The Mapp
Life is a journey, and every journey needs a guide—or at least a good story. Welcome to The Mapp, hosted by Michael Pursley, where we navigate the messy, beautiful business of being human. The podcast's name is a nod to both Michael A. Pursley Podcast and the "maps of meaning" that help us find our way in life.
Born during the stillness of the COVID-19 lockdowns, The Mapp emerged from Michael’s hunger for understanding. Inspired by long-form conversations that spark insights and refine ideas, Michael dives into deep, authentic dialogues with curiosity and humor. From life’s profound mysteries to its absurdities, nothing is off-limits.
Each episode unearths the treasure of human stories: wisdom, laughter, and moments of profound connection.
At its core, The Mapp is about the human story. It’s a place where problems shrink, purpose grows, and laughter and revelation often arrive hand in hand. For Michael, the podcast is more than a platform—it’s a mission. It’s an effort to create a space where wisdom is shared, ideas are tested, and hearts are healed. Whether through a profound insight or an unexpected laugh, Michael hopes listeners walk away from The Mapp with a sense that they, too, are part of a bigger story—one that is still being written and, in the words of another great storyteller, echoes through eternity.
The Mapp
The Soul’s Journey Through Loss: A Conversation with Jim Kelly
What does it mean to lose the people you love most—and to find meaning in the aftermath? This episode is a raw and reflective conversation with my long-time mentor and a spiritual father, Jim Kelly. Jim, a retired United Methodist minister who has walked alongside me for years, joins me to explore the depths of grief, faith, and the intricate dance between suffering and transformation.
Our dialogue is unflinching and deeply human. Together, we navigate the shadowy waters of loss—the kind that strips away certainty and forces you to confront your own soul. With the recent passing of my brother and Jim’s reflections on losing his mother, we delve into what it means to face life’s inevitable pain not with avoidance, but with courage.
This is a conversation about the architecture of the soul. We unpack the mysterious, almost alchemical power of prayer—not as a tool to escape suffering but as a means of embracing it. We examine forgiveness, not as a moral checkbox, but as an act of liberation for both the forgiver and the forgiven. We explore the sacred tension between the individual and the collective, asking how our personal faith journeys intersect with the broader call to build authentic, healing communities.
Jim’s wisdom reminds us that faith isn’t a linear path; it’s a spiral staircase, drawing us deeper into mystery with every step. And while the church as an institution may falter, the power of genuine relationships—rooted in love and shared struggle—remains unshakable.
This episode isn’t just a conversation; it’s an invitation to wrestle with life’s great paradoxes: how loss can illuminate purpose, how brokenness can lead to wholeness, and how the darkest nights of the soul often reveal the brightest truths. If you’ve ever searched for meaning in the chaos or wondered how to transform suffering into growth, this journey is for you.
Thank you for joining The Mapp. If this resonates with you, don’t forget to subscribe and share it with others who might find it meaningful. Subscribe, leave review, and follow us on social media to stay updated and join our community of explorers. Together we navigate life’s pathways.
Hello and welcome to the Map. Today I'm honored to have a very special guest, someone near and dear to my heart. He's a long-term mentor and a former pastor of mine. His name is James Keller. He goes by Jim.
Speaker 1:Jim has been, to say the least, an influence in my life since we first met back in 2008.
Speaker 1:He is a retired United Methodist minister but who is actively engaging in ministry.
Speaker 1:He has a master's degree in divinity focused on apocalyptic literature, and has a myriad of organizations and ministries that he's been involved with over the years Things like Kairos, prison Ministry, emmaus Walks, things of that nature.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I admire most about Jim is his approach to the questions that I've had about faith, and I would come to him with kind of big existential questions, and he never just handed me some answer or tried to impose his own views on me or doctrinal ideas.
Speaker 1:Instead, he would lay out several different perspectives and he'd say this isn't about what I think or about what a group thinks, but it's really about what God wants you to discover, and he was always encouraging me to seek my own relationship with Scripture and with God, which really had a lasting impact on me in terms of how I would be led by other people and what I would look for in mentorship. And in this episode we dive into some really meaningful conversations, talking about loss of my brother and his mother, about our faith and about growth, and we touch on the weight of just relationships and responsibilities. We carry within that and reflect on Jim being in his late 60s and still learning, still wrestling and sometimes shaking his fist at God, and I think our conversation was a powerful reminder that faith is a journey without a final destination and that I hope it speaks to anyone navigating some hardships and hard questions in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, likewise it's been a while. I wanted to visit you when I came up to west virginia the last time, but it was just hectic with my.
Speaker 2:my brother passed and yeah, uh was trying to to navigate you know, I know your heart was broken and and uh prayed for you.
Speaker 1:I hope, uh, hope you're doing better yeah, I mean it was mean, it was just tough, completely unexpected. He was only 41, and we were over in Europe at the time. So my other brother messaged me the day that we were going to leave, at like 4 in the morning. So I just kind of had to like shut my brain off and go into survival mode because we were traveling with two small kids. So just getting back here, and then there's just a bunch of stuff that happened. We got back, or our fridge it died at some point when we left and all that kind of like every day life stuff was going on so hard.
Speaker 1:Now because you grew up in West virginia and the bible belt and people always say you know you're not promised tomorrow and you know that, you realize that. But then when somebody you care about's gone, you realize okay, that's it, like no more memories, no more experiences, that that's it. You have to get right with that and I think that's the toughest part. Don't really torture myself with like thoughts of, oh, we should have spent more time or done this. It's just like no one can ever anticipate. But just comes in waves for like a little bit of time I'll be busy with work and kids, stuff. I don't think about it. Then some some song will come on or something will happen and then I'll feel like crying like a little kid.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's, that's part of the deal, man. Yeah, that's how.
Speaker 1:That's how god made you and I'm sorry about your mom passing as well. I know that had been tough on you guys. You spend like tons of time together.
Speaker 2:Now in the last years she's living with you yeah, it's hard, yeah, it uh brings mortality to your face-to-face. I mean it really hurts and makes you reevaluate everything you do.
Speaker 1:That's pretty much how I felt. There were things that what am I doing? And then I have X amount of time on the earth and all those feelings come up. For sure, when I thought about people to talk to, I thought about you specifically, just because time on the earth and, like you know, all those, all those feelings come up and, for sure, when I thought about people to talk to, I thought about you specifically just because of uh, you were kind of at the beginning of my process, uh, in a lot of ways, and you were a godsend for me.
Speaker 1:Uh, I remember, I remember when I went to St Paul's United Methodist Church, so I went there and so I grew up in a Methodist church, but it's like a small country Methodist church in the middle of nowhere. You know, 40-ish people, everybody's older. There's really like only two families with kids, like outside of me. So I had, like you know, two, two boys, three boys my age, and then that was really it. There was not like a lot of other other kids there and uh, you know, my that was, that was my introduction to christianity, that was my introduction. Guys, a small country met this church, really lovely people there. They, they, they were. They were nice, but spiritually, um, it was just a graveyard. I mean like they were talking about having a personal relationship with jesus is the most important decision you could ever make in your life, but then I never saw that actually uh, demonstrated. I never saw that actually walked out in the sense of what relationship with god seemingly looked like from the perspective of a 10 year old.
Speaker 1:Was you, you? You, you memorize this book, you do the holy dues, you don't do the holy don'ts. You sing songs about God, you talk about God, you close your eyes and you complain about how bad the world is, things that you want and thanking for things you have, and you wait to die, to go to heaven, or everyone was hoping that Jesus came back and I was like man, I want to live my life. What do you mean? Like I don't want to get sucked up into heaven. I haven't even I'm fresh in the pond here. So I'm like, if you're 80 years old and you've lived, your life has kind of ran its course and from your perspective, you're like, I'm kind of done with this world. I think you're nihilistic. I think it's getting worse. You're ready to make your exit. Okay, that makes sense that you want to go to some another dimension and be with like a place with no pain, no stress. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:But for me it was not making too much sense and it was like I remember there's a guy, he's 84 years old, his name was bernard and he he would. He was just a character, he had a hearing aid, um, that always was like this high pitch noise is going on because he's trying to adjust it. He never could hear anything, but he didn't feel the problem to interrupt the sermon. He would full-on interrupt. Sir, what did you say? Like he was interrupted.
Speaker 1:And and then when we would sing these hymns, these, you know these, we had a hymn book so we'd only sing like hymns and for worship. I mean, he was just in his own world, like he was like worshiping god. But he was just like in his own world, like he was not with us. We're not singing together. You know some of those hymns. There's like two parts that you can sing. He would be singing the third part. He was with anybody.
Speaker 1:But anyways, that guy, he said something that like just it felt like someone hit me in the face with a pound of bricks. He was there in church and he said I'm ready to go meet Jesus. And I don't know exactly how he meant it exactly. You know, obviously I'm an adult now but as a kid I'm like holy smokes. This guy's 84. He's been a Christian his whole life. He's never met Jesus, but they're telling me having a relationship with Jesus is the most important thing.
Speaker 1:What are you guys doing here? Like what's going on? And we had to play Bible trivia in Sunday school so we had to memorize all these scriptures, right? So in the scriptures I'm memorizing, jesus is doing crazy stuff, like he's healing people, he's interacting with people, he's moved with compassion, where his guts are wrenched, and he's doing crazy countercultural things. And I'm like what is going on? Is the Bible God's greatest hits? That happened 2000 years ago. We just live vicariously through all these people and trust blindly that all this stuff happened and then when we you know we die, we go to heaven. Or is this? Is this bunk? Is this just like a fairy tale? Because you know, growing up where, where I grew up, and I don't know how it was when, when you were younger.
Speaker 1:But you know, santa claus was a thing, the easter bunny was a thing. Um, so there's these narratives that adults impose on children. And I mean you, look at santa claus, do good things, don't do bad things, and if you, at the end of the year, you get a reward. And so I was kind of coming into this conclusion. Jesus is like the ultimate Santa Claus, because you only know when you die. Because when you went with Santa Claus, at some point the adults let you in on the secret. The little kids are there. They're winking at you, santa Claus. You're like what do you mean? Why are you winking at me? Is Santa Claus not real? Like what are you doing at me? The santa claus not real. Like what are you doing? And you get let in on this thing. You're like my whole life's a lie, my whole childhood's a lie. So that's kind of how I like looked at it was like okay, this is the ultimate santa claus.
Speaker 1:You guys perpetuate it and and like jesus is is the ultimate comfort blanket for people to make them comfortable with the idea of dying, and it's the ultimate control for younger people to modify behavior. Basically. And then the rapture. The rapture is a way to like also. You know, it's this wild card of like well, you think you have time, you think you have like 80 years, you can sow your wild oats, but it could happen like that. Then you're left behind, you know.
Speaker 1:So I was like this is a big, big mind game, that's that's going on. Kind of is what I was was thinking about, um, but also I was very like I'm I would say I'm probably what people consider a little bit on the autism spectrum in the sense of like I just go narrow and deep on stuff, become obsessive and and and so it sure I can't I can't imagine you doing any of that well, so watching you live is a roller coaster man well, I I, looking back, I felt like, uh, very much like martin luther, uh, when, when, when he would describe this, this terror of judgment, in the sense of he would lay in bed as night, repenting, repenting, repenting, repenting, um, not wanting to go to hell, having zero revelation of grace.
Speaker 1:And that was another component of this, was um, of this was it was a legalistic kind of presentation of God. It was really just fear of punishment. At the end of the day, it was fear of going to hell, it was fear of these things. And my dad and me had a conversation in the car and he grew up kind of fundamentalist um background and I was maybe like 11, and so we're going to this church. There's a lot of stuff about end times left behind, films, revelation, you know, focused. But anyways, I asked my god, my dad, one day. I was like you know, if I, if I'm a christian, I I believe, you know, jesus died, he resurrected from the dead. I, I, you know, I'm asking forgiveness for my sins, I'm trying to live like a good life. But let's say, hypothetically, I tell a lie, all right, I do some sin and I don't ask forgiveness for it, and then I die. What happens, my dad says well, you go to hell because jesus said you have to be perfect, like your father in heaven is perfect. So his definition of perfect was not complete in the sense of coming into unity with the trinity. His definition of perfect was performance oriented, of like making no mistakes. So I was like I think you want to say 11 or 12, I I just went home pretty deflated some. Some weeks passed and then I came to this conclusion, jim, I thought I'm not entirely sure that this is all real, because nobody here there's no miracles, nobody here seems to be able to hear God, which everybody throughout the Bible could hear God, everybody throughout the Bible that we have an account of has some kind of interaction. There's mysticism happening throughout Scripture. I don't see it here, um, so I'm not clear on if this is real or not, but even if it is real, they the expectation on my life is impossible, like basically, I'm gonna try this as hard as I can, I'm gonna go to hell. That was the realization that. So I just at that point in my life I was like I'm just going to live life exactly the way I want and go to hell, versus like be miserable in this boring stuff and go to hell. So I'm saying I'm saying all that to say you know most of this, I'm just saying it for listeners of like kind of a backdrop. So fast forward, uh, I go into like a hedonistic uh direction, living life really how I want and uh, come to conclusion. That's probably not the best way, like I was pretty depressed on the result of that. It was not as fulfilling as I thought it might be.
