July 10, 2025 • 48 mins
Have you ever felt like the least qualified person in the room? David Hanegraaff discusses what it is like growing up as the son of the “Bible Answer Man” and how he does his best to say yes to the call of the Lord even when he feels unqualified. David has learned to overcome self-doubt by trusting the Lord and taking those leaps of faith—because when God calls you, he equips you.
Recorded during a talk at the Set Apart retreat for young adults at Gospel for Asia in Wills Point, Texas, this candid presentation by David Hanegraaff offers encouragement for anyone seeking to follow God’s will for their life. Interested in serving with Gospel for Asia? Contact young@equip.org, and the CRI team will connect you with GFA.
Recorded during a talk at the Set Apart retreat for young adults at Gospel for Asia in Wills Point, Texas, this candid presentation by David Hanegraaff offers encouragement for anyone seeking to follow God’s will for their life. Interested in serving with Gospel for Asia? Contact young@equip.org, and the CRI team will connect you with GFA.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Today, we have the privilege of having David Hannagraph with us,
and I'm gonna have to introduce him in a different way,
in the same way that people introduce me when I
go to the mission field. Usually when people introduce me,
they talk about my father for about thirty minutes and
then they say, here's his son. One. That's a very
(00:43):
Asian way of introducing people, because you're always connected to something,
you're never an individual. And so they would talk about
how my father, you know, he wrote three hundred books,
he's been on the radio for thirty years, he had,
like you know, with all the programs and a million
responses on an on, and like, here's his son, who
is going to share with us? And so kind of
(01:04):
in the same way, David Hannigraff serves with his father,
Hand Canigraph. Some of you would know him, most of
your parents would know him. Hank Canigraph is known as
a Bible answer man. He's the president of CRI, which
is a Christian research institute. When I was in seminary,
there was three individuals in the entire world. If any
(01:24):
one of them said anything about the Bible or anything
about the Christian faith, the entire church would say, Okay,
that's what we believe. One would be John Stott, who
went to be with the Lord quite a number of
years ago. Another would be Reve Zacharias, who's an apologist.
And before Revezacarias, he would have Francis Schaeffer and C. S.
Lewis and a couple of others, and then Hank Canigraph,
(01:47):
his father. And when Hank Canagraph said something, the entire
Christian world would stop and listen. To the point where
when Hank Canigraph journeyed into Orthodoxy, a whole world stopped
and said, I think this guy has gone crazy. And
people are like, what are you talking about? The Bible
answer man has gone crazy? Don't think so. David serves
(02:09):
with his dad in the ministry. He does help him
with his podcast in the research is a lot of
research that goes into the podcast and the magazine and
the books and other things. But him and his dad
and a couple others really keep the whole ministry growing.
He grew up pretty much like me, watching our fathers
travel the entire world, speaking at major events, charting the
(02:32):
course of major Christian pathways. My father did missions, his
father did apologetics. His dad has traveled to Iran, to China,
to multiple places that you can't imagine, to share about
the faith. I mean, And David's got to travel with
him to a lot of places around the world. He
deeply loves the Lord loves young people. And he told
(02:54):
me he's like, I'm not the Bible answer man, but
I'm here to encourage and so it's a great privilege.
He'll be sharing with us this morning and then tomorrow
morning also, and so listen carefully to what he says.
Write down a couple of things. Maybe there's one thing
the Lord speaks to your life that's great, just one thing,
and then in your discussion groups you can continue talking
(03:14):
further on those things. And again, always have the question, Lord,
what are you speaking to me? And what do I
need to put into my life? Don't leave it here,
push it down to your heart and push it down
to some decision, something you want to pray about, something
that you want to apply to your life.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So David, please come, good morning. Have you ever felt
like the most underqualified person in the room. That's me.
(03:53):
Bishop Danny gave most of my speech, so this is
going to be easy. I want to talk you about
self doubt, and being set apart. Bishop Danny and I'd
have lived parallel lives in a lot of ways, I
feel like, and I'll get to that, but I'd like
to begin and maybe you could join me the same
way I start every single day by making the sign
(04:16):
of the Cross. If you don't already carry this with
you and you remember nothing more that I say today,
take the sign of the Cross with you. It's a
practice that I carry with me, Like I said, before
my feet hit the ground, every single day I wake
up and I make the sign of the Cross. It
(04:40):
serves as an anchor and a compass in my life.
An anchor and that it grounds me in reality and
a compass, and that it guides me to eternity. That
no matter what I'm going through, crisis with me and
I'm carrying that cross, and I usually accompany it with
a prayer role. Another thing, when I was going through
(05:01):
this book, I was really happy to see that there's
a large section dedicated to a prayer rule. And prayer
has always been something difficult for me, and developing a
prayer rule that has made it much easier. It's something
that I cling to no matter what, and so mine
and I'll say it to you, and I'd like at
(05:23):
the end for everyone to kind of go through it
with me. It's glory to you God in all things.
So no matter what I'm going through, glory to you
God in all things. It's very similar to the Eastern
concept of this too shall pass no matter what you're
(05:43):
going through, whether it's high, whether you're in the mountaintop
or in the valley, this too shall pass, and glory
to God in all things. When you're at the mountaintop,
glory to God, he brought you there. When you're in
the valley, glory to God. He's going to get you
through it. And I usually add at the end, thank
(06:04):
you for humbling me, your servant. So the full prayer
rule is glory to you God in all things. Thank
you for humbling me, your servant. What that does is
every single thing, like I said, the peaks in the valleys,
I know who's with me, and I know who got
(06:26):
me there. So if I'm at the top, it's like
glory to you God. But there's a temptation to slip
into pride. I did this. Now, thank you for humbling me,
your servant, So bring yourself down. Same time in the valley.
Glory to you God. I have something to learn from
this moment. What are you trying to teach me through
(06:47):
this pain, this suffering, this job moment? Well, I don't know,
but may it glorify you in the end. So before
we begin, if everybody could stand and go through this
with me, I would love it. And if you don't
remember anything else that I say today, I pray that
(07:08):
you carry this cross with you. So the name of
the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Glory to you
God in all things. Thank you for humbling me, your servant. Amen.
All right, Well know I have to do it again.
(07:31):
No one heard me? Where were you on that? Okay,
Well this is a perfect segue because this is not
my forte. As Bishop Danny said, this is very much
a full circle moment for me. I grew up the
son of Hank Canigraph, famously known as the Bible answer Man,
(07:56):
and so I grew up in the back of auditoriums
churches around the world listening to my dad speak very
much like my son Grace, Grace, where are you is
he in here? Everybody find Grace and give him a
little clap. He's here supporting me. And it's just such
(08:23):
a blessing to be here with him, because as I
watch him run around the church, most of you saw
him dancing through the candles last night, I see myself
and what a trip it's been. Yeah. I grew up
in a Christian home, the son of the Bible answer Man.
(08:44):
After every speaking engagement, people would come up to me
and say, are you going to be the next Bible
answer Man? And at no point in my life did
I ever want that, Including today, I've never wanted to
follow in my father's footsteps. But even as I say that,
(09:06):
it feels like a little bit of a lie. And
there's a double on tundra there that at this point
in my life, all that I want to do is
follow in my heavenly father's footsteps, and man plans God laughs.
(09:28):
That's following my earthly father's footsteps. And I know that
it will look a little bit different, but God will
use me, I hope. So any has I was telling
somebody this morning, I can't believe that I'm here. Ten
years ago, if you told me that I'd be speaking
(09:51):
in a church with my five year old son, I
would not have believed you. I wasn't married, I was
barely a Christian nominally. Oh yeah, sorry, you guys can
sit down. I was a very nominal Christian and bit
(10:11):
by bit God has turned my life around into his glory.
