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Christian Builders - Josh Galliart | Sacred Men · Sacred Men

• 0:00
  What's up, man? Welcome back to the Sacred Men
• 0:02
  YouTube channel. This is Pastor Justin Dean, and
• 0:05
  I am with my good friend Josh Gallier.
• 0:08
  This segment on our podcast is interviewing builders, people
• 0:14
  who have rejected what the culture is saying manhood and
• 0:19
  masculinity is all about, that they are not destroyers just
• 0:22
  tearing stuff down and living for themself.
• 0:24
  They're not just consumers living to consume and live off
• 0:28
  of other people, but they're actually building, they're
• 0:31
  serving God in their vocations. They're serving God as a
• 0:35
  husband, as a father, building a godly home, educating those
• 0:39
  children with a Christian worldview and serving their
• 0:42
  church. And so Josh is a great example
• 0:44
  of that. We're going to get into some of
• 0:46
  Josh's story today, how where he came from, how he came to
• 0:51
  Christ, how he came to Sacred City Church.
• 0:54
  Josh's also one of our elders, one of our pastors at Sacred
• 0:59
  City Church. So God's called him into that.
• 1:01
  We want to find out how that happened.
• 1:02
  I know some of you out there are navigating.
• 1:05
  We've been talking a lot about vocation.
• 1:06
  Is God calling me to ministry? Is God calling me to be a
• 1:09
  pastor? We want to see how God's done
• 1:12
  that in Josh's life. So, Josh, thanks for being on
• 1:15
  the podcast. Thanks for having me.
• 1:17
  And hopefully this will be a good one.
• 1:19
  Hopefully we'll have no technical difficulties.
• 1:21
  We'll keep praying for. That you guys don't know, but
• 1:24
  the last two or three videos I've had to record at least
• 1:29
  twice because we've had some kind of technical difficulty.
• 1:32
  One of them we should have posted anyways because it was
• 1:34
  hilarious. My voice, there was a button
• 1:37
  that got pushed on the recorder and I had a monster voice.
• 1:41
  It's. Like that talk boy from home
• 1:43
  alone too? Yeah, it was a complete
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  synthesized monster voice, me looking very serious and very
• 1:52
  intense, but speaking with this horrible voice.
• 1:55
  So how to re record it? We're learning.
• 1:58
  So thank you guys for being patient with us.
• 2:01
  Hey, again, if you like the podcast, please subscribe, give
• 2:05
  us a like give us a comment down below.
• 2:06
  It helps other people find us. But welcome back to the podcast.
• 2:09
  And Josh, let's kind of get into let's get into your story.
• 2:13
  So we're in. We're in Bettendorf, IA right
• 2:15
  now. Josh, where did you grow up?
• 2:18
  What was what was your life like?
• 2:19
  No, I can start there. So I grew up in a in a very
• 2:22
  small town called called Orion, Illinois.
• 2:24
  It's about 20 miles South of Moline, a town of about 1800
• 2:29
  people, so very small town. About half hour from here.
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  Yeah, yeah. OK.
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  And small. There's small Catholic Church in
• 2:37
  Orion. So I was raised Catholic,
• 2:40
  baptized as an infant, went through all the different what
• 2:44
  they would call the sacraments, the Catholic Church will call
• 2:46
  the sacraments. So baptism, first communion,
• 2:50
  confirmation. Went through catechism on
• 2:54
  Sundays growing up as a kid and then probably faithfully
• 2:59
  attended church on Sundays. And then probably around like 9
• 3:03
  years old, I was, I tried out for a a travel baseball team.
• 3:09
  And so my weekends and my weekdays in the summers were
• 3:13
  consumed by baseball. So you got a new sacrament?
• 3:15
  Got a new sacrament. Got got a new Got a new idol.
• 3:19
  Catholic Church has seven sacraments, but we added one and
• 3:22
  that's called travel baseball. That's right.
• 3:24
  That's right. So.
• 3:25
  You know, I wouldn't recommend by the.
• 3:27
  Way I don't recommend it either. I live that life as a kid so but
• 3:30
  I love baseball. I love playing baseball and my
• 3:32
  parents let me play baseball, so obviously that took us out of
• 3:35
  church on Sundays a lot because we traveled to different
• 3:38
  tournaments around the regional area and, you know, we're
• 3:42
  usually playing in the championship game on Sunday, so.
• 3:44
  Oh. Subtle flex.
• 3:46
  Yep, subtle flex right there. That's right.
• 3:49
  So that was my childhood and then probably the time I got to
• 3:53
  be in high school, you know, hit or miss with with church.
• 3:59
  And then by the time we got to college, we were what you would
• 4:02
  call the stereotypical creasters.
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  So just going to church on Christmas and Easter.
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  And even that started to die away a little bit in college.
• 4:10
  So your faith here, Explain like what?
• 4:14
  What is your faith here? It's really moralism, right?
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  So it was more of, hey, do this, don't do this.
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  Good people live this way, bad people do this.
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  So don't drink and party. Don't, don't sleep with girls.
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  Don't do all these things and doing that you know you're a
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  good person. And but you believed in God.
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  I believed in God. You.
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  Believe Jesus died for your sins.
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  No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say I could
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  articulate that. I knew who Jesus was.
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  I knew he was the Savior, but I wouldn't say like, I really
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  believe that I was really convicted by that.
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  This is why there's a huge problem in Catholicism.
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  I'm just going to say it right there.
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  This is we. We probably have 20 or so former
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  Catholics, at least actually just in the last few months,
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  come to faith here, come to our church, and this is their story
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  for the most part. And a lot of them are from my
• 5:07
  hometown. That's that's true.
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  That is true. OK, so moralism, more or less,
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  Are you following those moral principles?
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  No, not at all. I was doing, I was doing
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  everything but those things, right?
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  And it was like, I know this is wrong.
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  I know I shouldn't be doing this, but I kind of enjoy it.
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  I kind of like it. I'm having fun.
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  Like I enjoy doing these things. So yeah, living, living that
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  life in high school, living that life in college.
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  And I would say this, there's an interesting fact here that I
• 5:41
  think is, is important as part of my story of, of seeing how
• 5:45
  God was basically, you know, drawing me towards him in, in
• 5:49
  college, I did biology for my major.
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  And one of the classes I took was an evolution class.
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  And one of the things that we were doing was we were studying
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  different, different people and their, and their stances on
• 6:03
  creation versus evolution. And so we had to read through
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  those different, different authors and their different
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  beliefs and, and opinions on creation versus evolution.
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  And then we had to write a paper.
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  And then that paper got peer reviewed by one of our
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  classmates. And I remember writing this
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  paper and saying, it seems odd to me that all the things I
• 6:25
  learned in biology don't really match up with like what, what I,
• 6:31
  what I, what I see. So I'll give you an example.
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  They would have an artist's rendition of, let's just say
• 6:36
  adna molecule in a book. And then they'll say, well, this
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  is what it actually looks like under under a microscope.
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  And I look at that under a microscope and I see what their
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  artist's rendition is of it. I'm like, these two things don't
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  even look alike. How can you know that this is
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  what the DNA Helix is made out of based off this picture?
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  And so I started to question a lot of things that they were
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  teaching us. And I, I wrote that in my paper
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  and, and I also wrote like, how do you know that, you know, we
• 7:06
  evolved this way? How do you know that this is how
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  we got from basically primordial soup to being human beings?
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  And, and I made the comment of like, well, I actually think God
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  created everything and then set everything in motion.
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  And then we kind of evolved from there.
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  So I did have some, some beliefs in, in evolution, but I would
• 7:27
  say my, my main belief was that, you know, there is a God and God
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  kind of started this whole. Thing deism.
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  Basically, yeah. Deism.
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  Yep. And I remember my peer review
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  ripped me apart. It was, it was probably a woman
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  question. Everything I said just
• 7:44
  challenged it and said, well, you're wrong here and that's not
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  true and all these other things. And then our actual professor
• 7:51
  reviewed it as well. And he actually agreed with me
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  and said, Hey, I think this is fine that you think these things
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  and believe these things. And so I disagree with what your
• 8:01
  your peer said about your paper. So that was kind of interesting
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  to me as I reflect back on how God has brought me out of my sin
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  and brought me out of my brokenness.
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  And now what I've come to know, as you know, creationism and a
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  lot of the strong beliefs about evolution and how they've been
• 8:18
  refuted pretty strongly by Christian Scientists.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the peer review don't
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  question science, don't question what we've decided is is the.
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  Science is our religion. This is our new myth.
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  This is our new founding myth. Don't question our founding
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  myth. Exactly 100%.
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  OK, so so you're in college, you're a deistic moralist, and
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  then what happens? So then got out of college and
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  didn't have a job, didn't know what I wanted to do with my
• 8:52
  life. I majored in what, biology.
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  OK, Yep. So didn't have a job, didn't
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  know what I want to do with my life.
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  I just know that I just knew that I wanted to work and I want
• 9:00
  to make money. My wife, now her and I dated in
• 9:04
  high school, dated in college, still together, and then she
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  ends up getting pregnant so we're not married.
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  Hold on, you're a biology major. I know you're not officially a
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  biologist. Do I know how that works?
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  She ended up getting pregnant. This is an Immaculate
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  Conception. It was the second Immaculate
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  Conception that's happened in the in the history of time.
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  OK. All right.
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  So yeah, so she ends up getting pregnant.
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  She's mortified. I'm excited and we end up, you
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  know, work through that or whatever.
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  I was working at the Rock Island Arsenal at the time as what's
• 9:44
  called a student aid. So I was working in a in a
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  quality and engineering contractor location in at the at
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  the Arsenal Island. And so trying to make money.
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  She's working as well as a occupational therapist and has
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  our first child's born, Isla. And immediately after she was
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  born, we realized she had some sort of heart condition going
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  on. So you can imagine that was that
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  was pretty hard. Two people not married.
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  She's a primary income earner. She's making more money
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  obviously than me. I'm the student aid at, at this
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  contracting facility. I'm working on my master's
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  degree. Also trying to, you know, make
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  a, make a decent amount of money to support my new family.
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  So we work through that and Long story short, we get out of the
• 10:38
  hospital after she's born. We think everything's good with
• 10:42
  her, right? There's there's nothing
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  significant that is going on with, with her heart health.
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  Fast forward three months, she goes into, I'm at home with,
• 10:52
  with Isla. She was in a cardiac arrest
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  while I'm at home with her basically, I mean, pretty much
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  dies in my arms. And then the paramedics show up,
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  they resuscitate her, they take her to the local hospital.
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  She ends up getting life flighted to the Peoria hospital.
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  There they did some surgery on her open heart surgery where
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  they put a defibrillator and put her on some medication.
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  That was about six to seven weeks that we were in in the
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  hospital. And so again, things look fine.
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  We get out, we think everything's going.
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  So while this is going on right in the back of my mind, I am
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  constantly thinking God is punishing me.
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  God is punishing me for this, all these bad things that have
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  happened to my daughter. God is punishing me for
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  basically my my passings in my life.
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  So my Catholicism, my moralism, my deism, you know, I have this
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  view of God as a judge, mental unloving, punishing father.
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  And so, I mean, part of my prayers in the hospital was
• 12:01
  like, you know, Lord, take my life, spare hers, right?
