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July 7, 2024 32 mins

In this episode, we are joined by Mark Collins, a passionate pastor, coach, husband, and father with over 20 years of ministry experience. Mark has dedicated his life to guiding Christian men towards their divine purpose, and he brings a wealth of experience and insight into overcoming fear and uncertainty through biblical teachings. As the author of "Life Mastery, Living Life by Design, Not by Default," Mark shares his journey of finding his identity in God and how that revelation transformed his life and ministry.

 

Currently serving as the Associate Pastor at Authentic Community Church, Mark has empowered hundreds of men to unlock their true potential and live the life they were created to live. In this episode, Mark dives deep into his personal story, from growing up with a disciplinarian father to discovering his true identity in Christ. His journey is one of perseverance, transformation, and a passionate pursuit of God's purpose. Join us as Mark shares his heart and wisdom, offering encouragement and practical advice for anyone seeking to live a life of freedom and fulfillment in God. 

 

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Episode Transcript

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(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, thanks for listening.
Links to our social media channels are at bleedingdaylight.net.
That's also where you'll find other episodes.

(00:29):
If this is your first time listening, why not check out the dozens of other amazing guests at Bleeding Daylight and hear their stories too.
Please share episodes with others and consider leaving a five-star review.
Today's guest has discovered how to be free of the expectations of others and to live out the life he was created to live.

(00:52):
That's true freedom.
Mark Collins is a passionate pastor, coach, husband, and father, who has dedicated over 20 years to ministry and guiding Christian men towards their divine purpose.
As the author of Life Mastery, Living Life by Design, Not by Default, Mark brings a wealth of experience and insight into overcoming fear and uncertainty through biblical teachings.

(01:23):
Currently serving as the Associate Pastor at Authentic Community Church, Mark has empowered hundreds of men to unlock their true potential and live the life they were created to live.
Mark, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for having me with your community, Rodney.
I'm excited about the conversation.
I'm interested in the journey you've taken to where you are now.
Help me understand the young Mark.

(01:46):
How did life look as you were growing up?
My dad was in the military, and that's fairly common for those of us in the United States.
What wasn't common was the fact that we moved around to quite a few different places.
We moved because of his work and his opportunity to go to multiple places.
We lived in six different states within the U.S. and lived in Germany for a short period of time when I was about four years old.

(02:08):
I got to see a lot of my country, and the opportunities to do that were something I look back on fondly now, but not quite so much as a young, introverted, and insecure child that I was.
That was the Mark that was growing up.
My dad was a disciplinarian.
He wasn't a drill instructor, but he would have been a great one because he was a very matter-of-fact, black-and-white, get-things-done kind of dad, which isn't bad in some ways, but in other ways, it made it so he gave me an image of being a man that I felt I couldn't measure up to because I didn't have the war stories.

(02:40):
Not war as in going to war, but being a young man that he was, drinking, carousing, carrying on and doing those things before he met my mom.
But even in that, there was this image, this epitome of what manhood looks like, the stoic man who nothing hurts, no emotion comes out, no tear is shed, and you only have stories of your victories, your challenges, your fights, losses and wins.

(03:04):
That was me growing up, and my dad did a great job with the abilities or capability he had not having a father in his life.
I tell people the things that I want to do to invest in my community and those communities I have the opportunity to speak to isn't because I have a great idea or something that I thought, wow, this would be something I'd really want to invest some time in.
It was because I had a journey that I needed to have those things in my own life, and being able to see the transformation and the blessing in that in my own life, it's like when you have a good meal or you have a good experience, you want to tell everybody about it.

(03:36):
That was my beginning, was being that young man but believing there was more than where I was at and how I was feeling.
And having worked with so many men over quite some years now, you would probably understand that while your father put up that facade, there were probably issues behind that that you never knew about.

(03:56):
So you were trying to live up to an image that he had created himself, weren't you?
Yeah.
What was that like, trying to live to that image?
Impossible.
The short version, it was impossible because I knew on the inside I didn't have those resources.
I wasn't fearless in my life.
I didn't feel like I was invincible and or that I could do the things that I heard and the stories that my father told me.

(04:19):
It was an image that I couldn't accommodate and I couldn't ever master in my own life.
I actually got a second degree black belt in martial arts, and it wasn't because I felt like I wanted to be the strong guy or wanted to do anything in general, but it was because I felt that if I became that person, then I could be fearless like my father.
The things we do in our life, right, to try and measure up to an image that we're not supposed to.

