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From Torment to Simple Trust with Bobby Conway · True Comfort

• Teasi Cannon (00:01) Hi, I'm TC and I want to welcome you to true comfort where it's our desire to live out 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 verses 3 and 4 which assure us that we have a God who comforts us in all our afflictions and encourage us to share the comfort that we've received with others who need it. And I want to welcome my guest, apologist and pastor Bobby Conway. Bobby, thank you so much for being here. Bobby (00:27) It is great to be with you TZ, thank you for having me. Teasi Cannon (00:30) Yes, so I met you, think it's been, gosh, over 10 years ago. I don't know if you remember it, but I do because I was participating in the Cross-Examined Instructors Academy, which is, for listeners, it is ⁓ like a three-day intensive workshop. by that is an initiative of the cross-examined ministry where people who are budding apologists or interested in apologetics come to really learn how to articulate their arguments better, ask better questions. And part of that experience is an opportunity to present like a 12 minute mini presentation in front of a professional apologist who can critique you and give you good feedback. And you are one of my instructors that I presented to. So you were, I just remember you being so kind and encouraging and gracious to me, which I ⁓ am so thankful for. But even beyond that, I have really been encouraged by your ministry. You have had multiple avenues of ministry, but one of them that helped me for many years was the One Minute Apologist. And then even more recently, I finished your book, Does Christianity Still Make Sense, which I highly recommend to everyone. I'm gonna put the link to how you can get that book in the show notes, but. I would consider that a pastoral apologetics book. I think you did such a fantastic job just opening wide your heart. You share some of the most painful stories of your life, parts of your testimony in such a very raw way. You also share your honest doubts and also really address our culture's most skeptical ideas in a really relevant way. I just really thank you for that. I can't recommend the book enough. I think you've covered a lot of ground in that book in such a ⁓ pastoral way with such tenderness and obvious care for the readers. So Thank you for the work you did on that. Yeah. Bobby (02:38) ⁓ thank you, Tuzi. I appreciate it. Teasi Cannon (02:41) Yeah, it's interesting because that whole book is really such in line with the passion and the heart of this podcast, at least my prayer for it. But before we get into the heart of our conversation, I'd love for you to just share a little bit about what you're doing now in your ministry and where people might be able to find what you're working on now. Bobby (03:04) Yeah, so what I'm doing now, TZ, is I'm pastoring in Charlotte, North Carolina, a church called Image. And we were planted by Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, when I was living in California, Pastor Brian Broderson, Chuck Smith's successor of the Calvary movement. ⁓ He was letting me preach for him. he said, you know, think you need to be back in the pulpit. I had had a relapse after 23 years of sobriety about six years ago. went back home to California to just think about life and figure things out. And Pastor Brian was letting me get up and preach. He's like, Bobby, you need to be doing this. And so I started a church here about, oh, four and a half years ago, and that's going well. And then the other thing I've recently started TZ is the graphite apologist. So I had the one minute apologist. Well, I picked up a pencil a couple of years ago. Almost and I didn't even know I could draw and then all of a sudden I was replicating what I saw and so now I'm doing these Videos like yeah, here's an example. I'm working on this. It's not done But this is gonna be a video when it's done. It'll look more it'll look hyper realistic it's on the way there, but That's gonna be a video that people can watch and it was about a 20-hour drawing with a 60 second explanation on suffering Teasi Cannon (04:16) Wow. ⁓ Bobby (04:31) Why would God allow suffering and evil? And so I would encourage people to subscribe. I'm trying to do apologetics through the lens of art. And so I'm just drawing stuff and putting out videos. And that's been a lot of fun. Teasi Cannon (04:33) Wow. I am blown away. you never drew anything until two years ago. And that is, wow. You just discovered. I'm so blown away by people who, ⁓ Bobby (04:51) Yeah, I know, right? Teasi Cannon (04:57) have these multiple intelligences and these skills because I feel like I'm just so in one, so limited. But like, wow, that's really amazing. I have actually, watched the first video where you were drawing Jesus on the cross and I didn't know though that you've only begun doing that. That is fascinating. I think that's gonna be a really... Bobby (05:03) Hahaha! Teasi Cannon (05:21) meaningful ministry and ⁓ a different way to meditate on really powerful truth. So I look forward to seeing those videos and we'll definitely put the link to all of that in the show notes. I wish you would come to Tennessee and start a church. Anyway, that's another conversation. the people in your congregation are blessed for sure. I did kind of peek at a little bit of the website there Bobby (05:35) Thank you. Ha Teasi Cannon (05:49) saw something about you always taking time for Q &A in your sermons. Do you do that still? Or, yeah. Bobby (05:55) I do. Yeah, every week I end the service with about 15 to 20 minutes of live Q &A. And I really just want to give people an opportunity to process their doubts. And that's what I love to do anyway. I just finished up six years on a nationally syndicated radio show called Pastors Perspective that Chuck Smith started. And I was just in the hot seat answering questions on the Bible and apologetics and philosophy. Teasi Cannon (06:03) Wow. Mm. Bobby (06:22) And I wanted to apply that in the church to create a conversational culture to let people know that they can bring their doubts to church. We're