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  So I'm, I'm thinking those things like, please let my
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  daughter live, Please let my daughter live.
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  And so I'm, I'm literally every single night, I'm, I'm pleading
• 12:13
  with the Lord that he would save my daughter, he would fix my
• 12:16
  daughter, he would heal my daughter and we would get out of
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  the hospital. And you know, we can go on, on,
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  go on having a, a good family life.
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  And at this time, just going Christmas and Easter to the
• 12:26
  Catholic Church. Yep, OK, correct.
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  SO she gets out of the hospital after they do the open heart
• 12:34
  surgery and again, things start, you know, things are smooth.
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  And then probably three months later, all of a sudden she gets
• 12:44
  starts getting shocked by this defibrillator.
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  And what her doctors told us is that that should only go off
• 12:51
  like once or twice a year. And in one day it went off.
• 12:55
  I think it was 70 times she got defibrillated cause her heart
• 12:59
  just kept going into a high heart rate and, and basically
• 13:03
  going through cardiac arrest. So life flighted again from the
• 13:08
  hospital here in the Quad Cities to Peoria.
• 13:12
  Peoria takes her in and they basically say we, there's
• 13:16
  nothing we can do for her. She's got to go.
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  She needs a heart transplant. So we get, she gets life
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  flighted again to the Children's Hospital in Chicago.
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  So we end up being in the Children's Hospital.
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  We got there in October of around 2012, and she got a new
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  heart in December of that same year.
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  So again, it was a lot of pleading with God, like God,
• 13:40
  please, please save my daughter's life.
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  Please don't, please don't do this to her.
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  Like, please help her live like take my life instead.
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  And so again, it was that that repetitive pleading with the
• 13:49
  Lord to save my daughter's life while we're in the hospital in
• 13:55
  Chicago, there is a there was a nonprofit organization that a
• 14:00
  family started because they lost their daughter to a heart
• 14:03
  transplant complications faith. This family was Christian family
• 14:08
  started up this organization to help families that were going
• 14:12
  through similar things. And I forget how my wife was
• 14:16
  connected to them or got connected to them, but they
• 14:18
  started sending her scriptures. They started sending her a Bible
• 14:22
  highlighted with different verses that she could look at
• 14:25
  and and pray through and, and memorize.
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  So she starts getting poured into while we're at the
• 14:30
  hospital. And I have no interest in any of
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  that, even though I'm pleading with God to save my daughter's
• 14:36
  life. So I like it's a new heart
• 14:39
  transplant in December and within three weeks we are we are
• 14:45
  out of the hospital. At the same time, I was
• 14:49
  interviewing for a job with a company that I'm with now and I
• 14:52
  ended up getting offered a full time position with them prior to
• 14:57
  her going to the hospital. But I got offered the position
• 15:00
  like right before all this happened.
• 15:02
  So I was able to quit my job. Kayla was able to quit her job.
• 15:05
  We were both able to be at the hospital together with Isla the
• 15:09
  entire time knowing that my new job was going to start in
• 15:12
  January of the following year. So obviously didn't see it at
• 15:16
  the time, but God's grace right there, God's Providence allowed
• 15:21
  us to be together and be there with her to get through that
• 15:24
  heart transplant. My job started in January of the
• 15:29
  following year. It was a based out of
• 15:31
  Naperville, IL. We found a a condo to live in,
• 15:35
  in a town called the Grange, which was about 20 minutes from
• 15:38
  her hospital and about 40 minutes from where Naperville's
• 15:41
  at. And so I was in a six month
• 15:43
  training program when I first started with with Ecolab, which
• 15:47
  is the company I work for now. And so did the six months there.
• 15:54
  And then the gentleman that actually introduced me to the
• 15:58
  company left the company. He's from this area.
• 16:02
  And so they said, they called me up and said, hey, Josh, this guy
• 16:05
  left. We want you to come work out in
• 16:08
  the Quad Cities. So we moved back home and been
• 16:13
  here ever since. But while we like, right when we
• 16:17
  moved back, we got connected with Harvest, which is now
• 16:22
  Coramdale. And that is where I would say it
• 16:27
  was. It wasn't a conversion, it was a
• 16:29
  a profession of faith. It happened when we were at
• 16:31
  Coramdale. How'd you get pulled in there?
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  It was a mutual. It was a mutual friend from from
• 16:37
  where we grew up. She was going to church there
• 16:40
  and she, she just reached out to Kaylee and said, hey, I know you
• 16:44
  guys are back in the area. You guys should come check out
• 16:47
  our church when you guys move back and.
• 16:50
  So is it safe to say more is going on spiritually with Kaylee
• 16:53
  than you at this time? Yep, 100% yeah, got you.
• 16:56
  And so, so she wants to go and I have no interest in going.
• 17:03
  And she tells me one day she's going and I'm like, well, you
• 17:07
  ain't going without me. There you go.
• 17:10
  So. Not married, correct?
• 17:12
  Still not married. Yeah, you're not sitting your
• 17:14
  cute, cute girl. Actually, no, I'm sorry.
• 17:16
  I'm sorry. We did get married.
• 17:17
  We got married. I missed that part.
• 17:19
  Good question. So we got married two months
• 17:24
  after Isla got out of the hospital.
• 17:26
  Yep. Very small wedding.
• 17:29
  It was in Oak Brook, IL. Just close family and friends.
• 17:34
  Yeah, we got married. We're supposed to have a, a
• 17:36
  wedding like when Isla was I think 6 months and our, our
• 17:42
  invite list was like 550 people. And so we went from 5:50 to like
• 17:47
  30 people. OK.
• 17:49
  So it was a nice small wedding. Fantastic, fantastic moment in
• 17:55
  our life. And, you know, heal daughter.
• 17:58
  Now I have a wife, have a job, get moved back, get settled in,
• 18:03
  back to being around family and friends.
• 18:06
  And then now we find ourselves at a church that I don't want to
• 18:10
  be at because my wife wants to go.
• 18:13
  And it's a Baptist Church. And they did what Baptist tend
• 18:17
  to do. They did a, they did an altar
• 18:19
  call at the end of service and my wife stood up and I was like,
• 18:25
  oh crap, she's standing up. So I stood up too.
• 18:27
  I was like, you know, again, it was one of those things like not
• 18:30
  going to let my wife just stand up on her own.
• 18:32
  So yeah, Kaylee's leading this thing, and you don't want to
• 18:36
  admit that she's leading. That is correct.
• 18:40
  You followed her to church, and you followed followed her to the
• 18:43
  altar. Yeah.
• 18:44
  So yeah, it's one of those things is like, my wife's really
• 18:48
  pretty and I'm just going to, I'm just going to do whatever
• 18:51
  she wants me to do. Keeping Mama happy, OK?
• 18:54
  Keeping Mama happy. So that happens, you know,
• 19:01
  obviously people still come up to start talking to us.
• 19:03
  They give us this, they give us a pamphlet or whatever about
• 19:08
  being saved, Read through that. And then also they have what's
• 19:14
  called small groups. And so again, my wife wanted to
• 19:18
  go to small group. I was like, I don't want to go
• 19:19
  to small group. And I run into a mutual friend
• 19:22
  of ours, Kevin Ryan, while we're at church one day.
• 19:27
  Grew up playing sports against him.
• 19:28
  And he said, hey, how you doing? You should come to our small
• 19:33
  group. I was like, oh, yeah, cool.
• 19:34
  Yeah, sounds good. But I had no interest in going.
• 19:38
  It took me probably two months before I finally decided to to
• 19:42
  go to small group for the first time.
• 19:44
  And I remember being at that small group and they're talking
• 19:47
  about, you know, how great God is and you know how much they
• 19:52
  love Jesus as their Lord and savior and they're still
• 19:56
  struggling, you know, living that out or whatever.
• 19:58
  And, and I just stop and say, guys, I don't know, I don't know
• 20:02
  how to, I don't know what to do with this.
• 20:05
  Like, I don't know what I think about God.
• 20:06
  Like all this stuff happened to my daughter.
• 20:10
  Kaylee's mom passed away while she was pregnant with with Isla.
• 20:13
  I was like, what about that? Like, that's a pretty unjust
• 20:15
  thing. She's a great woman.
• 20:17
  She lived a great life. God seems pretty unfair to me
• 20:22
  and. It was one of those moments
• 20:24
  where you say something and you realize all the air just got
• 20:27
  sucked out of the room. And I don't I don't think
• 20:32
  anybody really knew what to say. And I don't remember anybody
• 20:35
  really saying anything. It was just kind of like, OK,
• 20:37
  let's just go to the go to the next guy, right?
• 20:41
  But that statement I think was good because everybody knew
• 20:47
  where I was at. And one of the guys that was a
• 20:52
  part of that small group that was leading it out, he was the
• 20:54
  worship leader at the church. He wasn't there that night, but
• 20:58
  he came the next Sunday that we were there for a small group.
• 21:02
  And him and I got connected and he just started discipling me.
• 21:05
  He just started pouring into me. And eventually I realized that
• 21:11
  Jesus was my Lord and Savior and I repented of my sins and I
• 21:15
  received Jesus by faith and I got baptized prime month after
• 21:20
  that happened. Both Kaylee and I did at the
• 21:23
  same time. Drew and Kelly Boston, who
• 21:26
  remembers here, also got baptized with us.
• 21:29
  And then Jenny Montgomery was baptized that same day.
• 21:32
  So all five of us were all baptized on the same day.
• 21:37
  That was probably 1415 years ago.
• 21:39
  Wow. So all that to say, like where
• 21:46
  I'm at now, I can look back and see how God was working in my
• 21:50
  life every step of the way to get me to realize where my hope
• 21:54
  and faith belong is in Christ and obviously profess my faith
• 22:01
  in that moment, realizing my need for Jesus, realizing that,
• 22:05
  you know, there are a lot of bad things that happen, but that
• 22:08
  doesn't make God unloving. That doesn't make God unfair.
• 22:10
  That doesn't make God unjust. And so that that was that was
• 22:16
  music to my soul when I realized that.
• 22:20
  That's good. So I remember my memory is not
• 22:26
  the greatest for this kind of stuff.
• 22:28
  So but I remember being somewhere I might have been
• 22:30
  home, I might have been out, I can't remember, but I received a
• 22:33
  text message from Kevin Ryan saying hey, I've got we're
• 22:42
  thinking about coming to sacred city.
• 22:44
  So Kevin and I, Kevin was in my youth ministry and when we moved
• 22:47
  to Omaha to a church planning residency, they landed at at
• 22:51
  Harvest at the time for community while we were gone.
• 22:55
  And then we came back and planted and his wife was getting
• 22:59
  ministered to there. So they, they stayed there for a
• 23:00
  while. And I remember Kevin texted me
• 23:03
  or called me out of the blue and said, hey, we're thinking about
• 23:06
  coming to Sacred City. And we've got a, a couple
• 23:09
  friends that are thinking about it as well.
• 23:11
  Yeah, I want you to. Can you come?
• 23:13
  We're up at was it central standard?
• 23:15
  Yeah, Central standard. We're up at Central Standard.
• 23:17
  Can you come meet us? Yeah.