(04:42):
That's one of the things that you did to try and measure up.
As you got a little bit older into your teen years and later, were there other things that you did, other lifestyles that you tried to pursue to try and live up to that image?
That is a great question.
At a certain point, right, when you feel like you're reaching or trying to grab accomplishments that you don't seem to ever get.

(05:04):
Again, my father was a good man and he did a good job with the equipping that he had.
When I was 21, I moved to a different state, so quite a bit of a different region from where my parents were at.
I was by myself, kind of all alone in the world, making my way as a person that has a bit of emotional depth and vulnerability.
I hope you never know what tomorrow brings.

(05:26):
On a phone call with my dad back in the old days when they had pay phones, I told him, I said, hey, dad, I love you.
There was a pause on the other end.
He said back to me, well, I love you also.
It was kind of matter of fact as if, why are you telling me that?
But growing into the late teens, right, in those kind of man years where the testosterone is building and you're feeling kind of full of yourself, there was an opposite approach.

(05:51):
Because I couldn't measure up or couldn't feel like I did because I didn't get the accolades or the attaboys or the attention or the response from my dad that I wanted, I went the opposite way.
And the opposite way for me was, well, then I don't need it.
I'll be my own man.
I'll do my own thing, right, whether that's out going, you know, being with ladies, drinking, doing those things, right, really the medications we use against the life we don't love, but we're living it anyway.

(06:16):
That's kind of the journey and the direction I went was I don't need you in my life anymore.
You've said several times that your father did the best job that he could with the equipping that he had.
And yet that didn't even dawn on you until many years later when you started to look into what it actually means to be a man.

(06:38):
And I think in those places it really comes down to this.
We live from our hurts.
And in that place we can't see past the disappointments or even in those places where we kind of create an identity around it where he didn't tell me I was a disappointment.
I just felt like I was one.
So it's in those times where you can't get past that identity crisis or that false identity you have for yourself long enough to see what others have gone through.

(07:03):
But it's interesting.
The more I've walked in, and what I call it in the community that I had the opportunity to coach and to mentor, it's your freedom journey.
It's right.
It's going from hurt to healed.
It's being able to live out the life of a Christian to the epitome of what God has, right, what Jesus said.
He, with the sunsets, free as free as indeed.
And the more I've got to that place of feeling confident in my identity, the more it gave me permission to see my dad for truly who he was and less from the place of the things I needed that weren't provided.

(07:35):
And in that place really brought not just closure but really a reconciliation, a healing of that relationship.
We like to tell ourselves the fairy tale versions of our stories in that we were heading one way.
We come to faith, and then suddenly everything's all right.
But we know it's not quite that way.

(07:57):
Tell me about your faith journey and when you started to realize that actually when the Scripture says that we can be set free, that when the sun sets you free, you are free indeed, that that freedom started to dawn upon you.
Part of the upbringing we had at least for a period of time until I was about 12 years old was in Sunday services that we went to.

(08:18):
And at 12 years old, I guess my dad felt that I was man enough to make my own decision and gave me the opportunity to either go to church or not go to church.
And because it wasn't something that was really impactful, it was more about tradition than relationship in my life, I chose not to.
Fast forward to the things that you and I talked about and living that young adult and adult life and trying to kind of figure it out on my own and find those pieces where I could start to try and find out who I was.

(08:43):
I met a young lady, and we were starting to date and have a relationship.
Her name was Susan.
She's actually my wife of 35 years now.
But at that time, we were dating and we had a relationship, and we were really kind of evolving and growing in the relationship.
I didn't like the guy that I saw, and I didn't like the guy that I was at the time.
I knew that there was more for me.

(09:04):
I knew that there was a life that was greater than what I was living.
Not just the things I was trying to do to succeed at, but those things that came alongside.
Because that insecurity didn't leave just because I wasn't a boy anymore.
It just had a different form and a different way of trying to intersect in my life.
That person and the responses I had and situations and the control and anger and those things were something I felt I was better than, but I didn't know how to get from there to something better.

(09:32):
We found some friendships.
We maintained a business friendship that became a personal friendship.
And the people that I was around, I saw had something I wanted.
They had a joy.
They had a peace.
They didn't have a guardedness.
They didn't have this kind of rough edge that I had in my life.
And so the faith journey really was coming back to God, knowing that He was the answer that I walked away from at 12 years old.

