Latest / More Than Before / Brokenness to Freedom | Pastor Jim Domen on Redemption, Identity & God’s Healing Power

Transcript

Brokenness to Freedom | Pastor Jim Domen on Redemption, Identity & God’s Healing Power · More Than Before

• 0:00
  Hey everyone, for those of you listening with kids around, I
• 0:02
  want to give you a quick note before we begin.
• 0:04
  While most episodes of More Than Before are family friendly, this
• 0:07
  one is best heard without little ears nearby.
• 0:10
  Some topics discussed are sensitive and could be
• 0:12
  emotionally triggering. If you've experienced any
• 0:14
  similar situations, you're about to hear a powerful,
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  transformational story of how God can redeem and turn any
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  person's life into a miraculous journey.
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  With that being said, get ready for this incredible
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  conversation. Here's what's next on More Than
• 0:28
  Before. I was gay.
• 0:30
  Come out of the lifestyle. I'm a pastor.
• 0:32
  I get married, we get pregnant, then we end up holding a 16 week
• 0:37
  baby in our hands. In this carriage of 16 weeks, we
• 0:40
  saw our daughter. She had little gums.
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  You see the teeny tiny little toes and fingers and the nails,
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  the lips, a whole little bodies formed.
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  I'm holding Samantha in our hands.
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  That has been the most devastating, hardest thing ever.
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  We literally just wept and cried for a week.
• 1:06
  Have you ever walked through something that you thought might
• 1:09
  break you, only to realize later on that it actually shaped you
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  to be the person that you're created to be and to serve
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  people that you were called to serve?
• 1:17
  Today's guest has lived that kind of story.
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  He's walked through loss, confusion, surrender, and
• 1:23
  renewal. And what God has done in his
• 1:25
  life is nothing short of a miracle and nothing short of
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  powerful. He's a husband, a dad, add a
• 1:30
  pastor, an author, and yes, he is an Iron Man.
• 1:34
  But what stands out most isn't his achievements.
• 1:37
  It's his transparency, it's his honesty, and it's his faith.
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  This conversation that you're about to hear is all about
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  freedom, all about redemption, and what happens when you let
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  God define who you're created to be.
• 1:50
  Jim Dolman, welcome to More than Before.
• 1:52
  It's great to have you on, brother.
• 1:54
  Hey Nathan, it's great to be on your show and I loved your
• 1:58
  introduction. I I'm going to, I think I'm
• 1:59
  going to steal that and write that down.
• 2:01
  That was really good. Thank you.
• 2:03
  There are people in life that you meet that have really gone
• 2:06
  through the wringer and you can learn so much from them.
• 2:09
  And I know that your story is rich in a lot of different ways,
• 2:14
  but I, before we dive into more of the harder topics, I, I'd
• 2:19
  like to go back to early on in life when you were a kid, what
• 2:23
  were you like as a kid? Did what it what did you enjoy?
• 2:26
  What did you spend your time doing when you were younger?
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  I would say I was an awkward kid.
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  I didn't do well in sports. My brother, my younger brother
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  and younger sister, they excelled at everything I didn't.
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  So it's kind of little socially awkward.
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  I dressed, you know, I don't know, I'll say funny, not like
• 2:46
  popular kids did. And, you know, I look at
• 2:48
  pictures of me and go, good grief, you know how
• 2:52
  embarrassing, you know, And so I again, I just think I was really
• 2:57
  socially awkward. I mean, it wasn't like we had
• 3:00
  donation clothes or anything. I have nothing wrong with that.
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  We actually, you know, use, we use clothes donated all the time
• 3:06
  for our kids. But I was kind of geeky and
• 3:08
  nerdy and just really didn't fit in, didn't have a lot of
• 3:12
  friends. I mean, I knew a lot of people,
• 3:13
  but just never had like a best friend.
• 3:16
  So yeah, I would say didn't really fit in.
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  Became more popular in life and which maybe I know that's a good
• 3:24
  thing or not. But yeah, like my wife, we joke
• 3:27
  about we never would have been friends in high school.
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  She was, you know, in the band. And I did sports.
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  I did wrestling in football, more wrestling than football.
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  Again, wrestling doesn't have balls.
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  So I'm not too. I'm not too, I'm not too
• 3:42
  coordinated. So, you know, I, I kind of stuck
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  to that, you know, Iron Man, there was no balls in Iron Man.
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  You bike, you swim, you run, you know, it's pretty basic.
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  But yeah, we joked about we wouldn't have been friends.
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  I probably she's like, yeah, you would have been too cool for me.
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  But I wasn't cool in high school.
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  That was another crowd. Maybe not till college.
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  I kind of come out of my shell and a little bit more into my
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  identity as a cooler dude, I'll call it.
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  So when you were a wrestling, I'm I'm curious, did you did you
• 4:13
  wrestle for a while or was that like a short period of your
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  story? Three years, freshman,
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  sophomore, junior year. My sophomore year I placed no.
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  My junior I placed third in CIFII was in Orange County, so I
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  forget which division it was, but to place third in CIF is
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  pretty significant. Although I didn't pursue
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  wrestling, I should wrestle varsity my sophomore and junior
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  year. I didn't like my coach and the
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  coach that I loved left the school and I'm like I'm not
• 4:45
  going to do this anymore. So I bailed and didn't wrestle
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  my senior year. It's that's interesting because
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  even even early on, I mean wrestling when you were growing
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  up, when I was growing up, wrestling was a whole different
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  thing. Like, like, I remember my
• 5:00
  uncles, they, when they wrestled, they didn't have
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  weight classes. It was by the way, you're
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  wrestling this guy, he's £300. I, you know, I, I, my uncles,
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  one of my uncles was a Triple Crown champion.
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  And so there was kind of a level of expectation when I came in
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  and they actually went to the same high school as me.
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  But I remember cardio days. I remember those hard days that
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  you had to push through. And I still remember one of my
• 5:24
  coaches. He was, he was the, he was, he
• 5:26
  was, he was something else. Let's just say that he would
• 5:29
  always say you don't leave this room unless you unless you puke,
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  faint or you're bleeding. And there was, there was truth
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  in that. And for sure then you know, like
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  I wrestled 152. So we when I wrestled, they
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  still have weight. They had weight classes.
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  They still do today, actually, my nephew place like third and
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  Texas or 4th and Texas at a division five school, which is
• 5:54
  amazing as a junior. But yeah, so they, I had weight,
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  a weight class and the last two years I think it's about I
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  started at 1:38 and then ended up at 1:52.
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  OK, wow, that's crazy. Yeah.
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  It's, it's interesting because once you start talking with
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  people and you hear a different pieces of their story, you're
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  like, oh, I can actually see how this might even have actually
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  helped you later on down the road.
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  Like having that mentality, you know, in wrestling, it's just
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  you just bite your teeth and you go.
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  So I'm curious, early on in high school, what did you find
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  yourself involved in? You know, because you kind of
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  said you're a little bit on the outside of things, so.
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  I did yearbook, which is kind of nerdy, you know, I wasn't a
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  writer, so I didn't do like the newspaper journal kind of thing.
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  But I was a yearbook editor my or very involved my in junior
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  high, 7th and 8th grade. And they typically at the high
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  school level don't allow freshmen into the yearbook
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  class. It's a sophomore and higher.
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  But because of my background and experience and I went to some of
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  their camps as actually involved in yearbook all four years at
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  her high school. So it's kind of the geeky, nerdy
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  side, you know, but and again, like football didn't work out
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  real well for me at the time. I didn't have that mentality.
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  Go kill them. You know, I'm just, you know, I
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  love Jesus and I'm not, I don't want to go and kill people.
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  And I'm not saying you can't be a Christian and be, you know,
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  rough, tough football player, but that just wasn't me.
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  I hadn't matured a kind of grown into my body, so to speak.
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  I mean, shoot, I was 152 as a junior and senior.
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  I was skin and bones, you know, I didn't have really muscle
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  structure that didn't come until college.
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  And you know, I've got, I've got OK arms now, but you know, that
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  comes later in life, so. I'm not going to show you.
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  I did not have that in college or high school, that's for sure.
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  So so when you accepted Jesus at the age of seven, what was what
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  brought you to that decision? You know, it's, I would say it
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  was like child, child like faith.
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  My parents had recently come to know the Lord and I kind of
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  remember it 2 times at a conversation with my mom.
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  We did it in Sunday school when I was, you know, 7.
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  It's about first grade and I just, you know, I just felt
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  moved to accepting the Lord. And at that age, you don't
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  realize, I didn't realize that the gift of evangelism, but I
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  just had this burden on my heart that I wanted the world to know
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  Jesus. I wanted everybody to know God
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  so they would go to heaven and not hell.
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  And you know, as how does the kid articulate that?
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  I don't know, but that was my heart.
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  I want everybody to know Jesus. So I would say it was a very
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  legitimate acceptance, if that makes sense.
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  I knew God from a young age and have walked with them my whole
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  life. So what were your aspirations as
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  a child like? What did you, what did you want
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  to be? What was what was the desire,
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  what was the goal when you were younger?
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  So we had a cleaning lady and she cleaned our house on a
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  weekly basis and she goes, Jim, this is the only house I clean
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  where a kid has all their goals up on the on, you know, posted
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  above their bed. And in essence, it was to be
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  rich, buy a or own a Mercedes, have a ranch with horses and it
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  kind of all these material things.
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  You know, that was kind of my goal as a kid.
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  And art the cleaning lady was really funny because she's like
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  you're the only house where kids got all his goals up there.
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  But that was kind of me. I was an entrepreneur,
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  entrepreneurial, very motivated, wanted to make a lot of money,
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  be successful in life. I mean, I was in honors and
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  APIB, Advanced Placement international, bad gloriate.
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  And I wasn't like a brainy, brilliant genius kind of a kid.
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  I had to work really hard for good grades, but I had a higher
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  than a four point O all through high school.
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  So I was academic and a little athletic.