• 23:20
  And you know I don't. I if I was in my lazy boy, you,
• 23:26
  you know me now. You're.
• 23:28
  Like this one eye open. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:30
  And I was like, Yep, I'm on my way.
• 23:33
  And then I texted Alex Arguello and I said, hey, this couple,
• 23:38
  blah, blah, blah, blah. So then we came up.
• 23:40
  I don't remember anything else, but I remember that.
• 23:42
  What? How?
• 23:44
  How did that come about? Yeah.
• 23:46
  So we were probably at harvest for, I would say four years at
• 23:50
  that point. And it was one of those things
• 23:54
  where as you start to read more Scripture, understand the
• 23:59
  Scriptures, sit under the teaching of God's Word,
• 24:04
  obviously you, you start to know and understand more of what God
• 24:08
  teaches. And the preaching just seemed
• 24:14
  shallow. And it was, it kind of got to a
• 24:19
  point where like what, what's going on here?
• 24:21
  Like preaching shallow community is very community shallow.
• 24:28
  There's a lot of these different ministries that they had.
• 24:30
  And it was like, well, I want to be a godly man.
• 24:33
  So how do I, how do I walk that out?
• 24:37
  Right? We'll come to our men's
• 24:39
  ministry. And so I go to the men's
• 24:42
  ministry. I'm sitting there hanging out
• 24:43
  and it's like, I'm around all these dudes that I don't really,
• 24:53
  I don't want to be like them. I don't really respect them.
• 24:59
  It was kind of just an effeminate, feminine men, I
• 25:03
  guess soft men, you know, And the way I'm wired is I'm just a
• 25:10
  pretty like go after it hard nosed guy.
• 25:15
  That's what's made me successful in what I'm doing now.
• 25:18
  It's made me successful in sports.
• 25:20
  It's just, you know, nose to the grindstone and kind of being
• 25:23
  like, you know, a middle linebacker and running around
• 25:26
  and trying to knock people out. And I'm just around all these
• 25:30
  dudes that are like very sensitive and effeminate and
• 25:34
  soft. And it was just, it was off
• 25:37
  putting to me. And so I kind of had this idea
• 25:40
  of like, is this what biblical masculinity looks like?
• 25:44
  This is this is not. I don't, I don't want that.
• 25:48
  Come on man, line up. Put your nuts on the table.
• 25:50
  Yeah. And that was that was pretty
• 25:51
  much, that's pretty much what it felt like.
• 25:53
  And I was like, well, I don't want to go to men's ministry
• 25:55
  anymore. It's just kind of a waste of
• 25:56
  time. So there was also that going on
• 26:00
  too, right? So several different things kind
• 26:02
  of I'm seeing and I'm observing and we're at church.
• 26:07
  We, we, you know, the Montgomerys were going to that
• 26:09
  same church, going to Corbin at the same time in our small group
• 26:11
  with us, the Ryans and the three of us, three of us men realize
• 26:17
  like we need to, we need to do something different here.
• 26:21
  And that's when Kevin said, well, we should go check out
• 26:25
  Justin's church. And so that's when we met you at
• 26:29
  Central Standard. Was Jay and Jenny there too?
• 26:32
  Jay and Jenny weren't. No, I no.
• 26:34
  Were were they already here? I can't remember.
• 26:36
  No, they weren't. They weren't here yet.
• 26:37
  OK. Did they come later?
• 26:38
  They came later. OK, I couldn't remember if they
• 26:40
  came before they came later. No, they came later, so.
• 26:43
  Jay followed. He's going to use that.
• 26:46
  Yeah, he's going to hate that. He he was because we've talked
• 26:50
  about this before. He, you know, he, he knew he
• 26:52
  wanted to step away from it and you know, he was thinking
• 26:55
  through what they wanted. No Jay's and he's very loyal and
• 26:59
  he's very committed. He was leading some stuff over
• 27:01
  there and I'm just giving him a hard time.
• 27:03
  That too. Yeah.
• 27:06
  So, yeah, we met with you. And what's funny about this,
• 27:10
  this part of the story is that I knew Alex Arguello from playing
• 27:13
  football at Augustana College. He coached my sophomore season
• 27:18
  when I was there. So I kind of knew who he was.
• 27:20
  I was familiar with him. I think he remembered me.
• 27:23
  I don't really know her whether or not that's true, but I
• 27:26
  assumed you did. And so it's just funny that we
• 27:29
  were sitting in Central Standard.
• 27:30
  I'm I had never met you before, but in walks Alex Arguello.
• 27:34
  I'm glad I brought him. Yeah, cool.
• 27:37
  God's Providence that he came, right.
• 27:38
  So. So.
• 27:40
  Yeah. And have been here since.
• 27:43
  Gosh, what was that, 2017? I think, OK.
• 27:47
  Yeah, nine years. Nine years, yeah.
• 27:49
  OK, yeah. And what was it like
• 27:53
  transitioning over to Sacred City?
• 27:56
  Well, you want me toot your horn right now?
• 27:59
  Not really I'm just I want honesty man but toot away if
• 28:03
  you. Want to?
• 28:03
  Yeah, No. So obviously we, we stepped into
• 28:09
  missional community, stepped in to coming to church on Sundays.
• 28:13
  You know, we jumped right in. And I remember coming here
• 28:18
  thinking that I knew the gospel well.
• 28:20
  I knew what it looked like to live out a Christian life and
• 28:25
  step in the missional community and realize, man, I have no idea
• 28:29
  any of these things that I thought I knew.
• 28:31
  Like I felt I felt like AI guess you could still consider me a
• 28:35
  baby Christian at that point, but I felt like I was a mature
• 28:37
  Christian and I and I was not. You know the way just gospelling
• 28:42
  people, right? Helping people see where they
• 28:45
  were having idols or where they were sin in their life and then
• 28:47
  not realizing it and then applying the gospel to that,
• 28:51
  seeing repentance, seeing restoration happen in missional
• 28:55
  community. It was, I mean, it was life
• 28:59
  changing for us. It was life changing for myself.
• 29:01
  It was life changing for my wife.
• 29:03
  Sitting under the, you know, preaching of the word, having
• 29:07
  deep, robust sermons that created conviction, but also a
• 29:12
  desire to live that out, right, Not just be like, oh, that was a
• 29:15
  great sermon, just did a great job.
• 29:17
  I'm going to go home and just live my life the way I want to
• 29:20
  live it, right. It was actually deep conviction
• 29:23
  and, and a desire to change and be more godly, be a better
• 29:26
  husband, be a better man, be a better father.
• 29:30
  And so jumped right in and, and wanted more of that right.
• 29:34
  There was a hunger and there was a thirst that I was that was
• 29:38
  growing inside of me. And so jumped into Porter Brook
• 29:41
  right away. Took two years of that and
• 29:45
  continued down that path of being a missional community.
• 29:49
  We multiplied I think within the first six months or eight months
• 29:52
  that we were here. And so as part of that
• 29:56
  multiplication and, and going out with the, the group that was
• 29:59
  multiplying stepped into MC leadership or as, as an emerging
• 30:04
  leader. So start, started teaching and,
• 30:08
  and discipling people in our MC and then probably a couple years
• 30:13
  after that, just felt the a growing sense of conviction and
• 30:18
  a desire to, to pursue being an elder as well.
• 30:22
  So that was probably, I don't know, 2020 or 2021.
• 30:26
  So within, you know, being here for three or four years, God
• 30:29
  just continued to grow my my thirst for him and and a desire
• 30:33
  to pursue eldership. All right, so before we get too
• 30:39
  far ahead, after Allah, you had two more kids.
• 30:43
  Lincoln, Lincoln and Cora, or Cora and Lincoln?
• 30:46
  Cora and Lincoln. So you're here, you got 3 kids,
• 30:50
  you guys are really involved and pretty much everything we're
• 30:53
  doing. You feeling this sense to
• 31:00
  eldership and you step basically you stepped into the eldership
• 31:03
  process. What did your call?
• 31:05
  What did that call feel like? That sense of calling, what did
• 31:07
  that feel like? Well, I would say it first
• 31:14
  started out as 'cause I remember when I first got here, just
• 31:19
  being an MC, sitting under the teaching of the word or
• 31:22
  preaching of the word, I, I wanted to be a godly man.
• 31:26
  Like, what does it look like to be a godly man?
• 31:28
  And we had those pamphlets set out of the eldership process.
• 31:33
  And so I remember I, I just picked that up because I was
• 31:36
  like, well, I want to know what it's like to be a godly man.
• 31:39
  Elders are godly men. What are they reading?
• 31:41
  What do you, what do you, I mean, what does it look like to
• 31:43
  be equipped to be an elder? What does it look like to be
• 31:45
  called to be an elder? So I, I started reading that
• 31:49
  started picking up books that were a part of the, of the
• 31:52
  reading material for, for the elder, elder development
• 31:55
  process. And so I started just pursuing
• 31:57
  that very, very lightly, ultimately with the intention of
• 32:01
  just growing into maturity, spiritual maturity.
• 32:04
  And just the more I did that, the more I read, the more I
• 32:08
  understood, the greater, greater conviction that I had to want to
• 32:13
  be an elder like I want. I wanted to pour out to other
• 32:17
  people what I felt with my faith and the love and conviction that
• 32:24
  I had for Jesus Christ. And so I wanted to share that
• 32:27
  with people. I wanted to help people grow the
• 32:31
  way that I was wanting to grow. I wanted to care for people the
• 32:35
  way that I was cared for. I wanted to minister to people's
• 32:38
  needs. I wanted to give them hope in,
• 32:41
  in dark moments of their lives. I wanted to see them repent of
• 32:45
  their sins and, and be free from their sins and be free from
• 32:48
  their addictions so they could walk in uprightness and, and
• 32:51
  live a godly life. So that that was really the
• 32:54
  conviction and the stirring that that I was experiencing inside
• 32:56
  of me. And, and I just had a thirst.
• 32:58
  I was like, I, I want to do more of this.
• 33:00
  I want to I want to do more of this for more people.
• 33:02
  Yeah, I mean, the story God tells is better than anything we
• 33:08
  could come up with ourselves. So none of this would be
• 33:11
  happening if Isla didn't have a problem with her heart, right?
• 33:15
  And Kaylee, meet that woman, and then you guys start coming to
• 33:19
  church, and then friends bring you to Sacred City and all this
• 33:22
  stuff's going on. And then from there, it wasn't
• 33:26
  right around that time, you invited your parents?
• 33:30
  Yeah, right. Yep.
• 33:32
  So and your parents, they joined my MC.
• 33:35
  They did the first time, yeah. Right.
• 33:36
  And that was this right around 2020 or was this before that?
• 33:39
  So we had been, we, I think we've been coming to Sacred City
• 33:42
  for probably 2 years and they were coming to church with us at
• 33:46
  Coram Deo, but very inconsistently.
• 33:47
  And then when we went, then we came here and we would always
• 33:51
  invite them on Sundays and they would, you know, it'd be hit or
• 33:53
  miss for them whether or not they showed up.
• 33:56
  But yeah, it was probably around 21/20/20, 1:00-ish that they
• 34:01
  really started coming more consistently.