(09:54):
At 27 years old, there was an altar call at the front of a church service.
I looked at my, at that time, my wife and said, I have to go forward.
She looked a little shocked when she looked over at me, and I stood up.
I went forward, and that was the start of a different journey.
It was the start of a journey of kind of unpacking some of my past, but also unpacking what I thought Christianity was and what I felt I needed to be as a Christian versus the truth of what God invites us into.

(10:23):
How did the journey begin for you to start to understand beyond just that cultural Christianity, that expectation that we put on ourselves most of the time, but sometimes even from a church, there's an expectation, and then we start to realize, ah, but there's so much more in the Scripture.
How did you begin that journey to understanding what God really had in store for you?

(10:47):
That is a very good question, and really the journey started when I carried on the traditions and what I call the habits of Christianity, but I still was struggling with the insecurity and the issues and the sins that I kept falling into.
You know those things, and maybe, you know, maybe your audience is pure as the driven snow, but in my own life, it became a journey of I'm going to be better.

(11:08):
I'm not going to do that thing.
I'm not going to swear.
I'm not going to take on those activities.
I'm not going to do that stuff.
Then I would fall short, and I would do it anyway, and then I would get better.
I would ask God for forgiveness, say I would never do it again, and then I would go down that journey again once more of going through those times and trying to be better and getting better, and oh my gosh, now I'm okay.
Now I'm an okay Christian because I've walked through those things and then falling short again, and the tradition is not really pulling me out of it.

(11:34):
It's just different habits that I was exchanging one for another, but it wasn't transforming me on the inside.
But then I had an experience with God where I prayed for somebody and I saw them healed.
I didn't know they were healed.
They had bursitis in one of their shoulders.
We happened to have a chance to have a conversation.
I prayed for them.
At that time, we were doing a kind of a sports activity for an outreach in the community.

(11:58):
Next week, I saw that person.
His name was Dan Pohlstrahl.
I'll remember his name the rest of my life.
I walked up to him and I said, Hey, Dan, how's your shoulder doing?
He said, Ever since you prayed for me, I haven't had any pain.
I think I'm healed.
Something on the inside exploded because my understanding of God, incorrect understanding, was that my job is to be as good as I can to try and get through as many of the habits as I can so I could measure up when I get to heaven.

(12:26):
Now all of a sudden, God went from a God I'll see someday and I need to prove myself to, to a God who is absolutely right here.
Not just right here, but somebody that would actually use a guy who was broken, who was hurting like I was.
That was really kind of the start of a passion for God and chasing after him.

(12:48):
That's what started to unpack the journey that I had in this, what I call, freedom walk and created the course that I have, the book that I read.
Really, the whole trajectory of my life from that point forward was chasing after God because, wow, he is real.
I knew he was real.
I just didn't know he cared enough about me to show up where I was at in the moment I was there.

(13:10):
It changed my life forever.
It's been said that when we come to an understanding of who God is and at that point of salvation, we accept that freely, that that's something that God has done for us through the sacrifice of Jesus.
It's almost like once we're in, we then do just as you were saying, we try and prove ourselves to God as if, okay, we've had this free gift of salvation, but beyond that we have to work for it.

(13:39):
It must have been quite freeing when you realize, no, it's grace all the way.
Yeah, absolutely, and not just the grace, although that's a gift that I could never repay, but the opportunity to know that God loved you because then that grace came wrapped in a package of love and understanding that unlike who I felt I was and what I needed to do with my own father, interesting parallel by the way, I didn't have to measure up for God.

(14:06):
I tell people this all the time, and it was a journey I had to learn over time.
I said, hey, you didn't have to measure up for him to die for you.
Why do you feel like you have to measure up for him to love you now and in that place for you to actually be who you're created to be, not the person you feel like you have to be.
Prodigal son versus the older son, right?
I've done everything for you.

(14:27):
Why didn't I get a party?
But I've already given it to you.
You just didn't realize it.
One of the things that I know that you're very involved in is helping people understand their identity and their purpose.
And of course, we can't do that if we're still trying to live up to another expectation.
When did you start to actually put words around your own purpose, your own identity?

(14:53):
Was that part of that time of freeing, that time where you saw that healing and something burst inside you?
I think for me, at least, it was ever-evolving.
And I don't think that's different for me as opposed to any other man or woman out there.
What I do believe, and I see it time and time again, is that there's these things that God plants on the inside, the impact that's ours to have in the world.

