The Soul’s Journey Through Loss: A Conversation with Jim Kelly

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Map.
Today I'm honored to have avery special guest, someone near
and dear to my heart.
He's a long-term mentor and aformer pastor of mine.
His name is James Keller.
He goes by Jim.
Jim has been, to say the least,an influence in my life since we
first met back in 2008.
He is a retired United Methodistminister but who is actively

(00:25):
engaging in ministry.
He has a master's degree indivinity focused on apocalyptic
literature, and has a myriad oforganizations and ministries
that he's been involved withover the years Things like
Kairos, prison Ministry, emmausWalks, things of that nature.
And one of the things that Iadmire most about Jim is his
approach to the questions thatI've had about faith, and I

(00:48):
would come to him with kind ofbig existential questions, and
he never just handed me someanswer or tried to impose his
own views on me or doctrinalideas.
Instead, he would lay outseveral different perspectives
and he'd say this isn't aboutwhat I think or about what a
group thinks, but it's reallyabout what God wants you to
discover, and he was alwaysencouraging me to seek my own

(01:09):
relationship with Scripture andwith God, which really had a
lasting impact on me in terms ofhow I would be led by other
people and what I would look forin mentorship.
And in this episode we diveinto some really meaningful
conversations, talking aboutloss of my brother and his
mother, about our faith andabout growth, and we touch on

(01:29):
the weight of just relationshipsand responsibilities.
We carry within that andreflect on Jim being in his late
60s and still learning, stillwrestling and sometimes shaking
his fist at God, and I think ourconversation was a powerful
reminder that faith is a journeywithout a final destination and
that I hope it speaks to anyonenavigating some hardships and

(01:51):
hard questions in life.
Yeah, likewise it's been a while.
I wanted to visit you when Icame up to west virginia the
last time, but it was justhectic with my.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
my brother passed and yeah, uh was trying to to
navigate you know, I know yourheart was broken and and uh
prayed for you.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
I hope, uh, hope you're doing better yeah, I mean
it was mean, it was just tough,completely unexpected.
He was only 41, and we wereover in Europe at the time.
So my other brother messaged methe day that we were going to
leave, at like 4 in the morning.
So I just kind of had to likeshut my brain off and go into

(02:41):
survival mode because we weretraveling with two small kids.
So just getting back here, andthen there's just a bunch of
stuff that happened.
We got back, or our fridge itdied at some point when we left
and all that kind of like everyday life stuff was going on so
hard.
Now because you grew up in Westvirginia and the bible belt and

(03:05):
people always say you knowyou're not promised tomorrow and
you know that, you realize that.
But then when somebody you careabout's gone, you realize okay,
that's it, like no morememories, no more experiences,
that that's it.
You have to get right with thatand I think that's the toughest
part.
Don't really torture myselfwith like thoughts of, oh, we
should have spent more time ordone this.

(03:27):
It's just like no one can everanticipate.
But just comes in waves forlike a little bit of time I'll
be busy with work and kids,stuff.
I don't think about it.
Then some some song will comeon or something will happen and
then I'll feel like crying likea little kid.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
So yeah, that's, that's part of the deal, man.
Yeah, that's how.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
That's how god made you and I'm sorry about your mom
passing as well.
I know that had been tough onyou guys.
You spend like tons of timetogether.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Now in the last years she's living with you yeah,
it's hard, yeah, it uh bringsmortality to your face-to-face.
I mean it really hurts andmakes you reevaluate everything

(04:12):
you do.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
That's pretty much how I felt.
There were things that what amI doing?
And then I have X amount oftime on the earth and all those
feelings come up.
For sure, when I thought aboutpeople to talk to, I thought
about you specifically, justbecause time on the earth and,
like you know, all those, allthose feelings come up and, for
sure, when I thought aboutpeople to talk to, I thought
about you specifically justbecause of uh, you were kind of
at the beginning of my process,uh, in a lot of ways, and you

(04:37):
were a godsend for me.
Uh, I remember, I remember whenI went to St Paul's United
Methodist Church, so I wentthere and so I grew up in a
Methodist church, but it's likea small country Methodist church
in the middle of nowhere.
You know, 40-ish people,everybody's older.

(04:58):
There's really like only twofamilies with kids, like outside
of me.
So I had, like you know, two,two boys, three boys my age, and
then that was really it.
There was not like a lot ofother other kids there and uh,
you know, my that was, that wasmy introduction to christianity,
that was my introduction.

(05:18):
Guys, a small country met thischurch, really lovely people
there.
They, they, they were.
They were nice, but spiritually, um, it was just a graveyard.
I mean like they were talkingabout having a personal
relationship with jesus is themost important decision you
could ever make in your life,but then I never saw that
actually uh, demonstrated.

(05:39):
I never saw that actuallywalked out in the sense of what
relationship with god seeminglylooked like from the perspective
of a 10 year old.
Was you, you?
You, you memorize this book,you do the holy dues, you don't
do the holy don'ts.
You sing songs about God, youtalk about God, you close your
eyes and you complain about howbad the world is, things that

(06:00):
you want and thanking for thingsyou have, and you wait to die,
to go to heaven, or everyone washoping that Jesus came back and
I was like man, I want to livemy life.
What do you mean?
Like I don't want to get suckedup into heaven.
I haven't even I'm fresh in thepond here.
So I'm like, if you're 80 yearsold and you've lived, your life
has kind of ran its course andfrom your perspective, you're

(06:23):
like, I'm kind of done with thisworld.
I think you're nihilistic.
I think it's getting worse.
You're ready to make your exit.
Okay, that makes sense that youwant to go to some another
dimension and be with like aplace with no pain, no stress.
That makes sense.
But for me it was not making toomuch sense and it was like I
remember there's a guy, he's 84years old, his name was bernard

(06:47):
and he he would.
He was just a character, he hada hearing aid, um, that always
was like this high pitch noiseis going on because he's trying
to adjust it.
He never could hear anything,but he didn't feel the problem
to interrupt the sermon.
He would full-on interrupt.
Sir, what did you say?
Like he was interrupted.
And and then when we would singthese hymns, these, you know
these, we had a hymn book sowe'd only sing like hymns and

(07:09):
for worship.
I mean, he was just in his ownworld, like he was like
worshiping god.
But he was just like in his ownworld, like he was not with us.
We're not singing together.
You know some of those hymns.
There's like two parts that youcan sing.
He would be singing the thirdpart.
He was with anybody.

(07:32):
But anyways, that guy, he saidsomething that like just it felt
like someone hit me in the facewith a pound of bricks.
He was there in church and hesaid I'm ready to go meet Jesus.
And I don't know exactly how hemeant it exactly.
You know, obviously I'm anadult now but as a kid I'm like
holy smokes.
This guy's 84.
He's been a Christian his wholelife.
He's never met Jesus, butthey're telling me having a

(07:53):
relationship with Jesus is themost important thing.
What are you guys doing here?
Like what's going on?
And we had to play Bible triviain Sunday school so we had to
memorize all these scriptures,right?
So in the scriptures I'mmemorizing, jesus is doing crazy
stuff, like he's healing people, he's interacting with people,

(08:15):
he's moved with compassion,where his guts are wrenched, and
he's doing crazycountercultural things.
And I'm like what is going on?
Is the Bible God's greatesthits?
That happened 2000 years ago.
We just live vicariouslythrough all these people and
trust blindly that all thisstuff happened and then when we
you know we die, we go to heaven.

(08:35):
Or is this?
Is this bunk?
Is this just like a fairy tale?
Because you know, growing upwhere, where I grew up, and I
don't know how it was when, whenyou were younger.
But you know, santa claus was athing, the easter bunny was a
thing.
Um, so there's these narrativesthat adults impose on children.
And I mean you, look at santaclaus, do good things, don't do

(08:59):
bad things, and if you, at theend of the year, you get a
reward.
And so I was kind of cominginto this conclusion.
Jesus is like the ultimateSanta Claus, because you only
know when you die.
Because when you went withSanta Claus, at some point the
adults let you in on the secret.
The little kids are there.
They're winking at you, santaClaus.
You're like what do you mean?

(09:19):
Why are you winking at me?
Is Santa Claus not real?
Like what are you doing at me?
The santa claus not real.
Like what are you doing?
And you get let in on thisthing.
You're like my whole life's alie, my whole childhood's a lie.
So that's kind of how I likelooked at it was like okay, this
is the ultimate santa claus.
You guys perpetuate it and andlike jesus is is the ultimate
comfort blanket for people tomake them comfortable with the

(09:41):
idea of dying, and it's theultimate control for younger
people to modify behavior.
Basically.
And then the rapture.
The rapture is a way to likealso.
You know, it's this wild cardof like well, you think you have
time, you think you have like80 years, you can sow your wild
oats, but it could happen likethat.

(10:02):
Then you're left behind, youknow.
So I was like this is a big, bigmind game, that's that's going
on.
Kind of is what I was wasthinking about, um, but also I
was very like I'm I would sayI'm probably what people
consider a little bit on theautism spectrum in the sense of
like I just go narrow and deepon stuff, become obsessive and

(10:23):
and and so it sure I can't Ican't imagine you doing any of
that well, so watching you liveis a roller coaster man well, I
I, looking back, I felt like, uh, very much like martin luther,

(10:48):
uh, when, when, when he woulddescribe this, this terror of
judgment, in the sense of hewould lay in bed as night,
repenting, repenting, repenting,repenting, um, not wanting to
go to hell, having zerorevelation of grace.
And that was another componentof this, was um, of this was it
was a legalistic kind ofpresentation of God.

(11:13):
It was really just fear ofpunishment.
At the end of the day, it wasfear of going to hell, it was
fear of these things.
And my dad and me had aconversation in the car and he
grew up kind of fundamentalistum background and I was maybe
like 11, and so we're going tothis church.
There's a lot of stuff aboutend times left behind, films,

(11:35):
revelation, you know, focused.
But anyways, I asked my god, mydad, one day.
I was like you know, if I, ifI'm a christian, I I believe,
you know, jesus died, heresurrected from the dead.
I, I, you know, I'm askingforgiveness for my sins, I'm
trying to live like a good life.
But let's say, hypothetically,I tell a lie, all right, I do

(11:55):
some sin and I don't askforgiveness for it, and then I
die.
What happens, my dad says well,you go to hell because jesus
said you have to be perfect,like your father in heaven is
perfect.
So his definition of perfectwas not complete in the sense of
coming into unity with thetrinity.
His definition of perfect wasperformance oriented, of like
making no mistakes.
So I was like I think you wantto say 11 or 12, I I just went

(12:21):
home pretty deflated some.
Some weeks passed and then Icame to this conclusion, jim, I
thought I'm not entirely surethat this is all real, because
nobody here there's no miracles,nobody here seems to be able to
hear God, which everybodythroughout the Bible could hear
God, everybody throughout theBible that we have an account of
has some kind of interaction.

(12:43):
There's mysticism happeningthroughout Scripture.
I don't see it here, um, so I'mnot clear on if this is real or
not, but even if it is real,they the expectation on my life
is impossible, like basically,I'm gonna try this as hard as I
can, I'm gonna go to hell.
That was the realization that.

(13:03):
So I just at that point in mylife I was like I'm just going
to live life exactly the way Iwant and go to hell, versus like
be miserable in this boringstuff and go to hell.
So I'm saying I'm saying allthat to say you know most of
this, I'm just saying it forlisteners of like kind of a
backdrop.

(13:23):
So fast forward, uh, I go intolike a hedonistic uh direction,
living life really how I wantand uh, come to conclusion.
That's probably not the bestway, like I was pretty depressed
on the result of that.
It was not as fulfilling as Ithought it might be.
Have, have an encounter withJesus and get, just radically

(13:47):
encounter God's love.
I won't go into the depth ofthat story.
And the guy who was therearound me was the youth pastor
at the church you were pastoring, and so then he's invited me to
your church.
I walk in here.
We are full circle.
I started in a Methodist church.
Now I'm coming back into faith.

(14:09):
I had this encounter with Jesus.
I'm in a Methodist church andI'm like things are going to be
different now.
Man, I got zapped and we comein and the church is downtown in
the city.
Uh, it's, it's doctors, it'slawyers, it's town officials,

(14:29):
the, the pillars of society, andand uh there's a lot of, and
you can't imagine how hard it isto minister to those people
well, I was back full circle to,you know, from a country church
to more of a city church.
There's a lot of theater.

(14:49):
You know the clothes that theymade you wear there.
You wore this big, big robe.
You look like somebody fromsister act.
Uh, you know, that's what Ithought when I saw sister.
But yeah, so that that's kindof how we or from my perspective
, we ended up.
I asked you at some point for ameeting.
I sat down at your office andyou shared your testimony with

(15:13):
me on how you encountered Jesus,and when you shared that, I was
just like man.
I don't know about the rest of,like the church service and
like how this is, I don't knowanything about that, but I'll
follow this guy for a while,like this guy's the the real
deal introduction, at least onhow we met each other.
Um, so maybe circling back towhat you said, so you're in this

(15:36):
town, uh, this city ofparkersburg, you're at st paul's
and you're, you know, you haveto deal with a lot of big
personalities.
You have to deal with peoplewho are a lot of people who are
in charge yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
So a type personalities, disagreeable
people generally and they liketo tell you how you're supposed
to do your business you.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
You also came to faith kind of under like a kind
of crisis.
You're going through crisis inyour life.
You have encounter with jesusand so I would say that you know
, from what I know of you andthe time we spent together, I
would also consider you somebodywho's who's a mystic and
someone who you know reallyseeks to you, know, steward the
presence of God and and be incommunion with God and what that

(16:20):
looked like authentically,looks like not theater, theater
and and drama, but that lookslike so for you being in the
Methodist church.
You know how many years did youwere you serving in Methodist
church?
Like when did you come in?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
and recording elder, 36 years and I retired to take
care of my mom and and there's alot of story behind that as
well she gave me up as a fosterchild and and uh, so she wasn't
in my life a whole lot.
Uh, she, she, uh was into uh,partying and dancing and going

(16:57):
to parties and all the bigevents and in the area and and
uh, she was busy, but she kindof grew up that way.
Her mother was an artist andand and she also was really busy
.
She didn't have time for my momand so mom, I wouldn't say she
grew, you know, was raised bywolves, but she was raised by an

(17:18):
artist who was eccentric andand didn't give her any kind of
domesticated knowledge at all.
So my grandmother and my motherwere not domesticated women.
They both worked hard andtaught me a lot about work, but

(17:39):
they didn't really give me awhole lot of attention, didn't
really give me a whole lot ofattention.
So my growing up was amongstthe kids and the adults in my
neighborhood and so I grew up atthe age of 12.
I was an alcoholic.