• 34:04
  And here in the gospel preached, obviously knowing what they were
• 34:08
  struggling with, things that happened with their
• 34:11
  granddaughter, my daughter, my mom lost my sister when my
• 34:18
  sister was 18 months old. Obviously never really, she
• 34:23
  wasn't counseled well through that.
• 34:24
  She wasn't cared for well through that, I would say by the
• 34:27
  church. And so she she still had, you
• 34:31
  know, really a difficult time with how to handle that, how to
• 34:35
  reconcile that in her life. So the good news of the gospel
• 34:40
  was, was good for her soul coming here and and that's what
• 34:45
  kept them here. Yeah, yeah.
• 34:48
  So they've been here now 5-6 years at least.
• 34:51
  And I mean, some of them are are most committed members.
• 34:57
  Huge blessing to our our church. Mike was one of the guys that
• 35:02
  was with me every single day remodeling this whole building
• 35:06
  and one of the key members still in my missional community.
• 35:09
  So we love your mom, Mike and Beth and God's done.
• 35:14
  I'm just amazing an amazing in their life.
• 35:17
  Yeah, he definitely has. And just, you know, I knew my
• 35:20
  parents how they were when I was growing up and seeing where
• 35:25
  they're at now. I mean, it's, it's an amazing
• 35:27
  act of grace to see how their life has has changed as a result
• 35:31
  of being here and and being transformed by, by God's word,
• 35:36
  by God's grace. So, and at this all all this
• 35:39
  time, so while you're doing this, you're still like you're
• 35:42
  feeling called to be a pastor, but you're you're still working.
• 35:46
  Yeah, right. And what are you?
• 35:47
  What are you doing? Your job.
• 35:48
  So the company I work for is Ecolab and I started out as a
• 35:52
  what's called just a field sales Rep.
• 35:55
  And I remember when I, when I started, my first thought was I
• 36:01
  want to be a district manager because that was like the job
• 36:05
  that everybody wanted, right? If you were a district manager,
• 36:08
  like you were successful, you made a name for yourself
• 36:11
  basically. And I had to get 6 promotions to
• 36:16
  get there when I first started. And so every single year that,
• 36:20
  that was always my question to my boss is how am I going to get
• 36:23
  promoted this year? And so I, that's, that's what I
• 36:26
  worked for, that's what I worked towards.
• 36:28
  And that's what I, that's what I did every single year, just
• 36:31
  constantly, how can I grow? How can I get better?
• 36:34
  How can I get to this goal that, that I have in, in mind?
• 36:36
  And so when I started that job, I knew absolutely nothing.
• 36:42
  All I knew how to do was just to talk to people.
• 36:44
  And so that's what I did. I just started talking to people
• 36:48
  and I had success in doing that, growing relationships with
• 36:52
  people and growing trust with people and saw the success as a
• 36:56
  result of, of doing that eventually get to where I wanted
• 37:00
  to be as a, you know, be that district manager for, for my
• 37:02
  job. So.
• 37:04
  When did you get that? I got it in.
• 37:07
  It was, it was literally I think within six months of being here.
• 37:12
  OK, so in 2017? So pretty quick.
• 37:15
  Yeah, it took me, took me 5 years.
• 37:18
  OK. So basically what do you do?
• 37:23
  You just you, I mean, I would say you, you basically lead
• 37:25
  people. Yeah.
• 37:27
  So I, I lead our sales reps. What we do is we sell chemicals
• 37:32
  to industrial facilities. Yeah, you're a water boy.
• 37:35
  Yeah, I'm a water boy. That's right.
• 37:37
  That's right. Pretty much.
• 37:38
  No, you're an assistant too, the Water Boys.
• 37:43
  You're a sales Rep for the Water Boys.
• 37:44
  Yeah, a sales Rep for the water boys.
• 37:46
  Yeah. So I, I, I help coach and
• 37:48
  develop my team. I help my team sell new
• 37:52
  business. I help my team figure out
• 37:54
  problems that we have with customers.
• 37:56
  I help my team figure out logistic issues.
• 38:00
  I I, I mean my main job is just to coach and develop my team and
• 38:04
  and solve problems for them. How big's your team?
• 38:06
  15 people. How big's your region?
• 38:09
  So we do $25 million in business on an annual basis.
• 38:14
  OK. And is that just the Quad Cities
• 38:18
  or is that? Nope.
• 38:18
  So that's eastern Iowa. That's Wisconsin, Illinois and
• 38:21
  Indiana. OK, All right, So your husband,
• 38:30
  your father, you're a worker and you're pursuing eldership,
• 38:36
  right? How do you how do you manage
• 38:39
  that? Relentless planning.
• 38:44
  And he just preached for me on Sunday on planning.
• 38:46
  So we we he should be loaded for bear on this planning.
• 38:50
  Yeah, I mean it is, I would say. I mean it, it's been a blessing
• 38:57
  to me because I got introduced to planning when I was in
• 38:59
  college. That's one of the things that
• 39:01
  our football coach instilled in us, like he called it a a game
• 39:06
  plan for success was his terminology that he used.
• 39:09
  And so it was always you're a student athlete, right?
• 39:12
  You're a student first, athlete second.
• 39:15
  And so his, his thing was you need to learn how to plan.
• 39:19
  You need to know when your tests are coming up.
• 39:20
  You need to know what papers you need to write.
• 39:22
  You need to plan that out. You need to put it in your
• 39:24
  calendar. And you need to have you know
• 39:27
  different things in your calendar to know when you're
• 39:29
  going to do those things. Really it's prioritization of,
• 39:34
  of your responsibilities. And if you're familiar with
• 39:37
  Michael Hyatt, I mean, a lot of it was what Michael Hyatt
• 39:40
  teaches, right? What are what are my big three,
• 39:43
  what are my priorities? What are my goals for the
• 39:45
  quarter? And then scheduling that out,
• 39:47
  writing that out and coming up with a plan on how you're going
• 39:50
  to accomplish that. So I got introduced to that in
• 39:53
  college. So it really helped set me up
• 39:56
  for success when I started the job that I have now, because
• 40:00
  when I was a field sales Rep, it was like, well, I have 15
• 40:03
  customers. They all have, they all have
• 40:06
  service visits that I need to do.
• 40:08
  Some I need to see couple times a week, Some I need to see once
• 40:12
  a month, some I need to see every other week.
• 40:15
  So I need to plan all that out. I need to know exactly what I'm
• 40:18
  going to do when I'm going there.
• 40:20
  And then as I'm driving to those locations, what are what are
• 40:23
  some of the other facilities that we don't have business at
• 40:26
  that I need to go make a sales call on.
• 40:28
  So I need to figure out, I'm leaving my house and I'm going
• 40:31
  here. What are their, what other sales
• 40:33
  opportunities are there for me to call on along the way?
• 40:36
  And then when I get to my customer, what's the different
• 40:39
  work that I need to do? You know, one of the things that
• 40:42
  we talk about is we need to provide value to our customers.
• 40:45
  And one of the ways we do that is we look for opportunities to
• 40:48
  save them money, help them reduce the amount of water
• 40:50
  they're using, help them reduce the amount of energy that
• 40:53
  they're consuming, help them get better and more efficient with
• 40:56
  the waste that they're sending out.
• 40:58
  And so we have to identify that. We have to calculate that.
• 41:02
  We have to communicate that. We have to get them to agree to
• 41:04
  those things. Sometimes when you're on site,
• 41:07
  the equipment that we're using falls apart and you got to
• 41:10
  repair it. So you got to run to the
• 41:11
  hardware store and figure out what you need to fix it, or you
• 41:15
  don't know what to do and you got to call somebody.
• 41:17
  So there's all those different things going on.
• 41:20
  Sometimes you know about it, sometimes you don't.
• 41:23
  And So what does what does all that require?
• 41:25
  It requires planning. It requires understanding what
• 41:28
  do I need to do when I get there?
• 41:31
  And then making sure that you're prepared to go when when you do
• 41:33
  get there, especially for, you know, things that come up that
• 41:36
  you're not expecting to. So I learned a lot, learned how
• 41:42
  to be adaptable and flexible with those things, but I also
• 41:45
  learned how to prepare my butt off because I never knew what I
• 41:48
  was going to run into. Sometimes you run into, you
• 41:50
  know, you walk into a customer and out of chemical and that's
• 41:54
  how you get paid. So it's, you know, that's a
• 41:58
  priority to figure out. I got to get them chemical right
• 42:01
  now and I'm going to spend the next hour of my day or two hours
• 42:04
  of my day on the phone trying to figure out how to, you know,
• 42:07
  rush a product in. So that that really helped me be
• 42:12
  equipped and trained how to manage my time, how to
• 42:15
  prioritize things, how to handle, you know, unexpected
• 42:19
  things that come up. And so as, you know, as time
• 42:24
  went on and more and more responsibility got put on my
• 42:27
  plate, I was already equipped to know how to, to plan properly,
• 42:32
  to prioritize my time. And then how do I manage all
• 42:35
  these different things that, that are going on in my life
• 42:37
  with pursuing eldership, being a, being a godly husband, being
• 42:43
  a godly father, and obviously being doing well in my job too,
• 42:50
  right? My my our primary source of
• 42:52
  income for for my family, being able to take care of my family.
• 42:55
  Yeah, 'cause your your wife still stays home.
• 42:57
  Yep, correct. So then I'm trying to think,
• 43:06
  'cause you're also board member. Board member at New City
• 43:09
  Classical Academy. Yeah, which is the school that
• 43:12
  meets in our building and trying to think was that when, when did
• 43:18
  the school start? School started 23 in Yes 23 fall
• 43:24
  of 23. OK, so right around this time,
• 43:30
  all kind, all kinds of stuff comes to a head.
• 43:35
  You're in the outer development process Isla gets.
• 43:40
  Diagnosed with cancer. Diagnosed with cancer?
• 43:42
  Yep, and I can't remember what when the school's starting.
• 43:48
  Yep. The school is just starting and
• 43:50
  I'm not I'm not a board member at this point.
• 43:51
  Right, right. But there's just a lot of things
• 43:54
  coalescing at the at the same time.
• 43:59
  I I remember saying it, dude, you don't need to be elder.
• 44:03
  You know, you don't need to be the elder.
• 44:04
  We kind of how do you take a step back and MC leadership
• 44:08
  different things so you could love your family.
• 44:10
  Well, because it was a very intense season and you, you, you
• 44:15
  did, you prioritized your family during that season and work.
• 44:22
  I mean, the job seemed like they were.
• 44:24
  It was a huge blessing during that time.
• 44:25
  They were very understanding, very accommodating, did most of
• 44:30
  my stuff remotely, just on the computer, on the phone.
• 44:34
  So yeah, it was AI mean. Huge blessing to be able to have
• 44:39
  a company that understood what I was going through right and not
• 44:43
  and just letting me manage my team the way I saw best fit with
• 44:48
  everything going on. So tell me what it was like, you
• 44:56
  know, to get that diagnosis. You know that she's got that
• 45:01
  she's got cancer. The reason why I'm I'm you've
• 45:06
  been through something similar before with her.
• 45:08
  Yeah. And you've, you've already
• 45:10
  shared what, how, what your response was, right?