(15:14):
And I see it in Scripture as well, right?
It's the who you are lived out.
It's not the task that you're given.
It's the person that you've been created to be.
And so for me, it was that passionate time of saying, I really want to tell everybody about God.
And so I pursued ministry in many different ways, some ways just kind of fumbling and stumbling, and some ways being absolutely Holy Spirit-led.
But it was in that time where I started to unpack what I would consider the beginnings of what I spend every day talking to people about today.

(15:42):
And it's more about identity because, first off, in the Scripture as we see it, one of my favorites is Gideon, but in so many circumstances he'll tell the man or woman of God who they are, and then he tells them the mission, the plan, the purpose he has for their life.
But what they don't realize is they were that person from the beginning.
As Gideon, mighty man of valor while he was hiding from the enemies of his people, he didn't change into a mighty man of valor.

(16:08):
He changed the perspective of understanding who he was.
And that was similar to my journey.
Well, frankly, it was exactly like my journey.
Those things that I said when I was a teenager, I believed I was better than where I was at.
Well, come to find out I was right, and it wasn't because I was great, it was because God was.
And so as I started to unpack it in my life, yeah, then that started to build what I consider and I say is the roadmap of how do I get from this place to there?

(16:33):
Because I say this to people all the time, we understand he who the Son sets free is free indeed.
We understand freedom as a salvation message.
We don't just understand it as a lifestyle to live out because freedom looks like something lived out.
And so for me, the more I stopped trying to prove who I was, the more God was able to show me who he created me to be and how the things he created me to be were all those things that knit together in the path and the impact and the vocation ministry, whatever you want to call it, that I was able to walk in.

(17:05):
So often we are identified by what we do.
As soon as we meet someone, we get to know generally two things.
What is your name and what do you do?
What do you do for a job?
And we really define ourselves by doing things.
And what you're talking about is very different.
It's like, yes, there is doing, but first of all, we understand who we are, who God has said we are.

(17:29):
And how freeing is that when we realize that God has decided who we are and there are tasks that follow.
There are things that we do that follow that, but that's already something that God has placed inside us.
I imagine with the people you're working with, that must be a message of great freedom for so many.

(17:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
If you're in the business world, you would call it a paradigm shift.
If you're in the psychology or the personal development world, you'd call it a mindset shift.
But what it really is is it's a transformation of your thought process in biblical terms and understanding that who you were created to be and what I tell people is this, your character is your calling, which is absolutely contradictory to much of what the world says and frankly how we usually live.

(18:14):
Even in Christian circles, we always elevate the person with the title.
And that's not bad because they do deserve the honor that they have gotten.
The problem is we think that the title and the honor is the thing to go for, not realizing that God wants to unleash you.
And in that place, those things are just an outworking of who you are lived out.
We try to continue to give exercise and tools and things for people to understand, hopefully revelation that you're already the answer.

(18:41):
You're the calling.
You're the thing that happens.
If you can unpack who he created you to be, those activities, those accomplishments, those tasks, those jobs, whatever the thing is you're walking into are an outworking of who you are.
The world says I have to do those things to prove who I am, insecurity, fear, and worry, and those kind of things.
You always look outward to prove inward.

(19:04):
Fascinating thing, Rodney, when I started to unpack this journey in my life, my marriage got better, not because I got better as a husband, but because I stopped requiring my wife to make up for the things that I felt were lacking in me as a person.
The more insecure you are, the more others need to make you feel better about yourself, and the more outside tasks matter because now all of a sudden, what if I'm not?

(19:27):
What if I'm not a business owner?
What if I don't have a job?
What if I don't have a high level of income or a nice car?
Who am I?
You find out as you're in this journey, those things are just benefits and blessings from God.
They're not identity attributes, if you will.
Once you have started discovering who you are in God and what he has for you, obviously that's filled with some excitement and wanting others to know this.

(19:57):
How far along that journey did you think, I really need to share this, I need to write about this, I need to help others discover this?
When did that journey begin to actually start sharing this more widely?
As a formalized system of teaching and training or classes or what have you, probably seven to ten years ago, when I started to unlock the things that I discovered that God gave me and revealed.

(20:23):
It wasn't just in scriptures and Christianity.
My first pursuit before I found Christianity was in personal development.
All the big marquee names and people that you have, that you'd probably know because they're world famous.
But the interesting thing was the problem with the personal development programs was that the overarching theme in many of them is, follow after the high power at high level man or woman, imitate them until you become like them.