And going back to the opening question, have you ever
felt like the most underqualified person in the room? Time
and time again, I find myself in that situation. As
Bishop Danny said, I've traveled with my father around the world,
(10:33):
and I've been in front of high ranking government officials,
famous people, people with multiple PhDs, and I'll find myself
sitting at tables and They'll say, they'll point something out
that I say me. You know, just a couple of
months ago, we were across the way sitting at a
big boardroom table, people multiple PhDs, working on a pretty
(10:59):
big important project. And I'm sitting there like what am
I doing here? And feeling extremely insecure about my place
at that table on in the world. And I'll never
forget walking out going to the bathroom, and one of
(11:20):
the professors is basically saying the same thing. He's looking
at me, David, I just I don't know why I'm here.
It doesn't make any sense. And I look at him.
You you have multiple PhDs, you have so much to offer.
(11:42):
If you feel that way, think about how I feel.
And he looked me in the eyes he said, David,
I know exactly why you're here. You often do not
apply to do the work of the Lord. He appoints you,
he sets you apart. He started telling me, think about
the apostles. Were they the best and the brightest. No,
(12:05):
they're humble fisherman, tax collector, imperfect people. And the Lord
said follow me, and they did. They answered the call. So,
wherever you're at, if you're feeling that insecurity, that self doubt,
(12:28):
I just want to encourage you that when God calls you,
he equips you. Ye. Going back to the previous statement,
you know, my dad is the Bible answer man. If
he was here, you'd have the opportunity to ask him
all kinds of questions. And I am not here with
the answers. I'm here because I've lived in that same
(12:50):
tension that you might be feeling, and I'm experiencing that
same thing, and I'm just here to encourage you to
answer the call of the Lord in your life, matter
matter what it is, and a lot of the time
it comes with self doubt. So I have a question
for you, guys, and This isn't rhetorical. I'm genuinely asking
(13:11):
it because i'd like to see what you think. Is
it ever permissible for a Christian to tell someone to
go to hell? It's funny because I've been doing it
all morning. All morning, as I've prepared to come up
(13:31):
here and speak with you, I've battled self doubt, I've
battled spiritual warfare. You're not good enough, You're gonna screw
it up. You have nothing to offer these people, You're
gonna start speaking, and after five minutes have nothing left
to say. And when I feel that, what do I do?
(13:58):
That is not the will of the Lord. That is
not the voice of the Lord. That is the voice
of the devil and his demons. Because the closer you
try and get to Christ, the harder he's going to
work to try and pull you away. So a couple
months ago, I was reading something and it said, when
(14:20):
you start feeling that anxiety, call upon the Lord and
tell his demons to go where they belong, go to Hell.
It messes with your head a little bit, because I
saw a lot of your faces like net. No, of course,
it is never permissible to tell another human being made
(14:41):
in the imago day to go to Hell. But the
devil and his demons that's where they belong. So yes,
tell them to go to Hell. I'd encourage you to
practice that. It's a weird thing to encourage someone to do.
I'm giving you a prayer rule, and I'm telling you
to tell people to go to help. Tell those demons
go to Hell, and then continue carrying your cross. I'd
(15:06):
like to read the story of the Garriscene demoniac just
to drive that home, because I find that imagery to
be so powerful. Jesus and his disciples came to the
region of the Garriscenes. A man possessed by demons living
among the tombs ran to Jesus. No one could restrain him,
(15:28):
not even with chains. The demons begged Jesus, don't send
us away. Jesus commanded them to leave, sending them in
to Erna. Jesus asked, what is your name? They replied, Legion,
for we are many. Jesus commanded them to leave, sending
(15:50):
them into a herd of pigs, which rushed into the
sea and drowned. Picture that in your mind, and the
first time that I read that as an adult, what
imagery casting out demons into a herd of pigs, and
they couldn't hand. They just ran into the sea and drowned.
The man was freed, sitting calmly, clothed and in his
(16:14):
right mind. The people were amazed, and the man went
out proclaiming what Jesus had done. Do that to those doubts,
Tell them to go to hell. Now what do you
do after that? Well, how do you answer the call
of the Lord? This is particularly prescient for you, all
(16:39):
the young adults in this room, who are living in
a world that is so different. I'm only depending on
how old you are, ten years older than you. Yeah,
I'm thirty nine. But the world that I grew up
in is so different from the world that you're living in.
And there's such a temptation to chase fame and virality
(17:03):
and some sort of a platform because it's accessible to
you in a way that it never was for us.
And I would to encourage you to ignore the algorithm,
to be present, to live local lives, to be the
hands and feet of Christ. Yep, there's a saint. My
(17:25):
wife's patron. Saint is Mother Marie of Paris, and I
was going to speak about her a little bit this morning.
And then I as I was walking here, started thinking, well,
there are Mother Marias of Paris all over the world,
and Gospel for Asia works with them. They're unhurralded heroes.
(17:48):
When we were watching the videos last night, I'm seeing
them reminds me of the C. S. Lewis quote the
most famous person in heaven is a little old lay
that nobody's ever heard of, who is doing his will quietly,
not loudly. Don't search for a platform. If God gives
(18:10):
it to you, God will bless it. But be the
hands and feet of Christ, and let your faith flow
out of your fingertips. Be present where you are, because
no matter where you are, there you are. It's the
only place you can be so and it can be overwhelming,
(18:31):
but don't be overwhelmed. That's often how I feel when
I look at the world and everything that needs to
be done, and all of the people who are in pain,
who are suffering. I think, and it's from the Talmud,
but all truth is God's truth. You are not obligated
(18:53):
to complete the work, but neither are you free to
abandon it. You don't have to save the world. You
just have to say yes to your corner of it.
So wherever you are, you can do the will of
the Lord. And in an age of radical individualism, remember
(19:14):
that you're not the main character of the story. You're
a humble servant of the Lord, and that's a beautiful thing.
So just pray for his will and your life and
move forward in faith, because there's no safer place than
a leap of faith, especially if the Lord's with you.
(19:35):
Who can be against you? Now back to my amazement
at being here. It still doesn't make sense to me.
Before I walked up here, I was telling somebody that
I took a long, long, long walk in the wilderness.
(20:00):
I grew up in churches with the Christian family, and
I knew the right way to live, and I ignored it.
I lived according to a libertine ethic. Does anybody know
(20:21):
what a libertine ethic is. It's basically no ethic. So
a libertine lives as if morals don't exist. And I
did so in a very cognitively dissonant way. I was, Oh,
you know, I'm an agnostic Christian. I don't really know
(20:44):
what's going on, but it doesn't really matter either, And
I'll never forget riding on the subway in New York City,
hanging there, trying not to fall over and thinking, what
(21:07):
have I become? How did I get here? I'm telling
you that now. I'm thinking that then, because I had
always kind of imagined at this time and the wilderness
as a prodigal son adventure, kind of like when Amish
(21:30):
people go away into the world for a year or
two and decide if they want to live in it
or not. And if I remember correctly, most Amish people
don't stay in the world, and glory to God in
all things, neither did I. I was standing there and
(21:54):
it wasn't It takes a long time for a ship
to turn around. That was not a come to you
ju this moment. That was a leave the devil moment.
I don't know where I want to go, but I
know that there's no limit to the outrageousness of an
untethered existence, of a life that isn't anchored in Christ.
(22:16):
I can tell you that from personal experience. And sometimes
it feels good for a moment, but it does not last.
