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Mike Goodsell | From War To Worship | This is Life · Life Community Church

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Sean, we are like three weeks away from twenty twenty-six.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: Believe it or not, twenty twenty six is yeah, right around the corner.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're closer to twenty twenty six than we are twenty twenty-five.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: We I mean we're in twenty twenty-five.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: What are we talking about?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know if that's we'll know.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: We'll 2024.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I said that wrong.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's true.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: 2024 is kind of obvious, I guess.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's all right.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, it's been a long day with the seventh graders, has it?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: What were you gonna say?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: I have no clue what I was gonna say.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say, you have anything special planned for the holidays?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um Florida.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: That'll be fun.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: So everybody's home for the holidays.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's actually doing something right now on his YouTube account.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: He just started ran, I guess he randomly thought of this.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'll I'll I'll give him some what's it?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Give him a shout-out.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Shout-out.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's gonna be one of our sponsors.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: He could.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: So he recorded a video of himself and he said, for every subscriber I get every day, each day, so I'll do that many push-ups until I reach a thousand subscribers.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like you said, so like he started with zero, obviously, and then he that first day he got like thirty-five.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: So he filmed himself doing thirty-five push-ups, and then he had sixty-five, and then he did sixty-five push-ups, and then now he's up to like a hundred and something.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's day like five or six, and uh it's a great way to start.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: So people started commenting, like, do it at a gas station, do it by a dumpster.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: So the one he did, he was, I think, in the Walmart parking lot, and there's some lady behind him like loading groceries in her car and cranking out, which he's a little nervous, you know.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, once you get to a thousand?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: What is he gonna do?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: In a row?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's real, man.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't I mean, I don't know if that's you can edit anything these days.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: Take a picture and like send it to AI, maybe.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: Or you could do them, you could do them throughout the day.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you can do that on one shot.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think he makes the rules.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's his I'm gonna get on there.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm actually gonna I'll subscribe when he's like at 9,999.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: You'll be the thousandth subscriber.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'll be like that's the point.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: On the on the old drinking fountain over there, me and Hayden.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: We are proud to say on the old drinking fountain we were the one thousandth water bottle to be.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: You guys like we're watching it for a good one.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: We have a video of it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we were watching it and we got it to 999, and we have a video of us getting the thousandth water bottle.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: And there was shortly after that I got a phone call in the middle of the night because there was a water leak.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and it was the thousandth water bottle two years ago.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Two years ago.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: And we were the first water bottle on this one.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: So oh, nice.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: It does a shout out to the Yattos.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for fixing that.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, one of our appreciate that.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Unofficial sponsors.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we've got a guest here today.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Mike, you want to introduce yourself?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us a little about you, your family, and how long you've been coming to a life community church.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm Mike Goodsell.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my wife uh Lisa and I have been attending Life Uh Community Church here for about a year and a half uh after being at uh another church right down the road for about 19 years.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously, been Christians for how long?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I would say I was a Christian most of my life.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it didn't get real till.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get into it.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: Very cool.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And Mike, nobody can see us, obviously.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: But we came in and Mike has some show and tell.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: So he does.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to hear about it's great radio when you say look at this, right?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: But we'll have to be like the sportscasters that describe the uniforms, you know.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: So the people listening can visualize what we're looking for.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: What's happening?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Very cool.
