#327 Josh Howerton - "In 50 Years, China Will Have More Christians Than America"

Josh Howard to welcome to the show then. All right, it's an honor, my friend. >> It's an honor to have you, it's an honor. >> So yeah, I've been, you know, my chief staff came from Dallas and she kind of put you on my radar and I was watching some of the stuff.

Like, I don't remember how you popped up, but she had made a suggestion about you coming on and I was like, he's already on the list. >> [LAUGH]

“>> So we did, I think she's a more like point member.”

>> She is, yeah, it is. >> Yeah, so that was very cool connection man. Well, and you know, it's cool to meet the people you list. I've been, yeah, I've been watching you for a minute. >> Yeah, I appreciate you.

>> Well, thank you for saying that, yes, sir. But, so yeah, we got a lot of stuff to talk about today. >> I'm am pumped. >> I'm am, hey, four guests, can I give you something? >> Yeah, I gotta give you a gift.

>> Of course. >> So, I appreciate what you've done for our country. >> This is a big deal to me. It took me a long time to find this.

Here's what this is, you may have seen this.

And here's heard of a heart shield Bible. You've heard of it? >> No, this is like, this make my sweat a little bit. So here's what this is, I want you to hold that. So that's a 1943 of heart shield Bible.

And what that is, 1943, President FDR, he partnered with, I think, the Gittians. And they handed out these little pocket new testaments to active World War II soldiers. And bro, what they did is,

here's why that thing, I don't know if the viewers can see. The front of that thing is plated brass. And the reason they did that is they designed it so that it could fit in the front pocket of an active World War II soldier.

So that it could stop a bullet. >> No way. >> And so that guy, you'll see it on the inside. But when I found that guy, there was a,

“I think an Air Force Colonel that wore that”

into active duty. And Sean honestly, man, one of the reasons I said, I don't do this, I don't travel, I don't travel. >> Yeah. >> I got kids and I'm focused.

One of the reasons I said yes it is, is just why I see God doing in Yandria. And the reason that that thing means so much to me. Dude, that's a prayer that the president wrote for those soldiers to read that book.

Wow. And the reason, I want you to have that, is man, you know, I'm in it with you. There's that thing that above all, it was sit right over a soldier's heart.

And there's that thing above all else, guard your heart from it for us to close the world, well, spring of life. And how do you guard your heart? I've hidden your word in my heart

that I might not send against you. So, there you go, man. >> Man. >> Thank you. >> That's a really cool.

>> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Wow. I thought it was pretty cool. >> Thank you.

>> This is awesome. >> Yes, sir. >> Yes, sir. >> Beautiful. >> Beautiful.

>> No. >> Why I got a president for you, but it's not that-- (laughs) >> He's not to mental.

>> Come on, man. >> Get back at gummy bears.

“>> I love going sugar, red dyes, yellow five,”

all the bad shit, but they taste amazing.

So, and there'll probably be a legal here in a couple of months. >> I mean, is there a pod in those? I need to know right now. >> No pod. >> All right, good.

>> Sorry, I can have it. >> Sorry about that, but yeah, that's good, man. >> But just candy. Just candy, all right. But let me give you an introduction here.

Pastor Josh Howarton, your senior pastor of Lake Point Church and Dallas, one of the largest churches in the country. You're known for addressing difficult issues at the intersection of faith, culture, politics, and apologetics.

You're also the host of live free podcast. You're a husband, your wife, Janna, and the father of three adopted kids. Welcome to the show. It's an honor.

It's an honor, my family. >> So before we get started, wanna pray? >> I would love to. >> You wanna lead us? >> Yeah, I would love to, man.

>> All right. >> Jesus Christ, thank you for being the sovereign and loving Lord of all the universe. And thank you that for from before the foundations of the world. You pick this moment for me to have the honor of talking

to Sean and every man and woman that'll listen to this thing. Father, I pray that you would just, you'd kiss it from heaven. There'd be an open heavens over the conversation on the Lord. You would lead us in paths of righteousness

for your namesake in a way that would be a blessing to Sean, his family, and everybody that listens. I pray that in a crucified risen name of Jesus Christ. >> Hey, man, hey, man, hey, man. >> Thank you.

All right, here we go. Let's go, man. Here we go.

So third generation pastor, correct?

That is correct. You were here, I was here, I was here to do so. My papal, Jerry Howard, and my life hero. He was kind of blue collar, Ozark, mountains, kind of kid. And grew up, became a pastor is a little rural.

I mean, I'm in all over the place. drove a truck for a little while and became a pastor. And man, I miss him. But one of the best men I've ever met. And then my dad Rick Howarden, pastor as well.

And he started a church, rubbed two sticks together, started a little church here in the spring hill, kind of around this area, the bridge church. >> Well, yeah, that's like 15 minutes south. >> That's right, man.

>> So my dad started that church. And then I had one of the greatest honors in my life to step into my dad's shoes and pass that church for about 10 years. And was there for about 10 years, Lord did a really unique thing

and then called us a Dallas. >> Right on.

“>> How did you, I'm just curious, how did Christ come into your life?”

I mean, how did you, what built your faith?

Did you just always have it?

Or was did something happen? Or, I mean, I'm a hard knocks guy. He had to slap me around a little bit, he still does it. I'm going through one right now, but you know what I mean? But I like, I don't like it in the moment.

But it, you know, it'll, it'll 180x my faith. You know, it'll be in every time it winds up happening. And to the point where it's not in faith anymore for me, it's fact. And so I'm wondering, you know, did you just, did you always have it because you grew up in it?

Or are there any specific events that really just hit you? Like, okay, all this stuff that we're talking about, it's real. >> This is for real for real. >> Man, honestly, I'd say both, you know, I'll just honor my parents. I got, I got, make my sweat a little bit.

I got good parents and they love me. And man, you know, I grew up in the 1980s, baby, but the 90s made me count thing. And, you know, growing up in the 90s, it was kind of like cool to be a pastor's kid and kind of rebel and, you know, I didn't understand that at all.

Because, like, every second of my life, I love being Rick Howard and kid, Pastor Rick's kid, loved every second of it. So whatever they had, the experience they had, I had the opposite. So I grew up, like my parents raised me, just like a word says, in the fear and

had to have medicine in the Lord, you know, I got a million memories, a mom sitting

there and, with me, I'm Bible verses growing, you know, all the stuff. But, I will say, there definitely came moments where it was like, so here's how I say it sometimes, like, what you just said is like, man, every now and then you'll go through it a little bit. And, you know, you have those moments where, you know, you kind of get knocked

flat on your back, but what you'll notice is whenever you get knocked, not flooding your back, you finally look at the right direction, kind of thing. And, you know, when I look back in my life, there were moments where it was like, oh, like, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a for real for real for real center, and he's a for real for real save your, and I need something, I don't got this, I need something a lot bigger than me.

“And so, you know, I think, probably around college, you know, I had a couple head on collisions”

with my own depravity. And I remember, I'll just, yeah, I haven't talked about this in a long time. I remember right now my journal in college, like, where, you know, do you probably got the same stuff?

I'm just like, just like, you, you're saying the same dumb sin for the million time.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, thank God I didn't journal back that, but I didn't go to college, but that age. Yeah.

Yeah. I remember. I remember journal in college, and I was reading the Gospels. And you know, I think a lot of people think Christianity is, is like a bunch of good people telling bad people how to be good.

And I, you know, it's like, you figure out real quick, that is not what this thing is. The whole thing is like, I'm not good. It's actually, you know, it's a bunch of forgiving nobody's trying to tell everybody about somebody who can save anybody, kind of thing. Yeah.

I remember being a college and sin in the same denx sin for like a million times. And I remember reading about Jesus hanging out with prostitutes and text collectors. And it was the first time, you know, I haven't talked about this. Maybe ever. It was like the first time my life or like it hit me like, oh, like, I fit right prostitutes

and thieves. I feel right. I did. And I remember journaling and going like, man, it really dawned on me today that, you know, Jesus didn't come for a good.

He came for prostitutes and murders and thieves and race traders and I remember journaling and today, I realized I fit perfectly into that category.

“And I honestly think that's usually the minute when somebody meets the real Jesus.”

Because you got to know you're a sinner to realize he's a real Savior, you know. So I had to, I had a bunch of moments like that right on.

going to become a pastor?

You know, how long have you been a pastor? You know, I started traveling around in preaching like in college. Actually, my youth pastor Jeff Carlisle, he stood me out with preaching, I was like 16 in the youth group.

“And I just, honestly, you know, you, you've probably seen the same thing.”

The difference between men that grow up and they become good men and builders and makers instead of takers and breakers kind of thing, it's usually they got other good men in their life. Like, that's literally the different, you know. And I had a bunch of good men in my life and Jeff Carlisle was one of my youth pastor.

And it was like, I was 16 and he stood me up there and he was like, hey man, I want you to, I want you to appreciate your group. I don't know what I'm going to do. And you know, I just explained a verse about a red and he grabbed me afterwards. Like, hey man, I want you know, like, when you talk, everybody, everybody listen.

There was like a little heat on that thing when you did that. And I just, people around me kept saying, hey man, we see it in high school, the guys who, who maybe weren't on the same path that I was, you know, they're a little joe. They called me rev. You know, kind of thing.

Kind of half making fun of me a little bit, maybe. But it was just something everybody kind of saw me, you know, and then there was, I couldn't imagine do anything else.

“How was your first, how was it ministering your first congregation first time?”

You know, honestly, you're not good, you know, so I was, I went up to, I went up to, it was a Mount Washington Kentucky. I was going to seminary, which from it is listening, that's like post-grad, that's like Bible's, you get a theological degree.

So I'm up there on Mount Washington Kentucky, a little rural, first Baptist Church up there,

which sweetest people ever, like best experience ever, you know, I know some people have bad experience with churches, whatever that is, I had all of the opposite, you know. And the, the, I was there for like three years and I, I grew it from like 150 students to like 120, you know, and it, honestly, it went okay, but, you know, it's one of the things like the, the Lord was with me and I was figuring it out and just like you, you

know. Yeah. Right on the, I mean, alright, let's get into some hard stuff. This is a new question. I just, I started asking, I'm going to ask everybody this question that comes on that's,

that's kind of been a position like yours. Why is Christianity the one religion that is totally acceptable to disparage? Yeah. All right.

“Can I give, let me, can I give a starting point here?”

Absolutely. I'm going to show you something. And I, I know you've seen it because it's right of there. So do you remember this little thing, this, this is going to blow your mind. You remember that little thing?

Oh, yeah. All right. So what that is? We'll put it up on screen. Yeah.

So what that is, is that is a chart of every cross reference in a Bible. So what I want to talk about, I want to give a starting point. The answer to your question is in large part because that's exactly what the Bible said was going to happen.

So here, here's what, like, I'm always going to go Bible.

Yeah. I'm done with a lot of things. I try to, I try to love the word of God. So here's what it is, 16th, it's every cross reference in the Bible where the Bible references other parts of the Bible.

There are 16,791 cross references where parts of the Bible reference other parts of the Bible. And when you look at that dude, it kind of blows your mind a little bit. Well, I just want to point this out. Did you say 16,000?

16,791 from what I understand. I thought it was 62,000. It may be six, actually, you're right, actually shown you're right. I think it's 67,000. 700.

Why did I get six? I was off by an order of magnitude. I think I do. I think it's 62,000 and some change. Okay.

Okay. It's in the 60,000s. When you look at that thing, I mean, it'll blow your mind a little bit. And if you were to see that and one person wrote a book that did that, that many cross references and dovetails at other parts of the word.

You would look at that person and you would think, that is the greatest author who has ever lived like goat. No one will, an opus and masterpiece, okay. But that book was not written by one man. It was written by over 40 men across 1500 years, across three continents, Asia, Europe,

and Africa, in three different languages, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

It has zero contradictions.

That wasn't how when I see that, like that'll make my own sweat a little bit. Because there is only one way to explain that. And that book over there, it was written down by men. But it was authored by the word of God, by God himself. So when you ask that question, the response to the question, why is it the one thing that

everybody can disparage? Well, man, like when we open the word, what we know is from Genesis 1, 2 and 3, we know immediately what Satan does after the fall mankind is he begins to wage war on the offspring that God is going to use to redeem the world. So that's the storyline of the entire Bible.

It's word versus world.

If you get forward all the way to the end, you go to the book of Revelation.

A lot of people, they get into Revelation and it's like, you know, they start reading and it's like, you know, Jesus looks like metal and his eyes are flames of fire and it's, you know, three-headed dragons, eating babies and, you know, I think people start to go, how did they drop to ask the ancient Rome, you know, kind of, what do they do? What the book of Revelation is, is this really, it's not a lot of the book of Revelation,

isn't Revelation about what's going to happen in the future. It's Revelation about what's been going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm throughout all of human history.

“That's what a lot of the book of Revelation is.”

If you get to Revelation chapter 12, you get this little vision of a dragon that represents Satan. And what it says that he does is he wages war upon the woman, which most Bible scholars go, man, that's the church, the bride of Christ, and her offspring. So man, if you're going, why is Christianity the one thing that you can disparage

is because the Bible says the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. The Bible actually calls Satan, the little G God of this world. Actually, if you want to get this kind of a little, it's really interesting, that actually in the temptation of Jesus, Satan does this thing where he comes to Jesus and he goes, "Hey, I'm going to show you all the kings of the world." And he tells him, he's like, "Hey, man,

if you'll bow down and worship me, I'll give you all of these kingdoms." Now what's really interesting is Jesus doesn't say they're not yours to give. There's like this tacit assumption throughout the entire Bible that Satan is really over all of the world's systems.

“And that's why everything in the world aligns against one thing in particular.”

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It's a good answer. In fact, actually, I'll give you an example of this. Do you know who Raymond Ibrahim is? I do not. Do you need to know that, guys?

Okay. So Raymond Ibrahim. He's alive. He is. Raymond Ibrahim.

He comes from Egyptian, Coptic, Christian family. I just had him on the free. He's like, he actually got famous around 9/11, because he's a doctorate in Arabic. He got a job at the Library of Congress, so he's back in the stacks. This is going somewhere I promise.

He's back in the stacks, so those are the books no one has access to. And he finds in Arabic transmissions from Osama bin Laden out to a bunch of, you know, terror cells,

or whatever, that have never been translated.

