Episode Transcript
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The Lord spoke to me one dayand said, your pride is not look
at me, look at me,but your pride is I can, I
can. Welcome to the two Pennicostlesand a microphone podcast here with Justin Teel,
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recently a brand new author. Isit your first book? Right?
It's my first official published book,yes, first official published book. Awesome.
Well, congratulations. I'm super excitedabout this one because I did kind
of go kind of alongside you,at least I saw the process as it
happened, so that was exciting.It's always exciting to see an author release
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of book, especially if it's afirst official release. So congratulations, thank
you so much. I appreciate it. And you have kind of been there.
I think you were my first contactwith Woodsong and and kind of been
there through that, throughout the wholeprocess. So I really appreciate your help.
No problem, no problem. We'reexcited to be a part of it.
So your book is called Submission.Now, if you were going to
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pronounce it, would you pronounce itsubmission or submission or or would you pronounce
that probably either or I think Iwould say submission. Uh, kind of
like the little Paul's there and thenthe silent service. Yes, that's that's
kind of what I was thinking too. So so your your book is an
interesting take because we see a lotof not that there aren't a lot of
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great books bapis like authors there are, or Christian authors in general, but
when it comes to discussing topics suchas submission or any any topic of a
Christian living book, there's there's beena million discussions already, so sometimes it's
hard to find a new angle orsure people just approach it, uh,
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kind of in a direct way,maybe a popular kind of kind of way
that's just like easy. I don'tI don't know how to explain it.
But you see a lot of booksthat just don't say a whole lot,
you know what I mean, They'rethey're just about that topic, and that's
that's we're gonna get. Then there'salso the dry, you know, kind
of college professor approach. But yourbook I think was a fresh take in
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my opinion, because it does lookat it from an interesting perspective. It's
it's something new and fresh. Sokind of tell a little bit without giving
away the whole, you know,the whole enchilada. What is the what
is the angle of your book.Sure, well, again, thank you
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so much for the opportunity to behere and to speak with you on this
podcast. I'm thankful for the opportunity. Uh submission. The book really comes
from it's a it's a story aboutmy battle with pride. I think most
people, in some extent or anotherdeal with pride, and so I wanted
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someone. I wanted a platform forpeople who may be struggling with pride and
don't necessarily know how to deal withit or what's the best way to deal
with it, and so I wantedto create some content for especially for the
Apostolic realm, but for anyone whomay get hold of the book who's dealing
with pride in their life and reallyattack this head on. And submission.
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Really, when I got to thinkingabout the subject matter of the book that
I was going to write, Iwent to Pentecostal Publishing House and I did
a search in their search engine forsubmission, and it turned up no results,
and that was interesting to me.Of course, I've read a lot
of great Apostolic books. I've gotmany of them behind me here, and
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great author putting out great content,and a lot of them do mention submission
and the need for submission. Theytalk a lot about pride, but I
couldn't find a book that dealt withsubmission at length. And so having come
through that battle and I'm still fightingthat battle today, obviously, I'll think
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it's something that I'll fight for therest of my life. But I've learned
a lot over the last ten years. So that's really the purpose behind the
book was to hopefully help someone elseout who may be struggling with this battle
against pride. Okay, awesome,awesome, Yeah, I think it is
something we all deal with. Iknow in my life I can say the
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same thing I've dealt with with thatit's something that's easy to conceal. You
can live a pride full life andmaybe people don't notice, like they may
have some other things, some othersins. So it does sneak into the
church, I think fairly easily,doesn't get addressed, maybe as often or
as as thoroughly as a show.Sure, And I think that pride has
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many faces, you know. Obviously, I think the first place that people
go when they think about pride isarrogance or loftiness. But that wasn't my
pride that I was dealing with Ithink pride again shows itself in many ways,
and the Lord really dealt with meon that and in my pride the
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way that it presented itself in mylife. The Lord spoke to me one
day and said, your pride isnot look at me, look at me,
but your pride is I can.I can. And so that really
floored me when I realized, brother, mine is that that? Because I
didn't never feel like I was betterthan anybody else, right, I don't
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feel like I'm better than anybody else. But I always did have this mentality
of I can do it, Ican handle it. Just give it to
me. I'll do a good job, you know. And so that was
pride. And so that's the battlethat I had to face. And and
of course for some people it isyou know, they think that they're better
than other people, and that's aform of pride. But mine was not
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that. Mine was I can doit, just give it to me,
right, So I think that's notuncommon. I can relate to that.