(18:00):
At the age of 16, I was a drugaddict and at the age of 18
that's when I met jesus.
An evangelist came to town, uh,an ex-girlfriend of mine uh came
to my house.
She went to that church wherethe evangelist came.
His name is larry taylor andand larry had been a an addict

(18:23):
back in the 50s a heroin addictback in the 50s and upon
listening to his testimony, myex-girlfriend knew me and she
knew that I needed to hear thisguy, and so she cornered me at

(18:45):
my house.
This is February and and it'scold outside.
She comes to my front door andI'm surprised to see her because
I thought I got rid of her andand she, she, she wants me to

(19:05):
come with her to church.
Now I just drank a six pack ofbeer, okay, uh, to get up enough
nerve to go uptown and pop skin, all right.
So she, she wanted me to cometo church.
I and I knew who went to thatchurch.
The mayor went to that church.
The chief knew who went to thatchurch.

(19:25):
The mayor went to that church,the chief of police went to that
church, prosecuting attorneywent to that church.
Several state policemen,sheriffs and some federal people
actually went to that church.
So I knew that where I washeaded.
If I went with her to therevival.

(19:46):
I didn't want to be a part ofthat group.
I didn't want to be.
I was on their list it wasn't agood list and and, uh, they
were, they were really after meand but, but I went, uh, because
she started crying.
Uh, I hate women crying, that'snot a fair tool, but
nonetheless I really didn't wantto go uptown because then that

(20:08):
that night I was in turmoil.
I, I, I really believe that mylife was almost over.
I looked like, uh, death warmedover.
I mean, I, I just had skinpulled over my bones and I was
almost gone to begin with and Iwas mixing drugs and alcohol and

(20:30):
doing everything I can todestroy my life.
I didn't have any hope.
I didn't see any hope after Igraduated from high school.
I didn't see me getting a jobanywhere.
I didn't see anything in termsof my future.
So I thought my life was alreadyover at that point, because I'd
already basically messed it upand and there wasn't any drug

(20:51):
programs.
I didn't know anything about AA.
I didn't have any, anydirection at all, and so so when
, when she came to my door andwanted me to go to church, there
was, there was that sense thatsomebody actually cared and
loved me to church.
There was that sense thatsomebody actually cared and
loved me, and this person wasbrokenhearted that I didn't want
to go with them to church.

(21:11):
So I thought, well, this willbe a hoot, you know, I'll get in
the car and we go to church,which is a cross-cultural
experience for me, because Ididn't grow up in church at all
Okay, and so my goal was to sitas far away from the people that

(21:33):
I knew probably were there aspossible.
So we sat clear in the back ofthe church and I wanted to be
near the exit, and so I did that.
And because I drank a six packof beer before the service was
over with, I really had to pee,so I basically bolted.

(21:58):
But before I bolted, theevangelist was talking about
Jesus, and so I was kind ofangry because no one really told
me about who Jesus was up untilthat point.
Uh, I thought he was a good guy.
You know, I I've been in a fewchurches.

(22:19):
Mom and dad took me to, or notdad, but mom took me to, or not
dad, but mom took me to, or mygrandparents took me to, and,
and, and I saw his painting.
Uh, that, that icon of apainting, uh that that, as you
entered the church, usually thejesus is right there, and I knew
he was a good guy, andeverybody you know talked about
how good he was.
But I didn't understand who hewas, and, and so I was kind of

(22:46):
angry at that point because noone had really ever told me the
truth about Jesus.
Your comments was that he wasthe ultimate Santa Claus.
That's not how I saw him atthat point.
I saw him, as I was introducedto him, as as the, the center of
everything, that he is god inthe flesh, and no one ever told

(23:10):
me that.
And so, uh I, when I bolted outof that church, I went and peed
behind the catholic church, uh,which is just a half a block
away from the church I was in,and in that Catholic church

(23:35):
there's a statue not a statue,an erection of the cross of
Christ, and Christ is hanging onthe cross, and there's a pond
right in front of that withflowers and and and no, at the
time, not flowers, but butplants and and I, so I sat in
front of this crucifixion and Iwas looking up at Jesus and I

(23:59):
thought man, you, you, you looklike, you know what I feel like
and you're God in the flesh, whyare you hanging on a cross?
So all these questions startcoming to my mind and for an
addict they were heavy thoughts.
Where does space end?
Is God really there?

(24:20):
And and and uh.
The next night I went back, um,because he that evidently she
had told on me to the evangelistand he came looking for me in
high school, in in the actualfacility of the high school
building, and and he told methat he wanted me to come back

(24:42):
to church that night and I hadjust been selling stuff next to
the vending machines at schooland when they saw him coming
they thought he was the heat andeverybody disappeared and I was
losing money.
And so I said I tell you what Ipromise you I will be there.

(25:03):
I'm a man of my word, I willkeep my word, I'll be there.
I said what I heard, what Ipromise you I will be there.
I'm a man of my word, I willkeep my word, I'll be there.
I said what I heard you say wasinteresting to me.
I'd like to know more, butyou've really got to go right
now.
You're putting me in danger.
So I told him I'd be there andI did go.
I did go.

(25:26):
I took my present girlfriendwith me, whose dad went to that
church and he hated me and Iwanted to rub his nose in the
fact that I was with her, that's, that's my mind was not really
there yet.
So, anyway, I was sitting inthe back of the church again and
he gave the entire message.

(25:47):
I didn't drink, but before Iwent and it came down to the
place where he told me that if Iaccepted Christ, I became a new
creature, a brand new person,that I would become new,

(26:09):
transformed, and I wanted thatmore than anything else in the
world.
I needed a new life.
And so I went forward andaccepted Christ and my

(26:30):
girlfriend the presentgirlfriend her jaw dropped and
and and, uh, people who knew me,uh, they were all shocked and
the police officers that werethere were saying he'll never
make it, uh, but these littleold ladies would come up to me
and saying he'll never make it.
But these little old ladieswould come up to me and say I'm

(26:50):
praying for you, I'm praying foryou and I love those little
ladies.
And on my way home from thatgathering, by myself walking, a
group of guys that went to myhigh school was hanging out with

(27:13):
this guy by the name of RossCulpepper Harrison, and, and,
and he was kind of like theirmentor.
They were all following himlike a Pied Piper, and, and they
, they were coming across thestreet.
I was coming down this hill tothat street and we all kind of
met up serendipitously Of courseit was a plan by God, and, and,
and.
So they invited me to comealong, because they saw me at

(27:34):
the revival and these were guysthat I grew up with in the
neighborhood and they knew.
But they, it didn't matter.
They invited me to come withthem.
So I said sure.
So I began to be discipled bythis guy by the name of Pepper,
and.
So that was just the beginningof my introduction to Jesus and

(27:59):
my search for him.
I became extremely hungry tofind out more and more about him
.
I mean really hungry.
I would go to every church intown if there was a door open.
I was through the door becauseI needed to be around Christians
.
I needed to be around realChristians, and, and so, and if

(28:23):
I wasn't doing that, I knewwhere I was going to be.
So so I became extremely hungry, hungry for him.
I went to pentecostal churches,roman catholic churches, every
possible denomination you canpossibly think of and I I tried
to hang out with what who Ithought was the real, uh,
christians in that place, and soI went to camps and revivals

(28:48):
and and and uh, youth gatheringsand and sunday schools and I
got a vast array of differentperspectives of who Jesus was,
and it was all rich and Ilearned a lot about the

(29:11):
different denominations early on.
So, but that was the beginningof that to talk about, to bounce
off of your concept of jesusearly on, that the church's
downfall actually began in the18th century, uh, at the, the

(29:36):
enlightenment, and, and, andthat was the beginning of of a
secular movement, uh, thatbasically took over the church.
So when you entered into thatsmall church, they had been
influenced so much by thesecular world that they could

(29:58):
not communicate to you who Jesusreally was.
And that's where I tried mybest to keep you away from the
church people at St Paul's,because I was afraid you would
get basically the same messagethat you got in that little
small church and and I didn'twant that for you, cause I knew

(30:20):
that you'd had a real experiencewith him and and and I didn't
want to mess that up.
So I encourage you to check outevery church in the
neighborhood.
Go see for yourself who Jesusis and have different
experiences with the Lord.
And you did that, and not verymany people who are disciples of

(30:44):
mine actually do what I askthem to do.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
So well to your point whenever you were sharing
before about you know you wouldgo to go to churches.
For me I'm just I told youearlier I'm probably a bit
autistic, in the sense I justget obsessive over certain
things.
So I'd find something inscripture and for me the big
thing was I had this powerencounter with the love of God.
So I experienced the love ofGod.

(31:10):
I hear the voice of God, notaudibly, but inside me I hear a
voice saying I love you, you'remy son, you're safe now and I'm
proud of you.
And for me this is reallyimportant.
You know, my biological fathercommits suicide.
My uncle who adopts me, wherewe have a kind of ambiguous,

(31:30):
strange relationship growing up,where he's creating a lot of
stability.
He's very not very affectionateand affirmative, but you know
he's a good, he was a good dadthat you know for what it, for
what it was.
He taught me a lot of thingsbut there was just not a lot of
affirmation or affection.
So we don't feel like thisdynamic all the time of like,
actually like father and son,like this intimacy and for me.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
I grew up with a stepfather, so I understand all
that.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah, yeah.
So.
So for me, you know, I feltalso there were just a lot of
feelings of self-hatred andthings because my parents had
died.
I thought, oh, there'ssomething wrong with me, or I'm
not good enough, or I'd donesomething wrong to cause this
kind of thing happening.
So I have to have thisexperience.
I'm like, well, I'm in therabbit hole now, alice.

(32:15):
So how deep does this thing go?
Like?
What are we able to experience?
For me, that was the big thingis, you know, john 3, 16 says
for God so loved the world thathe gave his only begotten son
that none should perish but haveeternal life whoever believes
in him.
What is eternal life?
Well, according to Jesus, quiteliterally, like you know, if

(32:37):
you read John 15, 16, 17, 18,this is before he goes across in
the garden, he's talking to thedisciples.
He's like I'm speakingliterally to you now.
And they all remarked oh,you're not speaking in parables,
this makes sense.
And he says eternal life injohn 17, 3 is to know god, the
father, and likewise know theson.
So when I understood this, itclicked in my head heaven is a

(32:59):
continuation and byproduct ofknowing god.
The whole point of this shebangis that we have intimacy with
God, like heaven is presented assome kind of goal but heaven's
just the byproduct.
And it's like, if you're, if wefixate purely on getting to
heaven, which was like reallythe fixation in this country
Methodist church to avoid hell,it was all about avoiding hell.
There was no focus on actualrelationships.

(33:21):
So when I got around you I waswas like this guy knows jesus.
So when you told me don't dothis or do this or whatever, I
mean, I'll tell one story thatyou used to drive me crazy.
This is one thing you did thatdrove me absolutely crazy.
I would ask you point blankquestions, because that you know
, I think, really shortly afterI went to your church, I went
into this really conservative,uh dogmaticmatic university as a

(33:45):
private university doingbiblical studies, and I come
back to you hey, man, they'resaying this, this doesn't make
sense.
And I'm like what do you think?
And you would never tell mewhat you thought.
I would ask you point blankwhat do you think?
And you would oftentimespresent like, no matter what we
talk about, you present likefive different perspectives on
it.
I was like, cool, those are fiveperspectives, what's your

(34:06):
perspective?
And it was always like you'reputting the ball back in my core
like, hey, you have the bible,you have the holy spirit, like
I'll be like your bumper railsin the bowling alley, so to
speak.
Uh, but but you know, go figurethis out, and a lot of people
don't do that.
That was something that likeman, like I carry that forward
and it's kind of an unfaircomparison, because I always

(34:26):
compare a lot of people who arein leadership to you when I come
in, because they so have suchan ego trip that they want to
make little copies of themselvesand they feel so insecure
cookie cutter, cookie cutterproduction, yeah yeah, yeah, you
know the pink floyd uh song,another brick in the wall, the
music video to it.
There's the kids and they'refaceless and they're going into
the conveyor belt.

(34:47):
Exactly that's what.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
That's what it felt like, because I'm like when you
come out, when you come out ofthe counterculture like we did,
it is, it is, it is uh, it.
It is uh uh difficult toswallow the church.
For me it was difficult.
I found out that the churchdoes not operate like the church

(35:11):
is supposed to operate andthere's a reason for that.
And we have forgotten theingredients of the encounter
with God, and the first part ofthat ingredient is prayer.
We don't.
When was the last time you wentto church and had a real

(35:33):
exciting, wonderful prayermeeting?
Okay, that that says volumesabout where we are as a church.
If you go to Africa, theirculture there, when they have a
prayer meeting, it is anall-night prayer meeting and
they're excited about it andthey're absolutely pumped up

(35:53):
about it going to it becauseit's fabulous.
In our church, in the churchesin America, we have a prayer
meeting.
A couple people might show up,the senior pastor might not even
show up, okay, and we have ourprayer requests.

(36:15):
We talk about everybody that'ssick and dying and the pastor
prays, or whoever's praying,prays a five-minute prayer and
we're done.
That's a prayer meeting.
We have lost the sense ofspirituality when I say the 18th
century messed stuff up for thechurch when we swallowed that
pill.

(36:35):
I'm not against science, I'mnot against history, I'm not
against knowledge.
What I'm against is the lack offaith.
What I'm against is is what's?
What's happened to the churchis, uh, we do not believe in
prayer.
We do not hold prayer as assomething that that actually

(36:59):
does anything, when the truth ofthe matter is, when you look in
the scriptures, anything thathappens always involves prayer.
The uh.
When paul and silas are inprison, for example, they've

(37:21):
been beaten up because of theirfaith.
They They've been tossed inprison.
Now what do they do?
They start praying and singingand praising God in the midst of
their suffering.
What's happening on the outside?
The church itself is prayingfor them.

(37:41):
So it's not just about youindividually praying, it's about
corporate prayer.
When you came to me, it was notabout me placing something on
you, as if I was placing anotherbrick on top of the camel.
That's carrying too much of aload.

(38:03):
Anyway, you needed to find foryourself who you were in Christ.
I did not want to get in theway of that, for me to impose on
you anything to make you likeme or to make you like an idol
that I might have.