not celebrating doubts, but we are there to minister to them in the midst of it. Teasi Cannon (06:36) Right. That is so incredible because we need a safe space and what better place to be able to be honest about it than in our church community. And it leads me to the heart of our conversation today. So just to remind listeners, the point, the whole point of this podcast is that each week I invite a guest who has intentionally studied the evidence for the biblical worldview. to share with us a personal story ⁓ or ongoing experience with pain or heartbreak to share how God has comforted them through that and also a bit of the evidence that gives them personal assurance that God's comfort and God's promises can be trusted and my prayer for these conversations is that we will all be encouraged by seeing that we are not alone in experiencing hard things as Christians, that we aren't fools for believing what we read in God's Word, and that we will be better equipped to handle not only our own doubts in hard times, but better equipped to minister to others who are hurting. I also want to just say before we get into the conversation that these are not pre-scripted conversations and sometimes the content delves into topics that can be considered triggering to some. So I just like to give that little bit of a heads up as we go progress into the conversation. But I just want to thank you, Bobby, again, for accepting this invitation to encourage us in this way. And I am just going to let you kind of take it from wherever you want to start. Bobby (08:21) Well, that sounds good. I'm happy to do that. I guess just to connect people to my story a little bit, my wife would probably describe me as a tortured soul. I am that classic, ripe brain, creative type. Grew up California and never heard the gospel till 19. Got into Teasi Cannon (08:37) Hmm. Bobby (08:50) the drug and alcohol scene and ⁓ always, you know, looking for the next girl to party, big time promiscuous back in high school and early college. And when I placed my faith in Jesus, it really meant the world to me because the reason I was turning to drinking was of anxiety through the roof. I can just remember like my palms were sweating and I was anxious and back in high school, you know, Teasi Cannon (09:13) Hmm. Bobby (09:19) ADD people were just considered rebels. I was your ADD guy. I couldn't pay much attention. Unless you have my interests, I could hyperfixate. But I always found school so boring. And then when I became a Christian, I just absolutely felt like my world opened up. Like, wow, God would forgive me for everything that I've done, all the guilt that I collected. Well, I ended up becoming a Christian and Teasi Cannon (09:21) you Bobby (09:46) You know, it wasn't long before I was preparing for ministry and somewhere along the process, I began to struggle with extreme doubts where I thought, wow, am I going to be an apostate? And the doubts were so overwhelming in my life, TZ. It was a long, dark night of the soul, at least a decade off and on. And I was preaching by faith. I didn't renounce. Christianity, but I can remember walking up to the pulpit and going, God, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Am I supposed to just resign? Because I'm barraged by doubts. going, I'm just going to trust you to lead me through this long dark night. But I ended up in counseling, antidepressants. I was suicidal. I would ask myself, would I be better off just taking my life than being an apostate because if I'm an apostate, all these people who have watched my one minute apologist program, I don't want to disillusion them in the faith. So maybe I should just kill myself. And that's a horrible, horrible place to be, but it was genuine where I was thinking about it intensely. ⁓ And God would end up bringing me through that, but it was hard. Teasi Cannon (10:57) Well. Mm. Mm. Bobby (11:12) I've never known somebody that's been so wrecked by doubt than I have. I'm not saying there hasn't been those people, but I'm saying it tore me up. I hated my doubts. But apologetics, ⁓ what happened is for every book I read, I just learned 10 more I needed to read. And I needed to come to terms with a solution that the next book wasn't gonna find out. I was already into my second doctorate, working on a PhD in philosophy. Teasi Cannon (11:30) Right. Bobby (11:41) from Birmingham and England and deep in the trenches of Nietzsche and Freud and studying all kinds of the philosophy. And I just needed a breakthrough. And by God's grace, I would get that. And we can talk about that. But doubts for me, by God's grace, it may be more empathetic. Suffering brings you a part of the circle of compassion. It broke me. It helped me to not be so rigid. Teasi Cannon (11:48) Wow, yeah. Bobby (12:10) There was some, you know, tight box Christianity that I was stuck in that I needed to realize Christianity is bigger than the box that I was put in. And I had to rethink my faith from the bottom up again. And it affected my marriage. It affected my kids. I found myself asking, how do I raise my kids? You know, and if I walk out of Christianity, where am I going to go? All I'm going to do is an inherit another set of doubts and so I would try to think about the different worldviews and think about the kind of doubts I would suffer from and what I realized is I just struggle with my finitude. I struggle with the lack of certainty that I would like. I feel vulnerable. I feel kind of raw at times in this world just knowing we're traveling on a chunk of rock at speed of light. It can overwhelm me and so I had to figure out a way Teasi Cannon (13:04) I... Yeah. Bobby (13:08) to trust and I don't trust the invisible God well. I don't trust the visible well. So now I got this relationship that's complicated because I can't see God. I've had moments that are amazing and it's those moments that I've hung onto through the rear view mirror when I couldn't see my way forward. But it's not like those moments are all day long. Sometimes it gets dry and really dry. Teasi Cannon (13:14) Hmm. Right. Mm-hmm Yeah, you've said so much that I can relate to. ⁓ And it is so encouraging to me