• 45:14
  So what was it like this time? Yeah, you probably don't
• 45:22
  remember this, or maybe you do. But for me, it was always, it
• 45:29
  was. It was always in my mind like
• 45:31
  cancer is one of those things that I don't know if I can
• 45:34
  handle. Like if my wife got cancer, one
• 45:38
  of my kids got cancer, I got cancer.
• 45:41
  Like that's to me, it's like that, it's over, right?
• 45:45
  I don't know if I can handle that.
• 45:46
  That was that's kind of what, you know, was going through my
• 45:49
  head prior to all this. So then when the cancer
• 45:53
  diagnosis comes through, right? Obviously I'm pretty, I'm pretty
• 45:58
  crushed by that, right? I automatically assume it's
• 46:02
  over. We're not going to make it out
• 46:05
  of this. And it was, it was very hard to,
• 46:11
  to hear that one of the hardest things.
• 46:13
  Well, probably second hardest things to hear.
• 46:16
  So I remember where I was, I was driving home from a, from a work
• 46:20
  meeting that I had up in Minneapolis.
• 46:23
  I was actually driving through Cedar Rapids When, when, when my
• 46:26
  wife called me and was like, they confirmed it.
• 46:30
  It's cancer. And, you know, I, I cried for
• 46:35
  the next 25 minutes on my drive home and got home and spent time
• 46:40
  with my wife in prayer. And I think I talked to you the
• 46:43
  next day and, and I told you the same thing.
• 46:46
  And you reminded me of where my hope is.
• 46:52
  You reminded me that, yeah, like you can't get through this on
• 46:58
  your own, but Jesus will sustain you.
• 47:01
  And that's exactly what I needed to hear in that moment because
• 47:05
  it reminded me of where my hope was.
• 47:07
  And that helped me, you know, that lifted my lifted my droopy
• 47:13
  hands and strengthen my weak knees when I, when I heard that.
• 47:17
  And so I think, you know, that was kind of a, a course
• 47:21
  correction for me in that moment.
• 47:26
  You're right. I did not remember that.
• 47:27
  Yeah, so. I assumed as much I.
• 47:31
  Wish I could remember the things I said be really helpful.
• 47:34
  Well, it's recorded now, so you'll be able.
• 47:36
  To yeah, now. Now I'll remember.
• 47:41
  Tell us about that season. It was a it was a long, hard
• 47:47
  season. Lots of ups and downs, lots of
• 47:55
  tears shed great moments of, of joy, but also, you know, very
• 48:01
  dark, difficult moments, you know, being at being in a
• 48:06
  hospital, it's hard because, you know, as a man, like God made us
• 48:17
  to go out and work. God made us to go out and
• 48:20
  produce. And I wasn't doing that right.
• 48:24
  And so I think, you know, part of the struggle was like sitting
• 48:28
  and waiting for her to get better, sitting and waiting for
• 48:33
  good news to come back, sitting and waiting for her to get
• 48:36
  through a very difficult part of that cancer treatment.
• 48:41
  Those were really hard things to go through, like just sitting
• 48:45
  and waiting and praying and hoping that this is going to
• 48:49
  work out the way we want it to, right?
• 48:51
  We want her to get better. We want her to get healthier.
• 48:54
  We want her to come out on the other side of this.
• 48:57
  And so just that sitting and waiting is, you know, it does
• 49:03
  it, it does something to the soul of where you, you are in.
• 49:08
  You have no control over what's going on.
• 49:12
  You have no idea how things are going to turn out.
• 49:14
  And you just have to sit and wait for the next thing to
• 49:16
  happen or the next, the next day to come by.
• 49:19
  And so it was a very long, lengthy, stretched out struggle
• 49:24
  each and every day. Was it a year?
• 49:30
  18 months I think. 18 months, yeah.
• 49:34
  Yeah. With, I mean, trips, you know,
• 49:39
  long stays in Chicago, back here, back to Chicago.
• 49:44
  Yep. Yeah.
• 49:45
  So when she first got diagnosed, we celebrated her birthday up in
• 49:51
  Chicago. She got her first treatment of
• 49:55
  chemo. We came home, she got a fever,
• 49:59
  so we had to go back and she got treated for that.
• 50:02
  And then we came home and then she got sick again.
• 50:05
  So we had to go back. And I think initially we're,
• 50:10
  we're probably in the in and out of the hospital.
• 50:11
  I don't know, 5 or 6 different times in the first couple of
• 50:14
  months. And then there was about a, you
• 50:16
  know, 2 1/2 three-week stint where she was in the hospital
• 50:20
  and finally was able to come home.
• 50:23
  And then she was home for a short while till we had to, we
• 50:27
  had to go back again. And I remember after her long
• 50:32
  stay going back, I asked the one of the doctors, I just pulled
• 50:42
  her aside outside the room and, and I said, I said, what are we
• 50:47
  dealing with her? Is this, is this something
• 50:49
  that's just normal and we're going to work through or, or is
• 50:51
  this something, or is there something else going on?
• 50:54
  And she goes, she just looked at me and she goes, it doesn't look
• 50:57
  good. And, you know, part of my job as
• 51:03
  the father, as the husband is to bring the hope and joy in dark
• 51:10
  circumstances. And I was doing that well.
• 51:15
  And then I got that news and it absolutely crushed me.
• 51:19
  I don't, I'm not one who gets emotional, you know, and I got
• 51:23
  emotional and my wife started to freak out about it.
• 51:28
  She's like, why are you upset? Why are you crying?
• 51:30
  Why are you, you know, what's going on?
• 51:32
  And, and I just, I shared with her, I said they, they said the
• 51:36
  chemo's not working. And so literally the next day,
• 51:41
  though, they come back with her PET scan and they're like, oh,
• 51:44
  it looks better. And I'm like, praise the Lord,
• 51:48
  things look better. Like God healed her.
• 51:51
  And so we were able to get through that And, and, you know,
• 51:56
  in my mind, I was like, God, the doctor's wrong.
• 51:58
  She doesn't know what she's talking about.
• 52:00
  God's, God's in control of this God's, God's working this out.
• 52:04
  And so it, it gave me a, a, a sense of confidence and a sense
• 52:08
  of relief to continue to, you know, press forward walking my
• 52:12
  family through that season. And then she had a routine
• 52:17
  surgery probably a couple months after that.
• 52:21
  And while she was in that surgery, she actually went into
• 52:23
  cardiac arrest again. And I was at home.
• 52:26
  Kaylee took her up there, 'cause it's supposed to be an in and
• 52:28
  out procedure. And Kaylee called me and I
• 52:34
  rushed up there and she was just laying intubated, not moving.
• 52:42
  And they basically told us, you know, the next, the next three
• 52:46
  hours are going to be really telling whether or not she's
• 52:47
  going to pull out of this. And she pulled out of it.
• 52:53
  She's she was a monster. She was probably the.
• 52:57
  She's going to brag to Jesus. You know she's probably bragging
• 52:59
  to Jesus. Yeah, yeah.
• 53:01
  I came back 3 * 4 * 5 times. Jesus, you kept raising me back
• 53:06
  up. You know, we talked about like,
• 53:10
  you know, we don't, we don't walk to the throne of grace with
• 53:12
  a swagger. But sometimes I'm like, I wonder
• 53:14
  if she walked with a swagger to the throne of grace.
• 53:17
  Probably not. So she pulled out of that and
• 53:21
  they actually put her on a new treatment program.
• 53:25
  It was immunosuppressant, not immunosuppressants.
• 53:28
  It's a different kind of treatment than chemotherapy.
• 53:32
  And she, like her cancer, went away from that treatment.
• 53:36
  Yeah, I remember. So she went from a body that was
• 53:40
  full of cancer on her PET scans to nothing was detectable.
• 53:45
  One of the things they want us to do was do a stem cell
• 53:47
  transplant. And so we were looking at either
• 53:50
  going to California to have that done or staying at staying in
• 53:55
  Chicago to have that done. California was a was a better
• 54:00
  hospital had experience doing a stem cell transplant with a
• 54:06
  heart transplant child. So they they did have experience
• 54:09
  in doing it or the hospital that we are in Chicago did not.
• 54:13
  So we were waiting through that decision on, on what we needed
• 54:16
  to do. And I mean, it was, it was
• 54:19
  essentially to go through that is essentially going to be, you
• 54:22
  know, we were probably going to be there 6 to 9 months in
• 54:25
  California if that's the route we decided to go, made the
• 54:30
  decision to not do that, to stay in Chicago.
• 54:33
  That's where her team was. Obviously we're still close to
• 54:36
  home. We have two other kids we need
• 54:37
  to think about for this as well. But that was the route she was,
• 54:41
  she was supposed to go down. They still did see a little
• 54:46
  cancer in her blood. So she wasn't quite ready to
• 54:51
  have that stem cell transplant happen yet.
• 54:53
  And but we just stayed the course with this, with this
• 54:56
  treatment and, you know, just we're continuing to pray that
• 55:01
  eventually it would go away and she'd be able to get her stem
• 55:03
  cell transplant. Well, the following year, her
• 55:08
  cancer came back and it got pretty bad.
• 55:14
  She was in a lot of pain. She had to be on dialysis.
• 55:18
  They were able to kind of change things and get her comfortable
• 55:22
  and get her home for her 13th birthday so she could celebrate
• 55:25
  it at home until we were able to come back and celebrate her 13th
• 55:30
  birthday. She actually asked me to do a
• 55:32
  speech, spontaneous speech for her on her 13th birthday.
• 55:37
  So that was, I was like, thanks, Isla, for just, you know, coming
• 55:41
  up to being like, hey, dad, can you give me a speech?
• 55:43
  I was like, really? You want me to, you want me to
• 55:45
  give me a speech right now? But I gladly did it.
• 55:48
  And and then probably a month later, we were back in the
• 55:53
  hospital and that's essentially where they told us, you know,
• 55:58
  there's nothing else we can do for your daughter.
• 56:01
  And so they told us that. And then the next day, she
• 56:07
  basically had so much inflammation and so much cancer
• 56:10
  in her body that it just started to shut her body down.
• 56:13
  She lost consciousness that next day early in the morning.
• 56:18
  And they asked us, hey, do you want to do you want to have her
• 56:24
  here, keep her comfortable or do you want to go home?
• 56:28
  And I said, we're going home. And so we went home.
• 56:32
  Unox came over, prayed, prayed with us and then the day after
• 56:36
  that she went to be with the Lord.
• 56:43
  Yeah, yeah. You said the obviously earlier
• 56:50
  hearing that your daughter has cancer is the second worst is
• 56:55
  because that's the, yeah, that's the worst.
• 56:59
  That's the worst. You know, it's, it's weird,
• 57:11
  right after that happened, there was a sense of relief in my soul
• 57:17
  because I knew I knew where she went and I knew the pain and the
• 57:21
  suffering was gone. I knew the the season that we
• 57:25
  were coming out of the seasons of uncertainty, the seasons of
• 57:28
  waiting, the season of just pleading with the Lord to, you
• 57:33
  know, let this pass. We're over.
• 57:37
  And I knew where she went. And that was that was that was a
• 57:42
  relief for me, right. Her suffering's over with.
• 57:45
  She's now received her inheritance.
• 57:47
  She's in eternal joy with the Lord.