(38:23):
I wanted you to discover foryourself who you were in Christ,
and the only way for you to dothat was not to completely hang
out with me all the time was tohang out with other Christians
as well, and, and alivechristians, not not people who

(38:46):
are pretending to be christian,but alive, real christians.
And and that was my prayer foryou was that you would run into
people who were genuine,genuinely following jesus, um,
and and.
So what's happened to the churchin our culture is we become

(39:07):
secularized, we become swallowedup by the monster, and and
we're becoming more uh likesociety than than we are jesus,
and we've cut off the powertrain of how god works.
It starts, starts with prayer,lord Jesus.
Well, heavenly Father, I'msorry for my sins.

(39:28):
Please forgive me of my sinsand Jesus, please come into my
heart.
Okay, that's the beginning, sothat's how it begins and that
should be how it continues.
God's formula is praying to theFather.
The Holy Spirit shows up andbrings Jesus inside of us, so

(39:57):
Jesus can possess us.
They leave that part out.
We need to be possessed byjesus, absolutely possessed by
him.
Prayer should be like breathing.
Prayer is, is, is the breathingof the church and, unless we

(40:21):
use the formula.
This is god's formula.
This is not jim kelly's formula.
This is god's formula.
This is not Jim Kelly's formula.
This is God's formula.
You look at anything thathappens in the Bible.
When people start praying andasking for forgiveness and
repenting, that's when somethinghappens.
It doesn't happen otherwise.
That's the starter, that's theignition switch that starts the

(40:47):
rest of the engine and untilit's saturated with prayer it's
not going to happen.
Anything that's happened in mylife that's been successful in
my walk with christ has alwaysbeen ignited by prayer.
It always has to do with faith.
When jesus saw their faith, hesaid to the paralytic my child,
your sins are forgiven.

(41:07):
It always starts with faith.
Putting your faith in him,that's where it starts.
And then, when jesus comes inand possesses you, that's when
the power shows up.
And the power is not about you,it's about him.
He accomplishes what he setsout to do.

(41:30):
Okay.
When he possesses you, you aredoing his will, but that doesn't
mean that you're the center ofthe universe.
That means get out of the way.
I'm going to do something, okay.
And it's humbling because if itturns out to be all about you

(41:53):
and you become the centerpieceof what's going on, it's not the
church any longer.
It's not the body of Christ.
He wants to operate out of thebody of Christ.
So corporate prayer of christ.
He wants to operate out of thebody of christ.
So corporate prayer, prayingwith other christians.
Is the breathing church, is thealive church.
If prayer is not involved, itis not a lot an alive church.

(42:15):
The denomination I, I'm in, uhis splitting, uh and and and.
What's what's going on?
The, the liberals and theconservatives aren't getting
along with each other, but theyhaven't for years.
But the brick that broke thecamel's back in this situation

(42:36):
was the homosexual issue.
I've been waiting around forbefore even I was a united
methodist for god to dosomething in the methodist
church.
And and god called me to be amethodist.

(42:56):
That's a long story, I'm notgoing to go into it.
But god called me to be aunited methodist pastor.
I did not choose the UnitedMethodist Church.
God chose the United MethodistChurch for me.
You couldn't have paid me tojoin the United Methodist Church
, okay.
God called me to the UnitedMethodist Church.

(43:20):
I was disappointed that Godcalled me to the United
Methodist Church, okay, but Ifollowed what God told me to do.
And if I hadn't, michael, wherewould you be?

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, and countless other people yes.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yes, and so what I'm saying to you is is that God has
a purpose for you.
Even if it doesn't look likeyou're in the right spot, even
if things are not set up foryour success or your fame or the
ideals that you have about howGod works.

(43:57):
He's constantly humbling usbecause we need humbled, and if
that's the beginning, theprocess of a Christian is dying.
That's where it begins.

(44:18):
It's a downward motion.
If anyone wishes to come afterme, let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me.
That is dying, and we gothrough a process of dying to
self, getting out of the way,and then the rising part is the
resurrection part when we havedied.
We can't resurrect until wehave died, until we can't become

(44:43):
that new creature, until ourold creature gets out of the way
.
And when we start to rise iswhen we've gotten out of the way
, and the only way we continueto rise is continue to use the
formula that God has given us toallow Jesus to possess us and

(45:03):
take over our life, and thenministry really begins to happen
.
There's a lot of people are outthere trying to do ministry on
their own steam, and a lot ofthem are doing really good
things.
They're doing good things, but,but they're leaving out the
power of God in the midst ofthat.

(45:23):
What an amazing gift.
They're leaving out the powerof God in the midst of that.
What an amazing gift they'remissing.
The same way with the way theHoly Spirit wants to embody the
body of Christ.
We have gifts.
We're supposed to pray forthose gifts, we're supposed to

(45:43):
ask for those gifts and,according to Paul, we're
supposed to ask for those gifts.
And, according to paul, we'resupposed to ask for the higher
gifts first.
But none of those gifts, yousee, there are as a gift of
prayer, because prayer isbreathing.
Prayer is is what allows us toask for those specific gifts.

(46:06):
And when god gives you the giftand you realize you've received
that gift from god, it's amiracle.
You finally know who you are inchrist and and uh so, and who,
where you belong in the body ofChrist and and you can.
You can operate out of yourgiftedness rather than allowing

(46:30):
the pastor to pray for you,allowing the church the remnant
of that's in that church, to beJesus for you, on your behalf.
And you give money, so they'lldo that.
That is not Christianity.
And you give money, so they'lldo that.
That is not Christianity.
Christianity is a group ofChristians and preaching is a
part of it.
Don't get me wrong.

(46:50):
Preaching is a wonderful thing,but preaching is only part of
what's going on.
The body of Christ has beencalled to do a lot of things,
but first off, we're to pray andfast.
The first thing when the HolySpirit showed up in Jesus' life
was that we pray and fast.

(47:14):
We have lost that part of ourwalk, but it's the centerpiece
of our walk.
And here in america, we don'tpray enough individually.

(47:35):
We do pray for breakfast, orbefore we eat, sure, or when our
kids are in trouble, or if oursoccer team is is behind um, but
but it's not genuine.
I'm dying.
Prayers it's.

(47:56):
It's not getting out of the way.
Prayers it's not getting thechurch out of the way so he can
do his work.
Prayers.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Yeah, and that's what I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
I'm sorry I went off on a rant.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
That's perfect.
Yeah, it was a good flow, flowof thoughts and there's a lot of
stuff to unpack with what youjust said.
I think you know kind ofdissecting when we talk about,
about prayer cause, like youjust hit, hit the nail on the
head.
It's not a laundry list ofthank yous, it's not a laundry
list of you know, I want, etc.
And I always tease people about, you know, blessing the food.

(48:39):
Sometimes I'm like it's good tothank God for the food, but
keep in mind when, when, whenthey're praying, they either
prayed give us this day ourdaily bread, meaning there was a
lack, they needed food, orJesus needed to multiply the
food, so he blessed it.
So do we have enough or why arewe blessed?
So I just like kind of teasepeople about that, but it's good
to think.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
And you're right.
And the Lord's Prayer itself isa corporate prayer.
The disciples asked Jesus,teach us to pray.
Didn't say teach me to pray,because they were already knew
how to pray individually.
They were asking how to praycorporately, and and yeah, the

(49:19):
lord's prayer is not about thephysical bread.
Okay, and and and.
To have bread, you need theingredients for bread.
Same way with the with yourspiritual life, you need the
ingredients for a spiritual life.
That's what happened in theenlightenment was that we
separated spirit from thephysical realm, and, and so,

(49:44):
spit, the spiritual world becameless and less important, and
and so what we need to recaptureis that the spiritual realm and
the physical realm, especiallysince jesus came, has changed
everything.
The spiritual realm and thephysical realm are together, and

(50:27):
so part of our dying has to dowith us getting in the position
to catch the rebound, to be in aposition to allow God in to
empower us, and sometimes we'renot ready for that empowerment,
and prayer and fasting is a wayto get in that position.
Before Jesus, before the HolySpirit showed up, they got

(50:48):
together and they prayed.
After prayer and fasting inthat early church, the Holy
Spirit showed up, and theworld's never been the same
since.
And that group of disciples whowere afraid became bold.
The Spirit and Jesus became one.

(51:09):
They didn't lose their identityas separate parts of the
Trinity, they became one.
And so when we accept Christinto our hearts, we receive
Christ through the Holy Spirit.
And when he possesses us andthen begins to transform us, the

(51:37):
Holy Spirit does a wonderfulthing.
And when we get out of the way,the Holy Spirit does the Holy
Spirit's work.
And the things that we've beenpraying for selfishly, all of a
sudden don't matter.
What matters is the will of God.

(51:58):
What matters is doing His will.
It's not about what I want.
All of a sudden it becomes whatdoes he want?
It's not just what would Jesusdo logically, it's about what

(52:18):
Jesus is sending you to dospecifically.
And so every moment of the daybecomes you allowing Jesus to
encounter people in their dailylife.
Prayer all of a sudden is notan awkward thing, even when

(52:41):
you're praying for somebody whodoesn't know Jesus thing.
Even when you're praying forsomebody who doesn't know Jesus,
your family won't be able totake you anywhere, because
you're sharing the love of Jesuswith everybody.
You have the real disease andit's catching.
That's what the church needs.

(53:02):
That's what the church needs.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah, there was a book I read where he talks about
the immunization of the church.
Uh, essentially, like there'senough of the love of god that's
kind of injected into thebureaucracy and the structure
and the theater and what we'redoing to basically you know the
ways an immunization would workis you have enough of this.
A weakened version of gets inyou but your body kind of stamps

(53:27):
it out so that when you getexposed to the real disease, you
don't.
You don't become infected.
And this is something that youyou've mentioned many times is
like being exposed to the realdisease, because you essentially
get marked when God baptizesyou in his love.
When he baptizes you, godbaptizes you in his love.
When he baptizes you, you knowwhen you, when you have an
encounter like someone likeJacob, you get up off the ground

(53:49):
, you're walking different forthe rest of your life and, in
fact, yeah.
And you have a new name.
You know you, your identity isshifted in a sense, and so I can
.
I can identify and respect abit.
When people became Christiansearlier in the church, they just
took on a new name.
I'm like that makes that makesa lot of sense.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
And Jesus gives you that stone with a new name on it
in the book of Revelation.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah.
And I think one thing I wantedto touch on, you know we were
talking about prayer, becausethere's a lot of different
expressions of prayer.
You know, in my time in Europe Igot more connected with the
Catholic and Orthodox side ofthe church, and so they explore

(54:37):
a lot of themes and parts of theChristian life that you just
simply lose out on, and evenwhat we know as evangelical
christianity in america, and andand and it's it's quite sad.
You know my, my perspective Idon't want to go too deep in a
rat hole but my perspectiveabout what they consider the
eucharist to be, how that'simplemented, what that means, uh

(54:59):
, that has changed a lot.
But then also, uh, listening toorthodox, uh, priests talk
about, uh, contemplativemeditation and silence, and then
as well, you know, literally,people, you know in america we
want to do overviews of stuff,we want to digest huge pieces of
information and kind of giveyou go a mile wide and an inch

(55:20):
deep.
These guys want to go an inchwide and a mile deep, and so
they will contemplate one psalmor one proverb for sometimes
decades.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Um, and and and I love to read the read the works
of the ascetics.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
It's wonderful stuff yeah, they're just, it's like
squeezing water out of a stoneand these guys will do it
through through trial and timethey'll do it, um, but but that
was one thing that that was kindof jarring to me because, you
know, being being in streams ofcharismatic christianity again,
sometimes it becomes a circus,sometimes it's a lot of theater.

(55:54):
I mean, you made the comment tome before you you, you don't
think that you have theemotional energy and capacity to
be in that environment all thetime, because it's a bit
draining, and so being aroundthese people was good for me.
And when we're talking aboutprayer, you know, when we're
reading in Habakkuk, he gives usa kind of blueprint on how

(56:16):
contemplative prayer could be.
He's saying in the secondchapter I'll wait, I'll stand in
my guard post, I'll watch tosee what he says to me, and when
the vision comes I'll write itdown and even though the vision
might tarry, I'll stand firmthere.
And so basically there's thiskind of like blueprint of you
know, if God is speaking to us,like we hear people having

(56:38):
different kind of encounters.
Some people say they audiblyhear the voice of God, not every
day, on a daily basis, butthey'll have a kind of like
mountaintop experience,transfiguration kind of
experience.
And then some people say it'sstill a small voice inside of
you but really like what we getdown to brass tacks, god could
be speaking through coincidences.
He could be speaking throughyou know.

(56:59):
The Holy Spirit is ministeringsomething in scripture that
you're reading.
Jim Kelly might say somethingto me and you know, grace just
falls on those words.
They pierce my heart.
It feels like I got suckerpunched.
All those are true, but interms of you know, what we see
in this blueprint of Habakkuk isthrough the eye of your mind.
He says I'll wait and watch tosee what he says to me.

(57:21):
He didn't say I'll wait andlisten to hear.
He said I'll wait and watch tosee.
So he's implying that there'ssomething that's going to come.
Your consciousness is thescreen of the theater that God
wants to release something on,and when that vision comes, you
have to receive it by faith.
You write it down.
You write down plainly, as itis not adding your own flavor,

(57:42):
sauce or scent to it, as it isnot adding your own flavor,
sauce or or scent to it.
Um, and then, and then thatpassage also says I'll hang it
so people can plainly see itwhen they're running by.
And so there's this kind ofaccountability element when you
talked about the body of christ,because we do live in a time
where, uh, post-modernism islike huge, where there's no
objective truth and what Jimfeels is true, what I feel is

(58:04):
true, so having some kind ofaccountability, there's a
tension of what you said, ofit's not all about me.
In the body of Christ, if I'man eyeball, I could be the most
beautiful eyeball, I can have20-20 vision.
If someone rips my eyeball outof my head, it doesn't matter
how good that eyeball functions.

(58:25):
If it's not plugged into mybody, it doesn't help my body
and that eyeball is dead.
It's not.
The lifeblood of that eyeballis gone.
So there's that's again.
Another point of this is like inAmerica we, we hyper focus on
individualism and we we havehero worship where people you
know the rags rich and we set wehave hero worship where people

(58:47):
you know the rags rich andthat's not bad or wrong
necessarily, but it always hasto be held in tension with the
fact that life is not about you.
Like rich mullins, rich mullinsuh, you know the guy who wrote
awesome god.
You know people go around tohim when he was a kid and say,
cheer up, man, god loves you.
And he's like big deal, godloves everybody.
And it's like this, this thingof like you know the love of God
and whatever measure it, youknow it's, it's dispensed to it.

