January 12, 2026 • 53 mins
Welcome to the very first episode of the 9941 Podcast—a faith-centered conversation rooted in the words of Jesus and the mission to leave the ninety-nine to find the one.
In this debut episode, Granger Smith, Tyler Smith, Parker Smith, and The AntMan introduce the heart behind 9941 and explain why this podcast exists. What began as the conclusion of the Granger Smith Podcast now becomes a focused calling—discipleship over popularity, obedience over comfort, and faith over fear.
The group reflects on Granger’s decision to step away from country music, the ripple effect it had on family and business, and how God reshaped desires, priorities, and identity along the way. Tyler shares a powerful testimony of surrender after striving in his own strength, while Parker talks about transition, obedience, and trusting God through uncertainty. Together, they wrestle honestly with questions many believers face:
Is what I’m doing good—or is it pleasing to God?
Am I reaching the crowd, or the one God is calling me to?
This episode sets the spiritual foundation for the 9941 Podcast—centered on Luke 15, grounded in Scripture, and focused on authentic conversations about salvation, discipleship, trust, and following Jesus wherever He leads.
If you’re searching for a Christian podcast about faith, obedience, purpose, and real-life transformation, this episode is where the journey begins.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up. I'm Granger Smith, I.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Mean man, I'm Tyler and I'm.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Parker and this is the ninety nine for one podcast
where our goal is to seek the one and equip
the ninety nine to do the same Episode one. Oh no,
we did pretty good going around the circle and introducing ourselves.
We're off to a pretty good start. Admittedly it took
us two times. We had to go around and learn
(00:25):
that we're going clockwise, but this is what we're gonna
do every episode, so this is cool. We prayed right
before we started, recognizing that because this is episode one,
potentially a lot of people will go backwards in time
and from the future and go back to hear what
where it all started in episode one, which makes this
one extra special. I do that, at least I go backwards.
Do you guys do that?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
If it's really good, I will like if especially if
well and it's more of the ones that have stories
in them, and go oh, I need to go back
and listen.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
To the podcasts with YouTube channels definitely well with podcasts.
It's like with podcasts, I want the most recent, up
to date, you know, yeah, episode because it's topical for instance,
like investing our real estate stuff. It's like what they're
talking about three years ago doesn't apply today. Try to
avoid that because it's a completely different market and cycle. Now.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
You couldn't pull like you go back and listen to
a few old ones to pull some nuggets out of it.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
No, it's just not worth my time. That's personal. But
with YouTube, yeah, it's always fun to go see where
did mister B start, Like, I want to see what
he looked like and what he was talking about.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Then.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, it's interesting because this is actually the combination of
two different podcasts, the Granger Smith podcast. So it's what
I mean is it's not essentially brand new the Granger
Smith podcast that I've done for for many years, and
then the EEE podcast which we did together as brothers,
and those two we have dissolved those two and combined
them into what is now this ninety nine for one podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, when you were doing the ee podcast where they're
conversations there with the three of you going what if
you guys what we just did this all together all
the time.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, so unlike real estate podcast, hopefully we're going to
be speaking gospel truth every episode and that will never expire. Okay,
So let's go around and introduce you guys, and we'll
start with you a man. As long as we've done
this podcast together, the Grander Smith Podcast together, and after midnight,
people will still comment on YouTube on the Granger Smith
(02:25):
podcast and say, who is that guy? Who's that man?
Who's your guest? I should say so.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I'm Anthony, Yeah exactly, I'm Anthony Lay. And a long
time ago, a guy in radio that I was working
with just started calling me ant Man. And it was
long before ant Man or aunt Man and Wasp or
any of the Marvel stuff came out. There may be
a comic book and I had never heard of it,
but he started calling me ant Man and that's pretty
(02:51):
much just stuck.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Then.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
That's been almost thirty years ago, so it's almost just become.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
And you're part of the Freedom Lay Empire.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, generationally wealthy. I could do
what I would know not at all.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
We fought your grandfather's great great is FREEDO. I've never
heard of another.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Leg Yeah, I really, I'm I'm the only one. Yeah,
have you And it's very rare. It's very rare it
be and it's funny because you come across other people
and your last name's lay how Wild minus two and
they'll be like, oh, you're the only one I've ever met,
and yeah, it's it's it seems to be very rare,
but uh yeah, And so it started. Got the name
(03:31):
of the ant man from that, been in radio for
thirty years, tried to get out. You brought me back
in with After Midnight and then over to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
And now you produced my radio show After Midnight. We've
been doing that for a while. We met in the Phoenix.
There was when I was on tour for music and
that is another story for another time.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So Tyler, how about you? You you are now a
viral internet sensation?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Who what's the question? Who are you?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
You are? You're a viral sensation now on TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Man, the best way to sum it up is, honestly
is like, I'm just a child of God. That's the
most important and that's the only like we could all
sit here for like who I was, what I did,
what I do? But I'm just a child of God.
What did Kurt Signetti, the head coach of Indiana.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I'll win Google Google Meet not to need to Google me,
but so everybody google Tyler but you're how far are
you guys? Apart? Four years four?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
But yeah, it's been super encouraging seeing what you're posting
on Instagram and TikTok, it's been super encouraging for me.
What is your TikTok? Again?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Both of them are Tyler Smith eleven. But yeah, he.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Gives really good relationship advice. Hopefully we're gonna get some
of that advice right here on this on this podcast
in the future. Relationship advice from you godly relationship advice.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It became that just because that's what went viral people
the most views, I was like, I guess this is
the lane that I'll because it really apparently was helping
people and like really really help open people. So I
was like, man, if this is what the Lord wants
me to just keep talking on. Yeah, you know. I
never was like the great consistency though, Yeah, that's the key, man.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
It's really really good.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Is consistency with anything you do?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
How many of those do you knock at it one time?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Man? I knocked out twelve last week, which is the
most I've ever done, So I'm good for two weeks.
But uh, typically I like to get like at least five,
so I'm good for the week and actually change. It's
funny because I check the wind every day, like the
week of like what that is, and so today's day
because it's like gust is five, but the wind miles
(05:37):
per hour is two this evening, so I'm like, oh,
I gotta knock them out.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
So when you're filming this godly biblical relationship advice and
the sun is setting beautifully behind you, do you ever
feel the pressure of like, I gotta hurry up and
film this, like the sun is perfect in the sky
right now. I gotta film this right now.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
No.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I did at the beginning, but these no, no, now
it's just the wind. And then in the editing and
stuff when you do it, you can like adjust the
contrast or the saturation or whatever, and like Brian has
kind of helped me out a little.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Bit with that, So okay, And then we have a
megastar with us as one of the hosts of this podcast.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Parker Smith. I'm the youngest of the Smith brothers, and
I run EE Apparel and the EE Life YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Did you go through his agent get this all set up?
His agent is right here in the blue shirt. You
know what's funny about Parker, and I'll let him speak.
He didn't like speaking for him, so and that's been
my job, my job for so long to pump you
up and now to pump him up. But for so
many years we worked together in like all these press
promo sheets and like what do they called him blank?
(06:46):
And we haven't done one in a while, but like
all the boyip one sheets the bullet points of your career,
he has billions more views than you ever had in
your entire career, in your twenty year career. He's he's
exceeded that in less than six months.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So for context, you have managed me and my music
stuff since you know, like two thousand and eight, and
then as that continued and I ended up walking away
from music touring, you continue to manage me and all
the different things we do, like for instance, book like
you manage my book writing and book publishing and stuff
like that. And then when Parker started having success on
(07:24):
YouTube with his gun channel, you were like, hey, so
can I manage you?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
He won't let me manage him, so you you book.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Him, you book sponsors. So Parker, can you please talk
about your your channel? What do you want to know?
So you're now recognized in airports? Are you recognized in
like grocery stores and stuff like that because of what
you do? I was at the farmer's market with him
last weekend and somebody yelled at him. So Tyler's going
to speak for you.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
It started happening a little bit more recently in public
it so it's like maybe once a week or something.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I also want to know why you're so engaging in
funny on your YouTube channel, but you come on a
podcast like this in your talk real monotone, like.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
Just like with anything, I guess you just have to
turn it on, like when you're that's like that's like
me asking you like when you're performing, Like that's Earl Dibbles. Yeah,
that's like a show, like when the camera comes from
Earl Dibbles.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
So your your your channel's called yee Life and basically
you shoot things. What's your what's your tagline for that?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (08:25):
I usually just say minus Park, Welcome to you life
where we take anything and everything and we shoot it
with guns and we see what happens. So the like
brief story is about a year and a half ago
with you stepping down for music. We were thinking of ways
for us to make EE help YEE continue to bring
people into the fold of what YE is. And I
(08:47):
saw a guy talking about like he was like, only
nobody can be you like you can. So just think
about what different things uh God has placed in your
life that you can utilize to your advantage as a
competitive advantage of in the business world. And so I
was just thinking, we had land and then we had
the we had that the gun range in the Berm
(09:10):
and I had been helping behind the scenes with videos
with you with earldbls for whatever six seven years, and
so I knew a little bit about and had I
had my own TikTok at the time where I would
just do funny videos, and so just thought maybe I
could combine those and we were friends with a lot
of gun tubers and it's like, maybe we should just
(09:31):
try to try to do this ourselves, and it just
kind of took off and we just continued to build
on it.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Well, not that you were doing exactly what this other
guy was doing, but it also kind of coincided with
a big gun guy YouTube gun tuber, so leaving left
and you had already started taking.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
A demo mat Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Demolition Ranch, who had reached out to Granger in like
twenty twenty and I had become a good friend of
ours and really like a mentor in the YouTube space,
stepped down and was kind of he had been doing
it like ten years and was ready to kind of
be done with that phase of his of his journey.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And I'll brag on you just for a little bit.
You know. I talk to other people who will sometimes
ask me, like, what's your brother doing these days? And
I'll try to explain it. I'll say, well, you know,
he's got a YouTube page and he shoots things, and
inevitably they'll say something like, oh, so he's like trying
to do the demo Matt thing, And then you know
deep inside him thinking, oh, he's he's not trying to
(10:33):
he is doing it. Well, what you just have to
tell people is like there's a website called social blade
dot com and it ranks all the YouTube channels in
the entire world. Parker's ranked like number six hundred. He's
the number one channel that does guns. He's like mister
Beast's number one. Parker's six hundred in the entire world
(10:55):
on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Like there's not. There's only like five hundred that are
bigger than him any channel. It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
To put in perspective, he's not trying to do it.