I would also think say that I'mnot the person who says look at me,
you know, or or maybe lookat somebody else and things that I'm
better than them. But I findthe same struggle of you have to accept
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at some point that you need help. You need God's help, you need
others help, and you can't climbevery mountain that you think you can climb,
especially on your own, right.Uh. That realization that you just
brought up, that's really what savedme. Not save my soul, obviously,
Jesus is the one who saves mysoul. But that brought me up
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out of that struggle, that battlewas the realization that I cannot do this
on my own. As strong asI think I am, sometimes I just
can't do it. I'm not strongenough, I'm not smart enough on my
own. I need help. Ofcourse, I need God's help. That
goes without saying. But I alsohave learned that I need my brothers and
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sisters. I need my pastor,I need my wife. I need friends
people, healthy people who are sittingspiritually, healthy people who are sitting at
my table with me, who canspeak into my life and say, hey,
brother, til you know I seethis, I'm concerned about this,
Maybe we should make an alteration hereor you know. I need people like
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that in my life. And Ineed also one of the things that I
needed most was to be able toreach out and let somebody know, Hey,
I am struggling and I'm not okay, and I need help right now.
And so when I realized that Icould do that, and I didn't
lose the platform that God has givenme to be a minister, to be
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a husband, to be a leaderin the community. Just because you ask
for help and you humble yourself tothat level to where you admit I need
help, doesn't mean that that allof a sudden everything's going to be stripped
away from you. That's that's whatI was afraid of. That's not the
case, right, Yeah, Ithink you're right. I think for me,
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the struggle has been really stopping andadmitting. And I think it's maybe
it's a guy thing to a degree. I think it is. We want
to We tend to want to fixthings, we want to do. We
can figure it out, right.I don't need directions, I don't need
I don't need to read instructions.I don't need directions, I don't need
a map. Right, you know, I can do this. It is
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it's a mail thing. And andI think for me specifically, I grew
up in a home brother Mice whereI grew up in right outside of Atlanta,
Georgia, my whole life, welluntil I was the age of twelve,
and so I grew up without afather. My dad left when I
was two years old, and hewas gone for most of my life.
And so when he came back intothe picture at the age of twelve and
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got custody of me, and thenhe moved me to Virginia, and that's
how I landed here. I wasn'traised in the church. I didn't know
anything about God. I had ahard time even believing in God. And
so coming from that background without afather and then being taken away from my
mother, it caused a lot ofpain. It caused a lot of resentment.
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And when I realized, Brother Mice, that that I could work hard
and earn a living and have nicethings, because I never had anything nice
growing up. So when I learnedthat I could work hard as a man
and have nice things, I thinkthat that flipped a switch in my brain
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and it almost became a complex forme to where anytime anybody challenged me after
that, anybody, anybody who toldme I couldn't do something or or it
was too too outlandish for me,to think this way or or or you
know, that's just too you're reachingtoo far for this. It it was
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like, uh, you know,to use a biblical term, it was
like fire shut up in my bones. I love the challenge and so and
I think that is a man instinctfor us to just say no, we
can where you know, uh youknow, we'll we'll man through it and
all that. But that's very dangerousas well. Yeah, it absolutely can
be, and it's unhealthy. It'sin a lot of way. It's not
just spiritually, but it's physically andmentally also can it can affect your your
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your mental health and your physical health. And I think we put too much
on ourselves sometimes that's unnecessary. Sofar above and beyond like what is I
mean. Obviously you want to workhard, Obviously you want to provide well
free family, but so far beyondthat, we put so much on ourselves.