And I cannot tell you the peace that I feel
being here with my five and a half year old son, Grace.
And there's a reason that I named a boy Grace
(22:38):
because I don't deserve him and I know that. And
I have another son named Pax, and Pax means peace,
and I feel that piece with those two boys. Every day,
like I said, dozens, if not hundreds of times a day,
(23:01):
I make the sign of the Cross as a sign
of gratitude that I do not deserve any of this,
and I feel that peace. And there's a famous saying
of Saint Seraphim of Sarahov. Acquire a spirit of peace,
and thousands around you will be saved. You don't have
(23:26):
to be loud, You don't need a big platform to
change the world. You just need to carry your cross,
keep Christ close to you. He will be your anchor
and your compass, and he will guide you into eternity.
Now I could say more, but I think I'm gonna
(23:49):
in there. So if everyone would stand and make the
sign of the Cross with me again, like I said,
if there's nothing else that you carry with you, take
the sign the cross and develop a prayer. Rule. All right, So,
in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, Glory to you God in all things. Thank
(24:11):
you for humbling me, your servant. Thank you, guys, so
much for spending some time with you this morning. I
don't know how much time I have, But if I've
got more time, and anybody wants to ask questions or
talk about anything before you go into small groups, let's
do it. Is it ever okay to tell someone to
(24:32):
go to hell? Did the answer change? It still feels naughty?
All right? Does anybody have any questions for me? You're
(24:53):
with me the whole time. I appreciate that. Besides this ending,
I'm looking forward to the future. I said it. At
a certain point, when God calls you, he equips you.
And when I've sat in those rooms not understanding why
(25:18):
I'm there, it's not a logical question, because I know
exactly why I'm there. Bishop Danny knows why he was
invited to certain tables because of his father. I'm there
because of my father. But it doesn't end there, and
(25:38):
time after time, I'll talk about this a little bit tomorrow.
You think that you can't answer the call, you don't
have time, too busy, or you feel inept, You feel
like what do I have to offer? And when the
(26:00):
Lord calls you, he equips you, and you find, even
in a room full of PhDs, you have something to offer,
and I've found that in my own life. And so
what do I look forward to the most. It's a
future with Christ, because the past without him, there was
(26:22):
no peace, there was no grace, anybody else, several things.
So the question was what happened to bring you back?
A multifaceted So the first thing was that moment where
(26:44):
I remember, like I said, I even remember, I wasn't sitting.
I was standing holding that thing on the subway, thinking, yeah,
maybe off the cut. An analogy would be it's like
getting caught in a riptide. You think, oh, I'm only
(27:06):
going to swim this far, but I'll go back, and
at a certain point you start getting carried further and
further away and you think I can't get back, and
then you start getting scared. And without getting into the
(27:26):
specifics of the type of life that I was living,
it was completely absent of Christ, at least of his will.
His presence was there. He never left me, and thank
God for that. I always kept him at arm's lengths,
(27:46):
like once I'm done. But then I started to feel
it slip away, and that is a scary place to be.
And like I said, there's the freezing came into my
head and I thought this doesn't make any sense at
the time, but the idea that there's no limit to
(28:08):
the outrageousness of an untethered existence. That no matter what
I was doing, the crutch was always well, not do
it for the story. This will be funny, this will
be interesting. Your body's not a temple, it's a roller coaster,
the Anthony Bourdain line. You know, do whatever I want.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
And.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
It's a scary place. So that's the initial That was
when the boat started to kind of turn around, but
I was still extremely nominal. I started going to back
to church. Actually a Pentecostal church brought me back into
the fold, and I thank God for that. There's one
thing I appreciate about Pentecostals, it's their belief in the
(28:55):
Holy Spirit. So amen. And slowly I started going to
an Anglican church, and then when my father joined the
Orthodox Church, that is when I officially came back into
the fold. He often likes to quote me as saying
(29:19):
that if he didn't join the Orthodox Church, I don't
think I'd be in a church. And I don't say
that to denigrate any other churches. It's just my personal
experience of finding a foundation of faith that didn't fall
from the sky, that's rooted an Apostolic tradition that brought
(29:43):
me a lot of peace. Although it's often called the
ancient faith, when my wife and I officially joined the
Orthodox Church, I was it was extremely important to me
that we chose modern saints as our patron saints, because
(30:06):
although it's the ancient faith, it's living, it's here today,
and so I have with me Saint Porphyrios. If you're
not familiar with Saint Porfririos, you're gonna love him. Look
him up, start googling it. He's eminently quotable in all
the right ways. And my wife's patron saint was Mother
(30:28):
Marie of Paris Is and she died during World War Two.
She lived that local life that I am encouraging you
to live. She fed the hungry, she clothed the poor,
she dealt with the homeless. And one of the things
(30:50):
that I love about her is she had a past.
If I remember correctly, and this might be in my mind,
but I don't think it is. She was part of
a plot to kill Trotsky. That's my kind of saint,
who is and her former life was part of a
plot to kill a political leader, and she smoked. And
(31:16):
when they said, we want you to become a nun,
she said, I will become a nun, but I will
not live in a monastery. I will live among the people,
and I will work among the people. She really cared
about being those hands and feet of Christ to have
her faith flow out of her fingertips. If it sounds
like I'm repeating myself, it's because that's what I do
(31:38):
every day. It's the reason that it's so important to me.
The first thing that I said and the last thing
that I said is this prayer rule, because that has
changed my life. It centers you in everything. It's gravity
grounds you in reality. And that's something that you're going
to need more and more with every passing day as
(31:59):
we reality is obscured, whether it's because of AI or
postmodern thought, knowing what reality is is so hard to discern.
And so once again, not here is the Bible answer
man with answers for you. I'm just here to encourage
(32:21):
you to call on the Lord that he'll equip you
with discernment. And one of the quickest ways to discern
is just centering yourself in Christ. No matter what you're doing,
so I think that was your question. The question was
could you elaborate on what it means to carry a
(32:42):
spirit of peace with you? The irony is, I don't
think that I have a spirit of peace completely, So
what does it mean? Keep trying, keep trying. Another one
of my favorite perspectives that the Orthodox Church has offered
(33:07):
me is that I am in progress. That I did
not pray a prayer and there I'm done, that I've
been saved and being saved, and I will be saved.
But that's my hope because I've lived that life and
I know that just like that, if I don't keep
(33:28):
pushing forward, working on myself, committing myself to those daily disciplines,
that you can fall off the spiritual wagon very easily.
So what does it mean to carry a spirit of peace?
I hope that I can tell you someday anybody else, Oh,
(33:49):
there I go. A patron saint is when you join
the church, you choose a patron saint or it's chosen
for you. So in a lot of ways, I find
it somewhat ironic that I diverted from my namesake David,
(34:14):
Because if you're familiar with the story of David. It
mirrors a lot of my own. God uses broken vessels.
Talking to somebody earlier about Peter and Paul, I mean Paul,
God used Paul, persecuted Christians, Peter. Imagery is important in
my life. That's why I wanted to read the Garrisone
(34:38):
Demoniac to get that image in your mind, the same
thing when the cock crows three times, you will deny me.
That imagery terrifies me because I know that I'm that
close to denying Christ. Those who walked with him denied him,
and yet what did he do? They're the pillars of
(35:01):
the church. So a patron saint is somebody that if
it's not chosen for you, and if it's chosen for you,
then you hold it with you and you carry it
as your name. I chose Saint Porphyrius as my patron saint.