• 3:57
  unknown: Yeah.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: All right, dude.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Where do you want to get started with this?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh take us somewhere.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: The Bible starts off as in the beginning.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: Here we go.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So uh let's do that in the beginning.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um You know, I uh uh I uh came from a very, very broken family.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was in youth ministry for a while, assistant, and but uh I would always uh preach to our uh our youth about marriage.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I would start off by saying um I had zero examples of what a true relationship looked like.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um my mom was married and divorced six times.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was married and divorced four times.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: So and this was all like in your teenage elementary, was it all while you were young?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Was that like before you were born?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, my my mom was married twice before I was to be, and my dad was married once before.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh long story, but my mom found that out halfway through their marriage that he had been married before he didn't what didn't even divulge that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it was crazy.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I uh um anyway, I have an older sister who is a product of my mom's first marriage, uh, and myself and my younger sister are a product of the third marriage.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um my dad was uh uh in the military.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: He was a uh uh joined the Navy and became a corpsman and was in a corpsman in the uh in Vietnam.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then after uh after his first enlistment, he actually transferred to the the Coast Guard and uh came here to St.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Liscott Station.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's him and how him and my mom met.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh after my sister was born, when she's 19 months younger than me, uh about six months into that, they split up.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so um other than seeing my dad uh about every uh six months and usually a four or five days stretch over Christmas, uh we really never had a relationship.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: But uh so uh again never really had and and multiple stepfathers with my mother never had a never had an example of what a healthy relationship will look like.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um didn't uh really have a a a good uh idea what a man looked like.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: So when uh that void is there, uh the world kind of fills that void, and uh that's kind of what I followed.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now I did I did have some grounding.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my grandmother was very involved in her church.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Your mom's mom, mom assumed.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: My mom's mom.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um she was she kept us grounded.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she was really the matriarch.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we would attend church uh I wouldn't say uh avidly, but uh at least once a month with her, and definitely East during Christmas.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was very important by grandmother.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I did have that that uh little bit of a foundation.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I went to school, Sunday school when I would go there.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and actually when I was in eighth grade uh at the church we went at the time, there was a confirmation program.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And when you would go on a Saturday for eight weeks, uh learn the books of the Bible, learn the doxology, learn a little bit of church history, things like that.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I did have a foundation, and and I can honestly say at the time the uh Holy Spirit was working on me, and for a time I actually thought that I was being called to be a pastor.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's awesome.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Satan uh Satan will swoop in and and squash things really quickly.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was uh a poor example by by one of the leaders at the time, actually took us to a bunch of college campuses, people wanted to want to go to school.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we actually had gone to a seminary and um they were talking to a bunch of young students there and and uh a previous uh youth pastor that we had at our church went along on the trip.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'd and uh yeah, they were just joking around and uh I'm sure he thought it was just typical college kid b banter, but he you know, he you he was talking to the these young students and he was saying, Oh yeah, that was a closet where we'd go some uh sneak back there and smoke weed.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And me hearing that and having somebody in authority who I really looked up to.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um that really shot my entire uh outlook on that.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and pretty much I I pretty much stepped away from it from that moment on.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh went down a really dark path, uh, pretty much spent my entire high school years of drinking, smoking weed, um, being with a lot of girls, um, you know, being what the world says is manly and having a very distorted view of that.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh as high school's coming to an end, I'm I'm thinking about, well, now what?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I did want to go to college.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So uh um, you know, my dad and my grandfather were both in the military.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: My grandfather started in World War II.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um so uh I started looking at that, talked to a recruiter, um, actually and raised my right hand and was off to basic training.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um just like that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: One of the one of the best decisions I made, short of following Christ, is doing that uh really straightened me up and stopped smoking weed because if you got caught smoking weed, you're gonna get booted.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um got a lot of uh discipline in my life, um, you know, started really uh and did have some good examples of some leaders.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um my very first platoon sergeant actually uh was somebody I really looked up as a father figure.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he was uh a really squared away guy and uh had a lot of integrity and he expected a lot out of me and uh really rubbed off of me a lot really well, and uh and I really looked up to him for a long time.