And then he like blows the whistle on, hey dude, here's what this guy is saying. This is what they're saying on BBC and CNN about why they're doing all this stuff. Here's what Osama bin Laden is actually saying. Man, it's, you know, it's killed the infidels and all this stuff. So he blows the whistle on, that's where Raymond Ibrahim comes to fame.

So he's on a podcast. He's like a, he's a leading scholar on intersection of Christianity Islam. Very interesting. So Ibrahim's on a pod. And off air, he tells me, he's like, hey, you know what actually pushed me to

Christianity. I started study in the world and I noticed everything aligns against this one thing. And then he gives, dude, he gives this example.

“Which I think a lot of people will wonder about this.”

The example he gives is like, have you ever noticed that progressivism and Islam,

but they always seem to be on the same team, at least in America, he's kind of seeing that.

Yeah, it's kind of, in general, kind of tends to be a thing. Which makes no sense because you kind of got, hey man, we're over here, you know, gay rights, women's rights, you know, freedom of expression progressive. And then you kind of got Islam is kind of, you know, oftentimes the opposite of those things. Well, if you start asking a question, why would this, the women's rights people kind of

align with kind of the thing that at least in many countries, hey man, the kind of, you know, they'll, they'll do something to a woman, this, not, not wear it a burka, you know, kind of, hey man, why, why are we doing, you know, we're just for Palestine, you know, that's kind of like chickens for KFC, you know, that didn't make sense. Well, the unified principle is the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Anything but Christianity and anyone but Christ and Ibrahim sees that and he's like, "Everything's aligned against one thing. There must be something to that one thing." Interesting. You know, do you know who he like reign is? I don't. He like reign is a congressman out of Arizona, he was a Navy so he's a good friend of mine. And he's a huge fan of yours, he's somehow, he must have saw the post where that's also

coming on. So he wanted, I wanted to wait till the end to ask this, but men, Eli, bad, the Israel top at back and forth, pretty consistently. And we just disagree, we have wildly different ideas of, you know, what this is and what the relationship should be and what's going on and, and, but I, you know, I respect Eli, he's a really good friend of mine. And so he wanted me to ask you about Islam and prophecy. Oh, geez. Okay. All right. Just go with it, just go for it, hit it.

All right. You already know, if you watch this, you know, we've got to some dark dark dark dark dark. Yeah, yeah, let's go. Okay. Well, quick caveat. I'm just going to start right here. I'm a pastor and what my heart beats for more than anything else is for everybody everywhere to know Jesus Christ and a love of the Father. So that's my starting point. So before I say anything, I want you, Eli, and anybody else it listens to know, I love every person that calls himself a

Muslim and I hate Islam because it destroys people and attorneys and I can do both of those things.

“I can love a person and I can hate what I believe is a demonic ideology. So let me just point”

some things out. So like, some things that are interesting to me. And let me give a quick let me

You're going to hear some things here in an in a minute, everybody. Man, there's some real dark

“stuff in a world. Like, in fact, I think a lot of the reason that you're seeing a resurgence of the”

purposes of God, I think, I think a rising hope. I think we got a chance to see something special, man. I do too. I think I think we got a chance. And I'm willing to pour my life out for it. I think part of the reason, dude, is in the era of leading up to where we're at now and I'm going to get back to what you just asked. I'm making my way there is the obviousness of darkness became so smack you in the face that people, they awakened to the reality that there was a

non-ignorable dark force in the world. And then, dude, I think what a lot of people do, especially young men, right now, is they're gone, man. If there's a darkness, there must be a light. And that light has a name and his name is Jesus Christ. I honestly think that's a lot of what's going on. Now, that does tell us what you're saying. I just want to point some things out that, you know,

“you or anybody else can think I'm going to be idiot. That's fine. I don't want to, I don't want”

to, I don't want to point some things out. All right. So, what Muslims do in general, what a lot of Muslims do is they trace their spiritual language to Ishmael. So, we're going to do, we're

going to bubble nerd out for a second and we're going to go, we're going to do some Old Testament

theology and then make our way forward. Okay, so we're going to, we're going to do a little box that I work with. So, in Old Covenant God, God makes his covenant with Abram who becomes Abraham. Okay. And he tells Abraham through you and your offspring and it's very interesting, Sean. It's very interesting. Just for, I'm, I'm a Bible guy. When it says offspring, it's singular. So, in other words, you're going to have one future offspring and through that one future offspring,

somebody out of your lineage Abraham is going to bless the entire world. Okay. How do you know it's singular? In the book of Galatians, it specifically talks about that. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul calls attention to the fact that it says offspring. So, Paul is, what I'm doing right now is I'm making the same point, the Apostle Paul makes in the New Testament. And it's so points that out. It's a singular. Okay. Now, obviously, there's nations that come out of him and

all of that stuff. But, but there's the specific promise is going to find its termination in one future offspring that I'll just pull my punch is Jesus Christ. Okay. So, that's where we start. Now, the promise and the covenant that was given to Abraham, obviously, he was going to have a child. Now, the child, he has to wait for a long time and he's waiting for the promise to happen. And he takes matters into his own hands and his wife's whole deal, his wife Sarah gives him his servant

Hagar and they have essentially a covenantally illegitimate child named Ishmael. Then later,

he and Sarah have a child named Isaac. So, here's what you got. Which he end up with because of

he and Sarah's disobedience is you have one covenant, but you have two sons. And now we got a problem. Because now we got two sons, they're going to end up fighting. And all of their offspring are going

“to end up fighting. In the spiritual realm, I believe it's connected to that over this one covenant.”

So, then what you have is you have the children of the promise who who that those are the Jewish people historically. And then you have what Muslims do is they trace their lineage to Ishmael. So, this is what the other son, the other son. Okay. Okay. So, now one covenant, two sons, now you got to think going on. Okay. You got that thing going on. Okay. Now, fast forward, in Galatians 1/8, Paul says this, he says, "But even if we are an angel from heaven." This is really important. I'm going to give you two

verses where you connect some dots. He says, "But even if we are an angel from heaven should appear to you and preach to you another gospel let him be a cursed." Bookmark that in your head. Then you got another Bible verse in the New Testament that says that what Satan does is he quote, "mascarades as an angel of light." All right. I'm a dumb rural Kentucky kid, but you start putting things together. And in the

600's, what Muhammad says happens is he, now first of all let me just say, "I'm not like some islamic

scholar. I'm doing 30,000 foot big rocks." What he says happens is he wanders in a cave and he essentially does this, he goes, "Man, man, I was in there and it's a real weird thing happened. I was in there and this angel of light appeared to me." And he started revealing to me another way to God that's different than the one that we've had. Now, I do all of a sudden, I'm going, well, last real interesting because 600 years before he's doing his thing, you got a Bible verse saying,

warning that throughout history, that an angel from heaven may appear and reveal to you another

“gospel, why? Because Jesus came and he said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody”

comes to the Father except through me." And you actually want to say this, this gets me a little trouble. You know, you may have some experience with this every now and then you'll do something the internet will get mad at you, that happens to me. And, you know, one of the things that pastors don't have to try to be controversial, they just got to read Bible verses. And one of the things that Jesus said, "Man, people, they just hate it." But, man, I didn't say this. Jesus said,

"Man, what kind of, I'd be a horror, I'd be a liar not to tell you what Jesus said."

And he said, "He was the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the Father except

through him." What he didn't say is, "I am a way, a truth, and a life, and some people come to the Father except through me, or also through me." So then you got that. So you had the birth of Islam, and it seems to me, man, like it's the fulfillment of exactly what was warned against in the scriptures.

“Now, I'll give you two other things. Jesus said, "I think it's in the gospel, John."”

He said, "The time will come and he's talking about the end." Okay. I don't know, a huge end times God, but he's talking about the end. And he says, "The time is coming when they will kill you and think they're offering service to God." Now, I think what a lot of people have done, especially in America for like the last 30, 50 years, is a lot of Christians have been like, man, we're nervous about the rise of secularism and the rise of atheism, and people are just

decenverting and apostatizing a kind of thing. But you honestly, you take that verse that Jesus said, real clearly. And what Jesus seems to be saying is it like the final boss. Like when Jesus, like right before Jesus returns, the final boss, it's not going to be atheism, it's not going to be secularism. It's going to be some other religion that believes, that killing infidels is offering service to God. Seems like that's one clear meaning what Jesus said. Now, I'll give you one other one,

and then I'll just point this out. In the book of Revelation, again, Revelation is peeling

“back of the curtain on light. Now, what's been going on in the spiritual realm throughout human history?”

One of the things that it says is, John gets this vision of all the martyrs saints, like that, all that means just Christians. So all the Christians that were martyrs, because they refused to not worship the Lamb. They were like, we're like, we're Jesus people, we're Jesus. And it doesn't just tell us they were martyred. It tells us specifically how they were martyred. And it says,

he saw the souls of those who were beheaded. Now, dude, again, I always want to take this with a

grain of salt. Like, I'm not a big, like, here's all the charts. And here's when Jesus went to all stuff. But dude, I do want to have my eyes open with my Bible in front of me. And it is interesting to me, man, that I'm aware of. There is one major world religion and one only that doesn't just specify two sometimes kill people who have a different faith in you. It specifies how. And the Quran calls it striking next is beheaded. So you got that. And then I'll do one last one. It's hard to do

for memory, but I'll do it by very best. In Islamic eschatology. So, what eschatology means is to it's two, it's two records, eschaton means less and halology means study of. So study the last. In Islamic eschatology, like the end of the world, what it says is there'll be this figure that rises up called the "modi-m-a-h-d-i." And different in the same way that in Christianity, there's like different sex of Christianity that view end-time stuff differently. And that's like

not my fastball, but, you know, is what it is. It's the same thing in Islamic eschatology. Different Muslims believe different things. But there's some really interesting things that they believe about the body. They believe that he will rise to power during global tumult. They believe that when he rises to power, he will unite the world in a one-world Islamic government. They believe that that government will be headquartered in Jerusalem. They believe that when he does it,

he will slaughter the Jews. They believe that he will usher in a seven-year peace treaty in that area. They believe that he will ride in. They believe things like this, that he will ride in on a white horse. I do that. I just want to point this out. If anybody's listening and like hair standing up on back your head, there's a little alarm bells going on. I just want to point this out. If a little alarm bells are going off your head because you read your Bible before,

Testament Antichrist. Do I know this? What's going to happen? Nope. I don't. But I do have my Bible open and I want to be a guy this like, "Hey man, I'm ready. I got my eyes open. I'm waiting." That's interesting to me. Interesting.

“It's Christianity. Is it growing or is it shrinking?”

It's globally growing. If I understand correctly. Because it seems like I've seen a lot of charts, and I think it's globally. I think it's growing. I think there's a resurgence happening. But you see all these college kids getting baptized and brought the best. You don't have to be in. I just saw another one. I was a couple thousand people. I think God baptized on the beach. Yes, that's my buddy, Joey Martin. What do you mean? That's my buddy,

Pastor Joey Martin. That's one church. Oh, really? Oh, one church. Church 1122. Shout out. One church. They baptized. I think it was almost 4,000 people on a beach down there in Florida. Wow. 4,000 people. I mean, do you see it, man? You know, I'm not a super emotional guy, but if there's one thing that makes my sweat is that, man. We are, I'll just say this. So like in my lifetime, Christianity in America has generally been declining. I'm 43, 1983.

Feels like the tide's turning. And every pastor I talk to, man. I'm like every pastor I talk to. It's like more people getting saved. They've ever seen more people getting baptized. They've ever

“seen church attendance, spike it, like tide's starting. That's what I feel like. But then I see charts”

and it says, you know, it's a decline. Yeah. I don't know that's real. Do you have any insight on any of that? Well, I'm, you know, I'm not a sociologist. What I can't say is, uh, uh, so, you know, I don't like talking about stuff that I don't know for sure. What I have been told is that in places that have

generally been characterized as the West, can I ask you a question a second? Am I allowed to do that?

Yeah. All right. And a second, I want to ask you why you think the tide is turning. But from what I understand, uh, places that have been generally characterized as the West. So you're talking about like, uh, Eastern Europe and North America and Canada from what I understand in my lifetime, generally, uh, Christianity has generally been declining in the global, what's been called the West guy, uh, from what I understand Christianity has been, uh, exploding in Africa,

the global South Asia. That's from what I understand. So you're here in stuff about like, you know, Chinese house church movement, that stuff starts to explode, especially in the last 50 years. You know, uh, I read something a few years ago, and I may get a detail wrong on this, that at current growth rates of Christianity in China, there will be more Christians in China in 50 years than Christians in America. Wow. So now listen, that's like, wow. So there's stuff

like, men, there's stuff like that that's happening. Well, here's some stats. In 2007, 78% of US adults identify this Christian by 2024, only 62% of 16 point decline in just 15 years. Among women, 18 to 29, 43% religiously unafiliated in 2025 up from 29% in 2013. Churches were losing 1.2

million members annually before COVID, disengagement has accelerated since for the first time in

an American history, young people grow up with Christianity as one option among many, not the baseline assumption. So, you know, I don't, I don't, I mean, I just, but I live in a, you know, this area is a little different than most parts of the United States. You know, this is, this is Tennessee, we're in the Bible built. So you, you, everywhere you go, the first question is, you know, what church do you go to? And it's not like that. It's not like that very many other places. Right.

“But, I mean, you asked me, why do I think we're seeing a resurgence? I think we're seeing”

a resurgence because, I mean, I agree with you, the, the darkness. I also think that nothing

makes sense. I, I think, I think the search for, I mean, there has never been more distrust in

US institutions, world institutions, our government. We've been lied to a lot by pretty much

concrete and they're finding it in the word, I agree. You know, I think I think it's, it's that basic.

I mean, we can't even figure out what gender people are anymore. We can't, everything is turned out to be a lie. These, these wars lies, last wars lies. Government corruption lies is a get fixed. No, it continues on. You know, and, and there's just nothing to really ground yourself and anymore. Any more. It's up the word. That's right. That's right, Sean. That's right, Sean.

“Man, I, I think that's, you know, maybe it's a good thing. All this shit's happening.”