I'm maniacal about everything that I do. If I'm buying
(35:22):
a mattress, I research every mattress that's out on the
market because I want the best mattress. Imagine choosing your
patron saint. No pressure, right, And I was going over
and over and over, and when I read the story
(35:43):
of how Saint Porphyrios died. It floored me. I was
laying awake in bed at two in the morning. I
couldn't sleep. I'm googling on my phone different saints. And
he knew that he was going to die, and he
asked a couple of people were with him to go
up to the chapel and pray with him, and he
(36:04):
died praying the Lord's high priestly prayer that they may
all be one, so that the world may know you.
So once again, I don't know who in this room
or world is Orthodox. And of course I love my church,
(36:24):
but there's a saying that we could say with the churches,
we can't say where it is not. So I don't
believe that if you're not Orthodox, you're not in the church.
And that high priestly prayer of the Lord is so
important to me that when I read that he died
praying it, that's my man, and everything out after that
(36:45):
has just been pure blessings. So does that answer what
a patron saint is a little bit? That's exactly it.
And so I've often heard it said by skeptics of saints.
Trust me, I sat in that seat, and half the
time I'm still halfway on it because I don't understand it,
(37:09):
but I move forward in faith. And the best way
that I've come to understand the saints, because the question
that inevitably comes up is well, why do you need
somebody to intercede for you in Christ? Why not just
go straight to the source. Well, there's a couple ways
to look at that. Does anybody here ever ask somebody
(37:32):
to pray for them? Of course, why don't you just
go straight to the source, because we're saved in communion.
We're saved together. More succinctly, when my family was exploring
the church, my sister asked the priest, why do you
(37:53):
pray to dead people? And he just laughed and said,
there are no dead Christians. We're surrounded by that great
cloud of witnesses. Why would we not ask them to
pray for us, just the same way that I asked
my wife or Bishop Danny. And we're saved in communion.
(38:15):
And similarly, it's like, of course we learn from Christ.
All of the saints attain sainthood by trying to emulate Christ.
But this is particularly important for me is in my
current journey, and my dad will say, you got to
(38:36):
step up, you got to be like me, and I'll
sit there and think I can't be like you. Now.
He's way too far ahead from me. And I've heard
it said that when you try and look for a mentor,
try and find somebody who's a couple steps ahead of you,
not ten steps, two or three. That's an attainable goal.
(38:58):
And so I look at the saints as people who
have not gotten to the finish line, but they're further
along the mountain than I am, and they can help
me reach towards the ultimate goal, which is theosis union
with Christ. And that's our entire purpose in life, is
(39:19):
to grow closer to Christ. Once again, going back to
the prayer rule, it centers you. I am not my
own I'm not the main character the story Free will
is real. Teach me to deny my will and seek
your will. So for me, that's the benefit of a
(39:40):
patron saint. It's not somebody that you worship. You rightly
venerate it the same way that I You will see it,
if you've not already seen it, you will see it
over the next twenty four hours that I'm here or
however long. I love my son, and it's self evident
to end. Anybody who sees it, and it's the same thing.
(40:03):
You know. I love my patron Saint because he loved
the Lord and he's teaching me how to get closer
to him. So patron Saints, anybody else come on something fun.
(40:24):
The question is, do I know if my father prayed
for me while I was falling away inevitably yes, whether
it was a specific prayer, because I think this is
something that Bishop Danny failed to mention. I don't even
know what the size of my family is at this point.
They keep adding, I grew up one of eight, now
(40:48):
one of twelve, thirteen. My parents are in the process
of adopting a thirteenth. So hard to keep track of everybody,
especially one of the older I'm the oldest boy, the
third oldest. I'm not even sure to what degree he knew,
how far he knew. I'd kind of digested a more
(41:11):
liberal worldview. And it's an interesting place to be because
the way that I always phrase it is that I
was too good for the truly bad kids, but too
bad for the good kids. I was somewhere in between,
and that can be a dangerous place to be as well,
(41:31):
because you think, well, I'm not doing that you like
I'm only a little bad and it can snowball like
the proverbial snowball, But I know that knowing my father,
I know that he prayed for me because he prays
for all of his children. And I named my second
(41:55):
son Pak Johannes because my grandfather's name was Johannes, and
he emigrated from the Netherlands to Canada and then the
United States to be a pastor, and he prayed for
all of his children that they would remain in the faith.
(42:16):
And he came from the Netherlands, which is one of
the most liberal countries on earth, and none of my
father's cousins or uncles are in the faith, and every
single one of my grandfather's children and then subsequently their
children are strong Christians. And that is such a testament
(42:40):
to prayer and to setting that example. It's important to
remember that while I was taking a walk in the wilderness,
I did say I kind of saw it as a
prodigal son endeavor. So I knew on some level I
shouldn't be doing this and I'll probably come back someday.
(43:04):
But the reason that I knew that is because I
grew up with such a strong Christian family and imbibed
everything by osmosis, so that it was never that far
from me. It was always a well that I could
kind of pull from at some point, I think so.
So the question was what drew me back to Jesus
(43:27):
Am I ever attempted to leave again? And what keeps
me grounded? I think the answer to all three questions
is the Church. What brought me back into a life
of Christ is the Church and the church being a
(43:50):
place grounded in the tradition and the sacraments and truth.
And so the way that I describe it, as I've
gotten more and more I came into the church, and
then now I'm in a leadership role in the church,
so I spend even more time in the church. My
children during Holy Week leading up to Easter spent twenty
(44:11):
hours in church. So if you're not familiar with the
Orthodox Church, lots of services and very long. And so
somebody said, I think yesterday, oh we've got a service
for an hour and then forty five minutes. You might
not want to bring grace thought. An hour and forty
five minutes. That's a walk in the park for this boy.
That's shorter than a Sunday morning for us. A lot
(44:32):
of the time, so being able to go into the
church very similar to this morning. When I walked into
the church this morning, you asked the question, how do
you acquire a spirit of peace? And what does that
feel like? It feels like being here this morning when
you walk in and you see all the surrounded by
(44:53):
this great cloud of witnesses, all of these saints who've
come before us, the icon of Christ, everyone in there,
that one when you're walking on the right. That gives
me peace. If I could stand in front of that
icon all day, yep, that's what, once again, why I
constantly do this. It brings me peace. It anchors me
(45:15):
so being in the church because there is this temptation
in our modern individualistic, atomized world to think about it
as Jesus in my Bible, me and Jesus. And while
that's true, it's not singularly true. Yes, you and Jesus
(45:35):
and your Bible are important, but nobody is saved in isolation.
We're saved in communion. The Church is a reality. And
so that's what brought me close to Christ. That's what
keeps me from falling away, because if ever I might
(45:56):
start slipping, I have so many friends in the church,
spiritual father, who I go to, who I confess, not
as a laundry list of things that I've done right,
but as a hey, here are the things that I'm
doing and let's course correct. The church is not a
courtroom that's here to judge sinners. It's a hospital to
(46:17):
save us, to give us health. And so that's that's
what keeps me there because you know, if you've ever
gotten in shape after being out of shape, oh my goodness,
I was just fat. Like now, I feel so good.
I didn't think I could feel this good again. And
once you start feeling that way, that's all you want.
(46:37):
I don't want to get fat again. I've been fat.
Being fat is not fun, you know. So that's the
life and the church, and it's a life of continual growth,
and I always think about it. I don't know, have
you guys grown up playing tag with a home base?
What happens? When you touch home base, you're safe, No
(47:00):
one can get you there. When I step into the church,
that's how I feel, literally touching the walls, because we
have an incarnational faith. It's not just up here, it's physical.
Once again, why I constantly make the Sign of the Cross,
why I grab the cross, why I hold my fingers
(47:21):
a certain way to anchor me in Christ. It's incarnational.
