June 8, 2025 • 28 mins
Brad Church's faith journey reads like a roadmap through the messy reality of Christian living. From a six-year-old's spark of faith in Sunday school to teenage drug use, from business success to bankruptcy, and through the ongoing battle between spirit and flesh, Brad has discovered profound truths about God's relentless grace. His story challenges the perfectionist expectations often placed on believers while offering hope to those who struggle with internal spiritual conflict.
In this honest conversation, Brad shares insights from his book "The Stranger's Conflict," exploring why Christians are called strangers in this world and how to navigate the tension between our sin nature and our spirit's desire for God. His perspective on avoiding "checklist Christianity," understanding God's true character, and finding authentic community provides practical wisdom for anyone wrestling with their faith journey. Whether you're a new believer or a seasoned Christian, Brad's story reminds us that God's grace meets us exactly where we are.
WEBLINKS Brad Church’s Website Brad Church on Facebook Brad Church - Goodreads
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening today.
If you want to hear more stories filled with hope and inspiration, dozens more episodes are waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:30):
Sharing this and other episodes ensures that others can hear stories of hope too.
Do you ever wrestle with that frustrating inner conflict of wanting to do the right thing but ending up doing the opposite?
It's like there seems to be a deeper force at work that pulls us away from our good intentions.
(00:50):
Today's guest has faced that battle and in this episode, we'll talk about just what's going on.
Today I'm joined by Brad Church, a man whose faith journey has taken him from a small Methodist church to authoring the book, The Stranger's Conflict.
(01:13):
Brad's path has been anything but straight from teenage drug use to Bible college, from running a successful business to bankruptcy, from marriage and divorce to blending families.
Through it all, Brad has discovered profound insights about the battle between our sin nature and our spirit's desire to know God.
His life journey has given him a unique perspective on developing enduring faith and a personal relationship with Jesus.
(01:39):
I'm excited to dive into Brad's story and learn how his life experiences can strengthen our own spiritual journeys.
Brad, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I want to begin by going back several decades to the time that something awakened in you during a Sunday school class in that small Methodist church.
(02:01):
Can you take us back to that time?
Sure.
I was six years old and interestingly enough, it was my mother who was the teacher in that class.
Back in those days, in Sunday school, they used a flannel graph.
There was flannel on the board and little flannel figures, biblical figures, and somewhere in her presentation there was just this spark when she was talking about Jesus, that I believe that He is the Son of God and that He died for our sins.
(02:29):
It took me a long time to realize that.
When I was in my 20s, a college professor said, if you can't remember the moment you came to faith in Christ, then you're not saved.
And I got to confess, at that time, I didn't remember.
As I contemplated his statement, it was years later that I remembered that moment in that Sunday school class where faith sparked in my heart.
(02:53):
Things don't always run smoothly.
So while you made some kind of commitment at that age of six, growing up continued, and then things got a little off track, didn't they?
They did.
Yeah.
We lived on a farm outside of a small town.
My older brother and sister were gone from the time I was about in sixth grade.
(03:14):
So I was basically an only child and my parents worked and I came home from school and spent a lot of time alone.
I really lacked socialization.
I was not necessarily shy, but very introverted and not real confident in public.
And school bored me.
I didn't engage in sports, so there wasn't a lot of interaction with other students.
(03:34):
I grew up basically socially inept, probably really emotionally imbalanced.
And so when I started working after school at a restaurant, I began to associate with other people and began to feel an acceptance I'd never felt before.
And I got in with people who were using drugs and partying all the time.
(03:55):
For the first time of my life, I had a sense of acceptance in a group.
That was intoxicating and it pulled me off track for several years.
And that is something that should serve as a warning to those of us in faith communities that people are looking for acceptance.
People are looking for that sense of belonging.
(04:15):
Yes.
And if we're not providing that within the church, there's something terribly wrong with the way we're doing church, isn't there?
Absolutely.
Yes.
And our teens are especially vulnerable to that.
And we'll always look for that opportunity to connect in with other people.
And you found that with that group of people who were doing drugs.
So you took on that behavior.
(04:35):
Where did that lead?
I did that for about two years and I really began to realize how empty my life was and began to read Proverbs, interestingly enough.
The old King James Proverbs, you know, back then that's all we had.
One night as I was waking up in the morning, I had a vision that startled me.
And it was just this sense that I was falling down a bottomless pit.
(04:57):
I knew there was no bottom to it.
And on the edges of that pit was dirt walls and there was root sticking out from those walls.
And when I grabbed for a root, it would break away.
There was just this sense of knowing that that's where my life was taking me, that I was falling down this pit.
I cried out to God and said, I don't know how to get out of this.
(05:19):
Everybody I knew was in the party scene.
I knew I wasn't strong enough as a person to still be around those people and not do the things that they were doing.
So I basically surrendered my life to God at that point and asked him to deliver me.
It was probably within six months that I got a full time job in Portland, Oregon.
(05:39):
It was about 100 miles from where I was living at the time.
God moved me out of that situation.
So even during that couple of years when you were mixing with that crowd, when you were taking drugs, were there echoes throughout that time of that six year old who wanted to give his heart to Jesus?