He's literally like the point zero zero zero zero one
percent of all YouTube channel.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
The reason it's like that, though, is because of our
YouTube shorts, like our long videos, Like there's still plenty
of guys that are way bigger and better than me,
Like we just we were able to we were able
to nail down like the sixty second not in your
TikTok version of not in.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Your lane of long form.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, so let me look and see what you're right
right now? I mean, your your page is growing like crazy.
What are you at six million? Six million subscribers?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
What's wild? We were watching me and the family over
Christmas were watching one and it was before you got
to six, and it was like five and like five
point two or something like that. And as I'm telling Granger, hey,
we watched it yesterday, he goes, oh, he's at almost
six now, as what is it is? Like, where is
it right now?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Six oh seven?
Speaker 3 (11:57):
So it was I said it was five point two,
And next day I talked to him and it was
at five point six.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
So here's a perspective. In the last seven days, he's
gotten one hundred and seventy three thousand, three hundred and
seventy three Wow subscribers in seven days.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
That's wild, that's wild.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, averages like one hundred click a week.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, it's a it's a really big channel. Okay, So
that's our intro. What do we what do we have
on tap today?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And man, well, we ended the Granger Smith podcast last
week said goodbye wasn't clickbait although it was funny. Somebody
said it totally was clickbait because you're not leaving, you're
going to a new podcast. But it wasn't. It was
the end of that pot. If you notice today this
podcast is not on that channel. Yeah, this podcast is
on a brand new channel. But you know, was you know,
(12:46):
I think we're going to talk about what was leading
country music worth it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So I think it would be appropriate as we as
we start this new podcast in episode one and we
think back on the last two years or so since
I walked away from music touring, we could ask the
question together with the brothers and with Amen, was it
worth it?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
You know?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Because you know, like like in many ways. It's crushed
our family, it's crushed. It's crushed just financially, it's crushed.
Ye ye, it's hurt. It's hurt us in many ways.
I mean, if it wasn't for for Yee Life taking
off the way it is with Parker, that's kind of
been a lifeline for the brand in some ways. And
so I think it's worth it. It's worth a discussion.
(13:28):
There's a biblical answer that I can't wait to get
to do this. That's what we'll always do in this podcast,
but I want to discuss it for now well.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
As we get a lot of questions, a lot of comments.
In fact, there was one that came on the last
one that was like, don't don't don't forget about why
this became popular because of the music. Don't do away
with the music. And like you have, I don't think
you've been watching the last year or a year and
a half or whatever, because that that is gout. You know,
there's not new music coming out, do you is was
(13:57):
there a way for you in your mind to be
able to do Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, of course, I think I tried that for years.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
What was the biggest hurdle?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
You have my my own pride because you know when
you when you think about how the Lord radically saved
me and turned it around for him. And you see
this in other believers as well. You see people that
share the same story and you, oh, yeah, yeah, we
have the same father because I could recognize that that
(14:27):
kind of story. But when when someone has radically changed,
and you know they the Lord puts that hook in
their mouth language that Isaiah uses, there is a noticeable
difference in that person with what matters in their life.
You start to think, does this matter anymore to me?
(14:47):
Like things that once mattered to me matter less now
that's that's that's one of the things that starts to
happen in your soul. And you know, this could be
a test for any of us as we, for instance,
think it's think about your deathbed when we fall sick
with the illness of which we are to die, which
is what happened to Elisha in the Bible, and we
(15:09):
could look back from our deathbed, look back on life
at the things that actually mattered, and we will notice.
I believe that the things that matter don't always correlate
with things that we wanted to do or things that
were fun at the time. For instance that this past year,
(15:29):
when we lost my grandmother, I went to visit her
in hospice and I didn't really want to do that.
I don't know if anyone wants to see someone at
the end of their life that they love. But I
did it because it mattered. And that wasn't because I
wanted to, but because I knew it mattered and I
(15:52):
needed to. And that's what began to happen with country music.
It's like I want to do it. I think I
want to keep touring, but it just doesn't matter anymore.
I don't. I don't feel like it's it matters to me? Right?
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Do you think it's because God changed your desires? Because
it's just, you know, I think for some people would
argue that it does matter. You mattered you, you said it,
you know, you on stage singing and and even proclaiming
the word from the stage mattered to them. And so
how can you say it doesn't matter when it mattered
to me?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yes, And that's what I want to talk about because
everybody's different and everyone everyone's walk with the Lord is different.
And that's why we said before we started recording this
podcast this morning, we said, what if I was talking,
for, for instance, Josh Turner, who has used his platform to
speak about the Lord and sing about the Lord and
country music, and he would if he would say, I
(16:45):
need to be in country music. It matters for me
to be in country music because this is my platform
to proclaim the gospel. And I feel that to my core,
I would say, amen, brother, And I haven't specifically talked
to Josh about this, but I would say amen, and
thank the Lord for that kind of conviction of what
matters most in your soul. Yeah, So to your point,
(17:07):
I haven't felt that. And a lot of times when
we're seeking the Lord with all of our heart, he
begins to give us new desires like you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And so to the Josh Turner story, I would say,
that's not me. I don't have that desire. And for
whatever reason, the Lord started reshaping my desires. And I
felt in my core that ultimately country music was becoming
and was and idle to me. And so then for
the people that say, but grandeur with music, you could
(17:40):
have reached so many more people, I say, well, then
then comes in the name of this podcast right ninety
nine for one, And we used to think about this
a long time ago. Taller we would be with the
band and we'd be in a production meeting and we
would think about this way in music. We would think,
we would pray before show that that we would be
(18:02):
able to impact the one. We would forget about the thousands,
and we would impact the one because we knew that
that's what mattered. And we didn't know, you know, theologically
as much what that meant, but but we felt in
our soul that that it was it would be the
one person that mattered. And and so that that's kind
of where we are with this podcast. And so we've
(18:22):
we've told ourselves that no matter the views we get
or the listens, because we're inevitably going to go and
look and see how's the podcast doing, how many people
are looking at it. And we've decided as we started
this that that will not matter to us. We will
we will seek the one and equip the ninety nine
to do the same well.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
And if I can, I'm want to set the stage
a little bit because I want to ask you, Tyler,
when it when it came this revelation and two of
God to Granger, it changed a lot of stuff for you.
What did it change for you specifically, and how did
it affect you so much?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, it's say the Lord saved me through it, for one,
but I kind of before I forgot to don't pass
that real quick? How Why why did he say me? How?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah? What was the What was that time different than
every other time that you heard the word? Well?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I think the underlying theme is, to you know, is
Proverbs three four through six, trusting the Lord with all
your heart and not lean not on your own understanding.
I was trusting in myself, very long story shore. I
was trusting in myself. I was making good money. I
was idolizing the lifestyle I was. I was putting everything
(19:41):
on my shoulder, saying, I'm doing all of this, I'm
creating all this, I'm thinking about all this, I'm doing
all this. And then Granger decided to leave touring. Parker
decided to leave to go to Washington, d C. It's
like a lot of different moving parts here, but Parker left, Ye,
so I had to run yuee myself. Granger was leaving music,
(20:03):
and so, you know, I had to deal with that,
and I was like, all right, cool, I'm just gonna
get up earlier. I'm gonna work out harder. I'm gonna
do three workouts. I'm gonna, you know, time block all this.
And then I just broke down and I was like, Lord,
the Lord broke me down. I broke down. The Lord
save me. I can't do this, I thought I could.
I need you. And that's the day that he saved me.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
So with with with Granger leaving, it shook up your
security that wasn't in the Lord.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, yeah, there was one thing I wanted to say.
I think you said something about the music. Some fans said, yeah,
don't forget that the and I just thought of something
that it was never the music. It was always and
let's be honest, Granger was not and is not the
(20:55):
Lebron James a vocal seeing would you agree with that?
Of course, Like let's say a Chris Stapleton, I for
like we do a guitar pool, It's like, wow, that
guy's voice is incredible. Granger was just a product of
like good enough to get into the NFL, right, you.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
See, it's nice to have your brother as a manager.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
He just.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
You don't have to promote you anymore.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Granger's good enough get get into the NFL. And like
anybody would say, hey, talent, like hard work beats talent.
Every day, Granger would work harder. Here's the compliment. Granger
would work harder than anybody in the industry just by
sheer force.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
The white slot receiver in the NFL.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah he got in. But uh, the music was always
like a subset or a byproduct of everything we were doing.
We we created earld dibbles, you know, that propelled us
into record label and viral videos, and you know we
(21:58):
had a little success tiny with music, but we have.
So that's like we're to the answer that guy's question.
We created ye life, we created this new podcast. Like,
so my whole point here is just always be and
what we've all we've always done is we've we've used
our brains, uh and and through it all, it's like
(22:20):
it's cool to see what the Lord to trust him
and his plan, because would we want to still be
in music right now? The Lord like we could still
be just like white knuck on it, maybe get another
number one, maybe have some success. Maybe, But it's like, man,
like what I've like bird's eye view, like pulling out
from this is like just given me such more like
(22:45):
deeper trust in the Lord. You know, does any of
this make sense?
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah? No, absolutely. I think that there are there are
a few people on this earth and we could name
them on one hand that you could hear their voice
and you go, you areted beyond belief. Like you, the
Lord has given you a gift that it would be foolish,
it would be sinful to not use that gift. People
like Auverley Mario.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
We had to we you and I had to work
really hard to break into the industry.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, and so and Chris Tapldon might be another one
where you know, somebody like Chris Tapldon starts to back
out of music and you go, hang on a second.
You know, the Lord is blessed you in a way
that that's beyond any anybody else that sings. You can't
make that saying our argument with me and to Tyler's point,
I think that that's why music never defined us, and
we were we were different in that way. We were
(23:37):
we were more about growing together as a brand and
and finding different ways and different different talents to engage people.
And I think anytime you have this kind of discussion,
it always leads back to do like the comment any
man of someone saying, but Granger, you left music, you
could have reached so many more people. And to that,
(23:59):
I say, God doesn't need me to reach more people.
In fact, he doesn't need anybody to reach more people.
He reaches his people. That's what he does, and he
will reach his people by any means that he does.
And so we should never think of ourselves as we
are growing the kingdom. The Lord, in his kindness, uses
(24:20):
broken sinners like us to grow his kingdom, and he
does it by reaching the one. And so before we
go any further, I could I read a quote from
this guy. Y'all heard of this guy, David Brainerd. He
was a missionary in the eighteenth century. Fantastic story, incredible story,
(24:43):
but it goes to this. It goes to the idea
of are we growing the kingdom or is God growing
the kingdom? And here's his quote. This is from his journal.