(20:48):
Those things, while they had good principles and precepts, mostly biblical principles spoken in a worldly way, in those places, I knew I wasn't that person.
In this place of identity and understanding who you're created to be, I started to understand I don't need to be them because my highest level of life isn't to imitate somebody amazing, it's to be exactly who He created me to be.

(21:11):
As I started to unpack that and live it out in my own life and kind of pursue ministry, I thought that being a pastor and being a part of a church was that.
Then it became more of a singular passion where I'm still a pastor, but this is my one-hit wonder, if you will.
This is my one guiding passion.
Most of the conversations I have are typically around this.
Seven to ten years ago, yeah, I started to try and bring some folks along.

(21:34):
Really, it came from a perspective of definitely walking in the tools and the truth that I had in my course called Life Mastery.
But it really came from a place of knowing how broken and hurt I was and how desperate I was to not be anxious and fear of failure and insecure in the things that I did.
The interesting thing about men, and maybe I'm the only person, but I've seen it many times, is we tend to not want to show those things that we're struggling with.

(22:01):
In my own life, my wife didn't know a half of what the things I was going through because it was those mental gymnastics when you're having to do a task or something's happening or I didn't pay a bill and we're having financial trouble.
On the inside, I'm having this voice telling me that I'm a failure, what have you.
It was coming from that place and knowing that I wasn't the only one and wanting to give guys a shortcut out of that torment and that bondage that really made me want to create something where I could not just give them good words and ideas because those are awesome.

(22:34):
But if you don't have a path to get from there where you're at to that thing that people are talking about, it's after a while just an empty dream.
I didn't want to just speak things of value.
I wanted to give them a path to get there.
As you've done that now over a number of years, it shouldn't be surprising because you had experienced it in your own life, but I guess you've been surprised a number of times to see the turnaround in men's lives.

(22:59):
Tell me maybe one or two stories of the men who have come into the course or who have read your book and have thought that life is looking pretty bleak and the turnaround that they've experienced.
Absolutely.
One of the students and friend of ours is a man named Brett.
I know him because he's very successful in business.

(23:21):
He does ministry.
He's a pastor, but he also has businesses as well.
He's got a great business acumen.
And so we were talking about these things, and many of my conversations tend to lean towards talking about freedom and life mastery and identity and those things that are the topics that are always at the heart of who I am.
And while he was a successful business person, the interesting thing was, and we unpacked this during some different teachings and trainings and courses we were on, he always had this fear of failure in everything he was doing.

(23:50):
And this is a man that's six and seven figures worth of business transactions and those things he's doing.
So from the outside and even from my perspective, you know you're the best of both worlds.
You're a pastor, so you're a man of God, and you understand the depths of what God has for you and all of those things that we have an expectation of.
And you're also a person at a high level of business.
And so he would be the last person that on the outside you would say, oh, well, that's somebody who is struggling internally.

(24:15):
That's somebody who has a lack of confidence that's being overcome by, you know, a high level of business success.
It was a blessing to see him change because you know those people that are in your sphere of influence that are highly successful in one area, and they're broken and hurting in another.
For Brett, it was so open and honest about who he was and what he was walking through.

(24:39):
That was such a great blessing because many times the success that you have in your life lasts for such a short period of time because it really never overcomes that doubt and that fear that I'm not worth this and it's not going to last.
So for him, it was an amazing thing to see that so that he didn't have that yeah, but portion of his life, you know, I'm successful, but the next few that's going to drop the next transaction that we're going to have, what if I can't keep this business up?

(25:07):
To see him actually have success and, and see what God's doing in his life and actually be able to enjoy it and be able to invest in it completely because he didn't fear that it was going to go away and he didn't fear that he was inadequate to do it.
And then there was Vance.
And the reason I really enjoyed the opportunity to be a part of his life and his journey was because his challenge was relationships.

(25:34):
He was a husband and he was a father.
And what he said after walking through the course and using the tools and the things that we have to help you go from hurt to free or here to freedom, the response and the thing that happened with him was an engagement and an openness in his marriage.
He, like my father, and like some of us was somebody a man of few words and, and he would get things done, but he wouldn't share life.

(25:56):
And so in many of our cases, mine included, my wife actually likes to hear what's going on with me, not just see the tasks I've done for him.
It was the same way, but after a period of being able to feel safe within a relationship, so he didn't have to control it or hide from it, whether emotionally or relationally, but he could actually invest in it and feel confident as a man, as a husband, as a father, it transformed the way he had relationship with his wife and with his children because he was engaged and he was there.