(59:10):
I mean it's, it's a powerfulthing.
When Jesus says you know thelove that the father had for me,
it's going to be in you.
You're gonna feel in your heart.
It's like that's.
You know, we could spendprobably hours talking about
that, but that's as true for foryou as it is for me, it's for
everybody.
So kind of coming down off ofour ego trip and then a lot of
secularism that says, jim, yougot to do what makes you happy.

(59:31):
It's like, well, that's prettyshallow, that's pretty shallow,
and I've done that, I've alreadydone that, I try to do that.
I did things that I perceivedthat was going to make me happy,
with drugs, with women, withmoney, and it left me feeling
pretty depressed, suicidal, notin a good place.
So you know, there's thistension of the will of God for

(59:53):
my life.
And then, when you were talkingabout where we're tethered to
the body of Christ in somecapacity, and there's a saying,
if you want to go far, saying ifyou want to go far, or if you
want to go fast, run by yourself, if you want to go far, run
together.
And if we want any kind ofbecause I can to your point,

(01:00:14):
like I could go be atelevangelist and like, build
this big thing and whatever, andit's just like has nothing,
there's nothing to donecessarily with the call of god
or whatever, again we'refeeding into the theater, make a
bunch of money, get superfamous, I die.
Then it all ends, it goes away,there's no, there's no
longevity to it.
And paul writes and I think thatpeople should really embrace

(01:00:36):
this, because this is somethingthat I heard like maybe over a
decade ago.
But paul writes about the.
The foundation of the gospelcannot be changed.
Like, you can't make a newgospel.
The gospel is there and manypeople will come and build upon
that foundation and some willuse bricks, some will use stone,
some will use hay, some willuse wood, some will use precious
jewels and gold.
Whatever you're building with,the fire of god is going to come

(01:01:00):
, it's going to burn on it andit's going to test it and
basically saying um, and if itremains, you'll be, you'll get a
reward.
If it doesn't like it'll turnto ash, be swept away.
So basically, god, if you knowyou could, I could.
I could build a ministry, leadmillions of people to jesus and
do like crazy things.
But if it wasn't in alignmentwith god like at the end of my

(01:01:22):
life, fire, god's gonna comeburn it.
He's like great michael, Inever asked you to do that.
It wasn't in alignment with God, like at the end of my life,
fire, god's going to come burnit.
He's like great Michael, Inever asked you to do that.
When you talk about theMethodist church because we
could be doing a lot of goodthings, there's like the Mary
and Martha argument.
And then what he's saying isSamuel, obedience is better than
sacrifice, because I couldmartyr myself, give all my money

(01:01:42):
, do all these things.
But is it what god?
God called me to?
And and ultimately god willalways call us to.
Stuff where we're, where we'retethered to the body of christ,
because when you're talkingabout you know we've accepted
jesus like god comes inside ofus.
Well, the trinity is all alsosucked us inside of itself.
There's like this co-unionaspect of what's happened.

(01:02:04):
But you're also in the trinity.
Like me, you and jesus aresiamese triplets, more or less
like we're.
We're bound together, um, andso I think in america you know,
coming back that that's just oneobservation that I've uh made.
You know, being abroad is likethis, this hyper fixation on you

(01:02:25):
got to do what makes you happy,to the point where people to
end your marriage it like youknow, I do, it makes you I'm
just like man, like likemarriage is is hard.
You know, being a parent ishard.
There's a lot of stuff that'shard, but if you want to do
something meaningful, it's gonnabe hard, I don't you.
You talk to anybody who'stethered to reality.

(01:02:45):
They'll tell you that anythingyou want to do that's meaningful
is hard, there's a cost to itand you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
And so, in the spiritual world, endurance,
enduring, uh, in, in in yourspiritual walk with christ, uh
is, is what's held in highesteem as far as God's concerned
.
It is.
It is not, like you say, beingall that in a bag of chips in
front of the world.
It's, it's about enduring inthe faith.

(01:03:14):
He that overcomes, will stand,and and so, um, it's.
You know, we, we value all thewrong things, our value system
is completely upside down fromgod's value system, and and so,
um, that dying part is soimportant because unless you do

(01:03:36):
that, you can't have theresurrection part.
It doesn't happen.
You, you might, you might drawa lot of attention to yourself,
but, uh, you know, especiallyreally gifted people I don't
know they're, they're, they'vegot this they're so gifted in
what, naturally, that they can'tget themselves out of the way.

(01:03:58):
It is it, it is so temptingjust to kind of allow that gift
to take over a worship service,or to allow that gift to to take
over an organization, and andit, uh, it's in America, when
you cut that loose, when, whenyou allow that to, to, not to

(01:04:20):
have a leash on it, it gets ugly, it gets really ugly and ugly
and and uh, anyway, I don't, uh,I don't have the answers for
everything.
All I can do it's.
It's like when you, when you,try to interpret the scriptures,
uh, you've got a lot of peoplewho have different ideas about
what this verse says, or whatthat verse says, and and and, uh

(01:04:44):
.
So the search for thehistorical jesus, and and and,
making things really complicated.
But what is the bible reallytrying to teach us?
What is it that the earlychurch was really trying to tell
us about Jesus?

(01:05:05):
And it doesn't matter who wrotethe book, it doesn't matter if
those were the actual words thatJesus spoke.
The early church is trying totell us something about who
Jesus is, who God is and who Godis and who the church is, and
why is so important.

(01:05:29):
And it's not, you're right,it's not just about going to
heaven, it's about becoming anew creation now, and sometimes
accepting God's will for yourlife is hard, it is extremely
difficult.
And you know, like the Lordtold me that I needed to retire.

(01:05:55):
What's that about?
Why do I need to retire?
I'm not of age to retire yet.
You need to retire to take careof your mother.
Oh, but Lord, I don't want todo that.
My mom and I have a strainedrelationship.
I don't want to do that.
If I invite her into my house,into my home, what's that going

(01:06:17):
to do to my marriage?
What's that going to do for meas a pastor?
How is that going to work out,you know so.
So when god tells you to do andI followed I again.
I didn't want to retire.
I felt that I still had plentyof steam left.
But god in his wisdom, this iswhat you need.

(01:06:41):
And right, almost almostexactly at right.
After I retired, covid hit, youknow, and and uh, god and I went
into the closet.
Covid for me was a time mycloset time.
It was time for me was a timemy closet time.
It was time for me and God tocome to terms and get face to

(01:07:04):
face with each other.
And and it's been a, it's beena real spiritual journey for me
these last four years, not justbecause I'm taking care of mom,
but because God has cornered me.

(01:07:25):
I couldn't move, all me, Icouldn't move.
I had to unload all my bricksso that I could see what was
missing and be free in him again.
And be free in him again,because I had become so consumed

(01:07:49):
with all the things that drovethe church, that I left out the
most important part, which mademy job heavy.
And if Jesus' power wasn'tdoing what he wants to do, and
then all the burden comes on meand it's too heavy, it's just

(01:08:15):
too heavy, I can't carry it mylife would be miserable,
absolutely was miserable.
Um, there was so much that Iwanted to do, but again, it's

(01:08:41):
not about me.
So now, now mom has passed, I'mhere.
I'm here trying to figure outwhat's next.
You know what?
What is god telling me to donext?
I'm still.
I'm waiting.
Waiting is so hard, it, uh.

(01:09:02):
But it's beautiful at the sametime, because in that waiting,
you're getting close and closerand closer to him, and he's
getting you ready for whateverit is that comes next yeah, I
think for me, you know, Istepped away.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
I was, I was pastoring a church in in germany
and there's like somecircumstances where I needed a
lot of things moving at once butI was basically I was becoming
a father and it wasn'tfinancially sustainable to step
away.
That was super painful for meand like what you're describing
is is like, you know, not toimpose on you, but but I
identify what you're sayingbecause for me I kind of had
this understanding like wow, myidentity was really wrapped up

(01:09:47):
in church stuff and I was pushedlike you would you kind of
describe somebody kind of layingback on your gifting?
There's definitely times whereyou know I could make space and
like let god do what he wants todo with people and it's like so
, whatever the finite limit ofmy gifting is, I just make space
and like let God do what hewants to do with people and it's
like so, whatever the finitelimit of my gifting is, I just
make space in the Holy spirit.

(01:10:07):
It's kind of limitless on whatGod's going to do and he'll do
more in like a couple of secondsor minutes of ministering
somebody than what I'm going todo in years of like making them
a weird person, basically, butbut but I, yeah, I went that was
2000 into 2008, so beginning of2019 I transitioned out and

(01:10:28):
when you talk about, like,there's a lot of circumstance
around that, basically I waskind of ostracized from this
community.
I've been plugged in for fiveyears and I started working in a
cheese factory and and thereyou're flipping cheese for eight
hours a day, you're undergroundunder fluorescent lights, in a
climate controlled room whereyou can't if me and you are
standing two like three feetaway from each other.
We can barely see each otherbecause it's so foggy and

(01:10:50):
there's dead silence, you know.
And I felt like a realloneliness, uh, but I never felt
alone and there were, like youknow, times where, like jesus
was, I'm here with you, like I'mright with you, but I'm not
going to be able to take awaythis feeling of loneliness and I
realized that I had to repentbecause I'd had.

(01:11:12):
I was so wrapped up in thisidea.
Well, I need to be this, I needto be a missionary and I need
to be doing ministry, I need tobe doing these things, and and
my relationship with God, or thebasis of my relationship with
God, was kind of transactionaryin the sense of like hey, let's
hang out for a hot second.
I'm going to do some like prepand and for a sermon or
something, or, or, or I'm goingto get a.

(01:11:33):
I'm going to pray for thisperson.
So I need you to give me someinsight, like while I'm praying
and it just became thistransactionary thing and God so
it was like kind of rebuking meon that and my wife and me joke
about it.
But whoever I was when I wentinto that under the ground in
that factory, that guy died.
You keep talking about thisdying and it's not like a one
and done thing.
I think there's different likeseasons and crises of our life,

(01:11:54):
that kind of come up.
And so I was like it was andit's not you know.
It wasn't a you know executionstyle double tap to the back of
the head.
It was a painful, drawn outdeath where they tied me to a
horse and dragged me through thestreets of Rome, kind of thing
of like you know it was not.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
I think that's what they call.
I think that's what they calllamenting.
I think that's.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
Well, I was there, man and and and the again.
This is something I only hadlanguage to it later.
But in the Orthodox or theCatholic stream of faith, they
they talk about something calledthe dark night of the soul.
And the dark night of the soulpsychoanalyst, you know, carl

(01:12:43):
young was also a christian.
He would just describe itbasically like something in your
life that you were like kind ofthought was foundational, like
when hebrews talks about, likegod, shaking the shakable things
and the un and unshakablethings, and the unshakable
things will stay but theshakable things will be, you
know, gone.
It's like I was putting too muchweight on my foot on something
that was shakable.
And so when that, when that,when that happens, you're

(01:13:03):
grabbing at the fabric ofreality, trying to orientate
yourself.
But you have to.
You know you have to fall, tobe to hit the ground, to be
reorientated with where theground is.
And that was very painful forme, to my ego, but also just on,
what does this mean about thefuture?
What, what, what about all thistime and energy I've invested
in?
Now, like, where does that go?

(01:13:25):
And so, this dark night of thesoul, I got really embedded in
the Exodus story, because that'sthe Exodus story is an
adaptation phase of, you know,for Moses, but also the people
of Israel, where it's like I'mgoing to remove you out of you
know, a kind of enslavement thatpeople view it as the

(01:13:46):
enslavement of Egypt.
But they were also slaves tothemselves.
Because whenever they got outof slavery they're like, oh,
immediately in the desert, likewe should go back and be part of
that.
And that's very much how I feltI was, like this was toxic,
this is wrong.
This is not a good situation.
But part of me wants to go backand be there because of the
familiarity with it.
But that was because of my, howI enslaved myself to my own

(01:14:11):
desires and things that I wantedto see happen, my ego being
stroked and those kind of things.
And and then to your point, youin the desert.
It's all dependency.
It's like the pillar of fireand the cloud during the day,
the food, the clothes.
You know we're, you know the,the, the Moses entering into the

(01:14:33):
cloud, the commandments coming.
It's all a kind ofrestructuring and organization
of like how you should orientateyour life and it's utter
dependence on the father of likehow you should orientate your
life and it's utter dependenceon the father and, um, you know,
in spite of ourselves, he'sstill showing up, like when the
snakes bite them and they'relike you know, I don't know.
So it gets to a point where youbecome so orientated in the

(01:14:55):
adaptation phase I don't want togo anywhere that the presence
of god isn't leading me, and soI'm I would.
I would be more willing towander around the desert than go
into the promised land withoutthe presence of God isn't
leading me, and so I would bemore willing to wander around
the desert than go into thepromised land without the
presence.
And that was kind of circlingback to what we were talking
about before, about heaven.
You know, francis Chan wrote inthat book Crazy Love.
He talked about if you couldhave heaven, you know, all your

(01:15:20):
favorite people, all yourfavorite food, all your favorite
leisure, leisurely activities,all the natural beauties of the
world, no pain, no war, nostress, no disease, no death,
and you can have that placeforever.
Your consciousness would existthere, but you can have it
without Jesus when you want it,and it's like that that's.
The question is, like you know,we can enter into things that

(01:15:41):
we, when we were talking about,do what makes you happy, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
Okay you, perfect family,perfect house, perfect job.
You're going to want to at somepoint.
It's not going to be enough.
It's not going to be enoughbecause you're an eternal being
and all that stuff, as glamorousas it is, rots at the end of
the day, and your body isrotting.

(01:16:04):
Right now, this meat sack isrotting and when we get to a
point we have to transition, wehave to transcend.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
And then so this conversation becomes full circle
, and this guy that was in yourchurch all he wanted to do was
see jesus now begins to maybemake a little more sense, maybe
make a little more sense.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
He wasn't as weird as you thought.
Well, weird is not necessarilyan insult.
If the paradigm of normal is abunk, then it's good to be weird
.
You know, your buddy, it's goodwhere I think scripture says
we're supposed to be a peculiarpeople.
So, yeah, um, but yeah, sorryto sorry to go off a rabbit

(01:16:52):
trail, but I think you know foryou, you know, and that I wanted
to circle back to one thing yousay, because obviously like it
feels like from from myperspective.
You know hearing, you know yourmom at one point gave you up for
foster care and was like goingoff living her life, and then
we're coming towards the end ofher life and you take her on in

(01:17:18):
your house, you're looking after, taking her to doctor's
appointments, like stewardingthat relationship.
You know, in spite of history,it sounds a lot like God
completely redeemed some thingsthere and obviously we don't
have to go into depth about itbecause like, but there's like
all these little idiosyncrasiesand things that happen.
I know how these things kind ofunfold on an interpersonal

(01:17:39):
level, but do you feel like thatwas healing for you?
Do you feel like there was somereconciliation there?
Do you feel like there was kindof a breakthrough there, or I
know everything's still kind offresh, but like what was your
impression from that?