So I literally touch the walls of the church and
I thank God. I pray prayers of gratitude that I'm here,
that He saved me, and thank God I'm not leaving.
So but that's why you continually pray, because I say that,
(47:41):
and all it takes is one slip, one challenge that
you think is too big for God, and you start
wandering away again. That my cue, anybody, that's my cue,
the grim Reaper over here. Thank you all very much.
(48:01):
Glory to God and all things
Today, we have the privilege of having David Hannagraph with us,
and I'm gonna have to introduce him in a different way,
in the same way that people introduce me when I
go to the mission field. Usually when people introduce me,
they talk about my father for about thirty minutes and
then they say, here's his son. One. That's a very
(00:43):
Asian way of introducing people, because you're always connected to something,
you're never an individual. And so they would talk about
how my father, you know, he wrote three hundred books,
he's been on the radio for thirty years, he had,
like you know, with all the programs and a million
responses on an on, and like, here's his son, who
is going to share with us? And so kind of
(01:04):
in the same way, David Hannigraff serves with his father,
Hand Canigraph. Some of you would know him, most of
your parents would know him. Hank Canigraph is known as
a Bible answer man. He's the president of CRI, which
is a Christian research institute. When I was in seminary,
there was three individuals in the entire world. If any
(01:24):
one of them said anything about the Bible or anything
about the Christian faith, the entire church would say, Okay,
that's what we believe. One would be John Stott, who
went to be with the Lord quite a number of
years ago. Another would be Reve Zacharias, who's an apologist.
And before Revezacarias, he would have Francis Schaeffer and C. S.
Lewis and a couple of others, and then Hank Canigraph,
(01:47):
his father. And when Hank Canagraph said something, the entire
Christian world would stop and listen. To the point where
when Hank Canigraph journeyed into Orthodoxy, a whole world stopped
and said, I think this guy has gone crazy. And
people are like, what are you talking about? The Bible
answer man has gone crazy? Don't think so. David serves
(02:09):
with his dad in the ministry. He does help him
with his podcast in the research is a lot of
research that goes into the podcast and the magazine and
the books and other things. But him and his dad
and a couple others really keep the whole ministry growing.
He grew up pretty much like me, watching our fathers
travel the entire world, speaking at major events, charting the
(02:32):
course of major Christian pathways. My father did missions, his
father did apologetics. His dad has traveled to Iran, to China,
to multiple places that you can't imagine, to share about
the faith. I mean, And David's got to travel with
him to a lot of places around the world. He
deeply loves the Lord loves young people. And he told
(02:54):
me he's like, I'm not the Bible answer man, but
I'm here to encourage and so it's a great privilege.
He'll be sharing with us this morning and then tomorrow
morning also, and so listen carefully to what he says.
Write down a couple of things. Maybe there's one thing
the Lord speaks to your life that's great, just one thing,
and then in your discussion groups you can continue talking
(03:14):
further on those things. And again, always have the question, Lord,
what are you speaking to me? And what do I
need to put into my life? Don't leave it here,
push it down to your heart and push it down
to some decision, something you want to pray about, something
that you want to apply to your life.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So David, please come, good morning. Have you ever felt
like the most underqualified person in the room. That's me.
(03:53):
Bishop Danny gave most of my speech, so this is
going to be easy. I want to talk you about
self doubt, and being set apart. Bishop Danny and I'd
have lived parallel lives in a lot of ways, I
feel like, and I'll get to that, but I'd like
to begin and maybe you could join me the same
way I start every single day by making the sign
(04:16):
of the Cross. If you don't already carry this with
you and you remember nothing more that I say today,
take the sign of the Cross with you. It's a
practice that I carry with me, Like I said, before
my feet hit the ground, every single day I wake
up and I make the sign of the Cross. It
(04:40):
serves as an anchor and a compass in my life.
An anchor and that it grounds me in reality and
a compass, and that it guides me to eternity. That
no matter what I'm going through, crisis with me and
I'm carrying that cross, and I usually accompany it with
a prayer role. Another thing, when I was going through
(05:01):
this book, I was really happy to see that there's
a large section dedicated to a prayer rule. And prayer
has always been something difficult for me, and developing a
prayer rule that has made it much easier. It's something
that I cling to no matter what, and so mine
and I'll say it to you, and I'd like at
(05:23):
the end for everyone to kind of go through it
with me. It's glory to you God in all things.
So no matter what I'm going through, glory to you
God in all things. It's very similar to the Eastern
concept of this too shall pass no matter what you're
(05:43):
going through, whether it's high, whether you're in the mountaintop
or in the valley, this too shall pass, and glory
to God in all things. When you're at the mountaintop,
glory to God, he brought you there. When you're in
the valley, glory to God. He's going to get you
through it. And I usually add at the end, thank
(06:04):
you for humbling me, your servant. So the full prayer
rule is glory to you God in all things. Thank
you for humbling me, your servant. What that does is
every single thing, like I said, the peaks in the valleys,
I know who's with me, and I know who got
(06:26):
me there. So if I'm at the top, it's like
glory to you God. But there's a temptation to slip
into pride. I did this. Now, thank you for humbling me,
your servant, So bring yourself down. Same time in the valley.
Glory to you God. I have something to learn from
this moment. What are you trying to teach me through
(06:47):
this pain, this suffering, this job moment? Well, I don't know,
but may it glorify you in the end. So before
we begin, if everybody could stand and go through this
with me, I would love it. And if you don't
remember anything else that I say today, I pray that
(07:08):
you carry this cross with you. So the name of
the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Glory to you
God in all things. Thank you for humbling me, your servant. Amen.
All right, Well know I have to do it again.
(07:31):
No one heard me? Where were you on that? Okay,
Well this is a perfect segue because this is not
my forte. As Bishop Danny said, this is very much
a full circle moment for me. I grew up the
son of Hank Canigraph, famously known as the Bible answer Man,
(07:56):
and so I grew up in the back of auditoriums
churches around the world listening to my dad speak very
much like my son Grace, Grace, where are you is
he in here? Everybody find Grace and give him a
little clap. He's here supporting me. And it's just such
(08:23):
a blessing to be here with him, because as I
watch him run around the church, most of you saw
him dancing through the candles last night, I see myself
and what a trip it's been. Yeah. I grew up
in a Christian home, the son of the Bible answer Man.
(08:44):
After every speaking engagement, people would come up to me
and say, are you going to be the next Bible
answer Man? And at no point in my life did
I ever want that, Including today, I've never wanted to
follow in my father's footsteps. But even as I say that,
(09:06):
it feels like a little bit of a lie. And
there's a double on tundra there that at this point
in my life, all that I want to do is
follow in my heavenly father's footsteps, and man plans God laughs.
(09:28):
That's following my earthly father's footsteps. And I know that
it will look a little bit different, but God will
use me, I hope. So any has I was telling
somebody this morning, I can't believe that I'm here. Ten
years ago, if you told me that I'd be speaking
(09:51):
in a church with my five year old son, I
would not have believed you. I wasn't married, I was
barely a Christian nominally. Oh yeah, sorry, you guys can
sit down. I was a very nominal Christian and bit
(10:11):
by bit God has turned my life around into his glory.