• 57:49
  Yeah, yes, yes she is. And right after, I mean, she was
• 58:05
  an amazing young woman who loved the Lord and everyone who knew
• 58:10
  her loved her. And so we, we began planning a,
• 58:18
  a funeral celebration. It's a funeral, but it's also we
• 58:22
  want to celebrate her life and and we want to even at the at
• 58:28
  the funeral, maybe the only funeral I've ever done where we
• 58:32
  were singing worship songs, her favorite worship.
• 58:35
  Songs I I remember asking you that.
• 58:37
  I was like, is this weird that we're doing this?
• 58:38
  You're like, no, not at all. We're not going above and beyond
• 58:41
  enough. Yeah, yeah.
• 58:44
  For her, we're going to do whatever, whatever she wanted
• 58:46
  and but plan, Yeah, plan the funeral.
• 58:53
  And you gave a phenomenal eulogy that day.
• 59:01
  There were. What was it 500?
• 59:04
  Was it 600? I mean, there was like 1000 came
• 59:08
  to the visitation. Yeah, the visitation went five
• 59:11
  hours and yeah, I think over 1000 people came through and.
• 59:13
  Then lined, wrapped around, literally the street.
• 59:16
  And then the church obviously was full.
• 59:18
  And then there was a seat set up in the atrium that people could
• 59:21
  watch from the from the TV. Yeah, so we have 500 seats in
• 59:24
  the in the sanctuary. So packed funeral.
• 59:30
  I spoke, I preached, you gave the eulogy, my wife's saying
• 59:35
  Joel's saying we, we celebrated, the death is defeated.
• 59:40
  I still remember that. And yeah, horrible week,
• 59:49
  horrible experience. And much like Jesus's own death,
• 1:00:00
  you know Friday was horrible. And then comes the resurrection
• 1:00:06
  and then comes hope. I don't remember what I said.
• 1:00:12
  I remember telling you I knew God was going to do something
• 1:00:15
  out of this. I don't remember what the words
• 1:00:17
  I used, but precious in the sight of the Lord are the death
• 1:00:23
  of his Saints, the scripture says.
• 1:00:25
  And he, he put seeds in the ground for a reason, to bring a
• 1:00:29
  harvest. And obviously 500 plus people
• 1:00:33
  heard the gospel at that funeral.
• 1:00:37
  And many people have come to Faith.
• 1:00:42
  Yeah, her teacher, right? Her teacher came to Faith.
• 1:00:46
  Yes, I forgot. I forgot about.
• 1:00:48
  I forgot about them. Her teacher came to Faith,
• 1:00:50
  became a member here, got married.
• 1:00:51
  I married him. Yep, He came to Faith and then
• 1:00:55
  they they got moved off. He he took, he got an amazing
• 1:00:59
  promotion and and got moved up. But I remember they came to
• 1:01:02
  Faith specifically from from this from Ila's funeral.
• 1:01:05
  I forgot about them. I'm glad you remember that.
• 1:01:07
  Yeah. And then obviously, I mean,
• 1:01:08
  since then, Kaylee's aunt, uncle, her cousins, friends of
• 1:01:15
  friends of ours, a young man that I coached when when I got
• 1:01:19
  out of college and coached for a year at at our high school.
• 1:01:24
  Him, him, his family are here now.
• 1:01:26
  Kaylee's brother and sister-in-law, our
• 1:01:30
  brother-in-law and sister are here now.
• 1:01:33
  So yeah. Oh, and my mom's friend who she
• 1:01:36
  taught with is here now. And then my buddy's mom is here
• 1:01:42
  and his mother in law's coming here.
• 1:01:44
  I mean, there's just there's been over 20 people at least
• 1:01:49
  that have come and are here as members as a result of what
• 1:01:53
  happened. Yeah, and that, that's that.
• 1:01:56
  But also the amount of people in our church.
• 1:02:00
  So we were praying for a year and a half consistently for Isla
• 1:02:06
  and the amount of people in our church who were their faith was
• 1:02:14
  strengthened by Isla's faith and you and Kaylee's faith through
• 1:02:20
  the whole process. To watch a man and a woman go
• 1:02:23
  through literally the worst thing that you can go through.
• 1:02:27
  I feel like as a mother and father, to watch you guys go
• 1:02:31
  through that with faith and hope and a confidence in the Lord.
• 1:02:38
  I mean, I know you don't feel like it was, but from from our
• 1:02:42
  perspective, it was an unwavering faith because I know
• 1:02:44
  in the moments you get mad and all this kind of stuff, but.
• 1:02:47
  Certainly those moments. It was an unwavering faith that
• 1:02:52
  it, it like ministered to our whole church.
• 1:02:56
  It saved two dozen people and it ministered to our whole church.
• 1:03:02
  Yeah, it was. And I remember telling you too,
• 1:03:06
  like God's he he never wastes suffering.
• 1:03:11
  And I remember when I I went to a conference, it was probably 20
• 1:03:14
  years old. And I heard this old pastor
• 1:03:16
  Charles Swindoll, he said when God wants to do an impossible
• 1:03:21
  task, he takes an impossible man and crushes him.
• 1:03:28
  And you know, it's like that the only way to make olive oil,
• 1:03:33
  right? Like crushing the olives.
• 1:03:35
  And God's not going to waste this suffering.
• 1:03:39
  And God's going to, you know, he's going to do something in
• 1:03:44
  you and he's going to do something through, through Isla.
• 1:03:47
  And he has. He certainly has.
• 1:03:49
  And I mean that was that was part of it is after, after she
• 1:03:54
  had passed away. Like I said, I, I had a, a sense
• 1:03:58
  of comfort in that and a sense of peace in that.
• 1:04:05
  I'll, you know, not not saying grief was gone, right, but there
• 1:04:10
  was a there's a sense of peace of where she was.
• 1:04:12
  And, and in my mind too, I was just like, even if I don't see
• 1:04:16
  the fruit of this, even if I don't see what comes of this,
• 1:04:20
  that I'm fine with that. Like I don't, I wasn't saying
• 1:04:23
  like, Oh, I need to see results now.
• 1:04:25
  God of what, of what you know, use using this life as a means
• 1:04:30
  to glorify your name through through other means.
• 1:04:33
  Like I don't, I don't need to see that.
• 1:04:34
  I know where she's at. I know what happened.
• 1:04:36
  I know you've grown my faith. You've strengthened me.
• 1:04:40
  My, my faith is stronger now than it ever has been.
• 1:04:43
  And I was, I was OK with walking obedience the rest of my life,
• 1:04:47
  even if I didn't see any fruit from that, because I know
• 1:04:50
  ultimately what got it done in my soul, got it done in my wife
• 1:04:54
  and God, what God had done in my family.
• 1:04:56
  Yeah, and that's, that's the evidence of a heart that has
• 1:04:59
  been effectually called by Jesus to himself, then regenerated,
• 1:05:06
  given a new heart. And now Jesus is better than
• 1:05:10
  life itself, right? His steadfast love is better
• 1:05:12
  than life itself. And where before, when you got
• 1:05:16
  the you know, she needs a heart transplant.
• 1:05:19
  It was why God, why me? Why her, why this, why that?
• 1:05:22
  I mean, there's still a little bit of that, but this time it
• 1:05:26
  was this is what we're this is here and we have to walk through
• 1:05:30
  it. And no matter what happens, I'm
• 1:05:32
  going to I'm the Lord is mine and I am his.
• 1:05:35
  Yeah, right. The.
• 1:05:36
  Lord is still good. God is still good.
• 1:05:38
  Yeah. And I, I got to witness that in
• 1:05:42
  you that entire time. And it was really a gift to me,
• 1:05:47
  you know, as your pastor, to see that.
• 1:05:50
  So coming out of that, it wasn't long before you were like, I'm
• 1:05:55
  ready to get back in the other process.
• 1:05:59
  I don't remember how long it was, but it was, it was too
• 1:06:02
  quick for me. I was like, whoa, buddy, you
• 1:06:03
  sure? Yeah, I, I think I took a month
• 1:06:07
  off of work. And I mean, throughout this
• 1:06:11
  whole process, you know, I was still, I was, I was still
• 1:06:13
  reading the required reading material for the other process.
• 1:06:18
  And I mean that too. I mean, part of that too was
• 1:06:21
  what was good for my soul. It, it invigorated me.
• 1:06:24
  It, it, it helped me find joy in the Lord.
• 1:06:27
  It, it helped me find confidence in God and it, it helped me
• 1:06:29
  continue to persevere through that, that difficult season.
• 1:06:33
  So it was like, OK, the season's over with.
• 1:06:37
  And like I said, part of it's like, I know what God has called
• 1:06:42
  me to do as a man and, and have a vocation and, and, and work
• 1:06:47
  and be productive. And I've, I've been, you know,
• 1:06:50
  kind of stagnant for the last 18 months.
• 1:06:53
  And so I wanted to get back to work.
• 1:06:57
  It was good for my soul just to get out and work and get back,
• 1:07:02
  you know, doing what God has created men to do.
• 1:07:04
  So if in hindsight, maybe it was a little too, too quick, but I
• 1:07:11
  would say like I, I think that's what that's ultimately what I
• 1:07:15
  needed. Yeah, no, I remember now to get.
• 1:07:17
  Going. When you, when you just said
• 1:07:18
  that, I remember what you said to me because you said basically
• 1:07:22
  all this elder material reading has been like food for my soul.
• 1:07:26
  Yeah. It's like sustain me through
• 1:07:27
  this, all this kind of stuff. So I'm right now.
• 1:07:29
  I was like, oh, wow, yeah, that makes sense then.
• 1:07:31
  Yeah. All right, let's get.
• 1:07:32
  Let's get back after it. Yeah.
• 1:07:35
  So started started back up doing that and yeah, continue to
• 1:07:43
  pursue the eldership process. And you know, I sat down with
• 1:07:48
  you guys once to get an update on where I was at with things.
• 1:07:51
  And I mean, the questions were I was like, how you doing?
• 1:07:55
  Where you at? Are you still feeling called to
• 1:07:58
  do this? And yeah, absolutely, I am
• 1:08:01
  absolutely I feel called to do this.
• 1:08:04
  So then, you know, finished up with my test, sat in this room
• 1:08:10
  with you guys and did the assessment, called me that night
• 1:08:13
  and told me, you know, think you're called, think you're
• 1:08:16
  quit, think you're qualified. We want to install you as an
• 1:08:20
  elder. And then I think it was May of
• 1:08:24
  last year actually. Is that right?
• 1:08:28
  I haven't been an elder longer than a year.
• 1:08:32
  I think it was around this time last year, wasn't it?
• 1:08:35
  Oh, well, they caught me off guard and I don't remember that
• 1:08:37
  kind of stuff. So I think it's I think it's
• 1:08:39
  been longer than that. No, it's been longer than.
• 1:08:41
  That has it. OK, so yeah, get installed and.
• 1:08:45
  I'm pretty sure it's been longer than that, yeah.
• 1:08:47
  Yeah, so installs an elder and you know, working with you guys
• 1:08:55
  to help lead the church, feed the church, love our people,
• 1:08:59
  WellCare for our people. Continue to do what God's called
• 1:09:02
  the called us here to do at Sacred City.
• 1:09:04
  Yeah. All right.