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  So in high school, you started to feel, if I'm, if I'm
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  remembering correct, you started to feel kind of like the odd
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  duck. You felt out of water.
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  You felt different from everyone else.
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  Tell tell everyone a little bit more about that.
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  You know, kind of well in junior high's when I first started
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  realizing I was same sex attracted, I was attracted to
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  older men, but I didn't really know what to do with that.
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  And then kind of when puberty hit more my sophomore year, I
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  was 16/15/16 in high school. I was like, wait a minute, how
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  come I'm attracted to my own sex?
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  You know, I think I'm gay or I think I'm a homosexual.
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  I didn't think I knew what the word gay men.
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  I knew homosexuality and knew that was wrong, but you know, I
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  didn't know what to do with that.
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  How did environment play into that?
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  So I truly believe that environment is the reason why
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  people deal with LGBTQ issues, specifically for homosexuality,
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  a disconnect between the father and the son that generally
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  happens early in childhood development, like from the ages
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  of two to four, 18 months, kind of the 3648 months range, where
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  a little boy begins to build and understand his identity as a boy
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  and that connection with their dad.
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  And a lot of times if that doesn't happen or there's a
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  trauma or an abuse situation or something like that, for me now,
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  it wasn't trauma or abuse. My dad was an LA County Sheriff.
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  I just didn't connect with him with sports, with a variety of
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  different things. And he more or less connected
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  with my brother, could talk baseball, football, coach them
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  in all these sports. And the reason why I did sports
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  in high school was because my dad said, well, if you go to
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  high school, you have to play a sport.
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  So I tried football. That didn't work.
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  And so for obvious reasons, as I've shared earlier, and then
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  I'm like, well, my dad wrestled. I'll try to be like my dad and
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  wrestle. So it really wasn't a passion
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  for me. It was trying to honor my dad
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  because that's what he wanted me to do and what I try to tell
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  dads. And if there's a dad listening
• 12:13
  to this podcast, Nathan, do what your son, your kid, your
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  daughter wants to do. Don't make them what you want to
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  do. Let them come alongside your
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  child and support and encourage them.
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  Don't have them do what you think they ought to do, if that
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  makes sense. And that was kind of my
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  situation. And looking back, it would have
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  been so helpful to have my dad come alongside of me and go,
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  son, what, what is, what's, what are you passionate about?
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  What do you want to do? You know, he this came up, we
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  were in our spa 1 evening. My mom and dad and I said, mom,
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  dad, I want to go to Europe. And my dad's like, what?
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  Why do you want to go to France? You know, and he goes, you want
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  to learn French? Are you stupid?
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  Everyone in LA speaks, you know, Espanol.
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  Why are you going to have to learn French?
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  I'm like, well, because I think if you live in America, you
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  should speak English. So I'm not going to cater to
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  that. And two, I want to go to Europe.
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  You know, I don't want to go to Mexico or South America.
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  I want to go to Europe and he couldn't.
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  He's like, why would you even want to leave the United States?
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  You know, it's my dad thinking that you'd why would you ever
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  want to leave this great country and go, I'm like, and again,
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  we're just different. But he didn't know how to come
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  alongside of me. Now I got to go to France as a
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  16 year old on an exchange program, which was awesome, but
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  he didn't know how to come alongside of me again.
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  I'm kind of this odd duck, you know, scratching his head.
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  Why you wanting to do all the stuff that doesn't make logical
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  or rational sense? I'm curious also your
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  relationship with your mom, how how is your relationship with
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  your mom? I know she was a librarian.
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  So like you have you have this educational side, maybe some
• 13:52
  pressure around there to do well, which sounds like you were
• 13:55
  actually a good student. But how was your relationship
• 13:57
  with your mom? I mean, your dad was a little
• 13:59
  bit of strange to feel it feels like.
• 14:01
  Or strange, I guess I should say.
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  Sure. Yep, That's probably a good
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  adjective. And I was very tight and close
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  with my mom when she was pregnant, like with my sister
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  seven years younger. I when my dad was working nights
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  or was gone, I would care for my mom.
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  I was kind of in that role as a caregiver because she was sick
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  and nauseous all the time for morning sickness.
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  And I just, I was very, very tight and close with my mom.
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  And again, when boys start developing that tight bonding
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  with mom and not dad and men, they start seeing the world
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  through the eyes of the feminine.
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  And it's not like it's a, you know, here, let me give you
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  these binoculars. And now I'm looking through the
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  world, you know, through a binoculars.
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  So it's making me look feminine. But you, you start taking on,
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  you start seen the world through the feminine and you don't even
• 14:53
  realize, again, this is developmental that this is
• 14:56
  happening and I'm not getting called out in from boyhood to
• 15:00
  manhood. My identity is connecting with
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  the feminine and the feminine side of things.
• 15:05
  As a little boy or, you know, developing a young man, I was
• 15:10
  very tight and close with my mom and she was the spiritual giant
• 15:14
  as I was in the house. My dad lacked that leadership
• 15:18
  spiritually growing up. You know, if there is a
• 15:20
  spiritual, you know, my dad, you know, I tried to have a sex talk
• 15:23
  with my dad and I brought up the topic because I'm like, my
• 15:27
  therapist is like, hey, this would be a good thing for you to
• 15:29
  have a talk you and your dad to have.
• 15:31
  And we never had it. And when I asked him, he told me
• 15:34
  it was inappropriate. So, you know, well, if my dad
• 15:37
  tells me it's inappropriate, well, what he literally told me
• 15:40
  was, well, if you want to learn about sex, you learn about it in
• 15:42
  the locker room. And I'm like thinking, OK, my
• 15:46
  dad's a Christian and he's telling me to learn about
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  something God created that's beautiful for procreation and
• 15:53
  it's a gift to men and women. And I'm going to learn about it
• 15:57
  in the locker room. I don't think that was God's
• 15:59
  intention for sex and marriage, but that's, that was that's what
• 16:04
  I got when I now that's all kind of change at the age of 28, I
• 16:07
  had that talk again with my dad and I gave it.
• 16:10
  But that was part of my healing and restorative process to kind
• 16:14
  of revisit areas of my or periods of my life that I had
• 16:18
  missed or wasn't fed or didn't receive what I needed to as a
• 16:22
  boy. That thankfully as a grown man,
• 16:24
  I was able to, you know, minister to some of those areas
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  of my life. I love what you say there about
• 16:31
  having the conversation with your dad.
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  And, and I would imagine, you know, your, your son is starting
• 16:36
  to get older and, and there's going to be a time where you
• 16:38
  have that conversation too. But there really is this
• 16:42
  importance of having that conversation.
• 16:43
  You know, we live in a world that is super hyper sexualized
• 16:47
  for everything. And it's, it's interesting too,
• 16:50
  kind of the, the different perspectives between your mom
• 16:54
  and your dad. You know, your dad being
• 16:56
  Catholic and your mom being Protestant.
• 16:57
  Like, you know, within Catholicism, you don't, you
• 17:00
  don't talk about the physical and sex and those kinds of
• 17:03
  things, whereas you know, more Protestant, they're, they're
• 17:06
  probably going to talk about those things.
• 17:07
  It's going to be at least brought up, but there there
• 17:10
  really is a a key within men stepping in to their, you know,
• 17:16
  stepping in and having a conversation with their son of
• 17:18
  what, what does marriage look like?
• 17:21
  What does sex look like in good confines of what God created it
• 17:25
  to be. And I think that we see that a
• 17:27
  lot in society. A lot of kids are not getting
• 17:30
  the sex talk. They're not getting a
• 17:32
  conversation of, you know, what is a healthy relationship.
• 17:37
  Or they, they may not be getting it for mom and dad, but they're
• 17:39
  getting it through commercials, television shows and
• 17:43
  specifically on on phones and digital devices there that
• 17:48
  content. I mean, I listen to some
• 17:50
  statistics. So with like Meta, how within,
• 17:56
  you know, 72 hours, boys, teenage boys are exposed to
• 18:00
  drugs, sex, and that the logarithms know what what they
• 18:05
  like, what they don't like and they keep feeding it.
• 18:08
  It's so sinister. But that's a whole nother
• 18:10
  conversation. But I'll I'll take a step back
• 18:14
  then. We don't have television in our
• 18:16
  home. I mean, what you might think of
• 18:18
  this as, you know, totally archaic, but you know what?
• 18:21
  We don't have television in our home.
• 18:23
  We our kids do not have any devices.
• 18:26
  My they're, they're 11/9 and seven.
• 18:30
  And so they're not exposed to explicit content, They're not
• 18:33
  exposed to sexual content. They're not exposed to LGBTQ
• 18:37
  agendas and social media and apps telling kids that, you
• 18:41
  know, you can transition or you can do who knows what.
• 18:45
  And thankfully, they've been protected and shulered from the
• 18:48
  world. And these talks, my wife was
• 18:50
  able to have that talk with my oldest, my daughter, and she was
• 18:54
  the first one to have the sex conversation with her.
• 18:58
  And I think she did that when she was about 1010 or 11.
• 19:01
  Anyway, it was within like the last six months or so.
• 19:04
  And it was a beautiful. And what brought this on is, you
• 19:07
  know, we have a friend that's pregnant and, you know, they're
• 19:10
  talking about her pregnancy and how the baby's growing inside.
• 19:13
  And my oldest daughter goes, how did the baby get in her tummy?
• 19:19
  And so my wife is like, OK, yes, exactly, exactly.
• 19:23
  And my 2 younger kids, they're not really ready.
• 19:26
  They're not really ready for that conversation.
• 19:28
  But my wife just knew, OK, it's time.
• 19:30
  And she was able to share all of those details with my daughter
• 19:36
  through a couple of different meetings.