There's a verse in, there's a verse in Hebrews 12. This is what God does. He shakes the things that can be shaken so that only the things that cannot be shaken remain. And I think throughout human history, the Lord does that, where he just decides, like, "Hey, man, I got to, almost like, I got to flip, I got to flip them in an awfully board real quick so that you guys see like, "Hey, man, stock markets and institutions and ideas and ideologies. They're going to come and go.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." I also think, I think what you said, like, our church, you know, is, it's a specialization, you know, a bunch of tons of young men. See young dudes walking in with families. I think what we said earlier, like, that's a little thing that's like a little bit of my theory, is that I think Satan is so real and so evil. You know, it's like that thing, like, the enemy comes to steal kill and destroy, but I've,

I've come that you might have life and have it the full. And I think he's so full of evil and hate that in every generation, when he gets some momentum on the field, there's that thing I said earlier,

the devil always overplays this hand. And I think a little bit of what happened in the last, like,

“15 years, it's like, I think you nailed it. Like, you make good the illusion over there, Sean, right?”

I think what he did is we got to this spot where people are looking around and they're honest of like, like, I'm just like normal, normal guys. They're looking around and they're kind of going like, man, like, who's going to tell my son, he can't be a chick. You know, who's going to, you know, who's going to, is that, that kind of, and honestly, you got to the spot where there wasn't many places in our culture of left besides the church of Jesus Christ. Even a lot of churches are put

not out. Yeah, I don't like calling. I don't really know Texas. Yeah, they either are. You can go to the Northeast and you can see, you can see it, you know, yeah, but he's welcome. Everybody is welcome. What do you have to say like that? We know everybody's welcome. Yes, right. You know, that's right. Yeah. Oh, we're not called those churches, but I understand what you mean.

“I think another thing too, you know, is, and I'm not, I'm not trying to get the little”

here, but it just is what it is. I mean, I think that, you know, we've seen, and I'm guilty of it. You're probably guilty. I'm sure everybody's guilty of this at some point. But, you know, you, you know, we've just become so tribalized here, and we've put our faith in men, in human beings. And, you know, you go on one side of the aisle, and it's, this guy is going to save the country and edit it, edit it up. 90% of it was fucking bullshit. You know, you go to the other side

of the aisle, same thing. And so you get these two groups that were both, really, I mean, the majority of the statistics aren't lying. You know, the majority of both parties have been let down by the people that they stood behind and propped up. And it's, it's disheartening. And you can see what's happening and what's happened. And it doesn't align with what people want.

You know, there's some kind of, something's going on in there. I mean, I think they're probably always

has been, you know, it's just the line lines kind of on and these younger generations are a lot more skeptical than we ever were in the, and the people who pull us. And so, when you see how bad it actually is, I mean, where do you, there's nowhere else to go. You know, it's funny. It's like, I got a lot of thoughts on what you just said. I think you're on to something. There's a reason the word says trust not inferences.

You know, it's like some things that I can hope that a human leader will do, you know,

in a king of kings. You know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're thinking of like,

“at the end of the day, where are you going to go? I think, I think that's what people, you know,”

what it reminds me of. I love how this kind of lands on you is, you know, a parable of a prodigal son. And you, you got to, you know, you got to kid who, you know, great, great dad, the dad represents God. And he runs away and he spends all his money on parties and strippers and alcohol and, you know, whatever. And then if you read that, there's this little verse and everybody

skips the verse that I think's the most important where he gets the spot where he spends all of

money and everything, everything that he thought was going to make him happy and what it just didn't. And so he, uh, he's out of money and he's, he's in pig slot. He's feeding pigs, which obviously for a first century Jewish guy, it's like a little, no, no. And then there's one little verse that says what he was feeding the pigs, it says, and then he came to his senses and he started running back to the father. And I, you know, a little bit man, I feel like, you know, we got a bit of a

“prodigal nation. You know, it's like, and a little boy said, where am I going to go? I think that's what”

happened to the kid in the story. Is he woke up one day and he was like, where am I going to go? And I said, Maddie went, oh, man, everything else didn't work, but I know I can go home to dad. And I think a little bit in our country, I think everybody's going on that, we're honestly doing, we try everything else and didn't work. And I think there's a little bit of people that's going, you know, I can do. I wonder if I can go home to my family father. I think that's a little

bit what's happening. I'm going so too. I'm going so too. Let's talk about forgiveness. All right, I love to. How do we forgive? Here's a question for it. Justus and forgiveness. Yes, not at odds.

“They're not at odds. And now, yeah, no, how can you want justice and still be able to forgive?”

Yeah, all right. Well, so, you know, let me just do a few things here. Yes, yeah. So a few things. One, let me just get one thing out of the way, because what I don't want somebody to think if they hear what I'm about to say and they're like, man, somebody abused me or like, you know, somebody committed a crime against me, somebody raped my daughter, whatever it is. And when they hear what I'm about to say, they think, oh, because I forgive them, I don't need to, you know,

I don't need to call the authorities. That's not true. Justus and forgiveness, I don't

got to reconcile them because I don't reconcile friends. In fact, well, I get to in a second,

is that actually the foundation of true forgiveness. You know, Sean, you'd probably figure this out, you know, some things that you've been through in your life. Nobody makes it unless they learn to really and deeply forgive. They just don't make it, man. I just, I've seen a lot of things to pastor. One thing I can make you promise, nobody makes it. That doesn't learn to forgive. So let me just get this one thing out of the way. What do you mean by that? Nobody makes it. So

do what I mean is, man, there's hardly anything that'll mess you up more than not, then clinging onto. So there's a verse in Hebrews. It talks about a root of bitterness. Hey, you make sure that a root of bitterness doesn't spring up in you. The reason it calls that a root is because

roots always grow up into fruits, right? So dude, what I've seen, like, let me just, okay, let me, let me

do it like this. If heaven is the place where everybody's forgiven and hell is the place where nobody's forgiven. When we forgive, we pull heaven down into our lives. And when we choose not to forgive, we pull hell up into our lives. Now, you know, what I want to point out is there's this really weird connection in the Bible between satanic and demonic activity and unforgiveness. I just give you a couple little examples. So first of all, Jesus calls Satan, beels above. What that literally

means, it literally translates to Lord of the flies. And the implication is, like, man, if you

and then something that hurt you when all of a sudden it becomes fatal because they get up there

and they infest the wound. And so when Jesus calls Satan, beels above what he's saying is, hey, man, every wound you got, if you don't by the power of Jesus Christ, his blood and forgiveness, close that wound, that is a wide open pathway for Satan's work in your life. I'll give you another

“one. In the book of Ephesians, it says, "Hey, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Why?”

Because I don't want you to give any opportunity to the devil." The book of James, it does the same thing, this weird connection between demonic activity and unforgiveness. It says that bitter people, it says bitterness is, quote, earthly, unspiritual, demonic. So do a lot of people miss that.

If there's like a really powerful connection in the Bible, can you say that again, unforgiveness

is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. So they miss it. The do the apparently, there is some in the supernatural realm, the spiritual realm. There's a way that unforgiveness is like a portal, like straight in your soul for Satan and demons. I don't understand how that works. I just know that it works to get in your life. One thing that it'll do, man, is like, you know, I'm 43 at my life goal. I love being a pastor. I like teaching people the Bible. All that's awesome, man. My life goal

is to finish my race, have them been faithful to Jesus. I don't want to be one of those pastors that somebody tells a story about some day. Remember what that guy did? You know, I want to finish well. I want to be faithful to my wife. I want to sit in a rock and share next to Janah, old wrinkly, holding her hand, watching our great-grandkids play around the backyard, and they love us and they love Jesus. So one of the questions I ask myself the most as I get,

you know, I'm getting a load or every year, you know, is if you watch people, there's some people who they get older and the older they get, the more cynical they get, angry they get and they just get a little crusty. And then I'll see some other people who's like, man, the older that guy gets, he just a little more joyful, a little more soft in the right ways and not the wrong ways. You know, it's a little happier, you know, I don't know. And Matt, when I meet people who are the second

one, you know, you asked me a question you've started to ask everybody. When I meet people whose age starts with like a 6, 7, 8, 9 and they're just like old and happy and they got a joyful heart.

I always tell them, hey, it seems like people end up this way or this way, what's the difference?

Here's what I think the difference is. One person, they cleaned out all that junk in their heart throughout their entire life with forgiveness and one I'm didn't. And over the years they just almost become like just real slowly man, it's real slow. In fact, if you let me bubble nerd out young, a little thing, when you read in, when you read in the gospels and it talks about people being, quote, demon possessed, that's a bit of an elegant translation of what that is. It's

literally, it's one Greek word. We make it two English words. It's one Greek word. The word is demonized. So kind of like we say fossilized demonized. Like in the same way that a fossil is started out as this, but then very, very, very slowly over time. It was this and now it's this.

“Honestly, Matt, a lot of times that's how like demonic activity works in people's lives is,”

hey, slow is imperceptible. Guess up there, maybe in a wound, something like that. And how that guy end up old, angry, cynical, crusty. There's like no love in his heart. It's all anger. You know, man, just very, very, very slowly. He didn't learn to clean it out with forgiveness, which brings me back to the beginning, demonic activity and now forgiveness. If hell is the place where nobody's forgiven, and have his place where everybody's forgiven. Every

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SeanRyanShow.com and grab yours today. I've been thinking about this for a couple of years,

pretty hard about forgiveness, and I think it's more of a, uh, for lack of a better term, almost like it's kind of a selfish thing to do because it's really, you know, what I've figured out is it's, it is, it's for yourself, you know, which is what you're saying. I mean, you're healing healing wounds by forgiving. And the more I do it, the more I figure it out, the better I feel because you are letting go of shit. And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean

“you have to, you know, be around this person, pray. That's right, you know, prays them,”

talk about them. But I mean, it's just, it's just kind of like letting it go.

Yeah, I'm wrong about that. Right, you're, you're dead on man. So, man, the pat, like, if I'm myself cleansing process, 100% man, it's really hard to do, but it's in some circumstances, but people who really haven't been through something, they don't realize this, you probably do realize this. I think very frequently, the hardest thing a man ever has to do in his entire life is forgive somebody, very frequently. Now, when you say that, awesome, man, you're saying

Bible verses and you may not even know it, you know, it's like, so a Matthew 18, you're talking about man, it honestly feels selfish, feels like it's for me. Yeah, you know, like, there's a, like, there's a reason we call the podcast, the live-free podcast, live as people who are free, only do not use your freedom as a cover-up freeble. It's like, so Matthew 18, Jesus tells this parable. And he, I'm a, you know, 21st century, I'll do my best, because he tells this parable

about a guy who like owes a money lender a bank. And it says like 10,000 talents or something like that. But it's essentially a word that's like, this guy, this guy, the net worth of Elon Musk, like,

“that's what it's implying. He'll never, literally never be able to repay it. And the guy's like,”

"Hey, man, your debts do, and he runs up, and he falls on his knees, and he begs." And he's like, "Man, what'd you plead? Please, please, please forgive me." And the guy, it says out of the, kind of, is just how he forgives him. But then that guy, he turns around, and he finds somebody, and I'll 21st century it. He finds somebody that owes him, you know, like, the cost of a posted stamp. And in Jesus' parable, he, like, chokes land to the guy for real. He, like, starts laying

hands on him. And he tells the guy, like, you know, paying me back everything you owe me, and, you know, I'm going to put you in prison. You're not going to get out to you, you've paid the last penny. And awesome, man, I'm skipping ahead a little bit. Somebody may hear that and be like, what, how could the guy that was forgiven, the net worth of Elon Musk turn around and exact revenge on the cost of a posted stamp? Who would do that? And Jesus' answer is, you would.

Jesus' answer is, hey, man, I'm cutting to the chase a little bit. Is the basis for us becoming forgiving people as understanding? I have been forgiven by God. More than he will ever ask me to forgive anybody else. He forgave me the net worth of Elon Musk. And every time I

interesting about that parable though, let's take it back to where you started is, you like,

man, it kind of felt like it's selfish. In the parable, uh, when the guy is not forgiven, what he is is it says that he's put in prison. And the implication Bible scholars think, what Jesus is saying is he's saying I'm, and do you know what unforgiveness is like? It's like a prison. And do you know who's in the prison? You are. And you probably noticed this, man.

“The people who don't learn to forgive, what they do is honestly, they get stuck in time”

and they spend the rest of their life responding to something that happened ages ago.

And they live the rest of their life out of that one event. Well, that becomes a prison.

But I think there are definitely different degrees of maybe levels of forgiveness, you know, I mean, forgive and somebody for, I don't know, stealing water bottle out of your refrigerator is a little bit different from forgiving somebody that raped you, your entire childhood. You know, and so it's different. You know, it's it's, it's, it's, sometimes it's more challenging than others and, and you know, how do you do it? You know, how do you do it? How do you do it when

yes, yeah. I mean, your, your popular guy, your, yeah, more to line celebrity. People who use urban celebrity eyes like to get in there. People who are using you, people will abuse what you, what you, what you, what you have, you know, and, and the same with me. And I mean, it just is what it is, you know, there's no getting around that. I've seen people do that to you. So, you can forgive them. And I have forgiven them. You probably have to then it keeps

happening. It does the same people. Yeah. And every time it happens, it's a little fire comes up, you know, and it's, you get pissed and then you start thinking about things you probably shouldn't be thinking about. Yeah. And so my question is, is that is that, is that forgiveness did I really forgive them for the original thing? And I've distanced myself and I've come to peace with it, but then it happens again. Yeah. And then it happens again. And you have no control over it happening.

No, you do not. So how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that with forgiveness? Yeah. Something that I personally struggle with. Welcome to team human. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, brother. Me, I kind of just get this on table. Me too. I just want to be super honest man. I need the same grace, I preach every week. Me too. In fact, you know, it's no reason for me to go into it on, you know, here. That is, that's one of the hardest most consistent fights in my life. You know, it is.

“So let me just, you know, let me say a few things. Can I tell you a story about what it looks like?”