Speaker 1:Have, have an encounter with Jesus and get, just radically encounter God's love. I won't go into the depth of that story. And the guy who was there around me was the youth pastor at the church you were pastoring, and so then he's invited me to your church. I walk in here. We are full circle. I started in a Methodist church. Now I'm coming back into faith. I had this encounter with Jesus. I'm in a Methodist church and I'm like things are going to be different now. Man, I got zapped and we come in and the church is downtown in the city. Uh, it's, it's doctors, it's lawyers, it's town officials, the, the pillars of society, and and uh there's a lot of, and you can't imagine how hard it is to minister to those people well, I was back full circle to, you know, from a country church to more of a city church.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of theater. You know the clothes that they made you wear there. You wore this big, big robe. You look like somebody from sister act. Uh, you know, that's what I thought when I saw sister. But yeah, so that that's kind of how we or from my perspective, we ended up. I asked you at some point for a meeting. I sat down at your office and you shared your testimony with me on how you encountered Jesus, and when you shared that, I was just like man. I don't know about the rest of, like the church service and like how this is, I don't know anything about that, but I'll follow this guy for a while, like this guy's the the real deal introduction, at least on how we met each other. Um, so maybe circling back to what you said, so you're in this town, uh, this city of parkersburg, you're at st paul's and you're, you know, you have to deal with a lot of big personalities. You have to deal with people who are a lot of people who are in charge yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So a type personalities, disagreeable people generally and they like to tell you how you're supposed to do your business you.
Speaker 1:You also came to faith kind of under like a kind of crisis. You're going through crisis in your life. You have encounter with jesus and so I would say that you know, from what I know of you and the time we spent together, I would also consider you somebody who's who's a mystic and someone who you know really seeks to you, know, steward the presence of God and and be in communion with God and what that looked like authentically, looks like not theater, theater and and drama, but that looks like so for you being in the Methodist church. You know how many years did you were you serving in Methodist church? Like when did you come in?
Speaker 2:and recording elder, 36 years and I retired to take care of my mom and and there's a lot of story behind that as well she gave me up as a foster child and and uh, so she wasn't in my life a whole lot. Uh, she, she, uh was into uh, partying and dancing and going to parties and all the big events and in the area and and uh, she was busy, but she kind of grew up that way. Her mother was an artist and and and she also was really busy. She didn't have time for my mom and so mom, I wouldn't say she grew, you know, was raised by wolves, but she was raised by an artist who was eccentric and and didn't give her any kind of domesticated knowledge at all. So my grandmother and my mother were not domesticated women. They both worked hard and taught me a lot about work, but they didn't really give me a whole lot of attention, didn't really give me a whole lot of attention. So my growing up was amongst the kids and the adults in my neighborhood and so I grew up at the age of 12. I was an alcoholic. At the age of 16, I was a drug addict and at the age of 18 that's when I met jesus.
Speaker 2:An evangelist came to town, uh, an ex-girlfriend of mine uh came to my house. She went to that church where the evangelist came. His name is larry taylor and and larry had been a an addict back in the 50s a heroin addict back in the 50s and upon listening to his testimony, my ex-girlfriend knew me and she knew that I needed to hear this guy, and so she cornered me at my house. This is February and and it's cold outside. She comes to my front door and I'm surprised to see her because I thought I got rid of her and and she, she, she wants me to come with her to church. Now I just drank a six pack of beer, okay, uh, to get up enough nerve to go uptown and pop skin, all right. So she, she wanted me to come to church. I and I knew who went to that church. The mayor went to that church. The chief knew who went to that church. The mayor went to that church, the chief of police went to that church, prosecuting attorney went to that church. Several state policemen, sheriffs and some federal people actually went to that church. So I knew that where I was headed. If I went with her to the revival.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to be a part of that group. I didn't want to be. I was on their list it wasn't a good list and and, uh, they were, they were really after me and but, but I went, uh, because she started crying. Uh, I hate women crying, that's not a fair tool, but nonetheless I really didn't want to go uptown because then that that night I was in turmoil.
Speaker 2:I, I, I really believe that my life was almost over. I looked like, uh, death warmed over. I mean, I, I just had skin pulled over my bones and I was almost gone to begin with and I was mixing drugs and alcohol and doing everything I can to destroy my life. I didn't have any hope. I didn't see any hope after I graduated from high school. I didn't see me getting a job anywhere. I didn't see anything in terms of my future.
Speaker 2:So I thought my life was already over at that point, because I'd already basically messed it up and and there wasn't any drug programs. I didn't know anything about AA. I didn't have any, any direction at all, and so so when, when she came to my door and wanted me to go to church, there was, there was that sense that somebody actually cared and loved me to church. There was that sense that somebody actually cared and loved me, and this person was brokenhearted that I didn't want to go with them to church. So I thought, well, this will be a hoot, you know, I'll get in the car and we go to church, which is a cross-cultural experience for me, because I didn't grow up in church at all Okay, and so my goal was to sit as far away from the people that I knew probably were there as possible. So we sat clear in the back of the church and I wanted to be near the exit, and so I did that. And because I drank a six pack of beer before the service was over with, I really had to pee, so I basically bolted.
Speaker 2:But before I bolted, the evangelist was talking about Jesus, and so I was kind of angry because no one really told me about who Jesus was up until that point. Uh, I thought he was a good guy. You know, I I've been in a few churches. Mom and dad took me to, or not dad, but mom took me to, or not dad, but mom took me to, or my grandparents took me to, and, and, and I saw his painting. Uh, that, that icon of a painting, uh that that, as you entered the church, usually the jesus is right there, and I knew he was a good guy, and everybody you know talked about how good he was. But I didn't understand who he was, and, and so I was kind of angry at that point because no one had really ever told me the truth about Jesus. Your comments was that he was the ultimate Santa Claus. That's not how I saw him at that point. I saw him, as I was introduced to him, as as the, the center of everything, that he is god in the flesh, and no one ever told me that.
Speaker 2:And so, uh I, when I bolted out of that church, I went and peed behind the catholic church, uh, which is just a half a block away from the church I was in, and in that Catholic church there's a statue not a statue, an erection of the cross of Christ, and Christ is hanging on the cross, and there's a pond right in front of that with flowers and and and no, at the time, not flowers, but but plants and and I, so I sat in front of this crucifixion and I was looking up at Jesus and I thought man, you, you, you look like, you know what I feel like and you're God in the flesh, why are you hanging on a cross? So all these questions start coming to my mind and for an addict they were heavy thoughts. Where does space end? Is God really there? And and and uh.
Speaker 2:The next night I went back, um, because he that evidently she had told on me to the evangelist and he came looking for me in high school, in in the actual facility of the high school building, and and he told me that he wanted me to come back to church that night and I had just been selling stuff next to the vending machines at school and when they saw him coming they thought he was the heat and everybody disappeared and I was losing money. And so I said I tell you what I promise you I will be there. I'm a man of my word, I will keep my word, I'll be there. I said what I heard, what I promise you I will be there. I'm a man of my word, I will keep my word, I'll be there. I said what I heard you say was interesting to me. I'd like to know more, but you've really got to go right now. You're putting me in danger. So I told him I'd be there and I did go. I did go.
Speaker 2:I took my present girlfriend with me, whose dad went to that church and he hated me and I wanted to rub his nose in the fact that I was with her, that's, that's my mind was not really there yet. So, anyway, I was sitting in the back of the church again and he gave the entire message. I didn't drink, but before I went and it came down to the place where he told me that if I accepted Christ, I became a new creature, a brand new person, that I would become new, transformed, and I wanted that more than anything else in the world. I needed a new life. And so I went forward and accepted Christ and my girlfriend the present girlfriend her jaw dropped and and and, uh, people who knew me, uh, they were all shocked and the police officers that were there were saying he'll never make it, uh, but these little old ladies would come up to me and saying he'll never make it. But these little old ladies would come up to me and say I'm praying for you, I'm praying for you and I love those little ladies.
Speaker 2:And on my way home from that gathering, by myself walking, a group of guys that went to my high school was hanging out with this guy by the name of Ross Culpepper Harrison, and, and, and he was kind of like their mentor. They were all following him like a Pied Piper, and, and they, they were coming across the street. I was coming down this hill to that street and we all kind of met up serendipitously Of course it was a plan by God, and, and, and. So they invited me to come along, because they saw me at the revival and these were guys that I grew up with in the neighborhood and they knew. But they, it didn't matter. They invited me to come with them. So I said sure. So I began to be discipled by this guy by the name of Pepper, and.
Speaker 2:So that was just the beginning of my introduction to Jesus and my search for him. I became extremely hungry to find out more and more about him. I mean really hungry. I would go to every church in town if there was a door open. I was through the door because I needed to be around Christians. I needed to be around real Christians, and, and so, and if I wasn't doing that, I knew where I was going to be. So so I became extremely hungry, hungry for him.
Speaker 2:I went to pentecostal churches, roman catholic churches, every possible denomination you can possibly think of and I I tried to hang out with what who I thought was the real, uh, christians in that place, and so I went to camps and revivals and and and uh, youth gatherings and and sunday schools and I got a vast array of different perspectives of who Jesus was, and it was all rich and I learned a lot about the different denominations early on.
Speaker 2:So, but that was the beginning of that to talk about, to bounce off of your concept of jesus early on, that the church's downfall actually began in the 18th century, uh, at the, the enlightenment, and, and, and that was the beginning of of a secular movement, uh, that basically took over the church. So when you entered into that small church, they had been influenced so much by the secular world that they could not communicate to you who Jesus really was. And that's where I tried my best to keep you away from the church people at St Paul's, because I was afraid you would get basically the same message that you got in that little small church and and I didn't want that for you, cause I knew that you'd had a real experience with him and and and I didn't want to mess that up. So I encourage you to check out every church in the neighborhood. Go see for yourself who Jesus is and have different experiences with the Lord. And you did that, and not very many people who are disciples of mine actually do what I ask them to do.
Speaker 1:So well to your point whenever you were sharing before about you know you would go to go to churches. For me I'm just I told you earlier I'm probably a bit autistic, in the sense I just get obsessive over certain things. So I'd find something in scripture and for me the big thing was I had this power encounter with the love of God. So I experienced the love of God. I hear the voice of God, not audibly, but inside me I hear a voice saying I love you, you're my son, you're safe now and I'm proud of you. And for me this is really important.
Speaker 1:You know, my biological father commits suicide. My uncle who adopts me, where we have a kind of ambiguous, strange relationship growing up, where he's creating a lot of stability. He's very not very affectionate and affirmative, but you know he's a good, he was a good dad that you know for what it, for what it was. He taught me a lot of things but there was just not a lot of affirmation or affection. So we don't feel like this dynamic all the time of like, actually like father and son, like this intimacy and for me.
Speaker 2:I grew up with a stepfather, so I understand all that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So. So for me, you know, I felt also there were just a lot of feelings of self-hatred and things because my parents had died. I thought, oh, there's something wrong with me, or I'm not good enough, or I'd done something wrong to cause this kind of thing happening. So I have to have this experience. I'm like, well, I'm in the rabbit hole now, alice. So how deep does this thing go? Like? What are we able to experience?
Speaker 1:For me, that was the big thing is, you know, john 3, 16 says for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that none should perish but have eternal life whoever believes in him. What is eternal life? Well, according to Jesus, quite literally, like you know, if you read John 15, 16, 17, 18, this is before he goes across in the garden, he's talking to the disciples. He's like I'm speaking literally to you now. And they all remarked oh, you're not speaking in parables, this makes sense. And he says eternal life in john 17, 3 is to know god, the father, and likewise know the son. So when I understood this, it clicked in my head heaven is a continuation and byproduct of knowing god. The whole point of this shebang is that we have intimacy with God, like heaven is presented as some kind of goal but heaven's just the byproduct. And it's like, if you're, if we fixate purely on getting to heaven, which was like really the fixation in this country Methodist church to avoid hell, it was all about avoiding hell. There was no focus on actual relationships. So when I got around you I was was like this guy knows jesus. So when you told me don't do this or do this or whatever, I mean, I'll tell one story that you used to drive me crazy. This is one thing you did that drove me absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1:I would ask you point blank questions, because that you know, I think, really shortly after I went to your church, I went into this really conservative, uh dogmaticmatic university as a private university doing biblical studies, and I come back to you hey, man, they're saying this, this doesn't make sense. And I'm like what do you think? And you would never tell me what you thought. I would ask you point blank what do you think? And you would oftentimes present like, no matter what we talk about, you present like five different perspectives on it.