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
mom and I've always had a, a uh.
She always had my back, eveneven when I wasn't living with
her, and, and, uh, she's a.
She was a rather formidableindividual, um, so when you say
taking control of the situation,it really wasn't me so much

(01:18:20):
taking control as, as I wasbasically still along for the
ride uh, she, uh, uh.
She still handled, she stillhad her mind throughout all of
this.
She handled her own business,so I didn't have to, like, take
over there.
It was the physical things shecouldn't do any longer uh,

(01:18:42):
bathing herself, uh, uh,cleaning up after herself, uh,
so all that was was was humblingand I had to be, I had to be,
uh, in prayer about how to, howto handle the frustration of all
that for me.
So it was a spiritual journeyfor me in the sense of, uh, I

(01:19:08):
don't know, uh, breaking me down, um, and so, um, how that
fleshes itself out in terms ofour relationship with each other
.
I think think she saw she neverreally had confidence in me for
a long time, and rightly so,because I was well, I was a mess

(01:19:31):
and and, and.
So it took her a long time toget past the idea that that,
that that God had actuallychanged me so and she never
really trusted anybody anyway,not to the point where she
trusted him with her life.
And eventually she did trust mewith her life.

(01:19:53):
She did trust what I had to sayand trusted even though I had
become a pastor and didsomething she didn't want me to
do, which was become a pastor,and did something she didn't
want me to do, which was becomea pastor.
And in the beginning she didnot understand that she had a
radical mastectomy which changedher life.
She finally had an encounterwith God right before she had

(01:20:17):
surgery and I was with her andshe looked at me after she had
surgery and and I was with herand and she, she looked at me
after she had this prayer withme and she said, before she went
to surgery, I finallyunderstand.
It's like god did somethingthere.
You know, up until then she wastotally against me going into

(01:20:39):
the ministry and and uh, so upuntil then, uh, and then here
later on in life, at the end ofher life, it was, uh, we kind of
, we kind of accepted each otherand became a part of each other

(01:21:02):
in this journey toward the endof her life and me trying to do
everything possible to make iteasier, to make it fulfilling,
to share with her a deeper walkwith jesus.
A deeper walk with jesus, uh,and so so, at the, at the, you

(01:21:28):
know, basically at the end, yes,there was a redeeming, there
was a redeeming, uh, but likeyou say it was, it was like it
was like being dragged behind ahorse, uh, to get to that place
of her dying and my dying withher.
So we went through this journeytogether, and God is the one

(01:21:53):
who is to be glorified in that,because otherwise that would
have never, ever, ever happened,never, ever, ever happen,
because I would have had a, avindictive hatred for my mother.

(01:22:14):
Otherwise, uh, what youremember?
You remember that the, thedying moments, so to speak, in
the kairos program, that that wewere involved, the prison
together, and, and.
So that moment when they wroteall their people they needed to
forgive, on the list, uh, andand and.
Always for me, it's always me Ineed to forgive, first and
foremost, and, but right underthat was my mom, and then a list

(01:22:38):
of other people.
But so I finally got there, okay, and so at the end of her life,
I'm free, not because I'm ridof her, so to speak.

(01:22:58):
It's not that I'm free becauseof the redemption that happened.
I'm free because, well, I hadmy mother's seal of approval,
which I didn't have for thelongest time, and I don't think

(01:23:21):
a lot of people that have thatkind of relationship with their
parents that is adversarial,have that opportunity to have
that redemption happen in theirlife, and that's I hold on to
that.
That's a gift from God, and Idon't I'm still, I still think

(01:23:50):
she's here sometimes, but, butyou know, and that's the other
thing about you talk about theOrthodox church.
That's one of the things Iappreciate about the orthodox
church.
That I don't appreciate aboutthe protestant church is is is
that somehow we had to toabandon everything that was

(01:24:10):
orthodox, but the truth of thematter is the the christians are
still alive.
They're not dead either yeah andand, and you don't pray for
them for to them, for salvation,but you can ask them to pray
for you and I like.
I like that, that concept of ofbeing able to pray and asking

(01:24:36):
them.
You know, or even thanking themfor their example, that they
were faithful to the end andthat you know God works through
them and is still workingthrough them because of their
writings, and you can still prayto them and ask them to pray

(01:25:00):
for you.
I think it's important for usto have that sense that the
spiritual world is real andyou're not making an idol out of
them.
You're asking for theirassistance and so that's part of
our corporate prayer.

(01:25:20):
They're part of our corporateprayer.
They're part of our corporate,they're part and parcel of the
kingdom of God and they're stillthere, and we, the Protestant
church, basically ignore thefact that they're still there.
That's just sad, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
Anyway, confined by time, space and matter, so it's
kind of transcendent.
You can, you can go, you know,in this life, up down, left,
right, backwards, forwards, butin and out, uh is the spiritual
element of what you're saying.
And so that um and you look atthe story of when Jesus and the
transfiguration, he was up onthis mountaintop and there was
these people who are alreadygone, who are up there

(01:26:19):
ministering to him and with him,and and one thing I mean this
is something I've practiced fora little while, but when I was
in germany, what I would do is Ihad a wall in my office,
wherever I was working, whatever, but I put faces of people.
So some of them were peoplefrom my personal life, but then
some of them were people who Ijust looked up, so like johnny

(01:26:40):
cash or, or, or, um know, youknow, brennan Manning, or
different ministers, you knowWestern picture of Jesus,
basically there.
But there's these people upthere and and I would in that,
like the secret place that wetalked about going into, like
your prayer closet, there weretimes where there's a book I

(01:27:00):
read a really, really powerfulbook called the secret place,
but basically this guy wentthrough his mind's eye, create
this, like it was like alakeside cabin and there was a
chair in there.
Every time he would go back,jesus was building this place.
It was like jesus would likeadd to it and do all this stuff
and jesus would meet him there.
And then he got super freakedout.
This guy he wasn't praying forthis, wasn't looking for this,
but then I think abraham lincolnor somebody was there, some

(01:27:23):
random person was there andbegan talking to him.
He's like, oh no, this isdemonic, I can't commune with
the dead.
Blah, blah, blah.
And then he, like the holyspirit was like kind of
convicting him about sections inscripture where this does it
happen?
And to your point, like, um,yeah, there, that consciousness
doesn't just stop when we die.
You know we're, we don't, we'renot, we don't have a spirit.

(01:27:43):
You are a spirit and you have abody and that spirit goes on.
That spirit's eternal and itcan pass in and out of
dimensions and we see that inthese, in these texts and
scripture.
So it's something that Itentatively like practice.
Sometimes, when you talk aboutlike prayer and fasting, I have
like big problems like, okay,like holy spirit, spirit, like
you can minister what you wantto minister.
And then I have like a kind ofin my mind's eye, this like King

(01:28:05):
Arthur's round table, and thenI would have people sitting at
that table, whoever I thoughthad like competency and who had
dealt with that or struggledwith that, and like what do you
think?
And I would kind of weigh in.
I wasn't taking the specificguidance of one person, but I
would just write out what peoplesaid, like sometimes a worst
case scenario, you know, whenyou do something like that, it's
a, you just have a good laugh,you're like that was kind of

(01:28:26):
silly, you know, whatever.
But I would like invite god,like and and those you know,
saints and people, as in thatkind of platform.
But one thing I wanted to likekind of touch on that you just
mentioned, like not to circleback, is like you know, you had
this, um, when you mentioned inthe in the ministry, like high
risk ministry, and you have thislist of people you need to

(01:28:48):
forgive and you're at the top ofthe list, um, and then you, you
know your mom was under likewhat would you say to people?
Because I know people who havelike really estranged, uh,
relationships with their parentsand and and, to the point where
you know they're trying.
The Bible talks about honoringyour parents.
They're trying to love theirparents well, but the

(01:29:08):
relationship is quite toxic.
Communication is just anon-starter.
There's no boundaries that canbe set, like it just basically
it's like if we're going to havea relationship, it's just me
accepting you're going to treatme however you want to treat me,
and it's always going to behurtful and damaging, um, in
that sense.
But like how?
I mean what you know as apastor, what would your kind of

(01:29:29):
you know?
Obviously this is totallysubjective to the situation,
individual.
But what would be your kind ofwords to that person of they're
trying to keep the door open, um, and not set themselves up to
be just you know hurt and andwhatever, but like also honoring
their parents and stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
like what would you say to someone dealing with
something like like that well,honoring, honoring your parents
has an awful lot to do withhonoring god, and and so the
first, the first place that youneed to make sure is that you
and God are that God, that Jesushas possessed you and that you

(01:30:06):
are following his will, and,regardless of how that fleshes
itself out in any of therelationships that you have,
that's the most importantrelationship you're ever going
to have.
And and uh, you know, if, ifyou know, jesus said it kind of
succinctly, you know when he,when they asked him about, uh,

(01:30:30):
who his mother was, and and uh,jesus said those who do the will
of my father are my mother andbrother and sister.
So so, uh, that relationship if, if you're doing that and that

(01:30:50):
relationship is is still tenuousor difficult, or maybe even
what you consider to beimpossible, uh, sometimes you do
need to separate yourself, uh,for peace of mind and heart, but
the door can still be open andprayer, like I said, is the

(01:31:14):
lifeblood of who you are, andyou can continue to pray for
that and and talk to God aboutthat and lament Lamenting is a
part of prayer.
If you read the Psalms, a lotof the Psalms are lamenting
Psalms, but they're prayers toGod, it's okay to complain about

(01:31:37):
your situation and lament.
Lament over the fact that youand your parents don't get along
.
Lament over the fact that youand your parents don't get along
.
Lament over the fact that theydon't see things the way you see
them.
Uh, lament over all of that,you know.
Share it with God.
And and and and be.
You know, be lamenting.
Don't.
Don't have a flowery, uhpicture you want to paint before

(01:31:57):
God.
God already knows you're pissedoff.
So.
So you need, you need to behonest with God, and I've had
screaming uh times with God whenI was so angry, uh, and I had
to be off in the woods someplacebecause if somebody would hurt
me they thought I was nuts, um,but you know, god understands

(01:32:22):
all that.
God's big enough he can take it.
And and how serious are you?
You have to have feeling inorder.
If you, if you've lost all offeeling at all for your parents
and you are, basically you don'thave any feeling whatsoever,
and and and that's the worstplace to be.

(01:32:43):
It's worse than being angry.
It's worse than than feelingrejected.
It's worse than to get to theplace where you don't have any
feelings at all.
That's the worst place.
So, thank God, you're stillfrustrated with the situation.
Thank God, you still want yourlove for them and their love for

(01:33:04):
you to be real.
Thank God for that and at thesame time, ask God to intervene.
And it may or may not happen.
I mean, that's totally up tothem.
They have free will.
They have their ownresponsibility for their own
spiritual walk with God.
And sometimes it gets to theplace, like you, you know, your

(01:33:26):
parents pass away and there's noway you don't have the
opportunity to even know whoyour parents are, or you don't
have the opportunity to saygoodbye, or you don't have the
opportunity to to uh, uh, make,make amends, uh.
So, basically, what happens isthe relationship.

(01:33:50):
If it's, if it's bad, if it's abad relationship and it doesn't
seem possible, that becomesanother brick that you're
carrying around that's heavierthan what you should be carrying
.
It's just another one of thosebricks that that uh become a
huge burden for you and you needto take that brick and hand it
over to god because it's notgoing to get fixed.

(01:34:14):
You're not going to fix it andyou know in your heart you're
not going to fix it.
If it's going to be fixed, thenit's got to be god's business,
not yours.
And and so, uh, allow yourselfthe freedom of, of just giving
that burden to him, notnecessarily given, given up on

(01:34:38):
your parents or given up on therelationship, but giving the
burden of it to him.
Allow him to work his.
You know, when you, when yougive something to god, you don't
take it back.
You give it to him and expecthim to work it out however he
sees fit and however thatfleshes itself out at that point
is not on you.

(01:34:59):
Okay, and and and so, and it'sdifficult if it never happens.
It it is.
It is hard.
It's just like any kind ofgrief uh, it's, it's, it's hard
to get past, but you got to gothrough it.
And and again, you can lamentto god and get and and god will
help you heal.

(01:35:20):
Um, yeah, life life is hard,especially if, if, uh, if your
family is not godly, life lifeis difficult.
And even if it is godly, evenif your parents are godly people
, sometimes they can be soconservative or so liberal that

(01:35:42):
that, uh, there's no, uh,there's no having a conversation
with them, uh, but yet, in mostcases, uh, they were there to
give you food and shelter andand all those things that you
needed and provided for you.

(01:36:02):
So there's a lot to be thankfulfor in that.
In other cases, it is that senseof abandonment that you have,
that sense of rejection, thatsense of you never stacked up,
you never are going to amount toanything kind of attitude that

(01:36:25):
you receive from from thosekinds of parents.
Then then you need to ask God toheal you of that lie that the
devil has been using them to putin your heart and and, uh, it
takes a while to get past, toget past that kind of insecurity

(01:36:46):
, that that uh, uh, but it'slike, it's like.
You know, I tell people that I,that I was an addict and an
alcoholic and and I, you know,it's been 50 years since I've
had, you know, alcohol or smokeda cigarette or took drugs, and
it's been 50 years.

(01:37:07):
Can you, you know, if you talkto addicts and you tell them
that they have a hard timewrapping their brain around that
, how is that possible?
It's the same way with any ofthe other problems that we face
as human beings, you know.

