Verified Healings & Demonic Psychedelic Trips That Brought Him Closer to Jesus

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I take a sip and I have like a demonic trip.
Go meet my family doc. We show him the report.
He sees a report. I'm like, what do you make of
this? And he's like, take your
miracle. Like this is irreversible.
And then all of a sudden, like alight turns on and it's just all
these worms and maggots writhingover each other.
And boom, I sit up. And then he says to me, you have

(00:21):
this irreversible disease calledBronchiectasis.
And all that's going through my head is what this lady says to
my wife at the beach. You have to walk out your Bruce.
Line. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
today's guest is an author, artist, someone that's actually
behind a lot of the stuff you see on this channel with regards

(00:42):
to our own designs, including this shirt I'm wearing.
By the way, he has a brand new book that I'm ecstatic for.
It's called Room for Good Thingsto Run Wild.
Without any further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the one, the
only, the magnificent Josh Nadeau.
Nice. Hi, Ruslan.
Thanks for. Being here, man, did I say your
name right? Yeah, pretty close.
Like, way better than most people.
How do you say Naidu, Nadeau. Nadeau.

(01:04):
Yeah, alright. Just Nah.
Appreciate you, man. Yeah, yeah, dude, this is fun.
Congratulations on a new book. Thank you.
It is a spiritual formation book, which I have a deep love
for. And, and and your story is
crazy. You've experienced all sorts of
ups and downs and whirlwinds andhealing, miraculous healing
addiction. And you're here now, man.

(01:26):
And. And I feel like you have a voice
that I think is so relevant for this next generation of Gen.
Z, Gen. Alpha.
Most people probably know you through your art.
Yeah, totally. But you have a whole another
side to you that like, I'm excited to jump in.
Yeah, yeah. Thanks dude.
If folks who don't know you, give us a little background in
terms of your who you are, whereyou come from.

(01:46):
Yep. So my name is Josh Nadeau.
I run an Instagram page called Sword and Pencil.
This might be the Canadian in me, but I'm not used to like
gassing myself up. You I, I'll guess, yeah.
Yeah, so, but like, it's been great.
I've like, I've been doing art for a few years, love writing
and then had the pleasure of doing this, writing the book.

(02:07):
And so, yeah, it's been a blast.That's awesome man.
OK, so Canadian. That's right.
Amazing artist. I'll let you let another man's
lips praise you. The good book.
So the good book. Says author now.
Yeah, officially today. World traveller you've lived all
over. Yeah, husband.
That's right, Father. That's right.

(02:29):
Miracle receiver. Also true.
Amazing stuff. Man, yeah, dude, this, it's a
pretty good, it's a pretty good rap.
It's a pretty good list. It's been a like life is one of
those things that like for me, the adventure of life saying
learning to say yes is a wild adventure.
It's been really hard. There's some stuff that's been
brutal, but everything's a gift.All is gift.

(02:52):
And so to be here on this side, if, if we had done this
interview like a year and a halfago, I'd be a different guy.
But this has been a blast. Yeah, man, it's been unreal.
Man, I've had a blast just hanging out with you the past
couple days. We've talked a little bit on the
phone, but I feel like you can'tyou can't chat with me.
On Sunday we had some dinner andjust kind of hearing more of
your story has been so intriguing in terms of your

(03:13):
theological background. You're a charismatic believer.
You believe in the gifts of the spirit.
You've experienced healing and you have a deep reverence for
philosophy, theology. You have your master's in in
theology. And now you're you're kind of
stepping into this whole other realm when there's going to be
multiple books. So take me a little bit back to

(03:37):
how you grew up. Christian home, not Christian
home. How did you come to the faith?
Totally. So I grew up in a Christian
home. It was great.
Like I had a great upbringing. I became a Christian at like 6.
We watched the Jesus movie when I was a kid and I don't remember
which one, but it was just like classic crying at the end of it.
I want to be with Jesus. And then I just lived like a

(03:58):
very normal, mediocre, like Christian upbringing.
I mean, we were like catechized pretty intense.
We, we did like Louis Birkhoff for family devotions.
We did Calvin's Institutes for devotion.
So like I knew a ton at a young age.
And I think it's kind of what fed into some of this mediocrity
that I was going through in my life.
I had that experience growing upwhere I knew all the stuff, but

(04:23):
I had no real answers for like why my Christianity mattered.
So when I went to university, I did my undergrad in physics.
The first year I was like, OK, the good book says Jesus isn't
risen from the dead. Eat, drink, be married, tomorrow
you die. So what I wanted to do is figure
out like if Jesus rose from the dead.
If not, then I'm off the hook. I can do whatever I want.

(04:43):
And so I spent a big chunk of that year trying to figure that
out, was pretty convinced that Jesus rose from the dead.
So I was like, OK, the second way out is if the Bible's not
true, even if Jesus rose from the dead, no one can tell me
what to do because the Bible's not legit.
And so like I went through that process and then so second year
uni, I was pretty convinced likethis is the, the direction I

(05:07):
want to go with my life. And then, you know, life kind of
hits you and you think you understand it like
intellectually and you think that's going to change you.
And I just realized that most ofmy life was like mediocre.
I was pretty discontent. And like I was saying to you
over dinner the other day, like,I think the majority of people

(05:28):
in churches are just like mediocre discontent.
They're wanting something more out of Christianity.
And they're like, is this reallyit?
Like I show up at church on Sundays.
I sing the song. I feel good that afternoon.
And then I go home and like, Monday, I yell at my wife.
Tuesday I'm cutting corners at work.
You know, I never read my Bible.I never pray.
So much easier to open my phone than it is to crack open my

(05:49):
Bible. Like the whole thing.
And I think that, like, all those things are like these
passive things that weigh on us.And for me, what's the best way
of saying it? That was the beginning of like,
slowly deteriorating to where the book starts.
And and where the book starts isyou're full on.

(06:10):
Drunk before work? Alcoholic.
An alcoholic. Not just drunk before work, but
like living as a drunk. Yeah, dude.
So I was, I just been married. This is my first year of
marriage and everything's supposed to be like wedding
bells, wedded bliss. And it was great.
But like to cope with all the stuff going on in my life and I
at that time I didn't even know what I was trying to cope with,

(06:32):
right? I think most people who have
addiction or like so it can be porn, it can be doom scrolling,
it can be alcohol, can be anything.
It's like this existential thing.
It's not primarily. I don't think it's primarily
like a pleasure thing. I think the pleasure is what
you're looking for to numb the pain.
For me so I have friends who like it was porn for them or it
was other distraction. For me it was way easier to take

(06:54):
a drink and just forget for a second what?
Were you trying to forget? So at that time I didn't know
right when it first started. I'm like the cliche do do like
dozen knows emotions. Like when my wife and I first
started dating, I got like an emotions chart and like I put it
up on my fridge. She had one up on her fridge,
like where she was living in thecity and she'd be like Josh, how

(07:15):
you feeling today? And I'd look at the chart and
I'd be like that one. You know what I mean?
As time went on, I realized thatmost of it, which is like the
deepest thing for all of us, is just like, will I be if people
see me? Will I be loved?
Am I loved by God? Am I loved by others?
And insecurity and confidence that comes with that or doesn't
come with that. And I think that that manifests

(07:37):
in tons of different ways. So like, I was a pretty angry
guy and I had a great upbringing.
So like, it was really tough forme to manage or process where
the anger came from. But ultimately it was from like
this question of like, can I be loved and am I lovable?
And so like, so for me, the alcoholism was nuts, dude.
Like I would wake up at first itwas just like, you cope.

(08:00):
You drink to go to sleep and then eventually like it that
stops working. So you drink because you don't
want any withdrawals and then you can't sleep.
So you're just up all the time. And then I was doing all this
stuff at church, right? I so I had this lie that I was
telling myself, which is like, I'm newly married.
So you be there for your wife. I'm involved in church, I'm

(08:20):
leading Bible studies, I'm discipling dudes.
That made sense to me because like that's for other people's
good. I was working full time.
I was doing all this stuff and alcohol.
If you'd asked me then I wouldn't have called myself an
alcoholic. It was just the thing that let
me do the rest of the stuff thatI felt I was supposed to do.
So I leave work and so I didn't lose my mind at my wife.

(08:41):
I'd have a drink on the way home.
Like while you're driving. No, no, no, I would cycle.
I lived in a city I'd like. So like this is.
Like so while you're driving a bicycle.
I would have AI would where I worked.
I worked right downtown Toronto.So you went to like a pub?
Yeah, I would hit the pub pint or two before I went cycle home.
Still not good, not good. So that more the way the book
opens is like I'm drunk and I'vebeen up for an hour.

(09:05):
I like I can picture it because I lived it.
So clearly I'm looking at 2 oz, like a big 2 ounces of Jim Beam
sitting in my Tumblr. And there's the moment of like,
can I get through another 24 hours?
And then you have. I had this thing I was saying
with anger, Like anger swells and masquerades as courage.

(09:25):
You're like, yeah, I can get through another day.
But what it is, is like, I'm just using this weakness and
insufficient insufficiency in myself to get by.
And so I cycle into work and on my way, I'm hoping that like
some car swerves and hits me andlike takes me out just.

(09:46):
Were you dealing with like ideation?
Like like. Oh, totally.
And I didn't again, didn't realize that they're just like
these thoughts that happen, right.
So I think we this is probably 12 years ago now where the
journey starts. And so now we live in a culture
that's like we have tons of language around mental health.
Back then it was just like we had nothing.

(10:06):
I had a buddy who went to counseling and we all made fun
of, I ended up going to counseling.
It's a big part of the book and we just were idiots and made fun
of them, right? It was just a totally different
ethos. I'm like how you deal with
mental health. And so we're like, Oh, you have
like you're sad drink, you're right, you're angry fight.
The whole is cliche so totally ideations.