Speaker 1:I was like, cool, those are five perspectives, what's your perspective? And it was always like you're putting the ball back in my core like, hey, you have the bible, you have the holy spirit, like I'll be like your bumper rails in the bowling alley, so to speak. Uh, but but you know, go figure this out, and a lot of people don't do that. That was something that like man, like I carry that forward and it's kind of an unfair comparison, because I always compare a lot of people who are in leadership to you when I come in, because they so have such an ego trip that they want to make little copies of themselves and they feel so insecure cookie cutter, cookie cutter production, yeah yeah, yeah, you know the pink floyd uh song, another brick in the wall, the music video to it.
Speaker 1:There's the kids and they're faceless and they're going into the conveyor belt. Exactly that's what.
Speaker 2:That's what it felt like, because I'm like when you come out, when you come out of the counterculture like we did, it is, it is, it is uh, it. It is uh uh difficult to swallow the church. For me it was difficult. I found out that the church does not operate like the church is supposed to operate and there's a reason for that. And we have forgotten the ingredients of the encounter with God, and the first part of that ingredient is prayer. We don't. When was the last time you went to church and had a real exciting, wonderful prayer meeting? Okay, that that says volumes about where we are as a church. If you go to Africa, their culture there, when they have a prayer meeting, it is an all-night prayer meeting and they're excited about it and they're absolutely pumped up about it going to it because it's fabulous. In our church, in the churches in America, we have a prayer meeting. A couple people might show up, the senior pastor might not even show up, okay, and we have our prayer requests. We talk about everybody that's sick and dying and the pastor prays, or whoever's praying, prays a five-minute prayer and we're done. That's a prayer meeting.
Speaker 2:We have lost the sense of spirituality when I say the 18th century messed stuff up for the church when we swallowed that pill. I'm not against science, I'm not against history, I'm not against knowledge. What I'm against is the lack of faith. What I'm against is is what's? What's happened to the church is, uh, we do not believe in prayer. We do not hold prayer as as something that that actually does anything, when the truth of the matter is, when you look in the scriptures, anything that happens always involves prayer. The uh. When paul and silas are in prison, for example, they've been beaten up because of their faith. They They've been tossed in prison. Now what do they do? They start praying and singing and praising God in the midst of their suffering. What's happening on the outside? The church itself is praying for them. So it's not just about you individually praying, it's about corporate prayer.
Speaker 2:When you came to me, it was not about me placing something on you, as if I was placing another brick on top of the camel. That's carrying too much of a load. Anyway, you needed to find for yourself who you were in Christ. I did not want to get in the way of that, for me to impose on you anything to make you like me or to make you like an idol that I might have. I wanted you to discover for yourself who you were in Christ, and the only way for you to do that was not to completely hang out with me all the time was to hang out with other Christians as well, and, and alive christians, not not people who are pretending to be christian, but alive, real christians. And and that was my prayer for you was that you would run into people who were genuine, genuinely following jesus, um, and and.
Speaker 2:So what's happened to the church in our culture is we become secularized, we become swallowed up by the monster, and and we're becoming more uh like society than than we are jesus, and we've cut off the power train of how god works. It starts, starts with prayer, lord Jesus. Well, heavenly Father, I'm sorry for my sins. Please forgive me of my sins and Jesus, please come into my heart. Okay, that's the beginning, so that's how it begins and that should be how it continues. God's formula is praying to the Father. The Holy Spirit shows up and brings Jesus inside of us, so Jesus can possess us. They leave that part out. We need to be possessed by jesus, absolutely possessed by him. Prayer should be like breathing. Prayer is, is, is the breathing of the church and, unless we use the formula. This is god's formula. This is not jim kelly's formula. This is god's formula. This is not Jim Kelly's formula. This is God's formula.
Speaker 2:You look at anything that happens in the Bible. When people start praying and asking for forgiveness and repenting, that's when something happens. It doesn't happen otherwise. That's the starter, that's the ignition switch that starts the rest of the engine and until it's saturated with prayer it's not going to happen. Anything that's happened in my life that's been successful in my walk with christ has always been ignited by prayer. It always has to do with faith. When jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic my child, your sins are forgiven. It always starts with faith. Putting your faith in him, that's where it starts.
Speaker 2:And then, when jesus comes in and possesses you, that's when the power shows up. And the power is not about you, it's about him. He accomplishes what he sets out to do. Okay. When he possesses you, you are doing his will, but that doesn't mean that you're the center of the universe. That means get out of the way. I'm going to do something, okay. And it's humbling because if it turns out to be all about you and you become the centerpiece of what's going on, it's not the church any longer. It's not the body of Christ. He wants to operate out of the body of Christ. So corporate prayer of christ. He wants to operate out of the body of christ. So corporate prayer, praying with other christians. Is the breathing church, is the alive church. If prayer is not involved, it is not a lot an alive church.
Speaker 2:The denomination I, I'm in, uh is splitting, uh and and and. What's what's going on? The, the liberals and the conservatives aren't getting along with each other, but they haven't for years. But the brick that broke the camel's back in this situation was the homosexual issue. I've been waiting around for before even I was a united methodist for god to do something in the methodist church. And and god called me to be a methodist. That's a long story, I'm not going to go into it. But god called me to be a united methodist pastor. I did not choose the United Methodist Church. God chose the United Methodist Church for me. You couldn't have paid me to join the United Methodist Church, okay. God called me to the United Methodist Church. I was disappointed that God called me to the United Methodist Church, okay, but I followed what God told me to do. And if I hadn't, michael, where would you be?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and countless other people yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so what I'm saying to you is is that God has a purpose for you. Even if it doesn't look like you're in the right spot, even if things are not set up for your success or your fame or the ideals that you have about how God works. He's constantly humbling us because we need humbled, and if that's the beginning, the process of a Christian is dying. That's where it begins. It's a downward motion. If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. That is dying, and we go through a process of dying to self, getting out of the way, and then the rising part is the resurrection part when we have died. We can't resurrect until we have died, until we can't become that new creature, until our old creature gets out of the way. And when we start to rise is when we've gotten out of the way, and the only way we continue to rise is continue to use the formula that God has given us to allow Jesus to possess us and take over our life, and then ministry really begins to happen. There's a lot of people are out there trying to do ministry on their own steam, and a lot of them are doing really good things. They're doing good things, but, but they're leaving out the power of God in the midst of that. What an amazing gift. They're leaving out the power of God in the midst of that. What an amazing gift they're missing. The same way with the way the Holy Spirit wants to embody the body of Christ.
Speaker 2:We have gifts. We're supposed to pray for those gifts, we're supposed to ask for those gifts and, according to Paul, we're supposed to ask for those gifts. And, according to paul, we're supposed to ask for the higher gifts first. But none of those gifts, you see, there are as a gift of prayer, because prayer is breathing. Prayer is is what allows us to ask for those specific gifts. And when god gives you the gift and you realize you've received that gift from god, it's a miracle. You finally know who you are in christ and and uh so, and who, where you belong in the body of Christ and and you can. You can operate out of your giftedness rather than allowing the pastor to pray for you, allowing the church the remnant of that's in that church, to be Jesus for you, on your behalf.
Speaker 2:And you give money, so they'll do that. That is not Christianity. And you give money, so they'll do that. That is not Christianity. Christianity is a group of Christians and preaching is a part of it. Don't get me wrong. Preaching is a wonderful thing, but preaching is only part of what's going on. The body of Christ has been called to do a lot of things, but first off, we're to pray and fast. The first thing when the Holy Spirit showed up in Jesus' life was that we pray and fast. We have lost that part of our walk, but it's the centerpiece of our walk. And here in america, we don't pray enough individually. We do pray for breakfast, or before we eat, sure, or when our kids are in trouble, or if our soccer team is is behind um, but but it's not genuine. I'm dying. Prayers it's. It's not getting out of the way. Prayers it's not getting the church out of the way so he can do his work. Prayers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's what I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry I went off on a rant.
Speaker 1:That's perfect. Yeah, it was a good flow, flow of thoughts and there's a lot of stuff to unpack with what you just said. I think you know kind of dissecting when we talk about, about prayer cause, like you just hit, hit the nail on the head. It's not a laundry list of thank yous, it's not a laundry list of you know, I want, etc. And I always tease people about, you know, blessing the food. Sometimes I'm like it's good to thank God for the food, but keep in mind when, when, when they're praying, they either prayed give us this day our daily bread, meaning there was a lack, they needed food, or Jesus needed to multiply the food, so he blessed it. So do we have enough or why are we blessed? So I just like kind of tease people about that, but it's good to think.
Speaker 2:And you're right. And the Lord's Prayer itself is a corporate prayer. The disciples asked Jesus, teach us to pray. Didn't say teach me to pray, because they were already knew how to pray individually. They were asking how to pray corporately, and and yeah, the lord's prayer is not about the physical bread. Okay, and and and. To have bread, you need the ingredients for bread. Same way with the with your spiritual life, you need the ingredients for a spiritual life.
Speaker 2:That's what happened in the enlightenment was that we separated spirit from the physical realm, and, and so, spit, the spiritual world became less and less important, and and so what we need to recapture is that the spiritual realm and the physical realm, especially since jesus came, has changed everything. The spiritual realm and the physical realm are together, and so part of our dying has to do with us getting in the position to catch the rebound, to be in a position to allow God in to empower us, and sometimes we're not ready for that empowerment, and prayer and fasting is a way to get in that position. Before Jesus, before the Holy Spirit showed up, they got together and they prayed. After prayer and fasting in that early church, the Holy Spirit showed up, and the world's never been the same since. And that group of disciples who were afraid became bold. The Spirit and Jesus became one. They didn't lose their identity as separate parts of the Trinity, they became one. And so when we accept Christ into our hearts, we receive Christ through the Holy Spirit. And when he possesses us and then begins to transform us, the Holy Spirit does a wonderful thing. And when we get out of the way, the Holy Spirit does the Holy Spirit's work.
Speaker 2:And the things that we've been praying for selfishly, all of a sudden don't matter. What matters is the will of God. What matters is doing His will. It's not about what I want. All of a sudden it becomes what does he want? It's not just what would Jesus do logically, it's about what Jesus is sending you to do specifically. And so every moment of the day becomes you allowing Jesus to encounter people in their daily life. Prayer all of a sudden is not an awkward thing, even when you're praying for somebody who doesn't know Jesus thing. Even when you're praying for somebody who doesn't know Jesus, your family won't be able to take you anywhere, because you're sharing the love of Jesus with everybody. You have the real disease and it's catching. That's what the church needs. That's what the church needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was a book I read where he talks about the immunization of the church. Uh, essentially, like there's enough of the love of god that's kind of injected into the bureaucracy and the structure and the theater and what we're doing to basically you know the ways an immunization would work is you have enough of this. A weakened version of gets in you but your body kind of stamps it out so that when you get exposed to the real disease, you don't. You don't become infected. And this is something that you you've mentioned many times is like being exposed to the real disease, because you essentially get marked when God baptizes you in his love. When he baptizes you, god baptizes you in his love. When he baptizes you, you know when you, when you have an encounter like someone like Jacob, you get up off the ground, you're walking different for the rest of your life and, in fact, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you have a new name. You know you, your identity is shifted in a sense, and so I can. I can identify and respect a bit. When people became Christians earlier in the church, they just took on a new name. I'm like that makes that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:And Jesus gives you that stone with a new name on it in the book of Revelation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think one thing I wanted to touch on, you know we were talking about prayer, because there's a lot of different expressions of prayer.
Speaker 1:You know, in my time in Europe I got more connected with the Catholic and Orthodox side of the church, and so they explore a lot of themes and parts of the Christian life that you just simply lose out on, and even what we know as evangelical christianity in america, and and and and it's it's quite sad. You know my, my perspective I don't want to go too deep in a rat hole but my perspective about what they consider the eucharist to be, how that's implemented, what that means, uh, that has changed a lot. But then also, uh, listening to orthodox, uh, priests talk about, uh, contemplative meditation and silence, and then as well, you know, literally, people, you know in america we want to do overviews of stuff, we want to digest huge pieces of information and kind of give you go a mile wide and an inch deep. These guys want to go an inch wide and a mile deep, and so they will contemplate one psalm or one proverb for sometimes decades.
Speaker 2:Um, and and and I love to read the read the works of the ascetics.