(01:37:39):
It is the same way with any ofthe other problems that we face.
So you have to allow yourselfto get out of the way and let
God do God's business.
It always comes down tosurrender.
It always comes down to Hiswill, not your will.
And for us in America that's ahard pill to swallow.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02):
And you know, for us in America that's a hard pill to
swallow.
Yeah, yeah, I mean mostAmericans if they went to Europe
and experienced customerservice or waiting at a
restaurant, they'd be prettyjarred by it, because it's just
very, very, very different.
You're not the center of theworld and I don't care about

(01:38:26):
your problems and that broke,that's not problem, you know
kind of thing.
But yeah, I think, like whenyou were sharing about you know
one thing that kind of popped upwhen you're talking, was I
thinking about my, my dad.
So my dad, you know, committedsuicide when I was three and you
know, processing that, like alot of what you described.
Like in the stream of christian,some of the streams of
Christianity I've been in, theywould call that the orphan
spirit and it's the spirit offeeling abandoned, feeling

(01:38:47):
rejection, whatever.
And you know, when Paul talksabout we received the spirit of
adoption, we testify as ourspirit, we cry out of fault.
So they would say, like theantithesis of sonship would be
the orphan spirit and this is anidentity crisis that we all
will have to, you know, getthrough and reconcile with the
father heart of God, etc.
So you know when, when I wasprocessing the death of my

(01:39:09):
parents as a child, I basicallyjust shut down.
I went into a kind of likepost-traumatic stress fight or
flight thing, shut down, andthen I thought that it was dealt
with because I shut down and Iwent through life and then when
I had this like encounter withJesus, it kind of came up again
and I was actually delivered ofa lot of the self-hatred and
that abandonment, rejectionaspect of it.
But in terms of process, likethe weight of it, of what it

(01:39:33):
actually meant, didn't hit meuntil the day that my daughter
was born.
And so, like I'm on this, I'm inthe hospital room, very
strenuous, long, stressful kindof labor.
She's there.
We didn't find out the sex ofthe baby beforehand.
We wanted to be surprised.
So you know, I'm at the nursingstation, like they take the
baby and the nurse is cleaningit off and I'm just sitting
there Feels like gravity's leftthe room.

(01:39:55):
I'm kind of floating.
All these kinds of emotions arehappening.
I don't even check to see whatthe sex of the baby is.
The nurse eventually just said,oh, you have a daughter now.
And I was like oh yeah, Ididn't think so.
It's like 40 minutes after thebirth, my wife's like, what is
it?
Is it a boy or a girl?
Yeah, it's a girl, and so I'mthere, like in the moment.
It's a very nice moment.

(01:40:24):
Well then, out of nowhere, thisthought, this anger comes up.
It's just like rage out ofnowhere, and it was.
It was rage at my and my fatherfor not being there and I like
I never felt this before, likeabout like, and then it was like
a flood of like.
Every birthday, every event,like everything I'd accomplished
in my life was not there.
You chose that you yourselfmurdered yourself, you exited
the world.
You weren't there and I waslike, why is this coming up?

(01:40:46):
Like I dealt with this already,I dealt with this already and um
, and it was like a really likeweird, provocative thing.
I didn't feel it towards mymother.
There's something about thiskind of special.
It sounds bad.
I don't want to sound sexist,but there's kind of a special
grace on women to like be brokenor make mistakes or things that
I have.
But there's some expectation ofmen I guess I have more, so, um

(01:41:09):
, not probably my own brokennessof expectation to have it
together or or or at least admitlike where you're, where you're
wrong, or doing something wrongand make strides to try to
change it, even if you can,can't, I don't know.
But that was that.
That was a weird process to gointo because I did what we

(01:41:30):
talked about a moment ago.
I had to through visualizationand my, my dad and me looked the
same, like people like oh mygosh, you look like his twin, we
look like the same person, butI never met this person.
So and then people saypersonality traits oh, you're
just like him, so it's, it's,it's a real.
It's like lemon juice in awound.
When someone's telling you youlook like somebody who you never

(01:41:51):
met, who was supposed to bethere.
You act like somebody who younever met.
You have the same sense ofhumor or something.
So I have to basically, throughthe mind's eye, have this
dialogue and then release it.
And for me, there was a storythat I heard once about
forgiveness and they talkedabout in ancient Egyptian Egypt.

(01:42:12):
If you would kill somebody, youmurder somebody.
What they would do is theywould put the person who you
murdered on your back and theywould tie them tightly to you
with a rope and what wouldhappen is, after you walk around
some days, uh, obviously you'reostracized from society because
you have a dead body.
But after you walk around forsome time, the body will start
to decompose.
As it decomposes, that it'sgoing to leach into your body

(01:42:35):
and actually the infection andthe bacteria and stuff is going
to start killing you.
And they were talking aboutwhen you you, you know Jesus
talks about.
You know, if you have anger andthese things in your heart, it's
basically like you're murderingthis person, and so I think
there's kind of a parallel drawnthere.
You said it's a brick, butwe're also carrying that person
because it's just poisoning,poisoning us, it's poisoning the

(01:42:58):
well, at the end of the day Isaid, well, I don don't want
that, but this is still likesuper painful, and so it was
sometimes a.
You know, emotions are quitetricky because your endocrine
system, your emotions, like theykind of your flesh, kind of uh,
it's just not a good compassand but you'll, you'll feel like
, logically, I've processedthrough this, but not really you

(01:43:21):
.
You can, your brain can tellyou that, but it's somewhere
deep inside there's some beliefsystem, something's still
hanging on, something that thathasn't been, you know, tapped
into.
So I identify a lot with whatyou said there.
Um, I have another questionabout forgiveness, but I'll get.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
I'll make space for you because when we, when we,
when we're in prison, uh what?
I tell the guys in there thatfor them in particular, I mean
those guys know very littleabout genuine love, and so what?
I tell them that forgiveness isa matter of life and death for
you, more than a lot of otherpeople, people.

(01:44:06):
And because if you don't dealwith this and are able to
forgive someone, then you'regoing to be right back in here,
even if you do get out, and ifyou're going to be here for the
rest of your life.
It's going to be very,extremely difficult.
It's going to be a harderamount of time that you're going
to be spending.
So, and I tell them, if youcan't forgive them today, take a

(01:44:26):
first step.
Help me, lord, to forgive thema little bit today.
Let me take the first steptoward forgiveness.
I don't want to just turn myback and walk in the opposite
direction with more pain.
Let me take one step closer tohealing.
Let me take one step closer tobeing whole again inside.

(01:44:48):
Let me take one step closer toyou, lord, in this forgiveness
process.
Help me, lord, to forgive justa little bit more today.
And so that's helped a lot ofthose guys because you know,
just say I forgive you when,when in your heart it's it's
really not there, uh is, is uhhypocritical.

(01:45:10):
So, uh, and you know it.
And so, uh, you know I, I Inever have come to uh know God
is good at it.
I'm not and I'm not God.
Okay, so so it it for us.

(01:45:30):
It takes a process and it's a.
It's a something that you haveto work on every day.

Speaker 1 (01:45:39):
There's somebody who I listened to once and said it
like.
This is basically we wantinstantaneous freedom.
It's like from my ankles to myneck I'm wrapped up in chains
and it's like so heavy I can'tmove and we want the changes to
break and like have this, youknow, transfigurational kind of
experience and walk out of it.
But what realistically oftenhappens especially things like

(01:46:01):
this when it's to our parentsand and like there's a lifelong
process of kind of unpackingthat and different things come
up is it's basically likesomebody is pulling the chain
and so you, you do a loop andand you still have all the rest
of the chains, but you're justone layer lighter and then you
go one layer lighter and onelayer lighter and you have to

(01:46:21):
you accept that process andembrace the process and fall in
love with process.
Because if you want, if you'restuck in wanting instantaneous
things and like, basically Godis a lottery machine or slot
machine where I pull the leverand hit the jackpot every time,
you're going to live a verydisappointed life or self or be
delus, uh, in that sense, self,self-deceiving yourself.

(01:46:44):
You know, oh yeah, I forgavethat person, but like and I know
some people like that, they'relike they went through very hard
divorces and things like I'vetotally forgiven them.
But if you just talk a littlebit about family, you, you have
forgave that person, you'restill, you're still pretty upset
, you're still pretty mad andnot saying here but, um, I guess

(01:47:08):
, like what, what?
I would like to ask you and wekind of wrap up because I want
to be respectful of your time,but you mentioned, like, when
you have this list, um, offorgiving people, you're, you're
at the top of the list and you,you know, for some people maybe
that's a little bit jarringSomebody like yourself we could
from the outside observe oh,it's Jim Kelly.

(01:47:28):
His life has radically changed.
You know.
Yes, of course it's the graceof God, but Jim is like,
partnered with the grace of God,changes life, pastor, changing
people's lives, like MichaelPersley and numerous other
people in churches, and, likeyou know, wants to serve Jesus.
He has to forgive himself.
Like.
For me, this is an ongoingthing for me, obviously for

(01:47:50):
completely different reasons,but I still, in this phase of my
life, have some elements oflike, resentment towards myself.
But I'm just kind of curiousfor you, like, however, you want
to share, but like A like, whatdo you feel like when you write
that down, like what are thethings you feel like you still
need to forgive yourself for?
And then what does thatactually look like practically

(01:48:13):
for somebody who wants to walkthat out for yourself versus
like other people?
If there is a difference otherpeople.

Speaker 2 (01:48:23):
If there is a difference for you, well, for me
, for me, uh, the early, theearlier hurts in my life are the
ones that seem to be morepowerful.
And and there are people in mylife, early on in my life, that
hurt me, uh, like being molestedas a child, or or, um, uh,
somebody beat the crap out ofyou.
So so for me, those people arestill somewhat on my list, but

(01:48:51):
for the most part I have gotten.
I mean, I don't want to brag oranything is you know, tomorrow
I'll probably have a anotherepisode, but but you know, for
me those are the ones that hurtprobably the most.
And and then, if you've gonethrough something traumatic
experience, like I've neverexperienced divorce.

(01:49:13):
I've been with the same womanfor over 45 years now and and so
so I haven't experienced that.
And talking to somebody that'sgone, that's going through a
divorce A lot of times, well,have so.
So I, I haven't experiencedthat.
And talking to somebody that'sgone that's going through a
divorce A lot of times, well,have you gone through divorce?
They want to know if I'mspeaking from an experience, um,
well, my experience is isworking hard not to allow that

(01:49:34):
to happen.
So, um, you know, theforgiveness part for me, uh, me
is always a continuous thing,and I'm not exactly when it
comes to me forgiving me.
That has to do with how muchpower I have given those

(01:49:58):
individuals over my life.
Still, those individuals overmy life, still the hatreds that
I have based upon, the hurts inmy life, when they rear their
ugly head and I realize, becauseof my honesty with myself,
where they come from, I need toforgive myself because they

(01:50:25):
still have power in my life.
The only one that's supposed tohave power in my life is Jesus,
and so that's a sign to me thatI haven't completely
surrendered to him and allowedhim to give me the grace to get
past it and and and so, uh, andI haven't fully let him go as

(01:50:50):
much as I thought I had, and andand.
So it's.
It's not necessarily a uh, it'sa disappointment in self.
It's a disappointment in self.
It's a disappointment that thatthere's some something in me
that allows or feeds off of thatanger, that that that same

(01:51:20):
record that's being played in myhead.
They used to play in my headmore than it does now, but, you
know, all of a sudden I tap intothat, that record, I put it on
the turntable and I, I, I startthe record and, and and it's.
It's an old story, and I thinkabout all the things I could
have or should have done,instead of what actually

(01:51:41):
happened, and in my subconscious, I'm trying to fix what
happened.
And it can't be fixed, and I'mnot guilty of what happened to
me.
I'm guilty of what I've allowedthat to do to me.
That's why I need to forgivemyself.

(01:52:04):
Yeah, and they're doing those.
There's stupidity in me as well.
Still, and and sometimes youknow, I do something stupid, I
sin, I say something I'm notsupposed to.
Yeah, that those moments areare there as well, but not as
deep as as the others.

Speaker 1 (01:52:18):
Sure, yeah, and that's like a like a pretty
significant torture device thatwe have kind of in ourselves of
when we're trying to reconcilethe past or change the past, or
like like playing through thesemental gymnastics of what I
should have done, what Ishouldn't have done, what I just
said.
So I mean, I've, I'm, I'm likeyou, me.

(01:52:42):
What was what was hard beforewas people would look at me like
oh, this is super loving,joyful kind of guy.
And then, when I told you, whenI went into that cheese factory
time, I was like just to becompletely transparent I was.
I was like very angry, veryvindictive, where I'm like
contemplating should I burnsomebody's house down?

(01:53:03):
Should I like go, like you know, let's, let's, let me go beat
the teeth out of someone's head?
And like in my mind, likeobviously I know I'm not going
to doing that stuff, but I'mjust like kind of gratifying
myself like well, that's what Ishould do, though I should go
and like then I'll make.
And and one thing that was hardfor me like to, when I heard it,
they said they're talking aboutlike superheroes and comics and

(01:53:27):
stuff.
They said the villain, thesuperhero have the exact same
backstory like there's, you,look at they live the exact same
backstory.
But the superhero, uh, looks atthe, at what happened, and said
, because of all this pain andbecause of what I experienced,
I'm going to not let that affectother people.
I'm going to try to save otherpeople and I'm going to like
transcend that.

(01:53:48):
The villain is like the worldhas hurt me.
Now I'm going to hurt the world.
I'm going to, like you know,broke people or hurt people,
hurt people, that that wholething.
So when I heard that's like, ohman, like I don't want to be a,
I don't want be a villain, evenif it's just in my own mind,
you know, like it'll poison me,but yeah, I can.

(01:54:10):
I totally identify with thatand just disappointment.

Speaker 2 (01:54:16):
Part of our problem is we feed that evil spirit
within us.
And it's fleshy, and and andand it's, it's, it's.
You can't, it's like you can'ttake your flesh off, you can't
you get rid of yourself untilyou're in heaven, of course, but
it it, this, this dying carcassthat we, that we carry around

(01:54:41):
with us?
uh, the mind has a really goodmemory, but at the same time,
that mind can be worked yeah andand and how we see things may
not be exactly what exactlyhappened when it happened, but
it but over a period of longperiod of time, especially if
you, if you've held on to it andcuddled it and it becomes your

(01:55:04):
friend and it becomes so much apart of your life that that when
you're trying to go to sleepyou're thinking about doing evil
things to that person and thatgives you comfort so you can
fall asleep.
You know there's a there's awhole series of of of things
that needs to be healed insideof our hearts, and Jesus is

(01:55:26):
there to take those burdens fromus.
And it does take time, it doestake discipline.
And your prayer, personalprayer, is so important.
But corporate prayer have aprayer partner, somebody,
somebody you can pray with andshare deep things with, and
hatreds with, and temptationswith, and and and somebody that

(01:55:48):
that has their best your, your,your, your heart at, at the
heart of their interest for you.
And to have somebody that youcan trust to pray with you.
And corporate prayer is soimportant because if we're not
praying together, if we're nothaving that ignition button

(01:56:11):
pushed as a community, thechurch doesn't function like
it's supposed to, like we see ittoday like we see it today.
When I was in college, you know,I was basically a new Christian
.
When I first went to college,at 18, I was converted.
I went to college, which was amiracle in and of itself.