• 19:38
  They had a mommy daughter getaway time with just the two
• 19:41
  of them. They went shopping, you know,
• 19:43
  had the talk about having periods and menstrual cycles
• 19:46
  and, you know, bodies developing and changing and what that looks
• 19:50
  like. And I'm like, what a beautiful
• 19:52
  godly example and how to role model that to our children so
• 19:57
  they have healthy sexual identities in whom God made my
• 20:01
  daughter as a as a girl, but who will develop into a beautiful
• 20:05
  woman. And understands that sex is
• 20:09
  something that God's given us to procreate for pleasure, but
• 20:13
  that's between a man and a woman in a marriage only setting.
• 20:16
  And you know, I'm going to do the same thing with my son when
• 20:19
  that moments come. And it's probably will come
• 20:22
  before he's 11. I'll say that.
• 20:24
  So and I'm, I'm looking forward to having that talk with him,
• 20:28
  you know, but we've had this isn't like a one and done thing.
• 20:32
  We've been talking about these types of things from when they
• 20:36
  were little. You know, my youngest daughter,
• 20:38
  that was kind of hilarious. Our dog was a male and and she
• 20:43
  kind of said, oh, you know, girls have vaginas and boys have
• 20:46
  peanuts because she couldn't say the word penis.
• 20:49
  And so it was just hilarious that Tucker has a peanut.
• 20:52
  You're like, yes, and daddy has a peanut too, but she couldn't
• 20:56
  say the word. So but we have these kind of
• 20:59
  conversations. So it's not like, oh, we've said
• 21:02
  vagina or penis or something. It's an it's, it's biological.
• 21:07
  And God made a boy a boy and a girl a girl.
• 21:10
  And both are good. Yeah, I love that.
• 21:13
  So going back to your story, you graduate from high school and
• 21:18
  you then trek off to Oregon to go to Georgia, my neck of the
• 21:26
  woods, George Fox University, to get a degree in communication.
• 21:30
  What? What was the focus?
• 21:31
  Actually, international business and economics.
• 21:34
  OK, International business and economics.
• 21:36
  So what was the, what, what, what were you wanting to do with
• 21:39
  that? Get rich?
• 21:42
  I'm seeing a trend here, you know.
• 21:44
  Yeah, yeah, I, you know, I really wanted to go into the
• 21:49
  business world. I loved it and I loved
• 21:51
  international travel. Going to France as at 16, I was
• 21:55
  like, this is awesome, I want to do that.
• 21:57
  And since, I mean then till now, I've been to over 40 countries
• 22:02
  and I've travelled the world, I've lived in different
• 22:05
  countries and it's it's awesome. And I, I will tell you in all of
• 22:10
  the quote, Dorothy, there's no place like home.
• 22:12
  There's no place like the United States in the world, and we are
• 22:17
  really blessed. Even when we had the Biden
• 22:19
  administration in office, it's still the greatest country on
• 22:22
  the planet. And I've been to a lot of
• 22:23
  countries. What?
• 22:24
  What started to spiral in your life in terms of identity at
• 22:28
  that point? So I, my therapist really
• 22:31
  encouraged me to pursue masculinity in college, and I
• 22:35
  did. It was kind of like a restart.
• 22:37
  Not that I was feminine. Maybe some people would would be
• 22:41
  like, Oh yeah, like that he's going to end up gay or is gay.
• 22:44
  Maybe that persona I gave off. But I really worked on from 18
• 22:49
  and on pursuing masculinity. But then so and I and again when
• 22:55
  I I remember, I'll never forget I told one of my friends that I
• 22:58
  was gay from college. You know, they're all George Fox
• 23:01
  was a then was a conservative Christian School.
• 23:04
  I think they've gone liberal like most.
• 23:06
  But she was like, Jim, you lied to us.
• 23:10
  And I told her, I said, look, Elizabeth, if I would have told
• 23:14
  you that I was gay or struggling with same sex attraction, how do
• 23:18
  you think you and everybody else would have responded?
• 23:20
  You'd get, you know, you get kicked out of the school if you
• 23:23
  acted on any of those desires or as things.
• 23:26
  And so they kind of at first thought I was, I had lied to
• 23:29
  them. And then they kind of thought,
• 23:30
  Oh yeah, that's right. It probably wouldn't have gone
• 23:32
  over very well. You would have been ostracized.
• 23:35
  So I said, yeah, I decided not to let anyone know about this,
• 23:39
  you know, internal battle and struggle I had for so many
• 23:42
  years. But it was after college at the
• 23:44
  age of 23 when I took a job in Bermuda and then was filing.
• 23:48
  I was a virgin, but I was fired for and accused of being a
• 23:51
  homosexual. Now, homosexuality at the time
• 23:54
  was illegal. And the man that I worked with
• 23:57
  was worth scores if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 24:02
  And he's like, look, dude, you're going to this is going to
• 24:05
  jumper jeopardize my tax free haven.
• 24:08
  I I can't be or associated with you.
• 24:10
  I'm asking you to leave. And so in essence, I kind of got
• 24:13
  kicked off the island before that was a show Anyway.
• 24:17
  So I came back to the United States and thanks for laughing
• 24:20
  at my stupid joke. I came back to the United States
• 24:24
  and I said, well, hey, if I'm going to be ostracized for being
• 24:27
  gay, I think I'm just going to come out.
• 24:29
  And I came out in your neck of the woods, Portland, downtown
• 24:33
  Portland and what we called Gatum now they think they
• 24:38
  changed the street name. Oh, my gosh, I can.
• 24:41
  Yeah. What they changed the street
• 24:43
  name. I forgot what it used to be
• 24:44
  called, but that was Gatum The little, you know, the few blocks
• 24:48
  there in actually it was Southwest Portland where the
• 24:52
  little gay areas, which I still think it's still there today.
• 24:55
  So you dive into this lifestyle and what's, what's kind of
• 25:00
  interesting to me is it pulls, I think it pulls a lot of people
• 25:06
  more than what people really understand and realize.
• 25:10
  And I'm curious, like what drew you deeper?
• 25:13
  I mean, I know you said that, you know, the, the moment in
• 25:15
  Bermuda and then deciding just to come back, come out and, and
• 25:19
  live the way that you want to live in, in the way that you,
• 25:22
  you believed at the time that you were designed for that.
• 25:25
  But what drew you in and what kept you captive in that
• 25:29
  lifestyle? Oh, great question.
• 25:34
  Well, if you look at homosexuality, the development
• 25:38
  issue, which I really believe it's, it's environment, it's
• 25:42
  psychological. You're not born that way.
• 25:44
  There's no gay gene or anything like that.
• 25:47
  And I, we can talk about that later to what it's genetically
• 25:51
  and statistically impossible to have the number of LGBTQ people
• 25:54
  we do today and less than a generation if we're saying this
• 25:58
  is genetic. So in the left won't say this,
• 26:01
  but it's so clear that it's environment, it's it's
• 26:05
  astounding. But when you have that type of
• 26:07
  lack of connection with your dad and you bonded with your mom
• 26:11
  when you hit puberty, your wires are crossed, you're looking
• 26:14
  through the world through the eyes of the feminine and which
• 26:17
  you secretly yearn. The desire is that connection,
• 26:21
  that male bonding, relational connectedness, which is all
• 26:25
  natural and normal, but it becomes sexualized.
• 26:29
  And so when that when you cross that threshold to, you have a
• 26:32
  legitimate need and then you need it, actually, it's like,
• 26:35
  oh, you have an itch that gets stretched.
• 26:37
  Oh, that feels good. I must be gay.
• 26:40
  This must be who I am. And you begin taking on an
• 26:44
  identity that's really based on false lies because you're,
• 26:49
  you're, yes, you are meeting the need, but it's destroying you in
• 26:53
  the process. And you're almost blinded by
• 26:56
  that because you're so lonely or so desperate to connect with the
• 27:00
  man. It becomes sexualized instead of
• 27:03
  that's not what real men do. That's not true masculinity.
• 27:06
  Men don't do that with one another, if that makes sense.
• 27:09
  And so, but yet you're so broken and desiring that relationship.
• 27:14
  You, you, you cross boundaries and you find other men that
• 27:17
  you're willing to do the same. So you, you live this lifestyle
• 27:21
  for five years and it gets to a point where it's just tumultuous
• 27:25
  and what, what happens in that point?
• 27:28
  Because you, you literally lose everything just overnight.
• 27:33
  What, what happened within that? And then how did you start to
• 27:39
  kind of almost pick up the pieces, I guess?
• 27:41
  Yeah, So, you know, I started realizing I had no, I had no
• 27:46
  idea what codependency was, and I started going to Al Anon.
• 27:51
  And actually the people who go to Al Anon are sicker than the
• 27:54
  addicts who go to Alcoholics Anonymous Drugs.
• 27:57
  My partner was an alcoholic addicted to pot, smoke
• 28:00
  cigarettes like a chimney. And I'm like, was I kind of get
• 28:05
  battered wife syndrome? Because now I'm like, Oh my
• 28:08
  gosh, I'm in this relationship. I don't want to leave.
• 28:11
  I'm being abused verbally, but realizing my partner's an
• 28:16
  alcoholic, a pothead. And so I start going to Alan
• 28:20
  ongoing and hearing these other stories.
• 28:22
  I'm like, you people are crazy to put up with this kind of
• 28:24
  stuff. And then I'm like, wait a
• 28:25
  minute, I'm crazy. I'm living, I'm packed.
• 28:29
  I'm leaving. This is I'm not an addict.
• 28:31
  I don't have these things. I'm not codependent.
• 28:33
  I can survive on my own. And I literally had made
• 28:38
  arrangements to leave but before all that actually happened my
• 28:43
  partner I had dyed my eyebrows and eyelashes black.
• 28:47
  And anyway it changed my appearance and my partner
• 28:49
  freaked out. He's like get out of the house.
• 28:51
  I said hey not a problem I'm leaving anyway I already have a
• 28:55
  spot. So I move out and he files a
• 28:57
  restraining order and takes all the money out of our account.
• 29:01
  We had a business account and literally overnight I went from
• 29:04
  everything to nothing except debt on credit cards.