Was there something in the back of your mind calling you back to that?
(06:01):
Is that what drew you to start reading Proverbs?
Yes, that and one of the girls that I partied with attended church.
I think she was probably in retrospect going through some of the same struggles I was.
But she would talk to me about Jesus and the Methodist church in those days was rather a staunch, religious, orthodox type of place.
(06:23):
And this girl attended a Pentecostal church.
It brought a flavor of faith that I had never been exposed to before.
It piqued my curiosity.
And so, yes, there was this questioning of how come she's so joyful.
And I ran into a few other Christians that were like that as well.
Where did life's journey take you from that point?
(06:44):
You had got yourself another job.
So you're away from that friend group that were taking you down a very destructive path.
Where did life take you after that?
Well, I started working full time and just overall becoming healthier, not being around the crowd.
My drug use dropped way down.
I still smoked pot every once in a while.
But it was the summer of 1977 that I started attending a church in Portland and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
(07:13):
I don't recall how much I continued to use drugs during that time.
There was definitely a lot of conviction in that space of time.
So between August and New Year's Eve of that year, it was a transitional time in my life.
New Year's Eve 1977, I went to a party at my cousin's house back where I used to live.
(07:35):
That was the last night I smoked pot, did any kind of drugs, because it was like jumping back into the pit that night.
And I realized this is just an emptiness that I don't want.
From then on, I was in the Word a lot more.
I was praying a lot more and seeking God's direction for my life.
And we all know that life has its ups and downs, as does our faith journey.
(07:58):
And I know that there are a number of ups and downs even after that, wasn't there?
Oh, yes.
It's been an interesting struggle.
I will say the one thing that has been constant in my life is God's grace.
I had a pastor recently say that we can take a thousand steps away from God, but it only takes one step to turn around and God's right there.
(08:21):
I've taken that step, turning around a number of times in life in a number of different areas.
It's interesting that some people are like the Apostle Paul.
They get knocked off of a horse and their life dramatically changes instantly.
And then there's other people that God seems to take through the crucible.
And we could probably argue about, well, it's because of that person's choices.
(08:45):
And, you know, maybe they didn't make a full commitment and all those kinds of things.
But God met me where I was and led me through a process of changes.
I continued to smoke cigarettes for about three years after that time.
And I struggled and struggled and struggled to get that habit out of my life until one week I was in a situation where I wasn't allowed to take any cigarettes with me.
(09:12):
And when I came home, I threw away a full pack of cigarettes because God had delivered me.
Now, God could have delivered me three years before that, but He chose to allow me to go through those struggles of realizing that I needed Him to do something in my life that I could not do.
And it's changed my perspective.
(09:33):
Peter It's interesting that as you're walking this Christian life, you say that you continue to smoke cigarettes.
And I'm very aware that oftentimes in the church, we want to see that outward behavior, such as don't drink to excess, don't smoke, and these sorts of things.
And we try to impose these rules, whereas God will often deal with us differently and has a different priority list of things that He's working on.
(09:58):
And sometimes we, as followers of Jesus, try to play the part of the Holy Spirit and step in and tell others which behavior they need to change first.
How destructive can that be when we actually should be certainly helping others to overcome different things, but leaving the Holy Spirit to direct change in lives?
(10:21):
David Yeah, you know, I really think when we treat people that way, we're really in danger of doing what I call checklist Christianity.
Paul in the book of Galatians said, Believing in Christ is not a matter of do this, don't do that.
It's about learning to follow the Holy Spirit's guidance in our lives.
I think we really do, especially younger believers, not necessarily younger in age, but newer believers in the faith.
(10:46):
I think we do them a disservice when we say, If you're going to be a Christian, then your life is going to look like X, Y, Z.
One recent example is, I have a 31-year-old daughter, and she shared this song with me recently, and it said, Dad, this song really spoke to me.
It was a rap song, but it talked about Jesus and how He died for our sins.
(11:08):
That's not a song that I would choose to listen to, but that message was spot on.
And I think too many times in the church, we hear a song like that and go, That's rap, that's sinful, that's bad.
When I was a teenager, it was rock and roll.
All rock and roll was of the devil.
Well, we know that's not true.
Rock and roll can glorify God.
Rap can glorify God.
(11:29):
Pretty much any music style can glorify God.
Many times as believers in church, we look at people's lives and say, If your life doesn't conform to this cookie-cutter pattern, then you can't be a Christian.
I want to jump into the book that you've written, The Stranger's Conflict, because really that wraps up a lot of your life experiences, some that we've talked about so far and others as well, where there have been those ups and downs, and you came to this point of writing The Stranger's Conflict.
(12:00):
What was it that first sparked you to write this book?
My own dealing with that conflict in my own life, reading Romans 7, starting at about verse 14, where Paul talks about, there's things in my life that I want to do, and I find I just can't do them.
There's other things I really don't want to do, but those are the things that I end up making a choice to do.
(12:20):
He says, Woe is me.
How can I deal with this?
And he ends up saying, Praise God, Jesus Christ took all of that upon himself for us.
So it was my own struggle with my own thought patterns, some of my own habits, some of my behaviors, just crying out to God, God, how do I deal with this?