(10:28):
And that particular morning I feel this ache in my body, this
longing in my soul. And like the nausea that I
generally had from being hungover felt a lot more like
repulsion. I was like, I hate, I hate
everything about what's going on.
I should be super happy, marriedto the love of my life, decent
job, everything was aces. And I just want, like, the

(10:53):
subway car to derail and crush me.
And at that very moment, like, Iremember at Clears day, I felt
like I heard some faint whisper,some melody.
Like Lewis is like echo of a tune you've never heard.
And yeah, that was just the beginning of like my journey up
out of the pit rock bottom instead of taking the easy way

(11:15):
out. So I think it's probably people
that relate a lot to following God, following Jesus, waving
that banner over your life, yet still having parts that are
perhaps incongruent from the liberation that we should be
walking in, the freedom from sin, Right?
So your struggle, you said, was more of an existential meaning

(11:42):
love? Identity.
Identity. And I think that's very yeah, I
think, I think especially now, like that's very common, you
know, and so as you kind of get hit with this epiphany of like,
oh, I'm, I'm kind of a drunk, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm like a
I'm not who I should be. Yeah.

(12:03):
What happened next? Yeah, so one of the eye opening
things. So I would park my bike out, I'd
like lock it up behind the office.
And Toronto's just like every other city.
There's a tons of homeless people.
And so behind there's a bunch ofhomeless guys laying on grates
and they smell like alcohol and they're dressed in those like

(12:23):
duffel bags and garbage and cigarette butts and everything.
And I'm walking past them and like, we're the same them and
me, except I'm a whitewashed tomb.
Like, I look really good with like my Oxford button down and
my slicked back hair and my niceshoes.
And I'm ready to like, go plaster on the fake smile and
make a ton of money at the bank.And I think that realization of

(12:45):
like, I am the prodigal son and I'm judging the guy who's like
at the Feast of Pigs, except I'mat the bottom of a bottle.
I just look cooler. I look more put together.
I don't look like the cliche prodigal person.
And so I think like you're saying there's tons of people in
the church who struggle with it.I would say the majority of the
people in church struggle with like, here's my faith and here's

(13:07):
all the promises that were supposed to come true.
Jesus was supposed to transform me.
My life is supposed to be power and victory and revival, renewal
and hope and all the fruits of the Spirit.
And like, literally, my life is just a grind.
And then I think most people don't even know what they're
coping with, right? It's like dealer's choice.
For me, it was alcohol. For other people, it's all kinds

(13:29):
of things. And So what happened next for
me, like, the journey's not linear.
So one of the reasons it's toughfor me, I had to, like, come up
with this idea of how we proposition the book.
And it is essentially a spiritual formation book, but
it's not a, it's not a, this is no shade on anyone who's written
in spiritual formation books, but formation isn't primarily

(13:49):
intellectual. So it was not ideas that saved
me. I had my master's at this point.
I literally knew everything I was going to know that was going
to transform my life. I knew it in the Greek and I was
like, OK, even the demons know. So like there's no
transformation that's happening.I need something different.
That point. I had no clue what the different

(14:10):
was. So the, the, what's that thing
Einstein says? Like the mark of insanity is
doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different
results. That was like from 18 to like 25
for my life. So essentially I just had to get
to this point where I was like, OK, what, what am I going to do?
Like, how am I going to take thenext step?

(14:33):
And often times I think when we're on these journeys of
faith, so like formation is the sexy modern way of saying
spiritual maturity. We think we need to know the
end. You're right.
I'd need to know. I need to know every step along
the way. All I knew is I had to stop
drinking. That was like the next best
step. It was like, hey, no more
coping. Drinking was going to kill you.

(14:55):
So my wife the night after she, she told me she's like, listen,
like if we keep going this way, we're not going to make it, not
because we're not in love, but just like this is going to be
death by 1000 cuts, right? You're either going to get hit
by a car or get yourself hit by a car or it's going to be like
five years down the road. You have said yes to evil over

(15:16):
and over and over and over againthat you are no longer a person.
You're not even alive. So I'm of the belief that every
decision we make either leads usfurther up and into life, or we
descend further and further awayfrom life.
Do you think that the lack of spiritual formation, maturity,
whatever we're going to call it in the church is because there's

(15:38):
a subtle form of Gnosticism? What we think it's just about
knowing facts and ideas versus that, yes, I do believe God
transforms us and I do believe he gives us new desires and a
new heart. And we have to walk through the
process of what we would call sanctification.
We would have to cooperate and be conformed to his image

(16:01):
through a daily process. And I think often times people,
one, they don't know that like they think it's like, Oh, if I
just believe these essential beliefs, then all of a sudden my
life will be better. And or they, they maybe they do
know that they have to cooperate, but they don't have a
story or narrative totally in terms of how to walk that out

(16:26):
right, Because the story we hearin church usually is I was a
drunk, God save me Hallelujah. Yeah, the and then and.
Then that's it. Yeah, bye, Bye.
But it's also like, yeah, I was a drunk, God save me, and I
still dealt with this thing, andI had to figure out a way to
overcome it. Yeah.
And and and and live a better story.
Totally like for me. So the function.
So in the book I call it functional Gnosticism.

(16:47):
So I would I would be so much ofmy life after this moment was
trying to process what came next.
So like you can take the classicMoses in the Egypt and Israel
story, you leave the slavery of like what was oppressing me,
which was my addiction. And so like, if you're a person
watching, you just say, insert your sin and rebellion and

(17:08):
coping mechanism here. And we think we step out of
Egypt and we're like boom, land flowing with milk and honey and
be like, no, no, no, no, no. It's crossed the Red Sea.
It's passed through the wilderness, it's wandering, it's
dealing with the rebellion. And so most of my life, there's
this interim period of time, like you said, God save me or
like I have this addiction, God saved me.

(17:30):
But there's this interim time oflike, what did that salvation
look like? So one of the reasons I think
people really struggle is this thing that the time I've current
the term, I've coined functionalGnosticism.
So I don't think anyone in the church is like legit affirming
Gnosticism as a heresy functionally 100%.

(17:51):
So I remember these stories, dude.
I remember I was in seminary, I was writing a paper on Moses
song and I was like the if you're doing your masters,
there's like a cool spot of the library that was always reserved
for you. So it's late at night and I was
a good student and my buddy was a good student.
So the librarian left. He's like lock up is a small
school. So they're like lock up, stay as

(18:11):
long as you want. It's maybe 8-9 at night and
we're working. We're typing, drawing stuff out,
trying to map stuff, like separate desks.
This guy leans over to me and he's like, man, are you hungry?
And I was like, yo, I could totally go for like, a burger
and a beer. And he's, I kid you not, he's
like, oh, man, I'm full. I'm just feasting on this

(18:32):
passage. And I was like, OK, so like, did
you like bait and switch me? Did you be like, I need to tell
you how much more holy I am thatmy body doesn't need carbs, fat
and protein? And it was the same thing.
Like, there's so many stories oflike, I would be out and we'd be
like hanging out and people be like, don't you think it'd be
better for evangelizing or praying right now?

(18:54):
And I'd be like, So I think functionally we have this idea
that the things we know, the Gnostic idea of secrets will
save us. So if I just get the hidden
knowledge, the problem is my dad's a local pastor, so I love
local pastors. The problem is most people don't
know that they're just pushing aspiritual gospel.

(19:15):
So one of the scenes in the book, so the book is like it is
a formation book, but it's a it's my narrative because from
that story, you can elucidate all the the intricacies of what
salvation from addiction or sin or rebellion actually looks
like, because it's getting an idea in your mind or in your

(19:35):
heart and then learning to interpret it through your body
in the real world. And so the answer to functional
Gnosticism is incarnation. That what I call in the book
embodiment. And so it took me a long time to
learn that. I remember going out for drinks
with one of the guys at the church and it was the irony
because I knew as an alcoholic and everyone to found out that I

(19:57):
was an alcoholic and I quit my job.
Because I just, that was the wayfor me to stop drinking was
like, if I just remove the 70 hours of week of stress, then
like whatever. So I started doing bike Courier
work, delivering like red, red tie Curry around the city to
people. And I'm up for drinks with this
guy. And he's just got like verses to

(20:20):
save me. He's like, you know what you're
doing as a sin. And I was like, I know.
And he starts saying stuff to meand I'm like, listen, I've heard
it all. I don't even think you're wrong,
but it's just not changing me like that.
You think this is the life I want.
You think I want year one of marriage, alcoholic, quit the
job, move in with my old friendsacross the city.
Not know who I am, not know whatI'm doing, not know what's going

(20:42):
on. Having a Christianity that feels
like a cheap knock off of like everything I hear Sunday to
Sunday. And then when this idea got in
me of like, you know what? I'm not a brain in a VAT.
The world is not just materialism with a little bit of
Jesus sprinkled on top. Like if you measure it, you're
OK. Then I was like, well, Dang,

(21:04):
where do I go next? How do I learn to figure this
thing out through my body? And that was like that was way
harder to figure out. It is way harder to figure out
it is, but I do think that there's freedom in the
incarnation, and this is what I mean.
So the Christian story is that, you know, Glenn Scrivener says

(21:26):
God the Son becomes God the brother, God the Son becomes God
our brother, right? And so the whole aspect of
something immaterial stepping into the material so that the
material can be redeemed back tothe immaterial, right?
And the reconciliation then causes us to be reconcilers and

(21:48):
ultimately our bodies being redeemed for the new heaven and
new earth. Like that on a, on a, on a story
level is cool. But the way it hit me, and this
is going to sound super weird and it's not going to make
sense, is I, I had a similar story where I was, I was
struggling, I was touring, I wastraveling the country away from
my family body breaking down exorbitant amounts of sugar, bad

(22:11):
food, overweight, struggling with less like the whole gamut.
But the the interesting thing isthe pathway for me was in
chiseling my physical body, which then impacted my spiritual
formation. So like I think everybody has a
different thing they need to latch onto the the keystone
habit, the domino that you pressto then kind of everything else

(22:32):
aligns. And for me, oddly enough, it
what it was. It was like spiritual formation
came to the door of physical transformation.
Discipline, right? Well, like, so the, the reason
is what I didn't know then what I know now.
Like John Paul, the seconds, like the body reveals the soul.
The body makes visible what's invisible.
So, so your body goes so your soul.