• 29:08
  But during that time, I called the two Christian friends, the
• 29:12
  only two Christian friends that visited me in my sinful
• 29:15
  lifestyle because either other people didn't know or Christians
• 29:19
  didn't have anything to do with me.
• 29:21
  I actually reached out to them and told them what was
• 29:23
  happening. And also the friend that called
• 29:26
  me and asked me, Hey Jim, have you been reading your Bible?
• 29:29
  How can I pray for you and I, you know, before this happened
• 29:33
  that's I called Michelle. I told her I'm afraid God will
• 29:36
  change me if I read his word. But I never admitted this in the
• 29:40
  lifestyle. And This is why I say I've
• 29:42
  always walk with God. Well, I might have left God but
• 29:46
  he never left me. He still spoke to me.
• 29:48
  I still heard his voice when I was in the lifestyle.
• 29:52
  I just we have free will and we can choose to live our lives for
• 29:56
  God or not. And I chose not to live for him.
• 30:01
  How important was that, that those two people were open to
• 30:05
  having that conversation and to hear where you were and what you
• 30:08
  were going through? Because I do find it very
• 30:10
  interesting that, you know, Christians are the worst when it
• 30:13
  comes to caring for their own. We like to take them behind the
• 30:18
  barn and shoot them rather rather than caring for them.
• 30:22
  You know, our pastor likes to say a lot that, you know, people
• 30:26
  come to the church and they go, you're a bunch of hypocrites and
• 30:28
  you're like, if you only knew the half of it.
• 30:31
  Like we're way worse than what you think because we we all
• 30:34
  struggle with things. But how important was that to
• 30:37
  have people within the faith being open to hearing where
• 30:41
  you're at and to be able to embrace you, not necessarily
• 30:44
  being the sin piece, but to embrace who you are as a person?
• 30:48
  Well, and kind of to that, I did have one friend from college I
• 30:51
  was in Texas traveling through I think my brother's wedding and I
• 30:56
  was, they had said, yeah, she said, yeah, you can come stay
• 30:59
  with us. And then, you know, in route I'm
• 31:01
  driving there. I think I was coming up from
• 31:03
  Austin to the Dallas Fort Worth area.
• 31:05
  I get a phone call and I was told, Hey, you can't come to our
• 31:08
  house because you know of your lifestyle.
• 31:12
  And that was so hard. It just broke my heart.
• 31:14
  I mean, I went out that night and acted out sexually.
• 31:17
  I was that's I was hurt. That's what I was going to do.
• 31:20
  And I'm like, again, this is kind of, you know, Christians.
• 31:23
  I think we have a tendency to take, you know, and and shoot
• 31:26
  our own. But my buddy, my best friend
• 31:29
  Chris from college still to this day, and he actually came down,
• 31:33
  visited me a couple of times and I'm like, Hey, you can stay at
• 31:36
  her house. You've got a guest bedroom.
• 31:38
  And he's like, no, I'm not, I'm not going to stay at your house,
• 31:41
  but I'll, I'll meet your partner what can go out and have dinner
• 31:44
  or whatever, or you check out your business.
• 31:46
  And you know, Michelle and her husband did the same thing.
• 31:50
  Chris and his wife did the same thing.
• 31:52
  They came, they met us, we hung out, we had a meal and I said,
• 31:55
  hey, you guys, we've got a guest house, guest bedroom.
• 31:57
  You're welcome to. Oh, no, that's OK, you know, but
• 32:01
  they still, you know, came to the messy part.
• 32:03
  They, they, you know, that's what Jesus did.
• 32:05
  He came and ate with sinners, with the, with the people that
• 32:09
  the, you know, the elites, the religious people want nothing to
• 32:12
  do with. That's what my friends were.
• 32:14
  They were the only Jesus I saw. They came, they sat with me,
• 32:18
  they had a meal with me. And yet when I was broken and,
• 32:22
  you know, lost everything, guess who I called?
• 32:25
  I called them now, I told them what had happened, but kind of
• 32:28
  the, what I wasn't saying was you better start praying for me
• 32:31
  because God's doing something and changing my life.
• 32:35
  And you guys better start praying and interceding for me.
• 32:38
  And, and Chris actually was like, hey, Jim, we're going back
• 32:43
  to the farm in Pennsylvania to do hay and chop wood and plant
• 32:48
  oats and all that. Why don't you come back and come
• 32:51
  and come to the farm? And I did.
• 32:54
  And it was the first time I'd gone to church.
• 32:56
  I did, you know, hang out with all the men, you know, bail, You
• 32:59
  know, note to self, a stupid Californian, you don't take your
• 33:02
  shirt off when you're baling hay and stacking hay because, yeah,
• 33:08
  you will be in the bathtub with Epsom salts and oats trying to
• 33:12
  stop from itching. But I'm like, hey, the sun's
• 33:14
  out, shirts off. And that was, you know, live and
• 33:17
  learn. But that's a city boy, you know,
• 33:19
  working on a farm. But that was so healing and
• 33:24
  getting me out of the Palm Springs, you know, back to
• 33:26
  Gatum, the whole gay homosexual environment and into normalcy
• 33:31
  that here's what men and women do.
• 33:33
  This is what a family looks like.
• 33:34
  Men work hard. Women are, you know, at home
• 33:37
  doing the meals and just. It was it was beautiful and very
• 33:41
  restorative. And when I came back, I was
• 33:43
  like, OK, Lord, you know, my parents were saying come back
• 33:46
  home, son. And I'm like, I'm not going back
• 33:49
  home. I'm 28.
• 33:50
  I've lived the world. I had a business in my own home
• 33:52
  and I've lost everything. And I, you know, and part of me
• 33:56
  is like, as soon as they get right back to my feet, I'm going
• 33:58
  to go right back into the lifestyle.
• 34:00
  But God had another plan and I submitted to what he wanted for
• 34:04
  my life. I moved in with my parents and
• 34:07
  began to heal and restore the father son relationship, the the
• 34:12
  mother son relationship and I couldn't get good enough of God.
• 34:16
  I was going to three different churches and just getting
• 34:19
  cleansed by the Word and men's Bible studies and really trying
• 34:24
  just to, you know, get cleaned up, so to speak, and get my life
• 34:27
  back together. It's really amazing kind of how
• 34:30
  you talk about that. And then especially as you talk
• 34:33
  about, you know, I want to be rich, you know, I want to make a
• 34:35
  lot of money. And you're at this point where
• 34:37
  you have no money, right? And you're, you're going to
• 34:41
  Gold's Gym and you look down and there's a $5.00 bill.
• 34:45
  What was what was the shift point with that $5.00 bill that
• 34:48
  that really made an impact in your life?
• 34:51
  That you know what that God saw me in my desert literally not
• 34:56
  only you know, in Palm Springs, but desert, meaning no money no
• 35:00
  nothing. God saw me and that he would
• 35:04
  provide to meet my needs. I mean, so when I got served a
• 35:08
  restraining order for my partner, no, mind you, this this
• 35:10
  has been thrown out of court, expunged because it was nothing
• 35:14
  was substantiated. It was actually, it was it was a
• 35:18
  fraud because you can't file a false police report.
• 35:21
  But the police woman that served me was a believer.
• 35:26
  And like, I start having this conversation with her and I'm
• 35:28
  like, yeah, I know I was doing things that I shouldn't do,
• 35:31
  meaning, you know, acting out in a homosexual way.
• 35:34
  And she's like, you're not like the normal people we serve.
• 35:39
  Well, we end up becoming friends.
• 35:40
  She was, you know, she was in my wedding.
• 35:43
  Actually, she was, I had a partner wedding and again, most
• 35:48
  people don't become friends with police officers after they've
• 35:50
  been served restraining orders, but God just kind of again, just
• 35:55
  was doing this restorative work and brought people like that and
• 36:00
  that again, back to the $5. There was this other gal that I
• 36:04
  started telling her about Jesus. There's no more, There's no name
• 36:07
  more mighty, more powerful than the name of Jesus.
• 36:10
  And she was, like, freaked out that I was telling her this.
• 36:13
  And I'm like, yeah. And I have no money.
• 36:15
  I can't even turn on electricity because I need a deposit.
• 36:18
  And she goes, here's $100, gave me $100 bill, didn't even know
• 36:21
  me. But she goes, I want to help you
• 36:23
  so you can turn on electricity. And in Palm Springs in June,
• 36:27
  it's hotter than, you know what? And so I only went like one
• 36:31
  night without electricity, meaning air conditioning, you
• 36:34
  know, cools off to like a mere 100° at night.
• 36:37
  So I again, God just kept providing and bringing people
• 36:42
  and surrounding me in my life of sin, so to speak, but he was
• 36:47
  delivering me through the process and that I just think
• 36:50
  it's a beautiful thing. It really, it really is.
• 36:53
  So when did you decide to go to Azusa Pacific then?
• 36:56
  Well, that was the last thing I wanted to do, have anything to
• 36:59
  do with the church because I wanted to be Jesus, you know, to
• 37:04
  a lost and dying world, to people who really needed him.
• 37:07
  And that was really my heart. And to me, that was not the
• 37:11
  church and but my mentor for about 10 years that he, he and I
• 37:16
  met on a weekly basis, said Jim. What if you could go and help
• 37:21
  equip the church how to respond to LGBTQ issues?
• 37:25
  And I was like, oh, that makes sense.
• 37:27
  That's kind of strategic. That would help my, you know,
• 37:31
  make my voice be a little bit more exponential than just one
• 37:33
  voice speaking. I could equip pastors and others
• 37:36
  on these topics and prophetically.
• 37:39
  So that's all come into fruition and I've done this on the global
• 37:43
  platform for a couple of decades now and I'm right.
• 37:48
  I'm right now I'm part of the global Rainbow Crossers
• 37:51
  Alliance. We have 70 nations of former
• 37:53
  LGBTQ people that are walking with God and it had radical
• 37:59
  their lives radically transformed and have come out
• 38:02
  of, you know, the whole alphabet lifestyle.
• 38:05
  I mean, I don't have no idea where it's at today.