Okay, let me start here and then back up answer. So every now and then, you know, and you know, when I became a pastor, I knew what I was signed up for, you know. So every now and then I'll say

something and you know, the internet will get mad at me. One of the first times I haven't made,

dude, I didn't know what was going on. And yeah, honestly, the first thing you'd probably, you probably remember the first one of the first times I have any, the first time that happens to you, it's pretty disorienting, you know. How's it young pastor? And, uh, man, I remember I was taking a long walk and I remember thinking like, man, it's my, maybe I wonder if my ministry is over. Like, I was getting cry, I was a, I won't go into it. I was getting crushed. And, um,

“and I came home and I was like, man, I wonder if, maybe I'm a ministry's over and I honestly wonder if”

I've ruined everything and how am I going to provide for my family? I kind of, and uh, dude, I'll walk in the door and uh, I smelled, I smelled something. And as soon as I walked in the garage door, my wife, Jana was there with my three little doctor kids, uh, and they all yelled at the same time. Welcome home, Dad. And, um, and they, you know, they brought me in to the kitchen. And, uh, Jana had all the, like, she'd cleaned up everything. It looked spotless in there and she got

these candles out and she'd lit them on the table. And, uh, she could cook like my favorite, my favorite meal. They like takes a long time to make my little favorite meal. And I was like, hey, what is going on?

She said, Jesus said, Josh, uh, blessed are you. When people revile you, insult you, slander you,

“and falsely say, all kinds of evil against you, falsely on my account, rejoice and be glad,”

for great will be a reward in the kingdom of heaven. And then she said, so tonight, we feast. And, uh, we prayed, uh, Jana made me, we prayed for some of the people who, you know, they were just, you know, tean off, you know. It kind of just say something to you, without Jesus, there is a zero. I'm just telling you right now, dude, A's a zero percent chance that we can be like that. So, you asked the question, how do you do it? And man, you know, this is not you,

but if somebody's listening and you don't, you don't know Jesus, I'll be honest with me, I don't know what to tell you. I really don't. I don't know what to tell you, uh, because if I did not believe that every two things that every single sin will be fully recompensed for, either, I'm just giving a head, either, uh, that person that committed that sin against me will become a Christian. And at that point, their sin was paid for by Jesus dying on the cross, a gruesome

horrific death, or they won't become a Christian. I'm gonna say something really straightforward, and I'm not trying to be a jerk. This is just like, this is a Bible, or they won't be a Christian, they'll die and they'll go to hell and they'll pay for that sin forever. One way or the

other, that sin's getting paid for. If I didn't believe that man, in addition to the second thing,

the reality that I know, dude, I know down to the deepest parts of my bones, I know I've been forgiven more than the Lord's ever gonna ask me to forgive anybody else. If I didn't believe that,

“I don't know what heck I do, I don't know what I do. So, like, I'll give you this honestly deserves”

a lot more time, but if somebody's like, how do you do it, man? I'll give you a quickie. Here's a quickie. We don't need a quickie. We need the real deal. Like here's an example, I can't stand being used. I don't like being used. Try the church thing. I felt like that was good, very start happening. Then we do a Bible study, a couple families, because I ain't in privacy, we wanted in privacy. Things start getting leaked. Personal things. I call a lot of shit out on the show. A lot of evil.

Pisses a lot of people off. Pisses evil off. Bad to higher security. I've had to double that security. I haven't, to had to triple that security. I've had to move. Now I have to move into a gated community, because people can't shut their mouth and stop leaking shit. And every time it

happens, I forgive them. I'll never do that Bible study ever again, ever again, because of that.

It put my family a danger. It continues to put my family a danger. But they get something out of it. We can personal shit about my personal life and my personal family. When the whole thing was set up or discretion, how do you forgive that? First of all, man. I'm a nobody. I'm sorry. Hey, it is what it is because I'm a people. That's a good way to say that. But people go people. But how do you forgive that? You try to move on. It just keeps happening. That's just one of

a hundred examples, and everybody's dealing with shit like this. One way or another, the thing that keeps happening. Literally everybody. There's a few things when you preach on them. Every single time, it's got whatever you want to get. People are going to talk about it. They need it. The view counts. It connects forgiveness. 100% hate rate. 100% hate rate, because what you just said. So, man, let me say a few things. Number one, if somebody's going to sit down, I'll just give

listeners homework. If you're like, "Hey, man, what do I do? This thing happened to me. What

“do I do?" What you need to start doing is study Matthew chapter 18. Matthew 18 is where Jesus”

starts walking through. Jesus essentially does a Bible study on what to do when you're brother sins against you. Okay. So, there's a few things. I'm a rapid fire these and just, you know,

there's a few things there." Number one, if. You need to make sure, did somebody actually sin

“against me, or was it honestly, was I just offended, because, and I'm not talking about you,”

by the way, these are just generalities. If you're brother sins against you, the first thing I got to figure out is, if, did they really sin against me? Is it like an actual Bible sin that occurred, you know, that we're honest, man. Am I just being a little sensitive? Yeah, it was really just my feelings. If you're brother sins against you. Number two, it says, "If you're brother sins against you." The second question I got to ask is, "Man, is this person a brother in Christ?

Like, I'm just telling you how I'm going to pastor somebody through it? Is this person a brother in Christ? Because if not, man, me having a conversation about this forgiveness happening, that's really not the conversation I need to be happening. I need to have an conversation about this, like you and Jesus, man. Like, you, you all got to get good, you know? So, if you're brother, if your brother sins against you, okay, was it against me? I'm making sure this thing,

what I don't need to do is take up somebody else's offense, and then I'm angry on behalf of somebody else. Like, we call that Twitter, you know, what are you going to do?" So then it says, "Well, the next thing you do is, it says, "Go and show him his fault." You know, "Hi, I'm going to go talk to you, man."

"Man, man, I'm just going to talk to you. Here's what you did." Okay, now, you do all this stuff.

You kind of walk that process. If that doesn't work, then it says what Jesus says is, if that doesn't work, then take two or three others. You know, let me take a few other brothers. Like, "Hey, man, what you all come with me? We all love each other. We all love Jesus. Is there a little band of brothers? Let's talk about this thing together with open Bible and open hearts. See, we can figure this thing out, reconcile. Let me pause and say this. There's a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.

Forgiveness takes one person, and it's always possible. Reconciliation takes two people, and it's not always possible. And forgiveness can, like, literally every time. I can forgive anybody of anything because, honestly, dude, that forgiveness, I just put it in a straightforward way. I do not have a right not to forgive somebody who sins against me because Jesus paid the penalty for that sin, and he has commanded me to forgive everyone who sins against me. So I wish it were

different sometimes. I'm not allowed. It takes one. Okay, but reconciliation takes two people. It takes two. You got to want to reconcile. They got to want to reconcile, and they got to be

“willing to own what they did. Bend the knee. I'm sorry. And then you have to go. We're doing”

a little Bible study here. You got to go to the book of Proverbs, and Proverbs gives a taxonomy of three types of people. And mash on, just as, I think, I think there's a blessing on your life and, like, the fact that you'll even have a pastor. Like, I saw you have Bryce on, some other guys. Jeremiah, some other guy. Like, you're going to have some people who try to take advantage of you. And sometimes, that's going to be because the enemy's going to work in it. Okay. So you're going

to have this, you know, you're going to have this thing happen. This like, for guys who, man, for whatever reason, they got a lot of people who know who they are like you. This little thing from

the book of Proverbs might be one of the most important things you ever internalize. In the

book of Proverbs, there's three types of people. Wise, foolish, and evil. And so when you're deciding whether or not you reconcile with somebody. And I'd say this, not just Sean Ryan, I'd say it's anybody. You got to figure out, is this a wise person? I probably want to reconcile with a wise person.

“Is this a foolish person? I question Mark, because fools can, can, can, can hurt you, right?”

Is this an evil person? You definitely want to stay away from a evil person. So I think you're going to ask that question. Then I think what I'd say, if what you're just going to say, how do you do it? Number one, if you don't get like, do like, down deep, deep, deep in your soul, the reality of the gospel, the gospel is the good news that I am not a mistake or a need of a life coach. I'm a sinner in need of a Savior. And that God so loved the world that gave us one and only son who ever believed

in him would not perish but have a eternal life that like, man, God so loved Josh Howard and that he gave Jesus Christ so that if Josh Howard and believes in him, Josh Howard's in what of eternal life. If I don't receive that forgiveness, it's like in Kentucky, I grew up in Kentucky, I might say it like this. You can't give what you don't got. You can't give what you don't got. So one, I got to start there, all right. Now I'm going to start there. Now I'll do these others,

try to try to be a little more. Try not, not do a whole sermon here. The second do the sermon bed. All right, so all good. I'm trying to respect you. All right, I'll do my best here. There's no reason to speed it up. All right. What happens to most people in my opinion is

awesome, man. They never fully realized what happened to them and is still happening to them

I can't solve a problem that I didn't define. If I can't define it, I can't solve it.

“So I got a buddy that recommended this and I've been recommended it for years.”

Is that parable in Matthew 18? It says that when somebody sends against you, it is as if a debt has been occurred. That person took something from you. So in your analogy, that person may have taken your ability to feel at ease and safe around pastors away from you. I hope the Lord redeems that. And I would just say to anybody, this is not, is not about you. This is just about anybody. Anybody who receives a wound, anybody.

Satan will get in there and try to capitalize on it. And that's the prison. Hey, because that

thing happened to you, you can never, you'll, you make an inner vowel. I'll never do that again.

I'll never trust men again because that dude did that to me when I was six. I'll never go to, what people don't realize when you start using that type of language, that's prison language.

“All, in other words, bars have been erected between me and that thing. And I just want to give”

a gentle watch out to everybody listening. Sometimes that thing is a really, really good thing. The Satan's trying to use a old wound to keep you from ever getting that good thing again. Okay. So what you got? If you're talking about, are you talking about my particular situation? I'm saying that debt. So that's another thing with it again. No, that's, I use that analogy. I'm talking about anything. Does it mean I'll keep myself from the word, it would just want

to be, yeah, particular. Of course. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm saying, no, no, what I'm saying is typically when somebody is deeply wounded and it doesn't make your thing, anybody's saying, and it's not what you're saying. What Satan will sometimes do, I'm preaching with my little sermon here. What Satan will sometimes do is get them to make an inner vowel. Like, let's say a girl is abused when she's seven by her uncle. She'll make an inner vowel. It's like a demonic reverse

covenant is what it is. I'll never trust men again. And what Satan is trying to do is cut her off

“from honestly a lot of men that she's going to need in her life to become the beautiful,”

noble woman of God. You see what I'm saying is that makes sense. That's perfect. So there you go. Now let me ask you this. Do you think that wisdom can come from people sitting against you? Ball, bro. Yes. My gosh. Yes. That's like because if you, you know what that comes experience and why you may, maybe it would be foolish to say, I'll never trust another man again. I think a lot of wisdom can be pulled from that and maybe I won't never trust this type of

man again. You can see through, you know, you know, you know, the lot of times, you know, you can just see right through people, you know, through the experiences of things happening. And then you'd notice patterns that come with every human being that's like that. Yes. Strongly agree with that. That's exactly what the word means when it says the God works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

And all things includes all the jacked up things. They'll redeem all those things. All right. So if we're going back to how do I do it? Man, this next thing that I'm going to say is like for real is one of the hardest things you're going to do and it's one of these things you can't do in five minutes. It's like it's going to take like five hours, five weeks or five months. But this thing is got recommended. I've been recommended ever since you got you got almost like

make a debt ledger. This is what Jan and I have had to do for people who have very

agree justly send against us and they were never going to own it. They're never going to own it.

You know, this is what we had to do. So Jesus Matthew 18 says like a debt. So what you do is you get to ask you to paper. There's a little exercise and it's not fun. And you sit down at first of all, you pinpoint who send against me. And I need specificity. What you got to watch out for is a day. You know, there was one time. You know, a lot of people want to think about this because people do get hurt by pastors. You get you got that story.

I wouldn't have been hurt by a pastor. There you go. I would not say that. I don't want to put that on anybody. There you go. But you know, it was just trust. Yeah, it makes sense. It makes it. But what, you know, I'm not this is not a pity party at all. But what I will say was some people sometimes don't don't realize this matter. You know, that pastor's pastors can get shot at. She might, you know, you know, you know. So there was one time I was I went to counseling for a

time for you. And this guy asked me. He was like, you know, hey, man, what's going on to you? And I was like,

man, the church, I'm a pastor. The church hurt my God. I'm not doing that thing. And he paused. And it was, well, it was one of the most powerful things he ever did. Is he stopped me and I was like, hey, man, you know, he, you know, he'd you know, move me. He said, well, hey, wait a second, man. What do you mean by the church hurt you? I said, what a church. You're sure, I mean, man, this is

“we're going through this thing. And it's a way, second Josh. Your church, I think my church at”

time was 1,000 people or something like that. Same attitude. Your church is 1,000 did it. Did

all 1,000 hurt you? I'm like, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He said, hey, man, here's what I want you to do.

Right down the names of every single person who actually hurt you. And I wrote down those names with Janah. And when we got done, it was 7 people, you know. But, but what I think Satan had done is he had gotten me to transmit the pain that came from 7 people onto the church. So what you got to do is it starts with getting like specificity. Who specifically send against me? I think step two, and it's not fun is you got to take inventory of what what was taken from you.

Right. It's like I'll give an example that probably a lot of guys that listen to this podcast.

“Like, now you better watch out. This will get you. Is your your story is one time you stood at”

altar. And you said till death do us part and you meant it. And then one day you woke up and found out she didn't. And now somebody else is talking to your kids into bed at night. All right. Well, that's up man. That's going to leave a mark. You're going to need some need to clean some things out. When you get to that debt ledger, what you got to get down, okay, this is who sent against me. Now I got to start going, I need to name everything that was taken from me. And

dude, you got to write down. You got to write down like all the stuff like man. It's hard for me to, you know, let's say this example I just use. It's hard for me to trust women anymore. That was taken from me. Man, I spent eight months of my life not sleeping good and drinking too much because of that girl. Hey, you know what's taken from me? It's half my income. You know what's taken from me is all the job opportunities that would have had if I'd have been able to focus for that

year on my career. Hey, do you know what was taken from me? The ability to, now I see my kids, you know, 50% of the time. I just lost 50% of being a debt. Like you got to get down and like and the reason I say that man is people who don't do that. Like if you don't get like

this is, this is what's going on. What's taken from me? You can't cancel a debt that you never

inventoryed. And if you don't do that, like, okay, now once you got your debt ledger, okay, and that's that'll take you minute. You have two choices of what you're going to do with that. And the first one that, that both suck, but in different ways. You can, one, you can hang onto it. I'm like, I'm going to keep this debt ledger for the rest of my life, you know. And everywhere I go, everybody's going to know the reason I'm pissing an angry and cross crotchity is,

everybody's going to know is because they did this and I'm holding onto the debt and actually and I will say this. One of the biggest reasons and nobody likes to talk about that people don't forgive is because if they forgive somebody, they lose the excuse for why they act like they do. To damn good boy. It's like, if I forgive them, I don't got an excuse anymore for why I'm angry all the time. I don't trust nobody and why I'm cynical. I was like, you know, watch out for that man,

you know. So, you got that, you know, you either you can hold onto it, but that comes at a real big price. It cost you a joy for the rest of your life. Or, I think it's the book of Colossians.