(22:53):
So like when, when I had to be careful how I wrote the book
because there's something romantic about like a broken
person carving their way througha city.
And all my heroes are writers, so they're all drinkers and
they're smokers. But there's pictures I have from
this time. And like, I was skinny as a
rail, but like, I just looked empty.
I looked like a husk. I looked like a ghost.

(23:15):
One of the things in the book islike, you are not just soul.
You're also not just body, right?
You're not just a corpse, but I looked like a corpse.
But my body was revealing internal realities.
People would look at me and be like, we clearly know that
dude's not put together. It's like you just said, like
you had your body was making manifest some sort of lack and

(23:36):
need within you. So for me, like, listen, there's
a couple. I love art and I love being
surrounded by the art. The art looks great, but writing
is my thing. And so there are certain cliches
I didn't want to put in the book, but they almost felt
necessary because they're so important.

(23:57):
And so for me, one of the ways to like, disconnect from just
this mental way of looking at life was getting back into
martial arts and boxing. So I went to boxing and it was
one of those realities. Like you show up.
I remember walking in and like, the gym was hard.
I went to the hard gym on the sketchy side of town.
The girl was like always smokinginside and like, there's pros

(24:20):
tats on their faces. They were unreal.
It was awesome. First day you walk in and you're
like, I'm bottom of the rung, like I'm bottom rung, lowest
tier hierarchy. And there's this moment of doing
what I did in church all the time, be like, I can turn tail,
walk back around, just I can't fake it here.
So I shouldn't even try. And I was like, Josh, like,
how's that been working for you?Be like, OK, so go in.

(24:42):
And the best thing about the boxing gym is like it asserts
its dominance over you. But if you work hard, you
thrive. And there's this thing where,
like, you'd go and you'd spar and you'd get cracked in the
face and split lip and headaches, whatever.
But as time went on, it happenedless and less and less and less.

(25:03):
And I remember I'd cycle back and forth from my apartment to
the boxing gym. I'd be like, what if this is how
we made Saints? What if this is how we did our
Christianity? What if like you had a coach and
he's like, listen, you can read about boxing, You can watch
YouTube videos about boxing. You can follow a couple boxers
on Instagram. Once you get punched in the
face, everything you think you know goes out the window.

(25:26):
And when you work close with someone, he's like, you want to
know why you keep getting hit with that jab?
It's because like once you get hit, you're tired and you're
timid or whatever it is and you're just faint.
You're not bobbing or weaving ordoing anything.
And so I, I had this moment, I was like, this is where St. this
is how we find maturity. It's not just from reading a
book. So this book is not the secret

(25:46):
to save you. The ideas in the book of going
and living a real, embodied, incarnated life, wherever that
goes and dealing with your sin the way you actually need.
Like that's the it's not the secret.
It's the mystery of what saves us.
So it was boxing for me. And it's just this embodied
thing of like, listen, I startedboxing.

(26:09):
There is one day I stopped getting split lips.
Call that salvation. In between was tons and tons of
time. That's really cool man.
And yeah, I think, I think our stories are, are parallel in the
in, in a similar way. Because I think if we think
about it from sociological standpoint and we're thinking
about how much humans are sedentary and we're sitting and

(26:31):
we're not moving. And then like, that's not how
our grandparents lived. That's not how our ancestors
lived. And so you're, we're we're
almost dealing with different problems in a way.
And so like I think that you seethe spike in mental health and
anxiety and all that kind of stuff.
Like, a lot of that is, I think,probably caused by the way we
don't move. Yeah.
And we wonder why we're. So you feel like crap.

(26:53):
You have this like disembodied experience.
We interact with the world. I was out at this conference and
this is no shade on like the next Gen. but like everything
was interpreted through the phone.
So like rather than interpreted through your body and
experiencing people with touch and smell and feeling.
So like part of the book, part of the thing that like I started
figuring out next was like I needed a phenomenology of

(27:14):
sainthood. I didn't want like this
intellectual explanation. I wanted to know a St. by
experiencing a St. And just the same way like when
I first started dating my wife and you get the first kiss, I
could have blown it by being like, OK, let's measure how fast
my heart is racing. Let's measure how many
goosebumps I have. Or like, is it true that there's

(27:35):
butterflies in my stomach? Be like, no, you just enjoy the
kiss and you let the kiss do something to your body.
And so a phenomenology of sainthood, like experiencing a
St. by practice, I think is the way forward because like, you
can read the life of the Saints and I do, and none of them are
the same. They're all wild.

(27:56):
That's part of the reason why the book has the title.
But there's like, there's thingsabout them that are similar.
And so part of it is they love ultimate love.
They are committed to the way ofChrist.
There's all these things. But when you look at their
practical lives, they're they'redifferent.
They break categories. Peter Craft, Catholic

(28:18):
philosopher, I'm sure you've heard of him.
He talks about how you can nevermake a St. out of a wimp.
So what you need is the strengthto face all the stuff to become
a St. And then I had this realization
that like you can always see where a St. has been because
they leave like holy little messes everywhere they go.
Like you got a flip table. You have the scent of the life

(28:39):
to come and you watch, you know,when you enter into a room and
like someone who's holy has beenthere, like the presence of God
lingers. You're with them and you're
like, am I like when Paul says follow me for I follow Christ.
When you meet someone who's likemature and holy, committed to
the path, you're like, yeah, this isn't a normal
conversation. I'm not meeting with a normal

(29:01):
person. I'm getting so much Jesus
through this person's body. Like they are incarnating
goodness, truth and beauty to such an extent that I feel like
I'm seeing someone who's like partly remade already.
But you they're only like it's caught, not taught.
That person sits you down is like, OK, so I read my Bible,
this money, whatever. You're like, OK, I'll try.

(29:22):
And that's part of it. You have to like Louis talks
about these kids. There's good kinds of pretend
and bad kinds of pretend. When a kid is pretending to be a
firefighter, pretending to be a dad or pretending to be a mom,
what they're doing is taking thevirtues that they think exist
for those categories. Then they're doing it at 2 years
old, three years old, like kids playing house and I'm going to
go cops and robbers and go fightthe bad guys.

(29:43):
Then there's bad kinds of pretend that are like fantasy
escape. I don't mean Lord of the Rings
fantasy, I mean like escapism, numbing, distraction.
I have a massive update for you.I'm sure by this point you've
heard about the Blessed God Summit happening March 27th,
28th, 29th here in beautiful Carlsbad, CA.
But we've heard your request. We've conceded to your demand.
There are virtual tickets that are now available for the

(30:05):
Blessed Scott Summit so you could access it from anywhere in
the world as well as access to the replays.
And for those of you guys that are looking for something extra,
we're also offering a virtual ticket and an exclusive Bless
God Summit merch bundle. There's some amazing art and
some exclusive pieces done by our friend Josh Nadeau from
Sword and Pencil that you have to check out.

(30:26):
So join us online for the virtual event and experience
some sessions from my favorite podcasters, pastors and
performers. We have a stacked lineup.
I'm talking about Preston Perry,Doctor Sean McDowell, inspiring
philosophy. What do you mean Lila Rose Allen
Park and his wife Jen Parr. We even have Nate Sala from Wise

(30:47):
disciple Gavin Ortland, David Wood Avery from God Logic
Apologetics. And on the pastoral side, we
have my friend Daniel Golding, Pastor Ed Newton from CBC in San
Antonio, and my personal pastor from Rhythm Church, Pastor Jeff
Moores and his wife Aaron Moores.
You won't want to miss out from amazing performances from
America's Got Talent winner Dustin Savella, Billboard

(31:09):
charting hip hop artist John Keith and Miles Minnick.
And we're still finalizing a fewmore speakers, so head over to
bless God dot shop. Get your virtual ticket now and
you can get yourself a bundle with some of the exclusive merch
as well. I'll see you over there.
All right, Peace. And so part of like, that thing
of becoming a St. was for me finding local people around me

(31:33):
who I could just like, do my life with.
I could watch them. I could see how they were in
traffic. I could see how they were when
they were hungry. I could see how they were when
they made a mistake and they needed to apologize and just to
get life like that in me and around me.
I love that man. And I think the beautiful part
is when I think of the Scriptures and I think of like a

(31:55):
book like First Corinthians. Yeah, Paul's writing this kind
of wild, loose church. He's having to keep telling him
to, like, stop being sexually immoral.
Can't stop sleeping with your mother?
In law, like if someone's smashing their mother-in-law and
he's like, like, you know, get that dude out of the church,
like, and and yet he keeps calling them Saints.

(32:15):
Yeah, right. He keeps calling them to say, so
First Corinthians three, I thinkhe calls them worldly.
And then when he talks about sin, he's like, and and some of
you were this way, right in First Corinthians 6.
And he keeps referring to them as Saints.
And so it's this interesting idea of imitation to step into
the the sainthood or the priesthood of all believers
totally. Yet there's a disconnect.