Speaker 1:It's wonderful stuff yeah, they're just, it's like squeezing water out of a stone and these guys will do it through through trial and time they'll do it, um, but but that was one thing that that was kind of jarring to me because, you know, being being in streams of charismatic christianity again, sometimes it becomes a circus, sometimes it's a lot of theater. I mean, you made the comment to me before you you, you don't think that you have the emotional energy and capacity to be in that environment all the time, because it's a bit draining, and so being around these people was good for me. And when we're talking about prayer, you know, when we're reading in Habakkuk, he gives us a kind of blueprint on how contemplative prayer could be. He's saying in the second chapter I'll wait, I'll stand in my guard post, I'll watch to see what he says to me, and when the vision comes I'll write it down and even though the vision might tarry, I'll stand firm there. And so basically there's this kind of like blueprint of you know, if God is speaking to us, like we hear people having different kind of encounters. Some people say they audibly hear the voice of God, not every day, on a daily basis, but they'll have a kind of like mountaintop experience, transfiguration kind of experience. And then some people say it's still a small voice inside of you but really like what we get down to brass tacks, god could be speaking through coincidences. He could be speaking through you know.
Speaker 1:The Holy Spirit is ministering something in scripture that you're reading. Jim Kelly might say something to me and you know, grace just falls on those words. They pierce my heart. It feels like I got sucker punched. All those are true, but in terms of you know, what we see in this blueprint of Habakkuk is through the eye of your mind. He says I'll wait and watch to see what he says to me. He didn't say I'll wait and listen to hear. He said I'll wait and watch to see. So he's implying that there's something that's going to come. Your consciousness is the screen of the theater that God wants to release something on, and when that vision comes, you have to receive it by faith. You write it down. You write down plainly, as it is not adding your own flavor, sauce or scent to it, as it is not adding your own flavor, sauce or or scent to it. Um, and then, and then that passage also says I'll hang it so people can plainly see it when they're running by. And so there's this kind of accountability element when you talked about the body of christ, because we do live in a time where, uh, post-modernism is like huge, where there's no objective truth and what Jim feels is true, what I feel is true, so having some kind of accountability, there's a tension of what you said, of it's not all about me. In the body of Christ, if I'm an eyeball, I could be the most beautiful eyeball, I can have 20-20 vision. If someone rips my eyeball out of my head, it doesn't matter how good that eyeball functions. If it's not plugged into my body, it doesn't help my body and that eyeball is dead. It's not. The lifeblood of that eyeball is gone. So there's that's again.
Speaker 1:Another point of this is like in America we, we hyper focus on individualism and we we have hero worship where people you know the rags rich and we set we have hero worship where people you know the rags rich and that's not bad or wrong necessarily, but it always has to be held in tension with the fact that life is not about you. Like rich mullins, rich mullins uh, you know the guy who wrote awesome god. You know people go around to him when he was a kid and say, cheer up, man, god loves you. And he's like big deal, god loves everybody. And it's like this, this thing of like you know the love of God and whatever measure it, you know it's, it's dispensed to it. I mean it's, it's a powerful thing. When Jesus says you know the love that the father had for me, it's going to be in you. You're gonna feel in your heart. It's like that's. You know, we could spend probably hours talking about that, but that's as true for for you as it is for me, it's for everybody.
Speaker 1:So kind of coming down off of our ego trip and then a lot of secularism that says, jim, you got to do what makes you happy. It's like, well, that's pretty shallow, that's pretty shallow, and I've done that, I've already done that, I try to do that. I did things that I perceived that was going to make me happy, with drugs, with women, with money, and it left me feeling pretty depressed, suicidal, not in a good place. So you know, there's this tension of the will of God for my life. And then, when you were talking about where we're tethered to the body of Christ in some capacity, and there's a saying, if you want to go far, saying if you want to go far, or if you want to go fast, run by yourself, if you want to go far, run together. And if we want any kind of because I can to your point, like I could go be a televangelist and like, build this big thing and whatever, and it's just like has nothing, there's nothing to do necessarily with the call of god or whatever, again we're feeding into the theater, make a bunch of money, get super famous, I die. Then it all ends, it goes away, there's no, there's no longevity to it.
Speaker 1:And paul writes and I think that people should really embrace this, because this is something that I heard like maybe over a decade ago. But paul writes about the. The foundation of the gospel cannot be changed. Like, you can't make a new gospel. The gospel is there and many people will come and build upon that foundation and some will use bricks, some will use stone, some will use hay, some will use wood, some will use precious jewels and gold. Whatever you're building with, the fire of god is going to come, it's going to burn on it and it's going to test it and basically saying um, and if it remains, you'll be, you'll get a reward. If it doesn't like it'll turn to ash, be swept away. So basically, god, if you know you could, I could. I could build a ministry, lead millions of people to jesus and do like crazy things. But if it wasn't in alignment with god like at the end of my life, fire, god's gonna come burn it. He's like great michael, I never asked you to do that. It wasn't in alignment with God, like at the end of my life, fire, god's going to come burn it. He's like great Michael, I never asked you to do that.
Speaker 1:When you talk about the Methodist church because we could be doing a lot of good things, there's like the Mary and Martha argument. And then what he's saying is Samuel, obedience is better than sacrifice, because I could martyr myself, give all my money, do all these things. But is it what god? God called me to? And and ultimately god will always call us to.
Speaker 1:Stuff where we're, where we're tethered to the body of christ, because when you're talking about you know we've accepted jesus like god comes inside of us. Well, the trinity is all also sucked us inside of itself. There's like this co-union aspect of what's happened. But you're also in the trinity. Like me, you and jesus are siamese triplets, more or less like we're. We're bound together, um, and so I think in america you know, coming back that that's just one observation that I've uh made. You know, being abroad is like this, this hyper fixation on you got to do what makes you happy, to the point where people to end your marriage it like you know, I do, it makes you I'm just like man, like like marriage is is hard. You know, being a parent is hard. There's a lot of stuff that's hard, but if you want to do something meaningful, it's gonna be hard, I don't you. You talk to anybody who's tethered to reality. They'll tell you that anything you want to do that's meaningful is hard, there's a cost to it and you.
Speaker 2:And so, in the spiritual world, endurance, enduring, uh, in, in in your spiritual walk with christ, uh is, is what's held in high esteem as far as God's concerned. It is. It is not, like you say, being all that in a bag of chips in front of the world. It's, it's about enduring in the faith. He that overcomes, will stand, and and so, um, it's. You know, we, we value all the wrong things, our value system is completely upside down from god's value system, and and so, um, that dying part is so important because unless you do that, you can't have the resurrection part. It doesn't happen. You, you might, you might draw a lot of attention to yourself, but, uh, you know, especially really gifted people I don't know they're, they're, they've got this they're so gifted in what, naturally, that they can't get themselves out of the way. It is it, it is so tempting just to kind of allow that gift to take over a worship service, or to allow that gift to to take over an organization, and and it, uh, it's in America, when you cut that loose, when, when you allow that to, to, not to have a leash on it, it gets ugly, it gets really ugly and ugly and and uh, anyway, I don't, uh, I don't have the answers for everything. All I can do it's. It's like when you, when you, try to interpret the scriptures, uh, you've got a lot of people who have different ideas about what this verse says, or what that verse says, and and and, uh. So the search for the historical jesus, and and and, making things really complicated. But what is the bible really trying to teach us? What is it that the early church was really trying to tell us about Jesus? And it doesn't matter who wrote the book, it doesn't matter if those were the actual words that Jesus spoke. The early church is trying to tell us something about who Jesus is, who God is and who God is and who the church is, and why is so important. And it's not, you're right, it's not just about going to heaven, it's about becoming a new creation now, and sometimes accepting God's will for your life is hard, it is extremely difficult. And you know, like the Lord told me that I needed to retire. What's that about? Why do I need to retire? I'm not of age to retire yet. You need to retire to take care of your mother. Oh, but Lord, I don't want to do that. My mom and I have a strained relationship. I don't want to do that. If I invite her into my house, into my home, what's that going to do to my marriage? What's that going to do for me as a pastor? How is that going to work out, you know so. So when god tells you to do and I followed I again. I didn't want to retire. I felt that I still had plenty of steam left. But god in his wisdom, this is what you need. And right, almost almost exactly at right.
Speaker 2:After I retired, covid hit, you know, and and uh, god and I went into the closet. Covid for me was a time my closet time. It was time for me was a time my closet time. It was time for me and God to come to terms and get face to face with each other. And and it's been a, it's been a real spiritual journey for me these last four years, not just because I'm taking care of mom, but because God has cornered me.
Speaker 2:I couldn't move, all me, I couldn't move. I had to unload all my bricks so that I could see what was missing and be free in him again. And be free in him again, because I had become so consumed with all the things that drove the church, that I left out the most important part, which made my job heavy. And if Jesus' power wasn't doing what he wants to do, and then all the burden comes on me and it's too heavy, it's just too heavy, I can't carry it my life would be miserable, absolutely was miserable. Um, there was so much that I wanted to do, but again, it's not about me. So now, now mom has passed, I'm here. I'm here trying to figure out what's next. You know what? What is god telling me to do next? I'm still. I'm waiting. Waiting is so hard, it, uh. But it's beautiful at the same time, because in that waiting, you're getting close and closer and closer to him, and he's getting you ready for whatever it is that comes next yeah, I think for me, you know, I stepped away.
Speaker 1:I was, I was pastoring a church in in germany and there's like some circumstances where I needed a lot of things moving at once but I was basically I was becoming a father and it wasn't financially sustainable to step away. That was super painful for me and like what you're describing is is like, you know, not to impose on you, but but I identify what you're saying because for me I kind of had this understanding like wow, my identity was really wrapped up in church stuff and I was pushed like you would you kind of describe somebody kind of laying back on your gifting? There's definitely times where you know I could make space and like let god do what he wants to do with people and it's like so, whatever the finite limit of my gifting is, I just make space and like let God do what he wants to do with people and it's like so, whatever the finite limit of my gifting is, I just make space in the Holy spirit. It's kind of limitless on what God's going to do and he'll do more in like a couple of seconds or minutes of ministering somebody than what I'm going to do in years of like making them a weird person, basically, but but but I, yeah, I went that was 2000 into 2008, so beginning of 2019 I transitioned out and when you talk about, like, there's a lot of circumstance around that, basically I was kind of ostracized from this community.
Speaker 1:I've been plugged in for five years and I started working in a cheese factory and and there you're flipping cheese for eight hours a day, you're underground under fluorescent lights, in a climate controlled room where you can't if me and you are standing two like three feet away from each other. We can barely see each other because it's so foggy and there's dead silence, you know. And I felt like a real loneliness, uh, but I never felt alone and there were, like you know, times where, like jesus was, I'm here with you, like I'm right with you, but I'm not going to be able to take away this feeling of loneliness and I realized that I had to repent because I'd had. I was so wrapped up in this idea. Well, I need to be this, I need to be a missionary and I need to be doing ministry, I need to be doing these things, and and my relationship with God, or the basis of my relationship with God, was kind of transactionary in the sense of like hey, let's hang out for a hot second. I'm going to do some like prep and and for a sermon or something, or, or, or I'm going to get a. I'm going to pray for this person. So I need you to give me some insight, like while I'm praying and it just became this transactionary thing and God so it was like kind of rebuking me on that and my wife and me joke about it.
Speaker 1:But whoever I was when I went into that under the ground in that factory, that guy died. You keep talking about this dying and it's not like a one and done thing. I think there's different like seasons and crises of our life, that kind of come up. And so I was like it was and it's not you know. It wasn't a you know execution style double tap to the back of the head. It was a painful, drawn out death where they tied me to a horse and dragged me through the streets of Rome, kind of thing of like you know it was not.
Speaker 2:I think that's what they call. I think that's what they call lamenting. I think that's.
Speaker 1:Well, I was there, man and and and the again. This is something I only had language to it later. But in the Orthodox or the Catholic stream of faith, they they talk about something called the dark night of the soul. And the dark night of the soul psychoanalyst, you know, carl young was also a christian. He would just describe it basically like something in your life that you were like kind of thought was foundational, like when hebrews talks about, like god, shaking the shakable things and the un and unshakable things, and the unshakable things will stay but the shakable things will be, you know, gone.
Speaker 1:It's like I was putting too much weight on my foot on something that was shakable. And so when that, when that, when that happens, you're grabbing at the fabric of reality, trying to orientate yourself. But you have to. You know you have to fall, to be to hit the ground, to be reorientated with where the ground is. And that was very painful for me, to my ego, but also just on, what does this mean about the future? What, what, what about all this time and energy I've invested in? Now, like, where does that go? And so, this dark night of the soul, I got really embedded in the Exodus story, because that's the Exodus story is an adaptation phase of, you know, for Moses, but also the people of Israel, where it's like I'm going to remove you out of you know, a kind of enslavement that people view it as the enslavement of Egypt. But they were also slaves to themselves. Because whenever they got out of slavery they're like, oh, immediately in the desert, like we should go back and be part of that. And that's very much how I felt I was, like this was toxic, this is wrong. This is not a good situation. But part of me wants to go back and be there because of the familiarity with it. But that was because of my, how I enslaved myself to my own desires and things that I wanted to see happen, my ego being stroked and those kind of things.