“You can do this and it's not easy, but it's the best thing that'll ever happen to you.”

It says that what God did is he canceled the record of debt against us with its legal demands nailing them to the cross. And what you can do is you can take that debt ledger and I'd encourage you like actually like physically do something like this like, man, Janna, Janna burn hers. She took after a fire pit and burned it. I got, we got an old cross on our property. This, we build,

old school late 80s youth camp, like I'll nail it, I'll nail it on there. But you've got to make a

decision to cancel that debt and just say, okay, Jesus, I'm trusting that either you paid the penalty for this sin on the cross or that person will pay the penalty for it in hell. But what I know is it's not up to me. Vengeance is mine. I will repay, declare it's the Lord. Not not up to me. What about for giving yourself? Yeah, man, that's probably the biggest one of all. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So, when people say for giving themselves, that's a big ledger. It's a big ledger or some people. It's the biggest one, biggest one. I had a guy right me from prison a few years ago after listening to a sermon and I was talking about the grace of God and how God can redeem anybody, you know. And he said, he wrote me a letter and he was like, hey man, I want to believe that, but you don't know what I've done. And now what I would say that guy, actually what I did say that

guy is, and man, that's actually not the problem. The problem is you don't know what he did

because Jesus Christ went to a cross and he paid the penalty for your sin for you. Man, what about for giving yourself? There's this really interesting thing that happens. The longer somebody walks with a Lord where the longer they walk with Jesus, there's a weird thing that happens where the better you are but the worse you feel, you know, it's actually a weird thing.

“I think John MacArthur and old dead pastor said that. And it's interesting. If you watch the”

life of the Apostle Paul, a lot of people miss this because the books of the Bible are not in chronological order of like when they were written. They're in a different sequence. But if you line all the books up in the order that the Apostle Paul wrote him, he starts by referring to himself as one of the apostles. And then he goes a little farther and he says, wow, I'm the least of the apostles. And then he goes a little farther and he says, he calls himself the least of all the saints.

And then, and I think the last letter he ever wrote, he says, this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Jesus Christ died for sinners of whom I am the foremost. So it's almost like a reverse testimony. It's almost like he started feeling and the reason for that is the longer you walk with the Lord. You sort of know him a little better and the more you know I'm the more of his perfection you see and the more of your imperfection you see and you feel that gap.

So what happens is that gap gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Here's what I should be and here's

what I am. And honestly the longer you live some life, you send some more sense. It's like the gap gets bigger and bigger. You know, you've done some stuff and seen some stuff. But what happens is the longer you walk with the Lord, the gap gets bigger and bigger between you and

“what you should be and what you are. But if we're really understanding, we're looking at the cross and”

we're understanding what Jesus did for us. What really ends up happening is you're understanding of the grace of God to you and what Jesus did for you on the cross. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So John Newton who wrote the him amazing grace, he was involved in the slave trade. I think when he got saved, far remember correctly and had a pretty radical conversion and it bothered him for the rest of his life. At the end of his life, he had a little dementia and at the end of his

life one of the last things he ever said was, though I am old and my memory is fading. I remember two things very clearly. I am a great center and Christ is a great Savior. And man if somebody's going, how do I forgive myself? Man honestly what I would say is you get your eyes off yourself and it's really not about what you've done. It's about what he did. And there I'll just last thing. I'll just say this. There's a little bit of me that just wants to

just gently, gently with a pastoral heart. Look at a guy that says that and be like, hey man,

“who do you think you are? Do you think you're a better center than he is a Savior?”

I don't think so, man. I don't think so. So I think you just got to go back to the cross over and over and over again and know that thing was nailed to the cross and I'm really amfree. I really am. The original question was, how can you forgive still want justice but not be overcome with

term for it is fear sovereignty. I'm going to be a little nerdy for a second if that's okay.

“So in the Bible, God has established three institutions that when they work like they're”

supposed to work, it's good for people and it's good for societies. And the three institutions are the family, the church, and the state. All three institutions have different roles. So kind of the image that theologians have used to just be a Bible nerd for a second is what they'll say is, you know, you get the the rod, the keys and the sword is what they'll say. You know, the sort of the image that's the logo of the family is the rod. You know, hey, we're a good father's discipline

their children. Raise them in the fear and advantage of the Lord. The image of the church is the keys, as Jesus, when he talks to Peter, I give you the keys, the kingdom, whatever you buy on earth, we'll be bound and heaven, what he'll be released on earth, we'll be released in heaven. That kind of thing, keys. It's about ordinances, you know, helping people understand, helping people be saved, and then helping people understand that they are saved, okay, keys. And then the image for the state

is the sword that comes from Romans 13. And it says that the government, the human governments,

“as very imperfect as they are, I think we agree on that, that they have been instituted by God,”

that actually governments are a good thing. You know, you know, a bad governance is a real bad thing, but a world with no government is a real bad thing. And what it says is that God has, one of the roles of the government is to quote, bear the sword and be vengeance to the wrong doer. So you, to get back to this question, how can I forgive somebody and still seek justice?

Well, here's what you do, okay. Romans 13 is the passage where it talks about the role of the

government is the sword, it's to bring justice on the wrong doer. What's very interesting is right before that in Romans 12, it says this, you're actually alluding to it, it says vengeance is mine, I will repay says the Lord. In other words, don't seek vengeance. Don't ever do that. What it's acknowledging is there's a difference between the role of an individual and the role of the state. So you as an individual, my job is to love you, to forgive you, to release you from your debt. Like,

I'm not walking around trying to take vengeance on you. It's actually wrong for an individual to try to do the job of the government, okay? They're okay. So I can forgive you, but then it's still a good godly and just thing for the government to do its job to try to bring justice on the wrong doer. So man, honestly, it's fully appropriate for somebody that like commits a crime against somebody for you to forgive that person and then call the police and be like, hey, man,

this person just did this and report them. Those things are not in conflict. Does that make sense?

“Mm-hmm. That's what it sounds. It does make sense. Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Yeah.”

Why did he have to do it? I mean, he's God's son. He's God's only son. Why didn't God make another son? There are a lot of questions, sir. I mean, I just don't, I don't fully understand why it had to happen if he is God. Why couldn't he just forgive? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Man, that's like my favorite question. I answer ever. So the Bible says that God did it that way so that he could be both. Let me say it and then explain it. So he could be both just and the justifier of the ungodly. All right.

Just and justifier. All right. So my favorite way to illustrate this is by a story. Okay. So best illustration of why God had why Jesus had it on the cross I've ever heard. All right. That goes like this. Once upon a time and far off kingdom, there was a king who is known by everyone of the kingdom to be the most just and loving king who had ever lived. But then it was discovered that somebody was stealing from the king's treasury. And so the king being a just king,

he sent out an edict that whenever it was discovered who is stealing from the king's treasury, that that person would receive 10 lashes. Well, the theft continued and so he issued another degree when it's discovered who's stealing from the king's treasury had to be 20 lashes. The theft continued

30 lashes until finally the king issued a final degree and he said when it's discovered

who's stealing from the king's treasury, it will be a sentence of 40 lashes. Now, the problem with that was that 40 lashes was a death sentence. And so the theft continued until

from the treasury. So then a question began to ripple through the kingdom. What will the king do?

“Some thought he would forgive her, but then how would he be just? Some thought that he would”

issue the sentence, but then how would he be loving? Well, it was decided the king sat down and decided, you know what? The sentence is just the punishment must fall and so the decree stands. And so one day the entire kingdom was gathered and in front of everybody the king's own daughter was marched up to the podium in front of the entire kingdom and she was bent over the podium and the back of her shirt was ripped open and the executioner stood there and it began to

raise his whip to land the first slash and as soon as he did the king yelled, stop and there was a

silence that fell and the king strode forward and he took off his own shirt and he bent over and he wrapped his body around his own daughter and looked back up over his shoulder and he said, "Now hit her." And the executioner objected and he said, "Be king, it was lashes. They'll fall on you." And he said, "The sentence must stand. It's just hit her." And so 40 lashes fell on the body of the king that protected the body of his daughter and the king

died in the stead of his daughter and what happened on in that story is the king was both just because payment for the sin had to be made and the king was the justifier of the ungodly. She went free because he took the penalty. See the reason Jesus had it on the cross is because God is just and so payment for sin has to be made like if somebody walked into a courtroom and a judge just went, "You know what, man? You raped that girl when she was young, but you're

real sorry and I have the power to do it. You're forgiven. Nobody would think that was a just judge." So penalty for sin had to be made but God is love so he made the payment himself.

“That's what the Bible means when it says for the wages of sin is death but the free gift of”

God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So it's a substitutionary sacrifice in my place condemned he stood. Wow. It's a great explanation. Does it make sense? Makes perfect sense. Thank you. Yeah. Don't take a break. Let's do it man. A lot of guys think getting healthier means adding more and more things to the routine. More supplements, more tracking, more protocols, more complicated systems. But the older I get the more I think it

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subscription order. Go to armora.com/SRS or enter SRS to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's ARMRA.com/SRS. All right Josh, back from the break, we just wrapped up forgiveness, but I did have one more question. Is there anybody or anything you're struggling with to give forgiveness? You got to be any

“stories on that? Anything going on right now? I think we all struggle with it. Yeah, tough. It's hard to”

do. Man, I don't know if there's anything I would want to put on air. There's probably like you. Maybe something I could be transparent about. Being a pastor is a weird thing. It's a peculiar life. What do you say that? It's just a weird life, man. It's like, what's weird about it?

and they have extremely strong opinions about what you do. You get on top of that. Man, my job

is to open the word of God and then do my very best to apply it to your life. Man, sometimes

“that's going to get up all in your... Do you let those opinions get to? Does that bother you?”

Not as much anymore. Not as much anymore. However, there are people who, over the years, and what, usually it'll last for like... This is weird. I've kind of heard talked about this publicly. There are people who, for whatever reason, might be a personality type, might be something else, who they'll just decide they hate you, and they'll just... It's almost like a dog on a bun, they'll like a latch on, and like... They make destroying you their life calling for a few years.

And you know, man, it's like that effects. I'll give you an example. Here's how it affects me. Like, this is a debt ledger kind of thing. You know, like, a priest's sermon a couple years ago, they got into culture on political applications. That year, our home insurance application was denied. They got it. We were threatened about multiple people. Law suits.

They got a hold of Janice, my wife, cell phone number, and just spam the cell phone.

They posted our address. That's probably... This public... They posted our address a million places.

A million story, you know, it's like every time to open the internet, it was... He's a pedophile. He's... I mean, like insane, you know, stuff, posted, you know, pictures of our kids playing in our yard on the internet. I mean, it's like privacy violation. Yeah, dude. And it's like, what did you get out of that? Yeah. Why did you do it? Did you get something? I hope you got something out of that. Yeah.

Well, they know you didn't. Yeah, they don't. Well, like, you think your friend gives a shit that you saw my kids playing out front? They don't. Yeah. We don't give a shit.

And then they do it again. Yes. And then they got to pretend to be your friend or think,

you know, that's kind of like some of the stuff that I was kind of getting out of earlier. You know, in the internet, it's just like... I just don't realize how much that, like, it's not even... It's a safety thing. Yeah. I don't want to say, what did you get out of that? Yeah. I don't even mean anything,

“but what did you get out of that? Well, no, I think they do mean something by something. Well, yeah,”

I mean, okay. I'm talking, I was talking about, you know, people that don't mean you harm. There you go. You know, but then there is the other side of it. But yeah, dude, when I got, you know, that year we had some, you know, I don't... I think it's okay to talk about it. We had somebody like arrested on our property. You know, I was, you know, our kids are coming home, asking why it's dead on the news. You know, because they're, yeah, it's just like,

honestly, it doesn't bother me when it starts messing with my kids. Yeah. Uh, I see a new ball game. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. Dude, I want to go back to one thing you said earlier. You asked the question, it's like, man, the same thing will happen and it just, it just sends me. Like, I just keep feeling the same thing over and over again.

“One of the misconceptions I think people have about forgiveness is they think it's a one-time event.”

There is a reason Jesus says, "Hey, man, you're going to have to forgive seven times, 70 times." And honestly, Sean, what I've learned is a lot of times. All of them are for the same thing and the same person. Like, I'm going to have to forgive if somebody's husband cheats on them. They forgive him and they reconcile and they keep the marriage. That happens to our church all the time. Then every time they see their husband talk to a woman,

even completely innocuously in the lobby at church, it's like, just saying hi to somebody this on their served team. She may have all those same emotions shoot back up. Even though he's not doing anything wrong, she's going to have to forgive again and again and again for the same sin. So you're saying every time somebody sees the perpetrator, it comes up again and he up to go through the process. That thing Jesus said of, "How many times should I forgive Jesus?

Seven times?" And a Matthew 18 Jesus goes, "No Peter, it's actually give me seven times,

can't forgive the same one sin over and over and because it keeps going back up in your heart.

“The reason that's important is people will live with false guilt and they'll think, "Man, the fact”

that I still struggle with anger on this, it means that I haven't forgiven. I must not be a good Christian." And it's like, "Now, man, you're a normal human." And you're just doing the forgiveness thing over and over and over. What's a good point? Let's go back to the comments. Sounds like it sounds like people's opinions bother you. They, you know, at this point, do you, does that, is that in your head when you're up there giving your ministry? Oh gosh, you know, is this not at all good? No, not at all

man. The first few times, it happened to me while I was younger, it does. It did. No, like, you don't become a pastor unless you like and care about people. I hope, you know, there's price and cycle paths out there. So yeah, the default mode is you do, man. You want people to love and trust you. And the first time, you know, you get a little internet mob or whatever it is,

it does mess with you. At this, at this point, it's just so, you know, there's always a little

other. You just kind of get to the spot where it's Galatians 1-10. From an out trying to please, man, or am I trying to please God, if I'm trying to please man, I have no longer a servant of Christ. And you just sort of, let me just turn it off. Yeah, oh, it's just going to bring that up. I mean, it's interesting. You know, I kind of go on through that right now. And I've never, I never thought that I was influenced by my audience, but really by anybody. And then, you know, and that's

“really important to me that I'm not influenced by anybody. And I always say what I'm going to say.”