personally to hear your honesty about that because I don't want to laugh, but I chuckled a little bit inside when you said your wife would call you a tormented soul. And I think my husband might feel that way. I mean, maybe not to the degree that you wrestled, probably only because your intelligence is greater than mine. Bobby (13:53) Mm. Ha Teasi Cannon (14:04) You might be wrestling with, you know, maybe bigger picture things than I have, but I have also battled, waking up with the weight of the world on my shoulders. It often takes me an hour to just offload. know, heaviness my husband wakes up every day with the glass full. Like he is, he just sees the best. He's so, I mean, he works hard, so he doesn't have a whole lot of time to sit and be between his ears. Like I have more of that, but he also is just generally by nature positive and hopeful, which has been a gift from God because I have woken up. not that way and I have battled clinical depression myself. I ⁓ also felt deep despair while loving Jesus and I think it's more common than people realize which is one of the main reasons I love this conversation because I think there's a lot of people out there that wake up heavy that struggle with depression that that feel like They'd rather just get to the end quicker and we're not alone in that. I don't know. Maybe you know historically, like I have heard that like Charles Spurgeon dealt with overwhelming depression. And some of these theological giants, not only in the biblical times, but in church history have struggled as well. So. It isn't just this weird, uncommon part of the Christian journey to grapple with these types of struggles. I can completely relate. And it also just encourages me to know it's not that I'm just defective. It's not like, know, that there's just something totally wrong and I'm the only one. Bobby (15:48) Thanks Teasi Cannon (15:52) that wakes up heavy So you mentioned that you battled this in the past, how much of this is still going on? Like, is this just kind of part of the fabric of your psyche? Is this just a cyclical part of you or, you know, the doubting and the grappling or what does it look like now? Bobby (16:13) By God's grace, I'm not hammered by doubts the way that I was in the sense of panic because my doubts led to a lot of panic and I had my fair share of freak out sessions. I'm such a worrier that if I wake up and I don't feel worried, then I'll start worrying that I'm not worried. Like that's kind of the way I can get. The way it looks today though, Teasi Cannon (16:35) I Bobby (16:42) my relationship with Jesus, I'm trying to think through that right now. I told my wife, we were prayer walking, we'll go for a walk and we pray. said, you know, honey, prayer's confusing to me because on one side I wanna have faith and trust God, but so much of the Christian walk has been just a crash course and disillusionment because I had faith that God was gonna do these things and I thought people were saying this is what God wants. Teasi Cannon (17:05) Mm. Bobby (17:12) You know, you're listening and you're trusting and then you just get, you know, disillusioned by it all. And I'm going, okay, well, God's not trying to disillusion me, but I do need to step back and think about how do I have faith that he's going to do like good things, not just have me carrying a cross all the time. You know, we've called to carry a cross, but I, it's almost like on one side in prayer, I find myself going, okay, I want to have faith. Teasi Cannon (17:29) Right. Bobby (17:41) God, I really do. But I've been down this road so many times where I'm disillusioned by it that I'm not sure if it's my emotions or you or what's going on. And I'm struggling to sort out my prayer life. That's not saying that I don't believe it. I do. I pray. I just don't think I'm a good prayer warrior like I used to. There was a season where I used to pray more. And ⁓ it just... Teasi Cannon (17:50) Mm-hmm. you Bobby (18:09) so much of the language in the church, they talk about prayer in a relationship. We are in a relationship, but it's so much different. if you asked me to be on your show, I show up, right? Well, we feel stood up by God a lot, and that's kind of part of the program. we can't be, what are we looking for? Is it His presence? Is it a feeling? And then I get ADD and I wander. And so I'm trying to think through how I can be faithful. Teasi Cannon (18:22) Mm-hmm. Right. Bobby (18:39) And what did I misunderstand about maybe listening to people and what they're telling me that God's going to do? Or how did I not properly think about the suffering and the cross along the way of the dreams? Because you don't have a lot of people that talk about, let me give you this vision that God gave me. I'm going to die. it's always, I'm going to make a bunch of money. God gave me this house. And that disillusions us. And so I'm very concerned about Teasi Cannon (18:46) Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Bobby (19:08) eliminating disillusionment as a pastor in the church because that will protect them from suffering with doubt. And if you over promise in ways that God never did, then it's going to seem like he under delivers and then people are to get disillusioned and they're going to have big question marks. And perhaps it's just the fact that they were promised things that God didn't promise. Teasi Cannon (19:15) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right, and do you see that as basically the fundamental problems with word of faith gospel and some of these movements that are more hyper charismatic like the New Apostolic Reformation and the like? Bobby (19:49) Totally. you know, the Rhema word and the spoken word and name it and claim it. ⁓ So on one level, that's just an extreme. The other place that I don't want to go to is where I just shut down. I just want to think about this. you know, there's things like even as much as I know what the gospel says, I still sometimes struggle in my emotions to believe that God loves me. Teasi Cannon (19:53) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Bobby (20:19) ⁓ I, I struggle with insecurities about that. I've, told