Speaker 1:And and then to your point, you in the desert. It's all dependency. It's like the pillar of fire and the cloud during the day, the food, the clothes. You know we're, you know the, the, the Moses entering into the cloud, the commandments coming. It's all a kind of restructuring and organization of like how you should orientate your life and it's utter dependence on the father of like how you should orientate your life and it's utter dependence on the father and, um, you know, in spite of ourselves, he's still showing up, like when the snakes bite them and they're like you know, I don't know. So it gets to a point where you become so orientated in the adaptation phase I don't want to go anywhere that the presence of god isn't leading me, and so I'm I would. I would be more willing to wander around the desert than go into the promised land without the presence of God isn't leading me, and so I would be more willing to wander around the desert than go into the promised land without the presence.
Speaker 1:And that was kind of circling back to what we were talking about before, about heaven. You know, francis Chan wrote in that book Crazy Love. He talked about if you could have heaven, you know, all your favorite people, all your favorite food, all your favorite leisure, leisurely activities, all the natural beauties of the world, no pain, no war, no stress, no disease, no death, and you can have that place forever. Your consciousness would exist there, but you can have it without Jesus when you want it, and it's like that that's. The question is, like you know, we can enter into things that we, when we were talking about, do what makes you happy, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay you, perfect family, perfect house, perfect job. You're going to want to at some point. It's not going to be enough. It's not going to be enough because you're an eternal being and all that stuff, as glamorous as it is, rots at the end of the day, and your body is rotting. Right now, this meat sack is rotting and when we get to a point we have to transition, we have to transcend.
Speaker 2:And then so this conversation becomes full circle, and this guy that was in your church all he wanted to do was see jesus now begins to maybe make a little more sense, maybe make a little more sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He wasn't as weird as you thought. Well, weird is not necessarily an insult. If the paradigm of normal is a bunk, then it's good to be weird. You know, your buddy, it's good where I think scripture says we're supposed to be a peculiar people. So, yeah, um, but yeah, sorry to sorry to go off a rabbit trail, but I think you know for you, you know, and that I wanted to circle back to one thing you say, because obviously like it feels like from from my perspective.
Speaker 1:You know hearing, you know your mom at one point gave you up for foster care and was like going off living her life, and then we're coming towards the end of her life and you take her on in your house, you're looking after, taking her to doctor's appointments, like stewarding that relationship. You know, in spite of history, it sounds a lot like God completely redeemed some things there and obviously we don't have to go into depth about it because like, but there's like all these little idiosyncrasies and things that happen. I know how these things kind of unfold on an interpersonal level, but do you feel like that was healing for you? Do you feel like there was some reconciliation there? Do you feel like there was kind of a breakthrough there, or I know everything's still kind of fresh, but like what was your impression from that?
Speaker 2:mom and I've always had a, a uh. She always had my back, even even when I wasn't living with her, and, and, uh, she's a. She was a rather formidable individual, um, so when you say taking control of the situation, it really wasn't me so much taking control as, as I was basically still along for the ride uh, she, uh, uh. She still handled, she still had her mind throughout all of this. She handled her own business, so I didn't have to, like, take over there. It was the physical things she couldn't do any longer uh, bathing herself, uh, uh, cleaning up after herself, uh, so all that was was was humbling and I had to be, I had to be, uh, in prayer about how to, how to handle the frustration of all that for me. So it was a spiritual journey for me in the sense of, uh, I don't know, uh, breaking me down, um, and so, um, how that fleshes itself out in terms of our relationship with each other. I think think she saw she never really had confidence in me for a long time, and rightly so, because I was well, I was a mess and and, and. So it took her a long time to get past the idea that that, that that God had actually changed me so and she never really trusted anybody anyway, not to the point where she trusted him with her life. And eventually she did trust me with her life. She did trust what I had to say and trusted even though I had become a pastor and did something she didn't want me to do, which was become a pastor, and did something she didn't want me to do, which was become a pastor. And in the beginning she did not understand that she had a radical mastectomy which changed her life. She finally had an encounter with God right before she had surgery and I was with her and she looked at me after she had surgery and and I was with her and and she, she looked at me after she had this prayer with me and she said, before she went to surgery, I finally understand. It's like god did something there.
Speaker 2:You know, up until then she was totally against me going into the ministry and and uh, so up until then, uh, and then here later on in life, at the end of her life, it was, uh, we kind of, we kind of accepted each other and became a part of each other in this journey toward the end of her life and me trying to do everything possible to make it easier, to make it fulfilling, to share with her a deeper walk with jesus. A deeper walk with jesus, uh, and so so, at the, at the, you know, basically at the end, yes, there was a redeeming, there was a redeeming, uh, but like you say it was, it was like it was like being dragged behind a horse, uh, to get to that place of her dying and my dying with her. So we went through this journey together, and God is the one who is to be glorified in that, because otherwise that would have never, ever, ever happened, never, ever, ever happen, because I would have had a, a vindictive hatred for my mother. Otherwise, uh, what you remember? You remember that the, the dying moments, so to speak, in the kairos program, that that we were involved, the prison together, and, and. So that moment when they wrote all their people they needed to forgive, on the list, uh, and and and. Always for me, it's always me I need to forgive, first and foremost, and, but right under that was my mom, and then a list of other people.
Speaker 2:But so I finally got there, okay, and so at the end of her life, I'm free, not because I'm rid of her, so to speak. It's not that I'm free because of the redemption that happened. I'm free because, well, I had my mother's seal of approval, which I didn't have for the longest time, and I don't think a lot of people that have that kind of relationship with their parents that is adversarial, have that opportunity to have that redemption happen in their life, and that's I hold on to that. That's a gift from God, and I don't I'm still, I still think she's here sometimes, but, but you know, and that's the other thing about you talk about the Orthodox church. That's one of the things I appreciate about the orthodox church. That I don't appreciate about the protestant church is is is that somehow we had to to abandon everything that was orthodox, but the truth of the matter is the the christians are still alive.
Speaker 2:They're not dead either yeah and and, and you don't pray for them for to them, for salvation, but you can ask them to pray for you and I like. I like that, that concept of of being able to pray and asking them. You know, or even thanking them for their example, that they were faithful to the end and that you know God works through them and is still working through them because of their writings, and you can still pray to them and ask them to pray for you. I think it's important for us to have that sense that the spiritual world is real and you're not making an idol out of them. You're asking for their assistance and so that's part of our corporate prayer. They're part of our corporate prayer. They're part of our corporate, they're part and parcel of the kingdom of God and they're still there, and we, the Protestant church, basically ignore the fact that they're still there. That's just sad, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway, confined by time, space and matter, so it's kind of transcendent. You can, you can go, you know, in this life, up down, left, right, backwards, forwards, but in and out, uh is the spiritual element of what you're saying. And so that um and you look at the story of when Jesus and the transfiguration, he was up on this mountaintop and there was these people who are already gone, who are up there ministering to him and with him, and and one thing I mean this is something I've practiced for a little while, but when I was in germany, what I would do is I had a wall in my office, wherever I was working, whatever, but I put faces of people. So some of them were people from my personal life, but then some of them were people who I just looked up, so like johnny cash or, or, or, um know, you know, brennan Manning, or different ministers, you know Western picture of Jesus, basically there. But there's these people up there and and I would in that, like the secret place that we talked about going into, like your prayer closet, there were times where there's a book I read a really, really powerful book called the secret place, but basically this guy went through his mind's eye, create this, like it was like a lakeside cabin and there was a chair in there. Every time he would go back, jesus was building this place. It was like jesus would like add to it and do all this stuff and jesus would meet him there.
Speaker 1:And then he got super freaked out. This guy he wasn't praying for this, wasn't looking for this, but then I think abraham lincoln or somebody was there, some random person was there and began talking to him. He's like, oh no, this is demonic, I can't commune with the dead. Blah, blah, blah. And then he, like the holy spirit was like kind of convicting him about sections in scripture where this does it happen? And to your point, like, um, yeah, there, that consciousness doesn't just stop when we die. You know we're, we don't, we're not, we don't have a spirit. You are a spirit and you have a body and that spirit goes on. That spirit's eternal and it can pass in and out of dimensions and we see that in these, in these texts and scripture. So it's something that I tentatively like practice.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, when you talk about like prayer and fasting, I have like big problems like, okay, like holy spirit, spirit, like you can minister what you want to minister. And then I have like a kind of in my mind's eye, this like King Arthur's round table, and then I would have people sitting at that table, whoever I thought had like competency and who had dealt with that or struggled with that, and like what do you think? And I would kind of weigh in. I wasn't taking the specific guidance of one person, but I would just write out what people said, like sometimes a worst case scenario, you know, when you do something like that, it's a, you just have a good laugh, you're like that was kind of silly, you know, whatever. But I would like invite god, like and and those you know, saints and people, as in that kind of platform. But one thing I wanted to like kind of touch on that you just mentioned, like not to circle back, is like you know, you had this, um, when you mentioned in the in the ministry, like high risk ministry, and you have this list of people you need to forgive and you're at the top of the list, um, and then you, you know your mom was under like what would you say to people?
Speaker 1:Because I know people who have like really estranged, uh, relationships with their parents and and and, to the point where you know they're trying. The Bible talks about honoring your parents. They're trying to love their parents well, but the relationship is quite toxic. Communication is just a non-starter. There's no boundaries that can be set, like it just basically it's like if we're going to have a relationship, it's just me accepting you're going to treat me however you want to treat me, and it's always going to be hurtful and damaging, um, in that sense. But like how? I mean what you know as a pastor, what would your kind of you know? Obviously this is totally subjective to the situation, individual. But what would be your kind of words to that person of they're trying to keep the door open, um, and not set themselves up to be just you know hurt and and whatever, but like also honoring their parents and stuff?
Speaker 2:like what would you say to someone dealing with something like like that well, honoring, honoring your parents has an awful lot to do with honoring god, and and so the first, the first place that you need to make sure is that you and God are that God, that Jesus has possessed you and that you are following his will, and, regardless of how that fleshes itself out in any of the relationships that you have, that's the most important relationship you're ever going to have. And and uh, you know, if, if you know, jesus said it kind of succinctly, you know when he, when they asked him about, uh, who his mother was, and and uh, jesus said those who do the will of my father are my mother and brother and sister. So so, uh, that relationship if, if you're doing that and that relationship is is still tenuous or difficult, or maybe even what you consider to be impossible, uh, sometimes you do need to separate yourself, uh, for peace of mind and heart, but the door can still be open and prayer, like I said, is the lifeblood of who you are, and you can continue to pray for that and and talk to God about that and lament Lamenting is a part of prayer. If you read the Psalms, a lot of the Psalms are lamenting Psalms, but they're prayers to God, it's okay to complain about your situation and lament. Lament over the fact that you and your parents don't get along. Lament over the fact that you and your parents don't get along. Lament over the fact that they don't see things the way you see them. Uh, lament over all of that, you know. Share it with God. And and and and be. You know, be lamenting. Don't. Don't have a flowery, uh picture you want to paint before God. God already knows you're pissed off. So.
Speaker 2:So you need, you need to be honest with God, and I've had screaming uh times with God when I was so angry, uh, and I had to be off in the woods someplace because if somebody would hurt me they thought I was nuts, um, but you know, god understands all that. God's big enough he can take it. And and how serious are you? You have to have feeling in order. If you, if you've lost all of feeling at all for your parents and you are, basically you don't have any feeling whatsoever, and and and that's the worst place to be. It's worse than being angry. It's worse than than feeling rejected. It's worse than to get to the place where you don't have any feelings at all. That's the worst place.
Speaker 2:So, thank God, you're still frustrated with the situation. Thank God, you still want your love for them and their love for you to be real. Thank God for that and at the same time, ask God to intervene. And it may or may not happen. I mean, that's totally up to them. They have free will. They have their own responsibility for their own spiritual walk with God.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it gets to the place, like you, you know, your parents pass away and there's no way you don't have the opportunity to even know who your parents are, or you don't have the opportunity to say goodbye, or you don't have the opportunity to to uh, uh, make, make amends, uh. So, basically, what happens is the relationship. If it's, if it's bad, if it's a bad relationship and it doesn't seem possible, that becomes another brick that you're carrying around that's heavier than what you should be carrying. It's just another one of those bricks that that uh become a huge burden for you and you need to take that brick and hand it over to god because it's not going to get fixed. You're not going to fix it and you know in your heart you're not going to fix it. If it's going to be fixed, then it's got to be god's business, not yours. And and so, uh, allow yourself the freedom of, of just giving that burden to him, not necessarily given, given up on your parents or given up on the relationship, but giving the burden of it to him. Allow him to work his. You know, when you, when you give something to god, you don't take it back. You give it to him and expect him to work it out however he sees fit and however that fleshes itself out at that point is not on you.