And then reading Paul's charge to crucify the flesh, put to death the old man, well, how do you do that?
(12:46):
And that was the genuine question of how do I do that, and what does all of this mean?
I just recently started as a business analyst, so I'm used to looking at problems, and coming up with root causes, and asking questions that get to the root cause.
So I basically followed that process with resolving my own questions, with dealing with the sin nature.
It took me back to how we're created in God's image, and how God made us is really the root cause of that.
(13:14):
How our first ancestors sinned, and we all inherited that sin nature.
It really has to do with how our physical bodies are designed to relate to the physical world.
Well, God put a spirit within us that's designed to relate to Him and the spiritual world.
That sin that we all inherit closed that door off, while the spirit still is there inside every human being, it's dead to God because of sin.
(13:44):
And we need faith in Jesus Christ to reignite, or ignite for the first time actually, that spirit within us so that we can have relationship with God.
That's the root cause of that struggle is that we will have a sin nature until we breathe our last breath in this life.
But now because of faith in Jesus Christ, we have the Holy Spirit within us, who is working every day to conform us to the image of Jesus.
(14:10):
And that's the conflict in which we live.
And the amazing thing is, to me, that we will fail in the sin nature all the time.
I don't know about you, but I can't think of a day where I haven't done something worthy of punishment in God's eyes.
Fought something, done something, felt something.
(14:30):
It is there every day.
And yet the grace of Jesus Christ, through His sacrifice and through His resurrection, covers that so that as I come to God in humble submission and ask for forgiveness, I have the opportunity to be in living relationship with my Creator.
And every person who has faith in Christ does the same.
(14:51):
And there certainly is that conflict going on within us.
That conflict of, as you describe, Paul saying, I want to do stuff and I just don't, and there's stuff I don't want to do and I do.
So coming back to that title of the book, who is the stranger in the title of The Stranger's Conflict?
Well, it's a fairly common theme in Scripture that those who trust in Christ are strangers and aliens in this world.
(15:16):
Hebrews chapter 11 goes through that list of people who believed in God, in Yahweh, in the Jewish God.
And towards the end of that chapter, he says, all of these people held on to the promise of God, recognizing that they were sojourners and aliens in this world because they were looking for a different country.
So even those Old Testament believers were considered aliens.
(15:39):
And Peter wrote also in his address to his readers in 1 Peter, he called them sojourners and aliens, in some translations say strangers.
So it's that idea that we are now citizens of heaven through faith in Christ and that this is not our home.
We're visitors here and we're actually called to be distinct from the world, to be not of the world, but we're in the world.
(16:05):
There's different values because of the Holy Spirit within us that we're to live by.
So every believer is that stranger.
That really does define what most of us face, is that the world is consistently calling us to follow certain norms, certain practices.
And yet, as you say, the scripture does call us strangers or aliens, sojourners.
(16:29):
And so there is that battle and that's what the book is about.
What are some of the insights that you gained as you're looking into this, as you're looking into this whole idea of how do we start to conform more to the likeness of Jesus as we are still battling against this sin nature?
Well, I think the first thing to realize is that we cannot fix ourselves.
(16:52):
And I think a lot of us, and I have been guilty of this too, is maybe we avoid praying because we feel like I'm not good enough to go to God, or we don't go to church because there's this stuff in my life that is unacceptable to God, and we get this mentality that we have to clean ourselves up before we can approach God.
And that's totally backwards, because God knows we're sinful creatures.
(17:15):
God knows more about us than we know about ourselves.
What we need to do first is to take those things honestly and humbly, and hold them before God and say, here I am, just as I am.
I believe Jesus died for my sins, and that because of His righteousness, I can come before my Heavenly Father and gain acceptance.
(17:39):
And allow the Holy Spirit then to begin to work in us and cultivate that relationship by learning His Word, reading His Word, understanding His Word, thinking about how that applies to our lives personally, being in fellowship with other like-minded believers, worshiping God.
(18:02):
We're worshiping God with other believers, worshiping God by ourselves.
Here in the United States, people oftentimes commute for an hour or sometimes more to work every day.
That's a beautiful time to turn on worship music and worship the Lord and pray, and just taking advantage of those times to cultivate that relationship with God.
I imagine that a big part of that too is understanding more about the nature of God, because if we have in mind that we have a God who is just looking for when we mess up and expects us to get ourselves right before we come to Him, then there is going to be an even greater battle.
(18:40):
When we start to understand that we serve a God who wants to correct us, but lovingly, and wants to do everything to reconcile us back to Himself, which is demonstrated in the giving of His son to die on that cross, held nothing back for us.
Yes.
When we start to get that picture of God, we start to see things differently, don't we?
(19:02):
Absolutely, yes.
I grew up with this idea that God was just sitting up there holding a lightning bolt in His hand just waiting for me to mess up, and that's totally the wrong picture.
He's more like the father in the parable of the prodigal son.
He's at the window waiting to see any sign of his son returning home, and when he sees him, he runs to greet him.
(19:23):
At what part of life for you did you start to realize that this picture was wrong, and how long did it take you to actually throw off those old thoughts that you had growing up of that angry God with the lightning bolt?