David brainer says, I was constrained and yet chose to
say farewell all friends and earthly comforts, the dearest of them, all,
(25:03):
the very dearest. If the Lord calls for it, I do.
I'll spend my life to my latest moments in caves
and dens of the earth. If the Kingdom of Christ
may thereby be advanced. I found extraordinary freedom at this
time in pouring out my soul to God for his cause,
(25:24):
and especially that His kingdom might be extended among the Indians,
talking about Native Americans. This was in America, far remote,
he says, and I had a great and strong hope
that God would do it. I continued wrestling with God
in prayer. I longed to be as a flame of fire,
continually growing in the divine service, preaching and building up
(25:46):
christ Kingdom. To my latest, my dying moment. He was
preaching to the Indians, Native Americans. And the story goes
that there was no real fruit from this. There was
no real success, earthly success like from human terms. You
(26:07):
would have looked at David Brainerd and thought, man, he
did nothing really mattered. He died by tuberculosis at age
twenty nine. In a lot of ways you could you
can go wasted life. Look at this guy. He foolishly
went out and went after the one, you know, and
nothing really came of it. But after he died, his
(26:30):
journal was found, and it's so inspired so many people
like Jonathan Edwards who found his journal and republished it,
and millions read it. After that, including guys like me
and missionaries were inspired and during that time to go
into the ends of the earth, all because of the
(26:50):
spirit that the Lord gave David. This zeal for reaching
the One was given a David, and he didn't have success,
but the Lord grew it way later.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
That's that's incredibly encouraging.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, I mean you could look at David's life and
you can go, man, this guy he could have been
a businessman and made a lot of money and then
invested that money back into ministry, and he could have
they could have bought a new church building because of
you know, his work and the financial growth that he had,
and he could have given it all back to the Lord.
And in fact, you didn't do any of that, David.
(27:29):
You just went and got tuberculosis and died in a cave. Man.
That's that's unwise. You know, you could.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Easily say that quick break, real quick. I want to
ask you about something that I saw parkert eee dot com,
and that was everything you guys know about women. They're
cold and they like ice coffee, and you're you're at
least solving one of those problems with buy one, get one, right, now.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
Right, Yeah, we saw a real problem out there and
that was that girls kept taking their eyes hoodies and jackets. Yes,
and it was time that we did something about it.
And girls are always cold, and so we decided for
a limited time that we were going to do a
buy any women's jacket, you get another women's jacket for free.
So we would buy one, get one completely free right
(28:15):
now at ee dot com now through the end of
the month, to hopefully just warm some of these ladies up.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yeah, and guys, get some of your clothes back. Pretty cool,
yeee dot com right now. Well, at the same time
that God is calling you to leave to please him
and get out of music, it changes stuff for Tyler
and he God grabs a hold of you and saves you.
And at the same time it's also shaken up the business.
(28:41):
Not only Granger leaving, but you're going basically to intern
right in DC, Is that right, Parker?
Speaker 5 (28:49):
Yeah, in twenty twenty three, I went to DC for
six month internship under a pastor there, just to learn
and grow in faith with the intention of coming back
and resuming my role. But yeah, I tell people all
the time that Tyler felt the cost of Christ of
following Christ very heavily, really more than Granger or I,
because he lost in Granger's conversion and in my conversion,
(29:13):
he lost all of his money and he got all
of the burden of run of running a apparel company
day to day. And so it was like this like
twofold of the Lord taking something away, adding this burden,
and he's just stuck by himself on the farm.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
And but it's in those.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Things representation of the Lord saying I will break you,
no matter how stubborn you think you are.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
And you know, that's all you can see in a
lot of people's conversions. God's hand, his loving hand gets
heavier and heavier on them because it's the only thing
that will wake us up from the trance that this
world puts us in.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
There's a I was looking for something, well, and I say,
I'm looking for something. I wasn't actively. I wasn't going, man,
what is going to be my thing for twenty twenty six? Right?
But it was like it was kind of like running
into a brick wall. Was like, oh, that's it when
I heard it, and it was and it fits here,
I think because while you could have stayed in music.
(30:16):
Would you be pleasing the Lord with staying in music, Yes,
you'd be reaching, But he wasn't calling you to reach
like you said. It wasn't calling to reach the ninety nine.
He was calling you to reach the one. So I
want you to get out of this. And it's going
to be it's going to be a change in your life.
It's going to be hard in some areas and it's
going to be hard in some areas. It's gonna be
hard in some areas for you, Parker, but it ultimately
(30:38):
what it it led to you. It's leading and still
in some areas, leading you into a place where you are.
It's not good. It's pleasing. It pleases him. And for
some reason, when I heard this the other day, it
(30:59):
just me because I was like, I'm living and I'm
doing and I'm trying, But am I pleasing? And when
Jesus gets baptized, this is my son whom I love.
But I don't just love him. I am pleased, pleased.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
I'm not just pleased well pleased.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
So can I do that? And we can? In Proverbs
Proverbs sorry in Philippians in chapter two, Therefore, my beloved,
as you have always obeyed so now not only as
in my presence, but it's much more in my absence.
(31:45):
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for
it is God who works in you, both to will
and to work for his pleasure. I was praying for
this podcast before we started. Been a week since we
really you know, Okay, this is the end of this one.
(32:08):
I want this to be pleasing to you. And that's
been my prayer up through today, and I hope it's
our prayer this year because it applies to everything that
we do, is that we can be good in it,
or we can be acceptable, but are we pleasing to Him? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Because inevitably, when this comes out, we're gonna have some
kind of conversation about how many people viewed it.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Right, of course we will.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
And I'll say it again, before we started this podcast,
even at just the idea of the concept, we knew
we had to be resolute that it could not be
about the performance of the podcast or the views or
the mentions or the you know, it just can't be
that because that might fuel us for six months or
a year or two years. And we've all done this
in different ways, but eventually it will not be enough.
(32:53):
There needs to be more. There needs to be a greater.
Why then, because it's it gets a lot of views,
we must act as though it is truly a podcast
about reaching the one and equipping the ninety nine to
mobilize for the one. And so to add to build
(33:13):
upon what you said in Philippians two, Hey man, we
should rightly go to Philippians three, right because I think
this would be the perfect answer to the continuation of
what you said, and the perfect answer to our title,
you know, was leaving country music worth it. Everything has
been lost, and that statement's true. I mean, we had
(33:35):
momentum and we lost it. We had rising success and
we lost it. We had chart positions and we lost it.
We had a booming apparel company and we lost it.
We lost all of what that was. We had employees
and we lost them. A band we lost them. We
had buses and a semi truck, we lost it. So
what then, does the apostle Paul say to these things
(33:57):
that are lost? Let's read three. He says down in
verse seven, but whatever gain I had, I counted as
loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything
as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ,
Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the
(34:19):
loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, as garbage,
as trash, in order that I may gain Christ and
be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my
own that comes from the law, but that which comes
through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends
on faith. That I may know Him in the power
of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming
(34:42):
like him in his death, that by any means possible,
I may at obtain the resurrection from the dead. This
is the heartbeat of what we're saying, is this is
the heartbeat of this podcast that I am not the
apostle Paul. And I can't say this with true genuineness,
you know I can't. I can't say these verses and
(35:03):
go that's me, me and Paul. You know I can't.
But because this is the word of God, I can
look at this and I go, this is for me,
and this is this, Oh God, let this be my
heart position. Let this be what I want. Let Paul's
desire here and Paul's understanding about what he's gained in
the world is now rubbish to him. Lord, let that
(35:25):
be me, Make that be be my desire as well.
I can say that because this is written. This is
written by the Spirit too, children that the Spirit has
his board witness with this is this is about me.
So Lord, fulfill this, fulfill this promise that you've have made.
(35:45):
That the apostle expresses, fulfill this desire in me.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
And it's not from some kind of willpower that you
mustered up in yourself because you're super disciplined to tie
it to what Aunt said that ants versus so crazy,
because it's for it is God who works in you
both to will and work for his good pleasure, implying
that the desire to do something for God doesn't come
(36:12):
from you. God is working in you so that you
would want to work for his for his pleasure. So
God works in Granger to actually desire different things all
for God's glory, and Granger is just the vessel that
has his heart and desires changed.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
One of the things that you said initially was you
felt like you had a tiny little AC unit, like
a window ac unit, and you were just blowing it
out to the backyard and you're like, I have all
this zeal and you're just this little, like sputtering AC
unit just going out into like one hundred and five
degree Texas backyard. You say you could continue to preach
(36:57):
from a stage for seventy thousand people, but you just
felt like You're like, I need, I need to concentrate
this this cold air into a room of a few
people that I can pour into. And I felt like
that isn't that kind of what you say?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah? And I was thinking as you're saying that what
happens to a small AC unit that you run on
high at all times?
Speaker 3 (37:21):
It burns out yeah, quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
And so we even have a couple of guys with
us from the church right now, Dylan and ji Uh.
And I hope that this podcast could be a place
where we always have guys, guys in our immediate realm,
where we're we are pouring into and discipling guys, and
and so that that AC unit is not just dumping
out into the backyard. We're containing it here, you know,
(37:46):
right here, and even in this very room, we're containing
the zeal of our of our AC unit. And to
that point that you know, I I've had these impactful moments,
there's there's certain ones that just with you, you know. And
early on in my going out and preaching and speaking
different groups, somebody said something that stuck with me. And
(38:10):
as I was going out and speaking to these different
groups across the country and loving it, you know, I
loved doing that, but I recognized something. I recognized that
the hard part was not the speaking, but it was
afterward talking to people. And people would come up to
me afterwards and they would they would pour their hearts
out to me, and they would they would tell me
(38:31):
things going on in their lives. And I remember this
this one time there was a there was a guy
in Oklahoma and he came up to me and he
just he just looked dead on the outside. You know,
his face was white, his eyes were just glazed over,
and he was like a zombie. And I said, hey, brother, brother,
what's going on? And he said, I've been struggling. Last year,
(38:51):
I ran over my little boy with the tractor with
with the with the attachment. I had to pull him
out of it. And what do you what do you
say to something like that? But there is no quick fix.
So you could just see it all over this guy.
That a horrific story. You could see it on him.
He's coming to me because maybe I could empathize with him.
(39:14):
And what do you say to that? There is no
quick fix, there is no well there's a line behind you, guys.
