themselves surrendering to God.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's about something else.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Both have come to believe in the resurrection of Jesus.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: How is that even possible?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh recently I asked Paul Vanderclay that question in front of an audience, and I loved his answer.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: You were once asked the question, why do you believe in the resurrection?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And the first answer out of your mouth was, because my parents did.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: Why did you answer like that?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's true.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I some of you know I had this conversation with a subjectivist.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know he was an objectivist when I started the conversation.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we went round and round about this, and I wouldn't budge from that position because it's true.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it's something to be embarrassed about.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: The my belief in the resurrection is compelling because of the lives I've watched my parents live.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that that's special with respect to the resurrection.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's true with respect to a great many things.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And again and again, one of the most frequent questions I get from people is someone will come up to me and they found myself or Jordan Peterson or Jonathan Peugeot persuasive, and they come to me and they say, I'd really like to be a Christian, but I don't believe it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say to them, then go live amongst people who do.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because it sounds like a terribly um secular argument, but the truth is we believe in groups.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have our plausibility structures.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you would aspire to believe a thing that is difficult for you, live amongst the people who do believe it.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, once you're living in their midst, the quality of that belief will be seen by the quality of love and a whole bunch of other metrics that you see within their communities.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you look at how Christianity managed to supplant the ancient pagan world, it was really a lot of that that people saw Christians living, and they might say, it's business of the resurrection and the incarnation.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: It all seems wacko.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I often look at Paul singing hymns of praise in these painful stocks in a Philippian jail.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen a lot of crazy.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure the people in the ancient world saw even more crazy than I've seen.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure some of the people watching Paul sing hymns of praise after being bloodily beaten thought, if that's crazy, I want some of that.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: If that's crazy, I want some of that.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it seems like that's the journey that Joe Weller and Joe Schmidt and Brian Guan have been on.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: But as Paul Vandercle talks about his parents, and as Joe Schmidt talks about his parents, maybe you're watching this and you're thinking to yourself, that's not fair because my parents were not like that.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: I did not have as devout Protestant parents as Paul Vanderclay, I did not have as devout Catholic parents as Joe Schmidt.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: What should I do?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where we're gonna finish because actually Joe Weller didn't have Christian parents who are forming him in this kind of thing.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think actually Joe and Brian and Joe, they all have good advice for us, no matter how we were raised.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: You might be from a Christian home like Joe Schmidt, you might not be from a Christian home at all like Joe Weller, but you can still do what these guys are suggesting.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: What are they suggesting?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, here's how Joe Weller puts it.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_05: If there is the possibility that that there is this high power out there that that maybe does have a better plan for me than what I think is best for myself, why not give it a go?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_05: What is it to actually lose if we think about it, other than pride, feeling silly, feeling embarrassed because we're surrendering to this thing that we can't tangibly see or perceive?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, give it a go, see what happens is what Brian Guan would want you to do.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm just gonna be consistent.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna do the thing.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna pray every day, I'm gonna be grateful, I'm gonna read the Bible, I'm gonna do things like Jesus.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, just be consistent.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you can do that whether you've grown up in a Christian home or not.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: The 30-day challenge is not just for people who've grown up in the church, the 30-day challenge anyone can take part in.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: And here finally is Joe Schmidt's advice.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to know whether any of this is true, here's what he says.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: Imagine you're stranded and alone in a dense forest.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: You've gone missing for a week, and you're now out of food, water, and shelter.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Things are starting to look grim.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: But you know that there's like some chance that there's a certain that there's a search crew out there looking for you, either on foot or in helicopter.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you think there's only like a 1% chance of that, or like a 0.1% chance, or whatever.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: As it happens, you have a flare gun.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's super easy to use, and it takes almost no energy to deploy.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: Once deployed, it shoots up a flare into the sky, which would alert any potential search crews to your presence.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: The gun gives you as many shots as you'd like.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's like basically limitless reserves of flares.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I submit to you that it would be crazy not to shoot the flare gun, even if you think there's probably no one out there who will see it and come to help.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: What matters is that there's some chance, even if it's very small, that someone's out there who cares about you and is willing to help you if you ask.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you're in a dire situation, my friend, needing help.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: The stakes are high.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: Likewise, I submit that it would be crazy not to pray in your situation, at least conditionally.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you think there's probably no one out there who will hear your prayers and come to help you.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: What matters again is that there's some chance, even if it's small, that God is out there and is willing to help if you ask.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: And you're in a dire spiritual situation, needing help.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: The stakes are infinitely high, and death comes like a thief in the night.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Just as it would be irrational not to shoot the flare gun, it would be irrational for you not to pray.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Let's send up a flare.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to get to grips with the very heart of the Christian faith, here's something else you can do.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you go to 321course.com and check out what this vision of reality is.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's life according to Jesus.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: We think about God and his threeness, the world and its two-ness, you and your oneness.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Once you get that vision, my prayer is that you will jump in with both feet and say that Jesus is Lord.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that'll do us for now, but why don't you subscribe to this channel?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because coming up, I'm going to respond to over 30 hours of material from Joe Schmidt and uh his conversion from last week.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's so much to talk about, and I'd love to catch you on that next video.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: So see you then.