(26:26):
He wasn't just a provider, which is a great thing to be, but he was also there for the relationship and the journey that they were in and the conversations they wanted to have that were more than transactional.
And so it was really wonderful to see his family change because he changed.
I know that for some who are listening, they have done just what you explained right at the start of our conversation.

(26:50):
And that is to try to measure up.
And they've probably tried so many ways to measure up.
They're listening at the moment and saying, I'd love to have that, but it's just one more thing.
And I know I'd fail at that too.
What would you say to men who are stuck in that place thinking I've tried so many things, is it really worth the effort to learn about this life mastery that you're talking about?

(27:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
I was that man before I walked on this journey, as we talked about, I tried all sorts of personal development programs, anything I could get my hands on.
I was voracious because as I said, there was that thing inside that said there's more than the person I was living.
What I would say, the short version is to just let them know that they're first off, not alone.

(27:38):
And second off, they're not just not alone is in walking in this journey, but they're not alone as being a man who's tried things, who believes in himself enough to try something and then having it fail.
But what I always invite men into is would you bet on yourself one more time?
Would you bet on yourself so that you could actually maybe have that transformation that you believe you can have?

(28:02):
Because at the end of the day, what you need to know is that's actually the truth.
I believe it's the spirit on the inside telling you that you're meant for greater.
You're meant for more than where you're at.
And would you step in one more time, bet on yourself one more time to put the energy and the effort into doing those things that will take you from where you're at to free.

(28:24):
There's a track record of men who have done it, women as well, but it starts with believing that I, I'm just going to do it one more time.
I refuse to give up.
I'm not going to live this life that I'm living.
I'm going to find a way wherever I can find it.
So if it's those guys who are tenacious, then this is the, the opportunity for them to do that.

(28:45):
And again, I just, there's, this isn't a small thing that there's something on the inside telling you there's more than where you're at, because that's absolutely testifying to the truth.
You just need to be able to, what we call have a faith walk of stepping it out one more day, one more day, one more time, because you're worth it.
You're not wrong in what you believe.

(29:06):
You just need to be able to say, I'm going to do this thing.
One of the aspects in the teachings I have is having an, I will until mindset.
It's easy to walk into a program and to do something.
And I've been there where I thought, Oh, this is the answer to my life.
And I walk in and it's a lot of work with very little outcome.
And I give up and I'm done and I throw it away.

(29:28):
But there's those things that while they take hard work, actually have transformation attached to them.
And it comes to the people who say, I will, until I love this about my Christian walk.
In that my God and your God, the one we talk about is one in the same in that he is a God of miracles.
But part of that miraculous journey many times is having you on a faith walk of having to invest in the things that you desire.

(29:54):
I tell people it's like my son.
I have a son who's 44, but when he was a teenager in our household, we could only afford one pair of shoes for our kids at the beginning of the school year.
Both of him and our daughter got her shoes and he got his as well.
Within a few months, they would be torn up the soles that would be gone.
We'd have to buy him a new pair.

(30:15):
Well, we found out why he rode a bicycle to school.
And instead of using the break that the bicycle provided, logically he decided to use his shoes as his break.
But when this son of ours became an adult and he found his first job and he bought his own first pair of shoes, he was out on our patio one time with a toothbrush, cleaning the shoes, making sure that they were clean and sparkling and using them in a way and putting them in a box when he brought them inside.

(30:47):
There's a difference between given something for free and something that you pay a price for the things you pay a price for.
God knows.
And sometimes we don't that there's an ownership attached to it.
And when we own the process of our transformation, God can use that so that when the lies come, when the hurt happens, when we feel like we're not progressing like we want to, we still have that mindset of, I will until I'm not going to give up on the truth of who I am.

(31:15):
Mark, I'm sure that there are people listening and we know that there are people listening right around the world.
And many of those people can't sit across the room from you and to go through these sorts of processes with you.
So what is there for people who want to connect, who want to engage with what you've written, the courses that you've designed, what can they do?

(31:38):
I do have a website, courses.freedom-for-life.net.
And I point everybody to that place because that's where all of our free materials and paid materials are.
And my book, you can check out the book.
Well, I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find that easily.
I'll put a link to your website so that people can see that also to the book on Amazon.

(32:04):
So people can get to that very quickly.
Mark, it's been a great conversation.
Thanks for what you're doing.
Thanks for being open about your own journey.
And thank you for your time today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you for having me.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.

(32:26):
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
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