(32:37):
And I think the blood of Jesus and the grace and the mercy of
God is big enough to cover that.Yet what does that mean for the
person on this side of eternity and living in a perpetual state
of imposter syndrome? Totally.
Right, and I just, I, I don't want that like, and so as I'm
thinking about my own life, right, like, and I'm thinking

(32:57):
about like areas I want to button up by the grace of God,
like I'm not dealing with lust, I'm not dealing with alcoholism,
I'm not dealing with addiction in that sense, But like I want
to refine and get better at my love for food, you know, and
like overeating and, and, and not moving enough, you know, and
like the, the sin as you mature and you grow, becomes more

(33:17):
sophisticated and becomes more culturally acceptable.
Totally right. Like it's.
OK, if you're 30. Yeah, like Jerry Bridges has
that book, like Acceptable Sins or whatever it's called.
And like alcohol, like these things are like frameworks,
right? So like, it's the same impulse
of my alcoholism that drives me to be selfish.
Just me first. I need to take care of me first.

(33:40):
I think what you're saying with the not just a sophisticated
sin, but like being a St. in that already not yet paradigm.
So like if you close your eyes and you picture a St. you
picture the Halo, you picture like the tattered robes, you
picture like something or something very beautiful, like
Halos and beautiful robes, and they're praying, praying at the
altar. I think we need to like

(34:04):
reimagine the vision of like a St.
So yes, we are Saints in one sense, like you were called.
We've received the Holy Spirit. We are Saints in that sense, but
we also know we're not perfect yet.
And then there are people who wemeet, and I'm not just talking
about the Saints that are canonized.
I'm talking about like there's little old ladies in churches
I've gone to who they're Saints.Like, trust me, I've met them.

(34:28):
I see what they do. I see what they give to the
church. I see how they live.
And so the idea of an ordinary person becoming an everyday St.
I think so when you talk about the next Gen. their questions of
like identity and purpose are enormous, especially when
they're so inundated online withlike your identity could be
famous YouTube famous content creator.

(34:50):
You could be a celebrity, you could do this.
And like all of marketing and advertising is literally like
sniper aimed directly at their insecurities, right?
Like the new Apple, any new Apple product is like identity
is the slogan. If you buy this, it will save
you. And then they buy it and you're
like, oh Dang, I'm still addicted to whatever I'm

(35:11):
addicted to. So Christianity's solution is
like, listen, that question of identity and purpose, we've got
it. The purpose of your life is to
become a St. Becoming is like the operative
word. That's the thing that I needed
to learn. That was really difficult, was
not like, so about halfway through the book, I say
something and what I say is, I could have told you this on Page

(35:33):
1, but you would have done what I did and tuck it away in your
pocket and go tell people that Bible study.
Be like, oh, listen, I know the cool answer.
Be like, no, no, no, no, no, no,no.
You've got to go through that. Took me this journey of this
book is like six years of my life.
And it was up and down and up and down and up and down.
And so the idea of becoming is enormous.

(35:54):
What taught it to me was Brothers Karamazov.
There's like three key characters.
You've got Ivan. He's the atheist dude.
He's like observing the world asit is.
And what he sees is like evil suffering, kids freezing to
death in Russia, parents making sure the kids they can't feed
freeze to death. And he says, like, how could

(36:15):
there be a good God if this happens?
You have this guy, Father Zasima.
He's the Saint. He is the person who has quote
UN quote arrived and he's engaged in the life of love for
his community. And then you have like the the
priest in training Alyosha, and he's just becoming.
And so when he engages with the world around him.

(36:37):
So there's this scene in the book where Ivan and Alyosha,
they're brothers, they interact.And Ivan is like, how Can you
believe what you believe? How can you be a Christian?
How can you do any of this? And like, literally, Dostoevsky
is putting forward the best philosophical argument against
God imaginable. And Alyosha has no answer, and

(36:57):
he just gives his brother a kiss.
And I remember reading that being like, listen, Josh,
there's so many answers you do not have and you cannot
understand, but you can live a life of love.
And that's Christianity. And so the idea of becoming, of
being like this, and I don't need that answer.
Actually, what I do need to do is let love take root in my life

(37:18):
and express it and all the timesI don't want to love.
All the times I want to like, not love and honor my body by
eating extra. All the times I want to not love
the life God has given me, an escape from it and run from the
pain, I need to confront it withlove Incarnate, like in and
through my body. Yeah, that's good.
You know what I mean? Not just like sit alone in a
room and think about it for a bit.

(37:39):
Yeah, I mean, you're kind of alluding to some of the same
stuff that Jerry Bridges, you mentioned him earlier, also
explores and disciplines of grace.
Yeah, you know, which is like it's this dichotomy of we're
saved by grace, right? Justification, all the all the
good news. Yet there is a discipline to
walk out the grace that has beendeposited in US.
And that discipline is often uncomfortable, you know, and I

(38:02):
also think you're also hinting at this idea that I explore a
bit in my book about the law of replacement, right.
You people just want to remove. You think like if I just
revealed that I'm a Sinner, I'm a I'm a terrible Sinner, then I
just go straight to removing stuff.
But you missed the step of replacing totally, right?
You got you got to do the process of replacing the sin

(38:22):
with the virtue. Yeah, bro, come on.
You know, So there's this section of my book.
I read John Owens book in seminary, Mortification of Sin.
Huge tone. And I was like, this sucks.
I mean, it's a great book. It's important.
It's like, it's important to read, but it's half the story.
And it was the worst part of thestory.
Like Jesus tells the parable, like you get rid of the demon,

(38:43):
you clean your house, that demongoes out into the wilderness and
he gets 7 demons that are stronger and they're like, OK,
we're taking over. And I think most of like modern
evangelicalism is totally OK with cleaning house.
I'm not going to date, I'm goingto work on myself.
But So what I did is I had my mentor and I had the principal
at my school and I would run these ideas past them.

(39:06):
And I was saying like, listen, it feels like anytime I talk to
someone about virtue, about something positive, it always
comes back to killing sin. They were like, so how do I put
on love? Oh, you kill sin and be like,
sorry, you're just telling me the same thing.
The only thing you know. And so one of the reasons the
book is called Room for Good Things to Run Wild is Chesterton

(39:26):
has this quote where he was like, there's this established
rule and order of Christianity. And I thought they were
shackles. I thought it was a prison.
And then he's like, the more I considered it, what Chesterton
actually says is he's like, I went out to figure out my faith
and I wanted to found a heresy of my own.
Just this is going to be my belief.
And he's like, I went all the way around and what I found was

(39:48):
orthodoxy. I just found real Christianity.
I was just so blind to it. What I found was that
established rule and order was to give room for good things to
run wild, which is like virtue unleashed.
So like the classical virtues, like chastity.
So like how do you fight lust with chastity?
How do you fight greed, generosity?

(40:09):
How do you fight anger, kindness?
So like when you get angry at someone, be like, hey, I'm going
to bless them. You put on to take off.
But when you do that for your whole life.
It's the best way of saying this.
Like again, it's the hardest thing you'll ever have to do
because it's hard as hell. And I mean that as literal as
possible. You have to get rid of the hell

(40:30):
and rebellion in you and let thelife to come saturate you.
It's hard, but it will be an adventure.
It's the best thing I ever did. I mean, it led me all around the
world, which was perfect. It's part of what my story is,
but I, I think God was very gracious to me where I think I'm

(40:51):
the kind of person that is so dumb and so blind and so
confused that if he didn't just like shove my face and a Spanish
coastline, I would have never been able to come home and be
like, this dirty diaper is the exact same.
This cup of like Jesus, you turned water into wine.
And every morning I turn water into coffee like miracles.

(41:15):
It's all the same. But I needed to see at the
extreme of beauty to learn to come back to live a normal, a
normal, holy, ordinary, routine life.
Yeah, yeah, that's good, man. And I think when you talk about
this, at least in my circles, sometimes what gets thrown,
which I think is just so poisonous, is this idea of like,

(41:38):
oh, you're talking about like workspace salvation.
And I go, stop it. No, we're not talking about
salvation in the sense of justification.
We're talking about the process of becoming more like Jesus over
the course of your lifetime. And that involves you working
out the thing that God worked in.

(41:58):
And I think that's the part where I guess, and you know, my
like new evangelical type circles, as you start talking
about virtue and you start talking about goodness and you
start my beauty and they go, you're trying to earn your way
to God. And it's like no, no, no, no,
no, I don't need to earn my way to my identity, but I do need to
walk block out the identity of Bing given.
And like, there are, there's good things that happen when you
do that. Like, so the world that I grew
up in was like very Calvinistic.I'm not Calvinist anymore.

(42:23):
But it was like so heavy on grace and election that this
idea of like doing good works was always looked at with like
suspicion. Like what are you trying to do?
And be like, Jesus was like, I only do what I see the Father
doing. I'm trying to, I think, do the
same thing. Be like you're trying to earn
your salvation. Be like, no.
And then they'd be like, your righteous works are filthy rags.

(42:44):
And I'll be like, yeah, but I don't actually think so.
I think like if Christ in me is doing good work in me and
through me, I'm. So my view of what's happening
at the cross and in the resurrection is what Maximus the
confessor says. Like all things are being made
news. So you have the cosmic Christ.
Everything in creation was made for Christ, made from Christ and

(43:08):
finds its fulfillment in Christ and reflects Christ in some
capacities. So like why do we have winter
and spring? Because we have a dying and
rising God. Why does everything seem to
exist in triplets? Because we have a triune God.
Like this is just the idea. And so part of our
sanctification or theosis or participation, it doesn't

(43:29):
matter. Like what Athanasius said, God
became man so that we could become God.
And he means participate in the divine.
Like it says in first or second Peter is alignment is being made
new. And how do you make yourself
new? You do what's good and what's
true and what's beautiful. If you don't do those things.
This is the scariest part. This is so one of the big themes

(43:50):
in the book is like, it's not just enough to say I want to
have formation, I want to be mature.
Where you start and the steps you take matter because you
could do like think about Mormons.
They think they're Christians. Be like, sorry, you deny the
deity of Christ, you deny the Trinity, you're not in the club.
That's like literally Step 1. So where you start matters.