(01:56:37):
I went into college onprobation because when I was in
high school I was high all thetime.
So, um, but I prayed to God andI, I said, lord, I don't have
any friends.
And so I went to a fellowshipmeeting and, and they were all
church going people in the atthe meeting, and, and none of

(01:57:01):
them came from the backgroundthat I came from.
And so you know, lord, I don'thave anybody that I can relate
to.
And God said to me make some.
And so I went about makingfriends with people that were
not churchgoers, weren't evenChristians, with people that

(01:57:21):
were not churchgoers, weren'teven christians.
They, they became christiansand and and uh.
So when I first started college, there was, there was uh like
10 or 11 of us coming to thefellowship meetings, and, and so
, uh, by the end of mygraduation from college, 10 of

(01:57:42):
the student body was coming tothe fellowship meetings, 10% of
a college, including professors,10%.
So it wasn't me that did that.
You see, god did that.

(01:58:05):
I can't take credit for any ofit, god, I'm, I can't be the
leader of this group.
I don't have it in me.
I'm a.
I'm a drug addict, a streetperson.
I don't have the ability, Idon't have the arc.
Are the command of the englishlanguage?
Yet I don't.
I can't hardly even read.
And here I am in college.
How am I supposed to lead thesepeople?

(01:58:27):
God told me, don't you worryabout it, I'll do it, you just
trust me.
How perfect is that?
I didn't have to do hardlyanything except share the love
of Jesus with people.
That's all I had to do.
That was my only job.
And try to pass classes.

(01:58:49):
So you know, god was the onewho did the miracle.
I was just along for the ride.
It was a good ride, I enjoyedevery bit of it.
And then, when I got out ofcollege, I realized the church
does not operate the same way weoperated in college.

(01:59:11):
It just it's soinstitutionalized and so dead
spiritually that it's forgottenabout allowing God to take
control.
It's forgotten about seeing themiraculous love of Jesus

(01:59:37):
transform people's lives.
And we're about the budget, theuh.
Does the janitor do his job orher job?
Does you know, we have a foodpantry and we're having a
difficult time finding people touh work at the food pantry.

(01:59:58):
Uh, it just it's a never-endingthing in a church location
where.
But if it's not prayerful, if itis not breathed with the holy
spirit and if jesus doesn'tpossess it, then it's just going
to be hard, rote kind of workthat doesn't have any passion

(02:00:29):
and it's sad, it's truly sad.
You know, jesus had this whenhe saw the multitudes.
He had this compassion on thembecause they were like sheep
without a shepherd.
The Greek word basically meansin that he had a soul-heaving
sadness for them because theywere like sheep without a

(02:00:51):
shepherd.
When I look at this countryright now, I have a soul-heaving
sadness because we are likesheep without our shepherd and
we need him so badly.
If the remnant, if my peoplewho are called by my name, will

(02:01:11):
humble themselves and pray andturn from them, from their
wicked ways, repent, I will comeinto them.
It's, it's, it's written allover scripture, every single
thing that happens.
We cannot do this on our own,our personal life, our corporate

(02:01:37):
life.
It can't be done on our own.
We need god's spirit to make ithappen and in order for that to
happen.
We have to die, we have to getout of the way.
I ran it again, I'm sorry, yeahit's good.

Speaker 1 (02:01:58):
It's good, I think, um, you know the observation I
made in, obviously, germany isits its own thing.
Uh, it's its own monster and inEurope and all the history that
they have and, and, um, youknow, cultural shapers they have
there.
But what was jarring for me isthere's a hype I'm speaking

(02:02:21):
specifically about the reach Ican't say all of germany,
germany's big country, you know,80, 82 million, 84 million
people.
Okay, so I'm I'm specificallytalking about the south and the
alps, bavaria, when I saygermany.
There was a hyper fixation thereon events, the kind of idea
like, if you build it, they willcome, that kind of thing.

(02:02:43):
And so they wanted to doconferences and events and bring
in all these big name speakersfrom America who were popular
ministers in America, who hadbook deals and like this kind of
thing, and then, like, thepeople who were there would try
to imitate them so that theycould build up some kind of
ministry and, you know, want totake a picture so they could
post on social media.
And there's just this hyperfixation on events.

(02:03:04):
And if we do the event, youknow the stage design, the right
speakers and stuff, and youknow my baseline always is
coming back to like do you knowthe father?
Like do you have a relationshipwith Jesus?
Do you know his voice?
Jesus said my sheep will knowmy voice.
Like that, that's point blankone, you know let's.
Let's start there.

(02:03:24):
Like do we know jesus?
Because there's like tons ofpeople who are volunteering to
do these, like events and things, but it was just like lost in
the fog in that sense.
And then the other.
But what was unique there withthe germans is they, their
culture and I'm using a broad,stroking statement here.
It's not a very intimate drivenculture, it's not it's it's

(02:03:48):
it's performance and objectivebase.
That's why they're some of thebest engineers in the world,
that's why they, they they'regood at what they're good at,
but relationship is not apriority as much as your career,
like those kind of things, andso a relationship with God is
basically where can I fit you into what I'm doing?

(02:04:12):
I've heard what's very common inGermany is people will marry
someone only after living withthem for eight years, only after
even having kids sometimes, andthey're like I met people with
three kids.
I'm like you guys going to getmarried, that's a big commitment
, man.
I'm like you have three kids.
If I married somebody with nokids and we got divorced.

(02:04:40):
Hypothetically I could justmove on with my life.
There's some like things I haveto process through.
But if I have a child withanyone, it's like I'm tethered
to that person for the rest ofmy existence.
You know, because I have todeal with them and whoever they
end up with, I was like that's anightmare for me.
So they were just like, oh,it's a big commitment marriage.
But I heard a German say to theythey, their perspective is, I
have my life, my spouse hastheir life and there's an

(02:05:00):
overlap of 20.
So yeah, and that's how theyview it right.
So that's kind of blood over.
How do we do relationships islike that's how it is with with
god, that's how it is withpeople and that's why I see like
revival not not really this,and again it's a broad stroking
statement.
There's a lot of other movingpieces to this, but that's why I

(02:05:22):
believe like revival, with thekind of damn holding back
revival in Europe, specificallyin this region, is that there's
no desire for a relationshiplike authentic relationship.
Also, because the things thatyou're mentioning they're in a
socialist country.
There's so much oppression fromthe government like you, people

(02:05:42):
are paying nearly half theirsalary in some instances for
taxes and social fees, that theyhave individualism, but it's
like, basically, my house is mycastle, so out in society I'm
not trying to be superexpressive or stand out, but
like my house is my castle andlike the, the small amount of
control that I have, I will.
I will claw on teeth and fightfor that.
And so there's a lot ofresistance to the idea of dying

(02:06:09):
like sacrifice, or dying toyourself or not not pursuing the
things that you, you want to do.
So obviously there's people whodo.

Speaker 2 (02:06:17):
I'm using a broad-shortening statement, but
that's kind of the bottleneckthere In America, we're the most
fatherless country in the world.
There's more fatherlessness inthe United States than there is
any country in the world.
Wrap your brain around that andnow look at the condition that

(02:06:42):
the United States is inculturally.
Those two things go hand inhand and that relationship thing
is so important.
To be a pastor today isextremely difficult.

(02:07:02):
There are so many burdensplaced upon pastors, not only
the local church burdens, butsocietal burdens, and that's why
.
That's why, uh, we're right upthere with air traffic
controllers in terms of leavingthe job that you're in.

(02:07:26):
The success rate in clergy islike one in every 10 will last
long enough to retire as apastor, as a pastor.
So the burden, the burden thatyou're talking about in terms of
what's going on in Germany, isalso a burden here in terms of,

(02:07:47):
of, of commitment and marriage,and you know, marriage is what
really holds a nation togetherand if it, if it dies which is
it pretty much is is is gone.
It's like one out of every fourchildren.
Now one fourth of thechildren's population in the
United States is fatherless.
Um, or eight, what is it?

(02:08:25):
One, two, two out.
I'm sorry, it was 80 percent ofthe children had had fathers.
You know two, you know 20didn't, but now it's.
It's, uh, completely differentand the marriage unit here in
this country is a crapshoot.
I don't know.

(02:08:45):
Some of these kids have three,four, five parents, and you add
grandparents to all that and allthe kids that are involved in
each of those relationships.
It's it's, and as much as wemove around and aren't even near

(02:09:08):
family, it is.
It is extremely hard to holdthe unit together.
It really is, especially ifyou're not grounded in your
faith or in a community that'ssupportive.
It's really really hard.
It's really really hard, andthat's why God ordained marriage

(02:09:30):
.
So just saying yeah down.

Speaker 1 (02:09:41):
But there's a lot of pressure with the structure in
western culture on how familieseven should be uh, again, broad,
broad stroking statement.
But you know, if I look at youknow country like, for example,
italy they livemulti-generationally a lot of
times.
So grandma and grandpa willlive with you know the son and
daughter-in-law or daughter, andyou know daughter and
son-in-law and then evensometimes siblings will live.

(02:10:03):
They all will buy a house andthey'll live together and some
of those kind of scenarios.
So obviously you have a kind ofsupport structure and
infrastructure already kind ofbuilt in of like in terms of
like financially.
How does this work?
And it's less pressure becauseyou don't need to have six
washing machines.
You have one washing machinethat you guys can split.
You don't need to have six cars, you have a couple of cars that

(02:10:25):
you split, right.
So the economical pressures arekind of alleviated.
But then you automatically likewhat most people you know, if
you look online and forums ofwhat people are struggling with,
like mental illness is like atan all-time high and people feel
lonely, like they talk aboutloneliness, and so we're more
connected than we ever be.
But people need peoplephysically, people around them,

(02:10:48):
not just online where we jump ona video call but people around
them to like, touch them, hugthem, talk to them, and then, as
well, if you have the componentlike, if, if you don't know God
, there's always going to be aGod sized hole in your, in your
being, the innermost parts ofyour being.
There's nothing that's a blackhole that nothing else will fill
.
So, even with that like inplace, you have a relationship

(02:11:11):
with Jesus.
There's, we are wired to be inrelationship with people.
For all the things that we'vetalked about this whole
conversation.
You know to be in relationshipwith people for all the things
that we've talked about thiswhole conversation.
You know to be able to do thosetogether.
So it's something that I, youknow, I can understand now,
looking back to when they wantedto build these hippie communes
and why they wanted to buildthose communes, I understand.

(02:11:33):
Now I'm like, because in mymind I'm like let's just go on a
street with a cul-de-sac, buyall the houses on the end of the
cul-de-sac, connect ourbackyards, let's all go into
business together.
Just, you know, open up thefences and are we eating at your
house, your house, tonight?
That kind of like thing in mymind.
I'm like oh, this is very muchlike a hippie commune, like what
I have in my mind is buyingland.

Speaker 2 (02:11:54):
The early church was kind of like that too.
They pulled all their moneytogether, it says they gave
their money and their propertyto the disciples, and then they

(02:12:26):
used it communally to take careof the elderly and the weak.
So it's communism andcapitalism are at odds with each
other.
Communism is a lot likeChristianity in a communal sense
, but what happens withcommunism is the breakdown when
it comes to people who are eliteand people who aren't, and so,
uh, and and what.

(02:12:46):
What happens from there on isthey become servants, and the
elite people just reap thebenefits of their servanthood,
and so that's really notcommunism, that that is fascism.
And uh, that you know it, ittransforms itself automatically
into ugliness, and so, but, butwhat?

(02:13:07):
What they leave out of thatparadigm is god, when, when
jesus is the one giving thepower and he's getting all the
honor and glory.
What you're talking about?
Getting everybody together, uh,and and, and doing business
together and having holding allthings in common.
That's a biblical model, butgod is at the center of it,

(02:13:30):
jesus is is the one empoweringit.

Speaker 1 (02:13:33):
As long as it stays that way, then that whole, that,
that whole scenario works umyeah, I think to some degree
socialism, like the idea ofsocialism or communist, I don't
want to say like this kind ofcommunal living, it all can't
can make sense on a local levelof governance in a small pool of

(02:13:56):
people, where people have therelationship with the
understanding of where's thismoney coming from.
We have oversight over people.
When you, when it becomes thisthing of like money just gets
poured into this bucket and thenthese individuals who we don't
know have any relationship getto dell out who gets that money,
and then people areincentivized to think that this
bucket is bottomless and I'mjust going to take it and

(02:14:18):
there's no consequences for meabusing it.
Then it all yeah, again, likeit all kind of falls falls apart
there.
Cause if, if me and Jim arenext door neighbors and and you
know, jim falls, hurts his back,whatever can work.
It's like, yeah, of course I'llmake sure, like you and Mary
take care of and you know we'regoing to bring you food and
stuff.
But then I see like you're outplaying basketball and, uh, you

(02:14:38):
know everything, but it's beensix months since you had a job.
It's like a big question mark,like what are you doing?
What are you doing like, uh,and so I think that that's,
that's like the, the bigdisconnect as well.
And I I, you know I lived in asocialist country, uh, germany.
You, obviously you have toinject elements of capitalism to
get the economy to moving.

(02:14:59):
But I mean I just not to throwanybody in the bus, but I had a
really good friend of mine.
I love this guy to death, likelike he's.
He's really good guy.
We hung out, we grow a lottogether.
Super funny guy.
He also worked in a factory and,uh, basically, you know, if the
weather was good and he wantedto go fish, you just call in
sick.

(02:15:19):
You have no limit on sick daysthere.
The government pays part of itand your job pays part of it.
They don't want people comingto work if they have the flu or
stomach virus and get otherpeople sick.
He's just like what are youdoing today?
He's like, oh, I called off sick.
I'm like, oh, are you okay?
He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm justgoing fishing.
Oh, I called off sick.
I'm like, oh, are you okay?
He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm justgoing fishing.
But he did it like a lot, likea lot of lot and and and and.

(02:15:44):
Um, he worked hard, like heworked a lot.
He had like three jobs,basically that he's working.
But you know, when youincentivize people with a system
like we're, we're justself-seeking people at the end
of the day if we're not likeguided by anything else besides
what we want well, andcapitalism is based on greed as
well, and, and, and, so you canalways count on greed.