I don't let anybody dictate what I say. Well, by opinions, I don't care, you know, but I do care. I did care a little bit. You know, I would get the internet mob as it would it hurt. And then I would steer away from certain conversations for a little bit until I felt like I was healed. And then I died back in the fight, you know, and, and I realized that what am I trying to say here? You know what I realized? I ever since I came to Christ,

probably about, I don't know, three years ago, maybe, like fully committed. I've read this thing in the Bible once that said that many people, I'm out of guy that quote scripture. So, but he was talking about many people will say they're doing things in my name and they aren't. And that's right. I kind of self-reflected on that. And that may have been like six

months ago, maybe half a year ago, so. And I shit, man, like, I feel like I'm, you know, he's always in my

head. You know, I'm always trying to do the right thing. But then you get all these people coming up to you. And they're like, oh, you're doing God's work. And you look at the comments and they're all like, oh, yeah, you're doing a great job, Sean. You look at the views and the likes and in the negative shit to, you know, and, and, and you get pumped up, you know, to mean by all these people. And, and then, and then, and then it, I mean, from the lack of the better term in mind,

fuck you, you're like, oh, shit, I am doing the right thing. But it's just a bunch of people that don't know any better than me or you or anybody, you know, and just go on with the flow. And so you, you are, you, you, you, it tricks you into thinking that you're doing the, and I'm not saying

“I was doing the wrong thing. I think I've done some stuff that's wrong. You know, on here that I thought”

was right, that I was influenced by praise, you know, you know, you know, feet off the plank. Oh, well, if all these people think I'm doing the right thing, that I must be doing the right thing, right? But they don't know shit. Yeah. And I don't know shit. And so I just recently just cut it all off. I'm not on, I don't look at any of it anymore. I don't even look at the financials behind anything anymore. Really. Okay. Because I don't, I just don't want to be, I want to be totally

uninfluenced and in touch with God is much as possible without man, human beings,

me to do here? What do you want me to talk about? What do you want me to do? Not what all these people,

“you know, six million people want me to do, want to know what you want me to do. So I cut it all off.”

I don't, I don't even have any of it on my phone. I will watch YouTube. And that's it on my TV, but I don't, I don't look at any of that shit anymore. It's how it goes. A crushing burn. I bet not, but it feels pretty good so far. Do it up. I think you're hitting the right direction. I think I love notes you think about this. You know, kind of what what I learned when some of that stuff started happening is like, you know, there's a proverb this is, whoever walks with

the wise becomes wise and a companion of fools will suffer harm. And it's kind of that principle of met over time. You and me, we will end up becoming whatever is like the average of the five people who are closest to us. Whoever those five people are, you extrapolate out five years, 10 years,

“that's what I'm going to be. And so, you know, I've kind of thought about it. I love no”

thing. How I've kind of thought about it is like, man, you know what I'm trying to do? What I'm really going to focus on is assembling the band of brothers around me and getting, I care who that is, a lot. Like who are those like five writer die guys that band of brothers like, they know my jump. I know they're jump and when it hits the fan that's who I call. And those are the guys that like, I got those guys. I got five or six guys. They know, we text multiple times per day. They're

praying for you today. And then, you know, it's like, hey, man, what do you see in me? Am I missing it? And just like, hey, I need you to. Because I will say there are some people who like who are they, who did you put around you? Yeah. Do they work with you? Or are they part of your ministry? There are the guys out the side there. There's a, uh, some of them. Yeah, actually some of those guys do function like that. So our elders, we've got elders our church every year. I do the same thing.

What do I see? Well, I say, well, what I do every year is I'll ask that first of all, they've got

“an open door. The key to this that I've noticed is you, you probably felt the same is like, man,”

as a, and man, you know, I say this with humility, I hope that, you know, as your platform grows, your notoriety grows, it gets harder to find people who will be honest with you. So then what I've noticed is I have to like deputize people. Like, I'm giving you authority to call me if I'm break in the speed limit. That's your job. Like, I'll say, I need you to keep me out of the newspaper. I'd rather be embarrassed in front of you than embarrassed in front of

however many millions of people, whatever. So for me, we got elders our church, they're like, we're meeting constantly and they know, like, hey man, tell me, once a year I ask those guys, what should I start doing, what should I stop doing, what should I keep doing? What do you see in my life? I've obviously got Janna. Janna should be number one. Janna, man, Janna take a walk. I'm not saying anybody's got to do this. I got a lot of problems in my life. I got a real good marriage.

I got a real good marriage. Janna is a wise, very courageous, very godly woman. We take a walk at, we usually take two walks a day. So we usually walk about four miles a day together. And really all we're doing is it's just like, we're just, we're talking about Jesus, we're talking about life, we're talking about our kids, we're talking about ministry. And Janna will, Janna will tell me if she sees something, Janna will tell me, but she'll also be the person that if I were to

ever like need to preach something that was difficult, as I know this is going to make people mad,

if I flaked and I walked off stage, Janna will be the first person to be like, I love you, you flaked.

So she'll speak into my life. She'll also put steel on my spine. She'll do that, nice. And then I got, I got some of these guys out here. I got a group of pastors that I've been friends with for a long, long, long time that we're on a group text. And we, we keep in touch. These are guys, a guy in Arizona is a guy up in state of Washington, has a guy over in Atlanta. Those guys, but they, you know, I mean, it's interesting. I love it. And I do the same thing.

And I've got, everybody's in, I mean, everybody got four people in this building that have been

17 years old, when I was teaching tactics, he's been with me for 10 years now. And these, these people were like my family. And so I have that. Now on the flip end, I love them and they love me and, and we've been through a lot of shit together and we'll go through a lot more stuff.

And I always take, you know what they say, into, into account. But the interesting thing is,

they're also influenced by the success of this. And so you can't a hundred percent buy into everything that they're telling you because they are influenced, their lives are influenced by this. So of course, they're influenced by this. Same with your guys out there,

“they're influenced by the success of what you're doing. And so, that's right, you have to keep”

that in mind. That's right, you gotta have the outside. But what that does, at least for me, is when stuff hits the fan, which I pray is not frequent, you know, that the little axiom

becomes for me, criticism should be weighed, not counted. So I'm not taking a poll of how many people

liked it and how many people didn't like it. And if more people didn't like it, then liked what I said, it was wrong. Now that we got Bible verses for that, God be true in every man to liar. Amen. We're going to be in the minority on a whole bunch of stuff. We're going to stand on the word of God. And like I'll be true in every man a lot. We're okay with that. But when it hits the fan, and I'm sorry to ask him people, may I would you think, do I miss it? I'm not counting. How many

criticisms did I get? I'm weighing who did it come from? If it came from Janah, I almost don't need to hear anything else. If it's one of my elders, I almost don't need to hear anything else.

“If it's one of those guys, it's like a writer die. So that's how I kind of think about it.”

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our show sent you. My wife is the same. It sounds like our wives are very similar. You know, my wife, there are days that she just is like, we can stop at any time. We don't need anything else. And I think about that. And I'm glad she's like that because you know, if there's the other way, she would just want more and more. And like I say, do that. That tells me everything about your wife. Because what that tells me is she's into Sean.

Now, what Sean can do. Yeah. She doesn't like this. She loves what I do. She doesn't like it. She doesn't like the notoriety that comes with. Jill, she low-key. Yeah.

“That's how Janet would roll if she could. Yeah. We were going to do”

that editing room over there with all the computers. I was going to be our studio. We were going to do a husband, wife thing. And we did nine pilots. And they were wildly successful. And we we deleted them all. Yes, she didn't like that. She's like, I've also.

do with it. And that's cool, man, because most women opposite. Man, I don't know. I don't

“think about her. That's a good woman. Yeah. Is a, you know, Genesis, you know, pattern a marriage. And”

that's this is one thing. They'll get you in trouble a little bit. Uh, is hey, in a God honoring marriage, husband's job is to be a loving head. And her job is to be a respectful helper. And there's nuances to that. But when it says helper, it's, uh, it's Evan A, so the Hebrew is Evan A's R. It means necessary ally. And the implication is, my God designed her for Sean Ryan. And there's a whole bunch of battles that Sean could not win if that woman was not a Sean Ryan side. And, you know,

if you watch every man either marries a launch pad or a lid. And, you know, I, you probably feel the same way as me. Uh, there are guys that man do there. They were way way more talented to me. And way, way better opportunities than I kind of think. And a lot of the things that

“as one of the other things, I, there's a couple of things I can't talk about my sweat and one of them's”

Jana, uh, the reason that we've been able to, you know, just see happen, some of the things that happen is because I married a launch pad and not a lid. There's no way I'd go a tenth, uh, as far as, you know, we, we've been grace to do, if I had married Jana Howard in. How's that later? Blind date, a blind date. Blind date. Blind date. I was, uh, I was a senior in college and I was single, Jana was, she got saved, she gave her life to Christ and college. She was the president of

her sorority over there at Western Kentucky University. And, uh, so the, she went to college in the town where I grew up. So the guy that discipled me, you know, for listeners, all that means like when I became a Christian, it was an older godly man that I met with to like, and he showed me, here's how you, here's how you be a Christian man. That's all that means he discipled me. The guy that discipled me, his wife, discipled Jana after she gave her life to Christ and college.

So then Jana's there and she's president of sorority and everything and they just, they just were asking her, hey, why are you single? You know, and they sat around and did you grow up in church at all? So that again, did you grow up in church at all? Catholic, Catholic, Catholic. Did that, I don't, this, I'm going to show my ignorance real quick. Did they have like a old, when I was growing up, we had church directories where they have everybody's names and pictures

and phone numbers. Did they have that? Not that I'm aware of. All right, well, I'm all bad to church, I had that. So they, they were sitting in the Indiana and they pulled out the church directorie and started finding all the guys her age and they were like, what about him? What about him?

They did, they did, and then they finally got to me and they were like, what about him? And she was like,

man, y'all like it. So they sent me an email and it's named Jeff Carl while I mentioned

“earlier on my youth pastor and he was like, hey man, I got this girl that you need to trust me.”

You need to, me this girl. And I'll be honest, man, the first time an email, I was kind of like, well, man, y'all, I'm Josh Howard and I'm not desperate. And then he sent me a picture and I was like, I'll be there next week. And I drove up the bowling green Kentucky and blind date and we dated for four months got engaged engaged for four months got married. Passes we could. Best decision

I ever made. What'd you like about her? What was the first thing that hit you? Well, first of all,

she was very attractive. That's the first thing I noticed because I've got a picture. So I'm all, you know, I say that first thing I noticed when you met her, when I met her, oh, what say it again? What's what's other than that? What's the first thing that hit you? Man, she loved, she loved the Lord. Awesome. I was like in two seconds. Like all she wanted to talk about was like, now she wanted to pour herself out for stuff that mattered. I figured out real fast.

She obviously wanted to enjoy a great marriage. She wanted to find somebody that she could live and die with throwing heymakers for the kingdom of God. I figured that out real fast. And she was wise. She is a wise, wise person. Very wise. Her judge of character is ridiculous.

Like, I knew you for eight years or 12 years or whatever, she saw it. There has never been a

time, a 100% hit rate. That sound familiar. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The Bible doesn't call my helper for nothing. Yeah, it sounds like an amazing woman. She yes, she is. So these elders, do they have different opinions than you on topics? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, we'll have meetings. And now that there's a, there's a great unity of spirit.

“But man, they, they love me. And they love me enough to, hey, man, what are you?”

Here's what we're thinking. We'll pray about it and talk about it and argue about it and then pray about it some more until we get consensus on a thing. That's very old, very, there's a very, very high level of trust and love among those guys. And those guys at our church, they're not, you know, like you said, hey, man, you gotta watch out when somebody's, you know, it's like their livelihood is tied to the success of the thing. That'll affect their judgment.

These guys at our church, not at our church, like our church, at our church, they're just, they're just godly church members that are getting a dime from the church. They, not tied to that, which gives them the ability to love, to love me enough. And just like,

“hey, here's where we're, here's where we're seeing, here's where we're thinking. Yeah.”