my wife yesterday while we were out walking, said, I'm just, I want to know that I'm, that I please God. And I don't know if the way I'm using my time is I'm trying to use it for him. I I'll say things like it would make life so much easier if I could just get five minutes with him where he'd say, don't do this, do this because I feel so unfocused sometimes. And then. Teasi Cannon (20:35) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Bobby (20:48) That makes me insecure and then all that anxiousness can kick in. And the thing that I'm learning though is I have been saying on one level, I'm wondering if he loves me, here's the oxymoron of it all. But on the other level, I've been saying, God, thank you for being tender toward me because I do look at my past and it's not like he's stomping me out. He's tender toward me. I just don't always know how to integrate that and believe that. And so I've been thinking through what it means to have a secure attachment to God because my doubts, TZ, made it very difficult for me. started off, I mean, I was the guy who was witnessing to 50 to 100 people a week, a 40 day fast, a 21 day fast, fast and twice a week. I mean, I was sold out, praying sometimes three hours a day to total disillusionment, wondering if I'm going to walk away from it. And now Teasi Cannon (21:34) Hmm. Bobby (21:46) It's how do I have that secure attachment to him? Because if I don't feel that, I'm gonna struggle. And so all of my problems with God are rooted in identity as it relates to insecurities because I fail to trust him. And I just wanna know what trust looks like so I can feel secure in who I am called to be for him. Teasi Cannon (22:09) Thank you for sharing all of that. I grapple with those exact same questions. And a faith that's built on feelings can easily be demolished by feelings, And therefore, if... Bobby (22:20) point. Teasi Cannon (22:21) What we're hungering for, what I hear you saying, is like, want to feel you, God. I want to have a sense of you. I want somehow to experience you with my five senses or some type of tangible thing that shows me that we're good. know, like I would love to have that same five minutes. You know, I think God could cover a lot of ground in five minutes. But what I find... Bobby (22:39) Yeah. Teasi Cannon (22:46) is just that if having a faith that lasts, a stronger faith, a faith that's built on you know, built on truth and, and also a personal experience. Like my testimony is very similar. I had a radical Southern California transformation as well, straight from the bar to the Bible. And, you know, I was in like what you described. And ⁓ so I have that subjective evidence. I do have evidence of God working in my life subjectively in major ways. It's just so few and far between. It's almost like the miracles in the Bible. That was a part of one of the chapters I just read in your book. where you look at the Bible as a whole and you and you think about these little sprinklings of miracles and 500 years go by and 800 years go by between the next recording of miracles and I think it's that way in our lives when it comes to these subjective encounters and if God loves me so much that he wants me to have a faith that can last that can override supersede my feelings, then withholding the feelings might just be the very act of tenderness and love that I need. I don't know. I'm just postulating that because I'm with you. And I've come to this place where I feel a more robust faith, but in the process of those studies, and I promise I'll quit rambling because I want to hear more from you, but the pendulum swings like we go from this zealous, my gosh, the lights are turning green right when I need them to, and there's always a parking spot right where I want to this. I don't, I don't even know if prayer is working. and I hear you saying you've kind of done that and you're still in places where you're grappling. What would you I mean if you could encapsulate the bottom line that keeps you come into the pulpit on Sundays that keeps you? You know pursuing Jesus as your compass point. How would you boil that down in the midst of all of the grappling? What keeps you following Jesus? Bobby (25:01) believe he rose from the grave. I believe that I would be dead without him, with all of my heart. mean, coming out of the alcohol and drug scene, half of my friends are all dead already from drugs and alcohol. A year and a half ago, my buddy, you know, he couldn't get clean from heroin. Another one, they found him four days after he drunk himself to death in a family room. Another one couldn't get clean, went up and shot himself. And another one went out in the lake and shot himself. Teasi Cannon (25:14) I'm so sorry. Bobby (25:31) And I was kind of the ringleader, you know? And so God pulled me out when I was young. ⁓ And I just believe I would be dead. So I don't know how to live without him, but I don't know how to live with him the best either. And that's the tension. You know, it's like I want to know how to live for him. But it's trying to simplify what was once so complex for me. Teasi Cannon (25:43) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Bobby (26:01) And the way that I raised my kids, TZ, is I realized that what messed me up so much was being delivered a long list of black and whites. And then if you get too tight of a doctrinal box, what can happen is if you're intellectually inclined, ⁓ if you're ADD, you don't think inside boxes anyway. Teasi Cannon (26:20) Mm-hmm. Bobby (26:31) you're going to find yourself bumping up against this. And so for me, I say it like this. Some people want to be as conservative as they can be about their conservativism. I want to be as liberal as I can be about what we're trying to conserve without slipping into heresy. When you're as conservative as you can be about your conservativism, you'll alienate some that are in. But if you're as liberal as you can be about what we are called to conserve, Teasi Cannon (26:48) Mm. Right. Bobby (26:59) you'll be more welcoming. So I told my kids, said, I would have been helped as your old man if I would have been told on the front end of this, don't commit