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then I met my wife and uh she settled me down.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she it's kind of funny how that happens, you know.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: You're you met her after the military or I was still in the military.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had I'd been in the basic training, obviously.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was uh and and obviously ac actually after I graduated IT, I was only three months out and my dad died.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he was 49.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: I had to go down to his funeral.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I met my wife when I was just had turned 21 and uh was going to junior college actually.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh she had come from a family that was messed up in other ways where uh yeah, and a father that was very abusive, and uh her parents had divorced when she was sixteen, seventeen years old.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So neither one of us really had good examples of that.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I was very, very afraid of commit commitment.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we we dated and broke up four or five times, and my my wife points that out to me several times throughout our lives that remember that you really didn't want to commit be with me right away.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So uh but uh that that carried on for a while and then we uh uh had our first son and uh that really uh brought uh life into a completely different season, and now I'm responsible for somebody else.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh also thinking to myself, like I I don't know how to how to how to be a good dad.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean I'm looking around to the world.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So um while I had slowed down sm uh drinking a a lot, I still was drinking, um but also secretly was um slicking a lot of porn.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh that carried on until uh I found myself after 9-11 um knowing uh we were gonna go to war and had I mean it had gotten a warning order.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: We actually spent the first uh af the after uh 9-11, we actually went and pulled security at the the Winter Olympics uh initially uh Utah.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh then went to Panama and I actually watched uh the invasion of Afghanistan from uh from Panama.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um but we got a warning order to go to war.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh how old were you at this time when that happened, not eleven?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh thirty-six.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I was probably I was thirty-five.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I turned thirty-seven when we actually uh were in Iraq.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, by then we had already had our second child, Lucas, which him and his wife Bree they attend here periodically, um, and just had their their little baby, who's our third grandchild, um uh Brooklyn.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so now I'm leaving my wife and my then nine-year-old oldest son and my I'm sorry, he was eight.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Eight eight-year-old oldest son and going to be four youngest son.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of the hardest things I ever did is saying goodbye to them.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and the unit that I was in as well was was uh some uh was a unit that uh that could be involved in a lot of stuff.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't a promise.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: No what home what returning to home look like?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um It was hard.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was difficult, it was a transition.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean when I was in Iraq, um How many years were you over there?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was over there for I was on active duty for 18 months, but I was actually in Iraq for a little over thirteen months and would have been there longer had the uh election went poorly, the very first one.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh we were only in country for two and a half months, and uh because I was an engineer battalion, we were tasked out to the whole country in different smaller units.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So my I was a platoon sergeant in charge of 30 guys, and uh we were in uh Al Qud, Iraq, which was twenty f 25 minutes well, actually about 25 or 30 miles from the Iranian border.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so um there was a huge uh push by the Iranians to be very involved.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So they had fired up the uh Sadar militia, which was all Shia Sunnis and Shia within the Muslim religion, and Shia were mostly in the south, and the Shia were trying to be in uh take over the country because that's what I the I Iranians are Shia.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so there was a a three-day siege where we were and uh we had uh AC-130 gunships on station 24-7, uh 15s came in, um, actually called an entire uh armor uh portion of armor brigade out of Baghdad to come down to Iron Alkut.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: First time they had fired uh main tank rounds in about six months, fighting their way through the uh through the mess.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh and uh thought at one time that was gonna be it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sure.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you know what I know now you really shouldn't bargain with the Lord, but I was bargaining with the Lord.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you have me come back to my family, I'm going to I'm going to turn my life around and s and serve you.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: So is this this season of your life where you were you made like you make it real, right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're like you've obviously grown up around church, church things, all that kind of stuff.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: But like it's this 36, 37, this experience uh in the military that like opened your eyes to like Initially when you're uh faced with your own demise and you're not thinking about those things, even when you're in your thirties.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you think people die when they're 80 and 90 years old.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: But uh in Ward, I mean I lost a a buddy of mine, and uh you know, that was a blink of an eye with an IED.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: But uh so I come home, um, big transition because I had already you you almost become a different person when you're in the when you're in that situation because you drive yourself crazy worrying about home.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I worried about everybody else.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was the platoon daddy, that's what they call you.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Patoon sergeant, take care of everybody else.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um just kind of hit me with a ton of bricks when I got home.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um looking back on some things, like you know, this those are some days where things could have been really bad.