Now the guys I'm talking about have been, they could, they, you know, they, yes, there is that aspect, but they're also, you know, just to give them credit, they all tell me, like, hey, if you end this today, it's, we're good with it. Which is one of what's best for you, you know, so I gotta give credit, we're credit stewing it. Like I said, I love those dudes. But I, I also like, you know, I like, so I like talking to Eli, you know,

it's not gonna be like rain earlier. And that's, you know, if you watch, you know,

that's been a topic on that shelf, the Israel topic. And, and I always, I talk to them every

couple of months, we, we've battled it out. And, um, he hasn't changed my opinion, but, you know, maybe one day he will, and I love it once somebody does change my opinion, because it means, you know,

“you're growing. That's right. And, um, but, uh, that's iron, sharpening iron. Yeah, that's what you”

just described. We got a bubble verse for that. That's right. That's great. Sometimes barks fly. When it went on, it's our, you know, it's like summer. And usually a lot of times those are the best friendships that take you the farthest. Yeah. He's a good dude. And, uh, you know, there's, there's, there's no financial incentives behind him, you know, that are swaying his opinions. And, uh, a deeply respect that, especially, especially a man in politics. That's right. So,

but, um, how many people are in your church? On a normal week now, you know, let's say he recently, but 30,000. How many? 30,000? Yep. Holy cow. 30,000. I know, man. I know, there's a lot of people. I know. Wow. Yeah. As you watch my episode about the religion business,

I always sent clips. Would you think that I got a lot of a lot of texts? Well, man. You know,

there's, you know, I, I don't like commenting on stuff that I didn't dig in on. I know there's a lot of misconceptions about that kind of thing. And, you know, uh, there's some truths. It depends who you're talking about. So, uh, let me just, I'll, I'll shoot you real straight. There are some guys that are, you know, quote-unquote pastors. The MS, like, that's not a good guy. Absolutely. Yeah. But, you know, the weird thing about what I do is, like a lot of those

guys that are like pastors of, you know, bigger churches. I know all those guys, you know. And it, it, the, the thing that, you know, again, this stuff, and they're talked about publicly. The thing that can't be tough for me is when a guy that I know, and I'm like the, the internet, my, whatever, the public perception is this. And I'm like, I know that guy, I know what you're commenting on. And I know how that is like a freakishly cartoonish caricature of this thing that

actually haven't, but because of the realities of the terrain, he's never going to, he's never going to correct the record. That's tough. That's tough to see, you know, again, because he's got

Somebody, somebody that will start controversy to make themselves relevant, even though they know it's not true, is that what you're talking about? So it can be, you know, and dude, I'm not talking about anybody. I don't have a name in my, I might, but I'm not going to, well, 30,000, it could be any name, you know what I mean? Oh, you're talking about church members. Oh, I don't know. I thought

“that's what you were talking about. Oh, I'm talking about just like in public when you'll see”

pastors get shredded, like, you know, like, kind of that, that kind of vibe. I'm talking about when there's like this, that's a gap between like, yeah, I know that guy. And I know the real story on that thing. Oh, and you see, I'm saying, okay, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Okay, that can be tough. When you're watching, okay, yeah, when you're watching somebody that you know be defamed. So what you're talking about? Yeah, and I know, Brother, that is not. Yeah, that ain't what,

you know, and so what'll happen is some of these, these guys, is because, you know, the incentive, you, you, you, you just, you just, you've experiences. The incentive structure of the internet is for people to be big game hunters. Who's got a big platform? If I can create that person, if I can create controversy by attacking that person, I can harvest some of their platform for me, which, in not in all cases,

“let me just really quick say, there are some people who abs, there are saying righteous and true”

things about people who are not good men. Absolutely. So let me just say that. I don't want anybody to get me wrong on that. Then, there are other people who are like, man, what's real interesting is, you know, you're, you're, you're saying this about this guy that he's just doing all this for, for money or whatever it is, when actually what's happening is you have a monetized website and whenever you create a bunch of controversy, you drive a bunch of clicks to your monetized

website. You know, it's, it's weird. It comes off weird. What are some misconceptions? Man,

anything in particular? Uh, so first of all, my big caveat is there are guys, and I'm not,

I'm not going to go there on public. Uh, there are guys that I don't know well enough, but when I hear about him, I'm like, that guy does not sound like a guy, that guy don't sound like a guy. I've been around some guys where I'm like, it's, it just didn't feel in progress to me. I think I'm going to make my band of brothers these guys over here. You know, so let me just say that. Um, but sometimes man, the gap between reality and the kind of the vibe of like, man,

all these, all these big church pat, they're all like, they're all having affairs and they're all just in it for the money and they're just, get exploiting people and get rich. I'm like, do that is, it's just not true, man. Like, let me, let me, let me, let me, I'll give an example this. So, uh, uh, uh, I was 16 years old. God had just called me to ministry and I'm at high school. Um, the path, I'm going to say his name. Uh, the pastor of the at the time, I believe the

second largest church in America, the man's name was Bob Russell. He pastored South East Christian

church in Louisville, Kentucky. Okay. I'm 16 years old. God calls me a ministry in my dad because

“he was a good dad. My dad went, hey, Josh, so here's what you need to do if you want to be a”

pastor someday. You need to find good, faithful, fruitful pastors. You need to go get in front of them. You need to ask them intelligent questions. You, uh, you need to write down everything they say and then you need to do everything that they said. That's the book of Proverbs. Step one of getting wisdom, get wisdom. You gotta go get it. Okay. So, uh, how was like, well, you know, who's the best pastor I've ever heard of? And I was like, probably Bob Russell. The problem was,

he pastor at church that like in the 90s was at church like 20,000 people or something, which back then, like, that didn't even exist back then. So, I'm a confessous sin real quick. I was 16 and I drove up to the southeast Christian church, uh, new members class. It was for people who were trying to become members of the church. Um, and the reason I did it is because

I knew on a weekend because there's 20,000 people there, even though he's always in the lobby,

I'm probably, I might not be able to talk to him, but I knew he taught the new members class and there was only a few people there. I was like, well, go to that. So, I sat through the whole new members class and then at the end, I came up and I said, "Pesh, Bob, I'm so sorry. I'm not trying to become a member of your church. I'll live two hours away, but God called me to be a pastor. Is there any way I could take you out to lunch? Uh, I'll only take 45 minutes your time. I'll

be a pastor. And he said, uh, he said, you know what, Josh, if you'll reach out to my assistant,

“uh, you know, we'll see if we can set something up. So, she said something up for, I think it was two”

years later, if I remember right. Now, that was probably a gentle way to see. Is this kid going to fall through? I think it was like two years later. Now, I'm going to give you a, I'm going to give you a date. Okay, I bookmarked this date in your head because it's going to be important in a second. She set the date for, I think it was September 13th, 2001. So, two years later, I'm in college and I wake up that day. And uh, now remember, I just want to remember, this is the pastor of the

second largest church in America. I'm a 16 year old nobody, even more of a nobody than I have now when he meets me. So, that day I wake up and I drive five hours from you new university up to Louisville, something like that. And I get there and I sit down with him and back then, uh, it was pre iPhone. So, you remember those little taper quarters that you could put on a table and you press the thing? I brought one of those. I still have the tape. And I sat there at the time I was 18 then

and I put on a table and I had spent two years thinking of what are the 20 best questions I could ask a faithful pastor. And I sat there and Bob Russell, the pastor of the second largest church in America. He sat with a 16 then 18. He sat with a 18 year old nobody, college kid, did even go to his church. He sat there for two hours and two hours and answered my questions and I still have the tape. Wow. The story is not over the best parts to come. In fact, to talk about what we said earlier

about our wives, I'll never forget this dude. The last thing I did is I said pastor Bob,

"Is there anything that I need to know that I didn't ask you?" And he said, "Yeah,

“I should ask there is." You need to know that the most important decision you make for your”

ministry will not be what seminary you attend or what first church you take. It'll be what will many Mary. I never forgot to do. I never forgot my drive. All right, so we finished and then I drive him back in my little 96 Kia Sophia to his church and I drop him off. And as I drop him off, his assistant goes, "Do you know what he just did for you?" And I was like, "Man, yeah, he spent two hours

with me. It was amazing." It was a mess. Thank you so much. She said, "No, no. Did he tell you what he

did to meet with you today?" Now, I said earlier, it was September 13th. It was September 13th, 2000 and one. Two days after, not 11. There you go. She says there and explains the that morning. He had gotten called by the largest radio station in America and the largest TV station in America to do an interview, a nationally syndicated interview about God and 9/11. And Bob Russell said, "No, because a righteous man swears to his own hurt and he does not change."

And so instead of talking to the entire country that day, he said, "No, to that." So he could sit with an 18 year old nobody and tell him how to be a faithful Christian man and grow up and try

“to be a faithful Christian pastor. Now, somebody looks back and I'm like, "I think I would have done”

the other." But what I will say is those are the types of stories. Sometimes it'll bother me, because all the, the, you'll hear these bad stories that go viral and it's like that story that can go viral. Yeah. And there's a, brothers, there's a million, a million of those. That's a cool story, man. I like that. In fact, somebody said that once and that's not the

saw this somewhere or it's somewhere, you know, who the most important person in the world to me is

right now, you are. I like that. I like that. I like that. I like that a lot. It means something to think about it. It sure does. And people feel that. They feel that from you. Oh, sometimes when I'm around these guys, I won't use their names because they're, they're kind of guys. They wouldn't like it. But it's, it is weird because they're all my buddies. Like I know them. So I got here, I'll just give like maybe just a couple examples.

It's like one and it's fun for me because all the names pop in my head. You know, one, one of the pastors of one of the three largest churches in America. Nobody ever know this.

down every single year and they go on a generosity retreat and they try to figure out how can we give more and they're now up to given away 60% of their income just to help people and they give

these little anonymous donations to people in church and they're never going to know it came from that guy.

“One guy was a pastor of, uh, I think one of the two largest churches. Maybe in American history.”

Maybe. Maybe. He wrote a book at the time. He wrote a book that became, I think, one of the three or four best selling books in American, in world history. And what a lot of people don't know is what he did with all the money is, uh, he reversed. First, he repaid the church every dollar that they'd ever salored him. And then he and his wife sat down and they figured out how to reverse tie it on the money. So they gave away 90% and they only lived on 10 and he used that money to start a

series of nonprofits that just helped the poor. Um, uh, this guy's name I will say. I'm a brag on him because he's, he's on our teaching team at Lake Point. This is a guy named Pastor Mike Bro. He passed her church of over 10,000 people in Lexington, Kentucky. I grew up listening to him as a kid. Wow. Now he's on our teaching team at Lake Point. And I'm, I'm a brag on him. He may kill me, but I'm

“shouldn't brag on him. That guy retired stepped away from his church when it was like, I'm a peak like”

crushing. And he stepped away and you know, he ended up doing, he ended up helping his daughter plant a church in a city in California like rub two sticks together. Nobody's there. Help his daughter plant a church in a city that like didn't have many churches. And you know what that guy does now? Every Thursday. He wakes up and he leads a little Bible study at a local Starbucks for recovering addicts. And he volunteers his Thursday afternoon to help widows repair their homes and

mother-alons. This dude, like, everybody would been like, mega-drunk. Like, like, now, and I could keep going. Like, dude, I got, there's another guy who's, he sets aside, one of the pastor of the largest church in America. They set aside a large portion of their personal income to help families in their church adopt kids. And what they do is they set it up where every time somebody in their

church is adopting that person anonymously gets sent like thousands of dollars. And they'll never

know it. But it's from that guy. This is the senior pastor. And they've set a goal of funding at least 100 adoptions. Like, you know, with with with with with with with right there. Now, I could just,

“I could keep going on and on and on and on. But when people hear that, I think a lot of people hear”

that about, you know, they've mega-drunk pastors. And I think they go, well, man, Josh, yeah, but why don't I ever hear those stories? Because planes that land safely don't make the news. It's a good boy. Thank you for sharing that. I always notice when somebody goes the extra step. It does not have to be some huge thing. It could be someone following up when they said they would. Giving you a straight answer,

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How do you determine who you personally give your time to? Because it's impossible to dive, or to divide it up to 30,000 people. Plus, you got three kids in a wife. I do, and that's my first ministry. Well, a couple of things I say is that's true in any church.

“That's really over, you know, honestly, I don't know, six, eight hundred people. It's kind of the same thing.”

So, what I'd say is a few things, do you give it to anybody? Give what? You're time. To just anybody? Who do you give it to? Do you give it to? Oh, do I give it to all? Of course. Oh, my gosh, yes. Of course. Yeah, man. Like what I've, what I've, so let me say if you, what I do now is what I try to have this motto of do for one, what you wish you could do for all.

So, man, can I, can I do it for 30,000? No, I can't always do that. I'm going to, I'll talk about that in a second.

But I never want to get to the spot where the shepherd doesn't smell like a sheep. Okay. So, what I'll do is me, me and Janna, whoever it is. First of all, we're in the lobby after service is praying with people. You know, I said, like, after every service every week, unless I preach too long and I can't get out there, you know, we're just praying with people. Anytime I'm not preaching, we just travel, I did this last weekend. We just travel all the campuses and we just get there early

“and stand in the lobby and we just sit there and pray with people. It's like the, do this like the best thing.”

It's like my favorite. It's the best thing ever. I do that stuff. One thing that I'll do and then it what I do is, so in the book of Acts, when the church gets the same thing, Sean. The first church

ever exists at Acts 2, you got 3,000 people by Acts 3. It's 5,000 people. There's indications later

in the book of Acts that church definitely grew larger than that. So, you know, this has been around since the beginning and in the book of Acts is, I think in the book of Acts, when it gets to the spot where the church grows to the spot where there were a group of widows in the church that the pastors, the apostles themselves, they were like personally handing all the food to distribute to the widows to help them. The church eventually grew to a spot where they were spending so much time

doing that that the Bible says they were distracted from two things, prayer and the ministry of the word. So then what they did, if you read the book of Acts, is they essentially restructured the leadership of the church, they added a layer of leadership that we now called Deacons. That's where that came from. Deacon word just means servant, you know. They did a leadership restructure, added a layer of leadership, and it uncorked a little kink in the hose, so that now,

hey man, these Deacons are the ones. They're administering this ministry to you, so these guys can focus on prayer on the word. It's kind of been the same thing forever. So that's really what we try to do, is men, my job as the senior pastor at church is not to personally do every aspect of administrators. My job is to be responsible as best I can that ministry happens for every single person at church. It's like we have, you know, our team, we have hundreds of pastors that are trained.

So when somebody grabs me in the lobby and they're like, hey man, I need to meet with you. Well, why not? I'll talk to you right now in the lobby. Let's talk. What can I help with, I pray? But one of my questions is, is I a little sometimes ask, "Hey man, which one do you want? Do you want help or do you want me?" Because if you want help, I can get you with a person that's actually more gifted than me for the ministry that you need. This actually going to get you better help.

“That's why the Bible talks about how there's one body with many parts. Everybody, including”

every pastor has different spiritual gifts. Let me get like, bro, you don't want me counseling you. I was like, you know, what I use to do some counseling. I'm just not great at it. I'm like, "Hey man, quit doing that. Let me pray for you." And here's a sermon to listen to it. But we have people on our team who like, you know, I'm not the best preacher in the world, but guys give me some good ability there. We are guys in our team who are like, they are way more anointed and gifted

to personally counsel somebody going through a really traumatic thing than I ever will be. So I want to try to get them to the pastor that can help best help them.

The last thing that we do is, you know, we just never want to get to the spot where the

shepherd's don't smell like sheep. So we constantly got people in our house, we at our church call a rooted group. It's a little discipleship group. And Jan and I, we usually lead at least one per year. Last time, we just led a big discipleship group with 30 young adults, just sort of random young adults, a bunch of kids sitting around our living room and we're just a disciple and 30 kids in church. Or if I hear sometimes about somebody that's like going through it, I got to tell,

I'll just tell you, man, we had one of my favorite church members in our whole church just died

Kelly's life, you know, I'm calling Kelly and checking up on him. I'm praying with him. I'm seeing

if I'm, hey, man, what kind of, you know, and I, you know, we interact almost every day for the last, however many times. So what I try to do is do for one, what you wish you could do for all

“and stay connected to the sheep. Does that make sense? That's what I try to do.”