• 38:07
  It's like a million plus, you know, but it's amazing how God,
• 38:12
  you know, black, white, brown, male and female.
• 38:16
  He's he can redeem anyone. And actually a new friend of
• 38:20
  mine for female former trans male who removed her breast,
• 38:25
  she's actually as God has been healing her is regrowing her
• 38:29
  breasts. And that's the first miracle of
• 38:32
  that I've heard globally. And some some ladies in my
• 38:35
  prayer team were so excited. They've been praying for that
• 38:38
  that even God can you know, we hear it through Scripture what
• 38:42
  Jesus was able to heal and restore.
• 38:44
  But to actually hear that a woman that is that removed her
• 38:48
  breasts that they're actually God's growing them back is just
• 38:52
  amazing. But anyway, these are stories
• 38:55
  that God's doing here in America and around the world.
• 38:57
  Man, it's so it's so powerful and there's there's kind of this
• 39:01
  piece within your story and I think a lot of people can relate
• 39:04
  to this, especially people that have made mistakes in their
• 39:06
  life. You make a mistake and you feel
• 39:08
  like that's going to be the mark, the mark that is going to
• 39:12
  follow you the rest of your life, that you're never going to
• 39:16
  find someone that's going to love you because of that mark.
• 39:18
  I mean, you've talked about it, that even your partner had a
• 39:22
  bunch of different things going on medically and God protected
• 39:26
  you from that. But then you get out of that and
• 39:29
  now, now you're in this place. Well, OK, well, I live this
• 39:33
  lifestyle now who's going to want me because I live that
• 39:36
  lifestyle and like, how am I going to find a wife?
• 39:38
  Especially as you know, you're, you're in your early 30s, if I
• 39:41
  recall correctly. And you know, yes, the good ones
• 39:44
  are taken usually by that time. There's a lot of truth to that.
• 39:51
  Especially as a pastor, not going to say anything, but you
• 39:54
  know, how, how did that transition kind of open up?
• 39:58
  How did how did God restore that peace?
• 40:02
  When you met your wife at the admissions office.
• 40:05
  So, yeah, that was just absolutely epic.
• 40:08
  Now, when I came, when I started coming back to the Lord, that
• 40:11
  wasn't on my mind to get married and, you know, just, you know,
• 40:15
  turn into this heterosexual dude.
• 40:18
  But as as I talked about, as those needs started getting met
• 40:23
  developmentally that weren't met when I was little and older and
• 40:26
  through some great counseling that, you know, God just kind of
• 40:32
  told me, Hey, when I start healing you, you can't lust
• 40:35
  after women like you've lusted after men.
• 40:37
  And as I restore you now, I'll be the first to say I can.
• 40:42
  I am still tempted with same sex attraction that has not left.
• 40:46
  And that's a whole nother conversation.
• 40:48
  But our it's, it's why I wrote the second book.
• 40:51
  Our temptation doesn't define us and I don't act out.
• 40:54
  I don't live in that lifestyle. I don't do I don't do that
• 40:57
  anymore. That's been good grief over 20
• 41:00
  years, almost 25. But again, that's not our
• 41:04
  identity is how we're tempted. I mean, I get tempted by all
• 41:07
  kinds of weird stuff and that, but again, our temptation isn't
• 41:10
  our identity. So is that is that kind of
• 41:15
  change and God started healing me.
• 41:18
  I, you know, really started again taking on that manly role,
• 41:22
  the masculinity. But I also had men in my life
• 41:24
  and Nathan, this is so key men at the church that taught me how
• 41:28
  to not be afraid of a ball. I talk about that in my book,
• 41:31
  you know, because that's one reason why I didn't do well with
• 41:34
  sports. I'm afraid of the ball.
• 41:36
  Well, that's a problem. Will they help me overcome that
• 41:39
  fear and another guy talk about dating.
• 41:41
  This is how you date a woman. This is what you do kiss her on
• 41:44
  the first date and I'm like what kiss her what that's not godly.
• 41:47
  That's it's not Christian. I have all this garbage crap
• 41:50
  from all this bad Christian advice and he's like, no, they
• 41:54
  need to know you're interested. And if she's not interested,
• 41:57
  move on. That's OK.
• 41:59
  But if you don't have that chemistry, find someone else.
• 42:02
  And so little things like that, men coming alongside of me and
• 42:05
  teaching how to do that. And I, you know, I had a blast
• 42:08
  dating as a the singles pastor. It was a lot of fun.
• 42:11
  But my heart was now I was honorable, but my heart was, I
• 42:16
  wanted a woman that loved Jesus more than I did.
• 42:19
  And that's really hard to find. And I found my wife, and when I
• 42:23
  met her, I saw Jesus in her eyes and I kind of briefly told her
• 42:28
  my story and it didn't freak her out.
• 42:30
  And I got her number and I married her nine months later.
• 42:34
  Well, I think it's, I find it funny that you, you're kind of
• 42:37
  tricked her into getting her number, you know, for the, for
• 42:41
  getting her in the orchestra at your church.
• 42:43
  And then you felt bad and then you, I don't know, there's,
• 42:48
  there's some to that. Story yeah.
• 42:50
  So let me redeem that a little bit because I I, she told me my
• 42:54
  professional musician, she's an oboist.
• 42:57
  And I'm like, oh, we hire a we hire an orchestra.
• 43:00
  Let me get your number and I'll give it to our worship pastor.
• 43:03
  So I did get her number through covert means.
• 43:07
  Maybe Nathan is what you're alluding to.
• 43:10
  Well, I think it's also funny because the The Elbow isn't
• 43:13
  necessarily the one that you hire for the Christmas concert.
• 43:17
  Well, if you want to tune the orchestra, you do.
• 43:21
  But so I, and mind you, I had no idea what an oboe was.
• 43:27
  She's like, Oh yeah, it's a double Reed instrument.
• 43:29
  And I I'm like, Oh yeah, that helps a lot.
• 43:32
  So anyway, I think I read about the double reeds in, in, in
• 43:37
  Egypt, right? The double reeds, that's how
• 43:39
  they. Yes, exactly, exactly.
• 43:41
  It's where they found Moses, you know, so I felt bad about
• 43:45
  calling her from the just give me her cell number and I'm like,
• 43:48
  OK, I've got a man up. I'm that was really wimpy.
• 43:52
  I'm just going to call, you know, the main zoo specific line
• 43:55
  and I did and I told them, you know, I'm looking for, you know,
• 43:58
  gave her them her name and her assistant answers the phone and
• 44:04
  says who's this? And I'm like Pastor Jim Doman.
• 44:08
  I met her yesterday and she's like, hold on a second, puts me
• 44:11
  on hold, comes back, she goes she's in a meeting and I'm like,
• 44:14
  oh, I'm getting blown off. Here's my number.
• 44:17
  Call Me Maybe you know, so I leave her my I give her my
• 44:23
  number and I'm like, this is this ain't going anywhere.
• 44:25
  I was really actually kind of bummed.
• 44:27
  And later that day, about 435 o'clock, I get a call and she's
• 44:31
  like, this is Amanda. You called me earlier and I'm
• 44:34
  like, oh, I'm oh, hi, Amanda. Wow, I didn't think.
• 44:38
  And I'm like, are you, are you married?
• 44:40
  I I don't know why that just blurted out.
• 44:43
  Of my mouth that's the best question to ask, by the way,
• 44:46
  when you. Like a girl are.
• 44:47
  You married, do you want? Kids, but I'm like because you
• 44:51
  know, all the good ones they're taking and I'm like, oh, I bet
• 44:53
  you she's married. I better find out because I got
• 44:55
  her number and she's like, no, I'm not married.
• 44:57
  I'm like, oh, hey, do you want to go out sometime?
• 45:00
  I'd love to, you know, take you out for coffee.
• 45:02
  And she's like, yeah, I'm open to dating.
• 45:05
  Sure. And so, you know, we set up a
• 45:07
  coffee and I was so excited and I'll never forget.
• 45:11
  No, she didn't tell me this to afterwards, but she goes I give
• 45:14
  the best hugs. The first time I met her and we
• 45:17
  were talking and Nathan, I knew I was going to marry her again.
• 45:23
  I saw Jesus in her eyes. She loved the Lord and she
• 45:27
  wasn't like a goody tushu Christian, if you know what I
• 45:29
  mean, kind of she was just real down to earth and just love God,
• 45:35
  love Jesus. And I could see it in her eyes
• 45:38
  and just she was just so kind and so sweet.
• 45:41
  So I give her a hug that night. And but you know, note to self
• 45:44
  dudes, if God ever tells you you're going to marry the this
• 45:46
  girl, don't tell that to them. You know, I didn't.
• 45:49
  I've learned through the story of Joseph.
• 45:51
  You don't tell your brothers. Hey, you're all going to be
• 45:53
  bowing down to me one day. No, you know, keep, keep those
• 45:57
  secrets between you and the Lord.
• 45:59
  Don't share, don't share that kind of info or Intel anyway.
• 46:03
  Yeah, so we dated and yeah, nine months later that when met her
• 46:07
  in October and actually in California we were right in the
• 46:12
  battle is in 2008 and I was very much actively a part of changing
• 46:17
  California's constitution, Article 1, Section 7.5 that only
• 46:22
  a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized.
• 46:26
  Now that was back in 2008. And actually I need to check
• 46:30
  because I actually testified in Sacramento.
• 46:34
  I don't remember if they actually amended the
• 46:35
  Constitution or not through the vote, but there's actually AUS
• 46:40
  Supreme Court case coming up with I think it's Kim Davis from
• 46:44
  you know, I think she's Wisconsin or Minnesota, a
• 46:46
  registrar that took a stand on marriage.
• 46:49
  I'd love to see marriage get returned back to man woman only.
• 46:53
  I think a child, any child deserves a mom and a dad.
• 46:56
  So that's a whole other conversation too.
• 46:59
  But I you know, and I got to tell you this too.