Speaker 2:Okay, and and and so, and it's difficult if it never happens. It it is. It is hard. It's just like any kind of grief uh, it's, it's, it's hard to get past, but you got to go through it. And and again, you can lament to god and get and and god will help you heal. Um, yeah, life life is hard, especially if, if, uh, if your family is not godly, life life is difficult. And even if it is godly, even if your parents are godly people, sometimes they can be so conservative or so liberal that that, uh, there's no, uh, there's no having a conversation with them, uh, but yet, in most cases, uh, they were there to give you food and shelter and and all those things that you needed and provided for you. So there's a lot to be thankful for in that.
Speaker 2:In other cases, it is that sense of abandonment that you have, that sense of rejection, that sense of you never stacked up, you never are going to amount to anything kind of attitude that you receive from from those kinds of parents.
Speaker 2:Then then you need to ask God to heal you of that lie that the devil has been using them to put in your heart and and, uh, it takes a while to get past, to get past that kind of insecurity, that that uh, uh, but it's like, it's like. You know, I tell people that I, that I was an addict and an alcoholic and and I, you know, it's been 50 years since I've had, you know, alcohol or smoked a cigarette or took drugs, and it's been 50 years. Can you, you know, if you talk to addicts and you tell them that they have a hard time wrapping their brain around that, how is that possible? It's the same way with any of the other problems that we face as human beings, you know. It is the same way with any of the other problems that we face. So you have to allow yourself to get out of the way and let God do God's business. It always comes down to surrender. It always comes down to His will, not your will. And for us in America that's a hard pill to swallow.
Speaker 1:And you know, for us in America that's a hard pill to swallow. Yeah, yeah, I mean most Americans if they went to Europe and experienced customer service or waiting at a restaurant, they'd be pretty jarred by it, because it's just very, very, very different. You're not the center of the world and I don't care about your problems and that broke, that's not problem, you know kind of thing. But yeah, I think, like when you were sharing about you know one thing that kind of popped up when you're talking, was I thinking about my, my dad. So my dad, you know, committed suicide when I was three and you know, processing that, like a lot of what you described.
Speaker 1:Like in the stream of christian, some of the streams of Christianity I've been in, they would call that the orphan spirit and it's the spirit of feeling abandoned, feeling rejection, whatever. And you know, when Paul talks about we received the spirit of adoption, we testify as our spirit, we cry out of fault. So they would say, like the antithesis of sonship would be the orphan spirit and this is an identity crisis that we all will have to, you know, get through and reconcile with the father heart of God, etc. So you know when, when I was processing the death of my parents as a child, I basically just shut down. I went into a kind of like post-traumatic stress fight or flight thing, shut down, and then I thought that it was dealt with because I shut down and I went through life and then when I had this like encounter with Jesus, it kind of came up again and I was actually delivered of a lot of the self-hatred and that abandonment, rejection aspect of it. But in terms of process, like the weight of it, of what it actually meant, didn't hit me until the day that my daughter was born.
Speaker 1:And so, like I'm on this, I'm in the hospital room, very strenuous, long, stressful kind of labor. She's there. We didn't find out the sex of the baby beforehand. We wanted to be surprised. So you know, I'm at the nursing station, like they take the baby and the nurse is cleaning it off and I'm just sitting there Feels like gravity's left the room. I'm kind of floating. All these kinds of emotions are happening. I don't even check to see what the sex of the baby is. The nurse eventually just said, oh, you have a daughter now. And I was like oh yeah, I didn't think so. It's like 40 minutes after the birth, my wife's like, what is it? Is it a boy or a girl? Yeah, it's a girl, and so I'm there, like in the moment. It's a very nice moment.
Speaker 1:Well then, out of nowhere, this thought, this anger comes up. It's just like rage out of nowhere, and it was. It was rage at my and my father for not being there and I like I never felt this before, like about like, and then it was like a flood of like. Every birthday, every event, like everything I'd accomplished in my life was not there. You chose that you yourself murdered yourself, you exited the world. You weren't there and I was like, why is this coming up?
Speaker 1:Like I dealt with this already, I dealt with this already and um, and it was like a really like weird, provocative thing. I didn't feel it towards my mother. There's something about this kind of special. It sounds bad. I don't want to sound sexist, but there's kind of a special grace on women to like be broken or make mistakes or things that I have. But there's some expectation of men I guess I have more, so, um, not probably my own brokenness of expectation to have it together or or or at least admit like where you're, where you're wrong, or doing something wrong and make strides to try to change it, even if you can, can't, I don't know. But that was that.
Speaker 1:That was a weird process to go into because I did what we talked about a moment ago. I had to through visualization and my, my dad and me looked the same, like people like oh my gosh, you look like his twin, we look like the same person, but I never met this person. So and then people say personality traits oh, you're just like him, so it's, it's, it's a real. It's like lemon juice in a wound. When someone's telling you you look like somebody who you never met, who was supposed to be there. You act like somebody who you never met. You have the same sense of humor or something. So I have to basically, through the mind's eye, have this dialogue and then release it.
Speaker 1:And for me, there was a story that I heard once about forgiveness and they talked about in ancient Egyptian Egypt. If you would kill somebody, you murder somebody. What they would do is they would put the person who you murdered on your back and they would tie them tightly to you with a rope and what would happen is, after you walk around some days, uh, obviously you're ostracized from society because you have a dead body. But after you walk around for some time, the body will start to decompose. As it decomposes, that it's going to leach into your body and actually the infection and the bacteria and stuff is going to start killing you. And they were talking about when you you, you know Jesus talks about.
Speaker 1:You know, if you have anger and these things in your heart, it's basically like you're murdering this person, and so I think there's kind of a parallel drawn there. You said it's a brick, but we're also carrying that person because it's just poisoning, poisoning us, it's poisoning the well, at the end of the day I said, well, I don don't want that, but this is still like super painful, and so it was sometimes a. You know, emotions are quite tricky because your endocrine system, your emotions, like they kind of your flesh, kind of uh, it's just not a good compass and but you'll, you'll feel like, logically, I've processed through this, but not really you. You can, your brain can tell you that, but it's somewhere deep inside there's some belief system, something's still hanging on, something that that hasn't been, you know, tapped into. So I identify a lot with what you said there. Um, I have another question about forgiveness, but I'll get.
Speaker 2:I'll make space for you because when we, when we, when we're in prison, uh what? I tell the guys in there that for them in particular, I mean those guys know very little about genuine love, and so what? I tell them that forgiveness is a matter of life and death for you, more than a lot of other people, people. And because if you don't deal with this and are able to forgive someone, then you're going to be right back in here, even if you do get out, and if you're going to be here for the rest of your life. It's going to be very, extremely difficult. It's going to be a harder amount of time that you're going to be spending. So, and I tell them, if you can't forgive them today, take a first step. Help me, lord, to forgive them a little bit today. Let me take the first step toward forgiveness. I don't want to just turn my back and walk in the opposite direction with more pain. Let me take one step closer to healing. Let me take one step closer to being whole again inside. Let me take one step closer to you, lord, in this forgiveness process. Help me, lord, to forgive just a little bit more today.
Speaker 2:And so that's helped a lot of those guys because you know, just say I forgive you when, when in your heart it's it's really not there, uh is, is uh hypocritical. So, uh, and you know it. And so, uh, you know I, I I never have come to uh know God is good at it. I'm not and I'm not God. Okay, so so it it for us. It takes a process and it's a. It's a something that you have to work on every day.
Speaker 1:There's somebody who I listened to once and said it like. This is basically we want instantaneous freedom. It's like from my ankles to my neck I'm wrapped up in chains and it's like so heavy I can't move and we want the changes to break and like have this, you know, transfigurational kind of experience and walk out of it. But what realistically often happens especially things like this when it's to our parents and and like there's a lifelong process of kind of unpacking that and different things come up is it's basically like somebody is pulling the chain and so you, you do a loop and and you still have all the rest of the chains, but you're just one layer lighter and then you go one layer lighter and one layer lighter and you have to you accept that process and embrace the process and fall in love with process. Because if you want, if you're stuck in wanting instantaneous things and like, basically God is a lottery machine or slot machine where I pull the lever and hit the jackpot every time, you're going to live a very disappointed life or self or be delus, uh, in that sense, self, self-deceiving yourself. You know, oh yeah, I forgave that person, but like and I know some people like that, they're like they went through very hard divorces and things like I've totally forgiven them. But if you just talk a little bit about family, you, you have forgave that person, you're still, you're still pretty upset, you're still pretty mad and not saying here but, um, I guess, like what, what? I would like to ask you and we kind of wrap up because I want to be respectful of your time, but you mentioned, like, when you have this list, um, of forgiving people, you're, you're at the top of the list and you, you know, for some people maybe that's a little bit jarring Somebody like yourself we could from the outside observe oh, it's Jim Kelly.
Speaker 1:His life has radically changed. You know. Yes, of course it's the grace of God, but Jim is like, partnered with the grace of God, changes life, pastor, changing people's lives, like Michael Persley and numerous other people in churches, and, like you know, wants to serve Jesus. He has to forgive himself. Like. For me, this is an ongoing thing for me, obviously for completely different reasons, but I still, in this phase of my life, have some elements of like, resentment towards myself. But I'm just kind of curious for you, like, however, you want to share, but like A like, what do you feel like when you write that down, like what are the things you feel like you still need to forgive yourself for? And then what does that actually look like practically for somebody who wants to walk that out for yourself versus like other people? If there is a difference other people.
Speaker 2:If there is a difference for you, well, for me, for me, uh, the early, the earlier hurts in my life are the ones that seem to be more powerful. And and there are people in my life, early on in my life, that hurt me, uh, like being molested as a child, or or, um, uh, somebody beat the crap out of you. So so for me, those people are still somewhat on my list, but for the most part I have gotten. I mean, I don't want to brag or anything is you know, tomorrow I'll probably have a another episode, but but you know, for me those are the ones that hurt probably the most. And and then, if you've gone through something traumatic experience, like I've never experienced divorce. I've been with the same woman for over 45 years now and and so so I haven't experienced that. And talking to somebody that's gone, that's going through a divorce A lot of times, well, have so. So I, I haven't experienced that. And talking to somebody that's gone that's going through a divorce A lot of times, well, have you gone through divorce? They want to know if I'm speaking from an experience, um, well, my experience is is working hard not to allow that to happen.
Speaker 2:So, um, you know, the forgiveness part for me, uh, me is always a continuous thing, and I'm not exactly when it comes to me forgiving me. That has to do with how much power I have given those individuals over my life. Still, those individuals over my life, still the hatreds that I have based upon, the hurts in my life, when they rear their ugly head and I realize, because of my honesty with myself, where they come from, I need to forgive myself because they still have power in my life. The only one that's supposed to have power in my life is Jesus, and so that's a sign to me that I haven't completely surrendered to him and allowed him to give me the grace to get past it and and and so, uh, and I haven't fully let him go as much as I thought I had, and and and. So it's.
Speaker 2:It's not necessarily a uh, it's a disappointment in self. It's a disappointment in self. It's a disappointment that that there's some something in me that allows or feeds off of that anger, that that that same record that's being played in my head. They used to play in my head more than it does now, but, you know, all of a sudden I tap into that, that record, I put it on the turntable and I, I, I start the record and, and and it's. It's an old story, and I think about all the things I could have or should have done, instead of what actually happened, and in my subconscious, I'm trying to fix what happened. And it can't be fixed, and I'm not guilty of what happened to me. I'm guilty of what I've allowed that to do to me. That's why I need to forgive myself. Yeah, and they're doing those. There's stupidity in me as well. Still, and and sometimes you know, I do something stupid, I sin, I say something I'm not supposed to. Yeah, that those moments are are there as well, but not as deep as as the others.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, and that's like a like a pretty significant torture device that we have kind of in ourselves of when we're trying to reconcile the past or change the past, or like like playing through these mental gymnastics of what I should have done, what I shouldn't have done, what I just said. So I mean, I've, I'm, I'm like you, me. What was what was hard before was people would look at me like oh, this is super loving, joyful kind of guy. And then, when I told you, when I went into that cheese factory time, I was like just to be completely transparent I was. I was like very angry, very vindictive, where I'm like contemplating should I burn somebody's house down? Should I like go, like you know, let's, let's, let me go beat the teeth out of someone's head? And like in my mind, like obviously I know I'm not going to doing that stuff, but I'm just like kind of gratifying myself like well, that's what I should do, though I should go and like then I'll make.