And going back to the opening question, have you ever
felt like the most underqualified person in the room? Time
and time again, I find myself in that situation. As
Bishop Danny said, I've traveled with my father around the world,
(10:33):
and I've been in front of high ranking government officials,
famous people, people with multiple PhDs, and I'll find myself
sitting at tables and They'll say, they'll point something out
that I say me. You know, just a couple of
months ago, we were across the way sitting at a
big boardroom table, people multiple PhDs, working on a pretty
(10:59):
big important project. And I'm sitting there like what am
I doing here? And feeling extremely insecure about my place
at that table on in the world. And I'll never
forget walking out going to the bathroom, and one of
(11:20):
the professors is basically saying the same thing. He's looking
at me, David, I just I don't know why I'm here.
It doesn't make any sense. And I look at him.
You you have multiple PhDs, you have so much to offer.
(11:42):
If you feel that way, think about how I feel.
And he looked me in the eyes he said, David,
I know exactly why you're here. You often do not
apply to do the work of the Lord. He appoints you,
he sets you apart. He started telling me, think about
the apostles. Were they the best and the brightest. No,
(12:05):
they're humble fisherman, tax collector, imperfect people. And the Lord
said follow me, and they did. They answered the call. So,
wherever you're at, if you're feeling that insecurity, that self doubt,
(12:28):
I just want to encourage you that when God calls you,
he equips you. Ye. Going back to the previous statement,
you know, my dad is the Bible answer man. If
he was here, you'd have the opportunity to ask him
all kinds of questions. And I am not here with
the answers. I'm here because I've lived in that same
(12:50):
tension that you might be feeling, and I'm experiencing that
same thing, and I'm just here to encourage you to
answer the call of the Lord in your life, matter
matter what it is, and a lot of the time
it comes with self doubt. So I have a question
for you, guys, and This isn't rhetorical. I'm genuinely asking
(13:11):
it because i'd like to see what you think. Is
it ever permissible for a Christian to tell someone to
go to hell? It's funny because I've been doing it
all morning. All morning, as I've prepared to come up
(13:31):
here and speak with you, I've battled self doubt, I've
battled spiritual warfare. You're not good enough, You're gonna screw
it up. You have nothing to offer these people, You're
gonna start speaking, and after five minutes have nothing left
to say. And when I feel that, what do I do?
(13:58):
That is not the will of the Lord. That is
not the voice of the Lord. That is the voice
of the devil and his demons. Because the closer you
try and get to Christ, the harder he's going to
work to try and pull you away. So a couple
months ago, I was reading something and it said, when
(14:20):
you start feeling that anxiety, call upon the Lord and
tell his demons to go where they belong, go to Hell.
It messes with your head a little bit, because I
saw a lot of your faces like net. No, of course,
it is never permissible to tell another human being made
(14:41):
in the imago day to go to Hell. But the
devil and his demons that's where they belong. So yes,
tell them to go to Hell. I'd encourage you to
practice that. It's a weird thing to encourage someone to do.
I'm giving you a prayer rule, and I'm telling you
to tell people to go to help. Tell those demons
go to Hell, and then continue carrying your cross. I'd
(15:06):
like to read the story of the Garriscene demoniac just
to drive that home, because I find that imagery to
be so powerful. Jesus and his disciples came to the
region of the Garriscenes. A man possessed by demons living
among the tombs ran to Jesus. No one could restrain him,
(15:28):
not even with chains. The demons begged Jesus, don't send
us away. Jesus commanded them to leave, sending them in
to Erna. Jesus asked, what is your name? They replied, Legion,
for we are many. Jesus commanded them to leave, sending
(15:50):
them into a herd of pigs, which rushed into the
sea and drowned. Picture that in your mind, and the
first time that I read that as an adult, what
imagery casting out demons into a herd of pigs, and
they couldn't hand. They just ran into the sea and drowned.
The man was freed, sitting calmly, clothed and in his
(16:14):
right mind. The people were amazed, and the man went
out proclaiming what Jesus had done. Do that to those doubts,
Tell them to go to hell. Now what do you
do after that? Well, how do you answer the call
of the Lord? This is particularly prescient for you, all
(16:39):
the young adults in this room, who are living in
a world that is so different. I'm only depending on
how old you are, ten years older than you. Yeah,
I'm thirty nine. But the world that I grew up
in is so different from the world that you're living in.
And there's such a temptation to chase fame and virality
(17:03):
and some sort of a platform because it's accessible to
you in a way that it never was for us.
And I would to encourage you to ignore the algorithm,
to be present, to live local lives, to be the
hands and feet of Christ. Yep, there's a saint. My
(17:25):
wife's patron. Saint is Mother Marie of Paris, and I
was going to speak about her a little bit this morning.
And then I as I was walking here, started thinking, well,
there are Mother Marias of Paris all over the world,
and Gospel for Asia works with them. They're unhurralded heroes.
(17:48):
When we were watching the videos last night, I'm seeing
them reminds me of the C. S. Lewis quote the
most famous person in heaven is a little old lay
that nobody's ever heard of, who is doing his will quietly,
not loudly. Don't search for a platform. If God gives
(18:10):
it to you, God will bless it. But be the
hands and feet of Christ, and let your faith flow
out of your fingertips. Be present where you are, because
no matter where you are, there you are. It's the
only place you can be so and it can be overwhelming,
(18:31):
but don't be overwhelmed. That's often how I feel when
I look at the world and everything that needs to
be done, and all of the people who are in pain,
who are suffering. I think, and it's from the Talmud,
but all truth is God's truth. You are not obligated
(18:53):
to complete the work, but neither are you free to
abandon it. You don't have to save the world. You
just have to say yes to your corner of it.
So wherever you are, you can do the will of
the Lord. And in an age of radical individualism, remember
(19:14):
that you're not the main character of the story. You're
a humble servant of the Lord, and that's a beautiful thing.
So just pray for his will and your life and
move forward in faith, because there's no safer place than
a leap of faith, especially if the Lord's with you.
(19:35):
Who can be against you? Now back to my amazement
at being here. It still doesn't make sense to me.
Before I walked up here, I was telling somebody that
I took a long, long, long walk in the wilderness.
(20:00):
I grew up in churches with the Christian family, and
I knew the right way to live, and I ignored it.
I lived according to a libertine ethic. Does anybody know
(20:21):
what a libertine ethic is. It's basically no ethic. So
a libertine lives as if morals don't exist. And I
did so in a very cognitively dissonant way. I was, Oh,
you know, I'm an agnostic Christian. I don't really know
(20:44):
what's going on, but it doesn't really matter either, And
I'll never forget riding on the subway in New York City,
hanging there, trying not to fall over and thinking, what
(21:07):
have I become? How did I get here? I'm telling
you that now. I'm thinking that then, because I had
always kind of imagined at this time and the wilderness
as a prodigal son adventure, kind of like when Amish
(21:30):
people go away into the world for a year or
two and decide if they want to live in it
or not. And if I remember correctly, most Amish people
don't stay in the world, and glory to God in
all things, neither did I. I was standing there and
(21:54):
it wasn't It takes a long time for a ship
to turn around. That was not a come to you
ju this moment. That was a leave the devil moment.
I don't know where I want to go, but I
know that there's no limit to the outrageousness of an
untethered existence, of a life that isn't anchored in Christ.
(22:16):
I can tell you that from personal experience. And sometimes
it feels good for a moment, but it does not last.
And I cannot tell you the peace that I feel
being here with my five and a half year old son, Grace.
And there's a reason that I named a boy Grace
(22:38):
because I don't deserve him and I know that. And
I have another son named Pax, and Pax means peace,
and I feel that piece with those two boys. Every day,
like I said, dozens, if not hundreds of times a day,
(23:01):
I make the sign of the Cross as a sign
of gratitude that I do not deserve any of this,
and I feel that peace. And there's a famous saying
of Saint Seraphim of Sarahov. Acquire a spirit of peace,
and thousands around you will be saved. You don't have
(23:26):
to be loud, You don't need a big platform to
change the world. You just need to carry your cross,
keep Christ close to you. He will be your anchor
and your compass, and he will guide you into eternity.