to positions too quickly. Theologically realize there's lots of views out there. So enjoy learning. Don't try to conquer kids. Don't be surprised by different viewpoints. Doubt's not a Christian problem. It's a human problem. In the absence of certainty, there's always going to be room for doubt. The question is which worldview best explains. the truth about reality. And so I said, here's what I would focus on. Love God, love people, celebrate the gospel. Love God, love people, that's the great commandment. Celebrate the gospel, that's the great commission. I try in my head to realize that the early church wasn't even saddled with the overwhelming burden that we have from the standpoint of, yeah, they were being persecuted. Like that's huge. Teasi Cannon (27:36) Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Bobby (27:54) But what we're left with is trying to grapple through 2,000 years of doctrinal discussions. You didn't even have the first book of the New Testament written for a decade and a half after Jesus' So they weren't sitting around baffled by doubts like this. But for me, that's it. And so everything that helped me was rolled into the resurrection. If Jesus rose, then he died. If he died, then he lived. And if he lived, Teasi Cannon (28:18) Mm-hmm. Bobby (28:24) ⁓ He said he was going to die. He validated the Old Testament. He said he was going to rise. So I'm going, if he rose, he died. If he died, he lived. When he lived, he validated the Old Testament. So all those weird things that disturbed me at times, well, if it was good enough for him and he rose, then I'll deal with it. And I trust that in his first coming that he validated the Old Testament, that in his second coming, he'll validate the new. Teasi Cannon (28:43) Mm-hmm. Bobby (28:50) And so I'm trying to simplify it into the resurrection, into loving Him, loving people, and then being gracious about the things that we splintered, the Church to death, in the name of our pet particularities. Teasi Cannon (29:04) Right, I'm sure I know what you're gonna say here, but there are some doctrines that I'm sure you hold as far as like these are non-negotiables, which would be the gospel. ⁓ Because in our culture today, under the guise of unity, people might misunderstand and think, well. Bobby (29:16) Yeah. Teasi Cannon (29:26) You know, we don't even know what the gospel, so many people in the world don't even know what the gospel, the true gospel is. Even in the church, people can't articulate the actual gospel. What I love, when I read Acts, I've gone back through even and just like read just for the purpose of seeing what the early church people prayed for. Were they praying for God to reveal their epic calling? Were they praying for God to help them? Bobby (29:27) That's fair. Teasi Cannon (29:53) you know, with emotions, no, we don't really see that. Not that they didn't, but we don't see it. We don't see a lot of precedents for them grappling with a lot of the things like you just mentioned that we grapple with. They were preaching Christ in him crucified. That's what we see Paul saying, we're preaching Christ in him crucified. But, understanding the gospel is so essential in order to feel that liberty But I can attest to what you're saying because my first deep dive into apologetics was the age of the earth debate. And I had been, you know, raised up to believe one view of that very dogmatically. And when I read that some of these theologians that I highly respected had a different view, it shook me back. It really made me wonder if they were saved and then I had to walk through and do a deep dive which helped me to understand The two things I wish that I would have known I wish that what people would have told me right out of the gate was number one, we need to teach you how to read the Bible. This book is powerful and it's gonna be what you live your life by, but it isn't easy to read and you're not gonna understand how to read it if you flip and point. So we need to teach you the basics of how to read this book And then also, like you just said, being aware that some of these issues don't form a strong opinion right out of the gate. That would have been so helpful and I would have avoided some pretty serious situations of abuse because of situations I got myself into. from not knowing how to read my Bible, even with the most passion, that, you know, so much love for Jesus, but still just not knowing. what other encouragement do you have for, people who are experiencing similar back and forth in their head and still just wanting to stay faithful to the gospel? Bobby (31:47) Okay. Yeah, you know, I mean, I will say it. What I'm saying sounds like simple, right? But like you, I am a Christian apologist, so I'm passionate about recognizing our things to defend. It's just there's a lot. And I'm so thankful that people are finding kind of a niche to defend, because when I was getting started, it was crushing you. You know, I. Teasi Cannon (32:18) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Bobby (32:24) got my specialist training, but I also was constantly studying Q and A books and just thinking through how to answer every single question and trying to get down the genealogies and trying to put this together and trying to understand the dates. it just was intellectually exhausting at times ⁓ for me. mean, the funny thing about it all is I hated breeding when I was a kid. TZ, I I failed the ASVAB three times to get in the military. I was a total bonehead. I was a partier. And then I ended up with two doctorates, a four-year master's degree and graduating one of them summa cum laude. He just transformed my life, but it's not what I was looking for. And he's given me a break. think sometimes ⁓ this art has been wonderful for me because it's allowed me to tap into the right side of my Teasi Cannon (32:54) Yeah. Bobby (33:22) brain and get me out of my head. And I think that we all need something that lets us feel incredibly present. And a good hobby is something it was always reading and studying and thinking. And now discovering this, it's so nice just to put some relaxing classical music on and draw and get