• 16:56
  unknown: Yeah.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: At the time I blew them off, and you know, you gotta puff your chest up and lead everybody else, and that's what go on.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I start my wife had started going to church uh actually at Hope Christian Church while I was gone.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Some friends had invited her, and um, she had been going there for about five months before I got home.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I decided to join her.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh right away uh one of the very first people I met was uh our late great friend Chris Robinson.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, Chris was leading the men's ministry there and really at the it was kind of in the infinite stages of getting off the ground there too, and uh he was already trying to plan a men's retreat.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this was his time frame was like May-ish.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he planned a uh a retreat in October, and I was you know, I was really wanted to be a part of that.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I went and uh Chris had uh um somehow come in contact with uh uh a pastor who was uh a public speaker as well and from Oklahoma, and he was a an artist.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he he was gonna be there on a Friday evening and a Saturda uh Saturday as well.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh on the Friday evening uh he was a sculptor and uh he had this this blank bust, but he was forming a bust of Christ.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: But as he's speaking, he is beating this bust, um had a crown of thorns, shoved it on uh the head of this bust, and and yelling like he's a Roman soldier at people, like who knows this man?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know this man?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't explain it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: There was a hundred other guys there, but to me, um, it was real as real could be that Christ was right in front of me being beaten.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um right then and there I I was so broken and knew that Christ was real, the sacrifice he made for me was real, and I had been playing Christian all my life, and I was sure and I was a phony and uh broke down, uh probably cried harder than I ever cried in my life.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that was that was the defining moment of of my life and obviously uh my afterlife with Christ.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's when I can truly say I became a Christian.
• 19:36
  unknown: Wow.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it was no longer uh stories about Noah's Ark and and uh you know and and Jesus uh in Christmas when Mary and Joseph know it's real.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this person, uh God himself uh died for you, and what are you gonna do about it?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it became s very serious uh with me, and then uh after that I committed myself, I got back.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh committed myself to uh mentoring.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I was a I became a mentor in the military, just like my first platoon sergeant.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be a leader, be a trainer.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I said, uh what what what what can I do?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: What what can I do that God has gifted me with?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I I wanted to be involved with the youth ministry uh and mentor young people.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I did.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um came alongside four other m youth ministers and uh went to a lot of youth camps and talked to a lot of young people about uh about life, about about silly things and dumb things that I did and tried to give them some wisdom.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Things that I had learned.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and in the meantime, too, got uh very, very interested in apologetics.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um I always was a history buff, but now I'm a history buff for things that are biblical.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: So uh and uh that's kind of why it's kind of why I brought some of the uh the visuals that I have.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, some of these things are about Iraq and my time at Iraq.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I actually teach a uh a Bible study uh at the senior center in uh Waterloo, and this morning actually we're going we're going through Genesis and going through Genesis 11, we're talking about the Tower of Babel, and it also starts talking about Ur of the Chaldees.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I brought this along too.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, that that's part of my my story.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I while I was in Iraq for the last five months, I was actually in uh Anazariah, which is right there.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I could see the ziggurat from Ur of the Chaldees from where I was in Camp Sapper um every day for five months.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we were right there.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even though it was a war, um, our battalion S uh S3 actually was able to arrange with the guy who uh was the curator for uh that area where they had uh excavated out ear the Chaldees back in the late 40s.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um the ziggurat there that you see at the time, they they only only the top three feet of that was visible, and they had excavated all that out.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was all buried in sand.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um so looking back at the time, I was told this is a biblical thing, but there was again like you know, it's a story, like no, there's arc, but no, this is real.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was actually a a place, it exists.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh also have some pictures here of of Babylon, which is close to what is modern day uh Hilla Iraq.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh very cool.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: So all the you know, and Nineveh is is to the north where uh where uh you know Jonah had gone to Nineveh as God instructed him.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in real places uh of the Bible.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: Did it make it you know, as you're having this experience like uh while you're there, is this like you know, helping you like realize that like, well, this these weren't just stories.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like this is this was real.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: What I learned with my grandma going, you know, a handful of times of a year, like it's all coming back.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's all like this makes sense.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was working me the on me the whole time.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: It really was.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, God was speaking loud and clear to me that there's no more playing games because this is reality.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is real.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you need what are you gonna do with it is basically what he what are you saying?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're gonna walk away from it or are you gonna do something with it?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: You know, because it's real.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: You're not you're not playing games anymore.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I told the the ladies at my Bible study this morning, I said, I know I'll ever no longer use the word stories.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're they're accounts.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: We wouldn't ask somebody, hey, tell us or tell us the story about D-Day.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, you'd say, what happened?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you'd have first hand accounts.