• 1:09:05
  So I mean, your life is really, you know, a perfect example of
• 1:09:10
  how God calls men to himself, how he redeems them, renews
• 1:09:14
  them, He sends them out to work in the world.
• 1:09:18
  We don't know what's coming. Like you just preached on
• 1:09:20
  Sunday, You know, it's our plans and God's plans.
• 1:09:24
  And we got to roll with the punches as God, you know, we
• 1:09:27
  have our plans. And he, he says, this is my
• 1:09:29
  plan. We have to learn to adapt on the
• 1:09:30
  fly and grow and and walk with him through those things and at
• 1:09:39
  the I just want people to sit here.
• 1:09:42
  How? Like none of this is neat.
• 1:09:45
  None of this is neat and tidy. It's God doesn't call people
• 1:09:50
  typically OK, go to seminary, you're called boom church.
• 1:09:56
  That's not the normal road for an actual pastor.
• 1:10:00
  And I, I would even say, well, well, you said God, God never,
• 1:10:05
  God never wastes what? Whatever you're suffering.
• 1:10:09
  Yeah, God never waste your suffering.
• 1:10:12
  I wouldn't be able to minister to people if I didn't go through
• 1:10:15
  what I did, right. The different experiences that
• 1:10:18
  God has put in my life and God's plan for my life, like that's
• 1:10:22
  ultimately what has quit me to be a pastor.
• 1:10:27
  And so I think you know what you're talking about the
• 1:10:29
  traditional route of I'm going to go to seminary school, I'm
• 1:10:31
  going to learn how to study the Bible.
• 1:10:33
  I'm going to learn Greek and Hebrew.
• 1:10:34
  I'm going to learn about, you know, doctrine and, and all
• 1:10:37
  these other things. And then I'm a pastor.
• 1:10:41
  I know the word of God. Well, you know the word of God,
• 1:10:43
  but do you really know how to apply it?
• 1:10:44
  Do you know how to apply it to people's souls?
• 1:10:47
  Do you know how to minister to those to their souls?
• 1:10:49
  You got to cling to it when you're walking through the
• 1:10:51
  valley of the shadow of death. Right.
• 1:10:52
  Is it just here or is it actually in here?
• 1:10:55
  Yeah, yeah. Do you know what?
• 1:10:58
  Like the people you're preaching to, you do you know what they
• 1:10:59
  feel like when they're going through hell, Right.
• 1:11:04
  Do you know what they need to hear when they're going through
• 1:11:06
  hell? You do 'cause you walk through
• 1:11:08
  it, you know? Yeah.
• 1:11:10
  And also, so my I, I knew I was called the ministry early on,
• 1:11:17
  but there was nowhere for me to go.
• 1:11:22
  And so I started a construction company and I learned how to
• 1:11:25
  build houses and I did all this kind of stuff and God has used
• 1:11:29
  that in my ministry. You know, the apostle Paul was a
• 1:11:33
  tent maker while he was preaching the gospel.
• 1:11:37
  It is very worthwhile and helpful for young men who feel
• 1:11:43
  like they might be business minded.
• 1:11:45
  They might want to make some money to pay off student loans,
• 1:11:47
  do all this kind of stuff, not to go to seminary and then try
• 1:11:50
  to get a pastor job that's not going to pay very much and
• 1:11:54
  you're never going to pay off the Student Loans.
• 1:11:55
  It's actually helpful for, and a lot of, you know, for a lot of
• 1:11:58
  reasons to learn a trade, to maybe get an education and
• 1:12:02
  pursue a specific career or vocation.
• 1:12:05
  Do that for a while while pursuing growing as a man of
• 1:12:09
  God, growing as a husband and as a father, growing in your
• 1:12:12
  theology and then pursuing eldership, pursuing pastoral
• 1:12:18
  ministry. You know, so God's brought you
• 1:12:21
  through this like bit, you know, this business sales leadership,
• 1:12:26
  you went through all this suffering and how do you think
• 1:12:30
  like what is God equipped you for to serve at the word I want
• 1:12:36
  to use is a churchman. So a man who serves the church.
• 1:12:39
  How has God equipped you to use your gifts to serve the church
• 1:12:42
  now? Yeah.
• 1:12:43
  So I think just like I talked about with my job, right, I'm,
• 1:12:46
  I'm leading and developing people and coaching them and
• 1:12:51
  helping them improve what they're doing with their job
• 1:12:54
  every single day. You know, the, one of the, the
• 1:12:57
  business words, the the business buzzwords you can say is
• 1:13:00
  operational excellence within within the business that I
• 1:13:03
  oversee. And so we need that.
• 1:13:06
  I'm going there. That's right, I'm going.
• 1:13:08
  There. We need that.
• 1:13:09
  That's what I want. We need that.
• 1:13:11
  I'm going there. And so, you know, part, part of
• 1:13:14
  what I see is like, I've, I've had experience in this.
• 1:13:18
  God has grown me in this. I've been, I've been able to
• 1:13:21
  bless people by, by, you know, fine tuning my craft, so to
• 1:13:27
  speak. And, you know, being in the
• 1:13:30
  church and, and being in those other meetings and talking
• 1:13:33
  through how we want to continue to live out the mission that God
• 1:13:36
  has called us to. It requires a level of
• 1:13:39
  operational excellence right within the church to be able to
• 1:13:42
  steward the things that steward the people that got us brought
• 1:13:45
  in, but also steward the people that are running the day-to-day
• 1:13:50
  operation of the church. Right to to preach the word of
• 1:13:52
  God, to be on mission to people and to continue to produce
• 1:13:58
  material and content that reaches souls.
• 1:14:02
  And so I, I feel like I have those skills and abilities to be
• 1:14:06
  able to help our church continue to operate well.
• 1:14:10
  Bless the staff, bless you, bless our people by helping us
• 1:14:14
  get better at that and and getting better from from an
• 1:14:17
  operation standpoint within the church.
• 1:14:19
  Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's amazing.
• 1:14:24
  I mean, it's just amazing kind of sitting back and watching
• 1:14:29
  what God does, you know, and how God writes our story and brings
• 1:14:35
  us through things that we don't want to go through, but we need
• 1:14:37
  to go through. And then later there's going to
• 1:14:39
  be a harvest later. There's going to be a way that
• 1:14:42
  it's usually, not always, but usually we're going to, it's
• 1:14:45
  going to make sense to us. You know, ultimately it'll
• 1:14:48
  always make sense to us when we get to glory and we see his
• 1:14:50
  plan. But now it's like, oh, I see why
• 1:14:54
  I'm here. I see why I do this, you know,
• 1:14:55
  like for me, building homes, doing all this kind of stuff at
• 1:15:00
  the moment, even though I, I actually loved it.
• 1:15:03
  I love being outside. I love getting crap done.
• 1:15:05
  I love literally I, I love being with guys all day.
• 1:15:08
  I like, I loved it. There was in the back of my
• 1:15:11
  head, I'm wasting my life. God's called me to ministry.
• 1:15:14
  I'm wasting my life, I'm wasting my life, I'm wasting my life.
• 1:15:17
  And then 20 years later, he drops this building into our
• 1:15:23
  lab. Didn't need much work though,
• 1:15:25
  did it? Yeah, that needed a top down
• 1:15:28
  remodel and I was just going to raise money for the building and
• 1:15:34
  I was going to sub everything out and raise the money.
• 1:15:38
  And then one day was, was just like, I did something, I hung
• 1:15:46
  drywall, I did something. And then I was just like, maybe
• 1:15:50
  maybe I should just lead this whole thing, right?
• 1:15:55
  And I brought it to the elders. And if you think you can do it
• 1:15:57
  without burning out, you know, and then, but then on the
• 1:16:00
  backside of it, save the church quarter at least 1/4 of
• 1:16:04
  $1,000,000 and remodeled way more than we thought we were
• 1:16:07
  going to originally remodel. You're like, oh, that's why.
• 1:16:12
  Yeah. I see.
• 1:16:13
  I see what you're doing the whole time now, guys. 20 years
• 1:16:16
  ago, you were teaching me this trade not only so I could
• 1:16:18
  provide for my family, but also so one day I could serve the
• 1:16:22
  church in this capacity and do this.
• 1:16:24
  Yeah. And I just look at anything I've
• 1:16:27
  done in my life. I mean, really, you know, a lot
• 1:16:30
  of it is sports related, right? Like I got into sports, I love
• 1:16:33
  sports. I worked hard at sports.
• 1:16:35
  But I see how those were a means to an end to get me to where I'm
• 1:16:39
  at today. And I, and I just think, you
• 1:16:43
  know, football especially, you have two a days.
• 1:16:46
  Practices are tough, practices are grueling, practices are
• 1:16:49
  hard. You have to have like a certain
• 1:16:51
  mindset to get through those difficult days.
• 1:16:53
  And I think part of like, what shaped me and for me to be able
• 1:16:57
  to go through the suffering that I did was to, in one sense, have
• 1:17:01
  that football mentality, that toughness, that grit.
• 1:17:05
  Relentlessness. Someone would.
• 1:17:06
  Say relentlessness, Yes. Put your head down and go
• 1:17:09
  through it. There's there's only one way,
• 1:17:12
  and that's just by going through it.
• 1:17:13
  You can't go around it, you can't stop.
• 1:17:15
  You've got to go through it. Yep, Yep.
• 1:17:17
  And I, and I would say like even that I've just spent a lot of
• 1:17:21
  time just looking back and reflecting on different parts of
• 1:17:23
  my life and I can see how God has used a lot of those
• 1:17:26
  different things to navigate, to navigate me to where I'm at
• 1:17:29
  today. So you know.
• 1:17:32
  Yeah, well, man, I mean, Josh is a sacred man, and he's a man who
• 1:17:40
  is relentless and he's been through it and he's good
• 1:17:43
  provider for his family. He's doing good in his business.
• 1:17:46
  He's pursuing eldership. He's a churchman.
• 1:17:49
  He's a man we should all, a man we all should emulate.
• 1:17:53
  He's not perfect by any means. He'd tell you that he's not very
• 1:17:56
  good at golf. That is true.
• 1:18:00
  So I got too much stuff on my plate to to get better at golf
• 1:18:03
  so. Well, good.
• 1:18:04
  I we need to keep more on your plate.
• 1:18:05
  We need to keep more on your plate.
• 1:18:07
  I'm going to say that out loud. Keep.
• 1:18:08
  More on his plate. I'm going to get a text from
• 1:18:10
  Justin tomorrow. Hey, can you, can you work on
• 1:18:12
  this for me? So.
• 1:18:13
  Exactly, He's going to be preaching a lot more so I can
• 1:18:15
  get better at golf while he while I just need to stay a
• 1:18:18
  little bit better than Josh. No.
• 1:18:21
  Anything else that you want to that you want to share?
• 1:18:28
  Yeah, I think, I think one thing that I, I just see men struggle
• 1:18:39
  with is trying to find out what am I called to do, trying to
• 1:18:44
  find their calling in life, trying to find their vocation,
• 1:18:47
  trying to find what what works best for me.
• 1:18:51
  And sometimes just that wondering that contemplating
• 1:18:56
  that thinking you're really wasting time and not getting to
• 1:18:59
  work. And so you may not, you don't
• 1:19:02
  know what, what God has in store for you.