Speaker 1:And and one thing that was hard for me like to, when I heard it, they said they're talking about like superheroes and comics and stuff. They said the villain, the superhero have the exact same backstory like there's, you, look at they live the exact same backstory. But the superhero, uh, looks at the, at what happened, and said, because of all this pain and because of what I experienced, I'm going to not let that affect other people. I'm going to try to save other people and I'm going to like transcend that. The villain is like the world has hurt me. Now I'm going to hurt the world. I'm going to, like you know, broke people or hurt people, hurt people, that that whole thing. So when I heard that's like, oh man, like I don't want to be a, I don't want be a villain, even if it's just in my own mind, you know, like it'll poison me, but yeah, I can. I totally identify with that and just disappointment.
Speaker 2:Part of our problem is we feed that evil spirit within us. And it's fleshy, and and and and it's, it's, it's. You can't, it's like you can't take your flesh off, you can't you get rid of yourself until you're in heaven, of course, but it it, this, this dying carcass that we, that we carry around with us?
Speaker 2:uh, the mind has a really good memory, but at the same time, that mind can be worked yeah and and and how we see things may not be exactly what exactly happened when it happened, but it but over a period of long period of time, especially if you, if you've held on to it and cuddled it and it becomes your friend and it becomes so much a part of your life that that when you're trying to go to sleep you're thinking about doing evil things to that person and that gives you comfort so you can fall asleep. You know there's a there's a whole series of of of things that needs to be healed inside of our hearts, and Jesus is there to take those burdens from us. And it does take time, it does take discipline. And your prayer, personal prayer, is so important. But corporate prayer have a prayer partner, somebody, somebody you can pray with and share deep things with, and hatreds with, and temptations with, and and and somebody that that has their best your, your, your, your heart at, at the heart of their interest for you. And to have somebody that you can trust to pray with you. And corporate prayer is so important because if we're not praying together, if we're not having that ignition button pushed as a community, the church doesn't function like it's supposed to, like we see it today like we see it today.
Speaker 2:When I was in college, you know, I was basically a new Christian. When I first went to college, at 18, I was converted. I went to college, which was a miracle in and of itself. I went into college on probation because when I was in high school I was high all the time. So, um, but I prayed to God and I, I said, lord, I don't have any friends. And so I went to a fellowship meeting and, and they were all church going people in the at the meeting, and, and none of them came from the background that I came from. And so you know, lord, I don't have anybody that I can relate to. And God said to me make some. And so I went about making friends with people that were not churchgoers, weren't even Christians, with people that were not churchgoers, weren't even christians. They, they became christians and and and uh. So when I first started college, there was, there was uh like 10 or 11 of us coming to the fellowship meetings, and, and so, uh, by the end of my graduation from college, 10 of the student body was coming to the fellowship meetings, 10% of a college, including professors, 10%. So it wasn't me that did that. You see, god did that.
Speaker 2:I can't take credit for any of it, god, I'm, I can't be the leader of this group. I don't have it in me. I'm a. I'm a drug addict, a street person. I don't have the ability, I don't have the arc. Are the command of the english language? Yet I don't. I can't hardly even read.
Speaker 2:And here I am in college. How am I supposed to lead these people? God told me, don't you worry about it, I'll do it, you just trust me. How perfect is that? I didn't have to do hardly anything except share the love of Jesus with people. That's all I had to do. That was my only job. And try to pass classes. So you know, god was the one who did the miracle. I was just along for the ride. It was a good ride, I enjoyed every bit of it.
Speaker 2:And then, when I got out of college, I realized the church does not operate the same way we operated in college. It just it's so institutionalized and so dead spiritually that it's forgotten about allowing God to take control. It's forgotten about seeing the miraculous love of Jesus transform people's lives. And we're about the budget, the uh. Does the janitor do his job or her job? Does you know, we have a food pantry and we're having a difficult time finding people to uh work at the food pantry. Uh, it just it's a never-ending thing in a church location where.
Speaker 2:But if it's not prayerful, if it is not breathed with the holy spirit and if jesus doesn't possess it, then it's just going to be hard, rote kind of work that doesn't have any passion and it's sad, it's truly sad. You know, jesus had this when he saw the multitudes. He had this compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. The Greek word basically means in that he had a soul-heaving sadness for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. When I look at this country right now, I have a soul-heaving sadness because we are like sheep without our shepherd and we need him so badly. If the remnant, if my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and turn from them, from their wicked ways, repent, I will come into them.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, it's written all over scripture, every single thing that happens. We cannot do this on our own, our personal life, our corporate life. It can't be done on our own. We need god's spirit to make it happen and in order for that to happen. We have to die, we have to get out of the way. I ran it again, I'm sorry, yeah it's good.
Speaker 1:It's good, I think, um, you know the observation I made in, obviously, germany is its its own thing. Uh, it's its own monster and in Europe and all the history that they have and, and, um, you know, cultural shapers they have there. But what was jarring for me is there's a hype I'm speaking specifically about the reach I can't say all of germany, germany's big country, you know, 80, 82 million, 84 million people. Okay, so I'm I'm specifically talking about the south and the alps, bavaria, when I say germany.
Speaker 1:There was a hyper fixation there on events, the kind of idea like, if you build it, they will come, that kind of thing. And so they wanted to do conferences and events and bring in all these big name speakers from America who were popular ministers in America, who had book deals and like this kind of thing, and then, like, the people who were there would try to imitate them so that they could build up some kind of ministry and, you know, want to take a picture so they could post on social media. And there's just this hyper fixation on events. And if we do the event, you know the stage design, the right speakers and stuff, and you know my baseline always is coming back to like do you know the father? Like do you have a relationship with Jesus? Do you know his voice? Jesus said my sheep will know my voice. Like that, that's point blank one, you know let's. Let's start there. Like do we know jesus? Because there's like tons of people who are volunteering to do these, like events and things, but it was just like lost in the fog in that sense. And then the other. But what was unique there with the germans is they, their culture and I'm using a broad, stroking statement here. It's not a very intimate driven culture, it's not it's it's it's performance and objective base. That's why they're some of the best engineers in the world, that's why they, they they're good at what they're good at, but relationship is not a priority as much as your career, like those kind of things, and so a relationship with God is basically where can I fit you in to what I'm doing?
Speaker 1:I've heard what's very common in Germany is people will marry someone only after living with them for eight years, only after even having kids sometimes, and they're like I met people with three kids. I'm like you guys going to get married, that's a big commitment, man. I'm like you have three kids. If I married somebody with no kids and we got divorced. Hypothetically I could just move on with my life. There's some like things I have to process through. But if I have a child with anyone, it's like I'm tethered to that person for the rest of my existence. You know, because I have to deal with them and whoever they end up with, I was like that's a nightmare for me. So they were just like, oh, it's a big commitment marriage.
Speaker 1:But I heard a German say to they they, their perspective is, I have my life, my spouse has their life and there's an overlap of 20. So yeah, and that's how they view it right. So that's kind of blood over. How do we do relationships is like that's how it is with with god, that's how it is with people and that's why I see like revival not not really this, and again it's a broad stroking statement.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of other moving pieces to this, but that's why I believe like revival, with the kind of damn holding back revival in Europe, specifically in this region, is that there's no desire for a relationship like authentic relationship. Also, because the things that you're mentioning they're in a socialist country. There's so much oppression from the government like you, people are paying nearly half their salary in some instances for taxes and social fees, that they have individualism, but it's like, basically, my house is my castle, so out in society I'm not trying to be super expressive or stand out, but like my house is my castle and like the, the small amount of control that I have, I will. I will claw on teeth and fight for that. And so there's a lot of resistance to the idea of dying like sacrifice, or dying to yourself or not not pursuing the things that you, you want to do. So obviously there's people who do.
Speaker 2:I'm using a broad-shortening statement, but that's kind of the bottleneck there In America, we're the most fatherless country in the world. There's more fatherlessness in the United States than there is any country in the world. Wrap your brain around that and now look at the condition that the United States is in culturally. Those two things go hand in hand and that relationship thing is so important. To be a pastor today is extremely difficult. There are so many burdens placed upon pastors, not only the local church burdens, but societal burdens, and that's why. That's why, uh, we're right up there with air traffic controllers in terms of leaving the job that you're in. The success rate in clergy is like one in every 10 will last long enough to retire as a pastor, as a pastor. So the burden, the burden that you're talking about in terms of what's going on in Germany, is also a burden here in terms of, of, of commitment and marriage, and you know, marriage is what really holds a nation together and if it, if it dies which is it pretty much is is is gone. It's like one out of every four children. Now one fourth of the children's population in the United States is fatherless. Um, or eight, what is it? One, two, two out. I'm sorry, it was 80 percent of the children had had fathers. You know two, you know 20 didn't, but now it's.
Speaker 2:It's, uh, completely different and the marriage unit here in this country is a crapshoot. I don't know. Some of these kids have three, four, five parents, and you add grandparents to all that and all the kids that are involved in each of those relationships. It's it's, and as much as we move around and aren't even near family, it is. It is extremely hard to hold the unit together. It really is, especially if you're not grounded in your faith or in a community that's supportive. It's really really hard. It's really really hard, and that's why God ordained marriage. So just saying yeah down.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot of pressure with the structure in western culture on how families even should be uh, again, broad, broad stroking statement. But you know, if I look at you know country like, for example, italy they live multi-generationally a lot of times. So grandma and grandpa will live with you know the son and daughter-in-law or daughter, and you know daughter and son-in-law and then even sometimes siblings will live. They all will buy a house and they'll live together and some of those kind of scenarios. So obviously you have a kind of support structure and infrastructure already kind of built in of like in terms of like financially. How does this work? And it's less pressure because you don't need to have six washing machines. You have one washing machine that you guys can split. You don't need to have six cars, you have a couple of cars that you split, right. So the economical pressures are kind of alleviated.
Speaker 1:But then you automatically like what most people you know, if you look online and forums of what people are struggling with, like mental illness is like at an all-time high and people feel lonely, like they talk about loneliness, and so we're more connected than we ever be. But people need people physically, people around them, not just online where we jump on a video call but people around them to like, touch them, hug them, talk to them, and then, as well, if you have the component like, if, if you don't know God, there's always going to be a God sized hole in your, in your being, the innermost parts of your being. There's nothing that's a black hole that nothing else will fill. So, even with that like in place, you have a relationship with Jesus. There's, we are wired to be in relationship with people. For all the things that we've talked about this whole conversation.
Speaker 1:You know to be in relationship with people for all the things that we've talked about this whole conversation. You know to be able to do those together. So it's something that I, you know, I can understand now, looking back to when they wanted to build these hippie communes and why they wanted to build those communes, I understand. Now I'm like, because in my mind I'm like let's just go on a street with a cul-de-sac, buy all the houses on the end of the cul-de-sac, connect our backyards, let's all go into business together. Just, you know, open up the fences and are we eating at your house, your house, tonight? That kind of like thing in my mind. I'm like oh, this is very much like a hippie commune, like what I have in my mind is buying land.
Speaker 2:The early church was kind of like that too. They pulled all their money together, it says they gave their money and their property to the disciples, and then they used it communally to take care of the elderly and the weak. So it's communism and capitalism are at odds with each other. Communism is a lot like Christianity in a communal sense, but what happens with communism is the breakdown when it comes to people who are elite and people who aren't, and so, uh, and and what. What happens from there on is they become servants, and the elite people just reap the benefits of their servanthood, and so that's really not communism, that that is fascism.
Speaker 2:And uh, that you know it, it transforms itself automatically into ugliness, and so, but, but what? What they leave out of that paradigm is god, when, when jesus is the one giving the power and he's getting all the honor and glory. What you're talking about? Getting everybody together, uh, and and, and doing business together and having holding all things in common. That's a biblical model, but god is at the center of it, jesus is is the one empowering it.
Speaker 1:As long as it stays that way, then that whole, that, that whole scenario works um yeah, I think to some degree socialism, like the idea of socialism or communist, I don't want to say like this kind of communal living, it all can't can make sense on a local level of governance in a small pool of people, where people have the relationship with the understanding of where's this money coming from. We have oversight over people. When you, when it becomes this thing of like money just gets poured into this bucket and then these individuals who we don't know have any relationship get to dell out who gets that money, and then people are incentivized to think that this bucket is bottomless and I'm just going to take it and there's no consequences for me abusing it. Then it all yeah, again, like it all kind of falls falls apart there. Cause if, if me and Jim are next door neighbors and and you know, jim falls, hurts his back, whatever can work. It's like, yeah, of course I'll make sure, like you and Mary take care of and you know we're going to bring you food and stuff. But then I see like you're out playing basketball and, uh, you know everything, but it's been six months since you had a job. It's like a big question mark, like what are you doing? What are you doing like, uh, and so I think that that's, that's like the, the big disconnect as well. And I I, you know I lived in a socialist country, uh, germany. You, obviously you have to inject elements of capitalism to get the economy to moving. But I mean I just not to throw anybody in the bus, but I had a really good friend of mine. I love this guy to death, like like he's. He's really good guy. We hung out, we grow a lot together. Super funny guy.