And part of that is I thinkwe see what others have, or
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maybe it's not even realistic, likeour neighbor or our friends, but maybe
it's things you see on social media, especially the age of social media,
it's so easy to compare and toassume that like this is the standard I
should be living at so and sowhen I came into the church twenty twelve,
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twenty thirteen, I came into thechurch. God had ordained a meeting,
sent my pastor and his wife intothe city that we were living in
or close to, and we happenedto run into them, and very long
story short, they ended up reachingus and teaching us Bible studies in their
home and won us into the church, and we thank God for that.
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But I carried these same feelings intothe church, and I had a lot
of I always had my whole lifea problem with authority. Counselors, teachers,
principles would always tell me this,growing up, you have a problem
with authority. I had a lotof trouble with the law when I was
a child. And so when Ibrought this mentality into the church, and
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now I have this figure over me, a pastor, and he has this
this position, this this rank ofauthority over me, I didn't take too
kindly to it, and I didn'tknow how to handle it, and so
it caused a lot of conflict betweenme and my pastor. Thankfully he was
gracious to be patient with me andpray for me through that process. And
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it took years, but once Irealized, my pastor's not the problem.
You know, the law is notthe problem. The teacher's not the problem.
You know, if there's an oldsay, and if everybody else is
the problem, they're the problem,right. And so when I realized that
and God started working on me,and God helped me get through that pride
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issue, I just, you know, I said, here's what I want
to do, and I want towrite a book. I want to help
somebody else. And if it onlyhelps one other person, then it's worth
every hour that I spent studying.It's worth all the time of writing,
It's worth the cost of creating abook. If it helps one person,
it's worth it all to me forsure, for sure. And I I
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mean I again, you keep sayingthings that I keep thinking about myself,
and especially the younger me I have, I think matured a little bit,
but when I was when I wasyounger, I definitely struggle with authority.
And I you know, as faras being in trouble with the law,
not so much, but in prettymuch every other way. I questioned everything,
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I pushed back against everything, Itested everything, and I a lot
of the actually probably most of thegrowth really that I've seen since coming to
Seymour Church where we are now withPastor Airwood, there was so much growth
happened in that well now it's beentwenty twenty two years, almost twenty three
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years, and that is due tothe fact that my pastor was very gracious
and patient with me and probably couldhave easily been a lot more harsh than
he ever was, or just said, you know what, you can be
somebody else's problem, but he didn't, and he was patient with me through
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that. So I totally feel whereyou're coming from because I've experienced the same
thing. I think it's so importantnot that just that you submit yourself to
an authority in your life, there'sgreat value in that, but also if
you find your place yourself in thatplace of authority for somebody else, that
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you are gracious and patient and lovingand all those things. So I've seen
I've seen many times that people inthe church, as you said, will
not turn to others for help,not turn to God for help. So
specifically, when I think of others, brothers and sisters in the church,
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you're maybe your pastor, but especiallythe other saints. You know, people
that are not not necessarily in aposition of authority, but they're brothers and
sisters in the church. Not onlycan we not operate in a healthy way
if we don't reach out to themfor help, but the church as a
whole really can't operate in a ina healthy way or a God prescribed way
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unless we are Unless we're doing that, we're reaching out to one another,
where the body of Christ and allthe members have to be operating and operating
together with Christ as the heads.So how do you feel like the how
do you feel the body of thefellow believers played into into this? Yeah,
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so in the book I kind ofdetail this without naming names, but
you can definitely make the connection backto the church like you just did on
a submarine. And I did alot of research, extensive research on life
aboard a submarine, and the onething that was very clear to me is,
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of course you have rank. Youhave people in authority. You have
the XO, the chief of theboat, you have all these positions.
You have people in the sonar room, you have people. But the one
thing that I realized quickly is thatthe sonar expert or the person responsible for
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weaponry the missiles They're no more importanton that boat than the chef in the
kitchen, because if the chef doesnot a pair of the food, then
the people doing this on our workor missile launching, they can't even perform
their job. They would they wouldstarve. And so when I detail that
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in the book, it's really tellingthe story of the church that I'm in
and the people that I'm surrounded by. I quickly realize that without my brothers
and sisters, without leaning on themand letting them be used in the gifting
that God has given them, thenI am doing a disservice not just to
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them and not to myself, butto the Kingdom at large. If if
we can't work together and allow Godto use people in the gifting that they
have they've been giving given, thatI believe that the body suffers at large.