Honestly, there's times I still struggle with it.
It's getting less and less as I grow older and spend more time in fellowship with the Lord and with other believers.
(19:48):
It's been a process.
I remember pretty distinctly one time about seven or eight years ago, life was just a struggle.
We were trying to blend family, and there was conflict in our home.
Work was a challenge, work was a conflict, and money was tight, and I was concerned about where everything was going to go.
(20:10):
I was just feeling empty, and I got to the point where my faith got boiled down to one thing that I knew—that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that God is the Creator, and that somehow in all of that He loved me, and that everything was going to be okay.
That was a key turning point for me.
(20:31):
It was just a point of surrender for me, and just realizing I didn't have the strength or the power in myself to change this situation, and that God would bring us through, and He did.
It's been an interesting life.
And that raises another issue for me in that we often see people, even very high-profile Christians, who have abandoned the faith because they don't allow themselves to put together all the pieces, or they don't understand how to put all the pieces together, which is what you're describing there in those moments.
(21:08):
How important is it for us to say, okay, at the moment, I don't understand a lot of it, but there are certain things that I am certain of.
There are certain things that I can hold onto, and I know that God will reveal more of Himself down the line.
How important is it that we shore up those places of certainty in our own heart?
(21:29):
Oh, it's crucial.
Life can take us to the point where the noise in the world gets so much, so loud, that we need to build that foundation of faith.
That's why it's so important to continually be in God's Word, and continually in fellowship with other people who have similar beliefs, those foundational core beliefs.
(21:51):
The whole idea of the strangers' conflict is something that is very real to each and every Christian, but was there a particular group of people that you had in mind when you were writing the book that you think will benefit from reading the strangers' conflict?
Yeah, I think pretty much anybody who faces that conflict and has questions about how do I fight this battle, and how do I respond when I have a major blow-up in my life of personal failure?
(22:22):
How do I come to God when I feel so alienated, and so unworthy, and maybe so dirty that I cannot approach Him?
It's just recognizing that God is love, and God is full of grace and mercy, and that I cannot fix myself.
It's those people who are struggling with those issues.
(22:45):
I imagine that as people read it, there would be almost a sense of relief of, so I'm not the only one.
I'm not the only one who consistently struggles with this, because we do still have this idea that there are those who have lived the Christian life for X amount of years, and they have got it right, and everything is going well in their life, and that's the way they seem to present.
(23:10):
We don't realize that behind closed doors, and sometimes in open doors, they are facing those struggles as well.
How much of a relief is it for people when they understand that this is a battle that is not unique to them?
I think it's a great relief.
I've had several various seasoned Christians close to me that read the book several months before I finished it, before I went through the full editing process.
(23:36):
They were saying, every person in the church needs to read this book.
Those kinds of comments blew me away.
I think the more prominent a person is in Christianity, the easier it is for them to feel like they have to hide their imperfections, because I'm in a place of authority, and I'm in this position of leadership.
(23:58):
I have to be perfect, right?
Well, the sad truth is, none of us are.
From people in leadership to the newest believer, I think, will benefit from reading the book.
I benefited tremendously from writing it.
It was a real growth process for me of God's revelation to me on a very personal level.
(24:19):
Just finishing it was a victory in and of itself.
The fact that everyone goes through this conflict internally is not an excuse for us to have bad behavior.
We read Paul talking about that.
It's like, yes, there is grace, but that doesn't mean that we continue to sin.
That's right.
But it does give us an understanding that we do have a loving Father who wants to draw us back, that yes, it's a battle that everyone is facing.
(24:45):
And again, that's the relief that we get.
Yes, we want to continue conforming to the image of Jesus Christ.
Yes, we want the Holy Spirit to continue to change our lives from the inside out, but it must be amazing for so many people to realize that yes, everyone is facing this, because we live in a society that is soaked by social media, so we get everyone's highlight reel.
(25:10):
We see all the good bits, and we don't see behind the doors.
How important do you think it is for us as Christians, and not to just blurt it out to the whole world, but to find those people in our lives that we can be accountable to, that we can share the struggles with?
It's crucial that we have those people.
And that was part of my struggle, is finding those people that I could feel comfortable exposing those things to.
(25:35):
And like you say, you don't want to blurt it out to everybody, but we all need those people with whom we can share our deepest doubts and frustrations and our fears and our failures.
And we need to be able to be that to other people too, because we all have those gifts that other people need from us.
(25:55):
And when we walk around crippled, we're actually crippling the body as well.
That's not to be a guilt trip.
It's that being open and honest before God, and being vulnerable and transparent in the right situations.
It's crucial for every believer.
Now that people are having a chance to read The Stranger's Conflict, and it's been a great process for you, as well as for those who are now reading it, do you have plans to write some more?
(26:23):
Are there other things that God is tapping you on the shoulder about that you think, this deserves to be a book as well?
Actually, yes.
My original plan was for three books.
Just this week, I've been praying about what's next.
And the next book will be called The Stranger's Choice.
And it's going to be about how we get to choose between walking by faith or living in fear.
(26:46):
And there's a really good illustration of that in scripture.