And I've got about an hour before I got to
get out here and get a flight. There's nothing I
could say for him that in that moment. And what
do you do? I just pray, Lord, You're gonna have
to bring somebody to disciple this man because I can't
(39:37):
do it. I'm leaving here shortly. And you know, I
got that guy's number, I got his phone number, and
I've done this a thousand times, and you know, we
keep in touch a little bit. But eventually, if I'm
not walking alongside him, if I'm not taking him to
coffee and lunches and being there with him on Sunday mornings,
if he's not in my church really or in a
(39:58):
partner church with us, then it fizzles out. It always does,
because I can't be what he needs me to be
is someone pouring into him. And I remember telling the
story to another guy, and these are count the countless
stories of mine meeting people like this, and it was
expressing my pain in this to another guy and he
(40:20):
just quite simply said, Oh, that's because you have a
pastor's heart, and it really cleared everything up. Yeah, not
in a there's different kinds of people. The Spirit gives
different gifts to different people. An evangelist like a Billy
Graham could go out and speak to thousands and thousands
(40:43):
of people faithfully and go to the next town and
do it again faithfully, and then there's other people like
me that can't. I can't do it. I can't sleep
at night because I'm thinking about the one guy who
told me the story that now I can't be with him.
And that doesn't make me any better or worse than
an evangelist, for instance, But it's just different. They're different
(41:07):
members of the body serve different purposes. So there's the
evangelist that could proclaim the gospel faithful, and then then
there's another group guys like me, that the Lord says,
I want you to be the follow up of the
gospel proclaimed. So the gospel is gonna get proclaimed, maybe
by you, but but either way, you are the follow up.
You're the one walking the life with the person. And
(41:30):
that's that's what mattered to me. And you know, guys,
where I could say, what are you doing Tuesday? You know,
what do you what are you doing for lunch Friday?
How's how's the thing going? You know, the thing that
we talked about that, how's that going? Let's get back together,
you know. Let let come and come and sit in
my podcast, you know when we record it, sit with me.
(41:50):
How's it going? And for some reason, that's just the
way the Lord built me. And so do you know
part of this is the Lord, through his desires and
through giving me desires, showed me more satisfaction one thing
and less satisfaction in another thing. And so that's not
me telling anyone else that they need to stay in
(42:12):
country music and they need to do this a certain
way to the commoners.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
This is what the Lord has.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Done to me. And if you're seeking the Lord, this
goes for everybody. If you're seeking the Lord, he is
going to crush you in certain areas and give you
peace in other areas, and you will redirect according to
the peace right. So what about you, guys, do you
guys relate to this at all?
Speaker 5 (42:35):
I was just gonna say briefly, I think certain people
are in shadows that God is calling, you know, into
a position that is like a little bit more in
the limelight to potentially maybe share the Gospel with more
people or for whatever reason. And then certain people are
out there that you feel like the Lord is calling
you into more of a life of just like one
(42:56):
on ones and a life of obscurity.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
And don't think because he called June to those one
on ones that it's any more insignificant than the one
he's calling into the limelight.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
Yeah, and in many ways it could be even more
rewarding to be able to be the follow up guy
again that this gets to see the transformation over five, ten,
fifteen years of like some of the guys that we know,
rather than just going and you you speak at a
conference to whatever another fifteen hundred guys and you don't
(43:26):
see any of them ever again.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
You know. And to that point, I remember meeting with
a guy and we had met several times and he
was it's kind of repeating this verse out of the
Bible that he was applying to himself, and he was
over and over he would talk about the disappointments in
his life and he would repeat that verse over himself.
And I, you know, like everything in my spirit was
(43:49):
screaming at me that he was using this verse out
of context, and he was forgetting the next, the very
next part of the verse. He was forgetting that he
was that part, not the first part. It was an
Old Testament passage. And I remember sitting there with him
and just kind of pausing for a second and reminding
him that he wasn't the first part of the verse,
(44:11):
he was the second part. He was using it out
of context all this time. And when I said that,
the Spirit just overwhelmed him and I saw just the
tenseness in his face just relax his shoulders kind of
sat back, and he was revived, you know, by biblical truth.
The Lord revived him through the scripture, through my brain
(44:34):
and out of my mouth and into his ears. And
when I saw him just pull back and have peace,
I just thought, Oh, I love this. I love this.
This took an hour in my time that mattered. You know,
I could have been in front of twenty thousand people,
(44:54):
but this is the moment that mattered, and I felt
it in my core.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I think it's fitting that you you have the nine
ninety four one on your cap. It's in this in
this podcast. It's it's not the spelled out words it's
the actual numbers, and one is the last of those
four numbers, but it's the one that the focus is on,
the one.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Does anybody want to read that? Luke fifteen? I mean,
we've we've been talking about it for quite a bit
and here I'll turn to it. We've been talking about it,
and people might be like, what is he talking about?
Ninety nine? For one, Well, it's in. It's in the
Gospel of Luke and the fifteenth chapter. Jesus, starting verse one, says,
(45:38):
now the task collectors and sinners were all drawing near
to him. This is Jesus, And the Pharisees and the
scribes grumbled, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.
So he Jesus told them a parable, what man of you,
having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them,
does not leave the nine in the open country and
(46:02):
go after the one that is lost until he finds it.
And when he has found it, he lays it on
his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home he calls
together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, rejoice
with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
Just so I tell you, there will be more joy
(46:23):
in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety
nine righteous persons who.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Need no repentance. So beautiful, you know, the the image
of him, of Jesus laying the lamb on his shoulder,
the Shepherd, the Great Shepherd, laying the lamb on his shoulders,
is such a sight. It reminds me of like a
Sunday school class where you have the painting, the old
(46:48):
painting with the frame, and you see the Christ and
a lamb over his shoulders. That's that's where it comes from.
Speaker 5 (46:56):
I was reading a children's book to my son at
church the other day. I took him down and we
were in Washington, d c obvious that the took him
down to the library innerneath and we were reading the
like some of the little kid's books, and one of
them was called The Missing Sheep and it's by Karen
McKenzie and it's a little kid's book of that parable
(47:18):
and just like the simplicity of this kid's book with
Jesus like looking for his lost sheep and explaining that
to David for the first time as he's like processing
there's a sheep and then its owner I just like
had tears streaming down my eyes, just kind of reliving it,
like from a child's perspective for the first time.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Well, do you want to read some comments? He man.
I think that there's a couple of routine things that
I want to do on this show, and I think
reading comments from the last Granger Smith podcast of the
final episode, maybe we could read some comments from that,
and then we will read comments next episode, will read
comments from this one from the YouTube page, and then
after that I want to do a book giveaway. I
(47:58):
think that would be something we should do every episode
where and this goes for everybody, all four of you guys,
all three of you guys. If you think of a
book you want to give away, bring it with you
and we'll talk about it and mail it out. So
here's the here's the first book I kind of want
to give away. It's called The Mortification of Sin. This
is a Puritan Puritan John Owen. I thought, you know,
(48:20):
episode one of this podcast, if we could get people
to start reading Puritans, what a what an encouraging thing
that would be. And this is Puritan John Owen. It's
it's a very short book. It's you know, besides the
prologue and the outro or whatever. It's around one hundred pages,
super easy read. So this book John Owen Pureton, he
read a book on Romans eight thirteen. Let me find
(48:44):
that real quick. This, this whole book is basically on
Romans eight thirteen. And this idea of us the necessity
of killing our sin, as Christians are are our commandment
to kill sin. This is Romans eight thirteen. We find
it real quick. For if you live according to the flesh,
(49:10):
you will die. But if by the spirit you put
to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
He writes this book in a very practical way and
yet devotionally like a like a Puritan that he was,
and it is so encouraging.
Speaker 5 (49:25):
Fifteen seconds.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
What's a Puritan?
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Well, how about you? You spent a lot of time
in Washington, DC studying Puritans.
Speaker 5 (49:31):
I'm asking you, man, I don't think I would have
like a definition that would be as accurate as what
you know.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
What Thanksgivings based off of Oh, that's Pilgrims.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Well, actually not too far removed from the Pilgrims. The
Pilgrims were an offshoot from the Puritans, but the Puritans
were a group a product of the Reformation and after
the Reformation, the Church of England reformed from the Roman
Catholic Church, and the Puritans were a group that believed
they weren't reformed enough, and that that word Puritan actually
(50:04):
comes from it's a derogatory term. They were the Puritans.
They were kind of looked upon, They were frowned upon
as people that that were holier than everybody else. That
that's that was the kind of the perception. But but
truly they were trying to be as as aligned to
Scripture as possible. They they they believed in preaching faithfully.
(50:29):
They they believed in in salvation by faith alone, by
grace alone, Christ alone. They they they were a group
that was highly persecuted and they wrote a lot.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
This is.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
This is a group that they wrote thousands and thousands
and thousands of books and sermons and journals and notes
that we could now have Like if if you're reading
Puritans now, and if you're you're reading Puritan prayers and
you could read it devotionally, like you don't have to
sit there and read the entire volumes of it, but
if you read Pureton's just devotionally in small doses.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
It is so encouraging. How should we give it away?
In comments? Leave a comment, yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
We will send you this book. We'll all sign it
in here too. We'll do this every single week, but
I'll tell you what sign up or excuse me, comment below.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
This book giveaway. This type of book giveaway.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
So wherever you're watching is here. You're listening on the
Apple podcast or iHeartRadio or Spotify. Go take a trip
over to our YouTube channel which is ninety nine four
to one the podcast on YouTube. Find this video and
comment below book giveaway, book giveaway. Kaden will find your
name and reach out to you, get your email and
(51:48):
get your address and we'll ship this out to you.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
A couple of comments from our last epic, the very
last episode of the Granger Smith Podcast talking about launching
this podcast. I truly do love this. I've watched your
journey and now walking Closer with God truly inspired me
and my family to move closer to God and Jesus.
For that, thank you, and we'll most definitely be tuning
(52:12):
in for this new chapter. And that is it's You
can't do names on these because they are always letters
in numbers. This is sick, great idea. I like that comment.
That was a good one, and then I like to
yeah right, the title was clickbait. I'm so looking forward
to this new season of a great discussion and discipleship
(52:34):
from you guys as the granger Smith and y podcast
are combined to ninety nine for one. That was a
good one too, looking forward to listening to the nine
nine four one the podcast. Happy New Year, and so
more accurately, it's not ending your podcast, it's just changing years.