Just like if if everybody on thesubmarine boat is fighting with one another
rather than doing their jobs, andwe're in the middle of a war,
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well, the nation United States ofAmerica, three hundred million people are going
to suffer, not just not justthe people on the boat, right,
So so I realize the importance ofjust letting people be used how God intended
for them to be used and notbeing so proud to say that I don't
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I'm above that, or you know, it makes me less of a minister
if I go to you and Itell you I've got this problem. So
that's how I like in it inthat instance. And I would also say
that you can't share everything with everybody, right I don't. I don't subscribe
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to the thinking that you know,you just go blab all your problems to
the to the world. But Ido believe that there are people who you
can have sitting at your table.It's a safe place. And we set
up people of accountability who you givethat authority to. You allow them to
have access to speak into your lifeand say, hey, you need to
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make a change here because I seeyou veering off on a path is dangerous
if if you want to allow yourselfto have that that is pride in and
of itself, right, absolutely,and I think we have to we had
to remember that there's there are peoplethat we we need to be able to
trust, our brothers and sisters inthe church. But there are also levels
to that. You know, yes, yes, not everyone has the same
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trust, level of trust or deservesnecessarily the same level of trust. Then
you have to be Yeah, youhave to be careful. I think it's
I think sharing struggles can often helpother people, but I think sometimes things
maybe shouldn't be shared with everyone,or not every single thing should be shared.
Sure, and and some people,I think most people either have a
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tendency to overshare or to not toshare, so right, seems to be
one of the other. Yeah,the healthy zone doesn't seem to be really
popular, right, And so that'swhat that's really what I'm trying to do
to help grow and to facilitate,is that healthy zone where it's not I'm
going to shut down and just keepto myself and be silent, Because if
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you suffer in silence, you don'tonly hurt yourself. As much as we
like to think that we do onlydo harm to ourselves, that's not the
case. Your wife, your spouse, your husband, your children are going
to suffer if you're suffering in silence. And so creating that healthy place where
I have people who can speak intomy life, I can speak to people,
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but at the same time understanding whereto draw the line. You know,
I don't call my pastor every time, you know, I want to
teach a Bible study to someone.He doesn't need to know all those things.
You know, he'll find out intime. But so you don't want
to be a you don't want topester people to death. But there does
need to be a healthy amount ofcommunication because communication is always key. Absolutely
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absolutely I agree with that. Ithink it about out your military example with
with the submarine, but take thateven further. I mean, you have
to trust people that you're in thein a submarine with obviously, yes,
but not just in that context,but on a battlefield, in a trend,
in the trenches, and you're talkingabout warfare, you're talking about any
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anything dangerous, anything important. Reallyin life, you have to be able
to trust those around you, andI think part of that is surrounding yourself
with with the right people, choosingthose you know, circles and and and
of course people like to talk abouthow there shouldn't be cliques in the church
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and and all these things, butthere is always there are always going to
be circles. And I think weshould love We should love everyone, and
we should show the love of Christto everyone inside and outside the church.
But within the church specifically, there'sthere are boundary circles that you're that are
closer and more trusted and closer friends, and then some circles further out,
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maybe that you don't share as muchwith, but that in certain things you
do still have a level of trust. And I think for one prayer,
maybe you don't have to be specificwith everyone, but if you can pray
together whatever the need is both directions, because I truly believe that if the
Body of Christ is not working,active and doing the work that it's supposed
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to do, then it's going tobe atrophied, it's going to be weakened,
and it's not going to be incondition to do what it needs to
do. So not only are youdoing yourself, if you're just distrusting or
whatever the case is, you justyou can't reach out for help, you
can't ask for prayer, you can'task for support, then not only are
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you doing yourself a disservice, you'redoing a disservice to everybody else in the
body as a whole. Absolutely,And and to go back a little bit
on what you started out with,the level of authority reaches beyond your visibility
often time, so on a submarine, the new sub mariner, a new
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cadet on on board for their firsttime. Obviously they have a position on
the boat. They're important, butthey receive orders from the XO. In
our case, I receive direction,wisdom, guidance from my pastor and so,
but the level of authority does notstop stop there. The XO on
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a boat receives instruction from a higherauthority who's not even on the boat.