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the Bible is first hand accounts that are written down.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: So true.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way it was.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: Is this a picture of you right here?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: Let me see that.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: The younger version.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: Let's see here today.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I got a picture of a rat that I killed inside my tent.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that thing was mouth strapped.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: That thing was uh scurrying around.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, uh this tent's not big enough for me and you, dude.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you're gonna have to go.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, it looks like great living quarters.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, when it's 100 piled up tents.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: When it's 130 degrees.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh was it super hot in those things?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh one thing good about it is is those are actually uh insulated covers that go over it.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: We actually had heat inside of them and 'cause at night it's probably cold, right?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: It can be, yeah.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Especially in you know, like this time in Iraq, it it'll get down the temperatures it is right now when you get on top of a gun truck running 50 miles an hour down the road.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's cold.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: But it'll turn hot right away.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we landed on the ground initially the end of February, and it was already 92 degrees.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's just drastic depending on the time of day.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, and uh, you know, you you be out there in the middle of nowhere and look up at the sky and there's no ambient light, that's that's uh that's um you know keeping you from seeing uh thousands of stars as clear as could be, you know, some of the the things you see through the Hubble telescope or something.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you look up in a if you're out in the middle of the uh of the desert where it's completely black and you see every star as and and nebula and everything as clear as can be.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: That crystal clear.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:51
  unknown: Yeah.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: Incredible.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: What uh what was the hardest part of coming home from this experience for you?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, was it hard?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: Was it like was it challenging?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like what was that like for you?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was hard because um you know you kind of leave live life on the edge.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh and the situation where I was in, it was it was similar to what uh Vietnam vets had, that that you had people around you.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: People were not in uniforms at the time I was there, uh, who was our enemy, and you really didn't trust anybody.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, because you didn't know what was coming or going.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: So you're on edge the whole time.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Even when I was driving a car for the first time and I came back, you know, I was uh I was so paranoid.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: I really was, and we would always check check all the all of the uh overpasses and stuff, because uh you never knew when somebody was gonna shoot a RPG off the uh top of an overpass.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, later on uh we had one of our soldiers from not my unit, but another unit that got killed that way.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh you know we we were engineers, we're always looking for stuff on the ground that's not supposed to be there because they may blow up.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it took me a long time to get past that and and not have to worry about that.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just walking down the street.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'll be I'll be honest with you too, and to this day, when I hear somebody speaking Arabic, and uh I'm I mean, I I I've tried to get over that.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be biased.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: I want to sound like I'm racist or anything, but it just my hairs in the back of my head stand up and I try to figure out what they're saying because I did pick up a little bit while I was there.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: What was like the most like stressful moment or experience about being there?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like obviously obviously you look back at it now and you're thankful for it because of Christ, right?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because of what you your eyes were open up to.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: Your surrendering truly to Christ, no longer playing like the Christian game.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like in and this is true about a lot of Americans, right?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like we've all grown up with a grandma or a neighbor or a friend that's taken us to church, you know, even if we didn't have parents that went to church or parents with a great examples.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: Not all.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like I definitely have met people in America that are like, I don't have any church experience at all.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: But like for a lot of us, we would say most Americans say, I am a Christian, you know.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, those kind of things.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: But um you know, which is great, you had this incredible encounter with Christ, you know, and it's come back and it's launched, it's changed everything about you.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure your wife had, was she like this guy's different?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what was her when you came back, how did she respond to like obviously very thankfully you're home, you've been gone and you're alive and you're back in America, you know, kind of thing.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: But what was her response to like did she see the difference, uh change in your life?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: And she did.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but at the time, yeah, I was struggling with a lot of paranoia and a lot of anger, really.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I would I would uh it would take very little to set me off.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, her and my kids had set settled down in their own routine.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, the and my it was my wife's way of dealing and coping with it too, that her and the kids were never home, which was good.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: She got them involved with so many things.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my boys played uh competitive baseball and that all started uh I mean I played with them before I left, but they really got involved with it after after I uh was gone and got in a bowling league and they would be going to movies and and uh they were never home.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when I got back, I wanted to be at home.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, the very first purchase I made, Sean, was a recliner.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna sit in this thing and I'm gonna chill.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because I am at least for the first two or three months, that's all I really wanted to do.