present. Because what happens is, Teasi Cannon (33:31) Hmm. Mm-hmm. Bobby (33:52) That's what gypsies so much of our life is we're cramped between these future and past emotions. Future emotions of worry, anxiety, past emotions of guilt, shame, regret, and those emotions crash on us in the moment. And you know those moments where we have experienced God's presence? It's because we were present with him. We were in the moment. We weren't thinking about getting onto the next thing. We were like in the moment with the great I am who's the present one, the self-existent one. And I think we've got to find a way to get out of our head a little bit, to be present. And yes, I'm thankful for defending doctrine, but fortunately, we've got a lot of specialists out there and we don't have to wear the burden of, I I sold my library because I couldn't, I mean, I would be looking at books and. Teasi Cannon (34:27) Mm. Mm-hmm. Bobby (34:49) And I hadn't read in a while and thinking, okay, I think I forgot that I need to go back and read it. And so here's what I'd say. The person that I would be most concerned for is the person who's like me. And that's a person who I describe as an obsessive analyzer. I think there's a mental health play that you can connect to doubts and you could have somebody who's incredibly analytical like William Lane Craig, but I don't think he's got OCD tendencies. Teasi Cannon (34:53) Mm-hmm. Mm. Hmm. Bobby (35:18) So he's able to unlock. You can get somebody with OCD tendencies, but they're not into analyzing information. So they're not going through existential angst. You get somebody that's got sort of this addict type of a won't let go of the bone kind of a mind and incredibly analytical that doesn't know how to drop the bone, doesn't know how to let go. That person gets stuck and they get trapped in their doubts. Teasi Cannon (35:26) Mm. Bobby (35:47) And that's why I think we need to find something that we can be present in besides being present in just our doubts. We need to find a way to make room to enjoy life because that's the thing. I mean, I got these two grandkids that were born twins. They've changed my life. it's like, man, having like grandbabies or my charcoal and graphite pencils and, you know, Teasi Cannon (36:07) Mm-hmm. Bobby (36:16) all the fights that my wife and I've been into, but now we got 30 years into this. It's like, boy, it'd take a lot of screw ups to know somebody would forgive me like she has. And so we're at this stage of life where it's like, you know, it just looks different. A lot of loss to come when you're at middle age, but there's new gains and we just got to, you know, there's something about life TZ that. Teasi Cannon (36:31) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Bobby (36:39) your interior life has to be growing stronger in order to cope with your existence as you get older. Because the fact of the matter is, is as we get older, if you put your hope in beauty, you're gonna age. If you put your hope in foods and delights, well, you can't just eat as much. You have to eat less, work out more, take care of yourself better. It's like a constant dying to self and it's like a readying for heaven. Teasi Cannon (36:46) Mm-hmm. Yep Mm-hmm. Bobby (37:09) And we have to learn to love self-control and the simple things of life. Teasi Cannon (37:15) That so I mean such great advice. I'm with you on the grandkids. I've got three they live right next door to me. It's amazing. Yeah, what what they do. I have a grandson with Down syndrome and I'm just telling you he has been such a minister of joy and simplicity and just Bobby (37:24) ⁓ lucky you. Hmm. Teasi Cannon (37:35) no guile, know, not that he doesn't throw toys, but he doesn't, he's just got such a gentle spirit. And I have really, I love my days with them because I put everything else on the back burner and I'm just present with these little babies. And I do agree. And I, I, I'm receiving that encouragement for myself as well, because I think sometimes I just want to go look at a rippling brook. I feel this need to just go sit in nature and Bobby (37:37) Hmm. Mmm. Teasi Cannon (38:02) I don't do it enough. think ⁓ looking at my own life, I sometimes tell my kids, I feel like the most boring person in the world, because I don't really know if I, I mean, I walk every day, but I don't really have hobbies like drawing or ⁓ any of that. I am different though, that I have always loved to read but I agree this pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake and this angst to have more and more information is it isn't joyful. And I have felt at times even in my own studies of apologetics, just like this comparison that goes along with that, like where you're like, my gosh, how can these other people retain all these facts so well, and I'm just forgetting and you just want to keep voraciously reading. But how do you think, how would you advise people who, I mean to have a balance because you're not saying don't study because Jesus commands us to love him with our whole heart, our whole mind, our soul and our strength. and reading and studying is also an act of worship. ⁓ So doesn't have to be an obsessive, disordered, know, fiending thing where we're... How do we make... How would you encourage people to find a balance with that? Bobby (39:19) Yeah, studying for me, it started off because I wanted to know God and that was what I needed to do to read. So I fell in love with learning. But the problem with it is, you know, a lot of the things that we do that drive us, there's that shadow. So while I was fueled by love for God, I was also fueled by insecurities about my lack of learning growing up. And so then it was like, okay, now a lot of my education, while I think it was to please God and to be as prepared as possible, there's this shadow side of, ⁓ okay, but I want to feel like I really know my stuff and I feel insecure. And so that's, ⁓ you know, there could be a a healthy level of insecurity in the sense of like if it motivates you in a way that you go, well, there's we should feel the need to have some answers. But I think in some ways it grew in an unhealthy way with me. And