So that comes from the top down. And so I liken it into in
the book to the commander in chiefis God right. He is the the
unseen authority who makes all the decisions. He owns the boat, he owns
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the water that the boat is in, he owns it all. And and
so I have to trust that whenmy EXO tells me something, even if
I don't agree with it, thatthat authority, that that command is coming
from a level of submission from himselfto his authority. And if you don't
trust the ultimate authority, then thenyou have greater problems than really what we're
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even talking about, right, Andso I've learned to trust my pastor and
submit to my pastor as he issubmitted to God. Now, if I
see that my pastor is not insubmission to God, then I have no
I have no obligation to follow him. But as long as my pastor is
doing his very best to line upwith the word of God, then I
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am in full submission to Him andto his instruction his guidance. Absolutely.
And you you went right into whatI was going to ask next, and
that was, what about situations wherethe person and authority is you know,
in some way overstepping authority is abusiveAnd obviously those things do happen, and
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I think when when they do,sometimes it's there's an outsized reaction to it.
I think a lot of people whoare who are found in a situation
where there's abuse or something tend toproject that on everybody else in the religious
world or in that denomination. Atleast I see that with a lot of
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x UPCI. There's a whole sectionof Twitter and YouTube and TikTok or wherever
you're at that is x UPCI orx pentecostal or whatever you want to call
it, and it's it seems tobe very toxic. And I think the
reason is, actually, we intervieweda friend of ours on this podcast who
left the Apostolic Church who has avery different attitude, very different approach to
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it, and isn't toxic. ButI think it tends to go that direction
because people just assume that everyone islike the one person maybe that they dealt
with. And also I think alot of it comes from pride, because
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there are usually there's usually more toit than meats the eye, and a
lot of times they're projecting maybe thingsthat that they're insecure about personally projecting it
out onto not just their former pastor, but every pastor. Absolutely. I
liken this in the book because that'sa very real thing, abusive leadership,
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abusive authority, and it's it's real, and we don't need to shy away
from it. We need to addressit head on, and there's Bible for
that. And so the best examplethat I can find in the Word of
God is with King Saul and David. David was the successor, he was
the one to take the throne,and you can see a whole lot of
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pride seeping from King Saul. Hedid not want to let go of his
authority. He he was on apower trip and was willing to do harm
to the one that he loved andto the man of God. A chosen
vessel in the name of his pride. And so the greatest example again that
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I can find, is David's response. Now, I don't condone anyone staying
if there's physical violence, if there'sif you're receiving physical abuse, I think
that you need to immediately remove removeyourself from that situation. But if it's
if it's words, or if it'sindifference, if it's a disagreement, then
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I believe that you need to placethat in the hands of God, especially
if that if that person who isgiving you that is in a position of
authority, give that to God andlet him handle it. Because David could
have killed Saul. There's no doubtin my mind. I am totally convinced.
He killed the lion, he killedthe bear, he killed Goliath.
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He had killed his tens of thousandscompared to Sauls thousands, and so he
was a mighty man of valor.He was a warrior. So you can't
convince me that David couldn't have killedSaul if you wanted to. Of course,
he could have. And we seein the cave that that he cut
off the little corner of his jacketthere just to let him know that he
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could, and but that really didsomething to David's heart when he did that.
I think it really messed with hisinner being, knowing not the man
in the position, but the positionitself. He had such high regard for
the office of leadership that he wasunwilling to do harm to that person.
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And so I think that that's agreat lesson for us to learn when when
we're dealing with someone else's problems,maybe their own pride, if you're on
the receiving end of that pride,then you need to let God handle that
and don't put you You know,the Bible says touch not the Lord's anointed,
and so be careful with that andjust let God handle it, because
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he will. He will handle itif you're if you have the right spirit
about it, I believe that Godwill take care of that in due time.