• 47:01
  This is what's wild. Getting married, having kids,
• 47:05
  homosexuality in this whole gay stuff is just not even a part of
• 47:08
  our life. I forget that I was gay.
• 47:10
  And at times I'm like, did I really do that?
• 47:13
  Was that really me? Because it seems like it was so
• 47:16
  long ago. And that's, you know, every
• 47:19
  night I'm tucking my kids into bed, I'm praying with them.
• 47:22
  I, we've been in soccer season, I've been, I've been coaching
• 47:24
  and, you know, coaching them and doing all kinds of fun things
• 47:28
  like that, you know, going on vacations and this whole past is
• 47:32
  just really isn't part of our everyday life.
• 47:35
  And that's a, that's a great thing.
• 47:38
  And again, and I assured this ruler doesn't mean I can't be
• 47:40
  tempted. And I, I, I would say if people
• 47:43
  say, Oh, I'm not tempted anymore, I, I think you're,
• 47:46
  you're skating on thin ice. I, I'd rather come from a point
• 47:50
  of humility that yes, I could fall that rather than I've
• 47:54
  arrived. That's not going to happen to
• 47:55
  me. And I've got good men in my life
• 47:58
  that I can share and confess to when I do mess up.
• 48:01
  But most of the time it's I'm asking forgiveness for my wife
• 48:05
  because of my tone or I snapped at my kids and I've got to ask
• 48:09
  them, will you forgive Daddy? You know, and that's probably
• 48:12
  more of my sin issues at the, you know, what I'm dealing with
• 48:16
  now, so. Well, it's interesting that you
• 48:18
  mentioned that you were doing that in 2008 because you had a
• 48:20
  lot of stuff going on in 2008. You're, you know, you're, you're
• 48:24
  getting your masters in divinity at the time.
• 48:26
  You're also training to do your Ironman triathlon, you know,
• 48:30
  140.6 grueling miles of work and you're, you're doing all of this
• 48:37
  in this season of life of rebuilding and God is restoring.
• 48:41
  And, you know, I find it really interesting during this time
• 48:44
  that there's a lot of stuff going on and there's a lot of
• 48:46
  challenges to identity from what it sounds like.
• 48:49
  I'm curious during that period of of prepping for your Iron
• 48:54
  Man, running the Iron Man, doing your your Mdiv, what was God
• 49:01
  starting to stir inside of you to prep you for what was to come
• 49:05
  later on in life? You know, there, I'm a high
• 49:08
  achiever, if you haven't figured that out, kind of that
• 49:11
  entrepreneurial thing. I wanted to get fixed.
• 49:14
  You know, I wanted, if I go to seminary, you can't get any
• 49:18
  higher. I mean, you can go to church,
• 49:19
  you can become a pastor, you can go to seminary.
• 49:22
  I mean, you can keep trying to kind of achieve these earthly
• 49:25
  goals to get closer to God, so to speak.
• 49:28
  And I'm like, God, I want to be fixed.
• 49:31
  And I'll, I'll unpack that in a second.
• 49:33
  But on the Iron Man side of things, athletics exceeding, you
• 49:37
  know, it's funny, my dad did tries, he never did an Iron Man.
• 49:41
  And when I'm like, hey, dad, I'm doing Iron Man.
• 49:43
  He's like, is this what this is all about?
• 49:45
  You trying to outdo me? I'm like, well, you said it, not
• 49:48
  me. You know, I, I, I just want to
• 49:50
  kind of do the, you know, the impossible, you know, 140.6
• 49:55
  miles. By the way, I did it in 13 hours
• 49:57
  and 52 minutes and my whole family was there and they got
• 50:01
  tired watching me. They went back to the hotel and
• 50:03
  took naps and then came back out to church beyond as I never
• 50:07
  stopped except, you know, T1T2 to sit down and change from, you
• 50:11
  know, biking shoes to running shoes kind of a thing.
• 50:14
  But that was really transitional or helpful in the sense of I was
• 50:19
  the president of Multi Sport Ministries and Men's Triathlon
• 50:23
  Club. But that identity of working
• 50:26
  with men, coming alongside of men, I was a safe person men
• 50:30
  could share battles, struggles, victories with.
• 50:33
  And so I kind of developed just this great discipleship,
• 50:37
  mentoring and helping journey with men with their issues as I
• 50:41
  was transferring open with mine and my victories and failures.
• 50:45
  So it was kind of like this on both sides of the spectrum.
• 50:49
  So I'm actually getting all this practical stuff, training with
• 50:52
  men on runs and swims in the ocean and bikes through San
• 50:57
  Antonio, Cannon in in Orange County and through all the hills
• 51:02
  and going up into PCH all the way down to Huntington and
• 51:05
  Newport, Laguna, then back on the Santa Ana River Trail.
• 51:08
  I mean, I rode my bike all over Southern California, Orange
• 51:11
  County with other men and trained with other men.
• 51:15
  And so men that were better than me, men that were at the same
• 51:19
  level and ones that, you know, we're trying to, you know, grow.
• 51:22
  And so that kind of played out in a great way of building my
• 51:26
  identity in my, in my masculinity on the divinity side
• 51:31
  of things or might be more on the spiritual side.
• 51:33
  So as I shared, I wanted to get fixed and I ended up going to
• 51:39
  Israel and was in the Garden of Gethsemane.
• 51:42
  And I talked about this in my book.
• 51:44
  Not a mistake, but I think it was so powerful and really mind
• 51:48
  changing and really understanding identity because
• 51:52
  my former life was really kind of my identity.
• 51:56
  And I looked up going God, why me?
• 51:58
  I've asked him for, you know at the then it was like 3 decades
• 52:01
  now, you know, I kind of got over it, but I'm 50, I'll be 52
• 52:05
  soon. But for 30 years of my life I
• 52:08
  beg and pleaded why me, why me? Why did I have to have the store
• 52:12
  to my flesh and the Lord just so gently and kindly and graciously
• 52:17
  said who else was in the Garden of Gethsemane begging not to
• 52:22
  have something done. And Matthew's account, it's a
• 52:25
  one way conversation. Jesus is praying and pleading
• 52:28
  with God, not, you know, take this cup from me, but not my
• 52:32
  will, but your will be done. And Matthew's account, we don't
• 52:35
  even hear God answering Jesus and he's begging and pleading,
• 52:40
  not wanting to go to the cross, but he submits to the will of
• 52:44
  the Father and says, not my will, but your will be done.
• 52:47
  And I'm like, OK, God, that was Jesus.
• 52:50
  I ain't know Jesus. I'm a Sinner, you know, so this
• 52:54
  doesn't help me. And then the Lord again
• 52:56
  graciously and kindly said, who else pled three times like Jesus
• 53:01
  did, that the thorn in his flesh would be removed?
• 53:05
  And I'm like, well, and This is why Paul, the apostle Paul is
• 53:08
  one of my heroes. And in that conversation, Paul
• 53:12
  writes, God a record, God saying, my grace is sufficient,
• 53:17
  my power is made perfect in weakness.
• 53:21
  And then Paul goes on, I'll boast all the more about my
• 53:23
  weaknesses. So I kind of took that on and
• 53:26
  OK, I'm going to quit bitching and complaining about God.
• 53:30
  Why me and man up and own it and say I'm going to be grateful for
• 53:35
  the thorn of my flesh because it's kept me humble.
• 53:39
  It's, it's allowed me to receive blessings and not curses as I
• 53:42
  choose to follow and walk with God and follow the Spirit and
• 53:47
  not my depraved flesh. And I have to die to my flesh
• 53:51
  daily and walk in the Spirit daily.
• 53:54
  And it's daily. And what I mean daily, it's not
• 53:57
  just in the morning. Sometimes it's throughout the
• 53:59
  entire day. But you know, God's mercies are
• 54:01
  new every morning. And I say that, Nathan, because
• 54:04
  I haven't arrived, but I would rather be in that position, that
• 54:09
  position, like Paul, boasting all the more gladly about my
• 54:13
  weaknesses so Christ's strength can rest upon me.
• 54:16
  Or I should say His grace. His grace as it's, you know,
• 54:20
  it's made perfect in weakness. You and your wife have three
• 54:25
  beautiful kids. Thank you.
• 54:29
  I'm I'm curious, what have you learned about yourself as going
• 54:36
  through fatherdom of being a father, seeing your kids, seeing
• 54:40
  your daughter, seeing your? Son.
• 54:43
  What, what, what changed in your perspective, the way that you
• 54:47
  saw yourself when you had kids, especially, you know, it's kind
• 54:52
  of this quasi thing because you become a dad and you see
• 54:55
  yourself as a dad, but then you also see your dad and the way
• 54:58
  that your dad interacted with you.
• 55:01
  And so it's this kind of quasi moment where you're going, this
• 55:05
  is the way that my dad treated me.
• 55:06
  This is the way that I want to treat my kids.
• 55:08
  What did you learn about yourself when you when you held
• 55:12
  your first child? So I'm leaving back up so I you
• 55:15
  know, like I tell my dad, I, you know, to God me, if the Lord
• 55:19
  made me in your any better looking.
• 55:20
  I couldn't handle myself. You know, that's my healthy way
• 55:23
  to say I don't think I'm not that good looking, but a great,
• 55:27
  great friend in San Diego. She goes, Jim, you and your wife
• 55:30
  need to have more kids. You make beautiful babies.
• 55:31
  I'm like, thank you Benny. Anyway, so kind.
• 55:35
  I'm throwing that out there because it's not about external
• 55:37
  beauty. It's what's in the inside that's
• 55:39
  important. But as this, you know, what God
• 55:44
  has blessed us with, I've really been like I, I want in my book
• 55:49
  talks about this not a mistake about parenting differently.
• 55:53
  Now I, you know, let me give an example there, you know, and
• 55:56
  today we probably be considered abuse, but I don't, you know, I
• 55:59
  don't think there's anything wrong with it.