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was I was taxed so mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: It really was.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: How long was it from when you came home to where you started going to Hope and you went on this retreat with Chris Robinson and his hundred guys?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, I mean, I I started going to Hope simply because my wife is going and so she was the motivator and factor in going to this church.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the uh the men's retreat was about five months after we had started going to so uh they were you know, Chris was in the planning process of that.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I started going to men's group on Wednesday nights.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Chris was the very first one to hear my hear my testimony.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I heard his and and uh him and I had a lot in common.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: So uh what would you say to men um that are listening?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, Man, you know what, I've been riding the fence.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like I've I I get Christianity uh uh but I'm not taking it seriously.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm kind of playing the game.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: And uh what would you say to those men that are listening?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell I would say that they need to understand that they're more important to the kingdom than than they realize.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we all, whether we think so or not, we have great influence on people around us.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um I wish I would have been the man I am today, you know, 15 years earlier.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Sure.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: In your twenties.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I uh I uh am glad to see my sons both follow the Lord.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, if it my oldest son when I came back, he was almost ten, so uh he had spent a good chunk of his early life not seeing me being a Christian.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um so uh it bothered me that uh I wasn't that example to him initially.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but the Lord worked on him and and uh and and thanked thank the Lord for that that he came to the Lord and I baptized him when he was fourteen.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I would uh I would say that um and Chris Robinson would say this all the time, that if men are walking with the Lord, then the rest of their family, their uh the place where they're employed, their church uh is being led spiritually.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um when that's not happening, things are very broken.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that God can't work in that, but it sure works a lot smoother when things are the way that God intended to be.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's really good.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: So true, man.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, totally agree.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I could hear him saying that over and over.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: I've heard him say that a hundred times.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, yeah.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: More better.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's really good.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that he uh he had a big impact on a lot of lives.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I was so glad that I know I was there was a gap of about ten years where I I was uh kind of disconnected with Chris because he had gone up for with a couple other places and then uh we started coming here and uh as soon as I heard he was leading that that Wednesday night group, I'm like, well, I'm going.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Wow because I'm gonna go see my brother.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh me and him got got pretty close again uh for the last year and a half that we were here before he uh went to the Lord himself.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 33:12
  unknown: Yeah.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: If you could uh say one thing, final thing to your LCC family uh with and leave them with something, uh, what would you say?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that uh you have purpose.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Lord the Lord has created you with gifts, the Lord has sacrificed for you because of of of this creation that he loves so much, and uh you need to take it as serious as possible because our time on this earth is very finite and eternity is forever.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you need to look at everybody else on that uh scale as well.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: That you're looking at the eternity of your wife, of your children, of your extended family, of your neighbors, of your boss.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's good.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's good.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, do you mind Mike?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: First and foremost, thanks so much for joining your joining us, sharing your story, man.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: The real account of of Mike.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: But that's true, man.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's different, like when you can actually see the Bible in context, it changes everything.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really cool that he, you know, uh took you to a place, unfortunately, with a place, but yet and in that place you found you found Christ.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there are no coincidences.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: The Lord had me go there for a reason.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and he has me here for a reason today.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I needed a savior from day one in my life just as much as I need him today.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's so true.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: Don't stop.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: That need never stops.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: We just now know it.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, do you mind closing us out in prayer?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: That'd be great.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, Lord, uh, we come to you and and God, I want to pray for everybody that's gonna listen to this message.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: God, I ask that you speak to their heart.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: God, I ask that you speak to them in their circumstance.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: God, I ask uh with uh with open eyes and open heart that they uh they realize that the Lord loves them in such a way that it's almost unimaginable to us in their human form.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, God, that uh there's nothing more important than an eternity with you.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: And God, thank you for sending your son Jesus Christ to reconcile us back to you because we were made in your image, Lord, and we are bearers uh and ambassadors of you in this world.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: God, I ask for those who are lost and and seeking you, God, that you uh you put people in their lives to to plant those seeds and to speak truth to them.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, God, I want to pray for uh Life Community Church.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: I want to pray for our leaders, I want to pray for Jamie and Sean and Pastor Mike and all the all the staff, Lord, that uh you lead them in the spirit, lead them uh to to grow the kingdom and uh grow the body to uh to step out on faith and be bold to uh to advance your kingdom on a daily basis.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' holy name we pray.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.