• 1:19:04
  You don't know what, what you're good at or or not good at.
• 1:19:09
  And you just got to go and do it and trust the Lord with that.
• 1:19:13
  Like I said, when I got out of college, I had no idea what I
• 1:19:15
  wanted to do. And so I, but I wanted a job.
• 1:19:18
  I wanted to make money. And so I just got a job and I
• 1:19:20
  made money and then I found an opportunity that came up that
• 1:19:24
  fell, that fell in my lap. And so I took that and then I
• 1:19:27
  had another opportunity to come up and then I took that.
• 1:19:30
  So we, we think we have to have the traditional route of go to
• 1:19:34
  college, get a, get a degree in engineering or be a doctor or be
• 1:19:38
  a biologist or whatever. And then that's, that's the
• 1:19:40
  route I'm going to take. Now that that happens sometimes
• 1:19:44
  and most of the time it's like you just got to go and work and
• 1:19:48
  you just got to, you know, trust God every step of the way.
• 1:19:51
  And there are opportunities that come up that you need to discern
• 1:19:54
  whether or not I should take this and then decide am I going
• 1:19:57
  to take it or not and do it and go.
• 1:19:59
  Yeah, Jesus once said to a man who was going to follow him,
• 1:20:05
  Jesus said, come follow me and this I got to go do some things
• 1:20:09
  first. I got to go bury.
• 1:20:10
  And Jesus says that he should put his hand to the plow and not
• 1:20:14
  look back. Most guys are looking for some
• 1:20:20
  amazing thing in front of them to do, that thing that God wants
• 1:20:24
  you to do in front of you. It looks like a plow.
• 1:20:29
  It's work. It's work.
• 1:20:31
  And put your hand to the plow, get after it, get good at
• 1:20:36
  whatever it is, and then God will show you another plow.
• 1:20:39
  If He wants to change your career or change your direction,
• 1:20:42
  He'll show you another plow. But opportunity shows up as a
• 1:20:47
  plow. Opportunity shows up as work.
• 1:20:49
  There's and I've never understood people that what I
• 1:20:53
  get all weird about. I'm like, there is work
• 1:20:58
  everywhere. There is, there is work
• 1:21:00
  everywhere. I mean, obviously I have a
• 1:21:03
  construction background, so I just look out and I'm like,
• 1:21:08
  install gutters, do landscaping, get into concrete?
• 1:21:12
  Mow a lawn. Like fix cars, like just, I
• 1:21:16
  mean, this is all manual labor, but there's so much stuff out
• 1:21:18
  there. Just what can you do see?
• 1:21:23
  But it always shows up as work. It doesn't show up as this
• 1:21:26
  golden opportunity. It shows up as a freaking plow
• 1:21:29
  that you have to put your hand to, and you're going to have to
• 1:21:31
  bust up the earth and you're going to have to make it
• 1:21:33
  produce, right. And the other, The other thing
• 1:21:36
  too is I think sometimes young men, especially they, they see
• 1:21:41
  older men and they're like, oh, I want that.
• 1:21:43
  I want what he has. And they think that they need a
• 1:21:45
  job that's going to get him to, or they, they think they need to
• 1:21:48
  get a job that's going to put him exactly where that man is.
• 1:21:51
  But they don't realize all the time the energy, the commitment
• 1:21:54
  that that man has put in to get him to where they're at.
• 1:21:57
  Now that guy was selling ice cream cones when he was your
• 1:21:59
  age, right? You know, he, he was doing some
• 1:22:01
  stupid thing at, at your age, just barely making ends meet,
• 1:22:04
  putting $5.00 of gas in his gas, his gas tank.
• 1:22:08
  You don't even know that about him.
• 1:22:10
  But that diligence, that relentlessness, you know that,
• 1:22:13
  that doggedness when it came to work that got him to where he's
• 1:22:17
  at. Don't look for a job that you
• 1:22:19
  get to G3 days a week. Don't look for that job.
• 1:22:22
  That job rarely comes to a young man.
• 1:22:24
  You have to work yourself into that job, right?
• 1:22:27
  And that guy, most of the time, if he's playing G3 days a week,
• 1:22:30
  he's actually making money while he's on the golf course.
• 1:22:33
  But he earned it by plowing with the plows he was given at
• 1:22:36
  18/19/2020. You know, all the way up to
• 1:22:38
  whatever he is doing. I mean, that's one of the
• 1:22:40
  blessings I have. Like I have a lot more
• 1:22:41
  flexibility because I'm in the role I'm in.
• 1:22:43
  And, but also when I started out, I mean, I was up at 4:30 in
• 1:22:48
  the morning going to visit customers and I was getting home
• 1:22:51
  at 5:00 or 6:00 at night and I still had two to three hours
• 1:22:54
  worth of, of work to do when I got home, right.
• 1:22:56
  And I did that week after week after week for six or seven
• 1:22:59
  years until I got to where I'm at now.
• 1:23:01
  And so there's, there's a lot of work that you have to put in
• 1:23:04
  ahead of time to get to, you know, certain roles like like
• 1:23:08
  when I'm in, like what you're doing, you know, people don't
• 1:23:11
  see all that work that led up to where you're at today.
• 1:23:14
  So and it's OK for seasons to work 50-60 hours a week.
• 1:23:19
  It's OK you don't have to, especially if you know you don't
• 1:23:24
  have any kids or your kids are super little like you don't.
• 1:23:29
  I know you hold the kid, you look at him, you bounce.
• 1:23:32
  There's not much we can do. I just remember with my kid like
• 1:23:35
  jabbing like I can't wait till I can actually do something with
• 1:23:38
  you, you know, I. Know, I know.
• 1:23:40
  And it's like work, work, work yourself out of the position
• 1:23:45
  you're in now so that you hopefully have more free time
• 1:23:48
  when this kid, you take this kid to the baseball diamond, or you
• 1:23:50
  can take this kid on a bike ride and you can do, yeah, do stuff.
• 1:23:53
  Right, yeah, I just remember telling my wife, I, I think I
• 1:23:55
  told her the other day, I remember sitting with the kids
• 1:23:58
  playing teacups or whatever. And just all I was thinking
• 1:24:01
  about was that sales call I had the next day or that
• 1:24:03
  conversation I had the next day. And I just sat there and, you
• 1:24:06
  know, just move, move toys around and stuff, right.
• 1:24:08
  So I mean, there's, there's a level you can, you can, you can
• 1:24:14
  be productive even when you're playing with your kids when
• 1:24:16
  they're little. Yes, doesn't take much brain
• 1:24:17
  power to play tea sets. Yeah, don't be disengaged with
• 1:24:21
  your family. That's not what I'm saying.
• 1:24:22
  But you know, when you got little kids, there's still
• 1:24:24
  there's still things that you can be flexible with and.
• 1:24:26
  Yeah, but there's seasons for there's seasons for everything
• 1:24:29
  is all I'm saying. And too many young men.
• 1:24:32
  They want the 40 hour work week, they want the 40 hour work week
• 1:24:37
  and the. $1,000,000 Paycheck. $1,000,000 paycheck in the
• 1:24:40
  three, three days a week on the golf course.
• 1:24:42
  You're that that doesn't happen. You're not going to get that.
• 1:24:46
  And we were made to work. We were made to work.
• 1:24:49
  I just saw a study, I'm going to do a probably a podcast on this.
• 1:24:51
  I just saw a study that men today in this generation spend
• 1:24:56
  twice as much time with their kids as fathers did in the 50s.
• 1:25:01
  Wow, how are the how are the kids doing?
• 1:25:04
  Yeah, well, statistically, they're not doing well, right?
• 1:25:08
  The men aren't doing well, the ladies aren't doing well.
• 1:25:10
  The ladies aren't, aren't carrying as much weight as they
• 1:25:13
  were carrying in the 50s. But there's this mentality that
• 1:25:18
  I need, you know, that the dad has to be always present.
• 1:25:23
  I want a 40 hour work week, two days on the golf course and I
• 1:25:26
  want to do it from home so I can see my kids all day long and,
• 1:25:30
  and, and clean the kitchen for my wife and do all this stuff.
• 1:25:34
  You weren't made for that man. That is a pipe dream.
• 1:25:37
  Amen. That that's a pipe dream.
• 1:25:38
  Your wife's going to have to, as you're learning to carry more
• 1:25:41
  weight and get bigger shoulders and have more responsibility,
• 1:25:45
  because bottom line is the more responsibility you can carry,
• 1:25:49
  the more weight you can carry, the more money you'll make.
• 1:25:53
  All right, The more opportunities will open up, the
• 1:25:55
  more weight you can carry. Your wife has to go through a
• 1:25:58
  similar process when she gets her first kid, even if she's a
• 1:26:03
  stay at home mom, she's going to lose her mind.
• 1:26:06
  She I can't do this is up the cried all day, did this, did
• 1:26:09
  that, did that. She's going to need help and you
• 1:26:12
  need to help. But you also don't need to take
• 1:26:16
  something off of her plate that needs to be on her plate,
• 1:26:19
  because that's the weight that the that God's put on her.
• 1:26:22
  That's actually going to give her broader shoulders and a
• 1:26:25
  stronger back so she can do more.
• 1:26:27
  So then when the second child shows up, she doesn't lose her
• 1:26:30
  mind all again. And, and right 3-4 my, my wife
• 1:26:33
  now 5 kids, my wife can carry an an incredible amount of weight.
• 1:26:37
  She carries 90% of the weight of what happens in our home.
• 1:26:42
  She carries right. I'm overseeing vision, all this
• 1:26:45
  stuff and I'm carrying 100% of financial provision and
• 1:26:50
  protection and spiritual leadership.
• 1:26:52
  But there's this weird like bargain that that young couples
• 1:26:57
  are doing now where the man and, and, and kind of in the, in the
• 1:27:01
  Moto I'm going to serve my wife is actually taking on more of
• 1:27:05
  her responsibilities and becoming more feminine, more
• 1:27:07
  motherly and more present and more all this and it's actually
• 1:27:12
  hurting her sanctification and her discipleship, right.
• 1:27:16
  She's being convinced I can't do this.
• 1:27:19
  Instead of going, I can't do this.
• 1:27:21
  I need the Lord. The Lord's helped me.
• 1:27:23
  Oh, I did this. Oh wow, I guess I can do this
• 1:27:26
  and then gaining confidence for the next time she needs to do.
• 1:27:28
  It and and it and it hinders the man too from doing what God has
• 1:27:31
  called him to do and be able to provide and be able to go out
• 1:27:33
  and work and and bring more resources in for for his family.
• 1:27:36
  Yeah, 100 percent, 100%. Well, dude, I appreciate you
• 1:27:41
  being on here. Thanks for having me sharing
• 1:27:42
  your story. I think it was an awesome
• 1:27:44
  podcast. I can't wait for the people to
• 1:27:47
  see this one hear this one. Guys, if you like this podcast,
• 1:27:51
  please like it. Subscribe, share it with a dude
• 1:27:55
  who needs to hear it. We want as many people as
• 1:27:57
  possible to be ministered to this podcast and guys, it's it's
• 1:28:02
  great to be with you. Now go act like men.
• 1:28:07
  God bless.