And it's the two approaches of the nation of Israel to the promised land, where the first time they responded in fear and wandered in the desert for 40 years while that generation died off.
And the second time they approached in faith and they conquered the land.
So using that situation as an illustration, we'll be talking about faith and fear.
(27:10):
And then hopefully that'll come out in the next couple of years.
Brad, I'm going to put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you and find your book easily.
But I just want to say thank you so much for spending time with us today and sharing some of your story on Bleeding Daylight.
I appreciate the invitation, Rodney.
Thank you very much.
(27:32):
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening today.
If you want to hear more stories filled with hope and inspiration, dozens more episodes are waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:30):
Sharing this and other episodes ensures that others can hear stories of hope too.
Do you ever wrestle with that frustrating inner conflict of wanting to do the right thing but ending up doing the opposite?
It's like there seems to be a deeper force at work that pulls us away from our good intentions.
(00:50):
Today's guest has faced that battle and in this episode, we'll talk about just what's going on.
Today I'm joined by Brad Church, a man whose faith journey has taken him from a small Methodist church to authoring the book, The Stranger's Conflict.
(01:13):
Brad's path has been anything but straight from teenage drug use to Bible college, from running a successful business to bankruptcy, from marriage and divorce to blending families.
Through it all, Brad has discovered profound insights about the battle between our sin nature and our spirit's desire to know God.
His life journey has given him a unique perspective on developing enduring faith and a personal relationship with Jesus.
(01:39):
I'm excited to dive into Brad's story and learn how his life experiences can strengthen our own spiritual journeys.
Brad, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I want to begin by going back several decades to the time that something awakened in you during a Sunday school class in that small Methodist church.
(02:01):
Can you take us back to that time?
Sure.
I was six years old and interestingly enough, it was my mother who was the teacher in that class.
Back in those days, in Sunday school, they used a flannel graph.
There was flannel on the board and little flannel figures, biblical figures, and somewhere in her presentation there was just this spark when she was talking about Jesus, that I believe that He is the Son of God and that He died for our sins.
(02:29):
It took me a long time to realize that.
When I was in my 20s, a college professor said, if you can't remember the moment you came to faith in Christ, then you're not saved.
And I got to confess, at that time, I didn't remember.
As I contemplated his statement, it was years later that I remembered that moment in that Sunday school class where faith sparked in my heart.
(02:53):
Things don't always run smoothly.
So while you made some kind of commitment at that age of six, growing up continued, and then things got a little off track, didn't they?
They did.
Yeah.
We lived on a farm outside of a small town.
My older brother and sister were gone from the time I was about in sixth grade.
(03:14):
So I was basically an only child and my parents worked and I came home from school and spent a lot of time alone.
I really lacked socialization.
I was not necessarily shy, but very introverted and not real confident in public.
And school bored me.
I didn't engage in sports, so there wasn't a lot of interaction with other students.
(03:34):
I grew up basically socially inept, probably really emotionally imbalanced.
And so when I started working after school at a restaurant, I began to associate with other people and began to feel an acceptance I'd never felt before.
And I got in with people who were using drugs and partying all the time.
(03:55):
For the first time of my life, I had a sense of acceptance in a group.
That was intoxicating and it pulled me off track for several years.
And that is something that should serve as a warning to those of us in faith communities that people are looking for acceptance.
People are looking for that sense of belonging.
(04:15):
Yes.
And if we're not providing that within the church, there's something terribly wrong with the way we're doing church, isn't there?
Absolutely.
Yes.
And our teens are especially vulnerable to that.
And we'll always look for that opportunity to connect in with other people.
And you found that with that group of people who were doing drugs.
So you took on that behavior.
(04:35):
Where did that lead?
I did that for about two years and I really began to realize how empty my life was and began to read Proverbs, interestingly enough.
The old King James Proverbs, you know, back then that's all we had.
One night as I was waking up in the morning, I had a vision that startled me.
And it was just this sense that I was falling down a bottomless pit.
(04:57):
I knew there was no bottom to it.
And on the edges of that pit was dirt walls and there was root sticking out from those walls.
And when I grabbed for a root, it would break away.
There was just this sense of knowing that that's where my life was taking me, that I was falling down this pit.
I cried out to God and said, I don't know how to get out of this.
(05:19):
Everybody I knew was in the party scene.
I knew I wasn't strong enough as a person to still be around those people and not do the things that they were doing.
So I basically surrendered my life to God at that point and asked him to deliver me.
It was probably within six months that I got a full time job in Portland, Oregon.
(05:39):
It was about 100 miles from where I was living at the time.
God moved me out of that situation.
So even during that couple of years when you were mixing with that crowd, when you were taking drugs, were there echoes throughout that time of that six year old who wanted to give his heart to Jesus?
Was there something in the back of your mind calling you back to that?
(06:01):
Is that what drew you to start reading Proverbs?
Yes, that and one of the girls that I partied with attended church.
I think she was probably in retrospect going through some of the same struggles I was.
But she would talk to me about Jesus and the Methodist church in those days was rather a staunch, religious, orthodox type of place.
(06:23):
And this girl attended a Pentecostal church.
It brought a flavor of faith that I had never been exposed to before.
It piqued my curiosity.