then I got to a point where I felt like, my goodness, I've learned so much. We're, you know, reading, teaching myself to speed listen to books at triple speed and, ⁓ you know, ⁓ listening to. Teasi Cannon (40:42) well. Bobby (40:46) So many, mean, I've got like seven or eight hundred books I've listened to on audible. It was just constant where it was never enough. And so I think that, ⁓ if we can just, you know, enjoy the learning process, enjoy our limitations, know that we, you know, and, and the thing that we want to conceal the most is the thing I think we need to reveal the most. Teasi Cannon (40:52) Yeah. Yeah. Bobby (41:15) you know, I've learned in sobriety and having hundreds and hundreds of sobriety meetings that transparency is my survival medicine. And so I'm working out what it means to be honest with myself that so that I, I, cause it's easy to self deceive yourself. And the problem with being deceived is you don't know you're deceived. And so we have to constantly like ask ourselves. Teasi Cannon (41:24) Mmm. Mm-hmm. Bobby (41:45) Why am I doing this? You know, we want admiration. We want respect. want ⁓ to feel like, you know, we got it going on. And I think my life in a lot of ways, it's like I told my wife, I just feel like a colossal failure in so many ways. ⁓ I've written several books and they don't do the best and I've tried these YouTube channels and Teasi Cannon (41:47) Yeah, that's good. Mm. Mm. Bobby (42:14) They'll go good, then I'll have a relapse and throw the whole algorithm off and mess that up. you know, so it's like, it's just sometimes a crap show. You know what I'm saying? And I'm like, man, Lord, be merciful with me, center. Teasi Cannon (42:24) Yeah. there's something just so beautiful about that journey. you're still clinging to the cross. You're you're clinging to the resurrected Jesus through it all. And those are the things I think I love where you said, how do we find balance? You're mentioning this shadow self that is worried about our achievements, I think it's like the lies we believe that are a product of the wounds in our life, a product of our culture. If we can learn to silence those and enjoy the journey as a pursuit of a God who loves us, this is the way I think about it sometimes. If there's a God who made me, I wanna know him. If he's revealed himself and not left me to just walk around blindly, then I want to do my darnedest to try to interpret what he's revealed. ⁓ But I want it to be motivated out of love. I want it to be motivated out of a joy. to know that the more I know him, the more I'm going to understand my own identity and my own value and my own worth. so I have to struggle to make sure that's always my motivation as well. Like, Lord, I want to know you and help make you known to others who need you because we are living in a broken world. Another thing I love that you mentioned is part of your journey has been This is a bad way of saying it probably, but you are clinging to the cross because the other options are horrible. That's part of what keeps you on the narrow road as well is just the other options of other worldviews, they fail. They don't make sense of your journey. I love there's a quote, I'll probably botch it, but Greg Kockel says, even with all its loose ends, the biblical worldview makes the best sense of suffering and pain and our own insanity between our ears. You know, the things we make so difficult between our own ears. And I often land there as well. There's no other option. I've tasted and seen what the world has to offer, just like you have. We know it doesn't lead to life. We know that the counterfeits are pretty at first, but they're empty. They leave you high and dry when you need them the most. And the biblical worldview continues to show up even when we don't understand every aspect of it. Bobby (45:13) Yeah, that's so true. mean, I wrote Does Christian still make sense? And I concede the point like there's a lot that doesn't make sense. mean, Ezekiel laying on a side for three hundred and sixty days and then rolling over and doing another forty while playing with pots and pans. mean, there's some bizarre, bizarre stuff in there, but I'll say that. Teasi Cannon (45:21) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Bobby (45:34) the challenge of it all is just, know, I don't like to suffer. And there's been a lot of it and probably the big majority that's been self-induced, but I don't relate to Paul. You know, I want to know him ⁓ in his sufferings and, you know, share in those sufferings and become like him in his death. like, man, I don't, that's part of my problem. It's like, Teasi Cannon (45:41) No, I don't either. Bobby (46:04) When I think about I could live 30, 40, 50 more years and all the suffering, I have to not freak out about that because life has hurt so bad and there's been so much ⁓ pain in the journey. And it's unrealistic. It's like even for the church, like I find myself going, I don't know how many more like trials, like if it sweeps across the church. But I can't ask God, God I'll pastor as long as there's no big major trial and I go what if he's trying to teach me how to just be okay in the midst of a storm? I haven't figured that out and I think that's like the invitation to surrender and it's like the beautiful thing about the Lord is he tried to remove disillusionment. You're gonna suffer. You're gonna have trials. He let it snow. It's there but for some reason in my head I'll almost feel like, ⁓ God, I've had a, maybe I'm entitled to not suffer anymore because it's been a rocky road. And so can I just have like a clean and you've seen that you've seen the cross I've, I've born Lord now, now can we put the cross down and can, can I, can I just enjoy the comforts? And I, I don't think he's going to, and I fear that I'm going to trick myself into more and more why God, why God in, I just have to learn. Teasi Cannon (47:19) Mm-hmm. Bobby (47:30) that there's something about faith like a child. And that's the beautiful thing about it. The way out of this whole doubt crisis was having faith like a child in the simple gospel that Jesus is alive. And that's what he wants. He