(44:11):
And the issue is if you start from a perspective that doing
good and being good and becominggood is wrong, you're, you're
pooched, right? Like ultimately you might be the
person as like you're saved as through the flames.
But if you that imagine the person who's like, Oh yeah, I

(44:34):
don't want to stop this bad habit because like God will do
it for me by grace. It'd be like Paul's, like I
worked harder than anyone, but it was grace in me and through
me. And you feel that when you start
doing good work like. I I think everything you say, I
just go, I don't want to just barely get to heaven.
Yeah, dude. Like I don't want to get to
heaven. And then like Jesus, like, yeah,

(44:55):
man, like you made it. But like, you came in with a
limp and you, you, you just, youhad all these things and you,
you shipwrecked your life and your marriage.
And it's like, no, no, no, like I don't, I don't want that.
Like I want to get into heaven and and be closer who Jesus
wants me to be as I progress in my.
Life, dude, you want to go in like high fives all the Saints

(45:17):
down the road, like this is the place of dreams come true.
I'm here. This is what I wanted my whole
life. And you don't want to be like
the rug pulled out from under you where you're like, oh, I
thought I was doing it, but I wasn't.
Right. Yeah, Yeah, that's good.
That's good. I think, I think these
conversations hopefully will help people reorient their faith
in, in terms of the, the, the, the faith versus works

(45:40):
dichotomy, which I, I think often times just is just a false
dichotomy. Like I think, I think in many
streams of Christianity, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant,
like there's a place for faith and there's a place for works
and they and they're not in, they're not in competition in,
in the blood of Jesus is still good.
And it's still like, like I'm confident that I'm saved, not

(46:03):
because of anything I've done, but because of what he's done.
Yet I have enough confidence to then walk it out.
Totally. Like I don't think I read a lot
of like ancient stuff and I was like, I don't think anyone
thinks you're saved by your works.
Everyone knows you're saved by Christ.
Who else can rescue you from this body of death, from the
domain of death? Only the person who slaughtered
death. End of story, right?

(46:24):
Like, and so I think works. I don't even like using that
framework just in my own life. I like the language of virtue.
I like the language of sainthood.
The narrative of it is somethinglike, listen, every day and
every moment is an opportunity to bring life to life in me and
through me. Or it's not, or I reject it.

(46:46):
I reject the opportunity. So this is just my context.
My contacts right now is like a wife and two kids and like that
they're my people. You know what I mean?
And in that context, like everything is not a a
mountaintop spiritual experienceat some retreat where there's
worship and 24 hour prayer and you know, mountaintop moments
with God. Like God is in the mundane

(47:09):
aspects of you having 2 little ones that are, you know, you
have a newborn and you have a 2 year old and you and you get to
walk through the process of, youknow, helping and serve your
wife while she nurtures the kid.Like all of that is holy.
It's like so the one of the yes man, like one of the main
thrusts of my life was learning that when the infinite God comes

(47:32):
into your finite moments, he redeems the ordinary to be
beautiful. The myth of the modern world is
like to be a success, I have to have a platform.
I have to have a following. It has to be mountain tops all
the time. It has to be CLEP.
So we're trying to like change ourselves and change the world
with the tools of the world, like the bless of the eyes, less
of the flesh pride of life. Like how's that working for you,

(47:53):
man? You know, it's really beautiful
living your small, holy, ordinary life.
And so there's this book called The Beauty of everyday things.
It's by this Japanese philosopher.
So Tetsu something I'd like forgive me for not remembering a
Japanese name. And he taught, he like wrote

(48:14):
about the, the he put language around the Japanese folk craft
movement. And what he said was these
things we surround ourselves with, the utensils, the clothes,
the blankets, when they're made by human hands, they become
familiar friends. They are like something real
that we're connected to. But when they become mass

(48:35):
produced, when they become made by machines that become
soulless, and our life becomes soulless.
And so when you look at your ordinary life and you think that
it's empty because it's not likebeing videotaped or it's empty
because it's not getting thousands of likes on Instagram
or like retweets, They call themretweets on X still, whatever
they call it, what they're called.
I don't know anything anymore, but we just have this like

(48:56):
massive disconnect, like mirror,mirror on the wall.
Who's the fairest one of all? And be like, who cares about the
mirror? Care about the person right in
front of you. And that's like the Kingdom mode
of being, which is like, these are your people.
You think you need that. But if you want salvation, this
is the context I have you in. And this will redeem you and it
will redeem the world. You'll be a part of Jesus's,

(49:21):
What does Lewis say? Like campaign of sabotage, going
behind enemy lines and being like, oh, you thought evil and
loneliness was going to rain here, Too bad Saints are showing
up. And now there's generosity and
intimacy and communion and you're like, OK, yeah, we could
do that. Yeah, that's good.
That's good. You had a pretty miraculous

(49:41):
healing that happened to you. Yeah, approximately was it about
two years ago. The healing a year ago.
OK. Just a year and a.
Half and it's something that thedoctors called a miracle.
Four times, yeah. Four times and I want to get
into that, but I I want to get into you kind of share with me
privately what you think may have opened you up to the

(50:03):
sickness. Yeah, that's like it's.
Kind of spooky. It's kind of spooky.
So easy on actually here's like easy on ramp is like our modern.
I don't think our modern time islike post Christian.
I think our modern time is pre Christian.
I think it's Pagan. And so I think that what you see
is like paganism run amok. And so there's all this eastern

(50:26):
ISM and part of that east. So there's this joke I
remembered this morning. So there's this Buddhist guy.
He goes to a hot dog vendor and he's got his money and he's
like, hey, I had like a hot dog.The vendor says what do you
want? And he's like, make me one.
Damn, how am I forgetting this? Make me one with everything.

(50:46):
So like the Buddhist idea of make me one with everything.
The the Buddhist guy passes the hot dog vendor 20 bucks and the
vendor puts it in his pocket andthe Buddhist guy is waiting for
his money and he's like yo what's the deal like?
And the vendors like he's. Waiting for his.
He's waiting. Yeah.
No, no, he gets the hot dog. He's waiting.
He's just waiting for. Yeah.

(51:07):
But then the vendors, like, change comes from within.
So it's like the Buddhist idea of, like, make me one with
everything. Change comes from within.
Those are like, that's my peopleat the climbing gym I go to on
West Coast Canada. That's just what it is.
And so, like, I have done mushrooms in my life.
Disclaimer, like, do not do mushrooms is not a good idea.

(51:30):
Yeah, very cautionary tale. So when one of the ways my wife
and I were trying to process this sickness was just to be
like, so for me, there's no diagnosis.
We know what was happening. Arteries in my lower left lung
were popping, bursting, coughingup a ton of blood.
Not cancer, not tuberculosis, not cystic fibrosis.

(51:50):
It's just nothing. I have no clue what's causing
it. And so like at some point we got
to this framework of kind of like the church father idea of
like everything evil is demonic,even like our own sin.
Like we have like our own propensities and our own will
and we desire sin. But like in lots of the early

(52:13):
church fathers, their ideas likethe devil and his minions are
like they're telling you that will save you.
Like it's a constant barrage of whatever.
So part of our framework at least is this was definitely
spiritual warfare. And they're things.
So like, OK, So what happens is what do you want to hear about

(52:35):
first? The sickness or the drug trip?
The drug trip was crazy. Tell me.
About the drug trip because because the drug trip comes from
a place of openness to want to potentially.
Find healing. Find healing.
Yeah. So this is the, this is like a
lapse and reason moment of weakness.
I'm an artist. This was years ago, but the idea
was like, there's tons of stuff,like look at our modern world,

(52:58):
like Rogan is like a evangelist for LSD and DMT, Sam Harris, all
these people, they want these spiritual experiences without
something. But then the brains of our
culture started coming in and being like, oh, psychedelics are
a way to heal from depression, away to heal from addiction, a
way to heal from this. And there's this like
experimental person in me that'slike, well, I'll try.

(53:19):
And if it works, I can help other people.
I can figure it out. So this is like literally
playing with fire. So what I do is I, we find a
place, we measure out the grams that we're going to take.
You make a tea, I take a sip andI have like a demonic trip, like

(53:39):
through and through. And you were hoping to heal
what? Anxiety, depression, that sort
of thing. I don't know, really, like I
just if there was to be healing,this is like at that time in my
life from like, I don't really know what I'm struggling with,
but I just want to fix it because life didn't feel like it
was coming up. So when I say that like I was
addicted to alcohol, I was also looking for salvation.

(54:01):
Like wasn't just alcohol. Like I did drugs to try to like
and you know what I mean? And like there are tons of
stories of people like, yeah, man, I saw like the geometric
patterns of the universe, man. And now I know everything's
love. I don't buy that at all anymore.
Like after my experience and after all the reading and study
that I've done. So like my trip, I go under and

(54:23):
it's like no fun, no like funny colors, no whatever.
It's like intense the whole way through.
Like like you're being demonizedon this trip.
Yeah, like, I don't know if I'm being demonized.
I'll tell you what happened. The language is very difficult,
like theologically because of myeducation and stuff I've read

(54:43):
like I know. So for example, the reason why
divination and pharmacology and witchcraft and stuff is
forbidden in Scripture. It's because like you're picking
up the phone to the unseen realmand you don't know who's
answering. The reason why we have prayer
and the spiritual practices is because every time you do those,
you do know who's answering. It's the Holy Spirit in you.
It's got the Father on the otherside.
Do you know what I mean on the other side?

(55:06):
And so I think that some people have these like mediating
experiences where like they pickup the phone and it's just like
no one. I think sometimes someone picks
up the phone and they're like, OK, time to tell some lies.
So I have this vision, the firstvision, like I literally take a
swig of this T5 minutes later, close my eyes like I'm, I'm like

(55:27):
out. And it's like, and I can picture
it now, it's like this enormous city, dark blue.
And it's like this mix of like neon future with like stone
ancient stuff. And there are these people
passing forth and they're tryingto get in the city, like they're
fighting to get in the city. And if I, I kept looking closer

(55:48):
and I noticed that the city was alive, like the city was
organic. It was a living being.
And it was like frantic, it was shaking.
And he was like desperately looking at these people, like
trying to coax them in. And these people who are trying
to get in the city had the exactsame kind of like frenetic
chaotic energy. But what they wanted was like
the power that came from being in the city.