No podcast ended, Grangersmith podcast ended, and ninety nine for
(52:57):
one has started today with this one.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Yep. So in order to seek the one and equip
the ninety nine Tyler, can you give us a good gospel?
We should have a gospel presentation in every show. Can
you give us a gospel to wrap this episode?
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Yeah? We were all want sinners. The God is a holy,
righteous God, righteous judge. We're all guilty and if we
surrender our life, repent of our sins, put our faith,
and believe in Jesus as the one and only true God,
(53:34):
then you will be saved. Hallelujah, Amen, Amen, Amen.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
All right, that's how we'll finish it. See you guys
next Monday eee
What's up. I'm Granger Smith, I.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Mean man, I'm Tyler and I'm.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Parker and this is the ninety nine for one podcast
where our goal is to seek the one and equip
the ninety nine to do the same Episode one. Oh no,
we did pretty good going around the circle and introducing ourselves.
We're off to a pretty good start. Admittedly it took
us two times. We had to go around and learn
(00:25):
that we're going clockwise, but this is what we're gonna
do every episode, so this is cool. We prayed right
before we started, recognizing that because this is episode one,
potentially a lot of people will go backwards in time
and from the future and go back to hear what
where it all started in episode one, which makes this
one extra special. I do that, at least I go backwards.
Do you guys do that?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
If it's really good, I will like if especially if
well and it's more of the ones that have stories
in them, and go oh, I need to go back
and listen.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
To the podcasts with YouTube channels definitely well with podcasts.
It's like with podcasts, I want the most recent, up
to date, you know, yeah, episode because it's topical for instance,
like investing our real estate stuff. It's like what they're
talking about three years ago doesn't apply today. Try to
avoid that because it's a completely different market and cycle. Now.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
You couldn't pull like you go back and listen to
a few old ones to pull some nuggets out of it.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
No, it's just not worth my time. That's personal. But
with YouTube, yeah, it's always fun to go see where
did mister B start, Like, I want to see what
he looked like and what he was talking about.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Then.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, it's interesting because this is actually the combination of
two different podcasts, the Granger Smith podcast. So it's what
I mean is it's not essentially brand new the Granger
Smith podcast that I've done for for many years, and
then the EEE podcast which we did together as brothers,
and those two we have dissolved those two and combined
them into what is now this ninety nine for one podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, when you were doing the ee podcast where they're
conversations there with the three of you going what if
you guys what we just did this all together all
the time.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, so unlike real estate podcast, hopefully we're going to
be speaking gospel truth every episode and that will never expire. Okay,
So let's go around and introduce you guys, and we'll
start with you a man. As long as we've done
this podcast together, the Grander Smith Podcast together, and after midnight,
people will still comment on YouTube on the Granger Smith
(02:25):
podcast and say, who is that guy? Who's that man?
Who's your guest? I should say so.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I'm Anthony, Yeah exactly, I'm Anthony Lay. And a long
time ago, a guy in radio that I was working
with just started calling me ant Man. And it was
long before ant Man or aunt Man and Wasp or
any of the Marvel stuff came out. There may be
a comic book and I had never heard of it,
but he started calling me ant Man and that's pretty
(02:51):
much just stuck.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Then.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
That's been almost thirty years ago, so it's almost just become.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
And you're part of the Freedom Lay Empire.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, generationally wealthy. I could do
what I would know not at all.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
We fought your grandfather's great great is FREEDO. I've never
heard of another.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Leg Yeah, I really, I'm I'm the only one. Yeah,
have you And it's very rare. It's very rare it
be and it's funny because you come across other people
and your last name's lay how Wild minus two and
they'll be like, oh, you're the only one I've ever met,
and yeah, it's it's it seems to be very rare,
but uh yeah, And so it started. Got the name
(03:31):
of the ant man from that, been in radio for
thirty years, tried to get out. You brought me back
in with After Midnight and then over to the podcast.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
And now you produced my radio show After Midnight. We've
been doing that for a while. We met in the Phoenix.
There was when I was on tour for music and
that is another story for another time.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So Tyler, how about you? You you are now a
viral internet sensation?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Who what's the question? Who are you?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
You are? You're a viral sensation now on TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Man, the best way to sum it up is, honestly
is like, I'm just a child of God. That's the
most important and that's the only like we could all
sit here for like who I was, what I did,
what I do? But I'm just a child of God.
What did Kurt Signetti, the head coach of Indiana.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I'll win Google Google Meet not to need to Google me,
but so everybody google Tyler but you're how far are
you guys? Apart? Four years four?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
But yeah, it's been super encouraging seeing what you're posting
on Instagram and TikTok, it's been super encouraging for me.
What is your TikTok? Again?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Both of them are Tyler Smith eleven. But yeah, he.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Gives really good relationship advice. Hopefully we're gonna get some
of that advice right here on this on this podcast
in the future. Relationship advice from you godly relationship advice.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It became that just because that's what went viral people
the most views, I was like, I guess this is
the lane that I'll because it really apparently was helping
people and like really really help open people. So I
was like, man, if this is what the Lord wants
me to just keep talking on. Yeah, you know. I
never was like the great consistency though, Yeah, that's the key, man.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
It's really really good.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Is consistency with anything you do?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
How many of those do you knock at it one time?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Man? I knocked out twelve last week, which is the
most I've ever done, So I'm good for two weeks.
But uh, typically I like to get like at least five,
so I'm good for the week and actually change. It's
funny because I check the wind every day, like the
week of like what that is, and so today's day
because it's like gust is five, but the wind miles
(05:37):
per hour is two this evening, so I'm like, oh,
I gotta knock them out.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
So when you're filming this godly biblical relationship advice and
the sun is setting beautifully behind you, do you ever
feel the pressure of like, I gotta hurry up and
film this, like the sun is perfect in the sky
right now. I gotta film this right now.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
No.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I did at the beginning, but these no, no, now
it's just the wind. And then in the editing and
stuff when you do it, you can like adjust the
contrast or the saturation or whatever, and like Brian has
kind of helped me out a little.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Bit with that, So okay, And then we have a
megastar with us as one of the hosts of this podcast.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Parker Smith. I'm the youngest of the Smith brothers, and
I run EE Apparel and the EE Life YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Did you go through his agent get this all set up?
His agent is right here in the blue shirt. You
know what's funny about Parker, and I'll let him speak.
He didn't like speaking for him, so and that's been
my job, my job for so long to pump you
up and now to pump him up. But for so
many years we worked together in like all these press
promo sheets and like what do they called him blank?
(06:46):
And we haven't done one in a while, but like
all the boyip one sheets the bullet points of your career,
he has billions more views than you ever had in
your entire career, in your twenty year career. He's he's
exceeded that in less than six months.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So for context, you have managed me and my music
stuff since you know, like two thousand and eight, and
then as that continued and I ended up walking away
from music touring, you continue to manage me and all
the different things we do, like for instance, book like
you manage my book writing and book publishing and stuff
like that. And then when Parker started having success on
(07:24):
YouTube with his gun channel, you were like, hey, so
can I manage you?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
He won't let me manage him, so you you book.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Him, you book sponsors. So Parker, can you please talk
about your your channel? What do you want to know?
So you're now recognized in airports? Are you recognized in
like grocery stores and stuff like that because of what
you do? I was at the farmer's market with him
last weekend and somebody yelled at him. So Tyler's going
to speak for you.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
It started happening a little bit more recently in public
it so it's like maybe once a week or something.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I also want to know why you're so engaging in
funny on your YouTube channel, but you come on a
podcast like this in your talk real monotone, like.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
Just like with anything, I guess you just have to
turn it on, like when you're that's like that's like
me asking you like when you're performing, Like that's Earl Dibbles. Yeah,
that's like a show, like when the camera comes from
Earl Dibbles.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
So your your your channel's called yee Life and basically
you shoot things. What's your what's your tagline for that?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (08:25):
I usually just say minus Park, Welcome to you life
where we take anything and everything and we shoot it
with guns and we see what happens. So the like
brief story is about a year and a half ago
with you stepping down for music. We were thinking of ways
for us to make EE help YEE continue to bring
people into the fold of what YE is. And I
(08:47):
saw a guy talking about like he was like, only
nobody can be you like you can. So just think
about what different things uh God has placed in your
life that you can utilize to your advantage as a
competitive advantage of in the business world. And so I
was just thinking, we had land and then we had
the we had that the gun range in the Berm
(09:10):
and I had been helping behind the scenes with videos
with you with earldbls for whatever six seven years, and
so I knew a little bit about and had I
had my own TikTok at the time where I would
just do funny videos, and so just thought maybe I
could combine those and we were friends with a lot
of gun tubers and it's like, maybe we should just
(09:31):
try to try to do this ourselves, and it just
kind of took off and we just continued to build
on it.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Well, not that you were doing exactly what this other
guy was doing, but it also kind of coincided with
a big gun guy YouTube gun tuber, so leaving left
and you had already started taking.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
A demo mat Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Demolition Ranch, who had reached out to Granger in like
twenty twenty and I had become a good friend of
ours and really like a mentor in the YouTube space,
stepped down and was kind of he had been doing
it like ten years and was ready to kind of
be done with that phase of his of his journey.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And I'll brag on you just for a little bit.
You know. I talk to other people who will sometimes
ask me, like, what's your brother doing these days? And
I'll try to explain it. I'll say, well, you know,
he's got a YouTube page and he shoots things, and
inevitably they'll say something like, oh, so he's like trying
to do the demo Matt thing, And then you know
deep inside him thinking, oh, he's he's not trying to
(10:33):
he is doing it. Well, what you just have to
tell people is like there's a website called social blade
dot com and it ranks all the YouTube channels in
the entire world. Parker's ranked like number six hundred. He's
the number one channel that does guns. He's like mister
Beast's number one. Parker's six hundred in the entire world
(10:55):
on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Like there's not. There's only like five hundred that are
bigger than him any channel. It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
To put in perspective, he's not trying to do it.
He's literally like the point zero zero zero zero one
percent of all YouTube channel.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
The reason it's like that, though, is because of our
YouTube shorts, like our long videos, Like there's still plenty
of guys that are way bigger and better than me,
Like we just we were able to we were able
to nail down like the sixty second not in your
TikTok version of not in.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Your lane of long form.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, so let me look and see what you're right
right now? I mean, your your page is growing like crazy.
What are you at six million? Six million subscribers?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
What's wild? We were watching me and the family over
Christmas were watching one and it was before you got
to six, and it was like five and like five
point two or something like that. And as I'm telling Granger, hey,
we watched it yesterday, he goes, oh, he's at almost
six now, as what is it is? Like, where is
it right now?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Six oh seven?