Now I could say more, but I think I'm gonna
(23:49):
in there. So if everyone would stand and make the
sign of the Cross with me again, like I said,
if there's nothing else that you carry with you, take
the sign the cross and develop a prayer. Rule. All right, So,
in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, Glory to you God in all things. Thank
(24:11):
you for humbling me, your servant. Thank you, guys, so
much for spending some time with you this morning. I
don't know how much time I have, But if I've
got more time, and anybody wants to ask questions or
talk about anything before you go into small groups, let's
do it. Is it ever okay to tell someone to
(24:32):
go to hell? Did the answer change? It still feels naughty?
All right? Does anybody have any questions for me? You're
(24:53):
with me the whole time. I appreciate that. Besides this ending,
I'm looking forward to the future. I said it. At
a certain point, when God calls you, he equips you.
And when I've sat in those rooms not understanding why
(25:18):
I'm there, it's not a logical question, because I know
exactly why I'm there. Bishop Danny knows why he was
invited to certain tables because of his father. I'm there
because of my father. But it doesn't end there, and
(25:38):
time after time, I'll talk about this a little bit tomorrow.
You think that you can't answer the call, you don't
have time, too busy, or you feel inept, You feel
like what do I have to offer? And when the
(26:00):
Lord calls you, he equips you, and you find, even
in a room full of PhDs, you have something to offer,
and I've found that in my own life. And so
what do I look forward to the most. It's a
future with Christ, because the past without him, there was
(26:22):
no peace, there was no grace, anybody else, several things.
So the question was what happened to bring you back?
A multifaceted So the first thing was that moment where
(26:44):
I remember, like I said, I even remember, I wasn't sitting.
I was standing holding that thing on the subway, thinking, yeah,
maybe off the cut. An analogy would be it's like
getting caught in a riptide. You think, oh, I'm only
(27:06):
going to swim this far, but I'll go back, and
at a certain point you start getting carried further and
further away and you think I can't get back, and
then you start getting scared. And without getting into the
(27:26):
specifics of the type of life that I was living,
it was completely absent of Christ, at least of his will.
His presence was there. He never left me, and thank
God for that. I always kept him at arm's lengths,
(27:46):
like once I'm done. But then I started to feel
it slip away, and that is a scary place to be.
And like I said, there's the freezing came into my
head and I thought this doesn't make any sense at
the time, but the idea that there's no limit to
(28:08):
the outrageousness of an untethered existence. That no matter what
I was doing, the crutch was always well, not do
it for the story. This will be funny, this will
be interesting. Your body's not a temple, it's a roller coaster,
the Anthony Bourdain line. You know, do whatever I want.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
And.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
It's a scary place. So that's the initial That was
when the boat started to kind of turn around, but
I was still extremely nominal. I started going to back
to church. Actually a Pentecostal church brought me back into
the fold, and I thank God for that. There's one
thing I appreciate about Pentecostals, it's their belief in the
(28:55):
Holy Spirit. So amen. And slowly I started going to
an Anglican church, and then when my father joined the
Orthodox Church, that is when I officially came back into
the fold. He often likes to quote me as saying
(29:19):
that if he didn't join the Orthodox Church, I don't
think I'd be in a church. And I don't say
that to denigrate any other churches. It's just my personal
experience of finding a foundation of faith that didn't fall
from the sky, that's rooted an Apostolic tradition that brought
(29:43):
me a lot of peace. Although it's often called the
ancient faith, when my wife and I officially joined the
Orthodox Church, I was it was extremely important to me
that we chose modern saints as our patron saints, because
(30:06):
although it's the ancient faith, it's living, it's here today,
and so I have with me Saint Porphyrios. If you're
not familiar with Saint Porfririos, you're gonna love him. Look
him up, start googling it. He's eminently quotable in all
the right ways. And my wife's patron saint was Mother
(30:28):
Marie of Paris Is and she died during World War Two.
She lived that local life that I am encouraging you
to live. She fed the hungry, she clothed the poor,
she dealt with the homeless. And one of the things
(30:50):
that I love about her is she had a past.
If I remember correctly, and this might be in my mind,
but I don't think it is. She was part of
a plot to kill Trotsky. That's my kind of saint,
who is and her former life was part of a
plot to kill a political leader, and she smoked. And
(31:16):
when they said, we want you to become a nun,
she said, I will become a nun, but I will
not live in a monastery. I will live among the people,
and I will work among the people. She really cared
about being those hands and feet of Christ to have
her faith flow out of her fingertips. If it sounds
like I'm repeating myself, it's because that's what I do
(31:38):
every day. It's the reason that it's so important to me.
The first thing that I said and the last thing
that I said is this prayer rule, because that has
changed my life. It centers you in everything. It's gravity
grounds you in reality. And that's something that you're going
to need more and more with every passing day as
(31:59):
we reality is obscured, whether it's because of AI or
postmodern thought, knowing what reality is is so hard to discern.
And so once again, not here is the Bible answer
man with answers for you. I'm just here to encourage
(32:21):
you to call on the Lord that he'll equip you
with discernment. And one of the quickest ways to discern
is just centering yourself in Christ. No matter what you're doing,
so I think that was your question. The question was
could you elaborate on what it means to carry a
(32:42):
spirit of peace with you? The irony is, I don't
think that I have a spirit of peace completely, So
what does it mean? Keep trying, keep trying. Another one
of my favorite perspectives that the Orthodox Church has offered
(33:07):
me is that I am in progress. That I did
not pray a prayer and there I'm done, that I've
been saved and being saved, and I will be saved.
But that's my hope because I've lived that life and
I know that just like that, if I don't keep
(33:28):
pushing forward, working on myself, committing myself to those daily disciplines,
that you can fall off the spiritual wagon very easily.
So what does it mean to carry a spirit of peace?
I hope that I can tell you someday anybody else, Oh,
(33:49):
there I go. A patron saint is when you join
the church, you choose a patron saint or it's chosen
for you. So in a lot of ways, I find
it somewhat ironic that I diverted from my namesake David,
(34:14):
Because if you're familiar with the story of David. It
mirrors a lot of my own. God uses broken vessels.
Talking to somebody earlier about Peter and Paul, I mean Paul,
God used Paul, persecuted Christians, Peter. Imagery is important in
my life. That's why I wanted to read the Garrisone
(34:38):
Demoniac to get that image in your mind, the same
thing when the cock crows three times, you will deny me.
That imagery terrifies me because I know that I'm that
close to denying Christ. Those who walked with him denied him,
and yet what did he do? They're the pillars of
(35:01):
the church. So a patron saint is somebody that if
it's not chosen for you, and if it's chosen for you,
then you hold it with you and you carry it
as your name. I chose Saint Porphyrius as my patron saint.
I'm maniacal about everything that I do. If I'm buying
(35:22):
a mattress, I research every mattress that's out on the
market because I want the best mattress. Imagine choosing your
patron saint. No pressure, right, And I was going over
and over and over, and when I read the story
(35:43):
of how Saint Porphyrios died. It floored me. I was
laying awake in bed at two in the morning. I
couldn't sleep. I'm googling on my phone different saints. And
he knew that he was going to die, and he
asked a couple of people were with him to go
up to the chapel and pray with him, and he
(36:04):
died praying the Lord's high priestly prayer that they may
all be one, so that the world may know you.