(56:09):
And so then literally like I situp in bed and my wife like
writes down what I tell her. And I'm like, that felt like
less of the eyes, less of the flesh, pride of life, like
money, sex, power felt like power.
Like that's you could be, that'swhat happens.
You like, you pursue power, you're trying to get in, but

(56:30):
it's like this frenetic clambering, you're crushing and
killing the people all around you.
Lay back down. Another vision.
Second vision is like kind of out in the wilderness.
So you picture it like close your eyes, it's dark.
And inside this tree trunk, the enormous tree trunk was like a
house, but it was like a party. So like I kind of peek in and

(56:53):
inside is like this orgy, just like bodies writhing and they're
all like reaching out trying to pull me in.
And there's something like in methat feels this pull and then
all of a sudden like a light turns on and it's just all these
worms and maggots writhing over each other.
And boom, I sit up and I'm like,that's sex.
Like if you give your life to sex, like if you think sex is

(57:14):
going to save you, like it's, you're going to lose yourself.
I lay back down. I have this like third and final
vision and something happens at the end.
And the third vision is like this.
I'm like pulling these like vegetables or something out of
the garden. And there's this like, I feel
like I'm being hunted. Like something's watching me

(57:34):
from like the, you know, like you feel like you, you know,
when you're a little kid and yousee a shadow and be like
someone's in the house, someone's in the house felt like
that the whole time. So I'm pulling out these
vegetables and then there's all these like mannequins around and
they're like kind of crackling and stuff.
And the idea that I like am overcome with is like, I taking
stuff up from the ground and I'll just like sell it to these

(57:56):
mindless drones. But they're all cracking and
falling apart. And then the vegetables so like
moth and rust, they start cracking, falling apart.
Boom, sort of wake up. What happens in this third and
final thing is I feel I saw whatall these people see, which is
like we're around a campfire, say the size of this table, and
there's all these people who aredancing and singing and they're

(58:17):
like have like a humanoid form. They're all black, but they're
bones and like their structures and stuff on them that are like
neon and bright and shining. And there's something like
really primal and ancient about it.
And I'm like, oh, this is cool. But all of a sudden, I feel like
the weight of, like, the whole universe is like, leaning in on

(58:37):
us. And So what felt like, so
amazing? Like, honestly, looking back and
like, if this is what people areseeing, I can understand why
they want to have these trips. You're like, yeah, this is
ancient. This is primal.
They're telling you you can be in the city and have the power.
You can have sex and find, like,orgiastic, orgasmic joy.
And you can make a ton of money.And then you get to go around

(58:57):
the campfire at night and sing and dance and whatever.
So I stood up in this little dreamy thing and I put my hand
up. Then I touched the edge of that
universe. I was like, oh, this this
universe, this way of being is in like I'm 510 when I reach up,
maybe maxing out at like a 7 foot reach or whatever.

(59:18):
I don't know. I don't have that short arm.
So if people Google this feel like I don't have tiny arms and
then I RIP through and it's justthis bright blue infinite
expanse. And then I sit up and I tell my
wife I was like, that was the worst thing that's ever
happened. And I thank God and his grace
like gave me these little visions of like the city was
alive and frantic like the orgy was writhing worms, moth and

(59:43):
rust is going to destroy this primal new age movement that you
think is ancient and going to satisfy you.
It's like the size of this room and God's like I want to give
room for good things to run wildso that there was the worst.
Like people do not do drugs. You don't need that to save you.
This was like literally me at the garden being like, I'll save

(01:00:05):
myself, my way. And I think God and his grace
didn't let me go down the path. When we're trying to frame up
what happened to me with my lungs and my health.
Part of it is like narrative building.
You want to just figure out why.And so when it came down to so
the first night. Do you mind if I was just good?

(01:00:28):
Just yeah. Is this cool?
OK, so. You're good.
I mean, the way you describe that trip makes me never want
to. Bro drugs, I'm telling.
You and I've never understood that cause 'cause you're not the
first like Christian. I know that's like dabbled in
that stuff and I've never understood it like I guess I
guess I'm just like in a place where all that just sounds
horrifying. It's pet, Yeah.
And I have enough of a spiritualdiscipline that like, I don't, I

(01:00:52):
don't, you know, But yeah, there's been multiple Christians
of that described similar. Stuff like what you have, I
think is like there's some things like in culture that are
quote UN quote neutral. And the way that the modern
world is gone, it's called like psychedelics, a neutral, a
neutral thing. It's not evil, it's not good,
it's neutral. It can be a tool for good.

(01:01:13):
And so you have all the scientists who come around and
they're like, yeah, we could, you could micro dose, you could
do a guided trip and we can stand behind the traumas that
exist in your mind and we can help rewrite pathways in your
brain. And you can like, and there are
people who go from like super neurotic, super depressed to
being very open and very joy filled.
And I don't know what to make ofthat.
I don't really know what to makeof this stuff anymore, except I

(01:01:36):
do know that I do not think drugs are neutral no matter what
like the modern prophets and evangelists of them will want to
say to. Us.
Well, yeah, it's it's it's like you said, it's pharmakeia,
right? Like you're opening yourself up
to a spiritual dimension outsideof Jesus, which if I'm with you,

(01:01:58):
I think it's always going to be demonic.
It's. Going to be bad and it's going
to be like, so for example, likeI am processing this down the
road, chatting with my brother, chatting with friends and
mentors and like, I mean, havingto admit this, this isn't a fun
thing to admit. I didn't I don't like being
like, hey guys, like I was on the path and then I did a bunch
of mushrooms to see if that would help me, right.

(01:02:18):
But this is like the path of being like their ups and downs
and like do not make the downs that I made.
Don't do drugs. The you know, I grew up in the
80s. I'm an 80s kid too.
And so like dare, dare, let's go.
And so one of the things is likepeople I think do have quote UN
quote positive experiences, but it's like it's the guy who

(01:02:40):
captures kids in the white van. I've got candy in here.
It's like the the beings masquerading as angels as the
light, Like they're not going tocome to you and be like, hey,
dude, we're going to lead you astray and demonize and torture
you. So like my vision of it, I think
that was a season in my life where I was in between where I
was like apathetic, where like my spiritual walk wasn't tight

(01:03:03):
enough that I let I told myself the little lies we all tell
ourselves. We tell ourselves these little
lies will save us or this isn't that bad or this will be OK
collateral damage of no one, whatever it is, this is one of
them. It was just a doozy of a little
lie that was like a big lie. So the house stuff was like

(01:03:25):
where to start? So my wife and I are hanging out
and I clear my throat. This is July 24th 2022.
So this is way later. This is like post book post
moving out West different kind of life.
Clear my throat put and there's I feel something in my mouth and

(01:03:48):
I put my fingers in and when I pull them away they're just
covered in blood and I look at my wife and she's wide eye mouth
stretch. I'm like call 911.
I Sprint to the bathroom. I start coughing up.
It's like frothy red smells liketin.
I grab the garbage bucket that'sin beside our toilet and I'm
like we got to go. She says there's no ambulances,
so we Sprint that's. Crazy by the way you guys are

(01:04:10):
out West. Yeah, we're out West in Canada.
We, we not to get too political,but there has been legislation
that has passed that has jammed up our emergency system so that
people who are coughing up bloodhave to drive themselves in.
That's crazy. Yeah, it's wild.
So we get in and then, dude, like I, I'm carrying a garbage

(01:04:33):
bucket and it's like like half full.
So like a cough up, like a literof blood.
And I get, they take some of my blood not from the bucket.
They drop from my arm. They want to test if it's
cancer. They want to see what's going
on. It eventually slows down and so
like I'm in, I go into the ICU and I, the first surgery I have

(01:04:58):
is this thing called the bronchoscopy.
What they do is they like they pseudo put you to sleep.
They put a bunch of tubes down your throat.
They want to see what's going onin your lung and then they spot
freeze it. So like they freeze it, help
everything clot. And then what they were planning
is to do all these surgeries. So what they do is they like cut
in through your femoral artery near your groin, send a catheter

(01:05:18):
up. You have to be awake the whole
time because you have to do all this breathing stuff.
They go all the way up in into your lungs.
And then they the first time what they do is they're just
mapping. So they're shooting out contrast
dye. You take a big breath in, you're
on the table, big thing takes a picture of you.
And then like all these experts are in the room watching and
they're like this kids lungs area mess or.

(01:05:43):
Did you? Were you like a heavy smoker?
Or yeah, I used to smoke cigars but like I had zero damage like
smoking damage from my lungs, super active, ate really well,
worked out I was a big runner. Literally like other than the
smoking cigars like as healthy as.
You could be a horse, but you'resaying the cigars isn't there.
There was. No, do anything.
Like I asked my doctor and I waslike, listen, like he's like,

(01:06:05):
dude, are you smoker? And I was like, I smoke cigars.
And then when he went in and examined all the tissues, like
you have no damage to your lung from smoking.
So this is just something different.
So I'm in that hospital. I'm in the hospital that first
time for three weeks, the first night, this is where I think the
spiritual warfare comes in. I'm in the ICU.
Everyone else in the ICU that night dies.

(01:06:26):
And I have this moment where a nurse comes in.
You introduced me as a charismatic.
I'm not like super charismatic. Like I do believe in all the
gifts and love when they're practiced.
But the stories, and I'm tellingyou right now are very like
supernatural stories, which is normally not my MO.
So like this nurse comes in and she like flicks a needle.