Speaker 3 (11:57):
So it was I said it was five point two,
And next day I talked to him and it was
at five point six.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
So here's a perspective. In the last seven days, he's
gotten one hundred and seventy three thousand, three hundred and
seventy three Wow subscribers in seven days.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
That's wild, that's wild.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, averages like one hundred click a week.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, it's a it's a really big channel. Okay, So
that's our intro. What do we what do we have
on tap today?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And man, well, we ended the Granger Smith podcast last
week said goodbye wasn't clickbait although it was funny. Somebody
said it totally was clickbait because you're not leaving, you're
going to a new podcast. But it wasn't. It was
the end of that pot. If you notice today this
podcast is not on that channel. Yeah, this podcast is
on a brand new channel. But you know, was you know,
(12:46):
I think we're going to talk about what was leading
country music worth it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So I think it would be appropriate as we as
we start this new podcast in episode one and we
think back on the last two years or so since
I walked away from music touring, we could ask the
question together with the brothers and with Amen, was it
worth it?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
You know?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Because you know, like like in many ways. It's crushed
our family, it's crushed. It's crushed just financially, it's crushed.
Ye ye, it's hurt. It's hurt us in many ways.
I mean, if it wasn't for for Yee Life taking
off the way it is with Parker, that's kind of
been a lifeline for the brand in some ways. And
so I think it's worth it. It's worth a discussion.
(13:28):
There's a biblical answer that I can't wait to get
to do this. That's what we'll always do in this podcast,
but I want to discuss it for now well.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
As we get a lot of questions, a lot of comments.
In fact, there was one that came on the last
one that was like, don't don't don't forget about why
this became popular because of the music. Don't do away
with the music. And like you have, I don't think
you've been watching the last year or a year and
a half or whatever, because that that is gout. You know,
there's not new music coming out, do you is was
(13:57):
there a way for you in your mind to be
able to do Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, of course, I think I tried that for years.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
What was the biggest hurdle?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
You have my my own pride because you know when
you when you think about how the Lord radically saved
me and turned it around for him. And you see
this in other believers as well. You see people that
share the same story and you, oh, yeah, yeah, we
have the same father because I could recognize that that
(14:27):
kind of story. But when when someone has radically changed,
and you know they the Lord puts that hook in
their mouth language that Isaiah uses, there is a noticeable
difference in that person with what matters in their life.
You start to think, does this matter anymore to me?
(14:47):
Like things that once mattered to me matter less now
that's that's that's one of the things that starts to
happen in your soul. And you know, this could be
a test for any of us as we, for instance,
think it's think about your deathbed when we fall sick
with the illness of which we are to die, which
is what happened to Elisha in the Bible, and we
(15:09):
could look back from our deathbed, look back on life
at the things that actually mattered, and we will notice.
I believe that the things that matter don't always correlate
with things that we wanted to do or things that
were fun at the time. For instance that this past year,
(15:29):
when we lost my grandmother, I went to visit her
in hospice and I didn't really want to do that.
I don't know if anyone wants to see someone at
the end of their life that they love. But I
did it because it mattered. And that wasn't because I
wanted to, but because I knew it mattered and I
(15:52):
needed to. And that's what began to happen with country music.
It's like I want to do it. I think I
want to keep touring, but it just doesn't matter anymore.
I don't. I don't feel like it's it matters to me? Right?
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Do you think it's because God changed your desires? Because
it's just, you know, I think for some people would
argue that it does matter. You mattered you, you said it,
you know, you on stage singing and and even proclaiming
the word from the stage mattered to them. And so
how can you say it doesn't matter when it mattered
to me?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yes, And that's what I want to talk about because
everybody's different and everyone everyone's walk with the Lord is different.
And that's why we said before we started recording this
podcast this morning, we said, what if I was talking,
for, for instance, Josh Turner, who has used his platform to
speak about the Lord and sing about the Lord and
country music, and he would if he would say, I
(16:45):
need to be in country music. It matters for me
to be in country music because this is my platform
to proclaim the gospel. And I feel that to my core,
I would say, amen, brother, And I haven't specifically talked
to Josh about this, but I would say amen, and
thank the Lord for that kind of conviction of what
matters most in your soul. Yeah, So to your point,
(17:07):
I haven't felt that. And a lot of times when
we're seeking the Lord with all of our heart, he
begins to give us new desires like you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And so to the Josh Turner story, I would say,
that's not me. I don't have that desire. And for
whatever reason, the Lord started reshaping my desires. And I
felt in my core that ultimately country music was becoming
and was and idle to me. And so then for
the people that say, but grandeur with music, you could
(17:40):
have reached so many more people, I say, well, then
then comes in the name of this podcast right ninety
nine for one, And we used to think about this
a long time ago. Taller we would be with the
band and we'd be in a production meeting and we
would think about this way in music. We would think,
we would pray before show that that we would be
(18:02):
able to impact the one. We would forget about the thousands,
and we would impact the one because we knew that
that's what mattered. And we didn't know, you know, theologically
as much what that meant, but but we felt in
our soul that that it was it would be the
one person that mattered. And and so that that's kind
of where we are with this podcast. And so we've
(18:22):
we've told ourselves that no matter the views we get
or the listens, because we're inevitably going to go and
look and see how's the podcast doing, how many people
are looking at it. And we've decided as we started
this that that will not matter to us. We will
we will seek the one and equip the ninety nine
to do the same well.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
And if I can, I'm want to set the stage
a little bit because I want to ask you, Tyler,
when it when it came this revelation and two of
God to Granger, it changed a lot of stuff for you.
What did it change for you specifically, and how did
it affect you so much?
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Yeah, it's say the Lord saved me through it, for one,
but I kind of before I forgot to don't pass
that real quick? How Why why did he say me? How?
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah? What was the What was that time different than
every other time that you heard the word? Well?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I think the underlying theme is, to you know, is
Proverbs three four through six, trusting the Lord with all
your heart and not lean not on your own understanding.
I was trusting in myself, very long story shore. I
was trusting in myself. I was making good money. I
was idolizing the lifestyle I was. I was putting everything
(19:41):
on my shoulder, saying, I'm doing all of this, I'm
creating all this, I'm thinking about all this, I'm doing
all this. And then Granger decided to leave touring. Parker
decided to leave to go to Washington, d C. It's
like a lot of different moving parts here, but Parker left, Ye,
so I had to run yuee myself. Granger was leaving music,
(20:03):
and so, you know, I had to deal with that,
and I was like, all right, cool, I'm just gonna
get up earlier. I'm gonna work out harder. I'm gonna
do three workouts. I'm gonna, you know, time block all this.
And then I just broke down and I was like, Lord,
the Lord broke me down. I broke down. The Lord
save me. I can't do this, I thought I could.
I need you. And that's the day that he saved me.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
So with with with Granger leaving, it shook up your
security that wasn't in the Lord.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, yeah, there was one thing I wanted to say.
I think you said something about the music. Some fans said, yeah,
don't forget that the and I just thought of something
that it was never the music. It was always and
let's be honest, Granger was not and is not the
(20:55):
Lebron James a vocal seeing would you agree with that?
Of course, Like let's say a Chris Stapleton, I for
like we do a guitar pool, It's like, wow, that
guy's voice is incredible. Granger was just a product of
like good enough to get into the NFL, right, you.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
See, it's nice to have your brother as a manager.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
He just.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
You don't have to promote you anymore.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Granger's good enough get get into the NFL. And like
anybody would say, hey, talent, like hard work beats talent.
Every day, Granger would work harder. Here's the compliment. Granger
would work harder than anybody in the industry just by
sheer force.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
The white slot receiver in the NFL.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah he got in. But uh, the music was always
like a subset or a byproduct of everything we were doing.
We we created earld dibbles, you know, that propelled us
into record label and viral videos, and you know we
(21:58):
had a little success tiny with music, but we have.
So that's like we're to the answer that guy's question.
We created ye life, we created this new podcast. Like,
so my whole point here is just always be and
what we've all we've always done is we've we've used
our brains, uh and and through it all, it's like
(22:20):
it's cool to see what the Lord to trust him
and his plan, because would we want to still be
in music right now? The Lord like we could still
be just like white knuck on it, maybe get another
number one, maybe have some success. Maybe, But it's like, man,
like what I've like bird's eye view, like pulling out
from this is like just given me such more like
(22:45):
deeper trust in the Lord. You know, does any of
this make sense?
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah? No, absolutely. I think that there are there are
a few people on this earth and we could name
them on one hand that you could hear their voice
and you go, you areted beyond belief. Like you, the
Lord has given you a gift that it would be foolish,
it would be sinful to not use that gift. People
like Auverley Mario.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
We had to we you and I had to work
really hard to break into the industry.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, and so and Chris Tapldon might be another one
where you know, somebody like Chris Tapldon starts to back
out of music and you go, hang on a second.
You know, the Lord is blessed you in a way
that that's beyond any anybody else that sings. You can't
make that saying our argument with me and to Tyler's point,
I think that that's why music never defined us, and
we were we were different in that way. We were
(23:37):
we were more about growing together as a brand and
and finding different ways and different different talents to engage people.
And I think anytime you have this kind of discussion,
it always leads back to do like the comment any
man of someone saying, but Granger, you left music, you
could have reached so many more people. And to that,
(23:59):
I say, God doesn't need me to reach more people.
In fact, he doesn't need anybody to reach more people.
He reaches his people. That's what he does, and he
will reach his people by any means that he does.
And so we should never think of ourselves as we
are growing the kingdom. The Lord, in his kindness, uses
(24:20):
broken sinners like us to grow his kingdom, and he
does it by reaching the one. And so before we
go any further, I could I read a quote from
this guy. Y'all heard of this guy, David Brainerd. He
was a missionary in the eighteenth century. Fantastic story, incredible story,
(24:43):
but it goes to this. It goes to the idea
of are we growing the kingdom or is God growing
the kingdom? And here's his quote. This is from his journal.
David brainer says, I was constrained and yet chose to
say farewell all friends and earthly comforts, the dearest of them, all,
(25:03):
the very dearest. If the Lord calls for it, I do.