So once again, I don't know who in this room
or world is Orthodox. And of course I love my church,
(36:24):
but there's a saying that we could say with the churches,
we can't say where it is not. So I don't
believe that if you're not Orthodox, you're not in the church.
And that high priestly prayer of the Lord is so
important to me that when I read that he died
praying it, that's my man, and everything out after that
(36:45):
has just been pure blessings. So does that answer what
a patron saint is a little bit? That's exactly it.
And so I've often heard it said by skeptics of saints.
Trust me, I sat in that seat, and half the
time I'm still halfway on it because I don't understand it,
(37:09):
but I move forward in faith. And the best way
that I've come to understand the saints, because the question
that inevitably comes up is well, why do you need
somebody to intercede for you in Christ? Why not just
go straight to the source. Well, there's a couple ways
to look at that. Does anybody here ever ask somebody
(37:32):
to pray for them? Of course, why don't you just
go straight to the source, because we're saved in communion.
We're saved together. More succinctly, when my family was exploring
the church, my sister asked the priest, why do you
(37:53):
pray to dead people? And he just laughed and said,
there are no dead Christians. We're surrounded by that great
cloud of witnesses. Why would we not ask them to
pray for us, just the same way that I asked
my wife or Bishop Danny. And we're saved in communion.
(38:15):
And similarly, it's like, of course we learn from Christ.
All of the saints attain sainthood by trying to emulate Christ.
But this is particularly important for me is in my
current journey, and my dad will say, you got to
(38:36):
step up, you got to be like me, and I'll
sit there and think I can't be like you. Now.
He's way too far ahead from me. And I've heard
it said that when you try and look for a mentor,
try and find somebody who's a couple steps ahead of you,
not ten steps, two or three. That's an attainable goal.
(38:58):
And so I look at the saints as people who
have not gotten to the finish line, but they're further
along the mountain than I am, and they can help
me reach towards the ultimate goal, which is theosis union
with Christ. And that's our entire purpose in life, is
(39:19):
to grow closer to Christ. Once again, going back to
the prayer rule, it centers you. I am not my
own I'm not the main character the story Free will
is real. Teach me to deny my will and seek
your will. So for me, that's the benefit of a
(39:40):
patron saint. It's not somebody that you worship. You rightly
venerate it the same way that I You will see it,
if you've not already seen it, you will see it
over the next twenty four hours that I'm here or
however long. I love my son, and it's self evident
to end. Anybody who sees it, and it's the same thing.
(40:03):
You know. I love my patron Saint because he loved
the Lord and he's teaching me how to get closer
to him. So patron Saints, anybody else come on something fun.
(40:24):
The question is, do I know if my father prayed
for me while I was falling away inevitably yes, whether
it was a specific prayer, because I think this is
something that Bishop Danny failed to mention. I don't even
know what the size of my family is at this point.
They keep adding, I grew up one of eight, now
(40:48):
one of twelve, thirteen. My parents are in the process
of adopting a thirteenth. So hard to keep track of everybody,
especially one of the older I'm the oldest boy, the
third oldest. I'm not even sure to what degree he knew,
how far he knew. I'd kind of digested a more
(41:11):
liberal worldview. And it's an interesting place to be because
the way that I always phrase it is that I
was too good for the truly bad kids, but too
bad for the good kids. I was somewhere in between,
and that can be a dangerous place to be as well,
(41:31):
because you think, well, I'm not doing that you like
I'm only a little bad and it can snowball like
the proverbial snowball, But I know that knowing my father,
I know that he prayed for me because he prays
for all of his children. And I named my second
(41:55):
son Pak Johannes because my grandfather's name was Johannes, and
he emigrated from the Netherlands to Canada and then the
United States to be a pastor, and he prayed for
all of his children that they would remain in the faith.
(42:16):
And he came from the Netherlands, which is one of
the most liberal countries on earth, and none of my
father's cousins or uncles are in the faith, and every
single one of my grandfather's children and then subsequently their
children are strong Christians. And that is such a testament
(42:40):
to prayer and to setting that example. It's important to
remember that while I was taking a walk in the wilderness,
I did say I kind of saw it as a
prodigal son endeavor. So I knew on some level I
shouldn't be doing this and I'll probably come back someday.
(43:04):
But the reason that I knew that is because I
grew up with such a strong Christian family and imbibed
everything by osmosis, so that it was never that far
from me. It was always a well that I could
kind of pull from at some point, I think so.
So the question was what drew me back to Jesus
(43:27):
Am I ever attempted to leave again? And what keeps
me grounded? I think the answer to all three questions
is the Church. What brought me back into a life
of Christ is the Church and the church being a
(43:50):
place grounded in the tradition and the sacraments and truth.
And so the way that I describe it, as I've
gotten more and more I came into the church, and
then now I'm in a leadership role in the church,
so I spend even more time in the church. My
children during Holy Week leading up to Easter spent twenty
(44:11):
hours in church. So if you're not familiar with the
Orthodox Church, lots of services and very long. And so
somebody said, I think yesterday, oh we've got a service
for an hour and then forty five minutes. You might
not want to bring grace thought. An hour and forty
five minutes. That's a walk in the park for this boy.
That's shorter than a Sunday morning for us. A lot
(44:32):
of the time, so being able to go into the
church very similar to this morning. When I walked into
the church this morning, you asked the question, how do
you acquire a spirit of peace? And what does that
feel like? It feels like being here this morning when
you walk in and you see all the surrounded by
(44:53):
this great cloud of witnesses, all of these saints who've
come before us, the icon of Christ, everyone in there,
that one when you're walking on the right. That gives
me peace. If I could stand in front of that
icon all day, yep, that's what, once again, why I
constantly do this. It brings me peace. It anchors me
(45:15):
so being in the church because there is this temptation
in our modern individualistic, atomized world to think about it
as Jesus in my Bible, me and Jesus. And while
that's true, it's not singularly true. Yes, you and Jesus
(45:35):
and your Bible are important, but nobody is saved in isolation.
We're saved in communion. The Church is a reality. And
so that's what brought me close to Christ. That's what
keeps me from falling away, because if ever I might
(45:56):
start slipping, I have so many friends in the church,
spiritual father, who I go to, who I confess, not
as a laundry list of things that I've done right,
but as a hey, here are the things that I'm
doing and let's course correct. The church is not a
courtroom that's here to judge sinners. It's a hospital to
(46:17):
save us, to give us health. And so that's that's
what keeps me there because you know, if you've ever
gotten in shape after being out of shape, oh my goodness,
I was just fat. Like now, I feel so good.
I didn't think I could feel this good again. And
once you start feeling that way, that's all you want.
(46:37):
I don't want to get fat again. I've been fat.
Being fat is not fun, you know. So that's the
life and the church, and it's a life of continual growth,
and I always think about it. I don't know, have
you guys grown up playing tag with a home base?
What happens? When you touch home base, you're safe, No
(47:00):
one can get you there. When I step into the church,
that's how I feel, literally touching the walls, because we
have an incarnational faith. It's not just up here, it's physical.
Once again, why I constantly make the Sign of the Cross,
why I grab the cross, why I hold my fingers
(47:21):
a certain way to anchor me in Christ. It's incarnational.
So I literally touch the walls of the church and
I thank God. I pray prayers of gratitude that I'm here,
that He saved me, and thank God I'm not leaving.
So but that's why you continually pray, because I say that,
(47:41):
and all it takes is one slip, one challenge that
you think is too big for God, and you start
wandering away again. That my cue, anybody, that's my cue,
the grim Reaper over here. Thank you all very much.
(48:01):
Glory to God and all things
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