(01:06:47):
I think she's going to draw someblood, do the whole thing, and
she comes right up to my face and pulls her mask down and
says, like, why don't you just die?
And then smiles and it's just like, sharp teeth.
What? Yeah, I kid you not.
Wait, was this like a like a vision?
Or yeah, so I ring the bell and I'm like, they come sprinting
because they think I'm coughing up blood and I'm like, listen,

(01:07:09):
am I on anything that's going tomake me hallucinate?
And they're like, you're on nothing.
And so, like, I'm petrified. Call my wife.
She got sent home that night. She was three months pregnant
when this whole thing started. And she just drives right over.
She's like, you got to put on worship music.
You got to like this is something else.
And was it? Was this a physical being or a

(01:07:30):
vision? I have no clue.
Like, my eyes were open. I was just, like, sitting there.
Yeah. Scary as hell.
Literally. And so like that first season,
I'm in the hospital for three weeks, I lose 2 liters of blood.
We go through the process of making sure like Aslan has all
my banking information, all the business information that
anything I'm working on gets directed to her.

(01:07:51):
My parents fly out. I'm like, listen, if I don't
make it, my wife's three months pregnant.
She's going with you guys. We know we're having a boy.
You raised two boys. Like we had to go through the
whole process of like, if you don't make it, But I had this
thing in me, it's like I got to see my son.
Like no matter what happens, I'mgoing to I'm going to live with
my wife and be a husband. I'm going to be a dad.

(01:08:12):
So we get through the three weeks or in the hospital, I
stopped bleeding, so I coughed up to liters of blood, almost
died the three times and. When you say almost died the
three times, what does that mean?
So like if you lose a ton of blood all at once, you're like
touch and go. So they didn't have to do a
transfusion. Thank God for being like a young
man who worked out like my. But a transfusion doesn't save

(01:08:34):
you when you start losing blood.It saves you by replenishing
blood like the day after. I think is that's my I'm not an
expert. So like you lose a liter of
blood if you lose in AI think you can lose.
I think a full grown man has like 5 or so liters and if you
lose like around 2 liters in a short time frame like that might

(01:08:55):
be it. And so like I'd lost 2 liters
within 5 days. And so I'm in the hospital for
three weeks. We leave and we think it's done.
And so my doctor says to me, therespirologist says to me, you
come back in three months. If you don't bleed for three
months, we're pretty much done. But we're going to monitor you
three months to the day we I cough up a little speck and I go

(01:09:18):
into the hospital. The doctor tells me if I'd go
in, if I have anything to see him.
I show them. I get some scans.
He's like, Josh, you're not bleeding, you're OK.
It's probably just like old stuff, or it's probably like a
little thing from your nose, your throat, if you had a cold.
So we leave the the emerge crying with joy.
We go for sushi. We put on a movie.
We get home. I fall asleep on the couch

(01:09:40):
because I was just gassed. I was tired from waiting and
then I sit up and I'm just coughing up tons of blood again.
My gosh. And this is on and off.
So this goes on and off for a year from like for another nine
months. We have our first son at this
time. So I'm a shadow of like myself
and because you're. You're just tired.

(01:10:02):
You're. Yeah, dude, I'm.
All the losing. I'm losing blood all the time.
I'm sleeping like 12 hours a day.
I take a 2 hour nap. So my wife is essentially a
single mom, but not just a single mom.
She also has to take care of me because I can't, like I can't do
anything. I wrote a ton of this book in
the hospital actually. And so the I have this one,

(01:10:26):
another major mishap. This is in June of 2023, and I'm
coughing up tons of blood. I get a surgery and normally
when you have a surgery, you're OK for a while.
So I have a surgery a week later.
I cough up more blood than I've coughed up in months.
So I'm in the hospital and I, I like I posted on Instagram and
all these people start messagingme.
I was mentioning this to you like I lost my brother this

(01:10:50):
week. I lost my sister.
I lost my kid to cancer to this,whatever.
And I just had this like out of body experience, like in this,
not like a supernatural experience.
I just like felt like I was looking at my life with a
clarity for like a moment instead of being so afraid of if
I'm going to bleed to death. I'm like, Josh, you're not the
only person suffering. There are tons of people

(01:11:12):
suffering. And so I decided to just run
through my Instagram this day offasting and prayer.
And so like 3 or 4000 people sign up.
We do this day of fasting and prayer.
And then there's this like weekend.
To me that is like transformative.
So on the Friday, we do the day of fasting and prayer and we

(01:11:32):
pray the hours. So we pray for the hour starts
out, we pray for like God just to bless us, speak to us,
minister to us, And then every hour praying for people like
legitimate people, but ideas like people who have miscarried,
people who want to have kids whocan't, people who have like
undiagnosed diseases, who have cancer, all kinds of stuff.

(01:11:53):
And then I found tons of ancientprayers.
I have all these old prayer books that I was like, listen, I
just poured over them. I found them.
So here's the thing. Here's a prayer you can do and
then take time. So that's the Friday, the
Saturday, it's literally a year to the day of my first bleed.
And we bump into some friends ofthe family and we are chatting

(01:12:14):
with them like Josh, how you doing?
And I'm like, I don't know, thisbleeding just last week, like
it's pretty garbage. And Aslan decides to tell them
the doctors thought they found something it could have been.
So she decides to tell them whatthis thing is.
It's called like aspergiliosis, which is like a fungal
infection, but it it wasn't that.

(01:12:36):
So she says it. And this lady says my best
friend's sister has that, let meget in contact with you.
So we get in contact with her. We find you can go out on some
drugs. They're super expensive.
And whatever Sunday comes around.
My old pastor is in town from Toronto over at West.
I normally don't go on InstagramSunday mornings.

(01:12:58):
I go on and I see him take a picture of the lake that I go
hang out at and I'm like, this is my lake.
And he's like, yeah, I'm just down the road, you guys should
come visit. So he's 1/2 hour drive away.
And so we go and he's preaching a sermon on suffering and he's
like old school Pentecostal. And so he starts like he's like,
come on, I'm preaching now. And he's like preaching, but
it's from the book of Joshua. And he's like, like, Joshua,

(01:13:21):
would you get emotional if I even think too long about how I
felt that day? Could you endure a little
longer? Could you be strong and
courageous? And if for the sake of others,
you can keep going, would you? And I'm like, bawling my eyes
out the back. He doesn't know what I'm going
through, right? Like, I mean, a little bit

(01:13:42):
following my Instagram, but he didn't know that's where I live.
And then I'm going to go to church that morning.
And so they pray for me. It's Sunday, and I'm going home.
And I'm like, Lord, I don't knowhow long this path is, but it's
the same thing. Like if this is the opportunity
from if this is what I need to become a St. like, so be it.
Fine. So I just like I had this mental

(01:14:02):
thing where I was trying to transition from this life of
fear and life is happening to meand at me to be like, OK, I can
begin to like become in this newspace.
Monday rolls around and I got todo work, like stuff to work.
And so my wife takes our kid. He's six or seven months old at
this point to the beach. And she goes to a different

(01:14:25):
beach. She's like, feels like she
should go to this different beach for the first time.
So she goes there and there's this lady looking over at her
and she's like, oh, your kids sobeautiful.
Your kids so cute. Aren't they amazing?
And every time she says something, she's like pulling
her towel closer to Aslan and Ransom and my wife Aslan is
like, do you have any of your own?
And the lady's like, yeah, I do,but we're not really on talking

(01:14:46):
terms. And Aslan's like, why?
And she says, when I was pregnant, my husband cheated on
me. And now my daughter's like, torn
between the family and has been falling out.
And so, like, she's getting emotional.
She's sharing the stuff with Aslan.
And Aslan's like, oh, I'm so sorry.
They pray for each other. She turns out to be a Christian.

(01:15:07):
And then Aslan says, like, sinceyou've been vulnerable with me,
I want to be vulnerable with you.
Like, this has been the hardest year of my life.
Like, my husband is, we don't know if he's going to make it.
He's been in and out of the hospital.
We have a kid and I just don't know what's going to happen.
And the lady says to my wife, I know God told me to come to the
beach today. God says he's going to heal your

(01:15:28):
husband. He just has to walk it out.
And I have not bled since that day of fasting and prayer.
And so then I get a scan. So like a year goes by it.
I mean, First off, it's awesome not to bleed, but in between
you're just like, I could bleed at any moment.
And so there's this like mental spiritual game of like, I'd
always bleed at night. So I'd go to sleep in the spare

(01:15:48):
room because I just, we thought I still needed to sleep and I'd
wake up in the middle of the night and if I had to clear my
throat, I'd be like, it's blood,I'm going to die, whatever the
the whole thing. So a year later, so six months
later we're I go in for ACT scanand what they do, you get the
needle in your arm. Contrast goes through.
They can see the mapping out of the arteries in your lungs.

(01:16:13):
And it takes a few days, like a week or two to review by the
docs. And so there's one night I wake
up in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom and I just
get this. I'm like, I know the reports in
online because it's just been a few days.
I guarantee it's in and I'm horrified to look at it.
I'm glad I haven't bled in six months, but if I look at it and

(01:16:34):
it's like all your arteries are hypertrophied, you're going to
just be down in the dumps again.So I pull it open.
I read the report and the report.
It's like Josh Nadeau, history of bleeding, blah, blah, blah.
Last sentence says the airspace disease in the lower left lung
is completely remediated. I like, fall down to my knees,

(01:16:57):
bawling my eyes out. I burst into the my wife's room
like the master because I'm sleeping in the spare because we
think like sleep and keeps inflammation down.
And I wake her up and she's like, no, you're bleeding.
And I was like, no, no, no. So we come out, my son doesn't
wake up. We come out a shower.
So we're bawling our eyes out. We go meet my family doc.