I'll spend my life to my latest moments in caves
and dens of the earth. If the Kingdom of Christ
may thereby be advanced. I found extraordinary freedom at this
time in pouring out my soul to God for his cause,
(25:24):
and especially that His kingdom might be extended among the Indians,
talking about Native Americans. This was in America, far remote,
he says, and I had a great and strong hope
that God would do it. I continued wrestling with God
in prayer. I longed to be as a flame of fire,
continually growing in the divine service, preaching and building up
(25:46):
christ Kingdom. To my latest, my dying moment. He was
preaching to the Indians, Native Americans. And the story goes
that there was no real fruit from this. There was
no real success, earthly success like from human terms. You
(26:07):
would have looked at David Brainerd and thought, man, he
did nothing really mattered. He died by tuberculosis at age
twenty nine. In a lot of ways you could you
can go wasted life. Look at this guy. He foolishly
went out and went after the one, you know, and
nothing really came of it. But after he died, his
(26:30):
journal was found, and it's so inspired so many people
like Jonathan Edwards who found his journal and republished it,
and millions read it. After that, including guys like me
and missionaries were inspired and during that time to go
into the ends of the earth, all because of the
(26:50):
spirit that the Lord gave David. This zeal for reaching
the One was given a David, and he didn't have success,
but the Lord grew it way later.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
That's that's incredibly encouraging.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, I mean you could look at David's life and
you can go, man, this guy he could have been
a businessman and made a lot of money and then
invested that money back into ministry, and he could have
they could have bought a new church building because of
you know, his work and the financial growth that he had,
and he could have given it all back to the Lord.
And in fact, you didn't do any of that, David.
(27:29):
You just went and got tuberculosis and died in a cave. Man.
That's that's unwise. You know, you could.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Easily say that quick break, real quick. I want to
ask you about something that I saw parkert eee dot com,
and that was everything you guys know about women. They're
cold and they like ice coffee, and you're you're at
least solving one of those problems with buy one, get one, right, now.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
Right, Yeah, we saw a real problem out there and
that was that girls kept taking their eyes hoodies and jackets. Yes,
and it was time that we did something about it.
And girls are always cold, and so we decided for
a limited time that we were going to do a
buy any women's jacket, you get another women's jacket for free.
So we would buy one, get one completely free right
(28:15):
now at ee dot com now through the end of
the month, to hopefully just warm some of these ladies up.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yeah, and guys, get some of your clothes back. Pretty cool,
yeee dot com right now. Well, at the same time
that God is calling you to leave to please him
and get out of music, it changes stuff for Tyler
and he God grabs a hold of you and saves you.
And at the same time it's also shaken up the business.
(28:41):
Not only Granger leaving, but you're going basically to intern
right in DC, Is that right, Parker?
Speaker 5 (28:49):
Yeah, in twenty twenty three, I went to DC for
six month internship under a pastor there, just to learn
and grow in faith with the intention of coming back
and resuming my role. But yeah, I tell people all
the time that Tyler felt the cost of Christ of
following Christ very heavily, really more than Granger or I,
because he lost in Granger's conversion and in my conversion,
(29:13):
he lost all of his money and he got all
of the burden of run of running a apparel company
day to day. And so it was like this like
twofold of the Lord taking something away, adding this burden,
and he's just stuck by himself on the farm.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
And but it's in those.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Things representation of the Lord saying I will break you,
no matter how stubborn you think you are.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
And you know, that's all you can see in a
lot of people's conversions. God's hand, his loving hand gets
heavier and heavier on them because it's the only thing
that will wake us up from the trance that this
world puts us in.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
There's a I was looking for something, well, and I say,
I'm looking for something. I wasn't actively. I wasn't going, man,
what is going to be my thing for twenty twenty six? Right?
But it was like it was kind of like running
into a brick wall. Was like, oh, that's it when
I heard it, and it was and it fits here,
I think because while you could have stayed in music.
(30:16):
Would you be pleasing the Lord with staying in music, Yes,
you'd be reaching, But he wasn't calling you to reach
like you said. It wasn't calling to reach the ninety nine.
He was calling you to reach the one. So I
want you to get out of this. And it's going
to be it's going to be a change in your life.
It's going to be hard in some areas and it's
going to be hard in some areas. It's gonna be
hard in some areas for you, Parker, but it ultimately
(30:38):
what it it led to you. It's leading and still
in some areas, leading you into a place where you are.
It's not good. It's pleasing. It pleases him. And for
some reason, when I heard this the other day, it
(30:59):
just me because I was like, I'm living and I'm
doing and I'm trying, But am I pleasing? And when
Jesus gets baptized, this is my son whom I love.
But I don't just love him. I am pleased, pleased.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
I'm not just pleased well pleased.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
So can I do that? And we can? In Proverbs
Proverbs sorry in Philippians in chapter two, Therefore, my beloved,
as you have always obeyed so now not only as
in my presence, but it's much more in my absence.
(31:45):
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for
it is God who works in you, both to will
and to work for his pleasure. I was praying for
this podcast before we started. Been a week since we
really you know, Okay, this is the end of this one.
(32:08):
I want this to be pleasing to you. And that's
been my prayer up through today, and I hope it's
our prayer this year because it applies to everything that
we do, is that we can be good in it,
or we can be acceptable, but are we pleasing to Him? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Because inevitably, when this comes out, we're gonna have some
kind of conversation about how many people viewed it.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Right, of course we will.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
And I'll say it again, before we started this podcast,
even at just the idea of the concept, we knew
we had to be resolute that it could not be
about the performance of the podcast or the views or
the mentions or the you know, it just can't be
that because that might fuel us for six months or
a year or two years. And we've all done this
in different ways, but eventually it will not be enough.
(32:53):
There needs to be more. There needs to be a greater.
Why then, because it's it gets a lot of views,
we must act as though it is truly a podcast
about reaching the one and equipping the ninety nine to
mobilize for the one. And so to add to build
(33:13):
upon what you said in Philippians two, Hey man, we
should rightly go to Philippians three, right because I think
this would be the perfect answer to the continuation of
what you said, and the perfect answer to our title,
you know, was leaving country music worth it. Everything has
been lost, and that statement's true. I mean, we had
(33:35):
momentum and we lost it. We had rising success and
we lost it. We had chart positions and we lost it.
We had a booming apparel company and we lost it.
We lost all of what that was. We had employees
and we lost them. A band we lost them. We
had buses and a semi truck, we lost it. So
what then, does the apostle Paul say to these things
(33:57):
that are lost? Let's read three. He says down in
verse seven, but whatever gain I had, I counted as
loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything
as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ,
Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the
(34:19):
loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, as garbage,
as trash, in order that I may gain Christ and
be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my
own that comes from the law, but that which comes
through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends
on faith. That I may know Him in the power
of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming
(34:42):
like him in his death, that by any means possible,
I may at obtain the resurrection from the dead. This
is the heartbeat of what we're saying, is this is
the heartbeat of this podcast that I am not the
apostle Paul. And I can't say this with true genuineness,
you know I can't. I can't say these verses and
(35:03):
go that's me, me and Paul. You know I can't.
But because this is the word of God, I can
look at this and I go, this is for me,
and this is this, Oh God, let this be my
heart position. Let this be what I want. Let Paul's
desire here and Paul's understanding about what he's gained in
the world is now rubbish to him. Lord, let that
(35:25):
be me, Make that be be my desire as well.
I can say that because this is written. This is
written by the Spirit too, children that the Spirit has
his board witness with this is this is about me.
So Lord, fulfill this, fulfill this promise that you've have made.
(35:45):
That the apostle expresses, fulfill this desire in me.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
And it's not from some kind of willpower that you
mustered up in yourself because you're super disciplined to tie
it to what Aunt said that ants versus so crazy,
because it's for it is God who works in you
both to will and work for his good pleasure, implying
that the desire to do something for God doesn't come
(36:12):
from you. God is working in you so that you
would want to work for his for his pleasure. So
God works in Granger to actually desire different things all
for God's glory, and Granger is just the vessel that
has his heart and desires changed.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
One of the things that you said initially was you
felt like you had a tiny little AC unit, like
a window ac unit, and you were just blowing it
out to the backyard and you're like, I have all
this zeal and you're just this little, like sputtering AC
unit just going out into like one hundred and five
degree Texas backyard. You say you could continue to preach
(36:57):
from a stage for seventy thousand people, but you just
felt like You're like, I need, I need to concentrate
this this cold air into a room of a few
people that I can pour into. And I felt like
that isn't that kind of what you say?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah? And I was thinking as you're saying that what
happens to a small AC unit that you run on
high at all times?
Speaker 3 (37:21):
It burns out yeah, quickly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
And so we even have a couple of guys with
us from the church right now, Dylan and ji Uh.
And I hope that this podcast could be a place
where we always have guys, guys in our immediate realm,
where we're we are pouring into and discipling guys, and
and so that that AC unit is not just dumping
out into the backyard. We're containing it here, you know,
(37:46):
right here, and even in this very room, we're containing
the zeal of our of our AC unit. And to
that point that you know, I I've had these impactful moments,
there's there's certain ones that just with you, you know. And
early on in my going out and preaching and speaking
different groups, somebody said something that stuck with me. And
(38:10):
as I was going out and speaking to these different
groups across the country and loving it, you know, I
loved doing that, but I recognized something. I recognized that
the hard part was not the speaking, but it was
afterward talking to people. And people would come up to
me afterwards and they would they would pour their hearts
out to me, and they would they would tell me
(38:31):
things going on in their lives. And I remember this
this one time there was a there was a guy
in Oklahoma and he came up to me and he
just he just looked dead on the outside. You know,
his face was white, his eyes were just glazed over,
and he was like a zombie. And I said, hey, brother, brother,
what's going on? And he said, I've been struggling. Last year,
(38:51):
I ran over my little boy with the tractor with
with the with the attachment. I had to pull him
out of it. And what do you what do you
say to something like that? But there is no quick fix.
So you could just see it all over this guy.
That a horrific story. You could see it on him.
He's coming to me because maybe I could empathize with him.
(39:14):
And what do you say to that? There is no
quick fix, there is no well there's a line behind you, guys.