Speaker 2 (02:16:07):
Yeah, that's why capitalism works so well, and uh
it, the systems work, but ifyou don't interject the Lord in
the middle of those systems,anything can become abused.

Speaker 1 (02:16:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:16:25):
Those systems can become abusive and ingrown and
diseased, and so, yeah, I don'thave the answers to all of it.
The only answer I have is Jesus.

Speaker 1 (02:16:43):
What would be and this is kind of a loaded
question but outside of thiselement of prayer and that being
breathing and that being reallythe lifeblood of the Christian
life, but even corporately, likewhat church should be?
What would you say to people whoare Christians now, who maybe
they're like my age or a littlebit older, but, um, they, they

(02:17:05):
love Jesus, they want to followJesus, but they find themselves,
um, you know, kind of jaded ordisenchanted with the
institution of church becauseit's just like this machine that
perpetuates itself, evenbecause it's just like this
machine that perpetuates itself,even though it's not really
moving in the direction thatgod's leading or whatever.
Um, and then you know they,they have families or they, they

(02:17:27):
, so they're trying to likesteward faith, they're trying to
steward this relationship withjesus, but they want to like be
doing life with other christians.
Like, what would you?
Yeah, what would you?
How would you encourage them orcounsel them?
Or what would you kind, whatwould you?
How would you encourage them orcounsel them, or what would you
kind of say to someone in thatsituation?

Speaker 2 (02:17:44):
basically the same thing I would have given you,
and that is freedom.
Um, there is.
There is a thing in terms of arelationship with God that
produces this kind of freedom tothink for yourself, to explore
your faith for yourself andbasically the priorities that

(02:18:09):
you set based upon what youdiscover about God, is important
.
If you're not really seekingGod's face, you're allowing
something else to run your life.
Most of the young people I seetoday are run by sports and all
sorts of other things that takeup basically their entire life

(02:18:32):
with their kids.
It's not that those sports inand of themselves are bad, but
those things are not biblicallyor spiritually conducive to
spiritual growth.
Yes, it teaches the kids how towork as a team and that they're
not the only person thatproduces success.

(02:18:54):
It's their good learning tools.
But how many of those kids aregoing to be professionals?
Uh, they have such high hopesthat their kid is going to be
the greatest thing in the world,and then when they're not,
what's?
What do you do?
What does the kid do then?
Um, so so we we put an awfullot of pressure on ourselves to

(02:19:19):
get our kids from one thing toanother thing, to another thing,
to another thing, and what wedon't do in front of them is I
keep going back to it what wedon't do in front of them is
prayer, praying with your wife.
Let the kids see you prayingwith your wife.
Pray with them.
Let them see you praying withyour wife.

(02:19:39):
Pray with them.
Let them see you praying byyourself.
When you take them to church,let them see you going up to the
altar and praying.
They need to be able to see aspiritual person, otherwise
you're robbing them of theirspiritual heritage in the Lord,
and what I would suggest was getyour priorities where they need

(02:20:01):
to be.
Seriously, we're so affected bythe culture around us that we
and if I was in a church and thechurch is still operating out
of this deadness, instead of measking what can the church give
me, ask what can I give thechurch john kennedy reference uh

(02:20:23):
, but I, I, I, uh, I think thatthat we, we shop around for the
church yeah but the truth of thematter is, if we start being
the body of christ in any churchand really get others around us
involved in, in fervent prayerand fasting and worship, and,

(02:20:44):
and, and, and you know, even ifit's in a small group, uh, and,
and the pastor sees that smallgroup grow, uh, that pastor is
going to froth at the mouth andhave to be led away to find out
what you're doing right andthey're doing wrong.
The only way to influence thechurch is within, and you may be

(02:21:04):
the spark that causes thatchurch to have a revival.
You need to realize that thechurch has allowed this to
happen to itself.
Who stopped the prayer meeting?
Who stopped the prayer meeting?
Stopped the prayer meeting Idid because I haven't started
the prayer meeting.
I haven't, I haven't gone outthere and, and, and, and, uh,

(02:21:30):
taught people how valuableprayer is, um, so, so what I'm
saying to you is that that theirsuccess as a christian and
their success in the church andtheir success as a family all
have to do with the primarypriority of igniting god's

(02:21:54):
spirit, the power train,starting the engine with prayer,
starting the engine, and letprayer ignite the Holy Spirit
who brings Jesus, and the powerbegins.

(02:22:15):
It's not all on your shouldersto do all that, it's faith.
Activate the faith.
Don't just sit there and watchthe church die.
Allow yourself to be involvedin ministry.

(02:22:36):
I'm not thinking that somebodyelse's job is praying because I
pay them to pray.
You are supposed to be prayingand praying for God's will to
happen in the church.
You be the ignition.

(02:22:57):
You be the ignition, you be thespark.
I don't wait around for thepastor to fix it, because the
pastor's so inundated with somuch stuff today they don't know
where they're, whether they'recoming or going, and in the
united methodist church, theydon't even know if they'll be
here next year.
So so, developing consistencywithin a congregation uh,

(02:23:23):
spiritually is extremely,extremely important.
Um, it's.
It's really the only way thatyou can change a church's
dynamic for the good.
And you know if there's pastorsout there watching.

(02:23:44):
Unburden yourself and get onyour knees, because that is
primarily.
What needs to be done is foryou to get out of the way and
let God do his work, but you'vegot to die first in order for
that to happen.

Speaker 1 (02:24:07):
This last one.
So you said you married samewoman 45 years and we talk about
, like America having thisepidemic of fatherless homes and
this epidemic of like marriagesfailing.
So what would you say are kindof like the biggest, the biggest
challenges that you guys havehad and your marriage and and

(02:24:28):
how did you overcome that?
And what would you say is likekind of foundational pieces that
you would say that this is whathas made it work and how we're
able to like love each otherwell, well, the first thing I
was looking for in a spouse wassomebody I could pray with.

Speaker 2 (02:24:47):
Now that may not be everybody's uh first priority
going in uh, that's where Istarted.
So I found a person that lovedthe lord as much as I did.
I know that was your concernwhen you got married.
That was a big concern for youand I appreciated that.
I just frothed at the mouth andhad to be led away with that.

(02:25:09):
You brought women in front ofme just to see what I thought
about them and and that was thatwas uh extreme, extremely
different compared to what otherpeople do.
Other people decide they'regoing to get married.
Then they come to the preacherand say we're going to get
married, can you do the service?
And sometimes I tell them Idon't think you should get

(02:25:30):
married and no, I'm not going todo the service.

Speaker 1 (02:25:33):
I'm sure that goes over well.

Speaker 2 (02:25:35):
I'm sure, yeah, you're not ready for that Anyway
.
So so what I would?
What I would say the people whoare married is, first of all,
like, always get your prioritiesstraight.
The biggest struggles we hadwas finances.
Coming out of college, neitherone of us had jobs, didn't have

(02:26:02):
a home.
You know, we, we were basicallytotally unprepared for reality.
In some respects, I mean, II've been prepared for reality
when I was younger because Iknew how to operate, but without
money, but but I couldn'texactly do the same thing then,
um, so, so, uh, you know, andand there was a coal strike on

(02:26:27):
and we had 77 blizzard and andit was really difficult, mary
almost left me.
I mean it was, it was really,really hard.
And if she left me, I mean itwas, it was really really hard.
And if she'd left me I wouldn'thave blamed her.
I mean it was hard.
It was so cold, our, our, our,our propane would run out, and
it was so cold in the trailerthat the potatoes busted.

Speaker 1 (02:26:49):
Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 2 (02:26:51):
The Wesson oil was solid.
It was hard.
We started out at the bottomand and poverty.
We were poor, as poor gets and,and we we were doing our best
to serve God in that situationand to honor him in that

(02:27:12):
situation and it was God thatpulled us out, got a job.
I had two part-time jobs in thebeginning.
Both of them turned intofull-time jobs, ended up, you
know, paying everything off,blah, blah, blah and eventually
I mean it was a long story interms of how I got into the

(02:27:34):
United Methodist Church, but itwas all God.
I got into the United MethodistChurch but it was all God.
I became a manager for Long JohnSilvers, which, if you're a
manager of a fast foodrestaurant, that business
basically takes over your life.
It's a 24-7 job and youbasically don't get away from

(02:27:56):
the shop, from the restaurant atall.
But we saved enough money up togo to seminary.
She worked and I worked and weboth saved up enough money to go
to seminary.
We went into seminary with somemoney because we knew it was

(02:28:19):
going to be expensive and wewent saturated in prayer and so
we went through.
We got into seminary.
Mary got worked while I was inseminary.
I worked while I was inseminary.
We came out of seminarydebt-free.

(02:28:44):
That wasn't easy.
A lot of people come out ofseminary today.
They're hawked up up to theireyeballs I mean, they're just
you know.
And.
And the question that whenwhen's asked at the annual
conference is are you soindebted as to bring shame to
Christ?
Most of them are lying whenthey get up there.

(02:29:05):
So the other difficulties thatwe have faced are communication
and intimacy issues, and beingable to communicate with your

(02:29:27):
spouse is is so important, butnothing, nothing, um, um, makes
that more graceful than prayingtogether.
Praying together, um, and notusing prayer as, as a, as a club

(02:29:49):
, for guilt.
We're not using prayer for thewrong reasons, but asking god to
bring you to, to, uh, the placeof submission.
Wives be submissive to theirhusbands, husband be submissive
to your wife, um.
You know some of these oldsayings are true.
Happy wife, happy life yeah,that is true, but happy husband
is also an important thing, anduh.

(02:30:11):
So if your marriage is centeredin Christ, you have a wonderful
chance to complete your lifetogether with a long marriage.
Today, you have a 40% chance ofmaking it.

(02:30:31):
The average person has a 40%chance of making it today, and
if you go to premaritalcounseling, you have a 40%
chance of making it today.
So I would suggest you getcounseling.
After you're married, go to amarriage enrichment course.

(02:30:56):
The Roman Catholics have awonderful system of marriage
enrichment courses.
They're the best, I think, inthe world at marriage enrichment
, and you're not required tobecome roman catholic to attend
their marriage enrichmentcourses.
Uh, it will do.
It'll do wonders for yourmarriage, um.

(02:31:21):
The other thing is raising,raising kids and trying to
figure out um, how in the worldam I going to give this child
everything it needs to to have asuccessful life after they
leave home, needs to to have asuccessful life after they leave

(02:31:42):
home, and that, too, takes alot of prayer and a lot of
patience, um, but, like I said,you set the right example in the
beginning.
Um, it's easier now.
Your child still may go in thewrong direction.
That's, that's heartbreaking,and it difficult.
I have a child that has amental issue and, and he is, he

(02:32:04):
is, he's schizophrenic, and sohe lives with us because he
can't handle his life the way heis and and so that that's
difficult.
There's all kinds ofdifficulties that you're going
to going to face, but most ofthem, um, are, are handled in in

(02:32:28):
the basic uh special sauce ofgod, and and and uh uh.
That special sauce is endurance.
God gives you the power to dothings.

(02:32:48):
Can someone have a perfectmarriage?
Probably not.
Can somebody overcome theimperfections of your marriage
through the grace of God?
Yes, you can, but it it isthrough the power of God that
that I found it.
Without the power of God, Iwouldn't have been married to
begin with, I'd have been dead,I wouldn't need to be here.

(02:33:12):
So so I owe everything to theLord, and and my marriage is one
of those I asked God to show mewho I was to get married to,
and God showed me, literallypointed her out to me, and I
tested it, though, and I've notbeen disappointed.

(02:33:38):
Okay, I've been angry a fewtimes, I've been very frustrated
at times, but it's God that hasbeen the center of who we are
together.
Without that center, I thinkit's a crapshoot.

(02:34:04):
It depends on how dependent youare on your spouse.
If God's not in the center, howdependent are you on the person
that you're with?
And a lot of people staytogether because they're
dependent on each other, notbecause they passionately love
each other, because without theother person, they couldn't

(02:34:26):
survive.
I'm not exactly sure thatthat's really healthy, but
that's that's a reason why a lotof people stay together.
I think finances is the biggestreason for divorce.
Whether you're rich or poor,greed can get in the way and

(02:34:51):
fear can get in the way.
So setting your will into motionis an important thing.
From the Jewish perspective,the heart is the seat of the
will.
So when you say I'm askingJesus into my heart, you're

(02:35:16):
asking Jesus to take over yourwill.
Say I'm asking Jesus into myheart, you're asking Jesus to
take over your will, you setthat will into motion.
This is what I'm going to do,regardless, even if it kills me.
This is what I'm going to do.
Okay, that's setting your willinto motion.

(02:35:38):
A lot of people don't know howto set their will into motion.
They give up too easy.
Things get difficult andthey're ready to bail.
And endurance God gives youthis ability to endure and it's

(02:36:00):
not easy.
It's not supposed to be easy,but you can get through it
regardless.
If you've got God's help,there's nothing you can't endure
together, as long as you getout of the way and let him do
his business.
As long as you get out of theway and let him do his business.

(02:36:24):
Loving is not always beingpassionate with each other.
Loving also may mean thatyou're angry with your spouse,
but you're determined to make it.
You're determined to make it.

(02:36:45):
You're determined to make itbetter.
You're determined to dowhatever it takes to reconcile.
And most of the time, admittingthat you were wrong or that
you're a part of what theproblem is is very difficult,

(02:37:08):
and saying you're sorry isn'tgood enough.
But showing you're sorry isworth a million bucks.

Speaker 1 (02:37:14):
Appreciate you coming on and doing this and, uh,
everything that you shared.
I think there's a lot of a lotof gold there, so I, anytime
someone kind of gets on a flowof thoughts, then I want to just
let them.
Let them, uh, finish out whatthey're, what they're thinking I
love you, brother, I hope thisconversation with jim brought

(02:37:35):
some gold into your life.
If his stories or his insightsor anything that we discussed
really touched you, I'd love tohear about it.
You can connect with me onsocial media and share how this
episode has impacted you.
It would mean a lot to hearyour feedback and know
specifically how it's blessedyou and hear your story.
And if, while listening,anybody came to mind for you

(02:37:58):
that you think that they benefitfrom Jim's wisdom, share this
episode with them.
Jim is truly a gift to the bodyof Christ.
He's lived an extraordinarylife.
He carries a wealth of wisdomwhich is really needed right now
Intergenerational wisdom.
In times like these, we needperspectives and strength that
come from people who have livedlonger than us.
Um, so we don't repeat history.

(02:38:20):
So thank you for joining ustoday.
I'll see you on the next one.

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