And so, yes, there was this questioning of how come she's so joyful.
And I ran into a few other Christians that were like that as well.
Where did life's journey take you from that point?
(06:44):
You had got yourself another job.
So you're away from that friend group that were taking you down a very destructive path.
Where did life take you after that?
Well, I started working full time and just overall becoming healthier, not being around the crowd.
My drug use dropped way down.
I still smoked pot every once in a while.
But it was the summer of 1977 that I started attending a church in Portland and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
(07:13):
I don't recall how much I continued to use drugs during that time.
There was definitely a lot of conviction in that space of time.
So between August and New Year's Eve of that year, it was a transitional time in my life.
New Year's Eve 1977, I went to a party at my cousin's house back where I used to live.
(07:35):
That was the last night I smoked pot, did any kind of drugs, because it was like jumping back into the pit that night.
And I realized this is just an emptiness that I don't want.
From then on, I was in the Word a lot more.
I was praying a lot more and seeking God's direction for my life.
And we all know that life has its ups and downs, as does our faith journey.
(07:58):
And I know that there are a number of ups and downs even after that, wasn't there?
Oh, yes.
It's been an interesting struggle.
I will say the one thing that has been constant in my life is God's grace.
I had a pastor recently say that we can take a thousand steps away from God, but it only takes one step to turn around and God's right there.
(08:21):
I've taken that step, turning around a number of times in life in a number of different areas.
It's interesting that some people are like the Apostle Paul.
They get knocked off of a horse and their life dramatically changes instantly.
And then there's other people that God seems to take through the crucible.
And we could probably argue about, well, it's because of that person's choices.
(08:45):
And, you know, maybe they didn't make a full commitment and all those kinds of things.
But God met me where I was and led me through a process of changes.
I continued to smoke cigarettes for about three years after that time.
And I struggled and struggled and struggled to get that habit out of my life until one week I was in a situation where I wasn't allowed to take any cigarettes with me.
(09:12):
And when I came home, I threw away a full pack of cigarettes because God had delivered me.
Now, God could have delivered me three years before that, but He chose to allow me to go through those struggles of realizing that I needed Him to do something in my life that I could not do.
And it's changed my perspective.
(09:33):
Peter It's interesting that as you're walking this Christian life, you say that you continue to smoke cigarettes.
And I'm very aware that oftentimes in the church, we want to see that outward behavior, such as don't drink to excess, don't smoke, and these sorts of things.
And we try to impose these rules, whereas God will often deal with us differently and has a different priority list of things that He's working on.
(09:58):
And sometimes we, as followers of Jesus, try to play the part of the Holy Spirit and step in and tell others which behavior they need to change first.
How destructive can that be when we actually should be certainly helping others to overcome different things, but leaving the Holy Spirit to direct change in lives?
(10:21):
David Yeah, you know, I really think when we treat people that way, we're really in danger of doing what I call checklist Christianity.
Paul in the book of Galatians said, Believing in Christ is not a matter of do this, don't do that.
It's about learning to follow the Holy Spirit's guidance in our lives.
I think we really do, especially younger believers, not necessarily younger in age, but newer believers in the faith.
(10:46):
I think we do them a disservice when we say, If you're going to be a Christian, then your life is going to look like X, Y, Z.
One recent example is, I have a 31-year-old daughter, and she shared this song with me recently, and it said, Dad, this song really spoke to me.
It was a rap song, but it talked about Jesus and how He died for our sins.
(11:08):
That's not a song that I would choose to listen to, but that message was spot on.
And I think too many times in the church, we hear a song like that and go, That's rap, that's sinful, that's bad.
When I was a teenager, it was rock and roll.
All rock and roll was of the devil.
Well, we know that's not true.
Rock and roll can glorify God.
Rap can glorify God.
(11:29):
Pretty much any music style can glorify God.
Many times as believers in church, we look at people's lives and say, If your life doesn't conform to this cookie-cutter pattern, then you can't be a Christian.
I want to jump into the book that you've written, The Stranger's Conflict, because really that wraps up a lot of your life experiences, some that we've talked about so far and others as well, where there have been those ups and downs, and you came to this point of writing The Stranger's Conflict.
(12:00):
What was it that first sparked you to write this book?
My own dealing with that conflict in my own life, reading Romans 7, starting at about verse 14, where Paul talks about, there's things in my life that I want to do, and I find I just can't do them.
There's other things I really don't want to do, but those are the things that I end up making a choice to do.
(12:20):
He says, Woe is me.
How can I deal with this?
And he ends up saying, Praise God, Jesus Christ took all of that upon himself for us.
So it was my own struggle with my own thought patterns, some of my own habits, some of my behaviors, just crying out to God, God, how do I deal with this?
And then reading Paul's charge to crucify the flesh, put to death the old man, well, how do you do that?
(12:46):
And that was the genuine question of how do I do that, and what does all of this mean?
I just recently started as a business analyst, so I'm used to looking at problems, and coming up with root causes, and asking questions that get to the root cause.
So I basically followed that process with resolving my own questions, with dealing with the sin nature.
It took me back to how we're created in God's image, and how God made us is really the root cause of that.