Speaker 1:He also worked in a factory and, uh, basically, you know, if the weather was good and he wanted to go fish, you just call in sick. You have no limit on sick days there. The government pays part of it and your job pays part of it. They don't want people coming to work if they have the flu or stomach virus and get other people sick. He's just like what are you doing today?
Speaker 1:He's like, oh, I called off sick. I'm like, oh, are you okay? He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm just going fishing. Oh, I called off sick. I'm like, oh, are you okay? He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm just going fishing. But he did it like a lot, like a lot of lot and and and and. Um, he worked hard, like he worked a lot. He had like three jobs, basically that he's working. But you know, when you incentivize people with a system like we're, we're just self-seeking people at the end of the day if we're not like guided by anything else besides what we want well, and capitalism is based on greed as well, and, and, and, so you can always count on greed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why capitalism works so well, and uh it, the systems work, but if you don't interject the Lord in the middle of those systems, anything can become abused.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Those systems can become abusive and ingrown and diseased, and so, yeah, I don't have the answers to all of it. The only answer I have is Jesus.
Speaker 1:What would be and this is kind of a loaded question but outside of this element of prayer and that being breathing and that being really the lifeblood of the Christian life, but even corporately, like what church should be?
Speaker 1:What would you say to people who are Christians now, who maybe they're like my age or a little bit older, but, um, they, they love Jesus, they want to follow Jesus, but they find themselves, um, you know, kind of jaded or disenchanted with the institution of church because it's just like this machine that perpetuates itself, even because it's just like this machine that perpetuates itself, even though it's not really moving in the direction that god's leading or whatever. Um, and then you know they, they have families or they, they, so they're trying to like steward faith, they're trying to steward this relationship with jesus, but they want to like be doing life with other christians. Like, what would you? Yeah, what would you? How would you encourage them or counsel them? Or what would you kind, what would you? How would you encourage them or counsel them, or what would you kind of say to someone in that situation?
Speaker 2:basically the same thing I would have given you, and that is freedom. Um, there is. There is a thing in terms of a relationship with God that produces this kind of freedom to think for yourself, to explore your faith for yourself and basically the priorities that you set based upon what you discover about God, is important. If you're not really seeking God's face, you're allowing something else to run your life. Most of the young people I see today are run by sports and all sorts of other things that take up basically their entire life with their kids. It's not that those sports in and of themselves are bad, but those things are not biblically or spiritually conducive to spiritual growth. Yes, it teaches the kids how to work as a team and that they're not the only person that produces success. It's their good learning tools.
Speaker 2:But how many of those kids are going to be professionals? Uh, they have such high hopes that their kid is going to be the greatest thing in the world, and then when they're not, what's? What do you do? What does the kid do then? Um, so so we we put an awful lot of pressure on ourselves to get our kids from one thing to another thing, to another thing, to another thing, and what we don't do in front of them is I keep going back to it what we don't do in front of them is prayer, praying with your wife. Let the kids see you praying with your wife. Pray with them. Let them see you praying with your wife. Pray with them. Let them see you praying by yourself. When you take them to church, let them see you going up to the altar and praying. They need to be able to see a spiritual person, otherwise you're robbing them of their spiritual heritage in the Lord, and what I would suggest was get your priorities where they need to be.
Speaker 2:Seriously, we're so affected by the culture around us that we and if I was in a church and the church is still operating out of this deadness, instead of me asking what can the church give me, ask what can I give the church john kennedy reference uh, but I, I, I, uh, I think that that we, we shop around for the church yeah but the truth of the matter is, if we start being the body of christ in any church and really get others around us involved in, in fervent prayer and fasting and worship, and, and, and, and you know, even if it's in a small group, uh, and, and the pastor sees that small group grow, uh, that pastor is going to froth at the mouth and have to be led away to find out what you're doing right and they're doing wrong. The only way to influence the church is within, and you may be the spark that causes that church to have a revival. You need to realize that the church has allowed this to happen to itself. Who stopped the prayer meeting? Who stopped the prayer meeting? Stopped the prayer meeting I did because I haven't started the prayer meeting. I haven't, I haven't gone out there and, and, and, and, uh, taught people how valuable prayer is, um, so, so what I'm saying to you is that that their success as a christian and their success in the church and their success as a family all have to do with the primary priority of igniting god's spirit, the power train, starting the engine with prayer, starting the engine, and let prayer ignite the Holy Spirit who brings Jesus, and the power begins.
Speaker 2:It's not all on your shoulders to do all that, it's faith. Activate the faith. Don't just sit there and watch the church die. Allow yourself to be involved in ministry. I'm not thinking that somebody else's job is praying because I pay them to pray.
Speaker 2:You are supposed to be praying and praying for God's will to happen in the church. You be the ignition. You be the ignition, you be the spark. I don't wait around for the pastor to fix it, because the pastor's so inundated with so much stuff today they don't know where they're, whether they're coming or going, and in the united methodist church, they don't even know if they'll be here next year. So so, developing consistency within a congregation uh, spiritually is extremely, extremely important. Um, it's. It's really the only way that you can change a church's dynamic for the good. And you know if there's pastors out there watching. Unburden yourself and get on your knees, because that is primarily. What needs to be done is for you to get out of the way and let God do his work, but you've got to die first in order for that to happen.
Speaker 1:This last one. So you said you married same woman 45 years and we talk about, like America having this epidemic of fatherless homes and this epidemic of like marriages failing. So what would you say are kind of like the biggest, the biggest challenges that you guys have had and your marriage and and how did you overcome that? And what would you say is like kind of foundational pieces that you would say that this is what has made it work and how we're able to like love each other well, well, the first thing I was looking for in a spouse was somebody I could pray with.
Speaker 2:Now that may not be everybody's uh first priority going in uh, that's where I started. So I found a person that loved the lord as much as I did. I know that was your concern when you got married. That was a big concern for you and I appreciated that. I just frothed at the mouth and had to be led away with that. You brought women in front of me just to see what I thought about them and and that was that was uh extreme, extremely different compared to what other people do. Other people decide they're going to get married. Then they come to the preacher and say we're going to get married, can you do the service? And sometimes I tell them I don't think you should get married and no, I'm not going to do the service.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that goes over well.
Speaker 2:I'm sure, yeah, you're not ready for that Anyway. So so what I would? What I would say the people who are married is, first of all, like, always get your priorities straight. The biggest struggles we had was finances. Coming out of college, neither one of us had jobs, didn't have a home. You know, we, we were basically totally unprepared for reality. In some respects, I mean, I I've been prepared for reality when I was younger because I knew how to operate, but without money, but but I couldn't exactly do the same thing then, um, so, so, uh, you know, and and there was a coal strike on and we had 77 blizzard and and it was really difficult, mary almost left me. I mean it was, it was really, really hard. And if she left me, I mean it was, it was really really hard. And if she'd left me I wouldn't have blamed her. I mean it was hard. It was so cold, our, our, our, our propane would run out, and it was so cold in the trailer that the potatoes busted.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:The Wesson oil was solid. It was hard. We started out at the bottom and and poverty. We were poor, as poor gets and, and we we were doing our best to serve God in that situation and to honor him in that situation and it was God that pulled us out, got a job. I had two part-time jobs in the beginning. Both of them turned into full-time jobs, ended up, you know, paying everything off, blah, blah, blah and eventually I mean it was a long story in terms of how I got into the United Methodist Church, but it was all God. I got into the United Methodist Church but it was all God.
Speaker 2:I became a manager for Long John Silvers, which, if you're a manager of a fast food restaurant, that business basically takes over your life. It's a 24-7 job and you basically don't get away from the shop, from the restaurant at all. But we saved enough money up to go to seminary. She worked and I worked and we both saved up enough money to go to seminary. We went into seminary with some money because we knew it was going to be expensive and we went saturated in prayer and so we went through. We got into seminary. Mary got worked while I was in seminary. I worked while I was in seminary. We came out of seminary debt-free.
Speaker 2:That wasn't easy. A lot of people come out of seminary today. They're hawked up up to their eyeballs I mean, they're just you know. And. And the question that when when's asked at the annual conference is are you so indebted as to bring shame to Christ? Most of them are lying when they get up there. So the other difficulties that we have faced are communication and intimacy issues, and being able to communicate with your spouse is is so important, but nothing, nothing, um, um, makes that more graceful than praying together. Praying together, um, and not using prayer as, as a, as a club, for guilt. We're not using prayer for the wrong reasons, but asking god to bring you to, to, uh, the place of submission. Wives be submissive to their husbands, husband be submissive to your wife, um. You know some of these old sayings are true. Happy wife, happy life yeah, that is true, but happy husband is also an important thing, and uh. So if your marriage is centered in Christ, you have a wonderful chance to complete your life together with a long marriage. Today, you have a 40% chance of making it. The average person has a 40% chance of making it today, and if you go to premarital counseling, you have a 40% chance of making it today. So I would suggest you get counseling. After you're married, go to a marriage enrichment course. The Roman Catholics have a wonderful system of marriage enrichment courses. They're the best, I think, in the world at marriage enrichment, and you're not required to become roman catholic to attend their marriage enrichment courses. Uh, it will do. It'll do wonders for your marriage, um.
Speaker 2:The other thing is raising, raising kids and trying to figure out um, how in the world am I going to give this child everything it needs to to have a successful life after they leave home, needs to to have a successful life after they leave home, and that, too, takes a lot of prayer and a lot of patience, um, but, like I said, you set the right example in the beginning. Um, it's easier now. Your child still may go in the wrong direction. That's, that's heartbreaking, and it difficult. I have a child that has a mental issue and, and he is, he is, he's schizophrenic, and so he lives with us because he can't handle his life the way he is and and so that that's difficult. There's all kinds of difficulties that you're going to going to face, but most of them, um, are, are handled in in the basic uh special sauce of god, and and and uh uh. That special sauce is endurance.
Speaker 2:God gives you the power to do things.
Speaker 2:Can someone have a perfect marriage? Probably not. Can somebody overcome the imperfections of your marriage through the grace of God? Yes, you can, but it it is through the power of God that that I found it. Without the power of God, I wouldn't have been married to begin with, I'd have been dead, I wouldn't need to be here. So so I owe everything to the Lord, and and my marriage is one of those I asked God to show me who I was to get married to, and God showed me, literally pointed her out to me, and I tested it, though, and I've not been disappointed. Okay, I've been angry a few times, I've been very frustrated at times, but it's God that has been the center of who we are together. Without that center, I think it's a crapshoot.
Speaker 2:It depends on how dependent you are on your spouse. If God's not in the center, how dependent are you on the person that you're with? And a lot of people stay together because they're dependent on each other, not because they passionately love each other, because without the other person, they couldn't survive. I'm not exactly sure that that's really healthy, but that's that's a reason why a lot of people stay together. I think finances is the biggest reason for divorce. Whether you're rich or poor, greed can get in the way and fear can get in the way.
Speaker 2:So setting your will into motion is an important thing. From the Jewish perspective, the heart is the seat of the will. So when you say I'm asking Jesus into my heart, you're asking Jesus to take over your will. Say I'm asking Jesus into my heart, you're asking Jesus to take over your will, you set that will into motion. This is what I'm going to do, regardless, even if it kills me. This is what I'm going to do. Okay, that's setting your will into motion.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't know how to set their will into motion. They give up too easy. Things get difficult and they're ready to bail. And endurance God gives you this ability to endure and it's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy, but you can get through it regardless. If you've got God's help, there's nothing you can't endure together, as long as you get out of the way and let him do his business. As long as you get out of the way and let him do his business. Loving is not always being passionate with each other. Loving also may mean that you're angry with your spouse, but you're determined to make it. You're determined to make it. You're determined to make it better. You're determined to do whatever it takes to reconcile. And most of the time, admitting that you were wrong or that you're a part of what the problem is is very difficult, and saying you're sorry isn't good enough. But showing you're sorry is worth a million bucks.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you coming on and doing this and, uh, everything that you shared. I think there's a lot of a lot of gold there, so I, anytime someone kind of gets on a flow of thoughts, then I want to just let them. Let them, uh, finish out what they're, what they're thinking I love you, brother, I hope this conversation with jim brought some gold into your life.
Speaker 1:If his stories or his insights or anything that we discussed really touched you, I'd love to hear about it. You can connect with me on social media and share how this episode has impacted you. It would mean a lot to hear your feedback and know specifically how it's blessed you and hear your story. And if, while listening, anybody came to mind for you that you think that they benefit from Jim's wisdom, share this episode with them. Jim is truly a gift to the body of Christ. He's lived an extraordinary life. He carries a wealth of wisdom which is really needed right now Intergenerational wisdom. In times like these, we need perspectives and strength that come from people who have lived longer than us. Um, so we don't repeat history. So thank you for joining us today. I'll see you on the next one.