But give honor to the position,to the office of authority, even
if you can't give honor and andand respect to the person in that office
right exactly. And I've always said, if you find yourself in a position
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like that where you cannot where youcannot have that level of respect for the
person, then you should probably moveon and find another, find another church
if if you can't, if youtruly find yourself in that position, but
you should never speak ill of theMan of God. That's I think too
many times people they want to airtheir dirty laundry. Whereas, like you
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said, in most cases, ifit's if it's a personality thing, maybe
maybe maybe somebody is a talk isjust kind of toxic and God's maybe God's
still working on them, but they'renot quite there yet, if that's the
issue, or if it's words likeyou said, if it's if it's those
types of things, quietly and respectfully, do what you have to do.
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But but like you said, leaveit in God's hands and don't don't make
it everyone's business. And I thinkthat's social media hasn't helped with that.
I mean, obviously gossip has alwaysbeen a thing, but the age of
social media has definitely not helped.And they're a whole when I said,
whole corners of the web that aredevoted to anti you know, Apostolic or
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anti UPCI or anti this, antithat, and it's just it becomes very
toxic. Yes, And I wouldlike to maybe just issue a small warning
to anybody, especially young ministry,social media is a very toxic place,
and you can you can always findsomebody to agree with you. If you
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want to bash your pastor, yourpastor's wife, they will agree with you,
many of them will. But Iwould say even even closer than that,
even if you don't do it onsocial media, don't even disrespect the
office of the pastor or the pastor'swife even around your dinner table with your
family. I believe that if youhave a problem with your pastor, well
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the biblical thing to do is totake it to them, right, go
to them in private and deal withit. But if you can't talk to
anybody else and you don't feel likeyou can talk to the person, either
remove yourself or talk to God.Talking to people about it does not help
anything. No, absolutely, you'reabsolutely right. You're absolutely right, And
that's obviously you're talking about things thatare like we said, words, you
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know, not physical not not physicalabuse or sexual abuse. That's a whole
noother story. But yeah, absolutelyabsolutely agree with you. There should be
no because your your children pick upon it. It's it's going to create
a toxic environment in your home.Even if you don't have children. It's
it's just going to create a toxicenvironment, and then you cannot you cannot
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grow and be healthy if the environmentyou're in is toxic. So don't yeah,
don't go there, absolutely, Iagreed. So your book is when
this comes out, actually, yourbook will be will be available everywhere the
books are available, which whether that'say, Amazon or Barnes and Noble, you
can get it a Woodsong Publishing dotCom, anybody locally. I'm sure it
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can get it directly from you.M So are you planning have you planned
anything with an audiobe an audiobook?Or you have a podcast? Right?
I do have a podcast, TheDisciples Dialogue. I'm planned to promote it
there quite a bit awesome, somaybe we can hear some some highlights on
the on the podcast. So haveyou thought about an audiobook at all?
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I've been toying around with the idea, so there might be some potential for
that. Awesome we have at woodSong. For those who don't know,
I'm involved with wood Song Publishing andwe have we have toyed around with the
idea of of an audiobook of afew different books, but we've never actually
done it. I think it's inthe probably in the cards for next year,
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so we'll see how that goes.But I'm always curious. I know
probably more than half of the booksthat I quote unquote read are audiobooks,
so oh yeah, I know that'sdefinitely something to coetit here. So anything
else you want to tell our audienceabout your podcast, obviously your book,
(33:50):
any specifics on that, any anythingelse you'd like to know, you can
go check out the Disciples Dialogue.We have a lot of great content there.
And yeah, what Song Publishing.I want to give a shout out
to which Song Publishing fantastic to workwith. If you're considering making apostolic content
writing a book yourself, please callup by the Mis here and he will
(34:15):
help you along the way. Soshout out to you guys, and I
appreciate your help. Thank you forthat. We were glad to be a
part of it, and God blessedthank you for coming on. Absolutely,
God bless you