(13:14):
How our first ancestors sinned, and we all inherited that sin nature.
It really has to do with how our physical bodies are designed to relate to the physical world.
Well, God put a spirit within us that's designed to relate to Him and the spiritual world.
That sin that we all inherit closed that door off, while the spirit still is there inside every human being, it's dead to God because of sin.
(13:44):
And we need faith in Jesus Christ to reignite, or ignite for the first time actually, that spirit within us so that we can have relationship with God.
That's the root cause of that struggle is that we will have a sin nature until we breathe our last breath in this life.
But now because of faith in Jesus Christ, we have the Holy Spirit within us, who is working every day to conform us to the image of Jesus.
(14:10):
And that's the conflict in which we live.
And the amazing thing is, to me, that we will fail in the sin nature all the time.
I don't know about you, but I can't think of a day where I haven't done something worthy of punishment in God's eyes.
Fought something, done something, felt something.
(14:30):
It is there every day.
And yet the grace of Jesus Christ, through His sacrifice and through His resurrection, covers that so that as I come to God in humble submission and ask for forgiveness, I have the opportunity to be in living relationship with my Creator.
And every person who has faith in Christ does the same.
(14:51):
And there certainly is that conflict going on within us.
That conflict of, as you describe, Paul saying, I want to do stuff and I just don't, and there's stuff I don't want to do and I do.
So coming back to that title of the book, who is the stranger in the title of The Stranger's Conflict?
Well, it's a fairly common theme in Scripture that those who trust in Christ are strangers and aliens in this world.
(15:16):
Hebrews chapter 11 goes through that list of people who believed in God, in Yahweh, in the Jewish God.
And towards the end of that chapter, he says, all of these people held on to the promise of God, recognizing that they were sojourners and aliens in this world because they were looking for a different country.
So even those Old Testament believers were considered aliens.
(15:39):
And Peter wrote also in his address to his readers in 1 Peter, he called them sojourners and aliens, in some translations say strangers.
So it's that idea that we are now citizens of heaven through faith in Christ and that this is not our home.
We're visitors here and we're actually called to be distinct from the world, to be not of the world, but we're in the world.
(16:05):
There's different values because of the Holy Spirit within us that we're to live by.
So every believer is that stranger.
That really does define what most of us face, is that the world is consistently calling us to follow certain norms, certain practices.
And yet, as you say, the scripture does call us strangers or aliens, sojourners.
(16:29):
And so there is that battle and that's what the book is about.
What are some of the insights that you gained as you're looking into this, as you're looking into this whole idea of how do we start to conform more to the likeness of Jesus as we are still battling against this sin nature?
Well, I think the first thing to realize is that we cannot fix ourselves.
(16:52):
And I think a lot of us, and I have been guilty of this too, is maybe we avoid praying because we feel like I'm not good enough to go to God, or we don't go to church because there's this stuff in my life that is unacceptable to God, and we get this mentality that we have to clean ourselves up before we can approach God.
And that's totally backwards, because God knows we're sinful creatures.
(17:15):
God knows more about us than we know about ourselves.
What we need to do first is to take those things honestly and humbly, and hold them before God and say, here I am, just as I am.
I believe Jesus died for my sins, and that because of His righteousness, I can come before my Heavenly Father and gain acceptance.
(17:39):
And allow the Holy Spirit then to begin to work in us and cultivate that relationship by learning His Word, reading His Word, understanding His Word, thinking about how that applies to our lives personally, being in fellowship with other like-minded believers, worshiping God.
(18:02):
We're worshiping God with other believers, worshiping God by ourselves.
Here in the United States, people oftentimes commute for an hour or sometimes more to work every day.
That's a beautiful time to turn on worship music and worship the Lord and pray, and just taking advantage of those times to cultivate that relationship with God.
I imagine that a big part of that too is understanding more about the nature of God, because if we have in mind that we have a God who is just looking for when we mess up and expects us to get ourselves right before we come to Him, then there is going to be an even greater battle.
(18:40):
When we start to understand that we serve a God who wants to correct us, but lovingly, and wants to do everything to reconcile us back to Himself, which is demonstrated in the giving of His son to die on that cross, held nothing back for us.
Yes.
When we start to get that picture of God, we start to see things differently, don't we?
(19:02):
Absolutely, yes.
I grew up with this idea that God was just sitting up there holding a lightning bolt in His hand just waiting for me to mess up, and that's totally the wrong picture.
He's more like the father in the parable of the prodigal son.
He's at the window waiting to see any sign of his son returning home, and when he sees him, he runs to greet him.
(19:23):
At what part of life for you did you start to realize that this picture was wrong, and how long did it take you to actually throw off those old thoughts that you had growing up of that angry God with the lightning bolt?
Honestly, there's times I still struggle with it.
It's getting less and less as I grow older and spend more time in fellowship with the Lord and with other believers.
(19:48):
It's been a process.
I remember pretty distinctly one time about seven or eight years ago, life was just a struggle.
We were trying to blend family, and there was conflict in our home.
Work was a challenge, work was a conflict, and money was tight, and I was concerned about where everything was going to go.