wants a relationship and the fact that he rose again. And then we sit around and start going, well, this particular Greek word in P46 ⁓ and this was in this codex and we just tweak. And I just want to know. Teasi Cannon (47:33) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yuck. Bobby (47:59) I want to know him and the power of his resurrection, but that suffering part... ⁓ Teasi Cannon (48:03) Mm-hmm. Right, right. You don't want that ending. But I don't want to know you in the power, you know, in the fellowship of your sufferings. I agree, but don't you just know that when we, I can't wait to get to heaven and understand the honor. Bobby (48:12) Ha ha ha! Teasi Cannon (48:20) of being in that fellowship because I also, I don't wanna keep turning, I'm just relating to you that I've also lived through a lot of suffering from childhood to this day. And I also am with you, I would love like the lottery in Tennessee right now is 1.9 billion or something. Like, God, can I just win that? Like, I think that would just be so great. But I also am just ready to... Bobby (48:27) Sure. Yeah. That would be great, yeah. You Teasi Cannon (48:47) you know, trying to prepare myself to know, nevertheless, Lord, your will be done. And to know that what I guess for me that the resurrection is also and the ascension gives me so much hope that it's not the end of the story and that I can trust even though I don't want to suffer anymore, even though I don't. like what I've had to walk through in my life. I do have enough evidence of things I have experienced, what I have seen to cling to, to trust that God's gonna give me the grace I need to make it through whatever else I go through. And I just pray that I will keep my eyes on him. Like you said, just keep my eyes on him, the author and finisher of it all. in the midst of it. And I think there's this beautiful balance based on what I've heard about your story. Even though I know you found relief in making it simple again, can obviously, it's obvious to see how God has used all the years that you were obsessing on learning because that's all in you. It's still a part of what he has used to build a faith that that is lasting. It's a beautiful testimony of what real life looks like. If we could all get real honest about what we struggle with between our ears, that looks more like what the Christian journey is than living your best life now. That isn't always what it looks like. And so I really thank you, Bobby, for opening your heart like that. I think hopefully people will leave just encouraged that this journey isn't simple. It's not always easy, but our relationship with Jesus can be peaceful and joyful like a child would experience. And... ⁓ The other thing I'm taking away is I need a hobby. I don't know if I'm gonna try to draw or not because I don't know if that'll work out as well, but having those times of just relaxing our minds, enjoying God's creation, He reveals Himself in nature and we can see Him in the beauty of nature as we can, know, digging into Scripture, I think at times. Would you agree? Bobby (51:06) Absolutely, we got two books, right? The book of nature and the book of scripture and we can walk around and appreciate things and I think sometimes just just Allowing yourself to just observe what's going on and you know, like you said do like to just go sit and look at a waterfall and try to appreciate that but we can use our thinking in those moments to come up with great illustrations or you know have thoughts like Teasi Cannon (51:08) Yep. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Bobby (51:36) I mean, I'll see a bug climbing on the ceiling and I'll think, how do they do that? Well, they must have some kind of adhesion on their feet that's allowing them to stick. you can sit outside and make observations. There's so much that we'll miss if we just keep our face in a book all the time, because there's other things to observe. And the biggest thing that we can't miss in it all is ⁓ just people. We need to learn to, people. Teasi Cannon (51:43) Yeah, yep. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Bobby (52:05) Sometimes they can, you the whole social media thing, people can be so cruel and saddened by how hurtful people are. Like I even think about like my daughter, she's a gifted vocalist and she's got these twins and she sings, she's singing to the twins and she puts a TikTok video out and she just starts getting hammered by some people about you should be feeding those kids right now instead of singing. I'm like, Teasi Cannon (52:09) Mm-hmm. Bobby (52:34) This is the most amazing mother in the world. But people just and you know what? I think these people that walk around and beat people up and bully people online, they're just they're they're they're all they're all bark and no bite. mean, it's the kind of people that can't speak up in public, so they take it all out in private. And I just I hate how much pain people are going through because of a lack of sensitivity to words. Teasi Cannon (52:38) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Bobby (53:04) people telling people to go kill themselves. We need to learn that people matter and we need to quit. Why do we want to go through life and just tear people down? Even if we don't like them, why don't we just say something that maybe builds them up so they can drop the defenses that we're hurt for? Teasi Cannon (53:04) Mm-hmm. Right. It's horrible. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I agree. Love God, love each other, love others. Simple and needed, very much needed. Well, Bobby, thank you so much for all of that you shared. So much wisdom, so much heart. ⁓ if, just for the listeners, if you have been encouraged, I hope you have, I know I have. I would love to ⁓ ask you to consider sharing it with a friend, maybe someone you know that would really be encouraged by this honest conversation. Also, if you were encouraged, I would love it if you would consider Bobby (53:29) Yeah. Teasi Cannon (53:57) subscribing to the podcast so that you don't miss a single moment of true comfort. Thank you so much, Bobbi, and thank you everyone for listening.