• 56:00
  But you know, I got the wooden spoon, the belt, the Tabasco
• 56:04
  with my mouth and soap. You know, I didn't swear for the
• 56:08
  longest time in my life because if my mouth had been clean so
• 56:10
  much, I think all the any bad words were washed away.
• 56:13
  But you know, that's kind of how we were brought up and but we
• 56:17
  decided we're doing things differently.
• 56:19
  As I mentioned, you know, the none of our kids are on devices
• 56:22
  or, you know, that we're not watching TV and having them
• 56:25
  programmed, you know, with demonic things instead of things
• 56:29
  that are of God. And so we, you know, we grew up
• 56:34
  watching TV, although there are certain shows we couldn't watch,
• 56:36
  but we've decided to do that differently.
• 56:39
  I am super intentional. And dads, if you're listening,
• 56:43
  it is so important your relationship with you and your
• 56:46
  son. And if you have a daughter it
• 56:50
  that is also so critically important because that's how
• 56:54
  they're going to learn how to choose a good, godly, righteous
• 56:58
  man with your relationship with them.
• 57:01
  And that will start early and build on.
• 57:04
  And my wife says I, my wife has told me multiple times she goes,
• 57:08
  I cannot believe the relationship you have with our
• 57:11
  son and each of our daughters. It's so unique.
• 57:15
  You have such a strong bond and connectedness to them.
• 57:19
  But Nathan, I've been super intentional with that.
• 57:23
  You know, I stunk at soccer, but you know what, all my 3 kids
• 57:26
  like to play soccer. So I coach, I go to their games,
• 57:29
  I go to all their practices. I'm there, I'm cheering them on,
• 57:32
  I'm supporting them. You know, I've been working, I
• 57:36
  work from home for 10 years. In the early part of their
• 57:39
  lives. Not everybody can do that.
• 57:41
  That was another blessing. So literally, I work from home,
• 57:44
  but I was with my kids, my family around the clock during
• 57:48
  those critical developmental ages.
• 57:51
  And I think that helps them build their identity, their
• 57:55
  masculinity for my son or their femininity As for my two
• 57:58
  daughters and just kind of what that looks like.
• 58:02
  And, you know, my daughter's tell me stuff, my son tells me
• 58:05
  stuff, you know, just between US.
• 58:08
  And that's a great place to be. I mean, I'm their parent.
• 58:12
  I'm not like trying to hope, hear me.
• 58:14
  I'm not trying to tell parents you need to be friends with your
• 58:16
  kids. But it's that kind of a
• 58:19
  relationship that, yes, I'm the father.
• 58:22
  I am the disciplinarian. You know, I've got the big
• 58:24
  booming voice when some, you know, they don't want to listen
• 58:26
  to mom, but you know, but we back one another, We support one
• 58:31
  another. And again, we just we've raised
• 58:33
  our kids really differently than even how my wife was raised.
• 58:37
  Now, I'm not saying we were raised like, you know, terrible
• 58:41
  or anything, but we've just learned and we've adapted and
• 58:45
  have been very intentional with being relational with our kids
• 58:48
  and focusing on what they're interested in, not what I want
• 58:52
  them to do or what I think they should do.
• 58:54
  We want to come and support their God-given gifts, talent,
• 58:59
  whatever that might look like, and kind of fan those flames
• 59:02
  within them. I'm going to walk one thing back
• 59:08
  because I want to, I want to ask you this next question.
• 59:10
  And it it, it, it goes back to what I asked you just a second
• 59:14
  ago about your, your three kids. And I'm going to walk that back
• 59:16
  here and you'll know why you and your wife actually had five
• 59:21
  children together, baby Samantha Aaliyah, baby Shane Riker,
• 59:26
  Asher, my wife and I, we've, we've both, we've experienced
• 59:30
  miscarriages. You, you've experienced it in a
• 59:33
  very, very real way of, of holding baby Samantha, your,
• 59:38
  your first daughter in your hands.
• 59:41
  And there is such a tremendous tearing of the heart when you go
• 59:47
  through that. I'm I'm curious how, how do you
• 59:52
  support your spouse through that type of grief, but then also how
• 59:58
  do you walk through that kind of grief?
• 1:00:02
  Of anything I've done in my life, that has been the most
• 1:00:06
  devastating, hardest thing ever mean.
• 1:00:09
  Think about this. I was gay.
• 1:00:10
  Come out of the lifestyle. I'm a pastor, I get married, we
• 1:00:14
  get pregnant and then we end up holding a 16 week baby in our
• 1:00:20
  hands. It was in miscarriage of 16
• 1:00:22
  weeks and we saw our daughter and she had little.
• 1:00:27
  You see the gums, you see the teeny tiny little toes and
• 1:00:31
  fingers and the nails, the lips. I mean the whole little bodies
• 1:00:35
  formed at at 60. I mean, even before it's 16
• 1:00:38
  weeks and I'm holding Samantha in our hands And it, it
• 1:00:42
  absolutely devastated us. We took I took a week off work,
• 1:00:46
  she took a week off work and we literally just wept and cried
• 1:00:50
  for a week. I mean, we were a mess.
• 1:00:53
  And I and it I am so pro-life and I'll debate anybody but
• 1:01:00
  anybody. And we had actually medical
• 1:01:02
  professionals that are complete idiots and morons.
• 1:01:05
  And so I can't so almost they literally said that it it is a a
• 1:01:11
  pile of tissue and it's such a flippin lie from the enemy.
• 1:01:17
  And for anyone I we've actually held baby Samantha at 16 weeks.
• 1:01:21
  It is a human. It is a baby that just has to
• 1:01:25
  live inside the womb and it is everything a human.
• 1:01:29
  It has nothing to do with the pile of cells or a mass.
• 1:01:32
  I think they called it a, a mass of cells.
• 1:01:35
  And it anyway, that was that was so infuriating.
• 1:01:38
  But we were so devastated, especially for our first.
• 1:01:42
  And what was hard, Amanda worked in an office with a lot of women
• 1:01:47
  and everybody kept getting pregnant.
• 1:01:49
  Everybody kept getting pregnant and having babies.
• 1:01:51
  And we weren't getting pregnant and we weren't able to have a
• 1:01:54
  child. So that was just, it was just
• 1:01:58
  devastating. And again, I think any, anything
• 1:02:01
  that I've gone through in this life that has been the most
• 1:02:04
  devastating, hardest thing we had to go through.
• 1:02:09
  A dear friend of mine told me, he said, and he was younger than
• 1:02:12
  me, actually a roommate of mine, JD, He said, Jim, you now have
• 1:02:16
  another, I'll get choked up, another spiritual language where
• 1:02:20
  you can connect with people with loss and have lost children.
• 1:02:24
  I mean, I did a funeral for a triathlon buddy, great athlete,
• 1:02:28
  by the way. They had a full term still birth
• 1:02:32
  baby and it's like, Oh my gosh, I can't, I just can't.
• 1:02:37
  And I did the memorial service. It just it rips your heart out.
• 1:02:41
  You know, it's not fair, it's not right.
• 1:02:43
  How does the good God allow these things to happen?
• 1:02:46
  And you know, you ask all these questions and how can this be?
• 1:02:50
  And thankfully Amanda and I were able to get pregnant again and
• 1:02:56
  we have our daughter, Elia. And then we lost our 3rd
• 1:03:01
  pregnancy at 14 weeks, baby Shane.
• 1:03:04
  And that was another. You know, what's funny is I
• 1:03:08
  evangelicals, and this is kind of a stereotype, but
• 1:03:12
  evangelicals you, we talked before the show about
• 1:03:14
  Catholicism and stuff. I think Catholics, Catholics
• 1:03:18
  have a better understanding of suffering and suffrage.
• 1:03:21
  It's kind of why I think they have Christ on the cross and the
• 1:03:23
  crucifix to, to remind them of the pain and suffering that we
• 1:03:28
  do go through in this life instead of we're all happy all
• 1:03:32
  the time. That's why, you know, a lot of
• 1:03:33
  the Psalms are laments. But when we lost our second, I
• 1:03:37
  was sitting in the Kaiser Hospital parking lot and the
• 1:03:41
  Archbishop of the Orange County Diocese called me about an event
• 1:03:46
  I was doing. And I told them, I said, Kevin,
• 1:03:50
  you called me. And it caught me in a really bad
• 1:03:52
  time. We just found out we're losing
• 1:03:54
  our second baby or a third. And he said, Jim, let me
• 1:04:01
  encourage you, when the baby passes, I would like to come to
• 1:04:06
  your home and hold the memorial service.
• 1:04:08
  I don't want to tell you what to do, but I really think it's
• 1:04:12
  important to celebrate the life, although brief, of your son and
• 1:04:18
  let you and your wife process that.
• 1:04:21
  And Nathan, that was the most beautiful thing.
• 1:04:24
  No evangelical offered this to us.
• 1:04:26
  And this is what just drives me nuts for him to say, let me come
• 1:04:30
  to your home. I actually made a little coffin
• 1:04:32
  out of the wooden box. We put our baby in there and he
• 1:04:36
  did a memorial service for my wife and I and our my in laws.
• 1:04:41
  And we got to celebrate those 14 weeks of baby Shane's life,
• 1:04:46
  who's now with the Lord and grieve his loss appropriately.
• 1:04:51
  Instead of kind of what I really felt on our first is it was just
• 1:04:55
  my wife and I crying for a week that we had no celebration of
• 1:04:59
  life or anything like that. And that really would have been
• 1:05:02
  helpful if, and I was on pastoral staff, if pastors would
• 1:05:07
  have came alongside of us and offered to do something like
• 1:05:11
  that. But again, now I feel like I
• 1:05:12
  have a deeper spiritual language.
• 1:05:15
  And when we've had friends go through epic losses like full
• 1:05:19
  term or losing children is we're able to come alongside and
• 1:05:24
  hopefully minister a little bit more empathetically.