(20:10):
I was just feeling empty, and I got to the point where my faith got boiled down to one thing that I knew—that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that God is the Creator, and that somehow in all of that He loved me, and that everything was going to be okay.
That was a key turning point for me.
(20:31):
It was just a point of surrender for me, and just realizing I didn't have the strength or the power in myself to change this situation, and that God would bring us through, and He did.
It's been an interesting life.
And that raises another issue for me in that we often see people, even very high-profile Christians, who have abandoned the faith because they don't allow themselves to put together all the pieces, or they don't understand how to put all the pieces together, which is what you're describing there in those moments.
(21:08):
How important is it for us to say, okay, at the moment, I don't understand a lot of it, but there are certain things that I am certain of.
There are certain things that I can hold onto, and I know that God will reveal more of Himself down the line.
How important is it that we shore up those places of certainty in our own heart?
(21:29):
Oh, it's crucial.
Life can take us to the point where the noise in the world gets so much, so loud, that we need to build that foundation of faith.
That's why it's so important to continually be in God's Word, and continually in fellowship with other people who have similar beliefs, those foundational core beliefs.
(21:51):
The whole idea of the strangers' conflict is something that is very real to each and every Christian, but was there a particular group of people that you had in mind when you were writing the book that you think will benefit from reading the strangers' conflict?
Yeah, I think pretty much anybody who faces that conflict and has questions about how do I fight this battle, and how do I respond when I have a major blow-up in my life of personal failure?
(22:22):
How do I come to God when I feel so alienated, and so unworthy, and maybe so dirty that I cannot approach Him?
It's just recognizing that God is love, and God is full of grace and mercy, and that I cannot fix myself.
It's those people who are struggling with those issues.
(22:45):
I imagine that as people read it, there would be almost a sense of relief of, so I'm not the only one.
I'm not the only one who consistently struggles with this, because we do still have this idea that there are those who have lived the Christian life for X amount of years, and they have got it right, and everything is going well in their life, and that's the way they seem to present.
(23:10):
We don't realize that behind closed doors, and sometimes in open doors, they are facing those struggles as well.
How much of a relief is it for people when they understand that this is a battle that is not unique to them?
I think it's a great relief.
I've had several various seasoned Christians close to me that read the book several months before I finished it, before I went through the full editing process.
(23:36):
They were saying, every person in the church needs to read this book.
Those kinds of comments blew me away.
I think the more prominent a person is in Christianity, the easier it is for them to feel like they have to hide their imperfections, because I'm in a place of authority, and I'm in this position of leadership.
(23:58):
I have to be perfect, right?
Well, the sad truth is, none of us are.
From people in leadership to the newest believer, I think, will benefit from reading the book.
I benefited tremendously from writing it.
It was a real growth process for me of God's revelation to me on a very personal level.
(24:19):
Just finishing it was a victory in and of itself.
The fact that everyone goes through this conflict internally is not an excuse for us to have bad behavior.
We read Paul talking about that.
It's like, yes, there is grace, but that doesn't mean that we continue to sin.
That's right.
But it does give us an understanding that we do have a loving Father who wants to draw us back, that yes, it's a battle that everyone is facing.
(24:45):
And again, that's the relief that we get.
Yes, we want to continue conforming to the image of Jesus Christ.
Yes, we want the Holy Spirit to continue to change our lives from the inside out, but it must be amazing for so many people to realize that yes, everyone is facing this, because we live in a society that is soaked by social media, so we get everyone's highlight reel.
(25:10):
We see all the good bits, and we don't see behind the doors.
How important do you think it is for us as Christians, and not to just blurt it out to the whole world, but to find those people in our lives that we can be accountable to, that we can share the struggles with?
It's crucial that we have those people.
And that was part of my struggle, is finding those people that I could feel comfortable exposing those things to.
(25:35):
And like you say, you don't want to blurt it out to everybody, but we all need those people with whom we can share our deepest doubts and frustrations and our fears and our failures.
And we need to be able to be that to other people too, because we all have those gifts that other people need from us.
(25:55):
And when we walk around crippled, we're actually crippling the body as well.
That's not to be a guilt trip.
It's that being open and honest before God, and being vulnerable and transparent in the right situations.
It's crucial for every believer.
Now that people are having a chance to read The Stranger's Conflict, and it's been a great process for you, as well as for those who are now reading it, do you have plans to write some more?
(26:23):
Are there other things that God is tapping you on the shoulder about that you think, this deserves to be a book as well?
Actually, yes.
My original plan was for three books.
Just this week, I've been praying about what's next.
And the next book will be called The Stranger's Choice.
And it's going to be about how we get to choose between walking by faith or living in fear.
(26:46):
And there's a really good illustration of that in scripture.
And it's the two approaches of the nation of Israel to the promised land, where the first time they responded in fear and wandered in the desert for 40 years while that generation died off.
And the second time they approached in faith and they conquered the land.
So using that situation as an illustration, we'll be talking about faith and fear.
(27:10):
And then hopefully that'll come out in the next couple of years.
Brad, I'm going to put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you and find your book easily.
But I just want to say thank you so much for spending time with us today and sharing some of your story on Bleeding Daylight.
I appreciate the invitation, Rodney.
Thank you very much.
(27:32):
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com