Does it make sense? And I get it. I mean, about a pastor, but there are a lot of people who watch this. A lot of people who want to come on here. I look for the biggest impacts. It's the biggest way I can make an impact. Let's move into, pass in the torch, being in, how do you get your kids? How do you get young adults? How do you, how do you real? I mean, like I told you, you know, I grew up Catholic, went to church every Sunday, did this Sunday school

thing and it never sunk in. It never sunk in until it got slapped around. I got a little bit.

And then it sunk in. But, you know, hopefully not everybody has to go through what I go through because it's tough, real tough. And so how do you successfully pass the torch and get them to get it? Like, really get it. Not just sit there. You know, I mean, I, I'm still Catholic. You know,

“I bring my kids, but, you know, bringing a five-year-old to a Catholic mess. That's what torture.”

Good luck. You know, but I mean, how do you, you know, how do you get the little guys engaged? How do you get them to get it without having to, did knocked around? Yeah. Well, one, I don't want to give somebody a promise. This is not a promise. So let me just say, here's why I say that. Like, as a pastor, what I've learned is when I say what I'm about to say about how to do it, what you're going to have is hundreds of thousands or millions of

dads, moms, grandpa's, grandma's, grandma's, that when I say what I'm about to say, they're going to get overwhelmed with regret of what they wish they did. And they're going to start blaming themselves for their kid getting sideways or gone prodigal or whatever. So here's my caveat. It only works for you. You know what I mean? It's just one way. There's, there's a hundred different ways to do this. I'm asking how you do it. Okay. Okay. That's good. That helps. Your way wouldn't necessarily

work on everybody else, but I'm just curious, you know, how do you do it? Yeah. All right. That's good. That's good. All right. My caveat for those people to dovetail you making that point is I do not see a promise in the scripture that if you do this 100% of the time, your kids will turn out this way. Okay. My example of that is Garden of Eden. Garden of Eden. You've got a perfect father. God's a father. That's pretty perfect. You got a

perfect father. You actually have perfect kids. Adam and Eve don't got a sin nature yet. And you have a perfect environment. Eden. There's no, there's a perfect, so you have perfect father, perfect kids, perfect environment, and they still rebelled. So I will just say, hey man, give yourself some grace. Yeah. Kind of thing now. I'll tell you, as far as how I'm doing it, my kids are 15, 11 and 7. So I'll be honest, man. Jerry still out. We'll see. We'll see if I do

my job. But I do know, I'm gonna give it everything I got. Let me, here's, here's while like,

here's what my dad did that I'm like that worked. And I'm doing it with my kids and I'm going

that seems like that's working. Okay. I say three things. Okay. Number one, your faith doesn't

“got to be perfect. It does got to be real. So like, dude, I remember being a little kid growing”

in church. And my dad sitting in the front row and, you know, we're worshiping those singing hands or whatever. And my dad's like not a super emotional guy. But like I remember watching dad and like just a little his eyes would just start sweating just a little bit, you know. And I remember being 13, 14, 15, 16 and watching that and being like, that man is not just leading a service. That man is worshiping his God. And I remember thinking like, man,

I want, I want to know who he knows. He knows him. I want to know his God. Because that's real.

Okay. So it doesn't got to be perfect. We're going to need grace. But it does got to be real. Number two is, uh, whatever I tell you when when you're younger, uh, you're a new parent, as well like, I mean, here's a secret. You know, here's a secret shop. You got to get down in their world. You know, if they're into Blueie, you're into Blueie, you know, if they're in a Coco-Melon, you're in a Coco-Melon, you know, whatever you do. Uh, now that strategy, that might be

fine. Uh, I'd say until they're like six or seven. Okay. Uh, but eventually reality kicks in and oh, by the way, realities undefeated. And I'm going to say something with a bit of an edge to it, but like, again, realities undefeated. Uh, kids are fools. We like, we got a Bible verse for that. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. Kids are fools. Their default mode is foolishness.

“That's why they need moms and dads. Godly moms and dad. Okay. So here's a thing. I don't need to get”

down into their world as they get older. Their world is full of rebellious rebellion and foolishness. I don't want to get down in their world of rebellion and foolishness. Instead of getting down in

their world, I want to pull them up into my world. So here's what I started to see. Like my dad,

he's a pastor. He's got a good band of brothers. I remember growing up. It's like every, I think it was Tuesday night. I remember growing up. Their whole discipleship group was coming over. A bunch of couples that like, they were awesome. Like they were like, like actual normal people that love Jesus and loved each other and had fun lives. You know? I'm seeing all of them. Like opening that book and like talking about it and, you know, all this stuff. So then I get a little

older. And my dad started doing this thing and looking back, I'm like, I know what he was doing.

“I didn't know what he was doing in the moment. My dad started doing this thing where like the”

church staff who were all awesome. They would like go out for lunch. And my dad would be like, "Hey Josh, you want to duck out of the thing you got today? Why don't you come to lunch with

the staff today?" So then here's what's happening is now he's pulling me up into his world.

And his world was full of wisdom and righteousness. And he's pulling me out of my world of rebellion and foolishness. So then I'm growing up around all these people. And I'm growing up going on man, the people that I respect the most, I'm like, it's Jeff Carl how. That's one of my dad's adult buddies. It's like, I can name all the families to this day. And what that did is I grew sitting around at those lunches or at our home and gone, you know, I want to be the type of

person that can fit in with these people instead of looking at like foolish rebellion rebellious kids

“and doing that thing. So like Hillary Clinton wrote that, was it a book that she wrote? I think”

call it takes a, it takes a village, something like that, I can't remember. She wrote something, I can't remember what was. That's a lie. And that's a, I'll just tell you right now, that's a lie. Okay. Because if the village that you're using to raise your kids is a bunch of like woke pagan secular swifties or whatever, if that's the village, well, if the village is a bunch of pagans, they're just going to help raise a whole bunch of other pagans. So you don't need

a village. Here's what you need as a dad. You need a redeemed village. The Bible calls that a church.

So it's like, I got to grow up what I'm doing right now. I'm doing exactly what my dad did. Like, I was just like literally this week. Yesterday was our all staff meeting, it sure. It's so funny. I didn't even think about this. I literally yesterday did what my dad did growing up. My dad's awesome. Yesterday was our all staff meeting. My 15 year old Eliana right now. She loves Jesus. She loves people. And there's a call. There's like a, there's a little grace on her life.

Lead and worship. You know, she loves servant at church. Let's do that stuff. So yesterday, I'm like, hey, Eliana, why don't you? It's so funny, dude. I exactly what my dad did. I was like, hey, Eliana, why don't you duck out of what you got today and come to staff meeting with me and your mom? So what's she doing? She's sitting around, I don't know, 400 pastors and their wives and people who love the Lord and they're trying to serve him and

and that's who she's around. Well, what am I doing? I'm not getting down into her world. I'm pulling her up into my world. Okay. Last thing I say is uh, is uh, and by the way, I got these for a buddy of mine named Josh McPherson. He's probably the best dad I've ever seen. Is whoever it tells the best stories wins. Do this is a total, this is a total cheat code parenting act, man. So what's interesting, if you go back next time you read your old testament,

you'll notice all these times where like God does like this amazing thing. It's parts of

will you guys please set up a big pile of rocks right here? And uh, and the Hebrew word

is there's a him that if you're listening to Europe singing us old hymns, there's an old him called

“Cumball Fount. And one of the lyrics of Cumball Fount is here I raise my Ebenezer as well. Was that?”

That word Ebenezer. It comes from two Hebrew words. I said it. I'm just realized and I said it wrong earlier. Two Hebrew words. Ebenezer, which means stone of help. Okay. So what all those little rocks were, they got said pile those up. Is he was going, hey, all throughout this little country this size of New Jersey, where you're raising all your kids. Um, every time you walk past one of these piles of rocks, God was going, hey, hey, dead. What I want you to do is stop and you're going to

point of that rock and tell your son, man, when papal was here 60 years ago, he was standing right there and him and all his buddies, they marched around that city seven times son and you're never going to believe what happened. The Lord gave us this promise. You don't got to fight. You just got to be

still and all fight for you. And son, you're never going to believe this, but our God is so powerful

that when your grandpa was over there and did it, God conquered that thing. And so they grew up telling all these stories. So here's a deal. God was wiring into how the culture was structured. He was given all the dads and moms. Here's all your story opportunity. So for me, growing up, like us sitting around the dinner table at night, you know, it's like, I was just constantly hearing all these stories. Dad would come home from work. And I was constantly just hearing all these

stories about, and this widow that somebody just gave her a car. And I just, because they,

how to know where. And this marriage guy, he, old guys, that addict that we've been praying for for

three, but they just got free. And you know, I just hear all these stories. And it just, it just gripped me. And the older I got, I was like, well, I want to be a part of the thing where all that cool stuff happens, you know, and it just rubbed off on me. So I think the thing I say that they just encourage me, and I'd give to, you know, guys who were in the thick of parenting like you and me. And all the guys listening and trying to figure it out, doing their imperfect best, just like me,

is, man, the most significant thing you do with your life if you're a father. It's probably not going to be something you accomplished. It's probably going to be somebody you race. Support all in. It's going to be the training in your replacement.

“It's good stuff, man. That's what we're doing. Thank you. Yes, sir.”

We got one last question. So hot question. Oh, buddy. Actually, I wasn't here, but I got my own. Okay. What is your favorite miracle that Jesus performed in the Bible? And why? Well, am I allowed to cheat and go resurrection? You know, let's do it. All right. All right. You know, other than that one. That would bang, man. Oh, that's fire. That's good. All right. This is shooting from the hip. If I have more time,

I think something else. All right. I think it's, I think it's when Jesus touches the leper and he heals him. Can you go on to it? Can you tell the story? Yeah. Well, he heals lepers a

“few times. Okay. And honestly, there's not much description to this miracle. But there's a specific”

time where maybe a couple of times in the gospels where Jesus reaches out and he touches the leper. Now, there's a reason that like most people, it's not the kind of thing you see. There's a reason that's my favorite. Okay. Might, might be my favorite. So in the Old Testament, there's all these laws about what to do with somebody that's got lepercy. And in the Old Testament, if you had lepercy, you were ceremonially unclean. And the kind of the rules were that if a clean person touches an

what you would have to do if you had lepercy is in that time, you would have to stand, you know, according to a tradition, maybe 50 paces away from somebody you'd have to yell unclean, unclean, unclean, unclean. So when I read that miracle about Jesus just walking right up to the guy, and you know, he's like, hey, well, you make me clean, you know, Jesus like, you know, I will and he touches him. I will be clean. One, that guy that it spent his entire life

having everybody stay 50 paces away. Jesus walks up and he's like, man, I'd really like to get right up in. I want to get right up where you are. I want to be close to you, brother,

I get close to you. And then when Jesus touches him, it heals him. And for the first time in the

entire Bible, instead of when a clean person touches an unclean thing, the unclean thing makes the clean thing unclean. Jesus works it backwards. And because he's clean, the clean thing touches the unclean thing and the clean thing makes the unclean thing clean. And it's like a, it's a picture of what happens when you by faith and repentance reach out and touch Jesus Christ. And when you touch him, he makes you clean. That's a good, a lot of it. How did the people react

to that? Well, in different times, they reacted different ways. A lot of people did not like it when Jesus did healings. They did not like it. Why? Because it messed with a lot of their traditions that had built up around the thing. In fact, one of the things that sets off the series of events that leads to the crucifixion of Jesus is him healing people on Sabbaths. They were like, "Hey, man, you're in a lot of it." That was like one of their little rules. What legalistic people do

is they take the rules that God actually gave him the Bible. And then legalistic people add rules to the rules. And then they condemn you for not obeying the rules. They added to the rules that actually God didn't make in the first place. And they did that with the Sabbath laws.

“I think they're called the Targams. They did that with the Sabbath laws. They took one command.”

"Hey, don't do work on the Sabbath. Keep it holy as unto the Lord." And they added a bunch of rules about what counts as work. And then they added rules to the rules and ended up all this time.

Well, one of their rules was, "Hey, no healing on the Sabbath." Which is real dumb. Like God never said that.

And so one of the reasons that they got mad is what you're breaking our our little religious tradition, you're making us look like idiots. We said you could do this and you're doing it. I never understood that. It seems... I'm not well-versed. I read it. I don't understand how to stuff a readbook. When I read the miracles that he did, it seems like the people were pissed every single time he performed what? Very frequently. I don't understand. He's doing

unexplainable things unless you have faith in God. And so what I mean is doing it right in front of him.

“How are they... What are they playing? How do they not get it? Well, I think two things.”

You know, I think one, it was a threat to their fame and religious sort of the power that they had. It's like, "Hey, quick, busted up our thing. We're the ones that are in charge of all the stuff." So when Jesus kind of, you know, he kind of rolls in and starts breaking everything. There's two things the Bible says about the Pharisees. Now there's actually a time where Jesus pronounces woes on the Pharisees and I won't be able to read them all off off the top of my head. But he gives

seven woes. And it's essentially like, "Here's what's wrong with you." You know, you ask people to

tie the 10th of this and you neglect the way to your matters the law, justice and mercy and loving your neighbor. And he goes through like seven different things. But two things the Bible said that Jesus says about Pharisees is they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. So one, what they cared about, like, you're like, "Hey man, why wouldn't they want people to have faith in God?" Because that really what they cared about, that's not what they cared about,

about a whole lot. What they cared about a whole lot was people thinking they were awesome

“power. Yes, they loved the praise of men more than they loved the praise of God. I think power plays”

into that. And they were like, "Man, what we really care about in their heart of hearts. Everybody cheer on us on and applaud us." And then it does say that they loved money. And so I think those two things, if Jesus rolls in and buss up their thing,

Like how you told that. Thank you Josh. Who's an honor man? Josh Mahal. Thank you. Thank you.

“Appreciate you. God bless you. Yes, sir.”

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