• 1:05:27
  I, I think there's something really powerful about you about
• 1:05:30
  what you just said is that a lot of the, the things that we go
• 1:05:33
  through in life, a lot of the thorns, a lot of those moments
• 1:05:36
  of, I like to call them the Crucible moments of life where
• 1:05:40
  God is purifying pieces about you.
• 1:05:43
  And we may not like that process, but that process opens
• 1:05:47
  up opportunities down the road to be able to speak life into
• 1:05:50
  other people, to love on other people, to be able to and say,
• 1:05:53
  hey, when, you know, when a couple loses a child, like I, I
• 1:05:57
  remember, you know, maybe not great timing, but I remember
• 1:06:00
  when we, when we lost one of our children to a miscarriage.
• 1:06:04
  And I remember telling my wife, I said, this is going to be an
• 1:06:06
  opportunity for us to connect with other people that go
• 1:06:10
  through this and we can encourage them and we can love
• 1:06:13
  on them. And, and this is this is a
• 1:06:15
  moment that God is giving us an opportunity through this hurt,
• 1:06:18
  through this pain to be able to connect with other people.
• 1:06:21
  And everything that you carry in life is an opportunity to do
• 1:06:25
  that. The the heart of the problem,
• 1:06:26
  the harder the situation, the better you are equipped to be
• 1:06:30
  able to speak life. You know, it's kind of like I
• 1:06:35
  remember you talking about someone asking you about
• 1:06:38
  celibacy in church and and someone said, well, maybe you're
• 1:06:44
  supposed to be celibate and the. You know, they gave me a verse
• 1:06:48
  and go, God, hold on. No, they gave me a verse and I'm
• 1:06:52
  like, it was the most hurtful thing.
• 1:06:54
  I'm like, what she's like here, God gave me this verse to you
• 1:06:57
  and it's just a verse on a piece of paper.
• 1:06:59
  So now I'm curious. I look it up and it's like
• 1:07:02
  you're to be a eunuch. I'm like, are you flipping
• 1:07:05
  kidding me that like, who comes up with this?
• 1:07:08
  I don't think that was from God, honestly.
• 1:07:10
  You know what I mean. Yeah, but the but people that
• 1:07:13
  that mean well that are Speaking of the things that they they
• 1:07:17
  shouldn't be speaking into. And I mean realizing that the
• 1:07:21
  things that we go through in our life, those are the things that
• 1:07:25
  God is equipping us to speak into other people's lives.
• 1:07:27
  A really good friend of mine, she, you know, she had a
• 1:07:30
  traumatic, traumatic brain injury.
• 1:07:32
  She she's had cancer numerous times.
• 1:07:35
  And the last time that she got cancer, when she went in ever,
• 1:07:39
  all the nurses were kept coming in her room and they kept
• 1:07:41
  saying, you know, she kept saying there's something wrong
• 1:07:44
  because you guys keep coming in my room.
• 1:07:45
  Like, am I dying? And they're like, no, you're
• 1:07:47
  just the happiest person in the entire hospital.
• 1:07:50
  Like we just, we just want to be in here instead of everywhere
• 1:07:53
  else. And the, the, the reason why she
• 1:07:55
  was like that is because she continued to look at every
• 1:07:59
  single trial in her life is an opportunity to use, to speak
• 1:08:04
  into other people's lives. And that's, and that's something
• 1:08:08
  that I think is so key in your life that all the, all the pain,
• 1:08:11
  all the hurt, all the things that you've gone through, you've
• 1:08:14
  taken those things, God has taken those things and he's
• 1:08:17
  truly planted beautiful flowers, beautiful fruit in your life.
• 1:08:23
  Even though we, we fall short, God still uses those things.
• 1:08:27
  Jim, you know, I've, I've really loved our conversation.
• 1:08:32
  There is so much wisdom in what you bring to a conversation.
• 1:08:36
  I know that our conversation is going to spark moments of
• 1:08:39
  transformation in many people's lives who are hearing this
• 1:08:42
  today. And I and I have one more
• 1:08:44
  question for you, but before I do ask it for all of you guys
• 1:08:47
  listening, I want you to take a moment to go and connect with
• 1:08:51
  Jim. If you like Jim's story, if you
• 1:08:52
  want to hear more, go learn more by checking out his book Not a
• 1:08:56
  Mistake or Breaking Sin's Grasp. Or if you have younger kids, he
• 1:09:00
  has a great young kids book series for every age of a young
• 1:09:05
  child, which is called the Button Kids series.
• 1:09:07
  I was looking at it the other night and I thought, man, this
• 1:09:10
  is this is really great being able to define what these things
• 1:09:13
  are when our culture just seems to be really haywire and all
• 1:09:17
  this stuff. And so go check him out.
• 1:09:19
  He's got some really great content to be able to equip you,
• 1:09:22
  especially if you have teenagers that are going to public school
• 1:09:26
  that are questioning things. He has a a ton of information
• 1:09:30
  that can equip you to be able to walk with your kids through some
• 1:09:33
  of the darkest things that our world is really going through
• 1:09:36
  right now. So you can find all that
• 1:09:38
  information. I'm going to put it in the show
• 1:09:39
  notes here for you guys to connect.
• 1:09:40
  But Jim, so many of our listeners are trying to break
• 1:09:44
  free from things that are holding them back.
• 1:09:48
  And so I'm curious for the person that is listening that
• 1:09:52
  feel like they failed over and over and over and they feel like
• 1:09:56
  it's impossible to break that hold that that captivity that
• 1:10:00
  they feel in their life. What would you say to them in
• 1:10:03
  truth and an encouragement today?
• 1:10:05
  Keep fighting, don't give up. And This is why I wrote the book
• 1:10:10
  that I did. And this is kind of the theme on
• 1:10:12
  breaking sin's grasp. Your temptation doesn't define
• 1:10:16
  you is I used to ask this questions from John chapter 5
• 1:10:20
  the healing the paralytic man at at the pool of the Theta he
• 1:10:25
  Jesus asks A crippled man, do you want to be healed and Nathan
• 1:10:30
  I've I'm like I literally say this in my book.
• 1:10:32
  What a stupid question. Of course, if you're crippled,
• 1:10:35
  you can't of course you want to get healed.
• 1:10:38
  But after being in ministry for more than two decades, you know
• 1:10:41
  what I've come to realize I know why Jesus asked him.
• 1:10:44
  It was not a rhetorical question is because people do not want to
• 1:10:48
  be healed. They don't want to be set free.
• 1:10:51
  And so I again, you've got to kind of unpack that is well, if
• 1:10:56
  you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again,
• 1:11:00
  you're missing something. And that really that was kind of
• 1:11:03
  the premise of the book is do you want to be healed?
• 1:11:06
  Are you willing to go through the process as you as you and I
• 1:11:10
  love this word that you use on your show, the Crucible.
• 1:11:13
  Are you willing to go do the tough work, go through the
• 1:11:17
  trial, go through the pain, go through the refinement process
• 1:11:20
  to really break free and walk in freedom?
• 1:11:23
  I mean, we have that immediately with Jesus.
• 1:11:25
  You know, Paul talks about in Romans, You know, if you anyway,
• 1:11:30
  I can't have time to unpack all that, but we get to choose to
• 1:11:34
  walk in the spirit and not in the flesh.
• 1:11:37
  And so my book addresses that and I want to encourage you.
• 1:11:41
  You can be healed, but first you have to choose.
• 1:11:45
  I want to be healed. I want to be set free from this
• 1:11:48
  sin. But you may not be set free from
• 1:11:51
  the temptation, but you can choose righteousness.
• 1:11:54
  You can choose the spirit and not the flesh.
• 1:11:57
  You can choose life. You can choose not to choose
• 1:12:00
  death, but that's up to you. And my book, and I mean, I wrote
• 1:12:04
  a whole book on it to help articulate that, but that's
• 1:12:08
  breaking sin's grasp. Your temptation doesn't define
• 1:12:11
  you. You know, it, it really is one
• 1:12:14
  thing to talk about change and we all talk about change.
• 1:12:18
  We want we we talk that we want change, but it's a completely
• 1:12:21
  different thing to actually live that changed.
• 1:12:25
  You know, the, the I love the word repent to do a 180 to turn
• 1:12:28
  to run the other way. You know, I think of Potiphar's
• 1:12:32
  Potiphar, Potiphar's wife and and Joseph, you know, he he
• 1:12:36
  late, he left his coat. He, he ran, he I'm out of here.
• 1:12:40
  And a lot of us, there are things inside of our life that
• 1:12:42
  we just need to turn and we need to run away.
• 1:12:45
  There, there are a lot of things in our life that we just need
• 1:12:47
  to, we, we need to make the decision, not just the decision,
• 1:12:50
  but we actually need to make the action that happens behind it.
• 1:12:53
  And today's conversation really does remind us that freedom
• 1:12:57
  isn't found in perfection of trying to perfect the way that
• 1:13:00
  we think necessarily, but it's about actually performance.
• 1:13:03
  It's about doing something different.
• 1:13:05
  It's it's about making a change. And not only that, it's about
• 1:13:09
  surrender. It's, it's about surrendering
• 1:13:11
  and letting God define and redefine who we are and what
• 1:13:16
  we're capable of. So I, I really love this
• 1:13:18
  conversation. It's been so great.
• 1:13:20
  You know, before we wrap up though, for all of you
• 1:13:22
  listening, I really, I really do hope that you stop for a moment
• 1:13:26
  and you stop running from who you are.
• 1:13:29
  Step into who God has created you to be today because that is
• 1:13:33
  what living more than before is all about.
• 1:13:36
  This episode has challenged us. It has encouraged us.
• 1:13:40
  If it's challenged you or encouraged you today, would you
• 1:13:43
  share this with someone? Share this with someone that
• 1:13:45
  needs to hear the words that Jim said today.
• 1:13:48
  Because you were created for a purpose, on purpose, and God
• 1:13:52
  wants to define who you are. Don't let the world define it.
• 1:13:55
  Let God define who you are. So until next time, remember to
• 1:13:59
  be more, see more, and experience more than before.