(01:17:17):
We show him the report. He sees a report.
I'm like, what do you make of this?
And he's like, take your miracle.
This is irreversible. I go see the respirologist a
month later, ask him the same question.
He's like, how you feeling, Josh?
I'm like, I feel strong again. Like I feel like there's color
and heat in my body. I'm not, I don't have to drink

(01:17:38):
tea every two seconds. I don't have to like, take
lozenges. I'm like, what do you make of
like what you see in the CT scan?
He's like, listen, you were bleeding all the time.
You're not bleeding. We don't know why.
And your lungs, like, we would do a surgery here and 15 dead
arteries that were bleeding disappear.
Like, I don't know what to tell you, man.

(01:17:58):
Like, take your miracle. Then he says to me, you have
this irreversible disease calledBronchiectasis, and there's
nothing you can do about it. It's irreversible.
The only thing you do in your life is make sure it doesn't get
any worse. And all that's going through my
head is what this lady says to my wife at the beach.
You have to walk out your healing.

(01:18:21):
So I'm like, OK, Lord, like I don't know what that means, but
like I'm going hardcore. So just like I tightened up my
whole life. You talk about like for you and
you're struggling with all the stuff going on when you're on
tour, whatever. Like food was on point.
We got like super granola, dude.It was like all farmers markets,
organic, non-GMO, everything. I ate carnivore pretty much

(01:18:45):
exclusively. We did tons of fasting and
praying. We did the whole thing.
So Fast forward one year, this is literally like 2 1/2 months
ago. I go in for another CT scan.
They go to map out how my lungs are and a few days later I get a
call from my family doctor and my family doctor is awesome but
he never reaches out. So I tell my wife I'm like, hey,

(01:19:08):
we, we got to get ready for somebad news.
Like if things have gotten worseagain, then we got to like, I
don't know what we do next, but we got to be ready.
So he goes, Josh, I was looking at your CT scan and he's like,
if you, if I didn't know what you had, I'd say your lungs are
perfect, but I know what you have.
So like there's some still some small stuff we want to work on.

(01:19:29):
But he's like, so I'm like, whatare you saying?
Like, is this Bronchiectasis, this irreversible thing?
He's like, yeah, most of it's gone.
Wow, the irreversible thing. Most of us gone.
So go the day my wife gives birth, January 21st.
I have a meeting with my respirologist in the hospital so
she finishes giving birth. We're chilling as a family.

(01:19:50):
I Sprint over to the respirologydepartment.
I meet with him for half an hour.
I Sprint right back and he pullsup.
I have the pictures on my phone I can show you after he pulls up
my lungs. Last year, so like end of 2023
and then he pulls up my lungs end of 2024 and he's like here's
the dilation, here's the Bronchiectasis and here's the

(01:20:13):
two spots in your lungs and I'm like Dr. Ralph, sorry, that's
his name. Don't dox him.
He's the best doctor in the world.
I was like, what are the chancesthat this thing reverses?
He's like zero. I know of one other person
that's happened to in like my 30years of doing this
professionally. And so I'm like, if you call it

(01:20:34):
a miracle again, like I told youGod was healing me.
And he just kind of sheepishly looks at me and like he gives a
wink and he's like, I don't knowwhat to tell you, man.
Like I don't want to be on record being like, yeah, you got
2 miracles. And like I told him, like, can
we do one more in six months so I can get 3 for three?
All my Catholic and Orthodox friends online message me.

(01:20:56):
They're like, if you get 3, you're a St.
'cause that's you need 3 miracles.
And I was like, no, no, no guys.Anyway, So like to be on like
I'm, I'm telling you, this book was like step one of like my
learning to embrace the way of the Saint.
Feel like the lesson God told methat whole healing story just to

(01:21:17):
say this. I was bleeding to death.
And now I'm so thankful for blood in my veins and arteries
and air in my lungs. But I should have been just as
thankful January or July 23rd 2022 or July 23rd 2022 before I
was bleeding. Every day is a gift.

(01:21:38):
Every day is an opportunity. All this gift, I was just too
blind to realize that everythingthat's coming my way is actually
the good and true and beautiful life God has for me.
It took me again. I think I'm so dumb and stupid,
like to be brought to the brink of life, to turn around and be
like, holy smokes, I had everything.

(01:22:00):
So yeah, miracle upon miracle, dude.
Like life is pretty awesome. That's incredible man.
You know, the cool thing is you,you connected it to the mushroom
trip, which you know, you shouldn't have done yet.
You know, meeting the the sickness potentially feel like
you opened yourself up. Yeah.
But even in that like, God is still good and still.

(01:22:21):
Yeah, You know what still healedyou?
So my wife got this verse halfway through that was like,
this kind only comes out by prayer and fasting.
And we're like, I don't know if I'm being oppressed.
I don't know if it's like, I don't know if it's the
mushrooms. I don't know.
One of the questions that goes on in your life is like, is
there sin that's causing this sickness?
And I know a lot of people don'twant to talk that way, but if

(01:22:41):
you do a deep dive, and I've read the good books on the book
of Acts, you do see that sin andsickness go hand in hand.
And sometimes it's a chastisement, like your father
loves you and he's going to let things happen, to drive, to
bring you back. We found, I think you've had an
exorcist on the pod, right? Well, I had Father Simon on.

(01:23:02):
He's an exorcist. Yeah, yeah.
But I found, like these this Catholic exorcist, and I don't
agree with their entire view of demon knowledge.
There was one thing he said thatwas so poignant where he was
like, anything in rebellion is opening yourself up to the
demonic. And I was like, yeah, of course.
It is like God created the worldgood.

(01:23:23):
And he said it wasn't good for man to be alone.
And I have systematically tryingto save myself, separated myself
from God's goodness. What do you think happens when
you're driven out from the goodness of God?
Things are wild, not good, kind of wild.
Things are like dark desert kindof wild.
And in the Scriptures, the desert in the wilderness is the

(01:23:43):
place where the dark forces lie.That's why all the early church
fathers like the the desert fathers, that's why they go to
the wilderness. They're praying to fight the
demons to save the world. And so I had this moment of
clarity where I was like, say itwas, I don't know if it was the
mushrooms themselves. It was the for sure, it was the

(01:24:04):
rebellion that I think. So the way that I map it out, if
there is no explanation and the devil wanted to take me, I don't
think necessarily Satan, but someone in the club wanted to
Take Me Out. They just probably found some
sweet overlap of something I maybe had when I was a kid.
If I had bronchitis and pneumonia or an allergy or this

(01:24:26):
or that, and they just found this like perfect storm.
And maybe they're just waiting to push the button.
And maybe it was like my apathy just want my bitterness and
resentment. And I'm not saying every time
you sin, you're going to start coughing up blood, but I am
saying every time you sin, you are removing yourself from love
and protection. Like I just don't know how

(01:24:47):
anyone cannot believe that. And if you don't experience it,
that's because you have a heavenly Father who's showing
you grace upon grace. And so I firmly believe whatever
I experienced with spiritual warfare, impart by my doing and
then impart by my commitment. Like I had gone through this
book and I had committed to the way of the St.

(01:25:09):
And then I experienced this thing and like it's, I wasn't
perfect. I was still apathetic and bitter
and resentful. Like still lose my temper at my
wife. I mean, you know, it's like,
like you have kids that don't sleep and you wake up and you're
a bad mood and you just like go off the handle.
So I had all these little things.
It's just stuff I was processingin my life.
And I truly believe for me, I don't think this is all sickness

(01:25:34):
and I don't think this is everyone who's going through
something. I truly believe for me that
there is an enormous spiritual component of what I went
through. So much so that when we fasted
and prayed. So this is the thing I forgot to
say was this. When we were done fasting and
praying, I went from sleeping 12hours a day with two hour naps

(01:25:56):
in the afternoon to going back to sleeping 5 hours a night and
feeling like strong. And so I was like, what?
Like I So all that to say, yeah,it's just normally my framework
for all of my life isn't this supernatural?
But I actually think that's a deficiency in me.
You go read the church fathers. They have a framework that's

(01:26:18):
like everything is God and Holy Spirit and everything evil is
like the world, the flesh, the devil.
So it's demonic and you there's.No, there's no neutral.
There's no neutral. We like the reason why it sounds
weird. Even me saying it out loud is
like, I have my masters and I want to be like, hey guys, I'm
actually really smart and I readphilosophy and theology all the
time. Like shame on me for thinking I

(01:26:40):
need to de spiritualize and de supernaturalize the world I live
in. Like of course, like if I'm
committed to the good, the devil's going to be after me if
I open myself to evil. Easy target.
But we don't think that way. We think that our little sins
and little rebellions, no consequences.
Yeah, Anyways, damn. Man, that's heavy, bro.

(01:27:04):
That's some good stuff. OK, tell them where they can get
the book. We got to have you back on and
and dive even deeper. But I thought that that that in
in and of itself is already it'sa great tie into the book.
It's a great time to not choosing apathy and consistently
leaning into spiritual formation.
The the desire to to to to be a St.
What can I get the book and and what can I find out more about
you? Yeah, get the book on Amazon and

(01:27:26):
if you do get it, leave a review.
They say that's good. You can find out more about me.
I have a sub stack called Everyday Saints and then I have
an Instagram called Sword and Pencil.
And other than that, like I probably won't talk to you
'cause I spend most of my life not online.
Don't take it personally, but yeah.
Appreciate you man. Thank you so much.

(01:27:47):
We'll link all your stuff below.Thank you for this, this book,
man. I'm excited to to, to have you
back on and, and go even deeper.Yeah, Thanks dude.
Thanks for the opportunity. This is great.
Alright guys, we're out of here.Peace.
Hey, thank you so much for checking out the video.
Please be sure to comment below and subscribe and all that good
stuff. And check out this other video
that YouTube seems to be recommending just for you.

(01:28:07):
Let me know if they nailed it. Alright, I'll see you over
there. Peace.

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