And I've got about an hour before I got to
get out here and get a flight. There's nothing I
could say for him that in that moment. And what
do you do? I just pray, Lord, You're gonna have
to bring somebody to disciple this man because I can't
(39:37):
do it. I'm leaving here shortly. And you know, I
got that guy's number, I got his phone number, and
I've done this a thousand times, and you know, we
keep in touch a little bit. But eventually, if I'm
not walking alongside him, if I'm not taking him to
coffee and lunches and being there with him on Sunday mornings,
if he's not in my church really or in a
(39:58):
partner church with us, then it fizzles out. It always does,
because I can't be what he needs me to be
is someone pouring into him. And I remember telling the
story to another guy, and these are count the countless
stories of mine meeting people like this, and it was
expressing my pain in this to another guy and he
(40:20):
just quite simply said, Oh, that's because you have a
pastor's heart, and it really cleared everything up. Yeah, not
in a there's different kinds of people. The Spirit gives
different gifts to different people. An evangelist like a Billy
Graham could go out and speak to thousands and thousands
(40:43):
of people faithfully and go to the next town and
do it again faithfully, and then there's other people like
me that can't. I can't do it. I can't sleep
at night because I'm thinking about the one guy who
told me the story that now I can't be with him.
And that doesn't make me any better or worse than
an evangelist, for instance, But it's just different. They're different
(41:07):
members of the body serve different purposes. So there's the
evangelist that could proclaim the gospel faithful, and then then
there's another group guys like me, that the Lord says,
I want you to be the follow up of the
gospel proclaimed. So the gospel is gonna get proclaimed, maybe
by you, but but either way, you are the follow up.
You're the one walking the life with the person. And
(41:30):
that's that's what mattered to me. And you know, guys,
where I could say, what are you doing Tuesday? You know,
what do you what are you doing for lunch Friday?
How's how's the thing going? You know, the thing that
we talked about that, how's that going? Let's get back together,
you know. Let let come and come and sit in
my podcast, you know when we record it, sit with me.
(41:50):
How's it going? And for some reason, that's just the
way the Lord built me. And so do you know
part of this is the Lord, through his desires and
through giving me desires, showed me more satisfaction one thing
and less satisfaction in another thing. And so that's not
me telling anyone else that they need to stay in
(42:12):
country music and they need to do this a certain
way to the commoners.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
This is what the Lord has.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Done to me. And if you're seeking the Lord, this
goes for everybody. If you're seeking the Lord, he is
going to crush you in certain areas and give you
peace in other areas, and you will redirect according to
the peace right. So what about you, guys, do you
guys relate to this at all?
Speaker 5 (42:35):
I was just gonna say briefly, I think certain people
are in shadows that God is calling, you know, into
a position that is like a little bit more in
the limelight to potentially maybe share the Gospel with more
people or for whatever reason. And then certain people are
out there that you feel like the Lord is calling
you into more of a life of just like one
(42:56):
on ones and a life of obscurity.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
And don't think because he called June to those one
on ones that it's any more insignificant than the one
he's calling into the limelight.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
Yeah, and in many ways it could be even more
rewarding to be able to be the follow up guy
again that this gets to see the transformation over five, ten,
fifteen years of like some of the guys that we know,
rather than just going and you you speak at a
conference to whatever another fifteen hundred guys and you don't
(43:26):
see any of them ever again.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
You know. And to that point, I remember meeting with
a guy and we had met several times and he
was it's kind of repeating this verse out of the
Bible that he was applying to himself, and he was
over and over he would talk about the disappointments in
his life and he would repeat that verse over himself.
And I, you know, like everything in my spirit was
(43:49):
screaming at me that he was using this verse out
of context, and he was forgetting the next, the very
next part of the verse. He was forgetting that he
was that part, not the first part. It was an
Old Testament passage. And I remember sitting there with him
and just kind of pausing for a second and reminding
him that he wasn't the first part of the verse,
(44:11):
he was the second part. He was using it out
of context all this time. And when I said that,
the Spirit just overwhelmed him and I saw just the
tenseness in his face just relax his shoulders kind of
sat back, and he was revived, you know, by biblical truth.
The Lord revived him through the scripture, through my brain
(44:34):
and out of my mouth and into his ears. And
when I saw him just pull back and have peace,
I just thought, Oh, I love this. I love this.
This took an hour in my time that mattered. You know,
I could have been in front of twenty thousand people,
(44:54):
but this is the moment that mattered, and I felt
it in my core.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I think it's fitting that you you have the nine
ninety four one on your cap. It's in this in
this podcast. It's it's not the spelled out words it's
the actual numbers, and one is the last of those
four numbers, but it's the one that the focus is on,
the one.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Does anybody want to read that? Luke fifteen? I mean,
we've we've been talking about it for quite a bit
and here I'll turn to it. We've been talking about it,
and people might be like, what is he talking about?
Ninety nine? For one, Well, it's in. It's in the
Gospel of Luke and the fifteenth chapter. Jesus, starting verse one, says,
(45:38):
now the task collectors and sinners were all drawing near
to him. This is Jesus, And the Pharisees and the
scribes grumbled, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.
So he Jesus told them a parable, what man of you,
having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them,
does not leave the nine in the open country and
(46:02):
go after the one that is lost until he finds it.
And when he has found it, he lays it on
his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home he calls
together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, rejoice
with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
Just so I tell you, there will be more joy
(46:23):
in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety
nine righteous persons who.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Need no repentance. So beautiful, you know, the the image
of him, of Jesus laying the lamb on his shoulder,
the Shepherd, the Great Shepherd, laying the lamb on his shoulders,
is such a sight. It reminds me of like a
Sunday school class where you have the painting, the old
(46:48):
painting with the frame, and you see the Christ and
a lamb over his shoulders. That's that's where it comes from.
Speaker 5 (46:56):
I was reading a children's book to my son at
church the other day. I took him down and we
were in Washington, d c obvious that the took him
down to the library innerneath and we were reading the
like some of the little kid's books, and one of
them was called The Missing Sheep and it's by Karen
McKenzie and it's a little kid's book of that parable
(47:18):
and just like the simplicity of this kid's book with
Jesus like looking for his lost sheep and explaining that
to David for the first time as he's like processing
there's a sheep and then its owner I just like
had tears streaming down my eyes, just kind of reliving it,
like from a child's perspective for the first time.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
Well, do you want to read some comments? He man.
I think that there's a couple of routine things that
I want to do on this show, and I think
reading comments from the last Granger Smith podcast of the
final episode, maybe we could read some comments from that,
and then we will read comments next episode, will read
comments from this one from the YouTube page, and then
after that I want to do a book giveaway. I
(47:58):
think that would be something we should do every episode
where and this goes for everybody, all four of you guys,
all three of you guys. If you think of a
book you want to give away, bring it with you
and we'll talk about it and mail it out. So
here's the here's the first book I kind of want
to give away. It's called The Mortification of Sin. This
is a Puritan Puritan John Owen. I thought, you know,
(48:20):
episode one of this podcast, if we could get people
to start reading Puritans, what a what an encouraging thing
that would be. And this is Puritan John Owen. It's
it's a very short book. It's you know, besides the
prologue and the outro or whatever. It's around one hundred pages,
super easy read. So this book John Owen Pureton, he
read a book on Romans eight thirteen. Let me find
(48:44):
that real quick. This, this whole book is basically on
Romans eight thirteen. And this idea of us the necessity
of killing our sin, as Christians are are our commandment
to kill sin. This is Romans eight thirteen. We find
it real quick. For if you live according to the flesh,
(49:10):
you will die. But if by the spirit you put
to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
He writes this book in a very practical way and
yet devotionally like a like a Puritan that he was,
and it is so encouraging.
Speaker 5 (49:25):
Fifteen seconds.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
What's a Puritan?
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Well, how about you? You spent a lot of time
in Washington, DC studying Puritans.
Speaker 5 (49:31):
I'm asking you, man, I don't think I would have
like a definition that would be as accurate as what
you know.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
What Thanksgivings based off of Oh, that's Pilgrims.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Well, actually not too far removed from the Pilgrims. The
Pilgrims were an offshoot from the Puritans, but the Puritans
were a group a product of the Reformation and after
the Reformation, the Church of England reformed from the Roman
Catholic Church, and the Puritans were a group that believed
they weren't reformed enough, and that that word Puritan actually
(50:04):
comes from it's a derogatory term. They were the Puritans.
They were kind of looked upon, They were frowned upon
as people that that were holier than everybody else. That
that's that was the kind of the perception. But but
truly they were trying to be as as aligned to
Scripture as possible. They they they believed in preaching faithfully.
(50:29):
They they believed in in salvation by faith alone, by
grace alone, Christ alone. They they they were a group
that was highly persecuted and they wrote a lot.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
This is.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
This is a group that they wrote thousands and thousands
and thousands of books and sermons and journals and notes
that we could now have Like if if you're reading
Puritans now, and if you're you're reading Puritan prayers and
you could read it devotionally, like you don't have to
sit there and read the entire volumes of it, but
if you read Pureton's just devotionally in small doses.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
It is so encouraging. How should we give it away?
In comments? Leave a comment, yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
We will send you this book. We'll all sign it
in here too. We'll do this every single week, but
I'll tell you what sign up or excuse me, comment below.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
This book giveaway. This type of book giveaway.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
So wherever you're watching is here. You're listening on the
Apple podcast or iHeartRadio or Spotify. Go take a trip
over to our YouTube channel which is ninety nine four
to one the podcast on YouTube. Find this video and
comment below book giveaway, book giveaway. Kaden will find your
name and reach out to you, get your email and
(51:48):
get your address and we'll ship this out to you.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
A couple of comments from our last epic, the very
last episode of the Granger Smith Podcast talking about launching
this podcast. I truly do love this. I've watched your
journey and now walking Closer with God truly inspired me
and my family to move closer to God and Jesus.
For that, thank you, and we'll most definitely be tuning
(52:12):
in for this new chapter. And that is it's You
can't do names on these because they are always letters
in numbers. This is sick, great idea. I like that comment.
That was a good one, and then I like to
yeah right, the title was clickbait. I'm so looking forward
to this new season of a great discussion and discipleship
(52:34):
from you guys as the granger Smith and y podcast
are combined to ninety nine for one. That was a
good one too, looking forward to listening to the nine
nine four one the podcast. Happy New Year, and so
more accurately, it's not ending your podcast, it's just changing years.
No podcast ended, Grangersmith podcast ended, and ninety nine for
(52:57):
one has started today with this one.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Yep. So in order to seek the one and equip
the ninety nine Tyler, can you give us a good gospel?
We should have a gospel presentation in every show. Can
you give us a gospel to wrap this episode?
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Yeah? We were all want sinners. The God is a holy,
righteous God, righteous judge. We're all guilty and if we
surrender our life, repent of our sins, put our faith,
and believe in Jesus as the one and only true God,
(53:34):
then you will be saved. Hallelujah, Amen, Amen, Amen.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
All right, that's how we'll finish it. See you guys
next Monday eee
Host
Granger Smith
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